He turned then, and beckoned everyone waiting in the hallway to crowd into the cabinet, where he repeated his declaration that all Toussaint’s officers would be maintained in their grades as they were incorporated into the French army, and that the liberty of all citizens of Saint Domingue would be eternal.
As the echo of those fine phrases died, there was a fresh commotion in the corridor, and the doctor turned to see Isabelle and Pauline Leclerc approaching, with Nanon and many of the children of their household. Saint-Jean Louverture broke out of the pack and rushed to throw himself on his father—it was unclear who was lifting whom, since Toussaint was scarcely taller than the boy. Toussaint kissed him and rubbed his head hard, and Saint-Jean swung around to wrap his arms around both his elder brothers at once, while the French generals smiled at his enthusiasm. Leclerc, meanwhile, was urging them all toward the grand salon; the double doors had been opened and the aroma of peppered beef was stronger than before.
As they shuffled in, the doctor recalled the day before the town was burned, when he’d glimpsed Leclerc’s envoy Lebrun dining in solitary splendor here, from an extravagant service of gold plate which must have since been looted, if not melted in the fire. An equally opulent service was laid before them now, just recently cast, so the rumor ran, from coin sent out to pay the troops.
Maillart tested the weight of a fork in his hand, and clicked it rather moodily against his plate, but he said nothing. Tocquet, with a somewhat cursory nod at Pauline Leclerc, bowed over Isabelle’s hand and murmured some compliment, then, raising his eyes to her face, he said, “And my lady wife?”
“She is indisposed.” Isabelle had colored slightly. “Of course she did not expect you or she would certainly have come.”
The doctor turned his face away, but Tocquet said no more on the subject, perhaps distracted by the bowls of beef and rice that were being served, or more likely by some bottles of very presentable red wine. Toussaint, he noticed, took neither wine nor meat nor anything at all but a piece of bread from a whole loaf and a square of cheese carefully dissected from the center of the wheel. He gazed rather gloomily at an equestrian portrait of himself which had been hastily replaced at the far end of the salon once Leclerc got wind of his arrival, and seemed scarcely to attend to the blandishments of Pauline Leclerc, who had been seated to his right.
Placide saw that Daspir had come into the salon and taken a seat with Cyprien and Guizot and Paltre at the lower end of the table, where Christophe was also, with Robillard, but as far from Toussaint as might be. His father studiously avoided looking in that direction. Riau and Guiaou had joined Christophe and the other officers, and seemed to be speaking with Christophe civilly enough, though the group was too distant for Placide to make out what they said. He wondered if what Dessalines had claimed could be true—that Toussaint’s hidden hand had moved Christophe to his surrender—and yet his father’s coldness seemed so genuine. As they entered the salon, Toussaint had even snubbed his brother Paul, for yielding Santo Domingo City to the French without authority—“You ought to have been guided by my example,” Toussaint had said, and turned his back—all this in spite of the tale of the false dispatches which Guiaou had brought.
Pauline Leclerc, feigning to be wounded at Toussaint’s indifference to her, had turned her attention to the green parakeet that walked over her bare shoulders and her arms, leaving tiny pink claw marks on her delicate skin, and repeating in a monotone, “How beautiful you are.” Then Isabelle Cigny leaned across the doctor and drew Pauline into some other conversation, commiserating with her homesickness for Paris, with its luxuries and entertainments, the sharper changes of its seasons . . .
Leclerc turned to Toussaint and said, “Tell me, General, if you had chosen to continue the struggle, how would you have procured your arms and ammunition?”
Toussaint turned and smiled more naturally than Placide had seen him do since he left the church at Marmelade that morning. “Why,” he said. “I would have taken them from you.”
At the far end of the table, Daspir was doing what he could, which was not much, to dissuade Paltre from a stupid jape he kept trying on Christophe. Paltre had filled Christophe’s glass with wine, but the black general did not want it. As often as Christophe poured it back into the bottle, Paltre refilled the glass and, with a fixed grin, set it again before him. Paltre was already drunk, Daspir saw, and certainly on something stronger and rougher than this wine, and no one, least of all Christophe, was in any humor for this teasing. Robillard and the other black captains who sat with him, especially that one with the terrible scars, had all gone very silent and grave. But Paltre would not notice Daspir’s nudging.
At the fifth reprise, Christophe crushed the balloon of the wine glass with a quick movement of his large hand, then held out his palm, full of wine and blood mingled, under Paltre’s nose.
“You desire to see me drink?” he said, in a grating tone that carried from one end of the room to the other. “Before today, I have drunk blood from the skulls of little white men like you. Insist, and one day I will drink a toast from yours.”
For one grisly instant the whole room fell silent; even the ringing of silverware stopped. Leclerc and the others at the head of the table must certainly have heard what Christophe had said, and yet they affected not to, until Pauline shrilled out some pleasantry which Isabelle took up and extended. Daspir yearned toward Isabelle, hopelessly since she was many places distant from him. Christophe wiped his palm clean with a napkin and squeezed it in his hand to stop the bleeding, lowering the balled cloth to his knees. With his left hand he spooned up a morsel of his food, and Robillard and the others started some semblance of conversation.
Only Paltre remained immobile, pale and staring, as if Christophe’s words had transfixed him physically. A yellow sweat gathered on the fine hairs at his temple and in the creases of his broken nose. It had just occurred to Daspir that Paltre must really be unwell (not merely drunk as usual), when Paltre flopped out of his seat to the floor—as he fell, a great quantity of black vomit rolled out of his mouth as if poured from a bowl. Daspir started up and back before the vile-smelling stuff could reach his shoes—he looked for Doctor Hébert, who was already hurrying down toward them.
“What’s the matter with him?” Guizot said uneasily.
The doctor looked up from where he’d squatted by Paltre’s head, to take a pulse from his limp arm. “Mal de Siam,” he said shortly. “The yellow fever. Come on, we’ve got to get him out of here.”
Another pall of silence had fallen over the room. Daspir reached down to get a grip, but Guizot had already raised Paltre’s shoulders and two of the black guardsmen, the scarred one and the one they called Riau, had taken his feet. Empty-handed and feeling quite useless, Daspir followed them toward the door. A servant had come to mop up the vomit. As they left the room, the babble of festivity was gradually renewed.
“Fatigué?” The little boy’s voice held more curiosity than concern. Tired? And truly, Elise felt so exhausted she could scarcely turn her head to look at him. Little Dieufait—child of Marie-Noelle and Moustique. He looked at her round-eyed, pleasantly smiling.
“Pa kè. Fatigué!” he said, brightly and conclusively. No heart—tired!
With that matter decided, Dieufait skipped out of the door of Elise’s chamber, singing a snatch of song as he capered.
Palé O, Palé O
La fanmi Asefi a palé O
Asefi ki jeté youn pitit sèt mwa . . .
A couple of the other children scampered around him, taking up the song, until the low rumble of Maman Maig’ ’s voice drove them out of the enclosure. Elise heard their voices spreading and fading over the steeper slopes above the lakou.
Asefi ki jeté youn pitit sèt mwa
Asefi ki jeté youn pitit sèt mwa
Pitit se byen O, palé O...
Dieufait did not mean to wound her; this she knew. The children scarcely knew the meaning of the words they sang. He had not even meant to
call her heartless. It was only a Creole expression for exhaustion, which was all she felt. A light fever had come over her, though she thought it had little to do with her bleeding or the child she had thrown off. It was only a new visit from some old fever which had found its way to her again, now she was weak. The fever put her pain at a distance. It jumbled her memory and confused her waking with her sleep. She didn’t know how long it had been since Maman Maig’ had made the second effort between her legs with her long wooden spoon. She didn’t know how much blood had poured out of the cavern the spoon had opened in her body.
But now a shadow blocked the doorway and Paulette came and knelt beside her and with her fingertips began to massage the area between her navel and her fente. Fontelle stood behind her, looking on.
“You must try it yourself,” Fontelle said. “This rubbing is the only thing to close the hole the blood comes from.”
But Elise had no heart for that effort either. She only submitted to the aching pressure of Paulette’s fingers, and thanked her weakly when she had gone. Almost hourly, one of the women came to her with their hands, Paulette or Fontelle or Marie-Noelle or Nanon, and sometimes Maman Maig’, though most often Maman Maig’ only stood by to advise and instruct the others.
Paulette had let the white drape fall over the doorway when she left, to shield Elise from the lowering afternoon sun. She had raised Elise’s feet, and Elise felt her head begin to swell, with the fever’s rising. There was some unusual noise in the town below—regular volleys of gunfire, and cannons from the direction of the harbor, but it did not much interest or worry her, though it did disturb her sleep. In half-delirium she seemed to struggle through a viscous fluid, a ghostly underwater world where everything was floating and the seaweed-tendriled shapes near her were somehow presences. One of those fetal forms abruptly rolled and raised its head from the blood in which it had been drowned and opened a hole in its skull to grin at her.
She woke with a terrible start, but the scream that she’d heard was not her own. No sound in her chamber but the sick, quick beating of her heart. The white drape had been raised from her doorway and she could see out past the striped central post to the shadow of the squat low cross beyond it. It was full dark now; she saw by starlight and by the light of candles waxed to small stones here and there. Someone was drumming, but she could not see the drums. The figure of Claudine Arnaud stood by the center post: fixed, rigid, shuddering. It was not Claudine herself who had screamed, Elise understood. The scream had only come through her.
Then Claudine’s body collapsed, as though the tendons that strung her limbs had melted, and Maman Maig’ appeared to catch her and cradle her in the vast cushion of her body, till whatever it was that occupied Claudine shook itself free of the mambo and rose. Moustique came toward her, cautiously, not quite cringingly.
“Maîtresse Erzulie!” he whispered as he offered his gifts: a comb, a round hand mirror, bright beads, and a small bottle of perfume. But Claudine’s hands dashed the offerings to the ground. The perfume bottle spilled into the dirt, releasing a weak musk. Claudine—it was not Claudine—seized up the mirror and crouched to beat it against a stone. Rising again, she curled her fingers into claws and raked two vertical slashes on her cheek.
“Sé Ezili Jé Rouj li yé.” Maman Maig’ ’s voice was calm, even detached. Moustique retreated, out of Elise’s line of sight. Erzulie Jé Rouj was turning, marching straight toward her where she lay. As she approached, her figure blocked the shadow of the cross.
“Ki moun ki rélé mwen?” she said, her voice tight with fury. Who called me?
Elise’s eyes fixed on the gleam of blood within the furrows of the nail cuts. She could not answer; it was as if a heavy chain lay across her tongue, but still she felt she was responsible—guilty, rather—for summoning the apparition.
“That was not your dream, white woman,” Erzulie Jé Rouj pronounced. “You dreamed the dream of the blanche, Claudine Arnaud—it was she who cut the child unborn from the mother’s belly, long ago and yesterday and always, and ever since the child has walked with her. Would you walk with them, white woman? Would you dream that dream, with them?”
I’d rather die, Elise was thinking, but still she could speak no word.
Ezili cocked her head toward the street below the lakou. The light of the candles around the doorway shimmered in the burning tears that filled her eyes. “Listen,” she said. “Can you hear them there?”
Elise strained her ears but could hear nothing. Even the drums were silent now.
“Toussaint has come to give his head to the blanc general,” Ezili said, and of a sudden she shrieked and tore at her hair, and tears spilled into the cuts along her cheek. “Do you know? We might all have saved each other. Toussaint carried that dream to the crossroads, but the blancs will not let it pass the gate. Now we have seen it die aborning. Now it must wait unborn four hundred years.” She threw away the fistfuls of hair she had torn from her head and scratched up dirt from the ground to pound into her face.
Though she choked with terror, Elise was also inspired with a terrible pity for the being before her, though she knew it was much stronger than herself. All its power was for self-destruction. And she, herself, could not reach or comfort it. From the soles of her feet to the roof of her mouth she was frozen. She could neither speak nor weep.
From the shadows near the entrance of the hûnfor, the doctor and Tocquet watched as the figure of Claudine Arnaud rose from beside Elise’s couch, turned, and swept toward them. It passed them blind, twin gashes shining red on its cheek, and went into the dark beyond the gateway. A rustle up the doctor’s spine moved in the direction of its movement, like iron dust following a magnet.
“What is it?” he said—to Moustique, who had followed Claudine in the direction of the gate and now was hesitating near them.
“You might do better to ask the spirit that touched you,” Moustique said. His gangling grasshopper’s silhouette was very still in the weak blend of light from the stars and the candles. Though his voice was not exactly unfriendly, his usual ingratiating manner had dropped away from him.
The doctor glanced at Tocquet, who looked unastonished by anything that had happened since they had left the feast of Toussaint’s surrender to come here. In truth, the doctor was not much astonished either. It all seemed strange but inevitable.
“That is Ezili Jé Rouj who has passed,” Moustique said. “She come for one reason or another. Sometimes she comes to send back children who are not wanted here.”
“And Madame Arnaud?” the doctor said.
“She is the spirit you have called out of your own need,” Moustique said, but the doctor thought he was not yet speaking of Claudine, or not entirely of her. “She sees what you don’t know you see, and says what you can’t say.” He paused, turning his large head in silhouette against the vague light of the harbor. “Madame Arnaud will return to herself,” he said. “Now I will go to her.” He lowered his head and went past them through the gate.
A wind came up and swirled around the hûnfor. The candles were all cunningly shielded with angled stones, so that their flames guttered but did not die. The shrouded figures of the women stood about the enclosure, bending slightly with the wind, like trees. The doctor thought that these were Paulette and Marie-Noelle and Fontelle, but he could not distinguish them one from another, except for Maman Maig’, by her bulk. Four candles flickered around the doorway of Elise’s chamber. She lay on the branches, still, but still living.
“So,” Tocquet said, rocking back to his heels as the wind faded. “What is it that this spirit sees, that we can’t say?”
The doctor said nothing. They had come here to visit Elise, but the descent of the spirit had held them back, and still an invisible membrane seemed to divide them from her. He had let Tocquet know that Elise had miscarried, but no more.
“Pitit sé byen-o,” Tocquet whispered. Children are riches. There was just the ghost of a tune in his words. The doctor kept his silenc
e. His mind ran to Paltre, borne to the hospital two hours before. Cases of the yellow fever were increasing day by day.
“Your sister and I have had fair days and foul ones,” Tocquet said. “I think you have been by to see some of both. You must know that with all that has passed, I would never raise a hand to harm her, no matter what she did. Had done. Do you care to tell me any more?”
“No,” said the doctor.
“Well,” Tocquet said, and almost with an air of relief. “Perhaps it’s better so.”
Maman Maig’ broke out of her stillness and moved toward the chamber where Elise lay. They watched her lower herself beside the couch of branches.
“I think we may as well leave them now,” Tocquet said. “I will come again tomorrow.”
“Yes,” said the doctor, and Tocquet nodded.
As they turned to leave the hûnfor, Tocquet did something that struck the doctor as strange, though he had sometimes seen the black men do it. He took the doctor’s hand in his own, and held it lightly for a pace or two, as they passed through the gate together, and then he let it go.
Maman Maig’ ’s smooth round face appeared in Elise’s vision like the rising of a full black moon. For some time after Ezili had left her, she had been drifting blurrily on the tides of her fever. But now as her eyes opened, her mind was clear and the pain was nearer to her than it had been before.
“Where is the child?” she said.
“Anba dlo,” Maman Maig’ said. Beneath the waters. She touched Elise on the cheek with her blunt finger: the spot where Ezili’s scars had been. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “Yours is not alone. Many, many have been sent back. When it would have been worse for them to live.”
Elise felt the sting as her tears spilled over the bone of her eye sockets. Maman Maig’ nodded, content to see her cry.
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