Massacre River

At once magical and grotesque, Rene Philoctete's amazing novel captures in a unforgettable manner a particularly dire moment of Haitian history: the 1937 massacres of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic. Massacre River is a monument of magical realism, a cascade of images and bizarre incongruities that nevertheless tell an irresistible story, complete with sympathetic (and unsympathetic) characters and a chilling moral.

It's the story of Dominican worker and union activist Pedro Brito and his young Haitian wife, Adele. Set in the Dominican town of Elias Pina, and in the border region between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, Massacre River follows their tale as it unfolds over the course of the massacre, from the appearance of a strange, ill-omened, birdlike thing in the sky over Elias Pina through their frenzied attempts to reunite in the face of the murderous chaos that stands between them. The book meanders through a slew of fascinating detours, examining the roots of Dominican racial theory, the dreams of Dominican dictator and megalomaniac Trujillo, and the playing out of the massacre at the local level.

One of the more nightmarish themes in the book is the use of the Spanish noun perejil (parsley, in English) to differentiate between Dominican and Haitian residents of the border region. If you pronounced it correctly, you lived; if you mispronounced it, you were hacked to death with a machete.

The characters are myriad, nuanced, bizarre, and infinitely compelling. There's the unique madness of Trujillo, an animate bus named Chicha (a guagua, in the border argot), the wind which doubles as a radio reporting the unfolding of the massacre, and the decidedly evil persona of Senor Perez Agustin de Cortoba, the Dominican boss of Elias Pina and instigator and leader of the killings there.

Philoctete's use of language is dumbfounding. The images, hallucinatory and intense, virtually tumble off the page, delivering a devastatingly kaleidoscopic picture of time, place, and events that leave the reader breathless.

In the hands of a lesser writer, this book might be a grim one indeed. It's rescued, however, by two things: the incredible beauty of Philoctete's language and vision, and the exquisitely tender portrayal of the love between Pedro and Adele. The story of their first meeting, and of their wedding, are high points, grippingly rendered and completely unforgettable. Take the following as an example:

Don Pedro, un poco borracho, slipped a rolled-up yellow bandana around Senora Adele's waist and held the two ends, one in each hand, while the young lady clasped her perfumed fingers sensually behind his neck and kept it warm. They twirled in the fire of their hips, he clicking his tongue and stamping his feet, she dizzily lighting up the night with her bright smile, ready to take flight -- they were so light they seemed made of nothing. A marvel to see. They throbbed with ecstatic joie de vivre. They drew close, pushed away, clung together, reared back, a tantalizing torture that left your throat dry and your temples pounding.

In the end, Massacre River is as well a deeply moral book, exploring the roots of genocide in racism and extolling the beauty of a colorblind society of mixed nationalities that embraces all aspects of its roots. Its uniquely lush language and incredible characterization only serve to highlight the innate humaneness of Philoctete's artistic vision. Would that more writers could combine art and high morality in as compelling a manner as Massacre River demonstrates.

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