Master of the Crossroads

by Madison Smartt Bell

  Flaville returned his salute. “Nor I you, Captain.”

  Maillart broke two bunches of bananas from the stalk he had purchased, and held them out to the black officer.

  “For yourself and your men, if you like them.”

  “With pleasure, and my thanks.” Flaville smiled naturally, accepting the fruit, and whistled for one of his men to come on the double and see to the captain’s horse.

  Unaccompanied (for Quamba and Guiaou were conversing with Flaville’s subordinates), Maillart strolled down toward the cane mill, where Flaville had told him he would find the proprietor. On the way he paused by that solitary shed—so odd to find it standing still, where everything else had been destroyed. The door was chained and fastened with a padlock, but there was a knothole. Maillart peeped in, then recoiled. The sun glared down on him more fiercely and the air now seemed too dense to breathe. Someone was watching him from the cane mill, a man in a loosely woven, conical straw hat with fringed brim. Only by the walking stick he held in both hands across his thighs did the captain recognize Michel Arnaud. The stick was unusual, grooved like a corkscrew—reputedly it was not wood at all, but a dried and hardened bull’s pizzle. Maillart wanted to look into the shed again, to verify what he had seen or (much better) discover it an illusion, but would not do so under Arnaud’s observation.

  He caught his breath, then went to greet the master of the land.

  “Welcome,” Arnaud pronounced, letting his cane swing free as he took the captain’s hand. “Come in and see the work, for what it’s worth.”

  Maillart followed him through the doorway, which at present lacked a lintel. The roof was gone too, so the area of the mill was open to the sky. The masonry walls were jaggedly shattered, battered down to ankle height in places, and fire-blackened to the top.

  Arnaud was following the captain’s glance. “Yes,” he said. “They were very thorough in their destruction, but had not the patience to smash down all the walls.” He snorted. “I may call that my good fortune. The press itself they were careful to knock down, but the iron—that was less damaged than I feared and, as you see, we have raised it up again.”

  Maillart followed the cane tip to the fresh masonry, more sloppily done than the older stonework, which supported the two vertical iron cylinders of the cane press. A system of gears ran through the wall to a spoked wheel outside. Through the gaps in the broken wall, Maillart could see two bullocks and a single mule, turning the central hub which ran the press. A boy urged the animals along with soft speech and light flicks of a green switch.

  “Ouais, ça roule encore.” Arnaud fanned himself with his hat, a near-shapeless, hastily crafted object of the sort a slave might have worn. “It works—after a fashion.”

  The captain stared at the crushed cane stalks emerging from the interlocked grooves of the press. Below, the syrup flowed into the slant of a dug-out log.

  “Come.” Arnaud gestured with his cane.

  Maillart followed him to the lower level, where the sap was boiled and reduced to sugar. The roof had disappeared here too, and the posts which had supported it burnt back to foot-high stumps. Two men worked the syrup with long-handled ladles. Flies covered the viscous surface of the tanks.

  “We have not the means to refine white sugar now,” Arnaud said. “And I regret to say there are impurities even in the brown. Still, it is something. He raised his voice. “Finished for the morning! Go rest!”

  The men at once laid down their tools, and Maillart heard the gears of the mill clank to a halt. He followed Arnaud around the outer edges of the broken walls, and they walked up through the compound. A chill clutched at the captain as they passed the shed, and then the heat returned, like fever.

  “It was not so in better days,” Arnaud reported, “this business of the noon hiatus. But now they will not work without it. He slashed at the air before him with his cane. “Free labor.” The cane whistled and sang alarmingly. “I give you that for free labor!” He let the cane drop against his side. “Well, it’s what we’ve got.”

  Maillart had seen no sign of a residence, but now they were mounting a twisted trail that passed through the citrus hedge and climbed through a stand of bamboo that covered the lower slopes of the morne behind the plantation. The path gave onto an apron of cleared ground, which opened out before a low rectangular dwelling, backed against the raw face of mountain. Flaville was waiting for them there, seated at a roughly carpentered table on the porch.

  “Anou bwé rhum,” Arnaud said, directing the captain toward a stool, as he went into the house. Maillart sat down and looked about. Though the climb had not seemed so very arduous, he now could now see over the compound from a considerable height. To the left was the sound of running water, and he saw that a ditch dug in the clay channeled the runoff around the border of the little yard—away from the house floor, which consisted of splintery puncheon embedded in the earth.

  Arnaud returned, carrying two bottles pinched together in one hand, and three cups fashioned from calabash in the other.

  “We are not very elegant,” he said, setting down these accouterments. He sat and poured a measure of raw, clear rum into each gourd, and pushed the cups across the table to his guests.

  “A l’aise, messieurs,” he said. “The other bottle is water.”

  The captain drained his cup of clairin, and refilled the gourd from the water bottle. Flaville, meanwhile, sipped his measure more slowly. Arnaud drank about half his cup, then pushed back his stool to stand again.

  “Well, I will look for something for us to eat.”

  “Allow me to help you,” Maillart said, having come to the conclusion that there must be no servant on hand.

  “If you will.” Arnaud shrugged.

  The captain followed him indoors. The house was an alley of four rooms, two on each side of a corridor and open at either end. The roof was palm thatch and the walls were lattice, plaited from sticks. Arnaud turned to the right and Maillart followed, parting a hanging curtain made of strings of red seeds from the bean trees. He found himself in a bedchamber, furnished with a wardrobe, a chest of drawers and a heavy bedstead. Without pausing, Arnaud passed through to the room behind, which was empty except for several padlocked chests and a pallet on the floor.

  Taking a bunch of keys from his pocket, Arnaud unlocked one of the chests and took out a platter covered with a cloth, and a small clay jug. Atop another chest was a dish with a bunch of bananas, two mangos and some limes. Arnaud nodded at Maillart, who picked it up.

  In the bedchamber he hesitated, catching the captain’s eye in the mirror propped on the chest of drawers. It must have been a fine mirror, once, though now the surface was smoke-stained and the gilt wood frame much damaged by fire.

  “I have prepared this room for the return of my wife.”

  Maillart inclined his head toward Arnaud’s reflection. He noticed that in this room alone the puncheon floor was sanded fine. Arnaud turned his face from the mirror and led the way back onto the porch.

  “A woman comes to cook at night,” he said, unveiling a plate of cold corn cakes. “But I don’t trouble myself for the midday meal, we are so . . . short-handed.” He took off his ragged-brimmed hat and ran his hands back through his graying hair. “The work will recommence at three.”

  “Ah,” said Flaville, with the air of making a pleasantry. “One might say that the Code Noir is respected here, nowadays. Concerning the treatment of the . . . cultivators.”

  Arnaud gazed into space without replying.

  Far below, behind the mill, men were loading sacks from a lean-to onto the pack saddles of a train of donkeys. “I see that something is already begun,” Maillart said.

  “Yes,” said Arnaud, pouring molasses from the clay jug over his cornbread, “that convoy must leave in good time, to reach Le Cap before darkness.”

  Maillart contained a restive movement and said nothing, though he was perturbed. Toussaint had sent him on this exploration to discover not only to what extent
the production of sugar had been restored but also where the product was being sent—for Toussaint wished for all such exports to pass through his own hands at Gonaives. As Laveaux, Toussaint’s commanding officer, was in charge at Le Cap, the black general could have no reasonable objection to sugar being shipped in that direction. But Maillart felt uneasy, and the silence round the table weighed upon him. Flaville chewed methodically at the hard corn cake.

  “This house,” the captain said, groping for a subject. “You did not choose to rebuild on the old site.”

  “No,” Arnaud said. Thumbing the underside of his jaw, he looked down with the captain at the train of donkeys filing out, past the burnt black square of earth where the old grand’case had stood, and past that solitary standing shed.

  “Here one takes the air more easily,” Arnaud said. “It is better for the health. Also there are considerations of security. Besides, the old site is accursed.”

  Again the silence bore down on the three of them. The last donkey had left the compound, which was empty, motionless, except for that shed, which seemed to waver in the shimmering heat. The captain swallowed and swallowed at his bite of cornbread; only with the greatest difficulty could he get it down. When he had finally succeeded, he reached for the rum bottle served himself and drank.

  “Why,” he said. “Why was that one shed left standing?”

  “Yes,” said Arnaud. “C’est ça la question. It has stood there since ninety-one—three years, man, since this place was sacked and burned. There is something inside it which I do not know how to remove, and yet it must be taken away before my Claudine can return here.”

  Maillart drank rum, then poured himself a water chaser. Arnaud’s eyes were distant, glassy; he seemed unaware of his company. The captain was puzzled as to why he had chosen to speak so openly before Flaville; it did not seem to be unconsciousness.

  “How shall I explain myself?” Arnaud pressed his palms on the table as if to rise. “You did not know me in those days, but I tell you, in the last three years I have aged twenty. Before the rising of ninety-one my hair was black as a crow’s wing, friends, and I had no thought but for my pleasure, or sometimes rage against the failure of my enterprises—my barren wife, my plantation foundered in debt and made barren too by the sloth and mortality of my slaves.”

  Maillart considered. He had not known Arnaud personally, true, but his reputation—for extraordinary and ingenious cruelty to his slaves—had spread far and wide. Caradeux, Lejeune, Arnaud—those were names of terror. Flaville, the captain noticed, had stopped eating, and now sat upright on his stool with his arms folded across his chest.

  “Though my wife is taken with a religous mania,” Arnaud pronounced, “I am myself no great believer.” He looked directly at Maillart. “When you found me, sir, wandering in the bush after the sack of the northern plain, I had ceased to know if I were a man or an ape. But I have been taught to believe in these years that the evil which one does returns. If that is true, so also may the good.

  “It must be said that my wife did a very great evil, whose blot still lies across this land,” Arnaud continued. “She did so only following my example.” He drew a breath, looking away from Maillart. “You know what you have seen, down there.”

  The captain’s eyes slid shut, against his will. Imprinted on their lids he saw, as through the knothole, the human skull and heap of bones littered on the shed floor, and the pair of skeletal hands still lashed to a hook on the wall above.

  “Bref,” said Arnaud. “It was there my wife murdered her lady’s maid, a bossale fresh from Africa, who, as it happened, was carrying my child. You will understand, in my heat I had sowed the whole atelier with half-breed bastards, but this was the first and only time my wife showed how bitterly she was offended. As you have seen, the very bones still hang in bondage, and my wife is bound to them, and so am I.

  “As for myself, I have undertaken many like actions. I cannot remember all those horrors, nor even half of them. My poor wife, misled by me, committed such a horror only once; it is that which has unseated her reason, I believe. I would take away the stain from her if I might, even take it upon myself. But I do not know how. There was a priest who might have advised me, but he is dead”—Arnaud’s voice broke into an eerie laugh—“tortured to death, my captain, by our concitoyens at Le Cap.” He made a half-turn to include Flaville in his discourse. “So, gentlemen, as you see, I am without hope or help.”

  Maillart massaged his eyelids with his fingertips, then opened them. The clearing and the jungle swam before him for a moment and gradually grew still. Somewhere a cock was crowing. The captain had always thought it odd how the cocks of the colony gave voice at any hour, never restricting themselves to the dawn. Flaville tightened the fold of his arms across his chest and breathed in three times, deeply, with short, sharp exhalations through his nose. Then he relaxed his arms and raised his head.

  “Perhaps I can arrange the matter,” he said to Arnaud.

  “If you should even attempt it,” Arnaud said, “I am forever in your debt.”

  After the meal the three of them retired to rest in the shade through the worst heat of the day. Maillart found he was to share his room with Flaville; two pallets were prepared on the floor in the first room opposite Arnaud’s personal chambers. Flaville stripped off his garments, folded them neatly and lay down without saying anything. At first the captain was uneasy at the quiet presence of the black man across the floor from him. But soon the singing of the insects and the dancing of the sunlight through the chinks in the latticed walls began to lull him. His breathing slowed; he did not wake till twilight.

  The room was empty, but someone had brought a basin of a water and a jagged scrap of soap. Maillart washed his face and torso, combed his wet hair back with his fingers and went out onto the porch. There was a pleasant smell of stewing chicken. Arnaud had come in from the fields and changed his clothes; Flaville sat near him, at the table.

  Maillart walked down the path to see that Quamba and Guiaou were settled for the night. He claimed two more bunches of the bananas for the master’s table, and leaving the rest to be shared among the men, he climbed back up. During the meal Arnaud replied to Flaville’s occasional questions, or volunteered descriptions of the difficulties, the failures and small successes, of his effort to bring the cane fields back from ruin. It seemed he was not alone in all this; the northern region was spotted all over with French colonists lately returned from exile, although at least as many properties were under the management of black or mulatto tenants now.

  Maillart listened, keeping his silence for the most part. He could not help thinking of that donkey caravan, now unloading sugar at Le Cap if all had gone well with the journey, and of Toussaint’s likely displeasure. But he would play the simple soldier; his only part was to observe and report.

  The woman who had cooked cleared away the plates and brought the rum. It was dark by then, but the moon was high above the plain, so that every detail of the compound was plainly etched in silver. As Maillart reached for his gourd of rum, he heard a drum beat slowly, four deep, throbbing beats. Then the hush resumed. From the trees came a procession of men and women, who moved toward the shed with rhythmic, swaying steps. It seemed that Guiaou was among them, or at least the captain recognized his shirt, but Guiaou had a different gait, a different manner, as if he’d been transfigured. When the singing began, that deep-throated voice made of many joined together, the fine hairs stood to attention on Maillart’s forearms and the back of his neck. Drawing near the shed, the procession broke up into those bewildering spiral patterns that had so often terrified the captain in ambush situations, yet now the movement was graceful, delicate and gentle, like ink diffusing into water.

  An old man held up a candle flame to each of the cardinal points of the compass, then set it aside and saluted the same four directions with a bottle which must have held strong spirits, for it burned gaily when he poured it on the ground and set it alight. Someone (was t
hat Guiaou?) rushed forward and danced jerkily, barefoot on the bluish flames. Someone stove in the shed door with a maul. Three women entered, then came back out, bearing the bones gently on a litter woven of green branches. Led by a gaunt figure in a tall black hat, the procession snaked away into the trees.

  The door of the empty shed hung lopsided from the frame like a broken tongue. Maillart glanced sidelong at Arnaud. Though he made no sound, a flow of tears ran from his eye sockets and branched along the angles of his jaw, and his throat worked steadily, as if he were swallowing blood. Presently he stood up, collected the rum from the table and disappeared onto the descending trail.

  The captain glanced at Flaville, who seemed alert, poised as if ready to leap from his chair in any direction, though there was no hostility, no menace about him. Maillart felt something similar himself, as though his body and bones were made of air.

  When Arnaud emerged on the ground below, he was carrying a lighted torch. He splashed the rum from the bottle on the walls of the shed on either side of the door, then thrust the torch against the liquid stain and quickly sprang back. There could not have been enough rum to justify the effect, but the whole shed went up all at once like fire from a volcano.

  Next day they rode to Haut de Trou, Arnaud accompanied by Maillart and Flaville and the men they’d brought with them: a strong party, for the state of the countryside was uncertain. Bands of unorganized rebels and fugitives still roved about, and the blacks who’d returned to work the fields were restless, chafing under the new labor laws proclaimed by both Laveaux and Toussaint. Maillart had time to reflect on the matter during the day’s journey, for there was little conversation among the leaders of the group.

  Toussaint’s edicts had been especially stern. He forbade any independent clearing of new land by the new-free slaves (Toussaint had no desire to see more maroon villages sprouting in the hills), indeed there should be no work of any sort for independent gain or sustenance—all efforts must be combined for plantation work and the restoration of export crops. Reasonable, Maillart knew well, given the troops’ constant need for munitions and other supplies which must be imported, but the strictness of the edict was sufficient to start murmurs of its resemblance to slavery . . . According to Laveaux’s parallel proclamations, this labor was not slavery because it was paid: the cultivators were meant to receive the fourth part of all they produced. Yet Toussaint himself was pleading that this clause of the program was unworkable, for the time being at least, with all the Plaisance Valley laid waste. Under such sharecropping the Cordon de l’Ouest might sustain itself, at best, but could bring in no money for guns or soldiers’ pay. And even on the Plaine du Nord, where the land itself recovered more easily from the devastation, Laveaux’s policy was honored most often in the breach.