The Return by Dany Laferrière Read Free Book Online Page B

behind dark glasses.
    Serial killers.
    Papa Doc was the only star.
    Tupac, the young leader who looks so much like Hector,
    has conquered the Foreign Woman.
    Tonight their savage kiss
    on a reed mat on the floor
    will drive all the warriors crazy
    under the Cité ramparts.
    Now Tupac is making political speeches.
    He moves through Cité Soleil in a car.
    Thinking he’s a real leader.
    A loud voice and an itchy trigger finger.
    Suddenly he becomes lucid and
    sees himself for what he is: a loser.
    Facing the camera.
    Sitting in the shadows.
    Tupac: “If I stop, I’m a dead man.
    If I go on, I’m a dead man.”
    I feel my nephew shiver as if
    he were facing the same choice.
    This is a city where the killers
    all want to die young.
    Tupac falls at the height of his glory
    in the dust of Cité Soleil.
    Like his brother Bily.
    Both killed by a frail young man
    who suddenly stepped from the shadows.
    The girl leaves with the TV crew.
    On the cassette there’s blood, sex and tears.
    Everything the viewer wants.
    Roll the credits.

An Emerging Writer
    My nephew wants to be a famous writer.
    The influence of the rock-star culture.
    His father is a poet who gets death threats.
    His uncle, a novelist living in exile.
    He has to choose between death and exile.
    For his grandfather it was death in exile.
    Before you begin
    you have time to think about fame
    because once you write the first sentence
    you’re up against
    this anonymous archer
    whose real target is your ego.
    Later on.
    In a comfortable armchair.
    By the fireside.
    Fame will come.
    Too late.
    The hope then will be
    for a day without suffering.
    The worst stupidity, it seems,
    is to compare one era
    to the next.
    One man’s time
    to another’s.
    Individual times
    are parallel lines
    that never touch.
    In the little room, my nephew and I
    look without seeing each other.
    We try to understand
    who the other is.
    On the narrow shelf I notice
    some Carter Brown novels that once belonged to me.
    To write a novel, I tell my nephew
    with a sly smile,
    what you really need is a good pair of buttocks
    because it’s a job
    like the seamstress’s
    where you spend a lot of time sitting down.
    You also need a cook’s talents.
    Take a large kettle of boiling water,
    add some vegetables
    and a raw piece of meat.
    You’ll put in the salt and spices later
    before lowering the heat.
    All the flavors will blend into one.
    The reader can sit down to the feast.
    It’s like a woman’s job,
    my nephew points out, worried.
    It’s true you have to be able to change
    into a woman, a plant or a stone.
    All three realms are necessary.
    Watching the vein in his temple beat that way, I know he’s thinking fast. But you haven’t explained the most important thing to me. What would that be? It’s not just the story, it’s how you tell it. Then what? You have to tell me how to do it. You don’t want to write something personal? Of course. No one can tell you how to be original. There must be tricks that can help. It’s always better if you discover them yourself. But I’ll waste time. That’s the point: time doesn’t exist in this job. I feel like I’m all alone. And lost. What good is having an uncle who’s a writer if he tells you he can’t help you out? At least you know that much. A lot of young writers think they can’t write because they aren’t part of a network. Maybe I don’t know how to write. You can’t say that if you haven’t spent at least a dozen years trying to find out. What do you mean? A dozen years to find out I can’t write? Well, believe me, that’s a conservative figure. So what good is the experience then? I can’t tell you any more than that, Dany.
    My sister’s son is called Dany.
    We didn’t know you were going to come back, my sister told me.
    The exile loses his spot.
    He goes and gets himself a glass of juice, then he’s