I Am Alive

By Kettly Mars and Kaiama L. Glover

I Am Alive (Je suis vivant) is celebrated Haitian author Kettly Mars’s latest novel, telling the story of a bourgeois Caribbean family as it wrestles with issues of mental illness, unconventional sexuality, and the difficulty of returning home and rediscovery following the devastating 2010 earthquake. Mars, herself a survivor of the disaster, has crafted a complex, at times disorienting, but ultimately enthralling and powerfully evocative work of literature that adds to her reputation as one of the leading voices of the francophone world.

When the mental health facility where he has been living for decades is severely damaged, Alexandre Bernier must return home to Fleur-de-Chêne. His sister Marylène has also come home, leaving behind a flourishing career as a painter in Brussels, and begins to explore her sexuality with her artist’s model Norah, who poses for her in secret. These homecomings are both a lift and a burden to the family matriarch, Éliane, a steadfast and resourceful widow. Over the course of the novel, past and present blend together as each character has an opportunity to narrate the story from their own perspective. In the end, it is the resilience of the Haitian people that allows them to navigate the seismic shifts in their family and in the land.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Release date: Sep 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9780813948348

Book preview

Cover Page for I AM ALIVE

I Am Alive

CARAF Books

Caribbean and African Literature Translated from French

RENÉE LARRIER AND MILDRED MORTIMER, Editors

I Am Alive

Kettly Mars

Translated by Nathan H. Dize

Afterword by Kaiama L. Glover

University of Virginia Press

Charlottesville and London

Publication of this translation was assisted by a grant from the French Ministry of Culture, Centre national du livre.

Originally published in French as Je suis vivant

© 2015 Éditions Mercure de France

University of Virginia Press

This translation and edition © 2022 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

First published 2022

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mars, Kettly, author. | Dize, Nathan H., translator. | Glover, Kaiama L., writer of afterword.

Title: I am alive / Kettly Mars ; translated by Nathan H. Dize ; afterword by Kaiama L. Glover.

Other titles: Je suis vivant. English

Description: Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2022. | Series: CARAF books: Caribbean and African literature translated from French | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022008323 (print) | LCCN 2022008324 (ebook) | ISBN 9780813948324 (hardcover ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780813948331 (paperback ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780813948348 (ebook)

Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.

Classification: LCC PQ3949.2.M33 J413 2022 (print) | LCC PQ3949.2. M33 (ebook) | DDC 843/.914—dc23/eng/20220406

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022008323

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022008324

The publication of this volume has been supported by New Literary History.

Cover art: Papa L. Sa m konnen, sa m pa konnen, Tessa Mars, 2017. (© Tessa Mars)

Contents

Preface

I Am Alive

Glossary

Afterword

Translator’s Note

Translator’s Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Preface

It’s difficult to write a story inspired by true events, especially when those events impact us closely. There’s the potential for parents or friends to feel betrayed, for them to feel dispossessed of their personal lives and their intimacy. You must find the right moment to explain to your family and friends your intention to write a novel inspired by a situation that concerns them directly or indirectly. You can also decide to say nothing at all and write your story, preparing yourself to face each person’s unpredictable reaction when the work becomes public. You must also pray that the book experiences a certain amount of success because, in that case, you will be pardoned faster.

Sharing details in the lives of people with whom you are close to is to assume a moral responsibility, to place a bet on affection and trust. It must be done with a world of respect, yet without falling into a self-censorship that would mutilate the essence of the project. You must stay true to yourself, true to your writerly self––do not seek forgiveness through writing. Of course, there are thousands of tricks to mask a true story, to cover up the facts. You introduce entirely made-up characters into the narration left and right, you transplant the story to another moment in time or to another place, you make someone have children who normally would never have had any, you imagine different physical traits for the characters, different professions, different habits. All of this to create distance between the lives and details that could betray the people whom, despite everything, you wish to protect. But the story is there, demanding our attention, occupying our minds. The story requires us to share slivers of the lives of the people who will eventually read it and recognize themselves in it, the same people who will find in it emotions, strength, and empathy.

I wrote I Am Alive in an attempt to break a silence. An old silence, many decades in the making. Mental illness is a painful subject within the human family. Even today when science has made so much progress in the area of psychiatric medicine. We’re left vulnerable and helpless when faced with this mental illness, which cannot be seen but which transforms someone dear, a parent, a friend, a lover into a strange person of whom we’re a little bit scared––a person whose body is physically degrading and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

The silence within Alexandre’s family has weighed heavy on their hearts and minds. Life’s circumstances caused this silence to crumble––just like the earthquake on January 12, 2010, caused the earth to crumble beneath our feet. The Berniers lived with Alexandre’s absence, but only silence could preserve their pain, relegating it to the corners of their memories, where they thought they had forgotten. A silence enveloped these particular memories, sheltering them in a hushed and uneasy space of forgetting. A silence that enabled them to manage the guilt, regret, jealousy, helplessness, resentment, and all the other emotions we harbor in the face of the one who has been rendered voiceless––also, in the face of those with whom you have shared in the ordeal. Alexandre’s schizophrenic silence sealed shut the lips of his entire family. They only spoke but so much about him, even though they lived in the same city, beneath the same sky. And life went on, the years went by.

I wrote I Am Alive in an attempt to undo the silence by looking it directly in the eye. I went in search of this silence in each of the characters’ monologues, to expose it to the light of the present. It was oppressing me, that silence, you can’t imagine how heavy it can be. How much courage it can take to ask a question that you hope will unravel the threads imprisoning the past. We say that silence is a source of serenity, that we find in silence the strength and clarity to live our lives. It’s true and fortunate for those who experience silence this way. But there are also silences that cause harm, that paralyze parts of your life. Literature can provide passage to words capable of delivering us from these oppressive silences, even when we read them in silence.

Kettly Mars

April 2021

I Am Alive

After the four o’clock snack, the earth began to grumble and shake as though it was going to open up to its core, all the way to its core. I quickly stuffed my mouth with the two cookies I always keep on reserve in my right pants pocket. The big trees of light are full of nesting birds. They’ll steal my cookies, and, if I let them, they’ll poke out my eyes, too. The ground’s movement broke and leveled the cinder block wall, but the Institution was left standing. Madame Fleury-Jacques’s heart gave out. Robert had another asthma attack, writhing on the patio’s yellow and red mosaic tiles, eyes bulging, his mouth open, gasping for air.

Yet, just a moment before, everything had seemed normal. Joseph was sweeping the entrance to the Institution, as he usually did at this time, before moving on to water the garden. A persistent breeze was blowing, and the almond tree’s large ochre leaves obstinately followed Joseph’s broom despite his vigorous strokes. After fighting with the fallen leaves, he carried them away in a wicker basket and got to his watering. The odor of the wet earth announced the coming evening. Standing still in the alley, I closed my eyes to breathe in the scent; it never fails to intoxicate me. And then, everything crumbled. As he fell to the ground, a chunk of the wall entombed Joseph in front of a row of red ginger plants––the only flowers in the garden.

Everyone was screaming, Madame Fleury-Jacques louder than the others. From outside the neighborhood, a bellowing rose loud enough to make your hair stand on end, along with a never-ending series of help me’s. This, in a neighborhood where I rarely hear any voices. Had everyone gone crazy? We finally got to them . . . Ha! Ha! Ha! And we’re the crazy ones? Look, they’re screaming louder than us! I ran into the common room to turn in circles around the concrete pillar. One hundred times to the right, one hundred and one times to the left. And I covered my ears with my hands, pressing hard enough to not hear Miss Laurette yelling at me to go out into the garden. My safe place is in the circle around the pillar. One step outside, and the monster will swallow me whole. And when he swallows me, I’ll have to scream inside my head to yank myself from his guts. For the time being, he watches me surreptitiously, fixating on my legs as he waits for me to take one step into his territory. My mother, father, little brother, and sisters are all around the pillar. I was terribly afraid––my hands were panic-stricken, my knuckles disarticulated like the pincers of a crab. The soles of my feet itched. Since I couldn’t manage to sleep that night, Tòy gave me an extra dose of medication. Tòy is a nurse’s aide at the Institution. He doesn’t know that I know. All of them, they don’t know that I know everything here. I see everything, I hear everything, and I understand everything. Dr. Durand-Franjeune ordered an extra dose for all the boarders, as they call us. An extra dose to allow us to sleep. Maria couldn’t stop sobbing and sniffling. It’s because of everything that just happened. Dr. Durand-Franjeune doesn’t want us to say we’re crazy. We’re mentally ill, yes, that’s what we are.

I didn’t say a word, I never speak. Almost never. From time to time I say hello, but I never know which voice is speaking for me. My body is a knot of words that live inside my toes or my buttocks or my bladder, especially inside the knuckles of my fingers, depending on the day. I didn’t run; run to where exactly? We never leave the Institution. I don’t have another address. I never leave––I know, I may get lost. One time a boarder left; his name was Bernard. They found him by the end of the day, his head was bleeding. Children in the street had thrown rocks at him. I’ll never find cookies outside. This is my home, my prison, my medication, my heaven and my hell, my entire universe. Many pairs of eyes in the walls spy on me endlessly. Joseph grew ivy on the blocks of cement, but I know that the eyes are there, open, watching me if I come too close. I stay in my spot in the middle of the garden and they let me go into the sun. I remain standing, still and speechless in the alley, so that the eyes won’t see me. They only see those who move and gesticulate. The garden is mine; it also belongs to Madame Fleury-Jacques, who just died, to Robert, whose mouth is foaming there, on the ground, and to Joseph, too, even though you can’t see him beneath the pile of broken cement blocks. The garden also belongs to all the others, Gogo and Samuel, the boarders like me, to Miss Jeanne and Miss Laurette, the nurses at the Institution, to Tòy the nurse’s aide who doesn’t know that I know. And finally, the garden belongs to Maria, my best friend. She told everyone that we’re going to get married when she gets older. Maria, the little girl with delicate white hair like oak blossoms kissing the sun. I’ve lived in the Institution since before I can remember. At any rate, I’ve forgotten so many things. My hair wasn’t white when I got here. I had all of my teeth when I got here. I’ve also forgotten how to laugh and how to fly away on an airplane.

Grégoire knew that Alexandre would be coming home to live with them soon. He had a knack for this sort of thing. He had a knack for a lot of things, for as long as he could remember. He could’ve put money on it. But he was never a betting man. Everyone in the family trusted Grégoire’s intuition. Maybe the others thought about it too, sometimes––about