The Return Read Free Page B

one small suitcase into which I could put everything. What I possess today is spread out through my room. I wonder what happened to that first suitcase. Did I forget it in a closet during a quick move? In those days I would slip out, leaving the last month’s rent on the table and a girl sleeping in the bed.
    Garibaldi just went by with his grandson, who comes to visit him every Friday after school. He makes him pasta and talks away to him in dialect. The boy is only ten years old, but when you ask him who he hates most of all in the world, he tells you Gianni Agnelli, the owner of Juventus. His son doesn’t want to hear anything about Italy; he likes hockey because it makes him feel closer to the country where he was born. Garibaldi will take revenge on his grandson who will inherit his bottles of bad homemade wine and the yellowed portrait of D’Annunzio.
    I fear that an event no matter how great
    will never shake
    a man from his habits.
    The decision is made long before
    we actually become aware of it
    and for a reason that will always escape us.
    The moment of departure has been written
    in us so long ago that by the time it comes
    it always seems a little banal.

Time in Books
    As soon as I moved into a new apartment
    I would place my books on the table.
    All of them read and reread.
    I wouldn’t buy a book unless
    the desire to read it was stronger
    than the hunger in my belly.
    That’s still the case for a lot of people.
    When our circumstances change
    we think it’s the same
    for everyone else.
    I know people who constantly
    have to choose between eating and reading.
    I consume as much meat here
    in one winter
    as a poor person in Haiti eats
    in a lifetime.
    I moved very quickly
    from forced vegetarian to obligated carnivore.
    In my life before, food
    was a daily preoccupation.
    Everything centered on my stomach.
    Once I got something to eat everything was settled.
    That’s impossible to understand
    if you’ve never experienced it.
    Two years ago, after a violent hurricane struck Haiti, I received a letter from a young student who urged me to inform all people of good will who were thinking of sending food to the victims that it would be better if every bag of rice was accompanied by a case of books because, he wrote, “We do not eat to live, but to be able to read.”
    One day, I bought a book
    without really needing to.
    It sat on the little kitchen table
    unopened for three months
    among the onions and carrots.
    Today I realize that a good half
    of my library remains unread.
    I’m waiting to be in a sanatorium before I read Buddenbrooks by the serious Thomas Mann, or track The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Why do we keep books we’ll never read? For The Leopard, the author’s name justified the expense. I forget what keeps me from reading Thomas Mann’s novel.
    I will leave with a little suitcase.
    Like the one I had when I came here.
    Nearly empty.
    Not a single book.
    Not even mine.
    Stay only one short night in Port-au-Prince
    before heading to Petit-Goâve to
    see that house again not far
    from my grandfather’s old distillery.
    Later I’ll cross the rusty old bridge
    to visit my grandmother in the cemetery.
    I’d just as soon spend the rest of my time here
    chatting about everything and nothing
    with people who have never
    opened a book in their lives.
    But sooner or later that essential moment will come
    when I confuse the novels I read
    with the ones I wrote.
    Everything moves on this planet.
    Seen from the sky its southern flank
    is in constant motion.
    Entire populations travel northward
    in search of life.
    When everyone gets there
    we’ll all tip over the edge.
    Sometimes a phone call in the middle of the night
    turns everything upside down in an instant.
    We are lost in restless movement.
    It’s always easier to change places
    than change lives.
    Into a suitcase I throw two or three pairs of jeans, three shirts, two