by Nick Lake
Now I know better.
Anyway, then la Sirene broke away and turned to the houngan who was holding him or her, and said:
— Water.
The voice had gone all dry and croaky.
The houngan gestured to one of the men standing outside the circle, who picked up the bucket of sea water and tipped it over la Sirene. She made this ah sound that was a bit like when Baron Samedi ate the bullet, only more grateful, more relieved.
— La Sirene, said the houngan, will you take Dread Wilmè into your land under the sea and look after him there?
She made a movement with her hands, graceful, like a dolphin.
— Dread Wilmè is loved by all the lwa, she said.
Her voice was still a woman’s, and you could almost imagine you heard the water in it, the echo of the deep, the whale song.
Almost.
— Of course I will take him, she said. He is a hero. He is Haiti.
Again, the crowd completely lost their shit. I was kind of worried Manman might get pressed to death, but she was dancing with the others, clapping her hands and laughing.
After that, it was quick. The houngan spoke some words, and the two men who had been ridden fell to the ground, just lay there and didn’t get up. He turned to Dread’s other soldiers and gestured to the boat. It must have been planned, cos it happened without many words. The men picked up the boat and carried it to the sea, then they set it on the water and gave it a push so that it drifted out. The houngan lit a stick covered in rags. He didn’t say anything, only tossed it onto the boat, and whoooosh. The little boat went up in this ball of flame, bright like a setting sun on the water, hissing in the rain that was still falling lightly.
The boat was drifting out to sea even as it burned, crackling, hot even from the distance I was at, like, twenty meters, at least. It blazed, and it drew further from the beach, till it started to break apart and fall into the water. Soon there was nothing but a slick on the sea, and a smell everywhere of burned petrol.
Later, some of Dread Wilmè’s men swam out and dived for the pieces of his body that had not burned, and they brought them out of the sea for luck. One of the pieces ended up with Biggie’s houngan – that’s how come Biggie got Dread’s bone dust sprinkled on him, to make him indemne against bullets. But that was after, when everyone else had gone. I didn’t see it, so I don’t know if it was really Dread that Biggie had on him, or if Dread just stayed on the bottom of the sea, became the sand and dirt of the beach.
The man who had been holding me up grasped me under my shoulders and put me back on the ground beside Manman. She looked out, past the people, to the stain that was on the sea.
— Well, I guess he isn’t coming back now, she said.
And you know what I think now? I think she was wrong. I think everything comes back – that’s what’s so fucked up about the universe. Everything comes back, whether you want it to or not, all covered in dead earth and stumbling like a zombi, and you can’t say no to it, cos there’s always time, flowing in and out, and eventually time brings the wreckage of the past up on the beach for other people to find.
Toussaint came back and he was Dread Wilmè, and then he was me.
My sister came back and everything changed.
Everything comes back.
Everything.
Then
There had been no time to call upon the forces encamped at the mountain stronghold in Dondon, so Toussaint had only the hand-picked men who had accompanied him here to Cape Town. This included Jean-Christophe, whom Toussaint had sent ahead to gather the cavalry.
The commissioners had more men, true, but the truce that existed between them and the blacks was built, like much of Haiti, on shaky ground. Toussaint knew that he must needs use his knowledge and his cunning to bring the two forces together in order to repel the French and push them back into the sea from whence they came.
Hours before dawn, he rode into the town with Jean-Christophe back at his side, his other soldiers commanded to wait just outside the gates. The guards balked when they saw him, but he raised a calming hand.
— We are only two, he said. We need to speak with the commissioners. They will be grateful for the news we bring.
— You’re slaves, said one of the guards with a sneer.
— No, said Toussaint. Your masters declared us free. Would you go against their word?
The guards grumbled, but they let Toussaint and Jean-Christophe in, reserving their most aggravated looks for Toussaint, Jean-Christophe being blessed with a countenance that not only inspired trust, but that could move more easily than most between the two worlds of black and white. Toussaint envied him that. He was a handsome one, Jean-Christophe, a fine young gentleman. Toussaint himself was a very ugly man, he knew. Already the men of his army, like his lost wife before them, had taken to calling him the Ogre, as if he were a monster out of a fairy tale. And who knew? Maybe to the whites he was.
He didn’t envy Jean-Christophe his upbringing, though. His mother had been a mambo, a vodou priestess, his father a petit blanc who owned a small parcel of land in the north of the country. From his mother he had acquired a firm know ledge of vodou, and a passing acquaintance with most of the many African tongues spoken on the island. From his father he had inherited pale skin and light eyes, the only indications of his other heritage being a certain curl to his hair, a certain curve to his lip. In his eyes sparkled a lively and insubordinate intelligence – one of the characteristics Toussaint admired in him. The young man’s father had tried to beat this apparent devilry out of him many times; Toussaint had seen the scars.Evidently, it had not worked – Jean-Christophe was as clever as any devil.
They followed narrow, winding streets, working their way up the hill toward the residence of the Commissioner of Haiti. On one corner was a cage and as they passed it monkeys hurled themselves against the bars, screeching at them. Hearing that noise and seeing the sharp teeth in their wide-open mouths, the hate in their wide-open eyes, Toussaint felt his heart stutter in his chest.
Eventually they reached the residence, which sat squat behind low garden walls, bougainvillea and other perfumed flowers growing in great profusion; Toussaint was aware of them more by smell than by sight. The guards on duty stopped them as they drew near.
— What do you want? said one of them from behind a musket.
— I’m here to speak to Brandicourt, said Toussaint.
— To say what?
Toussaint smiled.
— I’ll tell that to him, not to you.
The guard’s whiskers trembled with fury. He took a step forward.
— Insolent nigger! he shouted. I’ll have you killed.
Lights flared on the other side of the garden wall, and a general ruckus broke out. Toussaint saw candles flicker into life behind the windows of the residence, too. Another guard made as if to secure them.
— Leave them, said an imperious voice, the accent unmistakably French.
Brandicourt himself appeared out of the gloom, coming through the garden gate, a ghost in reverse, becoming detail and color and contrast out of the darkness.
— You are Toussaint, are you not? he asked.
Toussaint nodded.
— I have that honor, he said.
— I lost many men to your troops, said Brandicourt. He turned to someone behind him, a woman. The man has a certain low cunning – for a slave, he added.
Toussaint kept his face expressionless, felt Jean-Christophe tense beside him.
— Why have you come? asked the woman. You have your freedom. Do you demand our lives also?
With a faint shock, Toussaint noticed that she was holding a knife, that her husband, too, was armed, holding some kind of pistol. Do they so fear us, he thought, that they would arm themselves against two of us, in their own town, in the middle of the night?
— I’ve come to warn you, that’s all, he said.
— Ah. We have a month to vacate the island, or we all die? Do I have
the measure of it?
It was Brandicourt who spoke this time. He motioned to his guards afterward.
— Seize them, he said. But be careful. There may be some vodou witchery here.
Toussaint held up a hand.
— No. I’m here to tell you that the French will land soldiers before dawn. We advise you to prepare to repel them.
Brandicourt bristled.
— But they wouldn’t –
— Dare? interrupted Toussaint. Yes, they would. I swam out into the bay and saw for myself that each ship carries three hundred men, at least.
The wife drew in a sharp breath. Yet strangely, although she had been roused from her bed by a black man bearing ill tidings, she did not seem afraid.
— For the income that this island generates? she said. Of course they would take it back by force.
— Well, said Brandicourt. Then we’ll welcome them.
His wife laughed, a soft, short sound.
— And what will you say? That we’re sorry we gave away their most valuable possession? That we’re sorry we freed the slaves and declared ourselves a republic? That we wouldn’t allow their envoy on shore? Don’t be so bloody naive. They’ll mount our heads on pikes.
Perhaps Brandicourt had gone pale, but it was hard to tell in the darkness.
— We cannot fight them. Our troops are depleted and –
— I have troops, said Toussaint. They’re camped just outside the town. And you hold two thousand black men in your jail.
Brandicourt snorted at this.
— You can’t honestly believe that I would free criminals in the interest of a single –
— Be quiet, Robert, said the woman.
Toussaint was starting to admire the steel in her voice. She faced him, and he could see the strong line of her brow, the reflection of moonlight in her eyes. There was a scent about her, too – something feminine over and above the minor notes of the midnight flowers.
— Two thousand unarmed men, even freed criminals, won’t last long against crack French troops, she said.
— No, said Toussaint. But I can arm them.
Of weapons, he was well supplied. Many of the properties the slaves had overrun had possessed small arsenals, the better to allow a minority of plantation owners to dominate a much larger population of laborers.
The wife of Robert Brandicourt, Commissioner of Haiti, stepped forward and put a hand on Toussaint’s arm.
— I think you had better come inside, she said.
Deeper into the night, Toussaint ran a soothing hand down the neck of his horse. The white troops of the commission were now stationed further up the hill alongside his own men. He, however, had concealed his horse in a side alley in the warren of streets that led up from the port. Beside him, astride his own horse, was Brandicourt.
— You had better be right about this, said the commissioner.
— Oh, I am, said Toussaint. I have seen the future, and it does not include the French. Besides, if I were wrong, the men would return to the jail.
In the gloom behind them someone laughed at this, and Brandicourt blanched. All two thousand of the previously imprisoned slaves, murderers and rebels, rapists and thieves lay in hiding in the streets around them, armed with machetes and guns.
Toussaint trained his spyglass on the ships, dimly illuminated by the crescent moon. Several rowing boats had detached themselves from the mother vessels. He saw, too, the heads of the soldiers as they swam toward the shore, the whole thing silent as death.
— They come, he said.
It begins, he thought.
He turned to the men behind him, crouching in the muck of the alley. On the other side, under an awning, lay the bodies of three monkeys that had been taken from their cage and snapped at the neck before they could hiss and shriek. Toussaint had to acknowledge that their deaths, after they had frightened him earlier in the night, had afforded him a certain satisfaction.
— You are free, he said to the men in a low voice. He was certain that the message would be conveyed. Yet these French will make you slaves again if they’re allowed to remain on Haitian soil. Make sure that soil runs with their blood.
One of the men sniffed and said:
— I’m not sure this is soil.
The others around him laughed quietly.
— Well, said Toussaint. Even more fitting then.
The men laughed again, and he knew they were with him.
It was his last lucid thought for some time, because soon afterward the first of the French soldiers started to haul themselves onto the dockside, dripping, like invaders from some watery realm. They moved lithe and fast up into the streets, padding soft on bare feet. There were no lights; there would have been no warning had Toussaint not overheard the stratagem.
One of them passed the alley and Toussaint pressed his knees into his horse’s sides and moved forward. The French soldier stopped and stared at him, open-mouthed, the whites of his eyes very bright.
— Wh–what? he stammered.
Toussaint read terror on the man’s face. He placed himself for a moment in the man’s shoes, a trick he had learned many years before.
He imagined himself a Frenchman, come to the West Indies for the first time. He saw himself in a strange town, amidst the smell of tropical flowers and night soil, of sweat and rain, as birds cried overhead. He saw himself thinking that he was safe, that the people in this sprawling fetid town knew nothing of his coming.
Now he saw the looming mass of the land behind the port, all rock and forest. He saw a big ugly black man in front of him on a horse, grinning blacks with weapons behind him, and he remembered the tales of pagan magick told in the Paris streets.
Yes, Toussaint thought the man was entitled to be afraid. He pointed to the soldier and turned to his men.
— Get these intruders off our island, he said.
Then there was carnage.
The soldiers were taken by surprise and were pushed back to the docks by the mass of freed criminals. Bodies fell to the ground and into the still, black vastness of the water, but they were professionals, and the prisoners for the most part untrained, and the French forces quickly rallied. Toussaint and Brandicourt were protected by a contingent who had held back, otherwise they might have been overwhelmed.
— Now, said Toussaint.
Brandicourt maneuvered his horse around, toward the hill. Turning his horse, Toussaint followed Brandicourt back up the alley. He had seen slaughterhouses in his life and had no wish to see another, even if he had commanded it. The soldiers of Toussaint’s own detachment parted to let them through, then he and the commissioner pressed their horses into a canter, making for the higher ground that would allow them to see the night’s work.
As they settled into position at the top of the hill, Brandicourt raised his horn to his lips and blew.
On this signal, the standing army of the commission – what was left of it – and the small army of blacks Toussaint commanded flowed down the hill, horses in front, a cordon of infantry behind. Toussaint thought he could just make out the silhouette of Jean-Christophe, leading the cavalry.
It was from that moment on that the tide turned, and it swept down the hill in a black wave, pushing the French out to sea as piles of bodies.
For a long time after that, it was hard for Toussaint to see what was happening. There was an impression of movement in the shadowy streets, of men running in all directions. Church bells and ship bells alike were ringing out their alarum. Toussaint was sure that down there it must be hell, that the streets would be rivers of blood as the rout continued, but he could see none of it from up here.
Then the fires started.
At first there were just one or two blazes, then whole sections of the town were burning. Soon everywhere seemed to be a bonfire; flames took up half the world that Toussaint could see. He was surprised to find that there were tears in his eyes; they made the conflagration shimmer and blur.
I didn’t want it to burn
, he thought. I didn’t intend that.
From out of the flames came men in their hundreds, walking with a grim triumph in their eyes and in their gait. They were white and black, but mostly black, and they walked together.
— The French are destroyed, said Jean-Christophe, walking up the hill.
— For now, said Toussaint, pleased beyond measure to see the young man alive.
He looked back toward the ships, and as he looked he saw one of them explode: a dull crump and then – as sudden as that – it was just a ball of flame bobbing on the water. He guessed that some of the slaves, or perhaps the whites, had decided to swim out to the ships, as he had done the night before, and set the gunpowder kegs off. Later, he heard that for days and weeks afterward, it was possible to walk from the port out to the ships over French corpses the entire way. He doubted it, but it made a good story. Regardless, the completeness of the victory almost shocked him.
Brandicourt turned to him.
— Thank you, he said. For warning us.
Toussaint inclined his head.
— No. Thank you. For trusting us.
— You must thank my wife for that, said Brandicourt.
I do, thought Toussaint. Believe me, I do.
— Speaking of which, I should rejoin her, said Brandicourt. We need to leave this town before it’s nothing but ashes.
Jean-Christophe, who had been standing at a discreet distance but still in earshot, walked over. Toussaint dismounted from his horse and handed the younger man the reins. Behind them in the bay, another ship turned loudly to flames.
— You have the gratitude of the whites, Jean-Christophe said.
— No, Toussaint replied. They have mine. We have just won the island.
He was sure of it, as sure as he had been of anything. The war was by no means over, but they had just won Haiti’s freedom – as a slave republic, even if Brandicourt didn’t realize it yet. Soon, whether months or years from now – and he was prepared to wait either – there would be no commissioners, only a government of blacks.
War, he understood, was not simply a matter of taking up arms. It was a matter of thinking.