The Stone that the Builder Refused

by Madison Smartt Bell

  In the case of Merbillay I slept soundly then, until the morning sun was full. It was the voice of Caco that woke me. Outside the case he was splashing himself with water which the girls had carried and making himself ready to go and work in the coffee. He wanted to see me admire the bigger arms and legs and chest he had got from this work since I had seen him, though he had not yet got all his growth, and this I did. Caco was yet a child, but a man’s work made him proud—he did not hate it. I watched him go into the coffee grove, thinking, at least he is not made to work the cane.

  It was not such a good thought to have in my head even so. That devil had taken his teeth out of my neck, but I could still feel him waiting near. I knew I could not stay in this place with Merbillay and the children. Toussaint had his wife and youngest son Saint-Jean on a habitation just next to this one, and I knew he must be thinking of them now, and if he came to see them, he might even come to Thibodet, because he often visited here. Now the blanche Elise was in the grand’case, and she could recognize Riau.

  I rode down by Gonaives that day, taking care as I passed the town, but there was no word of any French ships yet in the harbor there. From Gonaives I crossed the Savane Désolée, and then the rice country, and came at last to Saint Marc in the evening. Here Dessalines had built for himself a house as fine and grand as the one Christophe had made at Le Cap, but today the walls were all painted with tar, and men of the Eighth Brigade stood outside with lit torches. In the Place d’Armes and before the church it was the same. The whole town was ready for burning. But there was a lot of commotion in the casernes, where all the soldiers were making ready for a movement.

  At last I found Dessalines down at the port, walking back and forth along the embarcadère. He wore his uniform pinned with many medals and draped with sashes and covered with long golden cords. Dessalines had come to his place as general under Toussaint, the same as had Moyse. But there was room in his head for more than Toussaint, and one could not always know what was behind it. He walked up and down the embarcadère, turning his snuffbox in his hands. There were not any French ships on the sea in front of Saint Marc, but I thought Dessalines must know by now what had happened in Port-au-Prince, from Lamartinière or from some other.

  “Riau!” he said when he saw me. “Where do you come from!”

  “From Toussaint,” I said. It was true, even if I had not come in a straight line.

  “From Toussaint?” Dessalines said. “I have a dispatch from him already.”

  “I have no letter,” I said. “Only the words which are in my head.” Then I told him what they were.

  “Ah,” said Dessalines. “It is the same.” I was glad to see him put his snuffbox into his pocket then. He took out a letter and gave it me. The seal was cut and at the bottom of the paper I saw Toussaint’s name in his own writing, though the rest was copied in someone else’s hand. Truly these words were much the same as those Toussaint had given me.

  . . . Do not forget that while waiting for the rainy season, which will relieve us of our enemies, our only recourse is destruction and fire. Remember that the earth we have bathed in our sweat must not furnishthe slightest nourishment to our enemies. Cut off the roads, have corpses and dead horses thrown into all the springs, have everything burned and annihilated, so that those who come to put us back into slavery will always find before them the image of the hell which they deserve.

  It was sure that if Dessalines had been at Port-au-Prince, all the town would have been burned before the French could land out of their ships. Now it was too late for that, but this letter had been written since I left Toussaint, and since the French had landed too, and the letter said to Dessalines that he must wait for another chance to burn the town, when some of the French soldiers might stray out of it. For that, Dessalines was getting ready to move his men down to Croix des Bouquets where Lamartinière was. It was not sure if he would burn Saint Marc before he left, though it seemed the letter wished him to. I, Riau, did not wait to see, but rode out before light the next morning and before the men of Dessalines were moving. I did not want to move with this army myself, and I thought too that now I had found Dessalines, I might go again to look for Laplume, to finish the work Toussaint had given me.

  9

  Elise descended to the kitchen well before her usual hour, in the first cool light of dawn. Zabeth had prepared coffee; without a word, she poured. Cradling the warm cup in her hands, Elise walked out the kitchen door into the small enclosed garden. There were some first flower plantings there, bougainvillea and hibiscus, and the shoot of a yellow coconut palm which would grow in time to shade this spot. Her brother sat with his coffee near the palm shoot, fingering a week-old letter from Paul.

  Elise sat down in a wicker chair near his. There was a rustic table for them to set their cups. This little garden was a work in progress. A work interrupted.

  “Are you decided to come with us, or stay?”

  At her voice the doctor glanced up, blinking. Elise saw him register the man’s attire she wore, but he made no comment on it.

  “There is that wounded cane-cutter in the hospital, and if I remain for a day or so more, I may see him safe to Héricourt again . . .”

  “A cane-cutter?” Elise sniffed her incredulity.

  “The Cignys are determined not to leave,” the doctor said.

  “Will you stay for Isabelle?” Elise dropped a teasing note into the question.

  The doctor turned his head from her, his beard jutting up toward the mourning doves which were calling softly from the eaves of the house. Light flashed from the lenses of his spectacles. “When Maillart has gone off who knows where . . .”

  “She does, after all, have her husband here.”

  “Yes,” said the doctor. “But she will not have you.”

  Elise nodded. The doctor’s hand lay on Paul’s letter; for a moment she covered it with hers. Then she got up and walked out through the garden gate.

  At another time of estrangement from Tocquet, she’d worn these clothes as an incognito. They were his: the rough canvas shirt loose on her torso, the extra length of the trousers bloused into high-top riding boots. It was her fancy when she traveled now to wear such garb and ride astride, like a man—the practice brought her a slightly scandalized attention, which she quite enjoyed. But no one paid her any mind this morning. There was next to no one abroad at all so early, only the charcoal burners and the first fruit sellers come in from the mountains, striding with their baskets balanced on their heads. In trousers, she herself moved with a longer, freer stride, and a few minutes’ brisk walking brought her into the Place d’Armes.

  A smell of hot tar hung over the square. A sexton was sweeping the steps of the church, and opposite the doors from where he worked sat a charcoal burner, a small gnarled man, with his knees drawn up to his heavily underslung jaw. She passed him and went into the church, pausing just over the threshold for her eyes to adjust to the dim. In the motionless air of the interior, the scent of candle wax and stale incense mingled with the tar smell from outside. After a moment she sat down on a bench so far to the rear that she could barely make out the glimmer of the cross on the altar. Lowering her head, she began mechanically to recite the Lord’s Prayer. Just why she had come here she did not know. An impulse, to walk in the town before leaving it, concealed in her man’s dress. She had a desire to pray for deliverance, but she could not yet name or know the thing from which she needed to be delivered, and because she had no habit of prayer the words were dry and lifeless on her tongue.

  A paper scuffed onto the bench beside her, folded and sealed with a glob of red wax. Automatically she whisked it into the belly of her shirt. As she touched the paper, the image of the little charcoal burner flashed behind her eyes. Impossible. He had been soot-stained all over his clothes and headcloth and his hands and face, but she had seen no sack of charcoal near him. She stood up, securing the letter with a hand pressed to her waistband. He was there on the bench behind her, but she did not ven
ture to look at him directly. The sexton had shuffled back into the church and was puttering in the area of the font.

  “W pa konnen’m. Pasé!” She turned her head just enough to glimpse the whites of his eyes beneath the soot-stained cloth. You don’t know me. Pass on!

  In a moment she was standing on the steps outside the church. At the sound of his voice she had felt somewhat more sure. They had spoken Creole to each other that one time, in urgent sibilant whispers. The slight roughness of his tone was like cat fur. Some white women who courted him were seeking preferment, but for Elise it had been different. Tocquet had absented himself to the North American Republic for God only knew how long, and she had wanted some great powerful secret for herself. In fact even Isabelle, who usually could divine the little Elise did not tell her, knew nothing of this interlude.

  And must she really go this day? The smell of tar was stronger now, all over the Place d’Armes. On arriving she had not noticed the little group of men at the opposite corner of the square, clustered around an iron cauldron from which the tar smoke rose. Two of them held unlit lances à feu upright before them, like standards.

  “W’alé!” The grating whisper came from a pace behind her. As if he’d read the question from her mind. “You are going. Now. Before the fire.”

  Elise went stumbling, as if the voice had shoved her. Or maybe it was the boot heels, still slightly unfamiliar to her feet. She hurried, not once looking back. At the next corner from the Place d’Armes she found in her pathway a worn-out, broken broom with its two pieces crossed. The débris in the interstices seemed arranged with some calculation; among the ordinary litter she picked out a twist of tobacco, an elaborately knotted string, a small, faceless doll sewn in black cloth, and a whole hen’s egg . . . Some nonsense of African superstition. She ought to feel free to walk right over it, to kick it carelessly out of her way. Instead she turned into another street, fear clawing in her abdomen and raking down the muscles of her back. And what if her every crossroad were blocked by some such ouanga? But at the next intersection the road was open all the way across the Rue Royale, and she could see the horses waiting at her door.

  For the next half-hour she could busy herself with preparations for the departure (though the real packing had been done the night before). Tocquet was supervising Gros-Jean and Bazau as they hitched the cart which would carry their luggage, and in which Zabeth and the two infants would ride. Yes, it did still amuse Elise to install her maid in such a vehicle, while she herself went horseback.

  The sun had cleared the rooftops and the day’s first real heat had begun to bear down, when Isabelle appeared to see them off. At the sight of her, twirling a parasol above her small, neat head, Elise felt a deep misgiving. “Come with us,” she murmured as she embraced her friend. “You must come—now—before they burn it down.”

  “No, no,” said Isabelle, as she pressed her lightly powdered cheek against Elise’s. “I don’t believe it will come to that—who stands to gain from such destruction? And everything will be put right, as soon as Toussaint has come.”

  Elise drew back to her arm’s length, though she still held Isabelle by the shoulders; Isabelle raised her parasol again to shade them both. She was reaching for something in Elise’s expression, but there was no way for her to describe her encounter at the church that morning. It would be taken as a freak of deranged fancy, and what if that were really all it had been? Xavier was studying her too, but perhaps only because it amused him to see them so together; in her current dress Elise might be taken for one or another of Isabelle’s swains.

  “Then send the children,” Elise said, turning her head; Robert and Héloïse had come along this morning with their mother. The boy stood flicking his wooden hoop an inch or so this way and that, while his sister gaped at him, stunned by the heat.

  Isabelle’s features stiffened slightly. “No,” she said. “I have been too long apart from them—I will not send them from me now.”

  “It is your choice,” said Elise, and dropped her hands. “Let it be.” She forced a lightness into her voice. “But you must come to us as soon as you may. Come to us at Ennery. We shall see each other soon.”

  “Indeed we shall.” Isabelle leaned in to brush her cheek once more, and then Elise turned toward Tocquet, setting her foot in the palm he offered as a stairstep to the saddle of her mare. He gave her knee a solid slap once she was settled, and Elise felt a flush of gratification; there had been few enough such friendly touches between them these last weeks.

  So they set out. Elise rode behind Tocquet; Gros-Jean and Bazau brought up the rear behind the cart. She looked back once as they turned the corner. Isabelle still stood with her brother and the children in the street.

  On the Rue Espagnole there was some turmoil. A gang of half-grown boys ran alongside the horses for a block or two, calling to them in voices that did not seem altogether friendly. At the corner of the street leading down to the Place Clugny another knot of men was gathered by a tarpot. The batting of their lances à feu was well coated with the stuff, and one of them thrust his shaft unpleasantly in their direction as they rode by. Elise felt a clutch, remembering the broken broomstick she’d discovered in her way. Her earlier mixture of feeling was entirely gone, and all she wanted now was to be safely out of the town. Would anyone actually block their passage? In the event the gate was open and they went through it without incident, onto the road toward Morne Rouge and Limbé.

  When the dust of his sister’s departure had settled on the road, Doctor Hébert bade Isabelle good day and walked across to Government House to see what news might be had there. En route he found various small squads of the Second Demibrigade busy tearing down copies of Napoleon’s proclamation of eternal liberty for the former slaves, which Télémaque had caused to be posted earlier that morning. Inside the building, he found Télémaque himself at the end of a shouting match with General Christophe. He would order out the municipal guard, Télémaque’s voice boomed down the corridor, to prevent any such act of barbarity. Fulminating, he stalked past the doctor and disappeared down the hall. The doctor reached the anteroom in time to see Christophe’s coattail disappearing into the inner cabinet. The door slammed. Pascal stood facing it, the edge of his thumbnail pinched between his front teeth.

  “And what act of barbarity might that be?” the doctor said.

  Pascal lowered his hand from his mouth and hid it in his pocket. “The general has ordered the town to be evacuated.” He swallowed. “And burned.”

  “When?”

  Pascal shrugged. “At any moment. Or if the fleet attempts a landing . . .”

  “And Télémaque?”

  “He believes the municipal guard will hold loyal to France,” Pascal said. “But of course they cannot hope for much if they have to resist the army.”

  With one more glance at the closed door to the inner cabinet, the doctor left the room and went back into the street. Slowly he walked in the direction of the hospital. The sun blazed down, and the grade of the ascent was enough to make him sweat. Inside the hospital enclosure he stopped for a moment to rest in the shade, with one hand braced against a palm tree. Further from the gate, the toeless cane-cutter was hobbling slowly across the enclosure with the aid of a peeled stick.

  When he had cooled sufficiently to think, the doctor sent out for a cart to convey the cane-cutter back to Habitation Héricourt. Two of his dysentery cases had been let go already, and the third was well enough to travel, along with the two malaria patients. In an hour’s time he had got them loaded on the cart with the cane-cutter—they would be dropped off at Haut du Cap, on the way to Héricourt. When the cart had creaked off down the hill, he sent the two sages-femmes who served him as nurses home as well. The hospital was closed until further notice.

  Most of his medical supplies had been sent down to Ennery with Elise and Tocquet. He was not sure why he had not gone himself. His interest in Isabelle was no more than friendly, and while he would like to see her safe, that wa
s not the only thing that kept him hanging on in the town. It puzzled him, as it had his sister, for he was anxious for Nanon and his own children, to whom he might have gone this morning instead of staying here.

  He went into the chamber that served him as office and examining room, and collected a bundle of his most essential herbs and a small surgical kit in a leather case. Since the fleet had appeared at the harbor’s mouth, he had been wearing a brace of pistols hidden under his coat, and now he took them both out, checked the priming, and holstered them again. His long gun was at his sister’s house in the town.

  He had just finished looping a chain through the iron gate that closed the hospital compound when he heard a voice calling to him in the street:

  “Doktè Doktè, madanm mandé w tounen lakay . . .”

  He turned toward the voice with a sense of déjà vu—it was that new porter from Elise’s house. Michau was what they called him, he remembered.

  Doctor, Doctor, Madame wants you to come back to the house.

  “Ki madanm sa yé?” he said, thinking that Elise was gone. What Madame is it? He snapped the padlock on the chain, checked his key, and turned from the gate.

  “Madanm Isabelle,” Michau panted.

  “Dousman,” the doctor said. He laid a hand on the black man’s shoulder to calm him a little and slow his pace. Michau caught his breath, then reached for the doctor’s bundle of herbs. The doctor let him take it as they walked together down past the casernes. There was indeed a movement of municipal guard through the streets, as Pascal had predicted. With the help of many ordinary citizens, they were organizing buckets and barrels of water. At the same time the small parties of soldiers grouped around tar pots, their lances à feu at the ready, were no less numerous than before.

  An officer of the municipal guard was just coming out of the Cigny house as the doctor arrived. Arnaud was waiting on the ground floor, just within the double doors, coatless, with his loose sleeves pushed back past his elbows.