Dance on the Volcano

by Marie Vieux-Chauvet

  Recalling that he had made the same prediction for both Nicolette and Kiss-Me-Lips, Minette nearly burst into laughter, but she restrained herself and it was she this time who made a face at Pitchoun.

  “You, too, are skeptical, young lady. But the future will prove me right.”

  He let his hands drop and, crossing his arms and closing his strange eyes, concluded:

  “Place your offering on the table, please.”

  When they were back on the street, Minette and Pitchoun burst into laughter, calling the old man a flea-bitten charlatan.

  “In your case at least,” said Pitchoun, “there’s some truth in it – but to tell me I’ll be a great man…me! He must have taken me for a white man, that’s all, and wanted to flatter me by saying I’d be the future Governor of the country. Oh, that’s a good one. And thanks to you I’ve got no more pocket money. Let’s hope Papa Sabès will be feeling generous…”

  “Tell me,” Minette asked him worriedly, “do you think he’s really blind?”

  XXVIII

  LISE WAS HAVING great success in Saint-Marc. Every so often, Jasmine received letters containing both funny anecdotes and crisp new bills. Her stand had become one of the most well stocked on Traversière Street. Young Jean was old enough that he could be counted on to watch over it on his own and even call out to passersby.

  As for Minette, she had one burning desire: to return to Arcahaie. Whatever the cost, she had to see the little house in Boucassin again, to talk to Ninninne, to see what had become of Lapointe’s workhouse and his slaves. Every day, pulling her big trunk out from under the bed, she counted her little nest egg, heart pounding. When she finally had enough, she decided to leave immediately.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Arcahaie, Mama.”

  Jasmine did not dare protest. She sighed and went away with the heavy step of the resigned creature she had always been.

  When Joseph came that morning, Minette wanted to give him a bit of money so that he might go to Dondon and see Vincent’s mother, as he had been asked to do. But he refused to accept her money, shaking his head stubbornly.

  “Go on, take the money,” she pressed him. “For many years you taught us for free…I’m not giving you a gift. I owe you this money.”

  And she more or less forced the envelope into his pocket. Then, leaving her luggage half finished, she ran to Mme Acquaire’s to let her know of her departure. She found Scipion there, cleaning the bedroom. He looked at her with his air of blissful adoration and told her that “Mistress” had gone out but would soon return.

  “Have a seat, Mademoiselle, have a seat.”

  He offered her some cane sugar, which she refused, and came to crouch dreamily at her feet.

  Opening the piano, she played a melody and listened to it distractedly.

  “Do you remember, Scipion, how I was afraid of the piano when I saw it for the first time?”

  “I do, Miss. You were just a little nightingale back then.”

  “I’ve grown up, Scipion, I’ve grown up so much…”

  At that moment, the door opened and Mme Acquaire burst in.

  “What’s this – is that you, Minette?”

  “Yes, Madame.”

  She seemed worried and her hands fluttered nervously about her scarf as she tried to untie it.

  “There’s a lot going on out there,” she finally admitted. “There’s been terrifying news from France. Talk of a revolution.”

  “A revolution!”

  “That’s all I know, my dear. But here the big planters are terribly excited and since this morning more than sixty carriages have traversed the driveway at the Governor’s palace…What they want, I have no idea.”

  This business about a revolution in France was of little interest to Minette for the moment. She interrupted Mme Acquaire.

  “I’ve come to say my goodbyes, Madame,” she said. “I’m leaving for Arcahaie tomorrow.”

  “For a long time?”

  “I’ll be gone for at least a week, Madame.”

  “Well, then that’s all right. Soon we’re going to put on an opera that’s all the rage in Paris.”

  “I’ll be back in time for that, Madame.”

  “Well, safe travels.”

  She kissed Minette and sent her off. The painter Perrosier, standing in his doorway with a bottle of rum in one hand and his paintbrushes in the other, was on the hunt for models. He called out to her as always.

  “Come pose for me, my lovely. I’m feeling inspired this morning. It’ll be a masterpiece.”

  “You really have no luck. I’m leaving soon.”

  “You’re leaving, you say?”

  “Yes, for Arcahaie.”

  “Even with all this agitation?”

  “What agitation?”

  “Hmph, the big planters are all riled up, just like the folks in France…”

  She shrugged her shoulders and went home. Jasmine was preparing lunch and young Jean was watching the stand. She finished packing her things, then sat down for a moment and began daydreaming. “Revolution!” Mme Acquaire had said. Her eyes darted around the room and fell on a book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. She stood up, took the book and began rifling through it feverishly. “The people of France are all riled up,” Perrosier had said. She looked at the book again, thoughtfully, then placed it on the bed, stood up, and went out into the street. Two coaches followed by two covered carriages passed at a gallop, causing the pedestrians to scatter. She followed them. Soon they disappeared and she took off along with several others headed toward the Governor’s palace. Mme Acquaire had not been exaggerating. More than sixty carriages were lined up around the Governor’s palace and a throng of curious passersby had crowded around them. Four planters emerged from their carriages gesticulating furiously, faces red and covered in sweat.

  “Apparently the King has convened the Estates General,” whispered a young white man to another.

  “Is that enough reason for the planters to be panicking?”

  “They aren’t panicking, they’re making demands and being refused.”

  “What?”

  The conversation was interrupted by the parade of carriages leaving the palace. A squad of soldiers came out to the street, armed to the hilt, and Minette recognized Captain Desroches among them. Someone grabbed her by the arm. She turned around to see Joseph. His eyes were gleaming with a strange light and a slight smile played on his parted lips.

  “Did you want to tell me something?”

  He nodded his head yes and pulled Minette into a quiet corner. Her hand was in his and she could feel him trembling.

  “What’s the matter, Joseph?”

  He looked up and down the street and took out of his pocket a piece of paper on which was written, in round letters, the following words:

  The Declaration of the Rights of Man.

  Then he folded the paper, put it in his pocket, and wrote in his notebook:

  The planters are demanding to be allowed to self-govern the country. I’m not going anywhere. Lambert and Beauvais have asked me to stay.

  Minette shook her head abruptly. Oh, no! No one was going to hinder her freedom!

  “Well, I for one am leaving.”

  Joseph shook his head to say no and pointed to something happening in the distance.

  A group of poor Whites were shouting as they ran after the carriages. Shaking their fists at the planters, they called them by name and threatened the drivers.

  It wouldn’t be safe.

  The agitation was at its height. The most recent news from France was deeply alarming. A letter from Vincent Ogé to Joseph recounted in great detail all the latest events, among which the storming of the Bastille.

  The letter was being re-read at the Lamberts’, in the presence of Beauvais, his wife – a young Mulatress named Marguerite – and Louise Rasteau.

  “The people of France are demanding their rights,” said Beauvais.

  “They’ve seized the Arsenal, arm
ed themselves, and destroyed a fortified prison…” recited Lambert dreamily.

  “And they’ve triumphed, ‘class privilege has been abolished,’ ” continued reading Louise.

  “The people of France have revolted!…”

  These words, repeated from mouth to mouth, had the effect of a spark in a powder keg. The poor Whites repeated them to the planters’ and the freedmen’s faces with their heads lifted. “The people of France have revolted.” Copies of the Declaration of the Rights of Man were circulated, and as the news heated up people’s spirits it also revitalized their sleeping consciousness. The revolt that had been simmering in their hearts sprung up. The cry of disorder was coming from the powerful, the great planters themselves!

  Disregarding the King’s refusal to recognize Saint-Domingue as a province of the kingdom, they delegated their deputies in the Estates General and formed a General Assembly of the French Sector of Saint-Domingue. Caring nothing for the Governor General, this Assembly interfered in public affairs and prepared to extend its powers by publishing a Constitution that was wholly unacceptable to the Governor. From then on, hostilities were openly declared. The big planters, more pretentious than ever before, went about whip in hand, smiling with a victorious air. The poor Whites vengefully sided with the Governor, who, as a sign of solidarity, distributed white rosettes among them, which they wore proudly. The colonists, meanwhile, adopted red rosettes in retaliation.

  The crowd had begun referring to them as the “White Pompoms” and the “Red Pompoms.” Hate had found an outlet and reigned over all. “White Pompoms” and “Red Pompoms” shot murderous glances at one another and sought out the least excuse to fight. Petitions that Beauvais, Lambert, Joseph Ogé, and Labadie had written were proposed to the “Red Pompoms.” In these petitions, free men of color and free Negroes demanded to be considered full citizens. In the name of the Black Code and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, they called for political equality. Already infuriated by the articles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man that called for the abolition of slavery, the planters demanded the names of the petitioners. The secret was well kept by their entourage but Labadie was suspected and his home was attacked by a band of enraged Whites. They dragged him into the middle of the street, despite the screams of his slaves, who were kept at bay by the whip, and attached him to the tail of a wild horse, which they then whipped. Followed by a crowd of curious onlookers and by his slaves, who the Whites lashed at any time they made the slightest attempt to save him, Labadie was dragged through the dust, his mouth bloodied, and his ribs half destroyed.

  The turmoil had attracted Jasmine, Joseph, and Minette’s attention to the street. When they recognized the old man, they rushed outside, screaming. Minette raised her eyes to the planters. She recognized Messieurs Caradeux and Mesplès, red, out of breath, drooling with hatred. A whip lashed the air and struck her face. She threw herself on the old man’s body along with Joseph and the slaves.

  Despite the blows that rained down on them, they snatched Labadie from certain death and brought him to Jasmine’s house. Electrified, the crowd held back the planters. The next day, a young White accused of having encouraged a new petition had his head cut off.

  Young Jean was the first to come upon the scene. On hearing his screams, Minette had raced to him and saw the white man’s head being paraded around on a pike with the words Enemy of the Red Pompoms below it.

  Immediately, the freedmen put together a volunteer corps and went as a group to see the Governor, who gave them white pompoms and, flatteringly, promised them the moon. He called them “my dear friends” and “French soldiers,” and he showed them every consideration, even welcoming some of them by having them sit down in his presence and putting his hand familiarly on their shoulders.

  They would need a leader. Colonel de Mauduit was put in charge.

  A White had just attacked a freedman and had killed him. The Colonel, seeing the Governor trembling, cried:

  “Good heavens, you’re shaking, if I’m not mistaken, Monsieur the Governor.”

  “My heart is suffering, Colonel,” responded the Governor, rubbing the left side of his chest…“What’s more, all these receptions seem tedious to me and life on this island would be unbearable without the theater…”

  For the rising tensions had not infringed on entertainment, and M de Caradeux never missed an occasion to receive the Governor, despite the fact that his home had become a veritable political club.

  At the theater, M Acquaire had decided to soldier on, despite the recent events. He organized a gathering of the artists and called for everyone’s complete faith in him, asking them to promise not to get involved in any suspicious goings-on.

  “Let’s not forget, we’re artists. We have nothing to do with politics. And as the late François Saint-Martin would have said to you, let us live for our ideal: Art – our common god…”

  They were meant to perform one of Mozard’s plays, The Interrupted Rehearsal, for which Minette had agreed to take on the lead role.

  It was no classic work but, written in French and in the style of the period, it was beautiful in its lively and humorous repartee. At least there were no slaves in the play, Minette could assure herself, and that was for the best.

  The evening before the performance, Lise returned from Saint-Marc, eyes red and completely dispirited: her lover had been accused of signing a petition and a colonist had shot him to death right in front of her. She was literally sick over it. The horror of what she had witnessed and her sorrow at having lost the man she loved had rendered her so miserable and weakened that Jasmine could not accompany Minette to the theater. The billboards had announced Charles Mozard’s The Interrupted Rehearsal on the occasion of the “Meeting of the Three Orders of the State.”

  A great crowd had come to the theater, after having raised the national rosette. In the course of the military exercises executed by the army of grenadiers, cries of “Long live the King! Long live the nation!” could be heard. The crowd threw rosettes onstage at the actors’ feet and asked them to put them on. If the situation was politically tense, it did not seem so during the performance, and the evening ended in a perfectly orderly fashion that everyone made an effort to respect, perhaps so as to make a show of goodwill vis-à-vis the King’s orders.

  Minette left the theater while the other actors headed to the evening ball, also being held in honor of the “Meeting of the Three Orders of the State,” and to which, nonetheless, no persons of color were invited.

  At the door of the theater, she ran into Zoé, Lambert, Beauvais, and his pregnant wife. Pétion joined them with a sixteen-year-old, who he promptly introduced.

  “This is Charles Pons,” he said. “He’s a friend.”

  He was thin and of short stature. Lambert looked like a giant next to him. Seeing that everyone was smiling as they looked at him, he stuttered:

  “I may be puny, but I’m brave.”

  And his voice was so thin that Beauvais laughed heartily. He put his hand on the youth’s shoulder and responded reassuringly:

  “One can be small and brave. I don’t doubt it.”

  They were joined by a group of men who Lambert introduced to Minette.

  “Daguiun, Vissière, Roubiou, and Pierre Pinchinat.”

  Minette took Joseph’s arm and was about to leave her friends when a carriage passed by them and would have run over the Pons boy had Lambert not grabbed him sharply by the arm. A white man stuck his head out the door:

  “Out of the way, monkey, before I have my driver whip you,” he screamed at the dumbfounded youth.

  Pinchinat exchanged a furtive glance with Beauvais and Lambert. All of their expressions had changed suddenly and Minette, looking at Zoé in that moment, saw that she was biting her lip as her eyes stared hatefully at the carriage.

  XXIX

  DURING THESE DAYS of turmoil, there were more runaway slaves than ever. The constabulary was dog-tired, for not an hour went by where some slave was not
brought back in chains, caught mid-flight. Tipped off to what was going on by the domestic slaves, the slaves in the workhouses listened attentively to those words Liberty and Equality, which a bunch of white people, rising up before the whole world, had written in their own blood. Their revolution, which they knew to be doomed from the start, was trying to declare itself nonetheless. The slaves reignited their old desires for vengeance, poisoning livestock and then killing themselves for fear of punishment. Losses were becoming substantial. M de Caradeux lost ten of his best horses that way. Tortured slaves were brought down from his plantation and paraded through the streets by way of example. Their backs had been sliced up and rubbed with hot peppers. To amplify their suffering, the slave overseers brutally whipped their raw flesh from time to time. Their screams drew the attention of nauseated crowds.

  Anarchy reigned during that period, and Saint-Domingue seemed firmly divided. The planters intended to rule the colony in the place of the King’s representatives. It was all about humiliation, dishonor, reprisal. They seemed to be everywhere: the tribunal, in the assembly hall, at the Governor’s home, at the Bursar’s home. From then on, their arrogance was without limit.

  The streets were strangely deserted. The people of color, afraid of being provoked, avoided going out, while the poor Whites posted at every crossroads debated in little groups, gesticulating as they conversed.

  Despite M Acquaire’s best efforts, they were not able to put on a play. Everyone was on high alert and people talked about nothing but politics. In any case, Minette had plenty to worry about between Lise and Labadie, both of whom were still bedridden. She never left the house and spent hours on end by herself, daydreaming. Oddly, she barely thought about the political situation in the country. Memories emerged as if from a thick fog and completely enveloped her; she was more in love than ever with Jean Lapointe. Where was he? What was he doing? She would have given ten years of her life to see him again and to run away with him to the little house in Boucassin.