The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  Kalfou, it’s Kalfou you are

  The Master of the Crossroads is a god . . .

  It’s Kalfou who comes among us

  The Master of the Crossroads is passing through the gate . . .

  The old black dame in the striped skirt passed by the doctor, a sweep of her hem inviting him into her movement. Ou vlé viré? she said as she twirled again toward the drums, Do you want to dance? But the doctor only took another step back, raising his eyes away from her. Kalfou was standing stock still now, his back to the doctor, the knot of his headcloth tight as a bloodclot to the base of his skull, his arms pressed hard against some invisible containment like the arms of Samson brought to bear on the pillars of the temple. The clash of the irons at the end of each drum phrase was like a slap in the doctor’s face. On the opposite side of the circle, one of the men in uniform was positioned so as to see Kalfou’s face, and there seemed to be something there he recognized, though with an expression of disbelief. That onlooker wore an officer’s epaulettes, and all at once the doctor realized it was Colonel Sans-Souci.

  Next morning he woke just before dawn, despite the restless night he’d passed. The sight of Sans-Souci in the Place Clugny had freed him to go home at a relatively reasonable hour (for even if Elise had not yet returned, at least he knew she was not in assignation with the black colonel). In the event, Elise and Tocquet were closeted in their boudoir by the time the doctor climbed the stairs, and when he went to his own room in the back of the house he could still hear the querulous tones of their voices, jerking along with the same uneasy rhythm as those drums.

  Zabeth, who knew his habits well, had brewed coffee. He stirred in sugar and drained his cup in a couple of gulps, put on his broad-brimmed straw hat, and went out. Elise was still abed, no doubt, and where Tocquet might be was anybody’s guess. At this hour the doctor was alone on the street but for soot-stained charcoal burners down from the hills, their donkeys loaded with their product, drifting ghost-like from one kitchen to the next.

  There was no crisis at the hospital today, nor had there been one since Captain Howarth had put to sea with the Merry Bell just a few days before. The yellow fever, by the grace of God, had not spread beyond the victims in Howarth’s crew. All the same, the doctor had yielded to Elise’s importuning and released Zabeth from hospital duty. He needed skilled nursing less urgently now. There were just two cases of malaria, recovering well enough, and three of dysentery, which clean water and a sound diet should soon cure, and finally an exceptionally careless cane-cutter from Habitation Héricourt, who’d severed the toes of his left foot with an unlucky stroke of his own coutelas.

  Once the other patients had been seen to, Doctor Hébert spent some careful time unpeeling the dressing from this wound, soaking in well-boiled water steeped with antiseptic herbs. Thus far there was no sign of gangrene, and with sufficient attention the foot might be saved. Héricourt had recently become Toussaint’s headquarters on the Northern Plain, as well as an important source of his personal income, and the doctor was sure that Toussaint had numbered each hair on the head of every worker there . . .

  By the time he’d put a fresh bandage on the de-toed foot, one of his women nurses was spooning out the noontime meal: boiled rice, with a serving of spicy black beans for those whose stomachs could digest it. Plain rice, the doctor had learned, was most salubrious in cases of dysentery. He took a spoonful of beans with his own helping, and ate it slowly, seated on a stack of bricks that had been delivered for repairs to a crumbling interior wall. A parrot chattered in the crown of the tall palm tree against his back. There was some commotion on the heights above the hospital, northward in the direction of Fort Picolet—a musket fired from a signal post, and voices shouting down into the town. The doctor paid it little mind. He’d slept so poorly the night before that food in his belly made him groggy. When he had finished the meal, he returned his coui to the cook and climbed into a sailor’s hammock strung between the palm trunk and one of the gateposts, meaning to doze through the heaviest heat of the day.

  As soon as his eyes closed, he seemed to tumble into the confusion of last night’s dream, or was it the reality? Again the unsettling rattle of the drums, dizzying spin of the dancers, the black soldiers watching from the far edge of the circle, their fixed eyes glittering in the thrusting red flames of the torches . . . The figure of Kalfou with its arms stretched out as if by an invisible rack—what could that apparition portend? Riau or Guiaou might have given him some hint, if he’d known how to put the question with sufficient tact, but neither one of them had been seen in the town since they last rode away with Toussaint. Kalfou revolved in the direction of the doctor, tilting the stiffened wingspread of his arms, his long jaw loosening below the veil of leaves. As the mouth opened there was a rattling of iron and the voice was the voice of a woman, rimmed with hysteria—

  Doktè! Doktè!

  He sat up so suddenly the hammock dumped him in the dirt below the palm tree. Zabeth, disheveled and all in a lather from running across half the town, kept calling out his title, her head tossing as she shook the bars of the gate. The doctor got up and dusted the seat of his trousers and unbolted the gate for her.

  “Madanm mandé w tounen lakay tout suite!” Zabeth babbled as she stumbled into the enclosure. Madame wants you to come back to the house right away. A full circle of white went round her brown irises. The doctor gave her a shake, then pressed down on her shoulders to anchor her in place while he dipped a gourd of cool water from the pail beside the ashes of the cook fire. He splashed a handful into his own face, then pressed his dampened fingers to Zabeth’s temples and the insides of her wrists.

  “Calm yourself,” he said. “What is it?”

  “Ships.” Zabeth flailed an arm in the direction of the sea. “Gegnen bato anpil anpil anba—gwo batiment yo! Big French warships in the harbor. Many, many . . .”

  The doctor stepped out through the gateway and shaded his eyes to look, but the section of the harbor he could see from this angle was empty except for the usual sprinkling of small fishing craft. All the same there might well be a French fleet of any size beyond the harbor mouth to the north. He could hear trumpets sounding in the casernes, just a couple of blocks away.

  “It was Madame Elise who asked for me?” he said, glancing at Zabeth for confirmation. “And Monsieur Xavier?”

  “Pa konnen, pa we’l,” Zabeth said. I haven’t seen him, I don’t know.

  “Dousman,” the doctor said, unconsciously quoting one of Toussaint’s favorite admonitions. Easy. “We’ll go back.”

  He swung the heavy gate shut behind them and they set off across the Rue St. Avnie, but almost at once their way was blocked by a column of infantry streaming from the gates of the casernes down toward the harbor. The doctor and Zabeth went zigzagging down the slope, but the troops reached every corner ahead of them, and finally they stood waiting in the Rue Royale. When all the troops had finally gone by, the doctor took Zabeth by the wrist so as not to lose her as he weaseled his way through the crowd of excited onlookers across the intersection. Two blocks further on, they saw General Christophe’s coach bearing down on them at a great rate. The doctor climbed a curbstone to let it pass, but the coach halted just where he had stopped, and the door slapped open.

  “Climb in, sir, I want you.” It was Christophe who spoke, and the doctor saw there was no refusing. He let go Zabeth’s arm and got in.

  Zabeth stood on the curbstone, the fingers of one hand spread over her throat, pulsing with the rhythm of the hoofbeats as General Christophe’s coach went jolting and creaking down the Rue Royale. When the coach had turned the corner, she smoothed her hand down over her bodice and turned to go, more slowly now, toward the house of Madame Elise. Her unsuccess in retrieving the doctor weighed down on the top of her head, in the same spot where the midday sun was beating. With her two thumbs she wiped back buds of sweat from her temples, along the trim line of her tight white headcloth. The new carriage of Madame Isabelle, she sa
w, was standing by the door of Madame Elise.

  “W pa join’l?” the porter said as he opened the arch-topped wooden door for her. You didn’t find him?

  “M pa kenbe’l,” she said. I couldn’t hold on to him, smiling ambiguously as she passed into cooler, dim interior, her hips seeming to swing themselves, as if they were independently aware of the porter’s attention. He was a new man in the house and Zabeth knew he admired her, but she had not yet even learned his name. Madame was with her friend, she thought, so she need not go to her at once; she walked to the small bedroom in the back of the house, where the two children were sleeping— Mireille in her white lacy bassinet, and her own Bibiane, the child of Bouquart, on a pile of clean rags beside it. Mireille murmured and snuffled, her soft mouth opening against the pillowslip, and Zabeth felt her milk start, seeping against the pads of folded cloth arranged over the nipples, under her chemise—she waited, but neither child awoke, and after a moment she slipped out, softly shutting the door behind her.

  The door to the second-floor parlor was just ajar, and Zabeth had raised her hand to knock, but the voice of Madame Isabelle came faintly leaking through the crack, and Zabeth let her hand float to her waist. Madame Elise was with her friend, there was no need to interrupt her . . . she might have forgotten that she had sent for her brother, or she might be angry, or distressed, that he did not appear. The mood of Madame Elise was very changeable these last weeks. She had given Mireille to Zabeth to nurse, and for that Zabeth was calmer than her mistress, or at least she felt so now. The agitated spirit of Elise had driven Zabeth frantically through the streets to the hospital in quest of the doctor and on the return she had felt just as perturbed by the uneasy excitement of all the people milling in the streets around her as the soldiers passed, but now, in the quiet of the house, she was still and heavy again, a little sleepy too.

  On the landing two steps below the parlor door was a basket of sewing on a short-legged, rough-carved chair. Zabeth sat down and lifted a piece of work from the basket—a soft white cotton gown, trimmed with red ribbon, for Mireille. There was another identical to it in the basket, meant for Bibiane; it was a fancy of Madame Elise to dress the two children alike. Both garments wanted hemming. Zabeth squinted to thread her needle, then began the quick small stitches as Elise had taught her long ago, half attending to the voices of the white women that came curling around the door.

  “O,” said Isabelle, turning before the open doorway to the balcony above the Rue Royale, “I do feel oppressed.”

  “It is the heat,” Elise said, automatically. She felt it too—the heat was inescapable at this hour, and on an ordinary day she would have passed the time in her bedroom, sleeping, or trying or pretending to.

  “It is ennui,” Isabelle said.

  “Today?” Elise said quizzically, but even the effort of arching her eyebrows seemed too much; she lolled back on the rolled arm of the divan where she sat. “Why, we have had our share of stimulation, with the news of the fleet—and more to come before the day is out.”

  “I daresay,” Isabelle said, still pacing along the three doorways letting onto the balcony. “O, I don’t know, I cannot settle.”

  “You miss your captain, maybe?” Elise said. “Major, rather.”

  “We shall see officers aplenty once they’ve landed,” said Isabelle. “A dozen regiments, according to the rumor. And Pauline Bonaparte, the First Consul’s sister, is supposed to have come out with her husband. I shall be curious to see her—she is said to be a very great beauty.”

  “And also a very great flirt,” Elise yawned. “Do sit down—you are making me restless.”

  But Isabelle continued to walk, twirling just enough to make a slight flare in her skirt with each turn. “The streets were almost impassable on my way here,” she said. “A movement of troops from the casernes.”

  “Troops? Where were they going?”

  “Down toward the Batterie Circulaire.”

  Elise sat up. “You don’t imagine they mean to oppose the landing.”

  “O surely not—it would be such folly. I suppose it was only a parade.”

  A breath of heavy, humid air moved through the open archways, bare hint of a breeze that soon faded. Elise felt a return of the turmoil she’d experienced when the news of the fleet had first been shouted down the block.

  “It is to be Héloïse’s First Communion soon, is it not?” she said, for a distraction.

  “Yes,” Isabelle said, looking out through the archways, setting a fingernail to her lower lip. “I ought to have taken her back to the dress-maker this morning. But she is willful—she does not like to go.”

  Then Isabelle swung suddenly toward Elise. “My dear, your brother is concerned for you.”

  “And I for him,” Elise said. “Well, I’d sent for him before you came— and why has he not come?” She made as if to rise, but Isabelle advanced upon the divan, took her hands, and settled her back down.

  “If the landing should be opposed?” Elise said. “Where is Antoine?”

  “Then there will be a great deal of trouble.” Isabelle held Elise’s hand in her own, stroking the small bones of the back of it with her fingertips. “But if you are frightened, I wonder that you have not sent for your husband.”

  “I should not know where to send,” Elise sniffed. “His movements are a mystery to me.” The contact of their palms was sweaty, and Elise pulled her hand away, irritated by the dampness. “I thought that man would set me free,” she said. “But now . . .”

  Isabelle had drawn back a little and was adjusting her skirt over her knees, as Elise stared at the lines on the palm of her hand. “It seems to me,” Isabelle said, “that you have exercised quite a considerable freedom, during Monsieur Tocquet’s voyage to the North American Republic.”

  “If so,” Elise said, “was it not wrong of him to leave me too much to my own devices?”

  “My dear,” Isabelle said. “It is difficult to imagine a more dangerous lover than Xavier Tocquet. And yet I believe you have contrived to find one.”

  Elise stared at her. “But you encouraged me with Xavier, from the beginning.”

  “Yes, because I could not bear to see you wither in the clutch of your first husband,” Isabelle said. “And at that time, it appeared that Xavier did set you free.”

  “I won’t deny it.” Elise looked away. Through the arched doorways the slate-colored line of the horizon appeared, beyond the red-tiled roofs descending the slope to the harbor front. “But now . . .”

  Isabelle resumed smoothing her skirt. “Of course I cannot say from my own experience what it might be like to marry one’s lover . . .”

  “You who are so well versed in ennui?” Elise said, and then, at once, “Oh, do forgive me that.”

  “Consider it forgotten.” Isabelle allowed Elise to take her hands and search her eyes. “It’s not ennui I see in you,” she said. “That is not a feeling that our Monsieur Tocquet would be likely to inspire. No, I think it is resentment—that you feel yourself neglected.”

  Elise had the impulse to pull away again; to contradict it she squeezed Isabelle’s hands and brought her face in closer. A dozen years since they’d first met—Elise brought out from France as the bride of the planter Thibodet, and Isabelle the Creole demoiselle, born and raised and married in the colony; she’d seemed to know everything Elise had yet to learn. From the first they had looked well together. Isabelle’s smallness, with her dark eyes and black hair and her ice-white skin, had set off Elise’s blond hair and high coloring and her willowy height. If their different beauties had not been so complementary, perhaps they might never have become friends at all.

  Elise leaned in to kiss Isabelle’s cheek, then observed her from the nearer range. Isabelle took great good care of herself, and yet when one looked so very closely there were crows’ feet faintly fanning from the corners of her eyes, and other pale lines lay across her throat.

  “Would you have married Maillart if you could?”


  Isabelle laughed merrily. “Not him, not O’Farrel, nor any of those. Well.” She let go of Elise and put her hand to her bosom, covering a pendant that lumped beneath the cloth. Elise looked at her curiously.

  “In a different world, I might have married Joseph Flaville.”

  Elise felt her mouth plop open. And yet, somehow she had always known it—only now it had been voiced, she could recognize what she knew.

  “Do I shock you?” Isabelle said. “Of late, my dear, you have equaled me even in that adventure, or almost, and yet the world as it is constrains us still. If your brother—”

  “That my brother should remind me of the proprieties,” Elise said sourly. “When he himself has actually married a mulattress.”

  “I meant to say that an indiscretion must be very flagrant to be noticed at all by your brother,” Isabelle told her. “He who has no eye nor ear for such things. If he is troubled, you must see that you really have gone very far. Yet I think what troubles him is not propriety, but that you may provoke Xavier too much.”

  “Xavier has a sense of justice.”

  “So he does,” said Isabelle. “Are you certain you know exactly how it operates?”

  The thump of a distant cannon brought them to their feet. In an instant they were both craning out over the filigreed iron railing of the balcony. But the harbor was calm and quiet as it had been before, all the way to the cliffs on the promontory that hid Fort Picolet from their view.