Joseph sat down on the bed with a dejected air and seemed to be conjuring a particularly frightening scene, for his hands trembled. Suddenly, he hid his face in his elbow and threw himself across the bed.
“Come, come,” said Minette, caressing his hair.
Then she sighed and went to her own room. She did not bother freshening up. After passing Joseph’s room on tiptoes, she raced down the stairs. A couple had just arrived: two middle-aged Negroes that were being led to other rooms by a young slave. Minette scanned the room for the big Mulatto and noticed him behind a counter, in the middle of writing in a notebook. She went up to him and said smilingly, in an effort to hide her anxiousness:
“Are people of color free to attend the punishment of Ogé and Chavannes?” she queried.
“Of course. Yesterday’s paper even said we’ve been invited.”
“I’ll be there,” she promised, still smiling.
“It’ll be tough to watch…”
“Do you think so?”
She went back upstairs and knocked at Joseph’s door. He opened.
“Listen,” she told him, “we won’t go out this evening. We’ll get some rest. There’ll still be time tomorrow to go out to get some news.”
He pushed her away with the violence of a madman and headed for the staircase.
“Joseph, where are you going?”
He offered no response and fled the hotel.
She went back into her room and stretched out on the bed. Her head was abuzz and her heart was racing annoyingly. She moaned feebly and turned onto her side. She somehow fell asleep that way. When she awoke, it was already dawn. She jumped up, thinking of Joseph. Opening her door, she went to knock at his room. As there was no answer, she turned the knob and the door opened on its own. The room was empty. She changed her clothes and went downstairs. The big Mulatto, an early riser, was already attending to his business.
“Have you seen my brother, by chance?”
“Your brother? Ah, yes…”
He burst into laughter.
“He must have spent the night in one of those places young people his age like to go to – he still hasn’t come back. There are some pretty famous brothels here. In fact, just next door there’s apparently a Negress who’ll dance naked, one gourde per person…I probably shouldn’t be telling such things to a young lady like yourself, but it’s just to reassure you. Young people like the fun spots…Well, well, there he is.”
He was in quite a state: disheveled, dirty, his hair wild, his eyes beaten, and shaky on his feet!
The big Mulatto burst into laughter once again.
“Oh, they’re all the same, those young people!”
Minette dragged Joseph along without asking any questions. He seemed so ashamed to see her that she left him alone and went into her room. Where was he coming from? In what seedy bars had he spent the night? What had he exposed himself to that had so transformed him? His eyes were furtive, his smile constrained, and his movements so awkward that he seemed to be hiding some sort of new character that even he found troubling.
Minette was pondering all of this for more than two hours and then joined Joseph in his room. The door was slightly ajar. She pushed it open: he was sleeping with his fists clenched, laid out on his stomach, with one leg hanging over the side of the bed. She left the room without waking him and went out into the street alone.
An early-morning crowd of people decked out in all their finery jostled one another as they passed by the shops on their way to the central square.
A barricade had been installed around a section of hard-packed earth. As the crowd arrived, people separated into two rows: the Whites went to the right and the people of color went to the left. Minette followed the people of her station and went forward toward the barricades. Two enormous wheels, gleaming in the sunlight, leaned against iron bars that four executioners had just brought in.
“What are those iron bars for?” someone asked.
“I’ve heard they’ve been condemned to be broken alive.”
“Does that hurt a lot?”
“You can go ask them.”
When they brought the two prisoners out, their hands tied behind their backs, Minette tried to figure out which of the two was Vincent Ogé. They both held their heads high and looked directly at the curious onlookers. Slipping adroitly through the crowd, she was able to reach the first row, and stood next to an elderly woman, stout and imposing.
“My Lord,” said the woman, making the sign of the cross.
Those who were situated in the first rows were touching the barricade and were no more than a few meters away from the prisoners. Which of them was Vincent? One was a Mulatto with curly hair; the other was darker-skinned and had a complexion more like Joseph’s. But it was the Mulatto who looked most like him. His eyes, fixed on the crowd, showed a noble pride. When the executioner approached him, his face took on an expression of terrible revulsion. In that moment, he looked so much like Joseph that Minette no longer had any doubt. That was him, Vincent Ogé. When the executioner untied his hands, he raised them to the heavens and cried:
“Don’t forget anything you see here today, my brothers.”
It had been so long since Minette had heard Joseph speak that she trembled. It was as if it was him and not his brother who had just spoken. It was the same deep and sonorous tone, the same slow, careful pronunciation.
Jean-Baptiste Chavannes, whose hands had also been untied, held them out to the right side of the barricade.
“I denounce the Whites,” he screamed with a ferocious voice. “I denounce the Whites, our torturers, forevermore and I leave to our brothers the task of avenging our martyrdom.”
An enormous clamor drowned out his voice. The executioners had just grabbed the prisoners to attach them to the wheels, their arms outstretched and legs spread wide. Minette lowered her head. A feeling of nausea welled up inside her. She put her hand around her neck and raised her head. At the same time, a terrifying scream broke the silence. The executioners, raising high the iron bars, broke the prisoners’ limbs. Their screams quickly became horrible bellowings. A freedwoman, weeping as she leaned against a tree, began to vomit. Minette fled, her hands covering her ears. The screams followed her all the way to the hotel, all the way to Joseph’s room. He awoke and looked at her with terrified eyes. She threw herself into his arms, put her hands over his ears and sobbed.
“Don’t listen, don’t listen, Joseph!…”
He threw himself to the ground, sunk his teeth into the sheets and the mattress, with gestures of utter rage, in turn letting out devastating sounds not unlike those of the tortured prisoners. Minette fell to her knees.
“We’ll avenge them, we’ll avenge them – you’ll see,” she repeated. “Their suffering and their death won’t be for nothing. They spoke out, and that won’t have been for nothing…”
She helped him to rise. He collapsed onto the bed, weeping, and covered his head with the pillow so as not to hear the strangely fading but increasingly devastating cries that would keep all the inhabitants of Cap-Français awake through the night.
The next morning, at dawn, it was clear from the silence that had followed their cries and then their whimpers that the tortured men had died. Their remains were brought to their mothers, two old women petrified with horror who had been forcefully kept in the parish and to whom were handed over two coffins, each containing a mutilated cadaver. Joseph stayed in Dondon to be with Vincent’s mother, and Minette made the long journey from Cap-Français to Port-au-Prince on her own.
This time, she stopped in Arcahaie. She was demoralized, broken. She needed Jean Lapointe’s strength and rugged energy. She went to Boucassin on foot and, carrying her trunk, climbed up the long hill that led to the house. When she saw the little house with its sole gallery, the flood of memories that washed over her was so strong that she collapsed onto her side, her eyes closed and barely breathing. Lucifer and Satan came to lick her hands and ran to alert their master.
She avoided breaking the spell and willingly suppressed the memory of the horrors she had witnessed at Cap-Français. She had not come to talk about such things. Drowning herself in pleasure, she planned to savor the selfish delight of being happy. He asked her all sorts of questions, all of which had only to do with love: “Were you tempted to love someone else? Were you faithful? Was your voice always so beautiful?”
The spell lasted for five days, after which time the manager of the estate came from the workhouse at a full gallop. Six of the best slaves had fled during the night.
Lapointe flew into a terrible rage, saddled his horse, and left for the workhouse, from which there immediately rose terrible screams. The screams reminded Minette of those she had heard from Ogé and Chavannes. She did not want to believe that her beloved was their cause. She waited for him, pale, standing on the gallery and surrounded by trembling slaves. Ninninne came up to her.
“Oh, Lord!” she said to her. “Now he’s angry. Too many slaves are escaping.”
Her back was bent and she shook her head slowly in her black madras scarf, adding:
“Fleurette and Roseline were the first to leave…”
An indefinable smell coming from the workhouse suddenly flooded her nostrils. The cries immediately turned into screams.
“Fire torture!” said one of the slaves mournfully.
Fearing she would leave like the first time, Lapointe hurried back. He found her packing her things, pale and more shaken even than his servants.
“What are you doing?” he shouted.
“I’m leaving and never coming back.”
“Because of a slave I had to punish?”
“You’re nothing but a dressed-up white brute,” she answered him angrily.
“You’ll regret insulting me one day. I’m also fighting for our rights.”
“By cutting the throats of the Blacks?”
“They’re slaves.”
“I see! Just be quiet, then.”
He tried to win her over by changing the subject.
“Between lovers, there should only ever be reproaches that have to do with love.”
“Love gets mixed up in everything these days. Times have changed.”
He saw that she was intent on carrying out her threat and tried to take her in his arms.
“You don’t want to leave, do you?”
“Let me go. Don’t touch me. I loathe you.”
She pushed him away with such a look of revulsion that he stared at her, astonished.
“Twice now you will have left me over these slaves. Perhaps one day you’ll come back to me because of them.”
He was suddenly enraged.
“But understand that without them I would be nothing, nothing…I’ve got to do everything in my power to keep them.”
As she offered no response, he shrugged his shoulders and helped her mount a horse. Then, handing the reins to a slave, said with a smile both mysterious and cynical:
“Bring Mademoiselle back.”
XXXI
MINETTE’S ARRIVAL IN Port-au-Prince coincided with the expedition of French reinforcements that had been announced several days earlier. The spineless Governor had left and been replaced by someone equally incompetent, who let loose hundreds of undisciplined, pro-revolutionary soldiers on the shores of Saint-Domingue. They came from regiments in Artois and Normandy and were known for their spirit of insubordination. They immediately sided with the “Red Pompoms” and riled the local troops and the people into a frightening state of agitation.
People went to the docks en masse to see them disembark. Minette left Lise and young Jean with Jasmine and hurried to the harbor with Joseph, Nicolette, and Pétion. M de Caradeux, at the head of the “Red Pompoms,” greeted several soldiers with cheers and had his slaves serve them tall glasses of rum. A few moments after their arrival, they were roaming the streets singing revolutionary couplets that joyful groups of children picked up and sung along with them.
That same day, the Colonel, who had received an order from the Governor to leave for the South at the head of enough troops to suppress an insurrection of freedmen, returned to Port-au-Prince victorious, with a large number of prisoners. The crowd of people of color, silent and enigmatic, watched them pass. Among the prisoners was André Rigaud, a young Mulatto with a proud, military bearing who walked with his head held high as he looked attentively all around him.
Pétion pointed him out to Pons:
“That’s André Rigaud, the head of the freedmen who fought at Les Cayes against the white troops.”
“What’s going to happen to him and the other prisoners?” asked Pons worriedly.
“They’ll probably be thrown in prison.”
“To be tortured?”
“No. Even if he hasn’t kept his promises to us, Colonel de Mauduit still wants to handle us carefully. He’ll pardon the prisoners.”
A dozen or so freedmen between the ages of seventeen and twenty surrounded Pétion at that very moment.
“You saw that, right, Pétion,” whispered one of them. “The Colonel is fighting our people and arresting them.”
Pétion slowly brought his hand to his white pompom and tore it off.
“I’m not with them anymore,” he said coldly.
“Me neither,” said Pons, also tearing off his pompom.
The twelve other young freedmen immediately followed suit.
“We can only count on ourselves,” spoke Pétion again, and his gaze, gleaming and harsh, followed the path of the Colonel’s troops.
The Colonel had lost the support of the freedmen. The perfect moment for the planters to avenge themselves had come.
The situation was tragic, for the soldiers from Artois and Normandy, encouraged by the planters, had converted the Colonel’s own grenadiers to their side. Stubbornly refusing to believe the betrayal, he and Captain Desroches, who had warned him, went to the barracks to interrogate the men.
“Don’t go, Colonel,” Captain Desroches advised him. “Your grenadiers have betrayed you, I’m sure of it…”
“I refuse to believe that.”
His arrival provoked a sudden tumult among the soldiers. Rising from their stations and without even standing at attention, they ran into the interior of the barracks.
“Colonel,” insisted Captain Desroches, pulling on the reins of his horse, “don’t go.”
“Forward march, Captain. That’s an order…”
They entered a room crammed with soldiers and as soon as the Colonel opened his mouth to speak:
“Let’s place Colonel de Mauduit under arrest,” shouted one of his grenadiers.
“Bunch of fools,” replied the Colonel, trembling. “You’ve all let yourselves be bamboozled by the planters.”
“Let’s place Colonel de Mauduit under arrest,” repeated the grenadier, seeming far less sure of himself.
Captain Desroches, unsheathing his sword, protected the Colonel with his body.
He was seized and disarmed.
As soon as the news made its way throughout the crowd, Pétion and Charles Pons ran to the Lamberts’.
“Colonel de Mauduit has been arrested,” announced Pétion, his voice choked with emotion.
“Let him figure it out,” responded Roubiou, a young freedman with harsh, accusing features.
“No,” said Lambert, “we’ll help him – if only to prove we’re better than he is.”
“Okay,” agreed Pétion. “Do you want to take charge of this, Pons?”
“Very well,” the young man accepted, conciliatory. “What do I have to do?”
That evening, young Pons, disguised as a woman, fled into a thick hedge separating the Governor’s palace from the barracks’ courtyard. The streets were under military guard by the newly arrived soldiers. At every crossroads, armed planters came out of their carriages to hold lengthy discussions with them. The Vaux-Halls – the theater as well as the pleasure houses – were completely deserted.
Outfoxing the g
uards, who were in something of a rum-soaked stupor, young Pons managed to get to the door of the room where the Colonel had been imprisoned. In the neighboring room, people were noisily debating his fate. Someone shouted:
“Down with Mauduit!”
Another responded:
“Hang him from the lamppost!”
Pons inserted tweezers into the lock and was about to force open the door and help the Colonel escape when the planters and the half-drunk soldiers burst into the room. Pons headed back into the hedges and stayed hidden there for a long while, listening to the group threaten the Colonel and condemn him for the sacrilege of having joined forces with the freedmen.
“You defeated us with a band of wretches,” shouted one of them.
“You’ll make serious amends for that,” said someone else. “Tomorrow, you yourself will bring back the flags that were removed from the Committee’s great hall.”
Pons quickly escaped the hedges and ran to Lambert’s. Powerless, they watched the execution of the Colonel the next day.
Surrounded by a half-drunk crowd of Whites, he walked with his head held high, carrying the flag. A disheveled woman passed in front of him and shouted, her fists raised:
“Let’s hang him from that lamppost!”
A drunken sailor, jostling the grenadiers, moved toward him and slapped him. Another woman threw herself on him and spit in his face.
Two tears ran down the Colonel’s cheeks. Tearing off his insignia, he threw them to his feet, thus signaling that he was no longer fit to wear them.
An arm raised a sword and dealt the Colonel a blow to the face. A vast wound opened on his cheek, revealing the bone.
Young Pons and Pétion, followed by a few Whites and some freedmen, threw themselves into the scuffle in an attempt to free the Colonel from the hands of his enemies. They were about to carry him off when a soldier thrust a sword into his back. He fell to the ground, blood streaming from his nose and mouth. His bloody corpse was then dragged through the street as people shouted, “Down with Mauduit, friend to sons of bitches…”
In the jail cells, the curious prisoners listened to the sounds of the mob, which intensified with every passing minute.
Dance on the Volcano Page 36