Master of the Crossroads

by Madison Smartt Bell

  The texture of the drumming changed and intensified, and Toussaint, slipping again partway toward dream, felt his limbs moving lightly on the mat, as if in water, but he did not wish to give way, and then, with the harsh cry of the loa descending, the drumming stopped. He was conscious of his cool detachment, as if he had become a blanc. The boiling of language in his head subsided and the words flattened out again on their papers, inside the desk sheathed by the leather bag. There were others skilled in the art of marshaling words on paper, most dangerously the mulatto Pinchinat, who was involved in some obscure machination which connected Villate on the north coast with Rigaud in the Southern Department (but Toussaint did not want to think about that just now . . .); meanwhile even Jean-François, in his angry letter rejecting an invitation to join the French Republicans, had managed a fine flourish:

  Equality, Liberty, &c &c &c . . . I will only believe in that when I see that Monsieur Laveaux and other French gentlemen of his quality giving their daughters in marriage to Negroes. Then I will be able to believe in this pretended equality.

  That letter had been written quite some ago, and quite likely someone else had furnished Jean-François with the phrasing, but still this shard of rhetoric was difficult either to bypass or digest, and similar arguments continued to gain sway among the people of the Grande Rivière valley. Even some of Moyse’s men at Dondon had been moved to defect to Jean-François, and though Toussaint imagined they had been more persuaded by proffers of Spanish gold than by any words spoken or written, the problem was serious and must be addressed. He had already countered by accusing Jean-François of slave trading—You ask if a republican is free? It takes a slave to ask such a question. Do you really dare—you, Jean-François, who has sold his brothers to the Spanish, brothers who are actually digging in the mines of that detestable nation, to supply the ostentation of its king. . . . and Jean-François was truly guilty of this charge, as Biassou had been guilty of the same action before him. Toussaint could well have wished that Jean-François had disappeared from the scene instead of Biassou (who according to rumor had gone to Spanish Florida and perhaps been killed there in a brawl), for Biassou was the weaker general, as Dessources was weaker than Brisbane, though not by so great a measure. Jean-François could be defeated, though not without effort and difficulty. There was no one who could not somehow be defeated.

  But when Jean-François had been dispatched, the question he had raised might linger and attach itself to another and another after that, for all black men and women in the colony would be most loyal to whoever they believed would protect their freedom. And freedom to do what? There must be work to feed the struggle—Laveaux’s French faction had no gold, nor sufficient supplies nor ammunition, so that Toussaint must take most of what he required from the enemy. This he had so far managed to do, but still there must be money to purchase weapons and supplies for the future, and so there must be work which produced something exchangeable for money—thus, plantation work, but that resembled slavery.

  Here was another problem Toussaint did not wish to think about, for he could not immediately solve it. Here the circle closed upon itself. As he had proclaimed to the former cultivators in the area of Verrettes:

  Work is necessary, it is a virtue; it serves the general benefit of the State. Any slothful wandering person will be arrested and punished by the law. But labor also takes place under the condition that it is only through compensation, a justly paid salary, that one can encourage it and carry it to the highest level.

  It was well enough to speak of working for a proportion of one’s own benefit measured against the common good, and Toussaint himself believed in this principle, but for the great majority, this was not liberty. Freedom was here, in this mountain village with a few animals and gardens on which the people might easily live; freedom was what he himself had come here, for the space of a few hours, to enjoy.

  The drumming had begun again, under the mapou tree. Toussaint shut down his mind. Only so much could be gained from thinking, reasoning like a blanc; problems which did not yield to reason might be dissolved in other ways. He calmed himself by silently reciting, against the driving of the drums, a chaplet of the names of camps that surrounded and protected his positions: Grande Saline, Rossignol, Poinci Desdunes, Latapie, Laporte, Théard, Chatelain, Pothenot, Donache, Boudet, Remousin . . . Then it was dawn.

  Midmorning, he came riding down the zigzag path out of the mornes above Marmelade. Women swinging empty baskets as they climbed to the provision grounds stepped aside and smiled at him as he passed. Toussaint touched his hat to the prettiest, and also to the oldest among them. Now and then Bel Argent’s hooves dislodged a shower of pebbles which rattled down to startle the quick brown lizards that flicked this way and that across the trail.

  Skirting the square with its church and the building he’d adopted for his headquarters, he rode to the house at the edge of town where he had installed his family. Suzanne was just returning from the river as he dismounted—she stopped dead and hugged her bundle of clothes. Behind her, the hugely pregnant Marie-Noelle was startled enough to drop the bundle she was carrying. The girl covered the O of her mouth with one hand and crouched awkwardly, knees splaying around her swollen belly, to collect the spilled garments and brush off the dust.

  Suzanne set her bundle inside the door and stretched out her hands to her husband; Toussaint leaned in and pressed his cheek to hers. He was content that he had surprised her even a little, though she did not show a great deal of surprise.

  “Where are my sons?” Toussaint said, but Saint-Jean, the youngest, was already running from the house to wrap his arms fiercely around Toussaint’s thigh above the boot top. Toussaint took a step back to regain his balance. Suzanne smiled at them from the doorway, hands on her hips, as Toussaint swung the boy onto his hip and kissed his forehead.

  “The others are at their studies with the priest,” Suzanne said.

  Toussaint lowered the boy to the ground; Saint-Jean scampered toward the white warhorse, then hesitated and looked back.

  “But this one must study and learn also,” Toussaint said. “Eh?”

  “Oh, the priest receives him later in the day,” Suzanne said, cocking up one hip. “He takes him alone and the other two together.”

  She went into the house and, a moment later, set a chair outside the door. Toussaint removed his hat and coat and handed them to her. He carried the chair to the shade of a mango tree and sat down, pulling off his boots and stockings and working his bare toes in the loose dirt.

  Marie-Noelle had sorted out her washing and was carrying part of it away toward the main square. Toussaint raised his arms slightly from his sides, allowing the breeze to run through his shirt sleeves and comb over the madras cloth tied around his head. A speckled hen plopped down in a sunny spot of the yard and began a luxurious dust bath. Saint-Jean came around the back of Toussaint’s chair and threw both arms over his shoulders, pressing his hands on his father’s shirt front and laying his cheek on the back of his neck.

  Briefly, Toussaint closed his eyes. When he reopened them, Suzanne had appeared with a calabash full of cool water. He took it from her hands and drank. For some time longer he sat quite still, only his toes flexing a little, his mind deliciously empty and clear. When the shade of the mango tree began to move away from him, he put on his boots with the ghost of a sigh and crossed the yard to knock on the frame of the door.

  “Will Saint-Jean go now to the priest?”

  “He will go later,” Suzanne called from within. “After the heat.”

  Toussaint went down across the square before the church. Indeed, it was very hot already, the sun vertical above the plumes of his hat, and the dust stirring white around his boots. When he came near the house behind the church, he could hear the drone of the boys’ recitation from the priest’s study. Occasionally, there would be the slap of a hand on the table to punctuate a correction l’Abbé Delahaye had made. Then the drone began again. Toussaint stood outsid
e, half smiling as he listened.

  When the lesson had ended the boys tumbled out, knocking into each other in the doorway: Placide the taller, scrawnier, serious-looking, with his high forehead. His skin had that coppery Arada tone, while Isaac was darker and more compact—somehow denser, it seemed. From his first years he had weighed as much or more than his brother, as if his bones were made of stone.

  Both boys brightened when they saw him waiting. Toussaint hugged them, touching the backs of their heads, and sent them home to their mother.

  “If you like, we can sit outdoors,” Delahaye said. “In the house it it is rather close, at this hour.”

  He led the way to a little arbor, upwind of the cook fire ring, where three chairs had been arranged around a wicker table. Delahaye motioned for him to sit.

  “They are applying themselves to their work?” Toussaint said. “They study with concentration?”

  “Oh, they are assiduous enough,” Delahaye said. “They progress, in small steps.” He sat down with a whoosh of his cassock. “And certainly they are more faithful acolytes than some.”

  “M’regrette sa,” Toussaint said hastily, for he was already sensitive on the point of Moustique. I’m sorry for that. He looked away. “I have heard the rumor,” he muttered, “that he has been running the hills here-about, but my own men find no sign of him.”

  “I’ve seen nothing of him either,” Delahaye said, “nor yet of my stole and chalice, or my donkey.” With a quick, irritable movement he brushed an insect from the back of his neck. “However, he did leave us some remembrance of himself,” he said, “As you may now very plainly see.”

  The priest looked significantly toward Marie-Noelle, who was waddling out of the house with a tray of refreshments. On the table between them she laid out cold bread and whole bananas, large glasses of water and small ones of rum. Toussaint kept silent till she had withdrawn.

  “Suzanne will come to her, when it is time,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Delahaye, “I knew that had been so arranged. And it must be soon, no? She looks ready to burst. But no matter.”

  Toussaint picked up a banana and inspected the peel. Satisfied, he slit it open with thumbnail and took a small bite.

  “There is news,” Delahaye said, a slightly rising note in his voice. Toussaint lifted his head.

  “Brisbane has died, from the effects of his wound,” Delahaye said.

  “Ah.” Toussaint set the banana back down on the table and spread his hand out flat beside it. Delahaye looked at him narrowly.

  “No Latin phrases?” the priest said.

  “Tout grâce à Dieu,” Toussaint murmured. “You are certain?”

  “Oh, quite,” said Delahaye. “Infection. He had been shot through the throat apparently, and in this climate . . .”

  “Yes,” Toussaint said, rocking almost imperceptibly in the chair. “Yes.”

  Delahaye was still looking at him, with an edged curiosity. “You prosper very well in Caesar’s world, my son,” the priest said.

  Toussaint, eyes lidded, swayed slightly in his seat but said nothing. He folded both arms across his chest and breathed deeply in.

  “Blanc Cassenave is also dead,” said Delahaye. “It seems impossible that anyone can raise himself to oppose you.”

  Toussaint let his eyes fall completely shut. Against the closed lids floated up the face of Joseph Flaville and, a little behind him, Moyse. He exhaled, opened his eyes and looked at Delahaye.

  “If God is with me,” he pronounced, “then who can stand against me?”

  18

  In the green and gilded light of morning, Captain Maillart rode down from La Soufrière, through Bas-Limbé and out onto the great level expanse of the northern plain. He was flanked by two black riders, assigned to him by Toussaint at Marmelade: Quamba and Guiaou. Of these the former was an able horseman and useful groom. Toussaint had told Maillart, with his hint of a smile that never quite flowered, that he believed Guiaou might one day make a horseman also, if he should gain confidence and overcome his fear. And today when they came down from the last slopes of the mountains onto the flat land of the plain, Guiaou, riding on the captain’s left, seemed to be much at his ease. Maillart glanced at him, half covertly, from time to time. Guiaou’s seat was sufficiently solid, and he held the reins above the saddle bow in relaxed hands. A loose chemise of off-white cotton covered the patterns of his dreadful scars, save those on his head and forearm. As he rode, he seemed to look about himself with pleasure.

  “Riziè marron,” Quamba remarked, to Maillart’s right. The captain looked over. There was a sizable, irregular rice planting—gone mostly wild, as Quamba had suggested. Bwa dlo with its pale white and violet blossoms sprang up among the rice shoots. White egrets stood spectrally about the shallows, and in a deeper slough was a long-horned cow submerged to her neck, blissful, now and then stretching her head to take another mouthful of green shoots. As they passed, two nearly naked men came out of the surrounding jungle and began to swing broad-bladed hoes at the border of the planting.

  They rode on. Another cluster of horsemen seemed to be in sight ahead of them, at that point just below the horizon where mirages were wont to appear. Maillart shaded his eyes for a better view; he could not make out if they were three or five. The figures did not shimmer as mirages do, but presently he did not see them anymore; the road ahead was empty.

  By now the heat was rising and the air around their little party ripened with the smell of horse and human sweat. Silence, heavy as the air, was broken by the occasional chink of harness rings, or someone’s voice at a distance, urging cattle or goats out into the pastures. At a crossroads a small crowd of women had gathered with their wares: green oranges and bananas of several kinds, some coconuts and mangos. Maillart reined up and arched an eyebrow at his companions.

  “Ki bo Bitasyon Arnaud?” Quamba addressed the question at large. Where is Habitation Arnaud? The oldest woman among the marchandes raised a toothless face as shriveled as a peach pit.

  “Ki sa ou vlé?” she said. What do you want?

  “Koté blan k’ap fé travay anko—l’ap fé sik.” Maillart said. Where the white man has the work going again—where he is making sugar.

  The woman’s eyes whitened. “Blan ki fé sik mêm?”

  A white man making sugar again? There was a general buzz among the women. Presently the old woman nodded with a seeming satisfaction and pointed a leathery finger to the road which led inland. Maillart pricked up his horse but, on a second thought, stopped again and purchased a stalk of bananas, which he fastened to his saddle knee with a bit of thong.

  Then they went on. With the sun mounting toward the meridian, the heat was wet and smothering. Maillart moved as little as possible, giving his horse its head, only sometimes turning his face, like a sail, to receive the intermittent, feeble hints of breeze. He left the chore of inquiring the way to Quamba, for even the effort of moving his lips made him pour sweat.

  They turned southwest and rode along a narrow muddy lane, pitted with deep sloughs which the horses must pick their way around with care; in one was an abandoned wagon, buried to the hubs in sucking mud. There were other tracks, some fresh, and Maillart noticed a pile of warm horse manure that put him in mind of the party of horsemen he thought he’d seen earlier in the morning. But no one was in view. Jungle pressed in on the roadway, the interlocking leaves of trees so tall they blocked the view of any landmark. With the sun at the center of the sky, all sense of direction was lost. But Quamba kept inquiring at the crossroads, and presently they came to a pair of blackened gateposts at the entrance to an allée of palms. The gates had been wrenched down from the masonry, and most of the spearheaded iron bars removed—perhaps for use as lances, Maillart speculated. A palm trunk had been laid across the gateway as a barrier, and Quamba began to dismount to shift it, but Maillart shook his head and jumped his horse over the obstacle. His companions followed suit. Maillart saw that Guiaou leaned forward and knotted his hands in t
he mane of his horse, with an air of desperation, but at any rate he was not unseated.

  Some of the palms bordering the allée had been hacked down, and through the gaps one could see patches of undertended cane. The citrus hedges of the main enclosure had been set afire but incompletely burned, so that now they greened again, pushing through the ash and the charred stems. Maillart leaned sideways, plucked a lime and sucked the juice to freshen the taste of warm, stale water in his canteen.

  But for a single small shed near the blackened square that might have been a stable, all the buildings of the main compound had been razed by fire. On the opposite edge of the clearing, rope had been strung from tree to tree to mark off makeshift stalls for horses, and here, Maillart took in at once, a party of black cavalrymen had recently hitched their mounts. The black men wore French uniforms, and as Maillart slipped gratefully down from his own horse, he found himself beneath the cool regard of Major Joseph Flaville.

  The captain suffered a conflict of impulses. He might toss the reins of his horse to the other, as if he were a stablehand, then turn his back. They might continue to fence in this manner, trading slights indefinitely, until one of them found a way to betray the other, perhaps even on the field of battle. All that was a great stupidity. Maillart felt so, even through the wave of unreasoning resentment which resembled the blind rages he had formerly felt against O’Farrel of the Dillon regiment—strangely, for Flaville had done nothing to offend him, or even to compete with him. Had he?

  Maillart saluted. “Good morning, Major. I had not looked to find you here.”