Port-au-Prince is the birthplace of Jeremiah de Saint-Amour’s lover and the city where the two first met, in a convalescent home. Their encounter there began a private bond that endured across distance and into the hidden life they shared in the provincial capital.

Setting and Association

The city enters the narrative through the history of this unnamed woman: she was born in Port-au-Prince, while Jeremiah had spent his early years there as a fugitive. Their paths crossed at a convalescent home, a meeting place bound to illness and recovery that became the origin of a relationship kept from public view.

From Meeting to Shared Life

A year after their meeting, the woman followed Jeremiah to the provincial capital on what was described as a brief visit. Both understood, without needing to say so, that she had come to stay forever. She cleaned and straightened his laboratory once a week, but their intimacy remained concealed; neighbors and even Juvenal Urbino believed Jeremiah’s disability extended beyond his inability to walk.

Narrative Significance

Port-au-Prince is recalled not as a fully depicted setting but as the point of origin for a clandestine attachment that complicates Juvenal Urbino’s understanding of his dead friend. Jeremiah’s posthumous letter reveals the relationship, but the woman’s account makes clear that she had been with him until only hours before his death and had shared his life for half of it. The city’s brief mention thus anchors a history of devotion that remained invisible in the provincial society where they lived.