In the Palm of Darkness

"When his house ends, that's when a man dies."

Cuban-born Puerto Rican author Mayra Montero continues a long tradition of Caribbean writers fascinated by Haiti. In this novel, In the Palm of Darkness, Montero weaves together the stories of two men searching for a nearly extinct frog in the mountains of Haiti, the grenouille du sang. Along the way, the two characters, Victor, the American herpetologist, and Thierry Adrien, the guide from Jérémie, take turns narrating chapters about how their roads eventually crossed and explaining the context of the plot. 

Thierry Adrien and his incestuous family, torn apart by extramarital affairs, violence, and political affiliation (Julien, the youngest, becomes a macoute) gradually die off, just as the elusive frog sought by Victor, coming from a failed marriage (with hints at lesbianism of his wife, Martha) and completely possessed by his research on frogs, is lost forever. The book includes numerous short chapters on the disappearance of frogs all over the world, and the causes are deeper than deforestation or pollution, just as the causes of Haiti's poverty are more complex. 

Unfortunately, while capturing the horrific violence quite well, the novel does not include Cito Francisque or anyone in the Haitian military who overthrew Aristide (the novel takes place in the early 1990s) as integrated characters. Instead, Thierry Adrien alludes to the drug deals, a Secret Society modeled on the Abakuá of Cuba (ultimately derived from West Africa), a series of brutal massacres and mutilated corpses across the country (a work of the macoutes, thugs) and the general atmosphere of fear in Haiti. Without any overt references to Duvalier or the first coup that unseated Aristide, Montero's novel successfully criticizes the social, economic, and political conditions of Haiti, but leaves the reader wanting more, such as a confrontation between Cito Francisque's gang and Victor and Thierry in Casetaches. 

The novel naturally includes numerous references to pwazon rat, zombies, Vodou, secret societies, and the dying way of life that characterizes the Adrien family. The various types of frogs used for poison and Vodou symbolism likewise add nuance, as does the explanation of Haitian doctor Emile Boukaka, alleging that Agwe has called the frogs back beneath the sea, which contains overtones of another world beneath the sea that is core to Vodou. 

Victor, on the other hand, can relate to the gradual disappearance of Thierry's world in that he is also experiencing loss, so the two become quite close. The novel's strongest character, however, and whose reflections form the bulk of commentary on Haitian social relations, are in the flashbacks of Thierry Adrien as told to Victor. Thierry's father was a member of a group that hunted zombies, yet somehow all of the local Caribbean and Haitian colors and Vodou beliefs are integrated with the text's secular herpetologist, Victor. Ganesha, a woman of Indian descent from Guadeloupe also plays a large role in the novel, adding pan-Caribbean dimensions to the novel about the loss of amphibian life. 

Besides Vodou, folklore, and Western science, the novel also subtly critiques the widespread denigration of women and women's bodies. Women are raped, massacred, forced into prostitution (one disturbing chapter discusses a teenage prostitute kissing her smelly client in Marfranc), and women are the first of the amphibian species to disappear, surely no coincidence. Like the female frogs of Haiti's shrinking forests, local women are often the most affected by crushing poverty and violence, the first to bear the burden of destruction.

I must admit that one of the things that drew me to this novel was a story my great-aunt used to share about the frogs of the Haitian countryside, back in her Bainet childhood, in the 1930s. It was common for her two brothers to chase after frogs, pick them up, and play with them, but she always laughed about how the "devils" would urinate on her brothers! My even greater surprise about frogs in Haiti was to hear the song of the coqui on the road to Jacmel, a tropical tree frog I had previously associated solely with Puerto Rico. Their beautiful call does indeed seem otherworldly, particularly special on the nightly paths through the hills of Haiti. The resourceful Caribbean amphibians are nonetheless dying off, disappearing like frogs all over the world, but they're resilient, powerful symbols of Afro-Caribbean spirituality, as well as notions of water and fertility. Montero manages to capture this perspective through the spiritual worldview of Thierry in a tasteful manner, without overdoing it with tales of zombi hunters or lougawou.