Saying these words, he took his sword out of the sheath and threw it away to the side of the road. He shouted that he wanted to come into the fort alone to parley with us. But at that his own soldiers began to argue with him and at the same time some of the officers in the fort began to argue with Magny, who was the chef de bataillon there. Some of them wanted to let the French come up and believed that we should not fight them after all.
Lamartinière stood apart from this talk. He was light-skinned enough that Riau could see how all the blood had washed out of his face. His head was turned to one side, listening. He was waiting to hear the cannons at Fort Bizoton, but they did not fire.
In back of the French soldiers I could see that there were some officers much bigger than the one who had come forward. Generals of brigade were there, and one general of division. I knew to recognize them now by their epaulettes and the markings of their coats. All at once I saw that Maillart was among them. He was far off, but I could see it was Maillart, and it seemed that I could even see his mustache moving as he turned to say something to one of the generals of brigade.
Then someone shouted from the top of the fort, Come up! Advance! We have the order to receive you!
I had not heard any order like that. But the French soldiers all began to walk forward when they heard this cry. Lamartinière stood very still. He did not look like he knew what was happening there in front of him. I wondered what spirit might be standing in his head. It was very quiet, and we could all hear the feet of the French soldiers shuffling on the road.
Then came three cannon shots from the mountain above Port-au-Prince. Lamartinière trembled, from his feet to his head. A wave went through his body and his right arm swept down. Fire! he said, and Magny gave the same order, Feu! Feu! Then the muskets and the cannons all shot together and a great many of the French soldiers fell down all at once, hundreds of them, as if a broom had swept them down. But behind them more were coming.
I did not know if Maillart had been shot down or not, though I had seen him moving forward with the others. There was a lot of noise where we were, but I could also hear cannons firing in the bay of Port-au-Prince. I got my horse then and rode around behind the fort and down to the road to the north. The soldiers in the fight were too busy to notice me, and I wanted to see what was happening on the bay. I looked back once as I rode toward the water. The French soldiers were still marching on the fort. They did not stop to reload at all, but kept coming with their bayonets, steadily and keeping close together. They did not seem to care how many of them were shot down. I saw them go over the lip of the earthwork like ants going into a sugar jar.
When those three cannon shots were fired, they did begin killing the blancs in Port-au-Prince, as Lamartinière had promised. Many blancs were taken down to the Savane Valembrun where they were shot, but I did not know that until later. I rode to the waterside where I could see the bay and the town harbor. Fort Bizoton was quiet because the French soldiers coming over the land had taken it already, but the other forts were fighting the ships on the bay. It seemed that I could not stop watching this, though it was terrible to see. The ships moved too quickly and the guns of the forts could not follow them. The firing from the ships was very strong and they kept firing till the guns of the forts stopped talking back, and then the forts themselves were blown in splinters in the air.
In all my life I never saw such power. I thought then that Toussaint must have seen such a picture in the eye of his mind already, when he first looked at those ships in Samana Bay.
Saint Marc was far from where I was, to the north of Port-au-Prince. I could not go there with a battle to pass through, and anyway it was too late for Dessalines to come. I turned from the water and rode into the plain of Léogane. Toussaint had told me to go south once I had given his word to Dessalines. He had a word to send to Laplume, who commanded for him in the Southern Department. Since I had not found Dessalines yet anyway, I was not really sure which way I should go. Djab-ladi l’ap manjé moin . . . I could not think how to get this devil to stop biting me at all. At evening I was riding south away from the fighting, when a big gang of men stopped me on the plain.
They did not seem so friendly when they stopped me. They looked at my uniform with hard eyes. These were maroons, though not all of them had run away from blanc masters before the rising. Men still ran from the plantations even now, since Toussaint had ordered that all must work, and set soldiers of the army above the men who must work with their hoes in the cane fields. In this rule there was no man harsher than Dessalines himself. That was why these men were not very happy to see the uniform I wore, I thought. Or maybe they were happy after all, to catch a soldier riding alone as it grew dark. My horse was tired, and I didn’t know what was going to happen, but then I saw Jean-Pic among these men, and Jean-Pic smiled to see Riau.
I jumped down from my horse, letting the reins fall so I could wrap my arms around Jean-Pic. He had a beard now, which rubbed against my face. When we let each other go, the other men seemed easier, and I did not worry about them any more. I had not seen Jean-Pic for a long time, since I left him in Bahoruco long ago, when I went back to Toussaint. But I had known Jean-Pic for a long time before that, years and years before the rising. Jean-Pic had been with the maroons in the north when I, Riau, first ran away from Bréda plantation to join them.
Jean-Pic and I walked together to the camp of these maroons, with his hand lying in mine as lightly as a bird. Someone else was leading my horse, because all these men were friendly to me now. That was a big camp they had on the plain, among banana trees and plantain, corn and manioc. Many hundreds of them were there, with children, and women working around the cookfires now that it was night. Jean-Pic had found a woman when he came out of Bahoruco the year before, and there was a baby sleeping in their ajoupa, and the woman stirring sweet potatoes in a pot. Some goat meat was cooking too, and callaloo.
When we had eaten, Jean-Pic and I told each other our news. I told him about Merbillay and the children I had made with her, because Jean-Pic had known Merbillay from the time before, when we were all maroons together in the north. But I did not tell him anything about Guiaou, and I did not say much about the fights that I had been in, or the army, or Toussaint. It gave me sadness to think that now there were a lot of things I could not easily tell Jean-Pic. Afterward when the fire had died and I lay looking up at the stars and waiting for sleep, this sadness grew larger. I had not felt such a big spreading sadness since I had stopped remembering Guinée, that time before Riau was stolen and sold in chains onto a ship and brought as a bossale to Bréda. The sadness I felt was as large as that, though I was happy to find Jean-Pic, and the devil had stopped biting me for a while.
In the morning, Lamour Dérance came. Lamour Dérance was leader of all of these maroons now. He wanted to know what was happening on the coast, because there were rumors about the ships. I told him about the ships with their guns that blew up the forts, and how Lamartinière had looked like he would lose the fight outside Léogane, even though a lot of the French soldiers were killed in the first shooting.
When I had told all I knew, Lamour Dérance asked for my name again, and when he had it, he stood with his arms folded and his eyes very deep. His nose came open and closed as he breathed in and out, as if he wanted to catch the odor of my spirit. I did not flinch when Lamour Dérance looked at me so. I kept straight, like a blanc soldier almost, as Maillart had taught me, and I did not let my eyes fall down until Lamour Dérance had stopped looking into them, but I felt shame inside my body. When Lamour Dérance had gone away, I told Jean-Pic that Riau must go also, because we were going to have to fight the blancs again.
That was true. But when I had left the camp of the maroons, I did not think of going to Laplume any more, partly because of the way Lamour Dérance had looked at me. I went north again, in the direction of Saint Marc. I had to go around Port-au-Prince on the road past Morne Diable, because the French soldiers had taken the town. As I passed
I learned that Lamartinière had got away with most of his men to Croix des Bouquets, but he had not managed to burn Port-au-Prince, so now the white men had it whole. I did not go at once to Dessalines, but kept on north beyond Saint Marc, until I came to Ennery.
I reached Habitation Thibodet after dark, and kept away from the grand’case there. I did not even go in by the main gate, but passed through a tear in the lemon hedges and led my horse along the slopes where the small cases were scattered among the provision grounds. At different times Riau and Guiaou had made the walls of Merbillay’s case more strong with clay, and built the floor up high against the rain. Over the door there was now an open shelter roofed with leaves, and Merbillay was sitting there when I came, with some other women, and Quamba was there too, playing a slow music on a flute made out of a bone. It was late and the people had already eaten and the fire had burned down. I sat on the ground near Merbillay and after a moment she reached to touch my hand, her head still turned in the direction of the flute.
My son Caco I did not see. He would be running in the trees with the other big boys, I thought. Yoyo was sleeping, inside the case, and Marielle, who had only four years, was walking around the edge of the ash circle where the fire had been, yawning and rubbing her eyes with the back of her wrist. When she saw me she came and wrapped her arms around my leg, then climbed up onto my lap and curled herself against my belly. Very soon she was asleep, before Quamba had finished the music he played on the flute. I thought of my banza still hanging from the roof tree inside the case behind me. Sometimes I played such music with Quamba, but tonight the weight of sleeping Marielle held me where I was.
I had been thinking of these children ever since I saw the French blow up the forts at Port-au-Prince, Caco whose father was Riau, and Yoyo whose father was Guiaou, and Marielle who had the two of us for fathers. It was a good time for Riau to come to Ennery, since Guiaou had been sent to Santo Domingo by Toussaint. Guiaou and Riau did not fight any more about Merbillay, but we did not stay in the case with her at the same time either, so this way it was better.
When Quamba had finished his music, he stood and walked away with only a nod to us before leaving. I carried Marielle inside and laid her on the shucks beside her sister. In the darkness of the case I spent some careful time unwinding the cloth which wrapped Merbillay’s head and folding it and laying it carefully down on top of a stool, before I laid my hands onto her shoulders. The sweetness was sharp, as always after a time away. It was the time away that made it so. Afterward I thought again how strange it was that there were many women in the country and many of them beautiful and strong, but for Riau and Guiaou there was only this one.
Then Merbillay slept, but Riau did not. I listened to the two girls breathing in the shucks, and the mice walking on the leaves of the case roof. After a while Caco came in on very quiet feet and crept to lie down on the other side of the case from his sisters. I felt glad then, to be in the same house with all of them together, but still sleep did not come to me. I was thinking how the people at Port-au-Prince had not wanted all they had built there to be torn down again and burned. A lot of them who were blancs had since been killed in the Savane Valembrun, so it did not matter any more what they wanted. Riau did not mind the killing of blancs at all, and when the red magic flowered in his head he killed blancs himself with pleasure. Maybe I did not want the whole country to be torn apart and burned again, but I knew it was going to happen, and not only because of the words which Toussaint had put into my head.
I did not know what it was that I wanted, or which way I should go. Instead of sleep, the sadness of the night before came down on me again. At Bahoruco, as in Guinée, each day unfolded a path before me, one path without any crossroads. Now every step brought Riau to some crossroads and he did not know which way to turn, nor even if he could pass through that kalfou at all.
Then I got up from where I lay. Merbillay shifted into the space I opened, but she did not wake. I went out from under the leaf roof over the door and stretched my back. At the top of a round hill to the east I saw the roof of the hûnfor with the long cane flagpole reaching very high into the starlit sky. The hûnfor was all dark and quiet, no drums, and the kay mystè was shut. I climbed up there and stood outside the cactus fence, looking out over the valley.
Word was that the blanche Elise had come back to the grand’case here, with her youngest child, and Zabeth and her baby. They were going away from some trouble at Le Cap. French ships had come there too, but that was as much as any one I talked to seemed to know about it. From Zabeth my head turned to Bouquart who was the father of her child. Bouquart was dead now, because he had joined in the soulèvement with Moyse, and when Toussaint commanded Bouquart to shoot himself, he did not think that he might not do it.
None of this was long ago. It was not yet one year since Moyse had died, shot by a row of muskets at the fort of Port-de-Paix, and Moyse had given the order himself for the men to fire their bullets into him. Riau was witness to that shooting, and maybe he had been part of the cause of it too.
Ogûn-O... Djab-la di l’ap manjé moin, si sa vré . . .
Riau had known Moyse for longer still than he had known Jean-Pic. They knew each other from slavery time at Bréda, where each of them had Toussaint for his parrain, though Riau ran away into marronage, and Moyse stayed. In the days of the first risings Riau and Moyse killed many blancs together. When Riau ran away from Toussaint’s army into a second marronage, it was Moyse who received him back again, and maybe Moyse had saved him from being shot, when Toussaint might have ordered this for Riau’s deserting. Now Moyse was dead, but Riau had not served his spirit, and there on the hill at Ennery I felt his spirit at my back, and very near.
This was the shame given to Riau by the eyes of Lamour Dérance. When Moyse made the soulèvement against Toussaint, Riau knew his reasons. I was even in the same spirit with Moyse then, because Toussaint was making the army to be like commandeurs for the blancs to make people work in the fields with their hoes in a way too much like slavery time had been. I knew the mind of Toussaint also, which was thinking we must make sugar and coffee to turn into money because that money must buy guns to fight the French soldiers if they came again. When they came. But my heart was with Moyse. Still, when I heard that Moyse’s people had risen in the north, I sent Guiaou south to warn Toussaint, and I told him to be certain to tell Toussaint it was Riau who sent him. I did this because I saw that Moyse was not going to win this time, and if I followed my heart to Moyse it might be Riau, and not Bouquart, that Toussaint ordered to blow out his own brains.
Lamour Dérance rose in favor of Moyse in the south then. Toussaint was at Verrettes when it all started, and it did not take him long to put it down. But Riau’s name, which I had told Guiaou to give Toussaint, must have reached Lamour Dérance also in this business. As for Guiaou, his head was so full of Toussaint that there was no room for anything else and nothing else behind it. Toussaint put Guiaou into his honor guard, later on when the soulèvement was broken and everyone he ordered to be shot was dead, and gave Guiaou the silver helmet to wear on his head. That was a great thing for Guiaou, because all the men in the honor guard were tall and handsome, where Guiaou had his face and body spoiled by shark teeth and saber cuts.
Ogûn-O... Djab-la di l’ap manjé moin, si sa vré? Men genyen BonDyé O, genyen tou les sen yo . . .
There was the hole where the devil had come in. I saw this now, standing outside the hûnfor. And I saw how the devil could be sent away too. Voyé djab-la alé!
Quamba stepped up to me then. He had been standing in the shadow by the fence for some little time, I did not know how long. The bone flute was in his hand but he was not playing it. Quamba had become hûngan in the place, after the old hûngan had died. He had his case now on the first flat ground cut out of the hill on the path below the hûnfor, and I had passed there as I climbed, though as I told him I had tried to set my feet down softly so I would not wake him or his people.
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��It was the singing,” Quamba said. I had not known I had been singing this song out loud.
Ogûn-O, that devil says he is going to eat me, is it true? . . . but there is God, there are all the saints . . .
Then Quamba opened the gate for me, and stood aside for me to pass. It was a small enclosure there on the point of the hill, and the kay mystè was so small a man must bend double to enter it. I sat crosslegged on the ground outside, with my back to the cross of Baron Cimetière and my face toward the open door of the kay mystè.
Ogûn-O... Djab-la di l’ap manjé moin, si sa vré? Sé pa vré, ti-moun you, sé pa vré! sa sé jwet, ti-moun-yo, sa sé blag . . .
I was breathing the night air very deep as I sat there, and keeping my eyes half shut, and after some time it seemed my breath was answered out of the mouths of the govi and canari jars inside the kay mystè, as the wind moved in circles round the hilltop.
Ogûn-O... That devil says he is going to eat me, is it true? It’s not true, my children, it’s not true! that is child’s play, my children, it is a joke . . .
Quamba was waiting. He did not say anything, but followed me out when I rose from the ground. He pulled the gate shut behind us. I did not speak until the gate was fastened.
“M dwé fé pou Moyse youn wete mò nanba dlo,” I told him. I must bring the spirit of Moyse back from beneath the waters.
Quamba nodded, and he said, “I can do that for you when it is time.”
“I must do it myself,” I said to him.
Quamba looked at me then, but his eyes did not hold much surprise. “For that you must take the asson,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “When it is time.” I knew it would be so. Quamba did not say anything more after that, but he took hold of my elbow and my arm with both his hands, as if he thought I would need his touch to guide me on the pathway down the hill.
The Stone that the Builder Refused Page 18
