Translated from the French by Nathan H. Dize.
Set in 1842, this novel foregrounds a Haiti that is grappling with the weight of an onerous debt imposed by France, forcing its citizens to pay reparations to French colonists in exchange for diplomatic recognition of the first Black republic of the Americas. In the town of Boën, a prosperous notary, Ludovic Possible, decides to take a bold step to secure the future of his community. He opens a schoolhouse where local children can learn both artisanal skills and the essential ability to read and write. For Ludovic, education represents the best chance for the people of Boën to rise above their hardships and build a prosperous future—especially for Aïda, a quiet and enigmatic girl whose mother’s marvellous stories captivate him.
The tranquillity of Boën is soon shattered, however, by a series of duels that pit families, neighbours, and even animals against each other. As tensions rise, Ludovic’s vision for a better future is threatened by the escalating violence. In Duels, Néhémy Dahomey introduces readers to a rich and unforgettable cast of characters—Aïda, Ludovic, Balthazar Possible, Pépé the Tempest, and many others—who find themselves at the crossroads of a nation on the brink of transformative change.
It was the thirty-eighth year of independence, or 1842 for the
rest of the world. Sixteen years ago, the government in Port-au-
Prince, then Port-Républicain, the titular capital of the Island of
Haiti, Kiskeya or Boyo, from north to south, from east to west,
had agreed to a financial debt to the country of France, following
the implacable logic of paying recompense for its bygone servi-
tude, including land and personal property.
Good King Charles the Tenth of France and Navarre set the
sum of 150 million gold francs for what had been seized during
the bloody anti-slavery and egalitarian revolution. He ordered
the reimbursement of damages to the former metropole for the
so-called unfortunate colonists, dispossessed by the Haitian
movement. Having thrown off the yoke of oppression and
founded a country, the former captives, maroon men and women,
freed slaves, bosals born in Africa, Black Creoles born in the col-
ony of Saint Domingue and everyone once classified by the
Code Noir of 1685 as personal property, biens meubles, now learnt
that they had to purchase their own bodies from the very owners
they never accepted as such. Across the world, a singular consen-
sus was spun around this affair: all the white countries—that is
to say, every nation constituted on their terms and recognized by
their standards, the powers of the world, big and small, imperialists
and missionaries alike—quickly nodded in agreement with this
excellent idea. The sole Black republic, the second independent
country in the Americas after the United States, had to comply
and pay up.
Since then, with this aim in mind, the very fine Jean-Pierre
Boyer, the mulatto President-for-life of the entire Island of Haiti
under the title of the Supreme Leader of the Nation, imposed
drastic taxes on farmers, from north to south, from east to west
—taxes that were often higher than the farmers’ annual revenue.
With such a ruinous system in place, the country not only
reduced what folks call the independence debt but also ensured
lasting poverty for generations to come. In order to sustain itself
to carry out ambitious projects, to support industrialization, the
Central Government drafted citizens into days of unpaid labour
whenever it pleased. The corvée meant working your fingers to
the bone all day long in exchange for a meagre survival diet at
the worksite. Some willingly accepted, most of them soldiers.
Others, pressured by armed troops, ultimately submitted.
There comes a time when intimidation no longer holds.
When military pressure is protracted, it cracks from within. When
abductions multiply across the country, you witness state digni-
taries, urged on by their wives, ally themselves with popular
movements, marching in Port-au-Prince and promising to sever
the head and the neck from the President of the Republic’s shoulders.
from the city. She can read and write in fine script, and she fought
wherever she could against the confounding logic that barred
people from entering the joyous circle of modernity with wide
open arms. It has already been fourteen years since she met a
young peasant learning the ways of politics. She took him under
her wing and then, shortly after, decided to indulge the eternal
urban fantasy of returning to nature. After years of peasant life
with Timoléon, after three miscarriages and the loss of two
children, Bérénice had not lost hope of reversing the colonial
order—that is, the end of mulatto rule—without replacing it
with some God-knows-what Black aristocracy. For the time
being, her contribution to this future world of love and peace,
free of domination and ethnic strife, was limited to cajoling an
excessively exuberant companion, wishing to bear him more
sweet children, and, above all, spreading the good word of edu-
cation and science wherever the opportunity arose. This is why
Ludovic Possible had once found in her a solid ally for his own
educational efforts.
*
Bérénice and Timoléon lived a stone’s throw from Papa Possible.
All they had to do was exit the notary’s front yard, take a few
steps to their left, pass the mango trees no one ever touched, and
walk past the little path on the right bordered by sugarcane that
led to Tapage Market. Further down, to the right, two coconut
palms were rooted inside the yard of the two liveliest political
minds in the entire plain. Thanks to this proximity, the notary
did not solely have a schoolhouse and children to occupy his
time. Bérénice managed the house, brought order to the day,
and furnished a sense of presence to all around her. It was she,
for example, who suggested involving certain parents in the
children’s instruction.
The same geographical propinquity also explained why
Timoléon Jean-Baptiste never skipped a round of dominoes on
Thursday evenings.The complicity that was established between
these men eventually subsumed the tensions that had once
seemed essential to Timoléon’s vision of the world. When
Ludovic lived far away, he was merely profiting from the labour
of lowly peasants. Now that he was present in the flesh and
alliances could be forged, the personal took precedence over the
political.
Meanwhile, in these long rainy days, as we withdraw into
ourselves, we set our demons free: the bourgeoisie and the people
share the same dread. They endure the same troubled sleep and
ultimately dream of the same gigantic rooster scratching at the
door, waiting for us to fall back into slumber, scratching again
and again, until the final rude awakening.
Néhémy Dahomey, born in Port-au-Prince, is a writer, poet, and philosopher based in Paris. He is the author of Mots épars, Emmuré, Rapatriés, and Combats, the original French edition of Duels.
Nathan H. Dize is an assistant professor of French at Washington University in Saint Louis and a scholar of French Caribbean literature. He is the translator of The Immortals by Makenzy Orcel, I Am Alive by Kettly Mars, and Antoine of Gommiers by Lyonel Trouillot.
This excerpt from DUELS is published by permission of Seagull Books. Copyright © 2021 Néhémy Dahomey. Translation copyright © 2025 Nathan H. Dize.
First published as Combats, by Néhémy Pierre-Dahomey, 2021 (Editions du Seuil).
Photo: Néhémy Dahomey © Bénédicte Roscot.
