by Nick Lake
Brunet nodded.
— As am I, he said.
He introduced his wife, who smiled demurely when Toussaint kissed her on the hand and did not shrink at all from contact with his negro lips. He appreciated this gesture, as not all well-bred white ladies behaved so.
— Now, please, do enter, said Brunet. We’ll have some refreshments.
Toussaint went first, Isaac behind him. The interior was cool and dim, the light filtered by gauze curtains. A glass and brass chandelier hung above a leather-topped desk, several comfortable armchairs, a chaise longue, and a beautifully polished floor. The room was tastefully decorated in the colonial tradition, but was markedly different from many Toussaint had seen in that it hadn’t been defaced, burned, or looted. The master here must have been good to his slaves to see his property respected in this way.
Madame Brunet excused herself, saying she felt that politics were best left to men. Toussaint didn’t necessarily agree, but he nodded politely and bowed as she left the room.
They chatted idly for some minutes, sizing one another up, then Brunet made a slight noise of irritation.
— The servants are taking their time with the wine I ordered, he said. I’ll just check on it.
He stepped from the room.
A moment later the door opened and a dozen men entered, armed with pistols and swords. They trained the guns on Toussaint. For a moment – just a moment – he didn’t understand, then a heaviness settled on his heart.
I wonder if they think me some kind of black magician, he thought, that I should require so many men to restrain me.
Isaac turned to him in bewilderment.
— Father . . . he stammered. What are they doing?
— What do you think they’re doing? said Toussaint.
Paris had provided his son with an excellent academic education, but in many ways it had taught him nothing.Toussaint looked into his son’s eyes, where he saw something of himself and was glad. He pushed Isaac behind him and drew his saber to face the twelve men.
Yes, perhaps this was his destiny.
The door opened again and Brunet stood there, a sad look on his face.
— Put away the sword, Governor, he said. We’re not here to kill you, but to arrest you for treason. You won’t be harmed. I promise you that, nor your son.
Toussaint laughed.
— You promise?
Brunet had just enough grace to look ashamed.
— I apologize for the ruse, he said. It was the only way to resolve the situation without bloodshed.
— The situation being the inconvenience of my wishing Haiti to be free?
Brunet ignored that, instead gesturing to the sword in Toussaint’s hand.
— Lower that, he ordered.
Sighing, Toussaint complied.
— Just one thing, said Toussaint, please, before you restrain me.
— Yes? said Brunet.
Toussaint moved his hand toward his trousers and the soldiers aimed their guns at him, eyes narrow, fingers white on triggers.
— Don’t shoot, he said. Don’t shoot.
Toussaint held one hand up in front of him as if it could stop a bullet if one came, and reached very slowly into his pocket. He drew out the pwen and handed it to Isaac, his movements as exaggerated as mime so that the soldiers would see he wasn’t producing some hidden weapon.
— What’s that? said Isaac, who had been educated in Paris, and who had never fought anyone in his life, nor been whipped, nor stood in a swamp as a houngan danced and beat his drum.
— A pwen. It contains the spirit of a lwa – a lwa of war, I believe. It belonged to Boukman and now it belongs to you. It . . . It’s Haiti.
Toussaint found that there were tears in his eyes. Isaac looked at him like he was mad, but he took the stone.
Toussaint nodded to Brunet to indicate that he was ready.
The men rushed forward and tied his arms behind his back. They marched him from the house and into a carriage.
They’re taking me to Cape Town, he thought.
But they didn’t take him there. They proceeded straight to the coast and, separating him from Isaac, pushed him into a boat, then rowed him out to a frigate anchored offshore. A gentle breeze carried to him the scent of the land – spice and earth and sugar – but the scent grew fainter and fainter as it was drowned in salt. Then he could smell only the sea, which was the smell of death to him because the sea was everything that lay beyond Haiti, and Haiti was life.
It would have been kinder to shoot me, he thought.
Night had fallen and, as he listened to the clapotis of the sea against the wood of the rowing boat, Toussaint was reminded of that night when he and Jean-Christophe had swum out to the French ships. We should have burned them.
As soon as he was hauled on board he heard the heavy metallic rattle of the anchor being pulled up, and he knew he had lost. Haiti was lost, and he would never see her again. He felt the motion of the ship and realized that he was leaving the island the same way his father had come to it – over the ocean. For the first time he understood why vodou believed the dead to rest under the sea, for the narrative of the world was one of exodus – from the womb, from Eden – and return. The slaves had come to Haiti by the sea, and it seemed that it was to the sea that they were destined to return.
He had been denied even a porthole, as he was locked in a cargo hold, and he wept to know that they had taken his country from him. Still, he refused to give up hope. He dried his tears and straightened his back to show that he had not been broken. In the darkness, he thought about death because he knew that was what awaited him. He knew that they could never truly take Haiti from him, because in death he would know those he had lost once again, would speak with them and hold them again. In killing him, the French would be returning him to his ancestors, to his wife, would in some sense be giving him what he wanted.
He thought about the Rapture, the moment when all the dead would rise up to heaven together. His father had taught him that this event would occur when Jesus returned to the earth, perhaps in ten years, perhaps in ten thousand. Then all death would be undone and all calamities reversed in a single stroke. It had always seemed a remarkable idea to Toussaint. He pictured the drowned walking up from the bottom of the sea, pirates and the navy alike, their skeletons barnacled and clothed in seaweed, to join the general drift up to heaven, as the gravity of the dead reversed itself. He saw graves open and spill their contents upward; he saw battlefields scatter into the air in a clatter of bones and armor.
But this version was wrong, he understood now. The dead did not have to wait for some unknown day for their reunions. Bois Caiman and the stone had taught Toussaint that the version presented in vodou was closer to the truth, that people were always traveling to death, always accompanying Baron Samedi and la Sirene to the land under the sea to meet their missed ones there. Death was a constant welcoming, with those already dead always waiting, and a perpetual reunion. Because what, otherwise, could come after? Once the Rapture is done, what then? Then there would be nothing but stillness, and the world abhors stillness.
No, he thought. There is no stillness, not now, not ever. There is another version. A true version.
Death will continue. There will be no triumphant ending with souls ascending through the sky, no waiting for a reunion that might only happen after ten thousand years. There will be a steady and endless stream of the dead, filling the land under the sea that can never be filled.
But this is not sad.
This is beautiful.
The beauty of this is that when you die there will always be someone waiting, there will always be those you have lost, standing there, the curve of their back and the stance of their feet so familiar. There will always be someone there, saying:
— We have waited so long. It is so good to see you. Come here.
Come here.
Now
I have to tell you the rest quickly now, cos it’s necessary that I die so
on. I don’t want to, but the time has come, I sense it. I was trying to reach the light, so I was hauling on a block – at least, I think it was a block – and something came free. There was a great creaking noise and then it fell down on me, crushing me. I think my leg’s broken. It doesn’t matter, really. I’ll starve or die of thirst soon anyway.
Manman was right. I was born in darkness, and I will die in darkness. I can’t even see the crack of light anymore, cos it was blocked by the thing that fell down.
Now you know why I want to throw my story behind me, like rubble. Now you know why I don’t want it anymore. I’m a killer and I shot so many times I made a goal in the end, and I got what was coming to me. I deserve all this, I realize that. Still, the feeling I had when I knew that Biggie was one of the men who killed Papa, when I realized it was Route 9 all along, that was like something tearing inside me, like I was giving birth to something, but the only thing that can come out of me is misery and darkness.
Tintin came to visit me in the hospital, I told you that. I didn’t explain anything. I just listened to him talk his stupid hip-hop talk and then I pretended to be asleep, so he would leave. He brought me a CD walkman and some CDs. One of them was Biggie rapping about air strikes and Tec-9s, and one was of Biggie Smalls saying he was ready to die, and I thought, yeah, I know the feeling. In the end, I can’t bring myself to hate Biggie, not exactly – he’s a chimère, what did I expect? – but I don’t want to listen to his music, either, so when Tintin was gone I shoved the CDs away from me.
Tintin will end up leading Route 9, I bet. Biggie’s dead, and so is Mickey. Tintin will say that he was a hero that night in Boston; he’ll talk it up so he didn’t run away. I know this. I don’t care, though. Let him have his precious Route 9. It’ll still end in a hail of bullets, like the rap songs say.
Stéphanie came to visit me, too. She sat down on the edge of my bed, though I didn’t want her to. She had been crying; I could see the redness around her eyes.
— They don’t want to give Biggie a funeral, she said. They think it would become a pretext for violence in the Site. After what they did, with their guns!
She started to cry. I felt like I should put an arm around her or something, but I didn’t. She might have wanted to help the Site at the beginning, but she got seduced by Biggie and his gangster lifestyle, and all that went out the window. She may have been UN, but she wasn’t much more than a girl, twenty-five at the oldest. Some people like that, they’re drawn to the power of guns, even if they say they only want to save people.
— Why did they do that? I asked her. MINUSTAH. Why did they kill him and the others?
— They think they’re helping, she said. They think they’re helping to keep the Site free of crime.
— If they want to do that, they should pay for some schools, create jobs. Then people wouldn’t want drugs.
Shit, I thought. I sound like Biggie.
— I agree, said Stéphanie. I tell them that, but they don’t listen to me. Sometimes when you have a gun in your hand it starts to do your thinking for you.
I knew what she meant. Sometimes when I was holding a gun it was like the gun wanted to kill people, not me. Never me.
That was a lie I just told you. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’d lie. You know perfectly well that I’ve wanted to kill people in my time, and that I’ve done it, too.
Stéphanie didn’t stay for long. We didn’t have a lot to talk about. I asked her what she’d do with her baby. I said I knew from Biggie that she was ansent, and I could see it, too, from the way she held her hand on her belly, even if it wasn’t showing yet.
— I’m going back to France, she said. To Lille. I don’t want my baby growing up here.
I told her that was a good idea. I told her I wouldn’t want my baby to grow up here, either, if I had one. She smiled at that. Soon after, she left. She said she’d visit again.
She didn’t.
I hope she got out alive. I hope the earthquake didn’t bury her and Biggie’s baby. Since I’m already confessing, though, I might as well tell you that part of me wouldn’t mind if his baby was never born. I understand Biggie and I don’t hate him, but that doesn’t mean I forgive him.
Finally, my manman came to visit.
She sat down in the plastic chair beside my bed and she cried. Then she asked me what had happened. I told her everything I’ve told you – I told her the whole story. The only part I left out was that it was Dread who ordered Papa’s death, cos I didn’t think she could stand to know that. At the end she wasn’t crying, but I think that was only cos she had no tears left to cry. Then she stood up from her chair and she leaned over me.
— I did this, she said. I blamed you when you joined Biggie and his gang, but I was the one who did it.
— No, you didn’t, Manman, I said. It was me. I should have listened to you.
She sobbed.
— No, it was listening to me that got you into this mess, she said. You should never have listened to me.
— Why, Manman?
She sat back down and she looked away from me, at the wall. Then there was, like, a click in my mind, and I could see why in the grief of her eyes. I could see what she was about to tell me and I wished I could stop time, like it stopped when I was down by the sea, looking at Marguerite, or the girl who seemed to be Marguerite. But time just kept on going; I could hear it being cut into pieces by the clock on the wall. I couldn’t make it stop.
Manman rubbed at her eyes and she looked over to the corner of the room. This fly was there, buzzing and buzzing against the window, not realizing it was glass it was trying to get through and that it was trapped.
I felt like that fly.
No. I wished I could be that fly; at least it would die soon, and its imprisonment would be over. I remember the sun was bright against the window, making it look like a painting of a blaze, an opening into hell.
— Marguerite – began Manman.
— No, I said. No.
I didn’t want her to tell me. I knew what she was going to say and I didn’t want to hear it. I tried to put my hands on my ears, but Manman wouldn’t stop and she pulled them away.
— They killed her that night, my manman said. Marguerite. I lied to you about it. When I went out into the street after they’d all gone . . . I didn’t see her at first, it was so dark. When I saw . . . something broke inside my mind. I told you she was alive cos I wanted you to have hope. It was something I didn’t have anymore, but I wanted you to have it.
I had known it already, but when Manman said it, something broke inside me and I stopped being me, stopped being a person.
I tried to breathe, but it seemed like all the air in the room had gone, and I was in a void. Good, I thought. At least then I’ll die.
But I didn’t die.
My heart kept up an offbeat rhythm in my chest, kept making its stupid music. At last, with a raw sound, air flooded back into my lungs.
— But . . . the girl . . . she didn’t shoot me, down by the sea.
— Someone else, said Manman. Someone who didn’t want to kill you. There are people like that, you know – even in the Site.
I stared at her. She had broken my heart, and part of me wanted to break hers. Part of me wanted to tell her:
— Manman, did you know that it was Dread who killed Papa? Did you know that when you moved to Solèy 19, you moved into the house of your husband’s killer and named it your own?
But I didn’t tell her. I didn’t really want to hurt her, even now. Let her think that Papa died cos we lived in no man’s land, not cos Aristide and his cronies found him a nuisance. Let her go on believing the world was a place where random bad things happened, not a place where people – boys – did terrible things just cos they could.
Manman reached into her pocket, and before she even took out her hand I knew what would be in it. I knew what she was trying to give me, and I knew that if I took it, it would be like I was absolving her, so when she tried to han
d me Marguerite’s half of the necklace, I closed my fist against it, refused to take it, and crossed my arms over my chest.
— You should take it, said Manman. You could put the pieces of the heart back together.
— No, I can’t, I said. She’s dead. You took the necklace – you keep it.
— I’m sorry, said Manman. I’m so sorry.
I closed my eyes.
— Leave, please, I said.
Sometime after that, everything fell down.
Then
When Toussaint first arrived, his cell had a window and through it he could see the River Doubs and the Besançon road. He could see mountains with snow on them, something he had never seen in Haiti. It was a sight that filled his heart with fear – that, and the cliffs and precipices of this god forsaken land in the alpine region of France.
Initially, despite being imprisoned, Toussaint was treated with respect. He was permitted paper and a pen; he was encouraged to write, in fact. He should have been suspicious about that, but he retained the foolish conviction that he would be allowed a trial. He conversed with the director of the prison, a civilized man, and received from him books and plays to read, as well as news of the outside world. Once, this man, Bresse, brought him a certain play by Alphonse de Lamartine that had been published and performed in Paris. It dramatized Toussaint’s life, telling the story of his struggle in rhyming monologue without regard for truth or even likelihood.
He read the play, shivering at his high window, with amusement and amazement. Hardly a word was true. In it, he was a Greek god, fierce in countenance and in battle, an avatar of furious vengeance, determined to wreak murder on the slavers. He was uneducated and single of purpose. There was no mention of his supervision of agriculture, his efforts to ensure his people were always fed, or of his sudden acquisition of the ability to read and write and make maps. One of the play’s more outlandish fictions was that he had buried a fortune in the mountains of the interior, a cache of gold, silver, and jewelry taken from the plantation owners, when Toussaint had always taken pains to restore the slavers’ possessions to them. He considered writing to the playwright to inform him of his mistakes, but he did not.