1973–1974: (Spring and the Maquillage: 200,000 Tourists, Jumbo Jets from Europe, Habitation Leclerc’s $150-a-Day Oasis Surrounded by Slums, the Madam’s Taxid…

1973–1974: (Spring and the Maquillage: 200,000 Tourists, Jumbo Jets from Europe, Habitation Leclerc’s $150-a-Day Oasis Surrounded by Slums, the Madam’s Taxidermy Diploma, and the Visitor Who Returned After Ten Years to Find Telephones Working and the L’Estère Bridge Collapsed): Not only did Paris, Washington, and other major capitals — London, the sole holdout, still withheld its blessing as a result of its ambassador’s ouster in 1962 — buy the story, but so did the man on the street. François Duvalier Airport, celebrating its tenth year of service, received some 200,000 tourists in 1973. Jumbo jets poured in from Europe carrying those seeking something different, and the beautiful people were no longer forced to congregate solely on the veranda of the Oloffson listening to the cajoleries of Graham Greene’s model for Petit Pierre, Aubelin Jolicoeur. The New York Times chronicled the opening in early 1974 of Habitation Leclerc, colonial ruins rebuilt into a hotel with surrounding villas each with its own pool, whose publicists maintained the property had once belonged to Napoleon’s sister — history does not record Pauline venturing further south than Dondon, but no one had the audacity to ruin such a splendid fiction. George Hamilton, Barbara Walters, and numerous Palm Beach socialites mingled with Haiti’s rich in buildings designed by Albert Mangonès, though Baby Doc failed to show as promised while sister Nicole breathlessly gushed that finally Haiti had something no other country had. Unfortunately, what had been several leagues south of Port-au-Prince in the eighteenth century had since been enveloped by one of its more insalubrious slums — arriving guests were driven in dilapidated jitneys over potholed roads dodging naked children, market women, pigs, and chickens, reaching the oasis only through high walls topped with broken glass shards, where for $150 a day — roughly the per capita annual income of the average Haitian — their material wants were ministered to. Those venturing outside could partake of simpler pleasures in the capital’s conveniently close red-light district, where one of the more renowned madams, seeking to cash in on the tourist boom, had rechristened her establishment a guest house — still on display were her framed correspondence diploma in taxidermy from the University of Nebraska and the various animals she had her girls stuff in idle hours, the closest thing Haiti had to a museum of natural history. A visitor returning in 1974 after ten years could not help but be impressed: at the airport all was calm, no frisking by macoutes, no fights between taxi drivers. Travel within the country was relatively easy; a trip to the Cap occasioned multiple detours as Canadian-funded road crews worked to rebuild and resurface the route linking the two cities — north of St. Marc, one had to swing inland because the bridge at l’Estère, whose baptism ninety years earlier had occasioned such laments from the Church, had finally collapsed after ninety years’ service. Telephones worked, there were few blackouts, and quietly many were willing to speak on subjects they would not have confided to their confessor at the height of the terror. If Papa Doc had spent much of his life in the maquis, sniffed one observer, it seemed that Jean-Claude was spending it in the maquillage.