Chapter Thirty-Two
THE NIGHT WAS THICKENED BY THE CLOUDS circling the ring of hills that shelved in Habitation Thibodet, and toward dawn it rained but only a little. Lying in the sag of his roped bed, Doctor Hébert was vaguely aware of the thickening of raindrops on the roof, as he drowsed between consciousness and dream. The light sound lulled him and he slept more deeply. When he woke again it was good daylight and the housemaid Zabeth was setting a tray with coffee on the floor beside the bed, turning her shy smile from him as she did so.
The doctor dressed, taking sips of coffee from the demitasse. On the gallery, Zabeth served him another cup, some bread and a jam made from mango. The doctor peeled a banana and ate half of it. Presently Delsart joined him and without speaking helped himself to coffee.
A mass of rain cloud crawled easterly over the hills like a great gray caterpillar, toward the peaks of the Cibao mountains, which were sheathed in a pale fog. To the west, the sun had shot the dissipating vapors with white light. The doctor finished his banana and folded the peel on his plate.
“Comment allez-vous aujour d’hui?” he inquired of Delsart.
“Pas mal, pas mal…”
In fact it did appear that the gérant’s health had taken a turn for the better. The sores on his face had healed to pinkish patches of new skin. The doctor had him under a mercury treatment for the pox, and had frightened him away from the quarters by telling him that if he did not altogether abstain from venery, an amputation would certainly be necessary to save his life. He had also contrived to limit Delsart to a pint of tafia a day. If altogether deprived of rum, the gérant began to hallucinate and turned completely useless.
“You’ll go to the coffee again today?”
“Ouais, bien s?r,” Delsart said. He brushed a crumb from his cheek and stood up, reaching for his tattered hat. The doctor got up also, nodding to Delsart, and walked down the path to the infirmary.
This building he had caused to be erected as soon as Maillart’s party had left the plantation, overriding Delsart’s complaints about the loss of main-d’oeuvre. Delsart had maintained that the institution of a hospital would only lead to more malingering, but in fact, the opposite seemed to hold: after a few days of treatment and recuperation, the ill or injured performed much better than before, and the morale of the whole atelier seemed boosted. Besides, the infirmary was far from luxurious, nothing more than a rectangular shelter built on the model of the slave cabins, but about three times their size. One wall had been left open to the air, with palmiste blinds that could be lowered in case of a blowing rain.
Today, the blinds were rolled up to the eaves. The doctor had ordered the making of six rope beds similar to the one he used in the grand’case, but only two of them were occupied at present. At least two other women, erstwhile inamorata of Delsart, were sick with the pox, but the doctor could spare no mercury for them. Delsart was essential; he’d have been helpless in the management of the plantation without the gérant’s aid. Unfortunately, Toussaint’s repertory as a dokté-feuilles had included no specifics for venereal diseases.
He first approached the bed of a twenty-year-old Senegalese with a pair of nasty puncture wounds, one in the forearm and the other in his calf. This one had a tale of being knocked over and slashed by a boar in the jungle, but the doctor did not much credit it. He had learned the difference between knife wounds and tusk wounds, and he thought the injuries more likely came from a fight, though he saw no use in prosecuting the matter.
He changed the Senegalese’s leg bandage and applied a fresh poultice of herbs. While he was so engaged, Zabeth came from the kitchen shed and served the tisane he had ordered for the other patient, an elderly slave who was sick with the grippe. When the old woman had received her bowl, the doctor beckoned Zabeth over and watched as she redressed the Senegalese’s arm wound, nodding approvingly as he stroked his short beard to its point. He was pleased with Zabeth; the girl was quick and clean and gentle, and she had talent as a nurse.
A wind was blowing pleasantly from the west and by the time the doctor left the infirmary, the sky had cleared all around the horizon so that the jungled peaks of the eastern mountains were sharply etched against the bluing sky. Already it was beginning to be hot, but the breeze cooled the sweat that sprang on him as he proceeded. He walked through the carrés of cane, untended for the moment, and climbed the terraces of coffee trees toward the edge of the jungle.
The atelier had started on the highest terrace and the slaves were picking their way down. It was much easier work than cane, so today the singing was spontaneous. Delsart had not even bothered to carry a whip up the hill. The doctor exchanged a word or two with him. He selected a red pod from the basket of the slave Politte, cut the husk with his thumbnail and peeled it back. The coffee taste was fresh and lively in the opaque jelly stuff surrounding the seed, when he popped the bean into his mouth. There was something he heard, though, a beat behind the singing. The doctor made a cutting motion and Delsart called out for the singers to cease.
In the decline of the gérant’s voice, the doctor slowly turned his head from side to side, straining his ears, but there was nothing, only the sigh of the western breeze. Delsart looked at him curiously. The small oval leaves of the coffee trees fanned back, then righted themselves as the wind relaxed them.
“C’etait rien,” the doctor said, blinking his reply to Delsart’s shrug. The slaves took up their song again as the doctor walked back down the hill.
He crossed the main compound and entered the cane mill. The slave Barthelmy was in charge of two others who were cleaning and repairing the refinery gear, which had been left in sticky disarray since the last pressing. They were also supposed to go over the equipment necessary for the refinement of white sugar. Doctor Hébert had insisted that Delsart teach him this process, though in truth they were now too short-handed to work both cane and coffee simultaneously. Habitation Thibodet had fared much better than most plantations of the north, but many of the slaves had run away, if not murdered or abducted, so that they now commanded only two-thirds of the original workforce.
The poles of the disused moulin de bêtes swung down from the central turn-peg. Barthelmy was scrubbing the interlocked grooves of the cane press cylinders with a stiff brush. He stepped back as the doctor approached, and swung a pole to turn the press, exposing new-brightened metal. Doctor Hébert smiled at him and left the mill.
He went to the stable, saddled his horse, and rode out on the cattle trail behind the main compound. In a scabbard by his knee he carried a big coutelas which he used to chop the overgrowth from the path—weekly the jungle tried to take it back. Every so often he stopped to gather useful herbs. Allowing for these pauses, it took him nearly two hours to reach the area where the sheep were foraging.
Again in despite of Delsart’s protest, the doctor had diverted two slaves in their prime, Coffy and Jean-Simon, to serve as shepherds—that because he was quite distressed over the drastic diminution of the flock over the months that he’d been absent, since Thibodet had died. But today, no more of the sheep had been lost, and three new lambs were safely born.
Coffy and Jean-Simon seemed very glad to see him. He had brought them food, manioc flour and some dried peas that they could boil. But Coffy, especially, seemed distinctly ill at ease. He asked the doctor if he had brought his pistol. The doctor said that he had not.
He thought no more of this matter until, partway down the trail, he heard the drumming start again. It was faint and very distant, but unmistakable—no longer to be dismissed as an illusion, as he had done among the coffee trees. He thought for a moment, then doubled back on the trail and returned to his pair of herdsmen.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” His tone was sharp. Coffy rested his stave on the ground and looked down at the dirt between his bare toes.
“How long since it began?” the doctor said.
“Only since this morning,” Jean-Simon muttered.
The doctor cocked his head again. He did not understand much about the drums, but this sound seemed fuller-throated, deeper, more like the drums of Biassou’s followers than the harsh dry rattling beat he had heard coming out of Jeannot’s camp once upon a time. Ought that to be a reassurance?
“We had better bring the sheep back into the corral,” he decided.
Jean-Simon and Coffy both looked visibly relieved. The doctor stayed to see them organize the movement, but Jean-Simon had been training a little dog to drive the sheep, so they didn’t seem to require his help. Only each must carry one of the newborn lambs in his arms, because they were too small to make the pace. The doctor took the third lamb over his saddlebow and preceded the others down the trail.
As he rode, the drumming became less distinct behind him and, by the time he reached the main compound, he could no longer hear it at all. Going at a faster pace, he had arrived well in advance of the herdsmen and the few remaining sheep. It seemed useless to raise any alarm, but he could not quite think what to do. All was quiet in the compound now, with the work party resting in the quarters, waiting out the midday heat. This term of the old Code Noir was one the doctor scrupulously observed, which was one reason he was infinitely more popular with the atelier than Thibodet had been.
He stabled his horse, and since he did not know what else to do with the new lamb, he carried it with him into the office behind the cane mill. The lamb nudged bluntly into the doctor’s armpit, hunting the teat. He set it down on the floor, where it balanced on its bunched legs, heavy head swaying. The doctor took one of the heavy mold-spotted ledgers from a shelf and opened it across the desk. Of late he had taken over all account-keeping, which Delsart had reduced to a sad confusion. The doctor had rearranged affairs into three books: one for coffee, one for cane, a third for provisions and the livestock. Now he dipped a pen and recorded the new births, two ewe lambs and the little ram who had now drifted into a corner and stood bleating at the join of the walls.
It was very hot in the close brick room, although the large shutter had been thrown completely clear of the window. The doctor finished his entry and fanned the pages back. Delsart’s uncertain watery handwriting lay in webs across the sheets, translucent from his weak, diluted ink. The doctor raised his head, almost before he heard the sound, and then a woman’s voice broke into a crazy ululation somewhere in the quarters.
The doctor dropped his pen and rushed into the yard. Coffy and Jean-Simon were just coming in, the little dog yapping at the tails of the hot and dusty sheep. At the doctor’s sign, the two slaves hushed the barking. At the same time the woman’s wailing stopped and in that crisp passage of silence the doctor heard drumming again in the distant hills. Then the woman’s voice again took up the cry, her thread of terrorized notes interrupted now by lower hoarser voices which perhaps were trying to calm her. But all was confusion: looking down the trail the doctor saw the whole atelier swarming out of the cabins.
Delsart was coming around from the rear of the grand’case, rubbing his eyes wearily. Jean-Simon and Coffy stared at the doctor to see what he might do. Doctor Hébert waved them on to the corral—they turned from him and began herding the sheep through the gateposts.
“They’re coming!” It was that woman’s cracking voice, crying somewhere among the agitated slaves.
“Quiet, then,” the doctor said loudly, but no one seemed to notice him. Delsart had just come up. “It may be nothing,” the doctor said to the gérant. “They may well pass us by.”
Delsart frowned and spat to the side. The petals of a bloodshot flower had unfolded on the white of his left eye. “Whether they come or not, we had better do something or our blacks will all bolt.”
“To join them?” the doctor said.
“Not this crew,” said Delsart. “These are afraid…”
“All right,” the doctor said. “Get them together and bring them all up to the yard. Women and children, everyone. Break out the cane knives for the men as well.” The doctor started for the grand’case, then called back over his shoulder. “Bring beanpoles too. Beanpoles and twine.”
By the time Delsart had marshaled all the slaves into the compound, the doctor had opened the storeroom and taken out the powder and shot and what firearms there were: five rusting pistols (apart from his own), two old smooth-bore muskets, four bird guns and his own rifled piece. He rowed the weapons out on the gallery floor, while the crowd in the yard shuffled and breathed. The doctor straightened, laid a hand on the gallery rail as he drew breath into his tightening chest.
“There is nothing to fear,” he said loudly. “I don’t think we will be attacked. If we are,” he picked up a musket, “we will be ready.”
He tossed the musket to Delsart, who caught it one-handed, leaning forward to snatch it before it hit the ground. The doctor picked up the second musket and passed it butt-first to Jean-Simon.
“Only remember,” he said, raising his voice another notch. “There is nowhere to run. Here is the safest place for all of you.” He lifted his own rifle and thumped the stock on the gallery floorboards. “If we stand fast, they cannot overwhelm us—they will not even dare to try.”
He turned aside. The slaves were quiet at first, then came the muttering of whispered conversations. Delsart came creaking up the gallery steps. “Do you believe that?”
“No,” the doctor said. “I had to tell them something. You’d better start them making cartridges. Jean-Simon and Coffy, they are quick. Have the other men make pikes from the cane knives and the beanpoles.”
“Much use those will be,” Delsart said. “All the brigands have guns from the Spanish now.”
“Yes,” the doctor said. “But it will calm them to have this occupation.”
“They won’t stand to fight, you know,” Delsart said. “They’ll break and run at the first shot.”
The doctor shrugged. “We have guns and powder enough, we may defend the grand’case with only a few.”
“Until they burn us out,” Delsart said.
“Of course,” said the doctor. “Perhaps it will not come to that.”
The clock ticked in the shadowed interior of the blinded front room, pendulum winking as it swung between the stripes of daylight. Going along the dim rear corridor, the doctor collided with Zabeth, who plumply recoiled, gasped and rushed into another room. In his own small chamber, he loaded both his pistols. He laid one of them back into the case where it was kept and stuck the other into his belt. As he came out onto the gallery again, he pulled his shirttail out of his waistband, letting it hang loose to cover the pistol grip.
A circle of blacks in the yard was engaged in splinting cane knives to beanpoles, as he had instructed. The doctor smiled thinly to himself to recall where he had come by this notion. His old ankle injury was paining him a little. He felt the eyes of Delsart on him as he went walking out of the yard.
He climbed the hill at such a good speed that he was soon sweating freely, but once he had passed the last coffee terraces and entered the jungle shade, the moisture turned cold on him, though he remained damp and humid. It was quiet beneath the forest canopy, only for the crying of the birds. He heard no drumming. The sounds of his breathing and his heartbeat seemed loud to him.
Unsure of his purpose, he went along slowly, climbing the steep slope, still soft and slippery underfoot. The mud was spotted here and there with the bright vermilion seeds from the bead trees. The doctor came to vine-covered rocks that edged a shallow ravine; in the bed of it a slender stream went singing down the hill. He continued, climbing alongside it. At a distance above he heard the drums again but then they faded, perhaps around some sudden turning of the slopes.
Toward the top of the ridge was a slash in the jungle where some big gommier trees had been logged out by Thibodet. Skirting the edge of it, the doctor saw that it was later than he had thought, for the light of the sun was sharply slanting. Somewhere nearby was a larger stream and he could hear the rush of the water, though he did not see it. All the air was dazed with moisture. He kept going, circling the cut. Never before had he climbed so high; plantation work had allowed him no time for such explorations.
When he crested the ridge, he found one of the flint-paved Carib roads that ran along the backbone of the mountain. Because he had not expected it to be there the discovery quite unnerved him and he left the road immediately, although it would have been easier going, of course, if he had kept to it. It was then that he noticed that all birdsong had ceased. Only, down below him now, a big dark-winged macaw went gliding across the cut as silently as a hunting owl.
The doctor moved toward a rock face which had been hollowed out a little by the rush of water and was overhung with vines that hung as straight and evenly as rain. There was just enough space behind the vines for him to stand erect. He waited, the damp of the rock face chill against his back. From this vantage he could admire a pale orchid which sprouted near a rotting log, white drooping blossoms strung in a row like harness bells.
He took the shard of mirror from his pocket and cupped it in his hand. Amid the wrinkles of his palm his single eye gazed back at him. He turned his wrist and the mirror swam plaid with the muted jungle colors. Why this movement gave him comfort he could not have said.
The first two men appeared in the slanting shafts of reddened light, below and to the doctor’s right; he had not heard or seen them come. Each wore breeches of army issue, and one had a shirt, while the other was bare-chested, black skin gone coppery in the crepuscular glow. Both their chests were crossed with straps of cartridge boxes and they both carried muskets at the ready and they went quietly, carefully on their splayed bare feet over the slippery grade. He saw five more men filtering around the edges of the cut, then ten, fifteen. All was silence still, until from above him he heard the tramp of many marching feet. He surmised they would still be following the Carib road, which had led them out of the secret heart of the mountains.
A black man in the uniform of a captain in the Spanish army appeared quite near the deadfall log and the white orchid. He was empty-handed, though he wore two pistols in his belt. He turned and explored the fringe of vines with his attentive eyes before he made his way farther down cautiously over the difficult footing. The doctor noticed that he had a pair of high-topped boots slung over his shoulder, though he went barefoot like the other men. Of course, that was altogether like him. It was the uniform and the unfamiliar captain’s hat that had delayed his recognition.
The doctor parted the vines and stepped into the clear. First he whistled, then called out.
“Riau.”
The barefoot captain pivoted on the ball of his forward foot, reversing his direction as he threw himself down; he’d drawn a pistol as he spun and now he lay propped on his elbows, training the barrel precisely on the center of the doctor’s chest. The doctor spread his hands and waggled the fingers slowly, the mirror shard still caught in his left palm. Quite suddenly, Riau broke into a smile and sat back on his heels. His hat had fallen off when he threw himself down, so that he looked more like himself as the doctor had known him.
Doctor Hébert relaxed and took a couple of rapid steps forward, so much too quickly that his feet shot out from under him and he went sliding down the grade, plowing twin tracks through the mud with his blunt heels. He rolled half over and stopped himself by catching hold of a sapling’s base, fetching up beside Riau, who was now laughing heartily and pounding the flat of his thigh with his free fist.
“Mwê m?tré sa,” Riau said, prying at the doctor’s left hand.
“What?” Unconsciously the doctor had closed his fingers over the mirror shard when he fell. He let Riau unfold them, so the mirror’s wink appeared.
“Oh,” said Riau. “There is your ouanga.”
“My ouanga?”
“It is the eye you see to shoot with.”
Riau smiled, but the doctor saw he was not joking. He shrugged, and put the mirror in his pocket.
“How did you come here?” he said, wringing some wet mud from his fingers.
“Following my General Toussaint.”
“Your general?”
Riau pointed, back toward the rock face where the doctor had cached himself. At the height of the bluff a number of other foot soldiers had materialized. The Carib road must have continued just behind them, for there was Toussaint indeed, astride a gigantic black stallion and wearing a Spanish general’s hat resplendent with a curling ostrich feather plume. The doctor scraped some mud from the back of his neck, then waved tentatively. Toussaint swept the hat from his head and bowed to him from the saddle.
IT WAS AGREED THAT THE DOCTOR WOULD GO AHEAD with Riau and some few men of the advance guard to prepare the atelier, so that the slaves would not panic when the main force arrived. Fifteen minutes later, the men began filing into the yard. Descending the jungle slope, they had fanned out, but once they reached the coffee terraces they reformed into a column and came lockstep and two by two, through the coffee trees and then the fields of cane. In the yard they regrouped into squares, each division with its officer stiffly standing at attention: Riau, Dessalines, Moise, and Charles Belair. Toussaint dismounted and stood beside the doctor, relaxed but perfectly erect. His military bearing seemed as natural to him as his good horsemanship.
They were reviewing the troops, the doctor perceived. His own spine stiffened. The Thibodet slaves stood in a loose group, round-eyed and silent.
“You’ll camp here?” the doctor said.
Toussaint inclined his head.
“Above the provision grounds is a likely spot.” The doctor waved his arm. “We had been clearing land for a new planting.”
“Bon ?a,” said Toussaint.
He called an order in a louder voice. His officers saluted him and the men spun the thread of their column once more and began marching out the opposite end of the yard. In the corral, a single ewe kept bleating piteously. As Toussaint’s soldiers marched out, the Thibodet slaves began to laugh and gesticulate and chatter among themselves.
“So the work has been going forward here?” Toussaint said.
“Yes, we have enjoyed enough tranquillity so far…” Was it guilt the doctor felt? After all, it was forced labor.
Toussaint nodded, noncommittally, stroking his clean-shaven jaw. “Show me, then.”
The sun had fallen behind the mountain and the light was blue. The doctor paused to ask Delsart to contribute some yams and a barrel of tafia to the cookfires of Toussaint’s encampment. The men were carrying supplies of their own, so Habitation Thibodet would not immediately be picked clean. Delsart went off to execute the order.
“You know,” the doctor said, “I hoped it would be you.”
“You hoped?” said Toussaint.
“When we first heard the drumming…”
“You heard no drumming from us, I think,” Toussaint said. “That would be Biassou—but he is still a long way off, behind that mountain.”
The doctor raised his head and looked toward the eastern peaks, though now it was perfectly silent there. Above, the first and brightest stars pricked pinholes in the violet sky.
The doctor escorted Toussaint around the compound, showed him the hospital, the other projects under way. In response to his occasional questions, he explained his plan to resume the manufacture of white sugar. He told how gravely affairs had failed during Thibodet’s illness, when both the slaves and crops had been neglected and ill used, and too many decisions left to the drunken and debauched gérant. He explained how he had sought to rectify these abuses, by building the infirmary and allowing for adequate food and rest, by denying Delsart use of the whip in all but the most desperate cases—and since these policies were instituted there’d been no desperate cases.
It was dark when they came to the cane mill again. The doctor lit a candle stub and held it high, while Toussaint explored the cane press. Then they went together into the office behind the mill. The little ram had been forgotten there; when they came in it jumped up and began bleating. Toussaint picked it up and it soon quieted. The doctor reached outside the window to draw the shutter to. In the corral, the ewe was still bleating but the shutter muffled the sound when it was closed.
“Yes,” Toussaint said, returning to the tale the doctor had told him of Delsart. His hands were folded over the lamb, which nuzzled at his finger. “It’s often so. And from that, many wrongs will come. And when the gérant drives the slaves to make a secret profit for himself as well as for the master…”
“I don’t suspect Delsart of embezzlement,” the doctor said. “It’s not his vice. He is interested in wine and women but not money.”
Toussaint leaned back and stared abstractedly into a cobwebbed corner of the ceiling.
“You know,” he said, “if all the white men did as you, these troubles would have long since ended.”
“And now?”
Toussaint looked directly at the doctor. The whites of his eyes had yellowed with his age. “You’ve seen my men. What do you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“The Spanish king has said that they are free if they will fight for him. Do you believe that they are free?”
The doctor looked at Toussaint’s hands, long fingers lightly folded over the lamb’s thin wool; beneath the wool the fragile skin showed pinkly. The candle cast a shadow over the black man’s face. He thought that he might ask Toussaint if he were himself a prisoner of the Spanish authorities at this point, for Toussaint’s arrival did represent the invasion of a foreign power…He recalled Monsieur Panon, whose lecture had sought to locate blacks somewhere in the chain of being between mules and men. There was Michel Arnaud, that night the doctor had first met him, releasing his cane and catching it just before it escaped his grasp. He remembered holding Nanon’s baby soon after it was born and how hungrily the infant had searched him with its eyes, and he thought that it would be absurd to say that all men were born to freedom. In his peregrinations around this place, he had often felt as helpless as a newborn.
“I believe they are as free as I am,” the doctor said.
“Ah,” said Toussaint. “That will do.”
The doctor exhaled and stretched out his legs. If it had been a test, he must have passed it.
“There is a woman in Le Cap,” he said. “Also a child. I had thought to go for them, and bring them here. What do you think?”
“Yes.” Again Toussaint lowered his head, perhaps to hide his smile. “I think you might be free enough for that.”
They returned the lamb to the ewe in the corral, then strolled to the encampment where they ate with the other men around the fires. When they had done, the doctor offered Toussaint the hospitality of the grand’case, but the other declared that he would stay with his men. The doctor bade him good night and returned to the house alone through the gathered darkness.
As he lay in his low bed he could hear singing from the camp. Some of the Thibodet slaves had brought up instruments they had made, and there was drumming now. Although Toussaint suppressed vod?n among his troops, there would be an impromptu calenda danced tonight. The doctor thought that on the morrow, he must give the slaves a day’s congé.
His candle sputtered low on the stick, but he did not extinguish it; there was not enough of the stub to bother saving. He was very weary, but the thought of Nanon had quite electrified him, so that his legs were tingling under the thin sheet. He closed his eyes and pictured a black fig, slightly wrinkled, pendulous and ripe to bursting. The fig would be cool in his palm’s hollow, and he would hesitate, considering how to enter it.
When he opened his eyes, Zabeth was standing in the doorway. She smiled and at once hid her face against her shoulder, while with both hands she raised the hem of her white shift to her neck, so that she showed herself to him entire. Her nipples and the soft brush of her nether hair were like dark chocolate layered onto light.
Presently the doctor said, “No, no, my dear—you must go to the dancing.”
When he opened his eyes again, Zabeth had gone. He smiled weakly, touching his lips with his tongue. She offered herself so to him because she was a well-meaning person, and she wanted to show him a kindness. So far he had always declined the gift. Sometimes he thought that it would be wrong to hold Delsart to a higher standard than he himself could attain. Sometimes he gave himself another reason.
When the candle drowned in its molten pool of wax, the fig was firmly in his hand. He required neither knife nor nail, only stroked the glossy darkness of the skin with the balls of his thumbs; gladly it opened itself to him. The black skin parted to disclose the creamy whiteness of the flesh within, but still he would go deeper, deeper still, to reach in the teardrop heart of the fruit the wet red viscera it held. How strange it was that a fig tree should also bear red flowers with those thrusting tongues! His dissection needed no instruments; he would pursue it further. When he had passed entirely through the body of the fruit, his being would be washed in the colorless light of another soul.