(During this speech, three black figures creep near ANTON.)
VOICES (Softly, like the wind)
Anton Calixte! Anton Calixte! Anton Calixte!
ANTON (Alert)
Who was that?
Yes, yes, I am Anton Calixte, what do you want?
VOICE
You are the son of Monsieur Calixte?
ANTON
I am his nephew. His nephew! I know these voices!
I am one of you, believe me. My mother was black, my mother was black.
Gaspar, Félicien?…
VOICES (Like wind as they circle him.)
You have the blood of your father, for that you will die.
When the moon hides in a cloud, for that you will die.
ANTON (Urgent)
Let me see who you are. I have done nothing to you.
Oh God! I have your blood in me.
(The moon hides in a cloud. They murder him. A SLAVE screams in triumph. The drums of revolution begin.)
Scene 11
The Bois Cayman. Drums. Enter SLAVES running with flambeaux towards the body. Silence. Enter BOUKMANN.
BOUKMANN
Jour sang rivé!
SLAVES
Hallelujah!
BOUKMANN
Jour nègre rivé!
SLAVES
Hallelujah!
BOUKMANN
C’est moi Boukmann qui dit ça!
Dire Hosannah!
SLAVES
Hosannah!
BOUKMANN (Holding up cross.)
Ça c’est croix n’hommes blancs, pas croix Damballa!
SLAVES
Hallelujah!
C’est pas croix Damballa!
BOUKMANN
Crasez croix Dieu blanc.
(He breaks the cross.)
You wishes to know why Boukmann break the cross?
This is the white God cross, not the god of this colour.
Alors, crasez croix Dieu blanc
Hosez serpent Damballa.
(Drums. A serpent is brought in.)
SLAVES
Damballa, Damballa!
(A white rooster is brought in by a FEMALE SLAVE.)
BOUKMANN (Holding the rooster.)
Red blood will flow from the white throat, I say.
Burn the canes, kill the enemies,
Kill everything white in Haiti today!
(A ritual dance begins, with flambeaux.)
We forget our gods when we leave Africa.
We make Shango vex, we forget Damballa!
Brûlez, brûlez, brûlez!
(All exit, led by BOUKMANN, with torches. Drumming. The dead body is left abandoned. TOUSSAINT, as a coachman, enters, finds ANTON dead.)
TOUSSAINT
Monsieur Anton! Anton, Monsieur Anton?
(Over the body)
Monsieur Anton! Drunk again. Come on, levez.
(He touches blood.)
Oh God. My other life is finished. Love is dead.
(He takes up the body.)
This poor boy hated nothing, nothing.
(A SLAVE WOMAN enters, passes TOUSSAINT.)
SLAVE WOMAN
That’s a heavy burden you’re carrying, black man.
(Fade-out.)
Scene 12
It is the late autumn of the first year of the nineteenth century. Rebel Haitian armies under Toussaint sack the city of Les Cayes. Bands of marauders. Torrential rain fights with the fire of the city. DESSALINES, soaked, watches the scene with some OFFICERS. A shed. A SOLDIER passes.
DESSALINES
You there, soldat!
SOLDIER
Yes, my general.
DESSALINES
Under what army are you, me, Christophe, which, hein?
SOLDIER
With General Toussaint, General Dessalines.
DESSALINES
In your cloak there, rum, non? Bring it here, nègre, and give your general a drink. Look at it burn, look. Remember this, this is the turning of a century, nègre. Oh, it pleases me. I could wash my face, Sergeant, in the handful of its ashes. Tell me, I love to hear it, what city is that? (He drinks.)
SOLDIER
That is Les Cayes, mon général, and we have scattered the forces of the mulatto Rigaud. The worst enemy of our new black republic.
DESSALINES
There must be one hundred thousand slaughtered there.
Burn, burn, city of contagions, consume it all.
Though God poured out the whole basin of this sky
He could not drench that fire. Go, leave the bottle.
You, there, you soldiers. In what quarter of the town
Is General Christophe?
SOLDIER
Here he comes now, my general.
(Enter CHRISTOPHE muddy, tired.)
DESSALINES
Put up the general’s tent to break this rain.
(An awning is added to the balcony.)
Look at it, General. It is art, is it not?
CHRISTOPHE (Collapses on a stool.)
Poor country. This is not a war.
DESSALINES
No, it is not war. But it will do for now. Here, drink!
I understand you had a difficult assault?
CHRISTOPHE
You said assault?
This butchering of mulattos you call assault?
You’ll catch a chill there, sitting in the rain.
Lend me a cloth, my own is soaked with blood.
DESSALINES
Here, have this shirt, I sent for dry boots and linen.
Well, where is our excellent commander L’Ouverture?
CHRISTOPHE
I thought that he was working close to you.
DESSALINES
No, I had an easy quarter.
A cowardly segment of Rigaud’s mulatto army. Oh, look!
There must be one hundred thousand dead out there.
Listen to the cries.
CHRISTOPHE
Yes, they smell wonderful, don’t they?
Burnt flesh and trampled muck and sweating rain.
It is only two o’clock, and dark as an eclipse.
DESSALINES
The pot is overturned, up in the north; the news is this,
That bloody, murderous slaughterer Sonthonax,
Boukmann, the Jamaican, and other rebellious regiments
Have burned the plains into a smoking shambles.
CHRISTOPHE
They burn the crops, but when peace has returned …
And which of them has yet conquered Leclerc?
DESSALINES
Up in the north two thousand whites are slaughtered.
The flame is catching in the unharvested canes,
Not only in this island, but through the Antilles.
We have sent agents to stir up this violence. Drink, drink.
Here, two hundred estates destroyed. The black wolves
Of our marauding soldiers, swollen by famine,
Have sacked the indigo and coffee fields. It will spread
Even in the British territories. In Martinique, Guadeloupe.
CHRISTOPHE
I only wish I had your sense of theatre. And Leclerc,
What has he offered us for the capture of Toussaint?
DESSALINES
The yellow fever has wrecked the French battalions.
The time has come, with Leclerc’s forces weakened,
For us to strike some temporary pact. As you remember,
He offered to withdraw his forces of occupation
If we hand over Toussaint to Napoleon. Oh, this Napoleon,
He is such an egotist. He thinks that Toussaint’s capture
Would weaken us. Oh, mon Dieu, mi blague, I could laugh, laugh.
CHRISTOPHE
There is no one the Corsican hates more than this ape,
This—what does he call him?—“this gilded African.” We sell him?
DESSALINES
One thing perturbs me. Pa
ss me the bottle, friend.
One thing perturbs poor Dessalines: we are four armies,
And all assembled under distinctive generals, you, me,
Toussaint, Maurepas. But of all of us, Toussaint
Has grown most power drunk. He has monarchic aims, I know.
CHRISTOPHE
Let us not lie to ourselves. We are betraying him.
A transaction of exchange, let us not excuse it, hein?
You think he’ll set himself up as Emperor?
How do you know?
DESSALINES (Laughs.)
I have a parrot that speaks to me in my dreams. Look!
Napoleon thinks of the whole world as his empire, yet
This ape has beaten him, outwitted his best generals.
And since Napoleon thinks in terms of a late Caesar,
He thinks this ape, encaged, will resolve the war.
Even Leclerc, who is a cynic and no fool, believes it.
And as you say, this is not war. Yet how I love it,
Look at it burn. This is more than war, it is revolt;
It is a new age, the black man’s turn to kill.
CHRISTOPHE
Then we are no better. Revenge
Is very tiring. Please do not hog the bottle.
Where does all that leave the mulatto, Dessalines?
DESSALINES (Pointing.)
There, out there dead in the stinking rain.
(A drumbeat. Enter TOUSSAINT.)
Speak, parrot. Here comes our bill of sale. The meat we dice for.
TOUSSAINT (To the OFFICERS)
We have scattered Rigaud, but we still have enemies
Here on the soil of our beloved Haiti: Leclerc, his armies;
Yet we have allies also, the fever, and our great zeal
To make this country greater than it was. Revenge is nothing.
Peace, the restoration of the burnt estates, the ultimate
Rebuilding of those towns war has destroyed, peace is harder.
We strike our march in the next hour. Collect your troops.
(A bugle is blown. OFFICERS exit.)
DESSALINES
Your lungs are iron, to still have breath to speak. Some rum?
TOUSSAINT
These clothes are stuck to me with filth and blood, a basin.
No, I must keep a clear head, though my generals do not.
DESSALINES
How many did you butcher of the yellow ones?
(A SOLDIER brings a basin and a cloth.)
TOUSSAINT
I do not have my ledgers with me.
The cavalry is cutting the last troops on the plain;
There is nothing between our mercy and their death
But a vast swamp of stinking mud. It is dark,
Dark as a portent at this turn of the year, the birth
Of a new century. What comes at the end of it, my friends?
CHRISTOPHE
This is a new age, born like us, in blood …
TOUSSAINT
Yes, yes, but I hate excess.
(He washes his hands.)
DESSALINES (Roars with laughter.)
Ho, ha! He kills ten thousand or more defenceless citizens
Who did him no harm but that their colour was wrong
And shrugs his shoulders and says he hates excess. Oh, oh
I love, I kiss this hypocrite!
TOUSSAINT (Angrily)
I am not a hypocrite, Jean Jacques,
I hate this now it is all finished. I remember
The body of the first mulatto I ever saw. The son
Of a stupid planter called Calixte. Multiply that.
I come from an exhausting expedition and I find
My two best generals getting drunk like sergeants.
Go, collect your forces, I want to think a little.
(Exit CHRISTOPHE, DESSALINES.)
Oh God, that I should find the centre of this whirlwind,
Those leaves of yellow bodies whirled in wind.
(Enter TWO SOLDIERS, CALIXTE-BREDA in rags between them.)
SOLDIER
We found this one hiding in the ruins, General.
What shall we do with him?
TOUSSAINT
I do not know the man … who …
Calixte? Is it Monsieur Calixte?
CALIXTE-BREDA (Shaking free from the SOLDIERS.)
And it is General Toussaint, is it not?
The conqueror of Haiti … I want to talk with you,
Unless the general must go back to his butchering.
TOUSSAINT
You soldiers, stand in easy distance from this tent.
What are you doing in Les Cayes? You live in the north?
(The SOLDIERS withdraw.)
CALIXTE-BREDA
There is no north. They have burnt the good land.
You should know that, it is you who guide this war.
TOUSSAINT (Holding out the bottle.)
Here, have a drink of rum. I do not know what savour,
You may remember how one improved its vintage
With an occasional slave tossed in the vats?
CALIXTE-BREDA (Hanging his head.)
I was never cruel. It was the times, the thought.
TOUSSAINT
I am not cruel either. It is also in my case the times,
The compulsion of opinion. I did not begin it.
CALIXTE-BREDA (Angrily)
You call this compulsion, this slaughtering of children,
This dedicated erasure of any complexion?
I have walked through the smoking fields, through the burnt land
That we all loved, destroyed, that was once green,
Racked by a rabble, turned savage as wild pigs.
TOUSSAINT (Shouting.)
They are my soldiers, not pigs, not animals.
CALIXTE-BREDA
I stepped across hacked citizens in these streets,
Blind in a stream of tears, I moved through fire,
Oh God in heaven, Toussaint, hell is not worse.
TOUSSAINT
War is not a drawing-room minuet.
CALIXTE-BREDA
Do not call this war, you hypocritical liar!
Since the day Anton died, and you abandoned him
On the white columned steps of Mal Maison,
I have pursued your great career with diligence.
I heard of how you joined the marauding armies,
Who burnt our lands and shambled the green north;
Your rise in the field of battle; how you wrecked Maitland
And drove the English down to the sea. Until today,
You are blood drunk, since that first boy you murdered.
TOUSSAINT
Murdered? Boy?
CALIXTE-BREDA
My son, my son Anton, that was so far
You have forgotten it. You have seen so many dead,
Now that war makes your butchery legitimate.
(He draws his pistol.)
TOUSSAINT
Put down the pistol, Monsieur Calixte. Your son? What son?
He was your nephew then. Look, man, have you forgotten,
Is it because you’re ruined you have turned pious?
CALIXTE-BREDA
O God, give me the strength to shoot this monster.
TOUSSAINT
And do not speak to me of God, monsieur; right now
I cannot think of God. Where was God in those years
When we were whipped and forced to eat our excrement,
Were peeled alive, pestered with carnivorous ants.
Where was God? All of a sudden from your nephew’s body
You have grown a delicate orchid called a conscience.
And blame the times. I have learnt to pick up a child
Limp on my sword’s edge as you would lift an insect;
I have to learn this. I love this land as well as you,
But when we tried this, when we tried to love you,
Where, O chaos, where was your heart?
CALIXTE-BREDA (Weeping.)
Toussaint, what, what is all this?
What is happening to the world, to Haiti?
(A bugle sounds in the distance.)
TOUSSAINT
Oh God, I do not know, Monsieur Calixte. I do not know.
I am pushed forward, lifted on the crest of the wave,
Then I am abandoned among the wreckage, while
The mass of guilty men say, Oh, Toussaint, he is gentle, good.
Leave him to clean it. Listen, the bugle blows the march.
We are striking out …
(Enter DESSALINES, CHRISTOPHE.)
DESSALINES
Who is this filthy white? A spy?
(He seizes his pistol.)
TOUSSAINT
I was his coachman once. Give me the pistol, General Dessalines.
CHRISTOPHE
His coachman? Is he offering your old employment back?
I will search him for letters. Jacques, keep the pistol.
TOUSSAINT
You see how my generals trust me, monsieur.
(The bugle again.)
DESSALINES
There are no gentlemen in Haiti now.
CHRISTOPHE
He has no letters. Come, it is time to march.
CALIXTE-BREDA
You have become three mad dogs all of you.
So these are the great generals. Is this Dessalines?
DESSALINES (Gripping CALIXTE-BREDA.)
Yes, white man, this is Dessalines, the general
Who ripped the white heart from the flag of France.
Tell them you saw him when you get down to hell.
Come, General, we are giving this one too much privilege.
TOUSSAINT
I still command here, Dessalines. Release him!
SERGEANT (Enters.)
The armies are assembled and ready to march.
CHRISTOPHE
Sergeant, wait!
DESSALINES
Well, is this a parliament now?
CALIXTE-BREDA
The Haitian Trilogy: Plays Page 14
