Cross on the Drum

by Cave, Hugh

  Antoine tried to stand on one leg while scratching the other and almost fell down. "But then the church will get back the property, won't it?"

  "Certainly it will get back the property. We've been all over that. You don't want the property. You want to be magistrate."

  "That's right," Antoine said, brightening. "I want to be magistrate."

  "Well, you will be, because Dufour will be packed off to the capital and slapped into jail. You will be named to take his place because you were magistrate before. Now will you stop scratching your damned leg and come home to bed?"

  They walked a little more and Antoine stopped again, scowling. "How long will this take?" he demanded.

  "How long will what take, for God's sake!"

  "For me to be magistrate again."

  Pradon flung up his arms. "How do I know how long it will take? A month, maybe. Two months. What do you care? You don't have to stand on your head till it happens, do you? You've got a palm tree to sleep under."

  Antoine giggled.

  "That fool!" Pradon muttered as he walked back alone after shoving Antoine into the arms of his wife. "That ignorant, stupid peasant! Magistrate, for the love of God!" There was going to be a new magistrate on Ile du Vent, all right, but it wouldn't be Antoine Constant. How trusting could the fool be?

  "Tell me again how this affair will result in my getting to be magistrate," Pradon mimicked.

  He laughed.

  "All right, my friend, I'll tell you. Not how you're going to be magistrate, because you're not going to be, but how you and Felix Dufour are going to find yourselves skipping out of here some dark night for the mainland, with scared looks over your shoulders to make sure you aren't being followed.

  "You're going through with this business of the papers, see? And it will work because Felix is smart enough to make it work. When it's over, that white-skinned priest who thinks I'm only a laborer will be finished here and you, my dumb friend, will own a church and a rectory. And then Pradon Beliard, who is much smarter than you and Felix think he is, and whose name will not have been mixed up in the affair at all, is going to call on both of you one day and threaten to expose you. And you and Felix, knowing very well that he can do it, are going to be scared out of your wits.

  "That's what's going to happen, friend, if you want to know the truth of it. You think you're going to be magistrate? You think you're going to take Dufour's place? Don't make me laugh. To quote one of your own peasant proverbs, my trusting idiot friend, `The stone you don't see is the one you trip over.' Only this stone will be big enough to break your neck."

  And beginning to chuckle because he was a little drunk, Pradon kept it up all the way home.

  16

  WARNER LEMKE, too, was drinking that evening. He had begun earlier than usual and was unsteady on his feet when he let the screen door of the plantation house slam behind him and headed for the beach.

  He carried a bottle. The night was very dark.

  Arriving at the beach just before eight, he looked eagerly along it as he staggered through the screen of malfini bushes. It was deserted. A crab scuttled over his foot in the darkness and he lurched backward, letting the bottle fall. Retrieving it, he unscrewed the cap and drank, only to choke on the rum and spit most of it out.

  Where was she? Why didn't she come?

  For three evenings he had walked the beach, cursing her. She had to come tonight. Sure, sure, she had a hard time escaping her brother's vigilance; he could appreciate that. But four nights in a row was too much.

  He walked up and down the beach, clutching the bottle by its neck, halting every little while to peer at the screen of bushes and listen for footsteps. With every halt his anger increased. Damn it, he was a white man. He was manager of a plantation. No native bitch could do this to him.

  He had another drink. The rum warmed him at last and his anger momentarily receded. What the hell, he was better off here, listening to the sound of the sea, than cooped up in the house with nothing to do but fiddle with the radio or read a book. Waiting for Micheline was better than sitting in the same deadly room with a wife who didn't know he existed. At least something might happen here.

  There was no longer any possibility of reconciliation with Alma, Lemke realized. If there ever had been, he had let it slip past him. To hell with it. No, that wasn't the way he felt. He wished there could be a reconciliation. At times he wished it very much, and felt that if she didn't stop poring over her damned medical books and pay some attention to him, he would start screaming. He knew it was hopeless, that was all.

  She never looked at him anymore. She never spoke except in the polite, impersonal way she would speak to a fellow guest at a hotel. They met at breakfast with indifferent nods of recognition, got through the days somehow, and after the long, murderous evenings of silence they nodded good night and went to their rooms. It was torture.

  He longed sometimes for the flare-ups of the period following their return from Fond Marie. But she managed somehow to deny him even that. 'What was she made of, anyway?

  Something very strange had happened to Alma. He didn't under-stand it. She wore the same clothes but wore them differently, walked differently in them, talked differently. She had changed completely. Was she in love with Clinton? Had she got religion? Maybe both. Either would explain the change in her, he realized. Either would explain why she went to that miserable clinic every morning to help dear Mr. Clinton look after a lot of filthy peasants.

  He didn't get it at all. A nurse, for God's sake. Why, before the start of this clinic business, Alma wouldn't have touched a sick peasant with a twenty-foot pole. Disease of any sort repelled her. Now if she condescended to talk to him at all, it was likely to be about some "interesting" or "pathetic" case of something with a long name. She spouted those Latin names as though she'd invented them.

  He tipped the bottle to his mouth again, beginning to be very drunk as the straight rum took effect. He pawed at his watch and looked up and down the beach again and swore. What a fool he was, coming here night after night when he knew damned well the girl had no intention of showing up again. She'd as much as told him, hadn't she? "I'll see you when I can," she'd said. "If I change my mind about not wanting to" was what she had meant.

  She wasn't interested in him and never had been. Face it. What she really wanted was a thing he couldn't give her. How did she expect him to give it? Was he supposed to invent a drug that would make Clinton break out in a rash of desire? They had potions of their own for that, if you believed the tales. Why didn't she use one herself?

  A crab investigated his feet again. Lemke kicked out savagely and sent it flying, heard it fall with a plop into the water, and then drank again. The bottle was empty. He tossed it away and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

  Micheline wasn't coming. All right, he'd show her. He'd prove to her he didn't have to hang around here night after night waiting for her to make up her mind. There was a bamboche up at the fishermen's shacks tonight. He'd heard the cook telling Alberse about it when she came back from there this morning with some lobsters.

  HE WAS REALLY DRUNK NOW. Half a dozen times he lost the path and stumbled blindly about in the dark, tearing his clothes on the bushes. Once he blundered into some mangroves and sank to his knees in mud. The trip should have taken him a quarter hour at the most, but an hour passed before he heard the throbbing of the Congos.

  The dance was in full swing when he located it. It was being held in a yard near the shore, under lanterns suspended from the limbs of an old tamarind tree. Fifty or more persons were present. Had he been sober he would not have thought of intruding; would only have voiced a polite greeting and walked on. He was white, after all. He was the plantation boss. But he halted now by the refreshment table and demanded a glass of clairin, slapping a coin down to pay for it. He staggered through the gate and pushed in among them, leered at a good-looking girl of eighteen or so and invited her to dance.

  She hesitated, but after a q
uick look around she stepped toward him. When he pulled her into his arms there was a sudden stillness, as though the scene were on film and the film had snapped. In St. Joseph a man did not wrap his arms around the woman he danced with. He did not touch her at all. Dancers simply faced each other, hands on hips, and moved their feet and bodies to the rhythm of the drumbeats.

  The drums were silent. Lemke realized what he had done and released the girl. "Sorry," he mumbled, foolishly grinning. But the girl had turned away from him in disgust, repelled by his drunkenness. He had to go lurching through the crowd in search of another.

  Some of them danced with him for a moment or two, but not the way they had danced with their own men. Not with laughter on their lips and an invitation in their flashing eyes. They simply went through the motions to be polite and escaped as quickly as they could. The men watched him, every move he made. There were whispers.

  He stopped trying at last. Hands clenched at his sides, he glared around him, cursed them under his breath, then flung himself about and walked out. To hell with them if that was how they felt. He stumbled toward the beach, out of the lantern light. He found an overturned dugout and sat on it. 'What was he going to do? Where could he go?

  He remembered Tina then. Tina Nerette. He remembered going to her house the day of his return to the island. She had been visiting a sister, her mother had said. Some sister who was expecting a baby. He hadn't looked her up since then. There'd been no need to, with Micheline taking her place.

  He hadn't seen Tina at the bamboche. She must be at home, then. Muttering to himself, he stumbled along the path to her house.

  The door was shut. When he knocked, there was a stirring inside and a sound of whispering. He became impatient and hit the door hard with his fist. Then a voice demanded, "Qui moun la?"

  "M'sieu Lemke!" he said angrily.

  The door was opened by the woman he had talked to on his previous visit. She peered into his face, obviously bewildered. "My daughter and I were in bed, m'sieu. What is it you want?"

  "Tell Tina to step out here. I want to speak to her."

  "M' sieu, she can't do that, no. She is not well. She is really very sick."

  "Sick?" Lemke muttered. He had not foreseen this; it confused him. "What do you mean, sick? What's wrong with her?"

  "She coughs all the time, m'sieu. She has a bad cold, maybe something worse than a cold. She has been coughing for days. She can't get out of bed to talk to you, no. She really can't."

  "What the hell," Lemke said, swaying. "Let me have a look at her."

  He stepped into the caille and struck a match. They had a bed, these people. The girl lay on it under an old gray blanket. He lit a lamp and leaned over her, peering into her face. Her eyes were wide, gazing up at him. She tried to speak to him and began to cough. He wondered if she had T.B.

  "What—what do you want with me, m'sieu?" she whispered when she could manage her voice.

  "Want?" Lemke mumbled. "I don't want anything. Not now. Not with you like this." He scowled at her. "Look—what are you doing for this? Are you doing anything?"

  "It will go away, m'sieu."

  "Not if you don't do something about it, it won't." He put a hand out and began to stroke her face. Her face was hot. She had a high fever. "You take yourself to the clinic," he said, "and let Père Clinton give you some medicine for this. You hear? You won't get better just lying here."

  She caught his hand and held it. "If I go to the clinic, will you come to see me again, m'sieu?"

  "Of course I will, when you're well."

  "Then I'll go. I'll go tomorrow. I promise."

  Outside the hut Lemke wondered what to do next. He felt cheated. He was desperately lonely. Maybe if he returned to the beach, Micheline would show up after all. He stumbled away into the darkness.

  TINA WALKED SLOWLY across the red earth of the mission clearing, tired from her long journey. Halting in the office doorway, she said in a whisper, "Mon Père."

  "Hello," Barry said cheerfully, turning toward her. "What can I do for you?"

  "I—I'm not well, mon Père."

  Barry nodded and stepped forward. He was a head taller than she; he had to look down at her. She was a pretty little thing, not more than eighteen. He took her by the hand and led her to a chair, then sat on a corner of his desk, one leg swinging, and looked at her. He was alone in the clinic. Alma had left just a little while ago.

  "You haven't been here before, have you? Suppose you begin by telling me your name and where you're from."

  Before she finished giving him the information for his file card, she was coughing. He frowned at her.

  "Is that the sickness you mean? That cough?"

  She nodded, struggling to get her breath.

  "It's a bad one," Barry said, frowning. "How long have you had it?"

  "A long time, mon Père. But not like this. It's getting worse."

  Barry examined her, calling Lucy in from the kitchen so the girl would not be frightened. It was not tuberculosis, he told himself. It might be, of course—he couldn't be sure without X rays, and there certainly was T.B. among the four thousand people on his island—but he guessed it was only a bad cold or bronchial infection, probably aggravated by dust. They lived in those miserable dirt-floored huts and stirred up clouds of dust every time they plied a broom. He dismissed Lucy and sat the girl down to finish filling out her card.

  "I haven't had many patients from your end of the island," he said to make conversation. “Who sent you to me?"

  "M'sieu Lemke, mon Père."

  "Oh? You work for him?"

  "No." She shook her head. "I'm his girl."

  "You're what?"

  "His girl. At least, I was for a time."

  He stared at her, knowing his mouth had dropped open. She had said it so matter-of-factly. No preamble. No warning. I'm his girl. He felt as though a bolt of lightning had penetrated his skull and was crackling around inside. Lemke's girl! No wonder there was trouble between Lemke and Alma!

  Did Alma know about it though? She must. She did. That night of the farewell party at the plantation—this was the reason for her strange behavior, her brazen flirting with the men as though she were determined to shame her husband in front of them all. It must be. A native girl. Good Lord!

  He took in a breath. "What do you mean, you were for a time? Aren't you now?"

  For the first time since she had stepped through the doorway, the girl showed some spirit. "He didn't come near me for weeks until last night," she said in a sudden outburst of bitterness. "That Micheline Laroche put a spell on him!"

  Another lightning bolt. Careful, Barry warned himself. Be careful here. "You mean he's been seeing Micheline?"

  "He couldn't help himself. She made him."

  "Where have they been meeting?"

  "On a beach near the plantation."

  "Does anyone else know this?"

  "If you mean have I told anyone, no. But I'm not the only one with a pair of eyes."

  Sooner or later, Barry thought, Catus will hear about it. What will he do?

  He gave the girl medicine and instructed her to come again. When she had gone, he stayed at his desk, thinking. It threw a new light on Alma Lemke, this did. He had been sure for some time, of course, that she and her husband were seriously on the outs, and had wondered about it. He had wondered about the change in her too, but had attributed that to the fact that in coming daily to the clinic, working with people who so badly needed help, she had found a relief from boredom.

  The truth was, he had never quite believed in the change, wonderful as she was with the peasants. The memory of the other Alma Lemke, sardonic, a little cheap, a kind of genteel street-walker in speech and attitude, had kept rising to disturb the picture, like bubbles rising from the dark bottom of a clear pool.

  Not once had she mentioned the real cause of her trouble. Those first sarcastic hints had led to nothing. Morning after morning here in the clinic they had talked of other things, he of his boy
hood in the hot countries, his reasons for wanting to be a missionary, his struggle to be one; she of her Louisiana childhood, her parents, her marriage. All sorts of subjects had bounced off these whitewashed walls in the past month. They had played catch with theology, philosophy, medicine. They had discussed the possibility of turning the old church and rectory into a school when the mission was moved to the ridge. They had argued about the probable origins of vodun, weighed the possibilities of improving and expanding the island coffee crop so the natives would have a chance to make some real money, even pretended to take sides in the old mock battle of tropic heat versus temperate-zone winters. He could not even remember all the things they had talked about while working together.

  But she had never mentioned her husband's affair with this native girl. She was certainly a strange woman.

  17

  THREE DAYS AFTER Tina Nerette's startling revelation, Barry and Alma were just finishing their morning's work at the clinic when a young woman appeared at the door. Barry had seen her in church and knew her name: Yolande Desinor. Her husband had met death by drowning the year before. She and her little girl lived with her parents in the village.

  Yolande flung herself at him with a babble of Creole, pawing at him like one possessed.

  Her child was desperately ill, he gathered. (Would he ever learn to understand their Creole when it was hurled at him with such speed?) He must come at once. No matter what her parents said, he must come and save the little girl from death.

  "You saved Fifine Cesar!" she wailed. "Please, mon Père, save my daughter!"