“No,” said Nanon, as if to answer the unspoken question. “I would rather remember him as he was then.”
“You speak of him as if he were dead.”
“Yes,” Nanon said slowly. “I suppose I do.” She stood up and walked over to her dress, which had dried by then, and slowly stooped to lift it, like a burden she was reluctant to resume.
When Nanon’s child was born, Isabelle assisted her as she had promised. The birth was uncomplicated, and Madame Fortier, though older and more experienced in midwifery, stepped back at the last moment, so it was Isabelle who received the bloody infant into her own hands. A boy. She slapped his back to start him crying, as she’d seen others do, then cleaned and dried him all over and swaddled him carefully in soft white cloth. Nanon was insensible; Isabelle passed the baby to Madame Fortier for a moment while she dried her own hands. When she looked again, the older woman seemed to be in the grip of some interior struggle, her hands trembling, her face tightly drawn, so that Isabelle took the infant back at once, and so quickly that she almost snatched him away.
During the next three days, the newborn began to take on the face he would wear through life. His features were very much those of his father’s, and it was plain enough to Isabelle that this father must be Choufleur, rather than Antoine Hébert, though no one spoke openly of the matter. Madame Fortier had none of the affection one might have expected for a grandson. She handled the baby seldom, and whenever she did pick him up, Isabelle had the disturbing impression that Madame Fortier could barely restrain herself from dashing his brains out on the floor.
At the end of three days, Nanon was on her feet again, and Madame Fortier announced her own departure. She and her husband must go, she said, to see to their holdings near Dondon. Here at Vallière, all was now in satisfactorily good order. Salomon had the field workers well in hand and (Madame Fortier implied) the two younger women would know well enough how to manage him.
At this announcement, Nanon merely lowered her head with her usual self-obscuring modesty, but Isabelle found a moment alone with Madame Fortier, just before they left.
“It is only a child,” she said carefully, having chosen her words in advance. “Only a baby—and given to us to make the best we can of him.”
“Is it so?” said Madame Fortier, drawing herself up to such a sharpness that Isabelle quailed, believing for an instant that the other woman had penetrated her own secret.
“A mother may fully give her love,” Madame Fortier said, in a terrible voice. “But there is blood too, and nothing—nothing!—will wash blood away.”
Then she softened ever so lightly. “But perhaps you are right,” she said more quietly. “In any case, I admire your sentiment, though what this child will do for a father, I do not know. I do not say I am leaving forever, though it’s best that I leave now, for a time.”
She stood up, and with her usual stately grace went down from the gallery into the garden. Beyond the open gateway, Fortier was already waiting on the wagon seat. But Madame Fortier paused at the foot of the stairs, and beckoned Isabelle to come down within earshot of her whisper.
“For your sake too, it may be better that I leave now, young woman.”
Inwardly, Isabelle wilted again, though she thought she kept her expression calm.
“You may find that Nanon has small enough experience in certain practical matters,” Madame Fortier said, with a dubious smile. “If you are in trouble, when your time comes, you must send for a woman called Man Jouba.”
“But where?” said Isabelle, who’d grasped her meaning well enough.
“Only say her name. They will bring her, out of the mountains.” Without saying anything more, Madame Fortier glided across the garden, her back faultlessly erect, like a soldier’s, as she stepped up into the wagon.
The management of the plantation now fell into the hands of the two women, which meant that it fell into Isabelle’s. Madame Fortier had judged Nanon correctly, at least to this extent. But Isabelle took up the ledgers where Madame Fortier had laid them down. In the older woman’s hand she found a meticulous record of all events on the plantation: the weather, positions of the stars and phases of the moon, progress of work in the coffee groves and drying sheds, a thorough record of illness, death and birth (not only among the people but for the animals too). Of the new child in the grand’case she had written this: “To the quarteronée woman, Nanon, was born, 6 January 1800, a male child, quarteroné, to be called François.”
There were no more excursions, no larks in the countryside. Not only because of the burden of management, but because Isabelle felt the weight of her pregnancy much more heavily now. In fact she was ill, and full of foreboding. That halcyon day by the waterfall seemed eons away from her now.
One morning at the breakfast table, she felt herself give way, but not till she saw Nanon’s startled face did she look down and see her skirts all stained with blood.
“Now let me die,” she said.
“Oh, what can you mean?” said Nanon, shocked. But she bypassed her own question and called a housemaid to help Isabelle to her bed.
The contractions, convulsions rather, came quickly, then subsided, then came again in viciously stabbing sets. So it went all through the morning, afternoon, into the night and the next day. The child was not descending properly. Isabelle felt that her own body would crush it to a lifeless pulp, and take her with it too. She held the name of the midwife to her like a secret weapon she would not draw. At last she passed from consciousness into fevered dream. It was night again when she awoke, enough to be aware of Nanon dabbing her temples and her lips with a cool cloth. In the light of a candle behind her head, Nanon whispered to her to hold on.
“No,” said Isabelle. “It is better I should die, and the child too.”
“You can’t mean that,” Nanon said to her.
“Oh yes,” said Isabelle. “If you knew the father.”
“No father could merit such a wish. No matter who.”
“It is Joseph Flaville.”
She felt Nanon draw back. For a moment she knew herself abandoned, utterly alone, and she wished she had not spoken. Then Nanon took one of her hands in both of hers, and pressed and rubbed it till Isabelle began to feel a thread of energy returning to her through this contact.
“Even so,” Nanon said. “Even so, we shall find some way.”
“There is no way,” said Isabelle. “From the day it happened I was ruined.”
“There is. You will live for your children already born, Robert and Héloïse.”
Isabelle felt the wetness of her tears against the pillow. “If I live,” she said, “I will ruin them too.”
“Do not say that!” Nanon hissed. “Listen to me. I will not let you go this way. When I was alone, and with child, and helpless, when the whites were killing women of my kind all through the streets of Le Cap, you took me in and saved my life and you saved Paul.”
“But . . .” Isabelle was thinking that she had not taken Nanon in with her whole heart, but had done it at the doctor’s insistence, and that at the time she had partly resented it. But there was no way for her to say such a thing, not now. So she did not, but let Nanon go on massaging her hand, until she began to feel that maybe Nanon was right about everything.
“Man Jouba,” she muttered at last.
“What?” Nanon’s breath was warm and sweet against her ear.
“Send for Man Jouba,” Isabelle said. Then she slipped backward, toppling into the delirium of her pain, and for a long time she knew nothing more.
When she came to herself again, it was night and she was alone. All the house was very quiet. She did not know if it were the same night, but thought it must be at least the next. Nothing in her memory was clear. There had been dreadful pain, which had now abated. The memory of pain was never perfect.
Outdoors, the wind shivered the leaves and branches, and a cool current swirled through her room. Somewhere in the house nearby an infant voice began to wail, bu
t was as quickly muffled by a breast.
She rose, but was stopped for a moment by a thrust of the pain she had forgotten. She bowed over, pressing both hands against the spot, gathering her flattened, slackened belly. It passed, and she straightened and reached for her robe. Fastening it around her, she crossed the hall to the opposite bedchamber. In the orb of light of a single candle, Nanon lay abed, suckling a tiny jet-black infant.
“You see,” she said, as if she’d been expecting Isabelle’s appearance at that moment. “He is already strong. Oh, he is like a little bull.”
“Li foncé anpil,” Isabelle remarked.
“C’est ça,” Nanon agreed. “He is very dark.” She looked up. “He has already needed his strength,” she said. “The cord was wrapped two times around his neck. Without Man Jouba, you would both be dead.”
“Yes,” said Isabelle. “I shall certainly send her a present.” She paused. “I must do it quickly, before my husband learns of this event, and I am murdered.”
“This child will be mine,” Nanon said calmly. “Brother to my François, but you shall name him.”
“Gabriel,” said Isabelle. “Let us call him Gabriel.” She studied the black baby, who pummeled the breast with one hand as he sucked.
“But it is all impossible, this scheme,” Isabelle said. “The servants know, and Madame Fortier . . .”
“Madame Fortier has taken good care to know nothing for certain,” Nanon said. “What she may know, or suppose, she will not tell. I think no one at all understood your condition, before we had reached Dondon?—but if need be, we will say that your child was born dead.” Nanon shook her glossy black hair back over her pillow. “That much is near enough to the truth, besides.”
“But Man Jouba.” Isabelle said. “The servants.”
“Man Jouba has gone back to the mountains, where no one will find her if she does not want to be found. The servants will not speak of it, not to anyone who might harm you.”
“Nanon,” Isabelle said quietly. “What of yourself, and your own situation?”
If a shade crossed Nanon’s face, it did not linger.
“Now that is a thought for another day,” she said. “Tonight I am thinking only of you, and of these two children.”
As if she had signaled him, François began to cry. When Nanon shifted to reach for him, the black infant lost his hold on the breast, slipped down and began to wail.
Isabelle lifted the crying baby and held him to her. He was not comforted by the movement, but howled louder than before. He felt much heavier than the other infant, denser, as if he were entirely carved from the cliff rock of the mountains. Tears were running down her face, and her own milk had started, seeping out through her robe.
“No,” Nanon said. “You must give him up. Give him to me.”
Isabelle obeyed her. She settled Gabriel at Nanon’s other breast, so that he and François could nurse together.
“Marassa yo,” Nanon said with a crooked smile. “You see? They are my twins.”
Isabelle saw. She knew she must not reach for what she saw. She must be grateful for her life and whatever it gave her, for the two children fastened to her friend’s breasts, and the dark hand groping blindly toward the light one.
35
In the late morning, Doctor Hébert came riding up the tattered allée to Habitation Arnaud, yawning and half asleep in the saddle. These last weeks he had been whipsawed all over the country by Toussaint, who needed to be everywhere at once to discourage Rigaudin conspiracies; since the cluster of attempts on his life, Toussaint had also become still more chary than usual of staying too long (more than nine or ten hours) in any one place.
But today Toussaint was on his way to Port-au-Prince (or so he’d claimed, though he might just as well appear somewhere else) while the doctor had been detached from the immediate staff and was traveling now under escort of Joseph Flaville and a small cavalry squadron. They did not hurry. In the fields of the plantation, men were cutting cane and loading it onto ox-drawn wagons. Flaville took a detour and selected a stalk, peeled and tasted it with a critical expression. For the past year, Flaville had had the management of a couple of nearby plantations whose original owners had not made bold to reappear, and so had become a student of the quality of the crop. He chewed and after a moment smiled his approval. He sectioned out a length of cane to distribute among his men, who bit great sweet chunks from their shares and laughed as they rode on through the warm sunshine.
As they came clattering into the main compound, the doctor was roused from his doze and pulled his mare up sharply. A work of construction was afoot, exactly where that shed had been, and Moustique was busy directing it.
“Ki sa y’ap fé?” he inquired of the boy who came out from the stable to take charge of his mount. What are they doing?
“They are raising a church,” the boy told him, with a brilliant grin. One of Claudine’s catechumens, the doctor imagined.
He dismounted, took off his straw hat, and began unconsciously to scratch at his dry scalp as he considered the history of that square of ground. Once it had housed Arnaud’s vicious slave-catching mastiff. Then Claudine had used it to martyr her maid. Now it looked as if Moustique meant to place the very sanctuary of his chapel exactly there. Perhaps it was fitting. Moustique noticed him and waved, with a smile. The doctor wondered how he’d hit on the spot, if someone had told him, or if he had simply been drawn to it somehow. There was a numinosity to places where blood had been shed.
Flaville had also noticed the construction and ridden in a wide ellipse around it, toward the cane mill. The doctor replaced his hat and followed him, on foot. He found Arnaud in the lower level of the mill, supervising the hands as they spooned with their long ladles from the tanks. The two skilled refiners had gone out to meet Flaville, almost as if they had expected him to come.
“What news?” said Arnaud, genially enough, as he wiped his hands on his shirttail.
“Beauvais has left Jacmel,” the doctor said, after a moment’s consideration. There was other news, in fact more urgent, but he was not eager to deliver it.
Arnaud stepped a little nearer, so he could lower his voice. “Has he come over to our side at last?”
“No,” said the doctor. Interesting, he thought, that Arnaud should identify Toussaint’s side as his own. “He’s fled the country, since Roume declared him in rebellion. Apparently he means to go to plead his case in France.”
“Ridiculous.” Arnaud walked out from under the roof’s overhang and spat on the ground. “He was a fool to think he could conserve his neutrality in such a situation.”
“Oh, Beauvais is a man of honor,” the doctor said. “One might say, meanwhile, that his conscience has given him a twisted path to follow.” He cleared his throat. “His men are very discontented with him, according to the spies.”
“So Jacmel will come over.”
“Unfortunately, no. Jacmel has declared for Rigaud and set in for a siege. I’m not sure who commands there now, perhaps Pétion.”
Arnaud grimaced. “The man is capable.”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “But gravely outnumbered all the same. Dessalines has the town completely encircled by land, and Toussaint hopes for help from the Americans at sea.”
“That’s something,” Arnaud said.
“It may be a great deal. Rigaud was ill advised to send his corsairs against the American merchantmen.”
“Let’s have a drink on it, then.”
“Willingly.”
Somewhat to the doctor’s surprise, Arnaud began walking away from the grand’case. He followed, along a rocky trail, toward the invisible rippling of a spring. Yellow butterflies flickered around the shoots of red ginger at their feet. The doctor began to smell smoke, and fermentation. They turned a bend in the trail and came in view of a rectangular open shed covering a fire, a cauldron, hood and coil. An old women tended the cauldron, using wooden implements strapped to the stumps of her hands. She did not look at them
.
Arnaud lifted a bottle from the coil’s tip and in the same motion replaced it with a long-necked gourd. He drank and offered the bottle to the doctor. The rum was clear, thick, extremely strong.
“You have made great strides here since my last visit,” the doctor said cheerfully. He glanced sidelong at the woman who keeled the great kettle over the fire.
“We make every effort,” Arnaud said. They took another drink apiece and then they returned in the direction of the mill.
It was the hour of midday repose. Flaville had gone off, with his men, to one of the neighboring plantations. The doctor checked on his mare in the stable, drank a mouthful of water, and found himself a hammock strung in a grove beyond the grand’case.
The shadows were long when he awoke, and he could hear the voices of children singing at Claudine’s little school. He rolled out of the hammock, pulled on his boots, and strolled idly toward the sound. A girl’s voice called out a greeting; he turned, still groggy with his sleep, and saw Fontelle and Paulette under the roof of the kitchen ajoupa, turning a young pig on a spit.
During what remained of the day, he heard the recitation of Claudine’s students, and inspected the infirmary, where all seemed to have gone smoothly since his last call there. Paulette, whose skills he knew, had taken over some of the duties of nursing, but under the gentler regime there was less injury and illness for her to see to. After darkness had fallen, they all gathered in the main room of the grand’case to eat. The assembly was sizable, including Cléo, Fontelle, Moustique and his three sisters; a long puncheon table had been knocked together to provide places for them all. Before falling to, they all joined hands while Moustique muttered a mostly inaudible prayer.
The food was good, and plentiful: rice and beans and fried plantain, a piquant sauce with soft green cashews to complement the pork. There was little conversation. At Fontelle’s glance or the flick of her finger, one or another of her daughters would rise to refill platters or refresh drinks. In former times, the doctor reflected privately, Arnaud would not conceivably have allowed any colored person to sit down at his table—not even Cléo, though she had certainly shared his bed, in the bad old days. Now all of them, even Claudine, seemed entirely at ease in their positions. The doctor’s only discomfort was that he had been sent to interrupt this harmony.
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