Prologue
JUNE 15, 1802 ABOARD Le HéROS
The weighing of our anchor with this morning’s tide brought me a lightening of my heart. These last few days we’ve been in port were most uneasy, owing to rumors of renewed disturbances, perhaps a more serious revolt, to be inspired by the deportation of the brigand chief Toussaint, our passenger and prisoner. All factions in the city of Le Cap or what remains of it are once again aroused against one another. As for the harbor itself, it is alive with sharks, which feed most avidly upon the flesh of those who take the losing part in struggles on the shore.
Thus I was greatly comforted to see us well away, to stand on the stern with the breeze freshening in my face, watching the broken soot-stained ruins sink rapidly enough to the horizon. The town of Le Cap has twice been burned to the ground these last ten years, but even at the height of its ostentation it could not, when seen at such a distance, have seemed any more than a most precarious foothold on this savage shore. Rounding the cape, I see that city give way to rocky escarpments plunging vertically into the waves, and above these the incomprehensible blankness of the forests or, where the trees are cut, the peaks standing out as bare and sharp as needles’ points. My sojourn here was brief but more than long enough to satisfy me. Here no enterprise has managed to achieve a good result—the hand of civilized man has done no more than make of a wilderness a desert. Perhaps before Columbus landed, it was some sort of savage Eden here. I believe it would have been better for all if he had never come.
As we set sail, there stood near me, among my fellow officers of the ship, some members of the company of the renegade slave Toussaint, though that gentleman himself remained carefully sequestered, under guard in his cabin below. The others of his party had so far the freedom of the ship, and I observed them closely as I might, with some thought of indicting their descriptions, though for what audience I do not know.
The eldest (and by far the blackest) of the women is Suzanne, the wife of Toussaint. She is said to be older than he and showed her years, appearing confused at moments, appearing not to know just where she found herself or how she came there. But for the richness of her dress (which was, however, modest) she might easily have been taken for any ordinary household servant in the colony. The three young mulattresses in her train (a niece, a daughter-in-law, and a companion as I gathered) struck me as rather more soignées, wrapped in that thin layer of hastily acquired sophistication with which one often meets in women of their type.
The lightest of the men is Toussaint’s eldest son, Placide, though as our Captain Savary has suggested there are some doubts as to his parentage, suspicion that he may be an illegitimate child of Suzanne’s prior to the marriage (yet Toussaint acknowledges and indeed is said to favor him). His light color may have occasioned this speculation, though often the Aradas, from which tribe Toussaint is extracted, are similarly light or of a reddish hue.
As for the two younger sons, Isaac and Jean, it is plain at a glance that they are full-blooded Negroes. The former wears a most extravagant uniform, every inch of it bedizened with gold braid and rosettes, complete with an enormous sword, the tip of it dragging the boards of the deck, whose bearer appears to have no notion of its use. The hilted weapon seems only to encumber the natural movement of his hands along his sides. With all its meaningless pomp this uniform shows marked signs of wear, hard wear at that, and Isaac seems to sulk inside it—a bedraggled peacock, caught in a rainstorm.
I have heard, from Captain Savary and others, that this uniform was the personal gift of Bonaparte to Toussaint’s second son. Placide was presented with another like it, on the same occasion, but no longer wears it.
The eighth and last of the party looks a miscellany of ill-assembled and badly chosen parts, being overly tall, gangly, poorly proportioned and clumsy in all respects, all thumbs and elbows. His neck is elongated, with a busy Adam’s apple the size of a garden spade, and, above, his head appears ridiculously small. He rolls his eyes and stutters when he speaks, and his outsized, long-fingered hands creep about all over his person like great agitated spiders the while. This singular creature is Toussaint’s valet, known by the fanciful appellation of Mars Plaisir. For the moment, he cannot practice his intended vocation, since Toussaint is held strictly apart from all this retinue, not permitted to see any of his retainers or even any member of his family. A pointless severity, I should think, yet I would willingly be deprived of the attentions of a Mars Plaisir. In almost any European village I would expect a creature such as he to be set upon and stoned to death.
Now the very thought of Europe makes me puzzle at my enterprise, for these notes are addressed to no one, nor could I find opportunity to send them anywhere at all these next six weeks at sea. Yet I continue, for there have been other curiosities this day. At even (his family and retainers being at table below), Toussaint was fetched on deck to take the air, under guard of two dragoons detached from Captain-General Leclerc’s expedition. Those soldiers seemed to tower over him, for he is only a small Negro man and unremarkable at first glance, more noteworthy for the incongruity of his dress than for any distinguishing feature of his person. He wore a loose white shirt or smock, coarsely woven and open at the neck, over tight trousers from a military uniform, and a pair of high cavalry boots. There was a kerchief bound over his head, and I remembered hearing that Toussaint affected such a covering, not only in his déshabillé but often even on occasions of state.
I had the watch, but the sea was calm and the sky clear, with the first stars just beginning to emerge, and I approached a little nearer. He did not seem at all aware of my proximity, but stood near the stern rail to stare most intently down at the water (there being no longer any land in view). Not knowing what to say to him, or if I ought to speak at all, I was silent for some minutes before inquiring, what it might be that he was so carefully regarding.
And here the sentinel’s attention abruptly returned to his charge, and he undertook to prevent our conversation, but I overrode him, repeating my question and adding to it, whether Toussaint was looking back toward the island of which he had lately been master, and whether he regretted it.
At this, Toussaint turned half toward me and looked at me with half a smile, but without immediately speaking. I suppose he must have gone a lengthy while without much benefit of human discourse. Still, there was a sort of slyness in that smile. His lips were full and heavy, his teeth long and yellow; he lacked an eyetooth on the left side. The jaw long and slung far forward, stretching and lowering the deep oval of his face. His nose was long also and typically flat, but his forehead was high and his eyes, with their yellowing whites, were large and expressive—his best feature. All in all, a most arresting ugliness.
He was smaller than I somehow had expected, standing no higher than my breastbone. His disproportionately long trunk was set on little bandy legs—undoubtedly he would appear to best advantage on horseback. Some grizzled hair appeared at his shirt’s neck, and the gray pigtail hanging from under the kerchief was fastened with a bit of frayed red ribbon. I would have put him in the middle fifties. He was narrow-hipped and distinctly thin, though not to the point of frailty—his arms were disproportionately thick and muscular.
He returned my looks, taking my measure also it may be, and then resumed his staring at the water.
“Guinée,” he said, but so softly I scarce caught the word at all.
“Africa?” I said, with some surprise.
Of course he was not looking in the right direction, but one would hardly expect him to be a master of geography, outside of the colony. He is himself a Creole and I believe this must have been the first time he had ever been to sea. I found that my gaze was drawn after his; he continued to inspect the surfaces of the ocean for some time before he spoke. The water had taken on a red metallic glimmer from the light of the setting sun.
“Guinée, on dit, se trouve en bas de l’eau.” Still Toussaint kept his eyes fixed on the water. They say that Africa is at the bottom of the ocean.
“But you are a Christian,” I said, for I was again surprised, though it was not the first time I had heard of this belief. One often finds the slavers complaining of it—how their new-bought slaves will fling themselves off the ships in droves, believing that they may pass beneath the ocean to regain their original homes in Africa.
Toussaint glanced up at me with that same sly smile. “Of course I am a Christian,” he said, “but I should like to see Africa all the same.”
Our colloquy could not continue past that point, for the dragoons quite brusquely led him away. Improbable as it is that anyone aboard should enter into conspiracy with such a one as he, his reputation for cunning is sufficient that his guard evidently has been ordered to permit that he converse with no one.
Unfortunate fellow, I should not suppose him likely ever to see Africa—not, at least, in this lifetime.
It was well past dark when I was relieved of my watch, and in groping along through the darkness below toward my own repose I must pass the cabin where Toussaint was held secure. Going along the passage, I heard a voice coming from behind the door, and (the sentinel having absented himself, perhaps to the jakes) I paused to listen. The occupant was reading in a loud sonorous voice, this passage from the end of Deuteronomy:
And Moses went up from the plains of Moab under the mountains of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan.
And all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea.
And the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, unto Zoar.
And the Lord said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go thither.
So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord.
And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor, but no man knoweth his sepulchre unto this day.
And Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died. His eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.
And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days: so the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended.
Here Toussaint stopped, and after a little period of silence began again but in a lower and less certain tone, a murmur unintelligible to me—perhaps it was a prayer. This was for all the world like a regular church service, though with the one man playing the roles of both priest and communicant.
I took my way toward my own berth, but sleep continues to elude me, though the hour is late. Therefore I write—to no one. The wind has risen and the seas run higher than they did at sunset, so that the lamp swings like a pendulum on its chain; it blots my page with shadow, and then once more returns its light. Though the ship is densely packed with men and I can hear my fellows snoring, I feel myself much alone this night.
Out of the groaning of the ship’s timbers come again the words that Captain Savary repeated to a few of us at table: a sentence he claimed Toussaint had spoken when first taken onto the ship. En me reversant, on n’a abattu à Saint-Domingue que le tronc de l’arbre de la liberté des noirs; il poussera par les racines, parce qu’elles sont profondes et nombreuses.*1 Captain Savary quoted this with a sneer and the following remark that these were fine phrases indeed to fall from the thick lips of a gilded nigger. Then there was laughter, in which I joined. Yet now I hear the words again and not in Savary’s voice but in some other. What if they are true? If this man did inspire these last ten years of fire and murder—could he call up two hundred more?
Away with such a foolish thought. I shall not sail this way again. As for Toussaint, the gilt is well worn from him now, his time is past for such pretensions. Toussaint must pass into ignominy, and I into anonymity, remaining at the last without a name.