I went to the last zombi, who had been, in his life, Chacha Godard. He moved away as I came near, moving a step for each step of mine, keeping our distance equal, as if an invisible stake was lashed between us. Perhaps it was so, for I had seen Chacha put into the ground, a corpse, and seen his body raised again, by Biassou, and made to move and to labor. I had wanted to see all those things at that time, but afterward there was nothing I could do to scrape the sight off my eyes.
Biassou had been gone for a long time now. He was supposed to have been killed in Florida. But still all this went on without him, and maybe it would take more than a handful of salt to undo it.
When Chacha struck the wall of the barracoon, he could not go backward anymore, and so I closed the distance. When I lifted my hand with the salt, his eyes rolled white, and his head whipped back and forth like the head of a panicked horse. He bit me when I forced the salt between his jaws, though not enough to break the skin. My hand jerked back, spilling salt upon the ground, but enough had passed his lips. His jaw worked and his body trembled. On the wet red of his lower lip, I saw the pieces of salt dissolving. Light came into his eyes then, and recognition, but no joy.
He turned from the wall, away from me, and began walking down toward the water. It was not the stiff zombi walk any longer. His hips and his shoulders swung with his step now, but still he walked very steadily, and his head and his eyes were fixed. Without breaking his pace, he passed the broken longboats on the shore and walked into the shallow surf, knee-deep, waist-deep, deeper. The sun was on the water, so bright one could hardly bear to look, and his head very black against it. A few people were quietly watching him, but many others were busy eating and drinking rum and so noticed nothing. Chacha kept walking into that bright mirror surface until the water sealed itself above his head.
At that moment a women on the beach was taken by Erzulie, and she began to sway and sing.
Tout kò-m se lò
Tout kò-m se lò
Tout kò-m se lò
Ezili sòti nan lamè-a
Tout kò-m se lò . . .
Erzulie of the Waters. People by the cookfire began to sway and clap their hands. They took up the singing too, though they had not seen what had begun it. They had not seen Chacha Godard go beneath the waters, but still they sang.
All my body is gold
All my body is gold
All my body is gold
Ezili comes out of the ocean
All my body is gold . . .
There was nothing to see in the ocean any longer, only the bright, tight surface of the water, like a sheet of hammered brass.
39
At a small mahogany secretary in his bedroom at the Governor’s Residence in Le Cap, Toussaint sat writing, alone for once. He wrote in his own hand, for the matter was unsuitable for dictation. The high arched wooden doors had been opened onto the balcony by the servant who had brought in his coffee, so that daylight illuminated his hand and his page. It was early in the morning, still cool, and a small moist breeze moved through the garden.
“My dear sons, Placide and Isaac,” he wrote, “I salute you from the country of your birth, your nation—” He stopped and blotted out the last phrase, “your nation,” so heavily it was in no way legible. “May this letter find you healthy and industrious in the bosom of our great Republic, France.”
He dipped his pen and lifted it from the well, tilting the nib for the excess to run off. Abstractedly he looked out over the balcony rail. In the sun-gilded garden, a servant was slowly sweeping up dried curls of leaves that had been blown down from the trees in the night.
“I wish always that both of you should make good use of the opportunity I must still deny myself, to live among the deepest roots of our fatherland, which is France.” This statement was flawless, from the point of the view of the censors and spies who would certainly be reading it before (most likely) or after it reached the addressees.
“But duty, and the work I owe the nation, retain me here in Saint Domingue. I do not know what you have heard of our recent civil war. Nor is it right or necessary that you should know too much of that, although I hope and expect that you will profit from your schoolmasters’ instruction in the art of war, that you will read and study Clausewitz and the other writers on this subject, and with your full attention.”
The last quarter-inch of coffee in his cup had gone cold, but there was still a vestige of warmth in the cup on the tray. He poured and stirred in sugar, but forgot to taste the mixture, as the next phrase came to him. “Suffice it to say that the civil war which has just ended here, with victory to your old father’s arms, has proved (if further proof were needed) that no conflict is more bitter than strife between brothers. As if the closer the kinship, the uglier and more ruinous the quarrel.”
A wash of sadness spilled over him, unexpected. This was the very thought, if not the words, of Moyse. But that predicament, at the moment, did not bear thinking of. He must concentrate on another sadness—five years since he had seen his older boys. What did he know of them now? They wrote to him often enough, it was true. Their letters were correctly spelled, increasingly elegant in their penmanship and even in their style, and thoroughly unrevealing. The differences between the boys were flattened by this correspondence. Isaac, though the younger, was the bolder, more impetuous, braver (perhaps), certainly more foolhardy. Tête bœuf, Toussaint had called him formerly, bullhead, with a rap of his knuckles on the boy’s hard skull, and not without a certain admiring recognition. Yet Placide, more hesitant, cautious, yielding in his manner, had also the greater capability, Toussaint believed. In Placide’s instinct for self-effacement, he saw something of himself. Beneath those currents of elusiveness might be a tenacity greater than Isaac’s. Or so it had seemed at the time of their departure. But what if the differences between the boys had really been rubbed away by their education? In the old days, before the Revolution in France, mulatto children sent for their education there had been neatly tapped into the mold of French chevaliers, until little remained of them but a set of borrowed morals and manners and assumptions which they did not realize would be useless, even harmful to them, when they returned to the colony . . . Lowering his pen to the paper, Toussaint glided into a Biblical homily, as smoothly as he might have done if the boys had actually been in his presence.
“I trust you remember the story of Jacob and Esau, which we read many times in our old cabin at Bréda when you were very small. How Jacob through his deception stole the blessing and the birthright of his brother, disguising himself in the rough skin of a beast.”
His thought wandered. Had Rigaud reached Paris, had he begun his intrigues there? On this subject, Toussaint’s intelligencers had given no report.
“Be always honest, practice no deception, in your dealings with the world, but especially with one another. No matter what skin you are given to wear, be true to yourself, beneath it.”
There. That was a nice piece of doubling. The censor could find nothing objectionable in this sermonette, but the message, the pwen, would fly past to reach, at least, Placide.
“I am pleased to tell you that peace and prosperity reign from one end of our colony to the other. Those disturbances you knew when you were small are at an end, once and for all. And how eagerly your mother and I look forward to your return!”
He stopped, bathed in a bitterness like gall. It was not so very long since he had actually tried to get the boys back. He had sent Huin, the French general whom he’d trusted with so many delicate negotiations, on a secret mission to spirit them out of their college and across the English Channel, where Maitland was waiting to receive them—under the protection of the entire British navy. Both boys, or at the least, Placide . . . but Huin had found no opportunity. Toussaint had felt himself suspected, if not detected outright in the scheme. And a failed attempt would have spoiled everything.
“But it is not for us to fix the day or the hour for that delightful event,” he wrote doggedly. “Yo
ur parents must follow duty rather than desire, and you must complete your education thoroughly, for your country will have need of your most skillful services, when finally you do return.
“Your brother, Saint-Jean, is well and sends his greetings. Your mother sends her kisses, and I mine.”
He signed, with the flourishing backward loop enclosing the customary three dots, lifted the sheet and flagged it in the air to dry the ink.
The anteroom to the private office in Government House had been furnished with a pair of tables so as to become, temporarily, a secretaries’ suite. There the doctor, Riau, Pascal, and several other scribes labored over fair copies of the Constitution which Toussaint had recently engineered for Saint Domingue. Riau worked impassively, and the doctor envied his concentration—letter by letter, leaf by leaf. In such a task it was better not to see the forest for the trees. As for himself, if he winced at some especially terrifying clause, he was apt to drop a blot and spoil his page. Pascal, across the table, had gnawed his thumb to such a miserable state that the wound drew flies.
The door opened, and Toussaint walked in, alone, wearing his ordinary undecorated uniform, plumed bicorne in his hand, his head bound up in yellow madras. There was an excited burr of petitioners in the corridor (for the time being they were not admitted even to the anteroom), but Toussaint shut the door and cut it off. He circled the tables, looking over the shoulder of one scribe, then another, humming noncommittally. When he came to the doctor, he tapped him on the sleeve and beckoned. The doctor rose and followed him into the inner cabinet.
Toussaint produced a folded paper from inside his coat and held it out. “A fair copy only,” he said, “there is no need to adjust the phrasing.” His hand covered a rather ingenuine cough. “Of course you will make sure of the spelling.”
“Of course.”
The letter came unfolded as the doctor accepted into his hand, and he caught a glimpse of Toussaint’s broken orthography, sépa pou nou precisé lajour ni leure pou . . . Fluent as Toussaint was in his language—he knew how to word the subtleties of his thought—his spelling was strictly phonetic; perhaps it had even worsened somewhat since his use of secretaries had increased. He wrote to his sons in his own hand, but always required a fair copy to be made—discreetly—lest his poor orthography embarrass him before the young collegians. The doctor was familiar with this work, and was rather flattered to be given it. He had mastered Toussaint’s odd renderings to the point that he hardly ever needed to ask for a clarification of a word.
He sat down at the place Toussaint indicated—this task would not be performed in the anteroom—arranged a fresh sheet beside Toussaint’s creased paper, and began the corrected copy. Toussaint pushed open the window behind his own desk. The cry of a crow came in with a wave of warm air, and the voices of carters encouraging one another beyond the wall.
The doctor wrote carefully. He was rather pleased to have been relieved of the Constitution for a time. The document had been approved by a committee of men whom all observers thought reduced to puppets. Its main thrust was to assign near-absolute powers to Toussaint Louverture, for the duration of his life, along with the right to appoint his successor. Who would perhaps be one of those sons to whom Toussaint had written today.
A tap on the door, and Riau presented himself, a sheaf of papers in his hand. He murmured that the Constitution was ready for the printer. The doctor felt himself begin to flinch, and he laid down his pen.
“Yes,” said Toussaint. “Send it down.”
Riau saluted and turned from the door, which Toussaint closed. The doctor, feeling that his tremor had passed, picked up the pen and went on writing. Before Toussaint could resume his seat, another tap came on the door. Pascal, announcing the arrival of Colonel Vincent.
“Yes,” said Toussaint, in the same tone as before, as Pascal gnawed anxiously at the edge of his thumb’s wound. “Let him come in.”
Vincent closed the door behind him and turned to face the desk, shaking his head ruefully. “General,” he began, “is there any way that I can dissuade you from this document you have prepared?”
“I think not,” Toussaint told him. “For it is not my doing, but the work of the Assembly.”
“The Assembly!” Vincent blurted out. “Raimond, Borgella—forgive me, General, I make no such accusation myself, but the men of the Assembly are perceived to be completely in your thrall, and that perception is likely to continue in France. Observe, this constitution gives you powers that a king might envy—might have envied even in the days before the Revolution. You have sole power to propose all laws, to conduct all enforcement, to bind and to loose—and this for the duration of your life? In effect, it is a declaration of independence.”
“It is no such thing,” Toussaint said quietly.
“How not?” said Vincent. “Sir, you assume to yourself every power of the state, save that to negotiate independently with foreign governments—which in truth you have done already, with England and the North American Republic—”
“Special laws.” Toussaint raised his voice slightly, and moved to the edge of his seat. “The First Consul has himself declared the need for special laws to govern the colonies. The Assembly has drafted special laws to present for his approval. We are responding to the need he has . . . indicated.”
Vincent took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “If it is approval you sincerely seek,” he said, “you would do better not to put this constitution into effect before approval has been obtained.”
The doctor, though he could not quite render himself deaf, felt that he was approaching what he’d imagined Riau’s state of mind to be: he looked no farther than the lines he must draw to make one letter, connect it to another letter to form a word. One word after another. In this way he was able to continue copying without a fault. When he had finished the copy, he would be able to leave the room, perhaps free to leave the building. Nanon and the children were waiting for him at the Cigny house.
Toussaint relaxed against the back of his chair, and set the tips of his long fingers together. “If the First Consul is uncertain of my Constitution,” he said, “he will send out commissioners to negotiate with me.”
“Say rather that he should send ambassadors,” Vincent said. “As if to treat with a foreign power.”
“Colonel Vincent,” Toussaint said. “You of all people know how deep and abiding is my loyalty to France. I have fought and bled on many battlefields to conserve this colony for the French Republic. In taking command of the island’s eastern part, I have more than doubled the territory belonging to France. I have restored peace, and a measure of prosperity—there will be more to follow. My Constitution is meant to do no more than to consolidate these gains—to France’s benefit. All this you have seen with your own eyes.”
Vincent opened his mouth, but no word emerged.
“Colonel, you know my heart, and my intention must be clear to you. I ask you to bring my Constitution before the First Consul and present it to him as I designed it—my ultimate service to the French Republic.”
Vincent swallowed a mouthful of air, gasping like a fish hooked out of the water. “Of course,” he said. “I shall do my best to satisfy your wish. But—”
“Excellent,” said Toussaint, with his smile unconcealed for once. The teeth were uneven in his jaw. He disconnected his fingertips and spread his palms on the table. “With you as my emissary, I need fear no misunderstanding,” he said. “Only, your departure may be slightly delayed, until the Constitution has come back from the printer.”
“You have ordered it printed?” Vincent blanched. “General, to have it printed and promulgated before its approval—” With a sag of his shoulders, he cut himself off.
By dint of a massive effort of concentration, the doctor had completed his copy. He swiveled on his stool and presented it wordlessly to Toussaint, who spread it on the desk and signed it with his usual triple-dotted flourish. Folding the letter in three, Toussaint applied a wax seal a
nd held it toward Vincent.
“I venture to add this private mission to your public one,” he said. “A letter to my sons. And in this affair as in the other, I trust you absolutely.”
Vincent clicked his heels and bowed. “I shall endeavor to be worthy of your trust.”
With Moustique, Marie-Noelle, and Riau, the doctor walked into the Place Clugny. At first light the square was nearly empty, though a few of the market women had already begun to appear, beginning to furnish their stalls. One tall and stately woman with a basket of soursops balanced on her head, another leading a donkey with panniers of green oranges . . . Marie-Noelle’s little son, called Jean-Baptiste, came trotting along behind the others. The dawn breeze coming from the sea ruffled the leaves of the figuiers planted round the edges of the square.
Moustique stopped, to the left of the central fountain, and handed Jean-Baptiste the gourd of water he had carried from the hunfor.
“Alé,” he said.
The boy looked up at him, quizzical. He had a sweet, milk-chocolate colored face. His stomach protruded slightly under his shirt.
Moustique nodded. The boy moved in a leftward circle, pouring out the water till the gourd was empty and a damp ring in the dust had closed upon itself. He looked up, smiling, dangling the gourd.
“Poukisa n’ap fé konsa?” he said. Why do we do like this?
The doctor felt the quiet of attention of the market women who had continued to drift into the square while the child performed this small ceremony of remembrance. He did not look at them, but he felt their eyes.
“For the spirit of your grandfather,” Moustique said. “He was killed here by the blancs, right on this spot.”
“But my grandfather was a blanc.”
Moustique’s face screwed up, then relaxed and cleared. “It is so,” he said, going down on one knee beside the boy. “Still the other blancs killed him. He was a priest of God, an innocent man, and a martyr.”
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