Summary
Chapter four is narrated by Richard in the days leading up to the earthquake. Richard is Ma Lou’s son, although he long ago cut ties with her. Richard now lives in Paris and is a top executive for a French bottled water company. Richard specializes in expanding the company's market into “Third World” countries where, for some, clean drinking water is still a luxury. After 10 to 15 years away, Richard returns to Haiti. Instead of visiting family, he takes a meeting with Haitian businessmen in which he convinces them to sign an exclusive contract with his company to bring bottled water into the country. Richard recalls the first time he tried filtered water and what a revelation it was for him.
Richard returns to Haiti after a call from his first child, Anne, upends his neat life in Paris. Anne calls to inform Richard that her mother, Richard’s first love, is dying. However, Anne accidently leaves a message on Patricia’s phone, Richard’s wife, who has no idea of Anne’s existence. Richard himself is hardly a presence in Anne’s life. Over the years, he sporadically sent money for Anne’s schooling but only saw her in person once. In a flashback, Richard remembers how he passed by her school and looked at her from inside his car. As he was pulling away, Anne turned around and waved at him. Richard teared up, surprisingly moved by seeing his daughter. After this moment, Richard decides to support Anne more financially, but never builds a more personal relationship with Anne. In Paris, Patricia surprises Richard with divorce papers and the news that she is taking the children and leaving him. Her decision shocks Richard out of his complacency; it angers Richard to think that Patricia got the better of him. Only then, weeks after Anne’s call, does Richard search Patricia’s phone and find the message from Anne. By this point, Patricia has taken the children and most of their belongings to their second home. The next day, Richard sits lost in his now empty Paris apartment; he receives a call from his cousin Dieudonné that Anne’s mother has died. Richard agrees to come to the funeral, mostly as an excuse to escape his life in Paris which seems to be falling apart.
However, once in Haiti, Richard expressly avoids visiting Ma Lou and Anne. Instead he hides out in a luxury hotel with a mix of Haitian elite, drug dealers, and high-class sex workers. This is the same hotel where Sonia and Dieudonné work, finding clients and catering to their whims. Those who frequent the hotel hide away in their privileged bubble above the city. Richard overhears conversations of other guests who discuss their superiority and either ignore or dismiss the poverty that many Haitians live in. After a few days, Richard decides he needs to get out of the hotel. Feeling guilty about his family in France and in Haiti, Richard decides he needs to go to the ocean to cleanse himself. With a driver, Lucien, they make their way through Port-au-Prince. At the beach, Richard makes his way into the ocean. In the water, he thinks about Ma Lou, who made sure he got into a boarding school so he could have more opportunities. In return, Richard has spent a lifetime fleeing from her and everything she represents. Richard comes to the conclusion that it's time to assume his responsibilities: to reconnect with his daughter Anne, to reunite with Patricia, and introduce Anne to his family in Paris. Feeling clean, reborn with a newfound conviction, Richard returns to the beach. As he does, he hears a thundering roar. He sees Lucien making his way toward him, miming something that Richard does not understand. Disoriented, Richard turns around in time to see an enormous wave swallow him into the ocean where he drowns.
Leopold is Dieudonné’s distant cousin from Trinidad. Leopold comes to Haiti through his work as a drug trafficker and is staying at the Hotel de la Montagne Noire, the same as Richard, Sonia, and Dieudonné. Leopold and Dieudonné have become close, but there is palpable tension between them in regards to Sonia. Leopold blatantly desires Sonia, while Dieudonné is committed to protecting her from unwanted attention. The day of the earthquake, Leopold tries to get Jonas, who is on an errand for Dieudonné, to deliver drugs for him. Dieudonné realizes what's happening and bats the drugs out of Leopold’s hands. He then gives Jonas money for candy and sends him off to school. Later in the day, Sonia and Dieudonné part ways with Leopold in the elevator. As they make their way outside, Leopold reflects on what a stunningly beautiful couple they make. Unsure of what to do, Leopold rides the elevator aimlessly; in that moment the earthquake strikes.
The elevator trembles as the building around it sways and suddenly Leopold finds himself, and the elevator, plummeting. Completely disoriented, Leopold cannot tell if he is falling or floating. When the movement stops, he is crushed up against the roof of the elevator with his arm broken and bleeding. Then the lights go out. At first, Leopold has no idea what caused the accident. For the next three days, Leopold is trapped in the elevator with no food, water, and very little idea of what’s happened. Only a crack in the broken and contorted metal walls lets in a sliver of light and fresh air. From here, he can glimpse the destruction of the hotel lobby: dead bodies, crumbling walls, and dust everywhere. Feeling the aftershock, Leopold realizes there has been an earthquake. As he waits to be rescued, Leopold thinks back on his childhood and adult life.
After his father abandoned the family, Leopold was raised by his mother. The rough environment of his neighborhood caused Leopold to grow up fast. His mother attempted to steer Leopold on another path but to no avail. However Leopold does recall a trip with his Uncle George and other boys to see leatherback turtles hatching. At ten years old, Leopold was in awe of the beautiful scene as the tiny hatchlings were striving toward the sea. Leopold came back from that visit excited with the dream of becoming a marine biologist and making his parents proud. A mere four years later, that dream was forgotten and Leopold began to poach turtle eggs with his friends to sell on the black market. Poaching led to selling drugs and, by sixteen, Leopold had learned enough about the business to start his own operation. Leopold resented his mother’s disapproval and attempts to change his behavior, he only thought of wanting to leave his neighborhood and make his way in the world.
As an adolescent, Leopold fathered multiple children without taking responsibility for any of them. However, Leopold’s mother was able to arrange for the adoption of his two sons by Leopold’s Uncle George. His sons grew up believing Leopold was their uncle, and Leopold visited them once a year. After a six month stint in jail, Leopold came out at twenty five determined to get serious about his business and fatherhood. His latest girlfriend was pregnant and Leopold decided he did not want to miss out on fatherhood again. Meanwhile, Leopold expanded his small trafficking business to Haiti where his mother’s grandparents were from. Leopold connected with his ancestral home. His daughter Mathilde was born. Leopold did not marry Mathilde’s mother but financially supported his daughter, also visiting her sporadically. For Mathilde’s fourth birthday, Leopold recalls how he took her to a bird sanctuary, the same place his father took him. He remembers her excitement at seeing the large, red birds, along with her innocent joy and their closeness in that moment.
Back in the elevator, Leopold realizes he can use his phone to shine a light through the crack in the roof. Someone sees the light and they promise to rescue him soon. Leopold feels relief knowing that there’s a chance he'll escape his cell. By this time, he is clammy and passes out from the pain and loss of blood and food. Finally a rescue team comes. As Leopold is being lifted out and attended to he thinks only of his daughter. Leopold is one of the few people to have survived from the hotel; he briefly wonders if Sonia and Dieudonné survived. When Leopold travels back to Trinidad, he decides that he’s been given a second chance at life. He quits drug trafficking and all contact with that world. Instead, he gets a job as a pool boy. Leopold renews contact with his mother and becomes a devoted father to his daughter Mathilde. However, Leopold never explains the reason for his behavior, or what happened to him during the earthquake.
Analysis
Richard is a character who is preoccupied with the idea of purity, in water and in life. For Richard, his pursuit of purity is a means by which he can escape the life of poverty he experienced in his youth. One can see Richard's attempts at escape play out in the way he abandons his Haitian family to pursue a European wife, as well as a career as a top executive. For Richard, "purity" becomes synonymous with whiteness, wealth, and high social status.
The call from Anne proves that, hard as he tries, Richard cannot fully escape his past in Haiti. Even in Haiti, Richard makes no attempts to reunite with his estranged family. His cousin, Dieudonné, watches his actions with disapproval but does not say anything. As with most of Richard’s relationships, his interactions with Dieudonné are transactional, businesslike. The one exception was when Richard visited Anne as a child. Here his conflicting feelings are apparent. As much as Richard tries to feign indifference, Richard feels attachment and pride when he finally sees Anne in person. Yet, by staying in the car, Richard maintains a physical and emotional barrier between himself and Anne. He chooses to support her financially while never claiming her officially as his daughter.
Chancy takes a critical look at the poverty in Haiti. Like other colonized countries, Haiti is not poor from lack of natural resources but through exploitation. Richard understands personally the poverty and desperation many face, but feels no empathy for them. Rather, he exploits the situation to his advantage. Only a select few Haitians will benefit from the contract with his company while the rest of the population will be forced to buy back their country's own water at an elevated price. Yet, Richard has no qualms about this, and he is instead proud of his negotiating skills and success in business. Overhearing those at the hotel talk, Richard neither joins nor stops them. Like them, Richard has developed a callousness that allows him to distance himself from his country and family on his rise to the top.
Swimming in the ocean, Richard feels a sense of peace. Unwilling to listen to his biological mother, the ocean, “our common mother,” provides Richard with guidance. In her waters, Richard feels cleansed. He hears voices that urge him to finally assume his familial responsibilities. But the ocean as a symbolic maternal figure is both nurturing and vengeful. Richard makes his living dealing in water: judging its purity, bottling it, and trying to control it. In the end, water comes back as a vengeful goddess to take him. The immense power of the ocean as it sweeps Richard away is a reminder of his ultimate lack of control over this elemental force. His narrative arc comes full circle as he dies where his mother started her life, in the ocean.
Leopold and Richard are mirror images of one another. They both grow up in hardship and as adolescents become determined to find a way out. Through their characters, Chancy explores the theme of striving. Richard finds a path through official business while Leopold sees drug trafficking as his escape. However there is one major difference: Richard got the opportunity to attend boarding school. Although Richard refuses to acknowledge Ma Lou’s role in his success, this education offers him other pathways. In their own ways, Leopold and Richard are dedicated to hustling: to climbing up the ladder of their respective businesses and achieving success and respect through money and power. On the way, both distance themselves from family: their mothers, children, and sexual partners. Chancy explores the theme of family and gender roles through their experiences as fathers.
Leopold has a complicated relationship with fatherhood. The sea turtles are symbolic of the model of fatherhood Leopold grew up with and inadvertently ends up repeating. Male sea turtles conceive offspring and then disappear from their children’s lives. Leopold struggles with his role as a father, at times denying outright his responsibility to his children. This choice, just like Richard, forces others to carry the burden for them. Leopold’s relationship with Mathilde is more nuanced. In their visit to the bird sanctuary, Leopold enjoys the feeling of connection but is also consumed by insecurities over his ability to be a father. Just like his desire for Sonia, Leopold craves connection but does not know how to foster it other than through money and possession.
While trapped in the casket-like elevator, Leopold has time to take stock of his life and finds it lacking. The near death experience prompts him to drastically change his life. In the end, Leopold chooses family and love over ambition and money. In doing so, he breaks the cycle of absent fathers in his family. Leopold also gains newfound understanding for his mother. What he once interpreted as overbearing he now sees as protective and loving. Chancy shows how in a patriarchal society caretaking in the family falls heavily on women while many men struggle or fail to assume their responsibilities. However, through Leopold’s character, she highlights the possibility of redemption and a path toward healing fractured families.
