by Ferenc Máté
The priest lowered the tea box to the ground and sat heavily on it, exhausted from the climb and from the madness of the world.
“How did he die?” he asked, and shook his head as if he didn’t really want to hear.
“Joya’s lover killed him.”
“Who?”
“Her lover. The Frenchman.”
“What Frenchman? There’s no Frenchman on the island except Testard.”
“There is now,” Nello said.
“Lord help us,” the priest said. “This is a slaughterhouse. Where is Ki’i?” he asked, his voice full of apprehension.
“We’re trying to find him,” Lil’bit said.
“I DON’T LIKE THIS PLACE,” Lil’bit said, but kept leading them down the curving path to the lagoon. The path fell steep with switchbacks to the shore, where the shack on stilts threw a shadow over the water.
Darina followed her without a sound. She was walking, stumbling, no longer from strength or determination, but simply couldn’t bring herself to stop.
She had over the years pictured, almost daily, the moment when she would again hold her brother in her arms: the tears, the sighs. And she saw a thousand times the fire in his eyes as they clutched each other, speaking with so much to say, about the long years they’d lived without each other—in body only, because in heart and mind . . . But now she couldn’t think of anything at all; except the child. I’d like to see the child, she thought. The child with his blood . . . my blood in it. Our blood. The other woman was only . . . As for him, she thought. For him . . . A peal of laughter rent the air. It came on the sea breeze and echoed from the bluffs. She stopped and listened, but no laughter came again. She pushed Lil’bit aside and hurtled down the path, sliding on the blood-red soil, losing her footing, falling, and uttering a quick shriek not of pain but of surprise. Then she arrested her fall against a bush, pushed herself free, and went on down again.
Nello and Lil’bit stopped. “She doesn’t need us,” Lil’bit said.
“She doesn’t need anyone,” Nello said. Then he leaned on the rifle and said no more.
Lil’bit’s shoulders dropped; her face was soft with calm. She smiled at Nello, looked down at his bandaged leg, his big hands resting, leaning on the rifle, then back up at his grizzled face, his tired, unguarded eyes. “I’m hungry,” she said.
She stepped off the path into the tangled scrub, twisted two mangoes from their stems, and came back peeling the hard skin with her teeth, biting the fibrous mass so the juice ran down her hands and out between her fingers. She gave one to Nello. She was tearing her mango, the juice dripping from her chin, when from over the hill, as if disgorged from the sky, came a booming, hollow sound—the blast of a cannon.
She looked up at Nello, her eyes full of surprise. And he saw something else there, an unmistakable glare of bitter accusation.
She turned uphill and with forceful strides she climbed. Nello drove the butt of the rifle hard into the ground and, pushing off with all his weight, hobbled up behind her.
Chapter 51
Darina stopped at the edge of the lagoon. The sun was setting directly behind the shack, smoldering through the thin cracks of its thin walls, making it seem to teeter on its stilts. And rising from the hidden sun, as if bursting from the shack, enormous shafts of sunlight shot between the clouds and fanned out across the sky.
She waded into the sea and pushed through its warmth. Someone in the shack began softly singing. The silky water around the shack reflected the oranges and yellows of the clouds on the horizon. The dazzling colors calmed her, and she hung her head and whispered, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” Then she forced herself to say, “Blessed art thou among women. And blessed the fruit of thy womb.”
The sea oozed languidly as she pushed ahead. She was so near the shack that she could hear the singer taking short breaths as she sang. Pressing her forehead against the wall’s bamboo slats, she looked in. Sunlight flooded the shack and bathed the naked woman, all alone, sitting on a mat leaning against the wall singing, slowly combing her hair.
Darina closed her eyes and let the sun blindness wear off. She moved around the shack to the front, to look through the door with the sun behind her. The demi sat with her hair golden in the light, and below her firm breasts there was her belly, flat except for a fold. Empty. There was no one else in the shack; no brother, and no child.
The demi looked up, squinted into the sun, and, not being able to see who it was, smiled a welcoming smile. Darina stared at a small bundle by the door—a bloody rag. She felt faint. She turned away and for support leaned against the door.
The demi stopped singing. Her hand with the comb stood still. With the sun now lighting Darina’s face, she could see her pale forehead and great blue eyes. The demi’s smile went cold. “Mon Dieu,” she whispered. “Mon cher Dieu.” She put the comb against her mouth as if to keep in the words that were trying to get out. “Tu es lui,” she said. “Tu es lui.”
It took Darina a while to put the words in order, but then she understood. The demi had said, “You are him.”
The demi regained her composure and, tapping the back of the comb against her lips, said, “You look like him before the tattoos.” She let out a childish giggle. “If you get tattoos you’ll look like him again.”
“Where is he?” Darina asked weakly.
“How should I know?” the demi shrugged. “Killing the French.”
“I meant your child.”
“Oh,” the demi said, as if it had already skipped her mind. “He took it.”
“He took the baby?”
“Yes. He came, looked at it, then he took it.”
“Took it where?” Darina asked, her hand tightening on the doorpost.
“Who knows?” Then she gave a hard laughter. “Maybe he gave it to Lil’bit, for her sharks.”
Darina pushed herself away. She felt unsteady standing in the sea. The sun had set; only a last sliver floated above the haze. She stared at the bloodstained cloth, crossed herself, and had started back toward the shore when she turned and called back, “The baby. Was it a boy?”
The demi snickered. “A boy? I would have kept a boy.”
DARINA AMBLED AIMLESSLY UP THE BANK, leaving deep footprints in the sand. Waves followed her, filled them, then washed them all away. She couldn’t think of where to go, what to do. She stood dripping. If I could only sleep, she thought, forget everything and just sleep. She tried to console herself by conjuring up an image of her brother with the baby, holding it lovingly, tenderly in his arms, but the only vision she could muster—one that wouldn’t go away—was of her brother near Connally’s barn with blood-covered lambs dangling from his arms.
He was stomping in big boots across the rain-slicked glen, with the flock surging before him following a ram. The dog turned the flock across the ravine, leaving only the trampled grass and some straggling ewes behind. The ewes lingered to protect their newborn lambs. The lambs staggered and weaved. Her brother grabbed them, looking for sick ones, held them by their hind legs, and let them dangle headfirst, with their front hooves tap-tap-tapping on the ground. He put them down gently across the ravine. And there was only one tiny lamb left, with legs like twigs, just born, caked in blood and slime, bleating its tiny heart out, dragging its torn umbilical cord behind, and the mother running after it, her great milk-filled udders bouncing off her legs, and they too were stained with blood, and there was panic in her eyes as her lamb was lifted into the air. He swung it back and forth as if it were a rag, waving it at the ewes to turn them up the hill.
Darina had seen him swinging lambs before; on the cliff.
When they were sick beyond cure, or still weak and feeble a few days after birth, he would take them to the edge, where the wind howled with menace up the rocky face, and with a mighty swing launch them off the bluff over the sea, where anxious gulls and ravens waited far below.
The demi’s song floated in the cove. Darina didn’t want to hear it
anymore, so she pushed on into the jungle up the hill. She clambered shakily through the wet darkening air and didn’t even notice when she ended up on all fours grabbing roots and the stems of ferns. Her knees were scraped and her fingers bled, but she pushed stubbornly on, slipping, and sliding when she ran into two legs.
The shoes looked familiar, but she didn’t know from where. A hand reached down, holding flowers and a pistol. It pulled her up by the arm. “This way,” a dry voice said. She recognized Guillaume.
His other hand was filled with fruit and he stood gray-faced, his eyes unfocused and solemn in the light. “This way,” he repeated, his voice as brittle as straw.
She let him lead her, not caring where or why, and they traversed the hill into a clearing with a rock. She saw a figure lying on the rock, the head slightly tilted, staring out to sea. Both hands lay palms-up, unmoving, on the ground. There were flowers near the feet and a pile of breadfruit near the hands. Without a word, Guillaume knelt down and began to place the flowers and fruit he’d brought along the extended legs, then placed some around the head on the flat part of the rock. He worked slowly with much care, changing, arranging, as if he were laying a table for a feast. But he didn’t let go of the gun.
“Food for her spirit,” he mumbled. “If it goes hungry, it will be angry. Her ghost will come and haunt the place until the end of time.”
Darina shuddered. “Do you really believe these tales?” she said.
He didn’t reply until he had laid the last flower. “Do you believe yours?” he said.
“I believe in God’s mercy.”
“Then why don’t you give her absolution?”
“I’m not a priest. I can’t.”
“She won’t care.”
“I don’t have the power of God in me.”
Guillaume uttered a laugh soft as a breath. “All these weeks at sea I wondered what was missing in you . . . So it’s the power of God.”
“I have to go,” Darina said, and turned.
Guillaume grabbed her arm sand spun her around. “I have the power of God!” he growled. “Right here,” and he held up the gun. “The true God. With the power of life and death. Now give her absolution or I swear you’ll lie dead beside her.”
Darina yanked her arm. “That would be a sacrilege. My soul would burn in hell.”
“Damn your soul! And damn you!” And he pointed the gun at her.
“My absolution won’t help her.”
“Then say a prayer for her. Put in a good word with your God.” When Darina didn’t move, he clicked back the hammer. “I already shot her. Shooting you would mean nothing to me.”
“You killed her?”
“I just shot her. Your brother killed her. Like he’ll kill us all.”
Darina stepped aside and knelt down near the flowers. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .” she went on, and after a while she could hear Guillaume murmur along with her, “and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those . . .”
The darkness had fallen. Only the last light from the horizon reflected in Joya’s eyes.
Darina rose and started across the slope toward the ketch.
“Not that way,” Guillaume said. “He went up to the plateau.”
As she came back past him, he held out the gun. “Take this,” he said. “You might need two gods.”
Chapter 52
A handful of sailors danced a lively jig, kicking up streams of sand into the flames. The others sang and swayed and took turns holding their tin cups under the spigot of a keg of rum that had been wedged smartly between two leaning palms. Dugger and the captain stood apart near the sea, drinking, talking about the ketch, her raked masts, her new-styled rigging, her sails, her hull, even the planks and the bronze fasteners that held them—all things concrete and blessedly inanimate. Then they fell silent and watched the sailors dance and the flames dance on the flag and on the steep walls of the grave. When the dance grew lewd, the captain looked out to sea.
“Is your wife all right?” the captain asked.
“She’s better. The priest stitched her well.”
The captain didn’t turn back but kept staring at the ketch. “Is she alone?” he asked.
“Yes. Resting . . . Why?”
“Nothing,” he said, and turned back toward the flames. “Just saw something move across your stern. A dolphin, I would say, looking for its dinner.”
Dugger glared into the twilight, but there was only the dark ketch upon the purple sea.
“I should get back,” Dugger said. “Thanks for the rum.”
“Je vous en prie,” the captain said. “Thanks for the company.”
DUGGER PADDLED THE PIROGUE HARD, pushed on by fear of something amiss aboard the ketch. Still blinded by the flames, he barely made out forms, the black mountains on his left, the ketch dark ahead, and the sky a deep purple all around it. The frigate lay with a single light no brighter than a candlenut flame shimmering in its bow, the cannon pointing rigidly at the shore.
He rested the paddle against the gunwales to steady his nerves and to catch his breath. The swells and the undertow turned the bow of the pirogue, and now he saw the shore, all dark except the candlenuts and the tall flames of the fire around which sailors leapt as if trying to stamp out the darkness at their feet.
Nearing the ketch, he used the paddle as a rudder, guiding the pirogue ghosting through the night. He drifted up alongside, and so as not to bump the hull in case Kate slept, he grabbed the rail of the ketch to keep the boats from banging. Hand over hand he moved the pirogue to the stern. He was at the last stanchion when he saw a quick movement on the sea. “Nello?” he called, but there was no reply.
He cleated the pirogue’s painter and pulled himself aboard when something large and solid hit his head. Dazed, he fell. One leg went in the water and he dangled from the rail. He hung there, trying not to pass out. Big hands grabbed his arms and pulled him over the rail like a rag doll. He was lowered to the deck. He lay there facedown, trying to make sense out of the figures on the aft deck, while the smell of gunpowder swirled around his head. Only then did he make out the shape of a small cannon.
“Where is she?” Dugger said groggily.
“Shhh,” a heavy voice replied.
“The woman. Ma femme. Où est-elle?”
“Elle dort,” another voice said, the accent thick, not French.
Dugger started to push himself up, but the big hands pushed him down, and held the cool blade of a hatchet against his cheek. “What do you want?” he grunted.
“Some silence,” a new voice said, thinner and with a lilt.
“You want silence, so you bring a cannon?”
No one answered. Along the stern rail three forms squatted as unmoving as statues, and a much slighter man was bent over the cannon. With a soft thud the breech of the cannon closed; then the slight man brought short blocks of wood and wedged them between the bed-logs of the cannon and the coamings. He tested the wedges holding the cannon by pulling the barrel sideways with all his might. The wedges held. The cannon stood immobile.
Seemingly satisfied, the slight man said something to the massive one kneeling, and the massive one quickly straddled Dugger’s back, pulling Dugger’s hands tight behind him.
“What the hell do you want with that peashooter?” Dugger snapped.
“If you talk, we will kill you,” someone said.
“Not with that toy cannon you won’t.”
The slight man grabbed Dugger’s hair, lifted his head from the deck. “Don’t you care about anyone? Your friend ashore? The woman below?”
Then he let Dugger’s head go and it banged on the deck. He tasted blood where he bit his tongue.
THREE LITTLE GIRLS BURST FROM THE CANYON onto the beach into the firelight, the smallest one in the lead, the oldest one trailing, feigning disinterest. They had heard from the priest about the gifts that awaited: the food, paper and pencils, pots and pans, but all the little one wanted was a big floppy
straw hat, and the big one a calico dress that tumbled to her ankles. When they saw the sailors dancing around the fire, they slowed, but edged toward the piles of sacks and boxes.
Older children followed, then some women arm in arm, others in groups, with the men trailing in fits and starts—all to gather up the alms without shame. They milled among the piles, lifting the lids of crates, untying sacks. Nataro headed for the rifles leaning against a lifeboat in the sand.
The captain approached, looked about for a leader in the crowd, but only Nataro seemed to command as he handled the rifles.
“Les cadeaux sont tous les votres,” the captain called over the song and din, and spread his arms theatrically to include all piles spread along the sand. When they returned to their rummaging he said more quietly, directed at Nataro, “Testard is dead. Come and drink. To celebrate his life.”
The sailors kept dancing, too drunk to really care.
The women untied the heavy sacks of rice. The smallest girl filled her arms with pomegranates, bit open the tough rusty rind of one, and grimaced when the acidic pulp reached her tongue, her lips, teeth, and the tip of her nose all red. The older girl, finding no calico dress, openly watched the awkward lurches of the sailors, the women passed around yams, and the men took cups of rum, then handled the new rifles, a kind they had not seen before. They were rifles with bolts instead of levers that you pumped, and they pulled and pushed the bolts and found the magazines empty. Nataro dug about for ammunition but there was only food, and bottles of rum.
THE FINN AND THE TALLER ZUO finished digging the grave, threw out their shovels, and the other Zuo reached down and helped them up. The captain handed them tin cups of rum, then he organized four sailors to lower in Testard. They spread the flag on the ground, and placed Testard, pale except for his blood-caked scars, atop it. Each sailor held a corner, and lifted him up and over the yawning grave.
“Saluer!” the captain ordered, and the music and dancing stopped. They all saluted where they stood as the flag with Testard in it was lowered out of sight. One young sailor saluted with his cup of rum.