Free Dancing in the Baron's Shadow by Fabienne Josaphat Page B

amusement. His wife simply averted her eyes and waved her fan.
    Just as they pulled up to the hotel, the husband asked if laws still mattered much in Haiti, and Raymond responded by announcing the fare loudly. The tourists paid him and jumped out. All around them, cars were honking, and buses loaded and unloaded right there in the middle of traffic. Raymond pocketed his money and sped away, his heart racing.
    Sweat pooled on Nicolas’s forehead and in his sideburns, and he pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his brow. Overhead, the ceiling fans spun quietly, barely dissipating the tropical heat. His mother always said, “ Santi bon koute chè.” It takes a lot of money to look like a million bucks. Nicolas L’Eveillé stubbornly weathered the heat of his classroom in a fine suit, and the female students admired his refined taste in pinstripes, charcoal grays, and navy blues, his rich mauve ties and gold cuff links. The male students studied his shoes and tried to memorize the style, the fit, the color, the stitching, the leather Eve had the maid polish each morning.
    But nerves exacerbated his sweating this morning. He didn’t know how the students would receive his lecture.
    â€œTurn your books to page two hundred and sixty, where we begin our lecture on the penal code.”
    Some students scribbled furiously as he began, but others eyed each other quizzically. A hand shot up in the air.
    â€œMaître? What about the lecture on human rights? The one from last week?”
    Nicolas maintained his composure, but beneath his stoic appearance, he was crumbling. “We have to catch up with the curriculum.As I was saying, the law penalizes people who may or may not be criminals, but those people will one day be your clients regardless. You will have to represent them.”
    Nicolas turned to the blackboard and scribbled the name of a case study in large letters. It would be foolhardy to venture into anything as incendiary as human rights right now.
    At two o’clock, the students still hadn’t shut their notebooks. Nicolas scrutinized the auditorium, scanning for a face or two who would protest his new lesson, but found none. Nicolas had a reputation for being an eloquent and passionate orator. Students and professors alike referred to him as “Maître.” Unlike most professors at the Faculté de Droit, Nicolas was not dictating or regurgitating doctrine. He had ideas. Loud ones. Borderline dangerous ones. Lately, straggling students on their way out of other classes would huddle by the windows and doors of his lecture hall, eavesdropping through the open louvers. They’d whispered to each other. “Maître L’Eveillé is crazy,” they’d say. ‘He makes sense, but he’s crazy.”
    Nicolas’s greatest fear was that his students—that the entire next generation—would transform Haiti into a nation of obedient sheep. Sometimes he couldn’t resist pushing the bounds of his lectures in an attempt to shake them from their complacency.
    â€œBefore long, they’ll probably rewrite the history books,” he’d complained to Jean-Jean once. “I know it’s risky, but it’s my duty to teach my students something about their country before it’s too late.”
    But now, with his family’s life on the line, he had to show more restraint.
    He glanced at his watch. “Next week we’ll pick up where we left off.”
    Nicolas himself exited with the clamoring students, swallowed up by the swarm. He’d gotten used to this strange intimacy, the whirlwind of young people’s hair pomade, cologne, and rapid chatter. He could see the unruly hairs on the napes of necks, the sweat-stained collars, the modest jewelry.
    The crowd spilled into the courtyard. Nicolas inhaled the fresh air and made his way beneath a canopy of bougainvillea. He’d first sat in this courtyard years before, a fresh-faced student