The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  No one but Toussaint knew for certain what he meant to do, and maybe even Toussaint was not sure. I, Riau, had changed my coat more than one time, the way my spirit moved me.

  But in those days my spirit felt very far away, even though Quamba had helped me take the asson not so long before. I was fenced in all alone by all my thoughts, and lonely, so I wanted to get out of that fence and go down to Ennery again, and not only to see Merbillay and the children.

  I was not going to run away this time, in case Toussaint would have me shot when I came back. I would have to come back, I thought, because it looked like there was nowhere free in the whole country between Toussaint’s people in the mountains and the blancs on the coast. But I knew Toussaint would want to know what was happening on the road between Ennery and Gonaives and so I offered to go and see for him, and Toussaint accepted this offer.

  Before I left, Guiaou gave me a big tortoise shell he had found in the woods to take to Yoyo at Thibodet, and a smaller one for Marielle. The small shell had the bottom piece along with the top and Guiaou had stopped the holes with clay, with pieces of the tortoise’s backbone still inside to make a rattle. When he had given me these things, Guiaou seemed happy enough to stay in the camp at Marmelade with Toussaint.

  It was easy riding from Marmelade to Ennery, and I met no blancs at all on my way to Habitation Thibodet. I did not find anyone in Merbillay’s case when I got there at the end of the day, though I called and knocked on the edge of the doorway. When I stooped and went inside, the air of the room seemed as if no one had been breathing it for a long time, and almost all the things were gone except for the paillasses on the floor. My banza hung still from the roof pole. I took it down and touched a string and bent the sound with a finger of my left hand. The banza was dusty on the wooden neck and the gourd shell of its body. I carried it outside and sat down to play on the ground near where my horse was snuffling in the dust, until some children came. When I asked them where Merbillay had gone, they pointed down the hill to the grand’case.

  By the time I had walked to the steps of the grand’case it was almost dark, and the stars were beginning to show above the hill where I had tied my horse. There was still enough light for me to see something moving in the pool the doctor had made there long ago. When I moved to look nearer, I was quick to jump back, because the thing which was there was a big cayman, resting among the flowers of bwa dlo. Only his eyes showed above the water, and two points of his nose, and I thought I could see the shadow of his body just underneath. I thought he was more than six feet long. But then it was too dark to see, and someone was lighting the lamps on the gallery.

  When I turned toward the light, there was Merbillay, holding the burning splint in her hand for the lamps. She was wearing her finest headcloth, the one with the gold fringes, to swirl her hair on the top of her head, and she had on one of the blanche Elise’s dresses.

  “Bienvenu, mon capitaine,” she said. When I came up the steps she gave me a courtesy, like a blanche. Sometimes Elise gave Merbillay her old dresses, but what she wore tonight was a new one. When she gave me her hand, it was dry and cool and pulled a little way from mine. Everything she had been doing unfolded all at once inside my head.

  Merbillay was staying in the bedroom of Tocquet and Elise, which was the best room in the house. She had put Caco in the other room at the front, where sometimes the doctor would stay, and the smaller children in the back where Zabeth used to keep the babies. Zabeth had gone off with the blancs to Le Cap, and something had made Merbillay believe that this time they were not ever coming back to Thibodet.

  She had made a fine meal to serve at the table of the blancs on the gallery. As Captain Riau of Toussaint’s army, I had sat down at that table sometimes before. This night I sat to eat with Merbillay and the children. The food was even better than what she cooked for the blancs, lambi with green cashews and rice cooked with cinnamon and milk. Some other people who were living at the grand’case sat down to eat with us, while others served the table as Zabeth used to do. The grand’case was all full of people who had come from the cases above the coffee terraces, and they had made a lot of disorder inside.

  When we had finished all the food, I gave Guiaou’s shell to Yoyo and Marielle. Yoyo ran away under the starlight toward the spring high on the hill, because she wanted to try her shell for a water dipper. Marielle went inside the grand’case, shaking her shell against her ear and smiling. Then everyone else went away from the table, and Merbillay asked me to come with her into the bedroom of the blancs, but I would not go.

  “If you are afraid of the blancs,” she said, “they will not be coming back any more.”

  I did not give her an answer to that. All the plates were still on the table between us, sticky with milk and oil from the food. There would be flies in the morning, if no one took them away. Maybe what Merbillay thought was true and the blancs were finished in this country, but if that was coming it had not happened yet. Maybe her picture of the future was true, but that picture had not yet come clear. Nothing was clear. If Toussaint had raised too much trouble for ordinary blancs to travel to Ennery, still Xavier Tocquet would go anywhere he wanted to go, with Bazau and Gros-Jean, or alone if he wanted. But that was not the reason I would not sleep in the grand’case. I had thought about lying down with Merbillay for many days before I left Marmelade, but I did not want to lie in the bed of the blancs and be covered with the fatras of their old dreams.

  “You make good food, like you always do.” I rubbed my stomach with one hand and smiled as I stood up. “I will be in our old case whenever you want to find me.” Then I kissed her hand, like a blanc myself, before I went away.

  There was a pull in the bottom of my belly that made my legs want to turn around and go back to her as I climbed up the hill, but I thought maybe it was better to keep away from any woman for a few more days, so that maybe my spirit would come back to me. I could not think what moved Merbillay to start living in the grand’case as she had done. Maybe there was a third man in it somewhere, but I had not seen any sign of that, and Merbillay was not the kind of woman who would hide it.

  I took the banza out into the starlight and sat down near the door to play it. Some of the same children who were there in the afternoon came to listen, and in a little while Caco came too, and sat down so near me that his shoulder was touching my shoulder. Then we heard Quamba’s bone flute whistling in the dark and coming nearer, and Quamba crossed his legs to sit down and play until we had finished the tune. Quamba let the flute drop on the string that held it around his neck, and I leaned the banza against the wall of the case.

  “I have been dreaming, or there is a big cayman in the pool by the grand’case,” I said.

  Caco laughed and rolled his head against the wall.

  “You can laugh,” I said. “But that is dangerous for the little children, like your sisters. Why does no one kill this cayman?”

  “All the guns have gone away to shoot blancs,” Quamba said. “If you want to kill a cayman that big with a knife, Riau, you are welcome.”

  “He is not hungry.” Caco could not stop laughing. “Maman gives him a chicken every day. Or sometimes the leg of a goat.”

  “Well,” I said. “I am glad there are chickens enough at Thibodet to feed a cayman.” Of course I had my pistols with me, so I could shoot the cayman myself if he was there by daylight, but I thought maybe I would leave him alone.

  Then Jean-Pic came out of the darkness toward our case. He was almost at the door before he noticed that Riau was there.

  “I thought you had gone north, to our old country,” I said to him. Jean-Pic and I had been maroons together long before, in the hills around the edges of the big plain outside Le Cap.

  “I was in the north,” Jean-Pic said. “But there was too much trouble, so I came back here. I didn’t see you there, Riau.”

  “It looks like you saw where my bed was,” I said, but I was smiling in the dark.

  “Oh,” said Jean-Pic,
“I was sleeping in the ajoupa of Michau, because he went north with Zabeth and the blancs, but yours is a better house, and it was—” He stopped himself because he did not want to say the house was empty, and looked over his shoulder toward the grand’case.

  “You can sleep here,” I said. “There is still room enough for you.”

  Then Quamba got up and went away and the children scattered, all but Caco, who came into the case with me and Jean-Pic. I let the cloth fall across the doorway and stretched out on a paillasse. The cloth held a pale milky light across the door. I could hear Jean-Pic and Caco breathing not far off, although it was too dark to see them.

  “Too much fighting in the north,” Jean-Pic said. “I went to Grande Rivière to get away from the blancs, but Sans-Souci found me and made me fight them still.”

  I heard Jean-Pic’s head shaking against the straw of his paillasse. “Woy!” he said. “Sans-Souci likes to fight too hard. With him, you have to beat the blancs or die. And they are tough, those new blanc soldiers.”

  “Lamour Dérance has left the blancs,” I told him. “I heard it from Chancy. He took all his people back from Port-au-Prince to the mountains. He was angry because the blancs arrested Rigaud and took his sword and sent him away to France.”

  “I heard they did that, in the north,” Jean-Pic said. “I don’t care anything about Rigaud. Rigaud is the same as a blanc to me.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But he is not the same as a blanc to the blancs.”

  “I would like to see Matilde again,” Jean-Pic said. Matilde was the woman he had in Lamour Dérance’s band. “Maybe I will go and look for Lamour Dérance, if he has gone back to the mountains.”

  Jean-Pic was chewing his beard in the dark. “What I would really like is to go back to Bahoruco,” he said. “If the blancs have not run all over it already, or people fighting the blancs. ”

  He didn’t say anything more after that, and so we slept. My sleep gave me a foolish dream about a cayman sitting at the table on the gallery of the Thibodet grand’case, eating a chicken with a fork. In my dream it troubled me that the chicken still had all its feathers, and was bleeding on the tablecloth. All the chairs were standing on their heads, like the chests and the bed in the bedroom. I woke thinking these were the thoughts the blanche Elise might have, if she saw how Merbillay had turned her house all upside down, but how had these thoughts come into Riau’s head? In the old days Riau would have killed every blanc in a house like that and burned it down and danced on the ashes and never dreamed about it.

  But it was pleasant to hear Caco breathing near me in the dark. When I slept again, I slept without dreaming.

  Next morning Jean-Pic had decided to go south. He could not get a horse at Ennery, or even a donkey. They had all been taken off by the French blanc soldiers or ours. I rode him double on my horse as far as the crossroads where the road from Ennery strikes the big road up the coast. The mango sellers at that kalfou told us that a lot of French blanc soldiers were coming up the road, so we hid my horse in the ravine of the river of Ennery and crept up to the roadside to watch from behind the trees. A lot of soldiers did come marching up the road from Le Cap, and Captain-General Leclerc himself was leading them.

  Jean-Pic went south when they had passed, on foot, among a gang of marchandes who were taking fruit to Gonaives. They were singing as they went, but I did not want to go any nearer to Gonaives that day. I bought mangoes and took them to Merbillay’s case. I found Caco to watch my horse, and then I took off my boots and walked with my bare feet to the top of the hill where the hûnfor was.

  Quamba’s woman was sweeping the ground when I came in. She smiled at me, and laid down her broom and went away. I sat down on the hard dirt of the peristyle, under the square red flag that snapped on its long pole in the dry wind. The door to the kay mystè was open. Inside in the shadows I could see the new cannari we had made, though which was for Bouquart and which for Moyse I could not tell. I did not feel the konesans I thought I used to have.

  After a while, Quamba came up.

  “The house is yours, Riau, if you want to make a service,” he said.

  “I know it,” I said. “I am only waiting.”

  Quamba went inside the kay mystè and did something there, I don’t know what, and then he went away. I stayed where I was until after dark, until the stars had moved halfway across the sky. What I expected I did not know. I wanted to feel my spirit guiding me again, and no longer be the prisoner of my thoughts.

  Before the night was finished I went back to Merbillay’s case. I had not been near the grand’case or seen Merbillay all day. But when I pulled the cloth back from the door, I saw that Yoyo was sleeping on the paillasse near Caco. That made me smile. The shell Guiaou had sent to her was by her on the floor.

  In the morning I ate mangoes with Caco and Yoyo and then I rode again to the Ennery crossroads where the mango sellers were. There I learned from the marchandes going up and down the big road that there were plenty of French blanc soldiers at Gonaives, and ships on the harbor with their cannons. In the afternoon I rode back to Thibodet and let Caco take my horse while I walked up to the hûnfor again. All afternoon I sat where I had sat before. At nightfall Quamba passed and put out the maman tambou and the asson and a pair of ringing irons where I could reach them if I wanted, but for the first time in my life I was afraid to touch these things.

  Yoyo brought Marielle to Merbillay’s case that night, so all three of the children were sleeping there with me. Marielle woke and cried for her mother, but Yoyo shook the turtle shell and sang to her and made her sleep again. I lay awake, thinking of Guiaou. We both knew Guiaou was Yoyo’s father, as Riau was Caco’s. Which one of us was father of Marielle we did not know for certain, but we had agreed that both of us would be, though we had tried to kill each other first. Once Riau was much more like Guiaou. When the spirit came it filled his head completely and left no place for doubts or thoughts to quarrel with each other. Guiaou was like that still, but now Riau was different.

  I slept through a long part of the next day, and climbed to the hûnfor after the heat was less. This day the wind blew from the sea, and it was not so dry. The red flag on the tall cane pole was stretching for the mountains. At the end of the day a little malfini came on the wind from the west, and turned into the wind above the hûnfor. The wind was so strong that the hawk hung in the air above my head without moving, and my vision rose into the eye of the hawk. In one direction I could see as far as Gonaives harbor where the ships of the blancs were waiting with their guns, but invisible beneath the water Lasirène was swimming, and her tail was big and strong enough to overturn those boats. It came to me that Lasirène was the spirit with Placide Louverture, the day we fought the soldiers under Hardy. I saw the green mornes and the dark hollows between them rolling back to the east until the clouds had swallowed up the trees. There was the black scar on the ground where Habitation Sancey had been burned, and around some bends of the ravine the grand’case of Descahaux was still standing. I could even see as far as Marmelade, where Toussaint was, if I could not see what Toussaint was planning.

  When the sky grew darker there was the smell of rain, although it did not rain this night. I touched the drum so that it spoke one time, and lifted the asson just enough to stir the seeds inside the gourd, and touched the irons together once, then sat with a piece of iron in each of my open hands. One was a curved piece from a collar, and the other a nail that had closed that collar around some man’s throat. By tossing the curved piece in my hand and striking it with the straight one, I might make a ringing sound to lead the drums. But I held the irons silent, feeling them warm the points at the center of my palms. It was dark, and now the hawk was gone.

  After the darkness had settled, Quamba came and sat across from me, waiting for me to speak.

  “If I made the service before I was ready,” I said, “it was because the spirit of Moyse was pressing me.”

  “The spirit will pardon you that, if it is so,” s
aid Quamba.

  All at once I felt a weight come off my back, and the irons in my hands grew very warm. I felt again what it had been like when Riau struck the irons from Bouquart’s feet, but this feeling was mixed with a picture of Bouquart shooting a bullet through his own head at Toussaint’s order, and Toussaint seemed to be watching too as the hammer struck the iron from Riau’s throat when Riau was brought a slave to Bréda. That part was so long ago I could not be sure. I had not then known Toussaint’s name.

  “Toussaint may be for freedom, and yet still deal with the blancs,” Quamba said, like he could see everything in my head clear as if it were written on the ground between us. “That was always Toussaint’s way.”

  “I am tired of those twisted ways,” I said. “Moyse’s way was simpler.”

  Quamba followed my eyes through the door of the kay mystè where the cannari of Moyse and Bouquart stood silent and invisible among the others.

  “Moyse has gone beneath the waters,” he said. “Toussaint is still here.”

  The iron grew warmer in my hands and spread its warmth to the bottoms of my feet. Quamba wrapped his hands around my head and set his fingertips in the place where my head hinged to my neck. “Ki jan ou yé?” he said. How are you?

  “Nou la,” I said. We’re here. I meant not only Riau and Quamba but the spirits of Moyse and Bouquart too, if they were silent, and above them Ogûn, the master of my head, Ogûn Feraille. Ogûn was there with a quiet strength, different from his strength for cutting. He had not turned Riau completely out of his head but was there, sharing the head with me so that I did not feel uncertain.