The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “How is it certain?”

  I had brought a proclamation paper from Port-au-Prince with me and now I brought it out from under my shirt and unfolded it and read the words to Lamour Dérance, pointing to each word with my finger as I spoke it.

  IF ANYONE TELLS YOU, “THESE FORCES HAVE COME TO TEAR AWAY OUR LIBERTY,” REPLY, “THE REPUBLIC WILL NOT SUFFER THAT IT SHOULD BE TAKEN FROM US.”

  When I had finished reading, Lamour Dérance took the paper from my hand and held it very near his face, though not for long. He turned his head and called a name and a third man came in and took the paper away. I thought that Lamour Dérance must be sending the paper to someone who could read and be certain that Riau had read out all the words as they were truly written. Then he turned again to me. All the time his hand still stroked the kitten. This reminded me of Halalou and his white cock, so long ago.

  “What if the blancs’ paper gives us lies? Gen dwa blan-yo bay menti.”

  “How can what they say or do be worse than what Toussaint has given you?” I said. “Now you have to hide from Toussaint all the time, if you don’t want to work on the plantations. And Toussaint would make Dessalines your whipmaster.”

  I stopped talking so that Lamour Dérance could consider. I wanted him to have to remember how, when Lamour Dérance rose up with Moyse against Toussaint to take the town of Marigot, Dessalines had come with the Eighth Demibrigade to kill them in the mountains, there above Marigot and Jacmel. Dessalines had killed so many that for a time Lamour Dérance did not have many good fighting men in his band at all, until more ran to him from the plantations on the plain of Léogane. Dessalines had been a hard master over all of the west since Toussaint had ordered that all men who were not in his army must go back to work with the hoe. Dessalines whipped with thorny branches if the work was not done fast and well, and many said his rule was harder than any blanc colon had ever been.

  “My son, who has nine years, works in the coffee now, at the command of blancs at Ennery,” I said. “As Riau worked the cane at Bréda.”

  The little kitten raised its head and looked at me with dark blue eyes. “I thought you had forgotten Bréda,” said Lamour Dérance. “When now you turn against Toussaint, who became your parrain in that place.”

  He did not say the name of Moyse, but still I heard it. I knew that he would lay the weight of my old action on me now, but it did not feel less heavy for my knowing it before. When I looked at the pile of stones it seemed to me that Legba would bring Moyse up through them, to stare at Riau with his one eye. There was nothing to do but face him.

  “Moyse turned against Toussaint,” I said, “who was his parrain also.” When I said this, Lamour Dérance folded his arms up tight again and blew a hard breath so that his nostrils flared, holding his mouth shut tight. The kitten curled in the crook of his legs, as if it would go to sleep.

  “Moyse could not succeed against Toussaint then,” I said. “Then, Toussaint was too strong for him.” In the eye of my mind I saw Bouquart step out of the ranks and blow out his brains with his own pistol as Toussaint had ordered him to do. Bouquart had gone with Moyse against Toussaint. I gave my head a shake to chase away that picture. “But now Toussaint cannot succeed against the blancs. They are too many and their power too great.” And now what appeared behind my head was the picture of the ships blowing up the forts of Port-au-Prince harbor.

  I began to remind Lamour Dérance how Laplume had already gone with the French and how likely it was others would do the same, so that all the south and much of the west and soon more and more of the north would be safe in the hands of the blanc soldiers. After that I could only repeat the words I had said before, but now they felt cold coming off my tongue. The presence of Moyse grew stronger in the pile of stones and I thought how I owed his spirit a service, as I had told Quamba at Ennery, yet all my words put me farther away from doing that service which I owed, and until I had done it nothing else I might do could prosper. Then I felt alone, and cold all over from the inside out, and the words that Riau’s mouth kept making sounded more and more distant, and they had no power of persuasion. If Lamour Dérance was persuaded I did not know, because all he did was get to his feet and tell me that he must think for a time about all I had said.

  He scooped the kitten up in his arms and went away through the gap in the bamboo he had come in by. The men who had come in advance of him followed. Jean-Pic and I went out in the other direction, and walked back down the trail. Now the sun was high and the mist all burned away, and hummingbirds were at the flowers growing by our pathway. Jean-Pic did not say anything about what had been told to Lamour Dérance, and soon the heat of the sun which was warming the whole plain of Léogane had warmed away the chill I had felt, under the bamboo and beside the stones.

  We dug that morning in the gardens Jean-Pic had begun in this new camp, then ate a meal and slept away the hottest time of the afternoon, lying in the shade of the ajoupa. In the cool of the evening a man came from Lamour Dérance to say that he had finished his thinking and was ready to bring his men to serve the French at Port-au-Prince.

  All the blancs were in a whirl when we came to Port-au-Prince next day, and this was the reason for it—while Riau was absent they had captured Chancy as he tried to pass through Petit Goave toward Jérémie. Chancy was a nephew of Toussaint by blood, not by adoption like Moyse and Riau. They caught him carrying two letters from Toussaint. One letter was to Dessalines at Saint Marc and the other was to Dommage at Jérémie, a long way out on the Grand Anse to the south. The letter to Dessalines was a copy of the same letter I had seen before in Dessalines’s own hand, because it was Toussaint’s way to send the same letter by more than one messenger. He would not trust a single messenger with all the words his pen set down. But the other letter never reached Dommage at Jérémie, not by anyone’s hand. Dommage was a commander Toussaint trusted very much, as much as he trusted Maurepas or Charles Belair, as much as once he had trusted Moyse. But when the French ships came to Jérémie, Dommage did not know what to do, because Toussaint’s letter had not come to him, so he let the ships into the port and let the men come into the town, and he gave his obedience to the French.

  Chancy could not get to Dessalines at Saint Marc because of the French blanc soldiers on the ways between, so he turned south to try to reach Dommage instead, and then blancs caught him as he reached Petit Goave. When I returned to Port-au-Prince from the plain of Léogane, Chancy was in the guardhouse there, expecting that maybe the blanc commander would soon order him to be shot. Major Maillart and General Lacroix and all the blancs there were in a big stir, because now they knew from Toussaint’s letter that Dessalines was ordered to burn down Port-au-Prince no matter the cost. Now they could see too how Dessalines had tricked General Boudet away from Port-au-Prince, with most of the blanc soldiers. They did not know just where Dessalines was, but they knew he would be coming quickly and that he would arrive before General Boudet and his men could return. There were only six hundred regular blanc soldiers in the town, and these would not be enough to fight the thousands Dessalines was bringing.

  For that, General Lacroix was very glad to see Riau’s return, with the big band of Lamour Dérance and his maroons, and the band of Lafortune who was with them too. After Riau’s talk with Lamour Dérance had ended under the tonnelle, Lamour Dérance had carried his words to Lafortune, and the two of them decided to go over to the blancs together. Lafortune’s people made double the number of Lamour Dérance’s men, and we were so many coming back to Port-au-Prince that at first the blancs feared it was Dessalines surprising them from the south. But when Lacroix once understood what had been done, he looked as if he might kiss Riau, though in the end he only clasped my hand very tight in both of his. Major Maillart gave me a big clap on the back which was his fashion when he was pleased, though when he took his hand away I saw the fingers trembled a little. They had all been fearful of what Dessalines might bring to them, in spite of all their soldiers in the country and all
the cannons on their ships.

  Now, the blancs at Port-au-Prince had already heard the men of the Eighth Demibrigade were coming against them from the direction of Grande Rivière, while Dessalines had reached Arcahaye, which was not very far off at all. Lacroix told Lamour Dérance and Lafortune that if their men could beat the men of the Eighth, they might take anything the men of the Eighth had, if it was clothes or boots or guns or money. Lamour Dérance and Lafortune accepted this idea easily, and so General Lacroix sent out some of his blanc soldiers to meet the Eighth from the front direction, while Lamour Dérance and Lafortune circled through the hills above the town to catch them from behind.

  I, Riau, went with Lamour Dérance and with me came Major Maillart and a couple of other blanc officers who wanted to see how the thing would be done. Those maroons could run fast on the hill trails no matter how steep, even carrying muskets and the cartridge boxes the blancs had just filled from their armories. I took off my boots and strung them over my shoulder because I could move better without them on those trails. The blanc officers were soon red-faced and breathless, though Maillart got along better than the rest, since he was better used to the country.

  It was the Eighth Demibrigade that had cut up Lamour Dérance’s people near Marigot before, so they carried that anger into the battle, though the Eighth had been commanded by Dessalines in that battle, and today it was Pierre Louis Diane who was at the head of the Eighth. Pierre Louis Diane expected to meet the French blanc soldiers and expected that their numbers would be small, but when the maroons rushed on them from behind, they were not ready and soon they were full of confusion and fear. A lot were killed in the first few minutes and more than a thousand captured. Then the men of Lamour Dérance and Lafortune took everything from the dead and the prisoners too, except Pierre Louis Diane and his officers. They were sent by General Lacroix to be held prisoner on the ships that waited in the harbor.

  Chancy was still shut in the Port-au-Prince guardhouse, but Pierre Louis Diane and his officers were put onto the ships. I saw that Lacroix knew the danger was not finished for him and his men yet, because Dessalines had not yet come. The story of Dessalines and of all the blancs whose throats were slit on his order or by his own hand had traveled a long way before him by then. By nighttime, the men of Lamour Dérance and Lafortune were not much use to the blancs any more because they were having a big bamboche at the edge of the town in their happiness at plundering the Eighth Demibrigade, with rum and fires and drums and dancing. Only I went with Jean-Pic and a few of the others who were not drunk or ridden by their spirits, with Maillart on the order of Lacroix to lay ambushes on the roads from Arcahaye. At the same time Lacroix had got the captain of all the ships to send many of his sailors from the ships into the town to help defend it.

  The moon was high and bright enough that we saw easily to shoot at Dessalines’s scouts when they appeared on the road from Arcahaye. A few fell in the first shooting, and the rest scattered quickly away along the road they had come. At the same time we could hear shooting at Croix des Bouquets too, but it did not go on for long at any of these places. Some fires could be seen on the Cul de Sac plain, where Dessalines’s men were burning whatever cases they might have missed burning the last time they passed that way. At the sight of the fires, all the blancs in the town began to cry Dessalines! Dessalines is coming! and the hand of Major Maillart got very tight and hard on his sword grip and the ends of his mustache were quivering, but Dessalines did not come. He had heard what had happened with the Eighth that day, and he knew now that the blancs were more ready for him than he had hoped. So he went away across the plain of Cul de Sac, killing and burning whatever he passed and driving some white prisoners ahead of him toward Petite Rivière. At Petite Rivière he would meet Toussaint, who had fought a big battle at Ravine à Couleuvre three days before, but I did not know any of that until later.

  Now all the blancs at Port-au-Prince were happy because they were safe and the town was saved from Dessalines’s torches, and Boudet brought his soldiers back from Saint Marc again not long after. They were all filled up with victory because they thought Toussaint had been beaten hard at Gonaives and Dessalines was running away too, though they had all been much afraid of Dessalines the day before. The truth was that the blancs were not winning yet so much as they said, because though they had taken Gonaives and Saint Marc there was nothing left for them in either of those places but dead bodies charred on the hot coals. Also the blanc commanders were all telling each other lies about how many soldiers they lost in their fights, especially at Ravine à Couleuvre, where Toussaint had killed hundreds more than General Rochambeau confessed. Also they had not succeeded to trap Toussaint at Gonaives and make him prisoner, which had been their plan. Instead Toussaint had gone away into the back country with all his army, to meet Dessalines with all of his.

  I saw the face of Captain Paltre grow a sick gray color when he spoke across the card table of what they found when they entered Saint Marc, what Dessalines left there for them to find. Then to encourage himself Paltre took a big drink of new white clairin, carelessly so that he coughed. Let him choke on it, I thought, where I sat in the corner cleaning my pistol, in shadows apart from where the blancs played cards. To encourage himself, Paltre then told a story he claimed he had heard when he was here before with Hédouville, though the story came from an early time, when an English army held Saint Marc and Port-au-Prince and other towns between them on the coast. Then the Count of Bréda had joined the English, hoping they would give him back his lands and slaves again, which they had promised though they could not ever do it. One day the mulâtre Lapointe, who commanded for the English in Arcahaye, offered to buy from the Count his old nigger. When the Count asked what he was talking about, Lapointe said, “Why, your old nigger Toussaint, who calls himself Louverture—I will buy him, general as he is.” As Paltre told the story, Lapointe paid the Count eight hundred gourdesto own Toussaint. Yet though Lapointe and Toussaint both still lived, Lapointe had not yet been able to get control of what he had bought, though Lapointe had now gone over to the French. But this part, Paltre did not say.

  All the blanc officers at the card table laughed loud when Paltre had finished telling this story. All had come with the new ships except Maillart, who did not laugh. He was still for a moment, completely still, then he laid down his cards so their faces showed, and picked up some money the cards had won. Of all those blanc officers only Maillart seemed to know that Riau sat in the shadows cleaning his pistol while they played and talked, though his back was turned to me the whole time, and only Maillart seemed to know when I got up from my stool and walked out of the room. I was not wearing my boots when I went out, and my bare feet made no noise.

  Two times in those days I had heard the name of Bréda. I was still a very young man when I ran from there to be with the maroons. I was not so much older than my son Caco now. I had scarcely fifteen years. But I did not know my age for certain because the day of my birth was lost in Guinée with my mother and my father there. When I thought of Pierre Louis Diane and the others held prisoner on the ships in the harbor, I felt the cold choking weight of the iron collar on my neck when I was taken from the hold of the ship that brought me out of Guinée to the barracoons outside Le Cap, where I was sold to Bréda. In slavery time at Bréda the blancs all talked before us so, before Riau or any slave, with no care at all for what they said, as if we had no more understanding of their words than a horse or a dog would have.

  Only Maillart respected Toussaint, though he had gone over to the other blancs as soon as they and he had met in Port-au-Prince. He seemed to do it without thinking. I did not know what was behind his head. He and I had not spoken of the choice he had made. Maybe he had not even seen that crossroads when he passed it. But when I left the card players I began to doubt the way that I, Riau, had taken from that kalfou.

  Chancy was kept then in an old cachot for soldiers who had disobeyed. There was a hole in the stone floor of a fort, rou
nd with a stone rim like the rim of a well, and beneath it a square room all made of stone. There was not any other way in or out and no light except what came in through the hole. Chancy was down there in the dark. Once a day they lowered a bucket with bread and water on a rope and once a day if he was lucky they pulled up a bucket where he made his kaka.

  Then I with Maillart and Paul Lafrance and some mulatto officers who had taken the side of the French blanc soldiers made a story about Chancy for the ears of Lacroix, because it was easy to speak to him, and then with his help the story came to General Boudet. Chancy was a mulâtre himself, the child of Toussaint’s sister with a blanc in Les Cayes as it was said, and the story we made told that he had fought with the mulattoes when Rigaud made war on Toussaint, and that afterward, not long ago, Toussaint had put him into prison—so he was not so loyal to Toussaint as the blancs would think from catching him with those letters. Now, there was enough truth in this story for it to be believed, yet Toussaint had adopted Chancy as if to be his son when the war with the mulattoes was finished, and there was no one who loved Toussaint better than Chancy, and though Chancy had been in prison for a time it was only because Toussaint was angry at him for making love to a married woman. But these things the blanc generals did not know. On the strength of the story Chancy was let out of his cachot and given the freedom of Port-au-Prince, on his parole that he would not run away to go back to Toussaint. All among us liked Chancy, and no one wanted to see him shot for carrying Toussaint’s messages. I made certain too that Chancy understood that Riau had helped him to get out, in case he might bring that word to Toussaint later on.

  Chancy got a bath and a clean uniform and went with me to visit the daughters of Paul Lafrance. Madame Lafrance was there to give us lemonade with plenty of sugar and she gave us pieces of griot with a good sauce Ti Malice, and Paul Lafrance was with us too. One of the old ones was in the room with us all the time, because they knew Chancy too well to leave their girls alone with him. Chancy was a fine-looking young man, with clear skin and the hair of a blanc, and he had some education so that he spoke gracefully in proper French, and with wit enough to keep the girls laughing. I saw Marie-Odette begin to give him many of her smiles. But though everyone was laughing and glad, whenever I looked at the smiles of the girls I remembered what Paul Lafrance had said to General Lacroix, and the face of Lacroix as it had looked across his shoulder when he embraced Paul Lafrance, and I heard an echo of what Lamour Dérance had said, Gen dwa blan-yo bay menti. Lamour Dérance had sold himself to the blancs anyway, but still his words hung in my ears: Maybe the whites are lying.