The War of Knives

by Broos Campbell

  Juge and I sat with our knees up and our backs to the wall, watching Sergeant Cahoon across the cell as he writhed in his own filth.

  “For pity’s sake, will someone clean him?” said Treadwell. “I simply cannot abide the stink any longer.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” I snapped. “Your leg excuses you from duty.”

  “I earn my keep with the cards.”

  “You lost five rats last night.”

  “It’s a controlled loss. That big-nosed nigger would just take ’em all, if I didn’t keep him entertained.”

  “Well, try to win some firewood tonight or we’ll be eating raw rat.”

  “The Froggies eat raw meat all the time. They call it tartare.”

  “Oh, what a lie.”

  “What does he say?” said Juge.

  “He thinks we should clean Sergeant Cahoon.”

  “What do you mean by this we? I am a major. I outrank you. You must clean him.”

  “Since when are you a major?”

  “Since Father Toussaint chose me for his staff.”

  “You’re pretty young to be a major, aren’t you?”

  He shrugged, “And you are young to be a lieutenant of vessels. But there it is for all to see.”

  “Yes, my rank was there for all to see,” I retorted, “until I lost my epaulet. But you wear a uniform that could mean anything or nothing.”

  Treadwell propped himself on his elbows and glared at me. “For the love of God, man, stop that bloody Frog babblin’ an’ tell him to jump to it. You’re the rankin’ officer.”

  “You’re wrong there, chum. He says he’s a major.”

  “Oh, don’t be stupid. Niggers can’t be majors.”

  “Can around here.”

  “Well, then it’s damn convenient for him, isn’t it? I mean, never says a word about it till some unpleasant work needs doin’, and suddenly he’s a bloody major.”

  “Being in here ain’t exactly nuts in May for him neither, y’know.”

  “Oh, God.” Treadwell turned his face to the wall.

  Cahoon stared at me. I didn’t know if he could see me or not. I didn’t know if he could see anything. He vomited again, spewing out great splashes of stuff like wet coffee grounds.

  I sighed. “Fine. I’ll fucking clean him up. No, I tell a lie: I’ll see if I can’t get Dr. Pepin up here.”

  I went to the barred gate at the top of the stairs and kicked and hollered until a soldier opened the door at the foot of the stairs and yelled at me to shut the hell up.

  “We need more water, clean rags, and Dr. Pepin,” I yelled back.

  “You won’t get ’em,” said the soldier. “So shut the fuck up before I come up there and beat you.”

  I rattled the bars some more. “I will not shut up! I have nothing better to do all day than to kick this door, and if you come up here without the things I ask for I will put a fist in your eye again like I did yesterday.”

  “I will not come up there,” he said. “That man has the black vomit, I know he does. I have never had it, and I don’t intend to get it now.”

  “Everyone in this whole prison will have it if he does not recover soon,” I shot back. “And the cleaner we can keep him and the sooner Dr. Pepin gets here, the less danger for you.”

  From up the stairs rose the smell of the gunpowder and tobacco the guards were burning to purify the air against the bad miasmas that caused the fever.

  “Oh, very well,” said the guard. “I will fetch him now and beat you later.”

  Dr. Pepin arrived with five soldiers in tow, three of them carrying buckets of water. The other two carried a tub in which several bed sheets lay soaking in vinegar.

  “Do not ask how I get this vinegar,” said Pepin. “Suffice it to say you owe me a small fortune, which I trust you will repay me before long. And now for the patient.”

  “He’s burning up,” said I. “He turned yellow this morning, and he’s been puking black stuff all day. Shits and pisses himself, too.”

  “Can’t help it, sir,” Cahoon muttered. It was the first coherent thing he’d said in a while.

  “Ah, he is aware of his surroundings,” said Pepin. He surveyed the mess around the sergeant. “You see the stale blood that has expelled from the anus? It indicates a hemorrhage in the intestinal mucus membrane. He is stuporous, yes?”

  “A stupid man I well may be,” said the sergeant, trying to rise, “for who else would go t’ sea? But ’tisn’t a man who’ll say I’m the stupidest.”

  “Stuporous,” I said. “He means you’re in a daze.”

  “Oh aye, daft is it? But ’tis fair enough I suppose.” He fell asleep again.

  Dr. Pepin knelt beside him. “The pulse, he is rapid yet feeble. The patient exhibits a dry brown tongue accompanied by incontinence. La, la,” he clucked. “But perhaps there is hope. Allons,” he said, turning to one of the soldiers, “be so good as to throw that water on him.”

  Cahoon sat up yelling. “What the bloody fuck!”

  “Ah ha!” chuckled Pepin. “There is hope indeed! Encore une fois— once more with the water!”

  Several bucketfuls later, Cahoon was not exactly lively, but he was awake.

  “’Tis yer eyes I’ll be havin’ for poached eggs,” he muttered, adding, “I’ll be murderin’ yis in yer sleep when I find me strength. ’Twill be a thought for to savor, these black nights.”

  “Clap a stopper on it, Sergeant,” I said cheerfully. “At least you’re clean now, which is probably as much a relief to you as it is to us.”

  “And now we wrap him in a sheet soaked in the vinegar,” said Pepin. “I find this works well at this stage. Sometimes two or even three patients out of ten survive this treatment.”

  “Survive the treatment, is it?”

  “Ha ha! I misspeak, Sergeant—I mean, survive after receiving this treatment.”

  I was pretty sure Pepin meant that so many of his patients survived because of the treatment, but I didn’t care to press him further.

  “C’est bien, garçons,” said Pepin to the soldiers. “Merci.” He gave them each a coin, and they went away laughing.

  We’d stripped Cahoon of his clothes already, he being so leaky there didn’t seem any point in keeping them on him. As Pepin began swaddling him in the sheet, I said in French:

  “Dr. Pepin, what are those little red bumps on his arms that look like mosquito bites?”

  “They are called petechiae,” said he. “You’ll notice more of them on his chest. They often appear in concert with bilious remitting fevers, and some regard them as a sign of impending death. In my opinion, however, they are what they appear to be: mosquito bites.”

  “Is there a connection between them and the fever?”

  “No, I think your Dr. Rush has destroyed that notion entirely. You yourself have many such bites, do you not?”

  I admitted I did.

  “And yet you exhibit no signs of the fever. Oh,” he said, switching back to English, “speaking of mosquitoes, you must, how you say, swab up the floor or you will have clouds of them in here.” And then, without changing the tone of his voice, he said, “Would you be so kind as to check if any of our friends linger in the passageway?”

  I opened the door and looked out. “All clear.”

  “Good. I think none speaks English anyway, but it is just as well to avoid being heard altogether. Now listen very carefully. You are soon able to pay my fee in full, perhaps. Pétion must break out very soon. There is almost no food left, and he no longer can replenish his ammunition, thanks to your frigate at the mouth of the bay. We have had no more supplies since she arrives. Yet he dithers. Perhaps a nudge from your frigate—a timely bombardment, say—might help him make up his mind, hein? Maybe you signal this to the frigate.”

  “I got no way of doing that. With a set of signal flags, maybe.”

  “But do you sailors not send signals at night with lamps and rockets and such?”

  “Sure, but they’re agreed
upon beforehand. You know, ‘If I light a blue fire, attack the enemy to windward; if I send up a red rocket, come alongside.’ That sort of thing.” Not that I had any blue fires or red rockets. “There’s no established code for signaling with lights.”

  “A pity. Such a system would be so useful. Now, as you are a sailor, I am certain you know when is the next full moon.”

  “Yes, sir. The eleventh.”

  “Exactly. This, I think, is when he intends to go.”

  “But wouldn’t the new moon suit him better? It’ll be dark then. Harder for Dessalines to see what he’s up to.”

  “And nearly impossible for Pétion’s troops to see where they are going, once they get into the woods. They do not know the terrain. No, he needs the full moon. The exact hour is a mystery to me, but I am willing to bet my life that he will break out on the eleventh. When is the moon at its highest?”

  “Midnight, with a full moon. It rises at sunset and sets at dawn. It’s just the opposite with the new moon.”

  “Mariners are walking almanacs.” He settled his hat on his head and picked up his bag. “Now, you remember what I have told you, in case you think of a way to signal or if you suddenly find yourself away from this place. Today is Sunday, the second of March. You have nine days, mon ami.”

  “Eight days,” I said to Juge the next morning. “We must think of something by then, if we are to be of any use.”

  “Very good,” he said. “Some opportunity will present itself. Or perhaps it will not. In the meantime, idleness is our enemy. I shall use the time to teach you fellows the Creole.”

  I looked at Treadwell. He lay on his back counting the spiders in the ceiling, or something. He’d been doing that all morning.

  “Hey, Treadwell,” I said, “how’d you like to learn to talk Creole?”

  He propped himself on an elbow. “No. I shan’t learn the nigger gibberish,” said he. “It’s no language, not a proper one, and not at all necessary anyway. With blacks, you point and the sergeants yell, and everyone muddles along admirably, thank you very much.”

  “I thought your men were Jamaican,” I said. “Don’t they speak English?”

  “Of course they speak English, after a fashion, but that’s hardly the point, is it?”

  “It’ll take your mind off things.”

  “Right.” He caressed his leg. “And speakin’ of takin’ things off, if Pepin decides to take off the old pin, I shall be all set to beg my bread in any street in the island, once I’ve learnt Creole. Great lot of good that’ll be. Is that your point, Mr. Graves? Eh?”

  There were plenty of sailors with only one leg, but I guessed it was different with soldiers. I left him to his sulk. “How about you, Cahoon? Want to learn the French Creole?”

  “Oh aye? The Irish and the English are plenty to be livin’ together in me head as it is, sir.” He tapped his temple. “’Tis six to a bed in here as it is already, thanks all the same, there.”

  “Suit yourself then.” I switched to French. “Looks like you have a class of one, Juge. I won’t bother to translate Mr. Treadwell’s views on the subject, but he leads me to wonder: Toussaint himself speaks only Creole because his French is wanting, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Father Toussaint speaks as he wishes.”

  “But it is said he has little French and hates to use it. Is this because he does not wish to be thought of as one who puts on airs?”

  “Palé frasé pa di lespri pou sa,” said Juge in Creole, and looked at me expectantly.

  “Er . . . Speaking French isn’t, um . . . proof of intelligence? Or wit, perhaps?”

  “Bon sang! You have it exactly so. You have learned your first lesson. See how easy it will be?”

  “But—and I mean no insult to General Toussaint and all—but isn’t it a sort of prideful ignorance that prevents him from speaking proper French?”

  He gave a look that killed the smile on my lips. “I should not put it that way, even in jest,” said he. “Let us say instead that he takes joy in his own language, and if one wishes to consult with him, one must speak as he does. But he speaks French well enough, I assure you, and reads English. And Latin, too. You should hear him say the Mass! He is a great one for the church and all the saints.” He crossed himself. “How he despises the maroons in the mountains who pound away on their drums, shrieking for demons to possess them as they dance and drink the night away. Of course the voudou brings on a trance, with the amount of rum they consume. But anyway, anything Father Toussaint misses in French, Delatte and his other white secretaries are sure to tell him.”

  “But of course,” I said, wondering what Connor and Franklin were up to.

  “Silence, classe!” said Juge, clapping his hands in exactly the way my tutor used to do when I was cutting up instead of paying attention. “Today we begin with the syntax. Once one commands this and a basic vocabulary—a great deal of which is taken directly from the French— one is well on the way to learning this simple but useful language. First, one must know that in Creole, one does not conjugate the verb. One could not if one wanted to, for the simple reason that it is not done. Why this is I do not know, so do not bother to ask. Second, one indicates the tense by placing a sort of marker before the verb.”

  “A marker? What’s that?”

  “Asé palé,” he said, holding a finger to his lips. “Stop talking and I shall tell you. Ready? We begin: If no marker appears, it means the phrase is cast in the simple past—or perhaps in the present. Context will tell you which. But when markers appear, they will take the forms ap, a, pral, or te. For example: Map palé, I am talking. Ma palé, I will talk. Mpral palé, I am going to talk. M’te palé, I have talked. Do you follow?”

  “Yes, yes. But shouldn’t I write this down?”

  “No, the Creole is not a written language. Do not be foolish. Encore, we continue:

  “The indefinite article, yon, precedes the noun, and the definite article, nan, comes after: yon gason, a boy; gason nan, the boy. One makes the plural by omitting the article: gason, boys. And of course the definite article changes when one speaks of something feminine: fi a, the girl. And la for things that have no gender: elev la, the student.”

  “Oh, a thousand thanks,” I said.

  “Ha ha! No, say mesi anpil,” he replied. “You will soon acquire an adequate vocabulary. In the meantime, a few stock phrases and aphorisms will get you through most situations.”

  “Yes, I have a collection of those already.”

  “No doubt the ones that sailors acquire in every port. No, I mean you must learn some local ones in order to understand the people. For instance, Yo trené kadav la na la ri. That is, They dragged the corpse through the street. This is an example of the lack of a passive voice. One never says the corpse was dragged, but always they dragged the corpse.”

  “Who dragged the corpse?”

  “Why, the people who drag corpses through the street, of course.”

  “This is a common saying?”

  “Oh yes, one hears it quite often these days.”

  Dr. Pepin came by again in the afternoon to stroke his beard and look at Treadwell’s leg. Négraud came with him because he had heard about Pepin’s quaint notion of bathing Cahoon.

  “Can’t you just wipe him off?” he asked. “Surely this constant bathing injures the health.”

  “Such nonsense. You yourself could benefit from a bath,” said Pepin, “you with your constant chewing of garlic.”

  “But chewing garlic keeps away disease,” said the lieutenant.

  “Yes, because it drives other people away. Speaking of which, go away while I examine my patients.”

  “Treadwell’s leg has closed up,” I said. “It’s a little swollen, maybe, but it looks well enough to me.”

  “It looks well enough to the unlearned eye, yes,” said Pepin. “But tell me, does he toss and turn at night with the delirium?”

  “He talks in his sleep, sure.”

  “Ah me, ah me,” said Pepin. “The
leg is red and swollen, and hot to the touch. I should have come sooner. Why did you not alert me when I tended to the sergeant?”

  “You’re the doctor,” I said, cross because I felt guilty. “I thought you’d see to it.”

  “The wound has healed on the surface only. Inside, she festers. I should have put in a thread to allow the pus an avenue of escape. M’sieur Treadwell, I am afraid I shall have to open you with my little knife.”

  The Englishman put up a good front, but Juge and I had to hold him down. I didn’t look to see what Pepin was doing, but judging from the way Treadwell gasped and bucked, it wasn’t pleasant. At last Pepin pronounced himself satisfied, and Treadwell fell asleep from exhaustion.

  “I have been remiss,” said Pepin. “I am sorry for the shortness of my tone earlier. But I think this operation will help. Perhaps one day by the grace of God he will walk again. And now for my other patient. Sergeant Cahoon, ’ow are you today?”

  “Weak as a babbie, your honor, but I sat on the seat of ease this forenoon watch. ’Twas the world’s great satisfaction to me.”

  “The seat of ease?” said Pepin.

  “He means he used the head,” I said. When Pepin still looked puzzled, I added: “The latrine, sir. The necessary. Juge and I held him steady while he walked himself over there. It was a great satisfaction for us, too, not to have to sluice him off anymore.”

  “Oh, God aye,” said Cahoon. “’Tis the delight to me. A man’s not a man that cannot be trusted with his own bowels. Who knew what pleasure could be had in the mastery of—oh Jezzus!” He clutched at his belly. “Mr. Graves, sir, ’tis touchin’ cloth I am!”

  Pepin had Cahoon’s trousers down before I had marched him halfway to the latrine.

  “And now,” said Pepin, while Cahoon was busy and Juge and Treadwell had turned away to give him some privacy, “here is something I must prevail upon you to take.” He slipped a piece of paper into my hand. “It is written in such a way that even the unlettered may grasp its meaning, so hide it quickly and do not look at it again until you may deliver it to General Dessalines or some other such person of authority.”

  And with that he plucked his pince-nez from his nose, stuffed his bicorn onto his head, picked up his bag, bid us adieu, and marched out the door.