by Jane Harris
Emile adjusted his hat and hoist his burden of wood onto his shoulder. Evidently, his mind was busy-busy: he chose to disregard me. When he began to walk again I notice he had change his gait somewise, so he look like an older man.
I called after him.
‘But how do we know if the road is safe?’
‘What’s the matter with you? They won’t arrest us just for being here. We’ve done nothing wrong. Leastwise, not yet.’
‘Well – if that’s the case, why do we have to carry stupid branches?’
‘Just a precaution. To avoid questions. Believe me, this wood on our backs is like a cap of invisibility.’
He took a few step and then, because he knew I was watching, stuck out his foot and waggled it in jest, personating some kind of Frenchified gigue dancer. I had to crack a laugh. Emile carried on walking but when I hesitated, he turned and looked at me.
‘There’s no time to waste. You go up behind that house if you want, but you’re liable to get lost in those mountain, and then I’ll only have to come and find you, unless those Maroon get to you first.’
I turned and stared up at the great forest. Whiles the low slopes look shadowy and mysterial, the lonely summits and jagged heights were veiled in mist and an air of menace. How many Maroon were hiding up there in those high peaks, skulking about and watching from the forest? I shuddered. All around me, the hillside swarmed with insect; the air filled with the high, throbbing rattle of their song. Enough to drive a person crazy. I hefted up my bundle and trailed after my brother, feeling sick to my stomach and wary as a beaten dog.
Chapter Sixteen
Down in the valley, on the muddy earth of the highway, Emile and I fell into step together. My heart beat like a tambou drum. Here in this place, unconstrain by cliff or ridge, the road grew wide, though it were still churned up and barely cartable. I fix my gaze on the ground ahead, glancing up time to time to check who might be approaching. On the far side of the river, the team of slave bent to their task, hauling and hacking at a tree stump. An overseer stood behind them, his whip trailing on the ground. Every otherwhile, he jerked his arm to make the lash twitch like a crosspatch cat tail. Up ahead on the road, four porteuses were striding out in pairs toward Fort Royal but those girls walk so fast we would never overtake them. The two Béké horsemen had cease their conversation and gone separate ways. One set off up the lane toward the Beausejour big house at a canter – and fine riddance to him. The other had cross the ford and was now trotting toward us.
‘Dousman, dousman,’ said Emile, to me, under his breath.
We kept to the edge of the highway and I swap the firewood bundle to my left shoulder, better to conceal my face. When the rider drew near I began to cough just as my brother had instructed but I need hardly have bothered: the Béké paid us less heed than had we been two butterfly flopping along the wayside. He was possessed of a broad, ruddy countenance; I would have guess more English in appearance than French. In passing, he gave us nary a glance, only applied his spurs such that his pony broke into a gallop and away he went.
‘Well done, bug,’ said Emile. ‘Now watch this pair coming.’
I had already seen them: two more carriers, young women, slender as beanpod, with peau-chapotille like us. Despite the great load upon their head they kept step and step with each other on their way across the ford, swaying their hip, their damp robes clinging to their legs. As they drew near, they glanced at us, my brother in particular, appraising him tip to toe as though to reckon his worth by the drachm. Those girls were strangers to me but they look so pretty – and tired, poor souls – it was only courteous to raise my hat to them:
‘Bonjou, Manzells. Bonjou. Sa ou fé?’
Slapdash, before they could reply, my brother began to cough like a sorry plague-struck ass: a honk so vile that the girls took fright and sped on down the road. Only when we had cross the ford did Emile cease his racket and hiss at me:
‘Are you brainsick? You suppose to cough, not stand there with your tongue hanging out.’
By this time, the porteuses had receded into the distance, just two lithe shapes, shimmering in the heat-haze between us and the sea. I paused in order to stare after them. I would sore have like to sit on the sand with them and hear their stories.
‘Keep walking,’ said Emile. ‘Tambou!’
I fell into step with him.
‘They’re only girls,’ I said. ‘Gentle dove.’
My brother gave me one sour look and muttered:
‘Chyen pa ka fè chat.’ Dogs don’t make cats – a remark that stop me in my tracks for I believe he meant to draw some insulting comparison between me and the Pestle, our vile parent.
‘What’s that suppose to mean?’ I said.
‘No fuss now,’ said Emile. ‘Keep moving.’
I put a lid on my rage and carried on. Before we had gone ten step we came to a signpost painted with the word Beausejour and an arrow that pointed up the lane. A stand of trees now hid the mansion from sight but I knew it was up there. Ordinarily, I would never mention Céleste as I knew the sound of her name pained Emile but that gibe about dogs and cats had provoke me and so now I asked, all innocence:
‘Di mwen, when you use to come here, those nights – where did you meet with Céleste? Was it down here – or up in her quarters – or where?’
My brother gave me an astonish look as though he could scarce believe my impudence. I went on:
‘Remember how you use to be so tired all day when you’d been to see her?’
Again, apart from some rapid, affronted blinking, no response. I was quite enjoying myself.
‘You know, the other night, I dreamed they sent Céleste to Martinique. I was bent down, cleaning out the chickens, and when I stood up – there she was, right beside me. She took me in her arms and stroke my head. Then I woke up crying, I was so happy.’
I turn to look at Emile – only to find him no longer beside me. He had stepped off the road onto a track that led toward another forested prominence. I threw my bundle of wood to the ground.
‘Stone me down. Where to now?’
‘Let’s get off this highway,’ he said. ‘Unless you want to strike up more conversation.’
‘I won’t talk to anyone else. I promise.’
He gazed off into the distance, along the road.
‘You want to talk to those soldiers?’
Through the heat haze, I could just make out a few bright red spot moving toward us. Say what you like about my brother but his eyes so sharp he could see two flea fornicating on a rat in the dark.
‘Bring that wood,’ he said. ‘You never know who we might meet in the forest. These bundles are a good disguisement, wherever we go.’
He set off again toward the trees. I stared at his back for a while. Then, with no little reluctation of spirit, I heave my burden up onto my shoulder and traipsed after him. Both of us carried a similar load but all the same I felt like his packhorse.
I called after him:
‘What do you reckon to my dream about Céleste?’
‘Enough of your dreams,’ he said. ‘Stop talking about her.’
Well, it was a mystery and no mistake. Something must have happen to make him so averse to the mention of her name, but whatever it was, I had not one iota of an inkling. Of course, once upon a time, my brother and Céleste had been inseparable. They were born in the same year and grew up together. By the time I was old enough to notice, Emile had taken to following her around like a whelp whenever he could, kissing her after dark if he thought nobody would notice. I suppute they did more besides because once or twice I saw them sneak off into the forest.
Back when I was peeny-weeny, neither one of them would ever shoo me away but everything change soon after they began their smouching. If I followed them, they would tell me to run along or shut themselves away in one of the hut. In the end, came a time if I saw them together, I knew to leave them alone. Every otherwhile, I would catch sight of them, walking hand in hand, or standing still
with their arms wrapped around each other, her head on his shoulder, neither one of them aware of my existence. Then my heart would throb with loneliness and I came to dread Sunday afternoon, for that was when they were mostly able to spend time together.
During the week, when Emile was over at the surgeon growing ground, I would follow Céleste around the hospital. She use to let me ride on her back and sometimes, if the sick room were quiet, she would try to improve her nurse skills by wrapping my arms or legs in splints, the way John Calder had taught her to bind broken bones; supporting my limbs so tenderly that I almost believe myself to be an invalid. (Other times, she was oblige to tend my real wounds, mostly the torn flesh of my back, and of this I was naturally less enamoured.)
One morning, she was about to fit my arm in a sling for practice when we heard a bird-call outside the sick room – three plaintive hoots. We both knew who it was, at once, and ran to the window and looked out. My brother stood in the courtyard, hat in hand, a burlap bag at his feet. Céleste started to laugh when she saw him there but we knew almost at once from his face something wrong.
‘Pou ki sa t’e là?’ she call to him. ‘You should be working.’
Emile notice me peering over the sill and frowned.
‘Lucien, pa rété la,’ said he. ‘You run off now.’ But when I show no inclination to budge he fail to scold me for he had something more pressing on his mind. ‘I only have a moment. The Pestle is sending me to Martinique. I have to go now.’
Céleste breathed in sharply. The bandage in her hand fell to the ground.
‘But – why?’ she asked.
‘The old gardener at St Pierre died,’ Emile replied. ‘They want me to tend the surgeon growing ground over there, just for a few week, until they find someone new. Augustin is to take over from me here.’
‘Attention,’ said Céleste, softly. ‘Look out.’
She jerked her head, indicating something on the far side of the courtyard. Emile glanced over his shoulder. I saw Father Damien emerge from the stable, leading a mule. My brother turn back to us, quick-sharp.
‘Take care of Lucien,’ he told Céleste. ‘And tell Calder what’s happened – I can’t find him anywhere.’ Then he spoke to me. ‘Listen, little brother, I have to go somewhere but I’ll be back soon, so you must not worry. Tjenbé rèd. You hear me?’
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘Then say it.’
‘Tjenbé rèd. Pa moli.’
He nodded.
‘Don’t you forget it.’
Then Céleste spoke his name, just that:
‘Emile.’
Father Damien had seen us. By this time, he had mounted his mule and was staring over in our direction. I shrank back from the window and heard the Pestle shout at my brother.
‘What are you doing there? Get over here, boy! Hurry up!’
By the time I dare to peep outside again, Damien was urging the mule across the yard, digging his heels into the sides of the poor beast. I leaned out further and saw Emile trotting longside him, turning back every so often to look at us. They pass through the open gate onto the High Road, heading down toward Fort Royal and the carenage. As they descended, Emile twisted around one last time to look at us and raised his hand as he disappeared out of sight. Céleste reach down and put her arm around me. We watched a while longer, though we could see him no more. Then she turned away from the window, her eyes full of tears, her face contorting as though it had begun to melt. My skin tingled with fright to see her on the point of collapse. I picked up the fallen bandage and held it out to her, but she turned away.
‘Not now, Lucien,’ she said. ‘You run along. I have to work.’
That would have been the last time she and Emile saw each other.
After that day, with my brother gone to Martinique, I was more at the mercy of Father Damien. Céleste and Calder did what they could to protect me but Pillon was sly and would wait until they were out of the way before he took out his wrath on me. Even now, all these decade later, my back is ridged with an island of scars, a map of tyranny, and a permanent reminder of our father. If no whip were available, he would simply use his fist. On one occasion, he knocked me cold as a wedge with a punch to my jaw and everyone thought I was dead until my eyes opened. Another time, he broke up a chair and beat me with one of the leg, such that I could scarce sit down for a week.
To make matters worse, soon after Emile had gone, first Prudence then Calder died of some burning fever. The Scotsman tried but fail to save Prudence and then he himself fell sick, where after I help Céleste tend him until his final breath. Father Damascene arrive shortly after to replace Prudence but, alas, he also succumb to bad fever almost as soon as he got to the hospital and was laid up for weeks. Left to his own devices, Pillon became yet more unpredictable. One morning, when I had spill some water on the floor by accident, he tied my hands and fasten me with a cord around my neck to a tree in the courtyard and then he took a whip and proceeded to beat the flesh on my back to a jelly. He might have kill me too had Céleste not intervened. She grab the lash but he turned on her and tried to strangle her with it. Fortunately for us both, Léontine had already run to fetch Father Damascene. He came hobbling out and attempted to restrain his fellow friar but Pillon was strong and the Good Father much weaken by fever. In the end, the Pestle threw him to the ground and stormed off to the mill where, I’m told, he took out his rage on some of the women.
Next day, Father Damascene packed his bag and return to Martinique, taking me with him. He would have brought Céleste too but Pillon refuse to give her up, saying he needed her in the hospital. Lucky for Céleste, she was so dark: Father Damien only pestered women with lighter skin. As for me, the Pestle said he was sick of the sight of me and good riddance. No doubt, he viewed me as the walking emblem of his sin. Céleste change my dressings before we left and came with us across the courtyard to the gate. That was as far as she dare to venture. My back was too cut up for her to embrace me properly and so she held my hands and kiss my fingers until the little bell rang inside the hospital summoning her to the sick room and she hurried away. Damascene led me downhill but I look back in the same moment as Céleste and she reached out one hand to me and then turned and was gone.
All through the voyage to Martinique, Father Damascene sweated with a violent calenture and once or twice he fancied the sea to be green fields. Although he was taking me to relative safety, to join Emile, I spent much of the journey with my head in my hands, weeping bitters tears for the loss of Céleste. And, no matter how I missed her, my brother must have felt worse, having been separated from her for so long. I doubt the Pestle could have got him on board a boat had Emile known it would be seven whole year before his return to Grenada. All that time wondering when he might see Céleste again, the weeks and month passing – then turning to years – until he could scarce bear to hear her name. That was why his mood now seem so strange, as though the prospect of seeing his true-love again had fill him with dread. Why was he so down-at-mouth and chagrin?
Chapter Seventeen
I followed Emile along the track, into the trees, then up a steep scarpment and over a wooded hill. From the edge of a felling on the far side we gaze down upon another bay. Fields of cane and coffee had been laid out along the valley. Here the road divided, one branch veered off into the mountain, the other continued alongst the coast. The four porteuses now specks in the distance whiles various white settlers made their way in both direction, some on foot, some with handcarts, others on horseback or mule. A group of slave in shackles had been set to fill the holes in the highway with gravel, watched over by another Béké with a whip. To the south I could see two plantation house. In the hills behind them, a dark-skin boy drove a herd of sheep up the slope.
My brother blew air between his lips, exasperated.
‘This use to be an empty valley.’
Near the shore stood a small sugar mill, the kind drove by cattle. A few slave hurried in and out of a store, carrying logs,
and there was a gang in one of the field, stripping trash – or bagasse – off some lush old cane. A well-fed Béké with tawny skin stood on a tree stump, leaning on a stick and smoking his pipe as he watched over his scrawny charges. The slaves look starved and ragged. An air of gloom and desolation hung over the landscape.
‘Look at that Goddam with the whip,’ I said.
‘He could be French,’ Emile replied. ‘A lot of those French stayed behind. Not all of them sold up to the English.’
I sighed.
‘Sometimes I wonder what it must be like.’
My brother looked at me.
‘What?’
‘To speak,’ I said. ‘And not be contradicted.’
He jab his elbow at me but I dodged out of the way, just in time.
‘Do you know any words in their language?’ I asked him, thinking he did not, but was surprised when he replied, in English:
‘Yes, master sir.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No, master sir.’
‘What else?’
He looked around then pointed to the boy and his beasts on the hillside.
‘Muttons,’ he said.
I had to smile.
‘No, those are sheep.’
‘Sheeps.’
‘You are quite the linguist,’ I told him, feeling pleased with myself.
But he paid no heed to my satirical remarks. He had turn to stare down at the travellers on the Gouyave Road, weighing some thought in his mind. At one point, he cast a doubtful look at me. Then, eventually, he scratched his head.
‘I would have propose going down to the road there and around the point but it’s too busy.’
Hard to tell whether this was true or if he simply no longer trusted me to keep my yam-trap shut. He began to head along the ridge. I trailed after him, saying:
‘This way must be longer.’
‘A little,’ he replied. ‘But in any case, the St Jean is too deep and wide to cross at the coast. We would only have to walk upstream if we went by that road.’