All Souls' Rising (57 page)

Then Biassou sat back. How his eyes were shining—Riau cannot forget. If the jaw of the
corps-cadavre
was still moving it was only that Biassou had pushed it, Riau thought. Or it still moved itself like a machine. The thing was choking, spluttering out the leaf paste. Then the thing was sitting up, spitting out dirt and leaves across its knees. It put its hands on the edges of the grave and rose.

It was not Chacha, it did not even look like Chacha anymore. There was no shining there around the body, and it could not cast a shadow anymore. The
gros-bon-ange
was gone away. The
ti-bon-ange
was gone. Maybe someone could catch the
ti-bon-ange
for the making of a
zombi astrale
, but it was the
corps-cadavre
that Biassou had come to take.

Biassou made the
zombi
eat more of the leaf paste. He took it under the shoulders and raised it up to stand beside the grave hole. He picked up a rod the thickness of three fingers bunched together, and he beat the
zombi
across the back and shoulders until it fell down to its knees. The
zombi
moaned and cried out like the wind across a rum bottle, like the dead thing which it was. Biassou kept on beating it until it put its face into the ground and covered the back of its head with its dead hands. Biassou was sweating and breathing like a runner and a lover. He kept on beating the
zombi
until the rod broke in his hand.

Riau thought he must have killed it, that it could not move again. But when Biassou commanded it to get up, the
zombi
rose once more. It stood with its head swinging and its two arms hanging down.

Biassou led the
zombi
to the edge of the trees, where some other men were waiting. They would take the
zombi
away somewhere. Maybe it must go to the farm which we had heard of, where Biassou had fields of
zombis
who must work for him. Or maybe he would sell it for a slave. He was still selling slaves over the Spanish side, we knew.

Jean-Pic and Riau did not wait for Biassou to come back from where he had taken the
zombi
into the trees. We stuck the torch in the loose dirt by the grave, still burning, then we left that place.

His
ti-bon-ange
and his
gros-bon-ange
were still with the body of jesus when jesus came out of the grave where they had laid him. That is the story Toussaint tells, and all the priests. I remembered the beads of the Père Sulpice, all those jesuses and skulls. It was not that way with Chacha. I wanted to raise the dead to life! Instead, we made a dead thing walk.

So I took off my uniform of captain, and hung the coat and trousers in a tree. I took off the soldier boots that crushed my feet. I was not going back to Toussaint now, but I was going to Bahoruco, with Jean-Pic. I had only a cloth to bind around my sex part, and a pouch hanging over my shoulder to hold my knife and pistols and the watch. I was only sorry to leave the
banza
, but if they did come after I would not want to carry it. All this time I was pretending to be a whiteman soldier, I did not have much time to play it anyway.

In Guinée I was alive, but they brought me out a dead thing. I was not three days but three months in my tomb. Each day they brought us on the deck and made us eat and made us dance, still nothing moved but the
corps-cadavre
. As a dead thing I was sold to Bréda. There Toussaint was my
parrain
, and there could be none better. Toussaint taught me how to be a slave, how to bear my death. It was the
hûngan
Achille, when he came down from the mountain with his band, who touched my lips and eyes and made me live again.

So I was running behind Jean-Pic, quick and sure-footed in the dark below the trees. No one was chasing us, but we ran because we liked to. The air of the night was sweet on my whole skin, and they were both the good black color. I could not see Jean-Pic or see myself in all this dark, but I knew I was Riau again, only Riau, and I was glad to be running away to Bahoruco.

Chapter Thirty-Five

“Y
OU ARE FORTUNATE
,” Monsieur Bourgois informed the doctor, “or they are fortunate on whose behalf you manage these affairs…That Thibodet brown sugar was certainly one of the last cargoes to be safely embarked; were you to arrive with it today, we scarce could contrive a secure passage. But as it is…”

Monsieur Bourgois reversed the ledger on his desk, so that the doctor might examine it. His face was even ruddier than Doctor Hébert remembered it, the cobweb of burst capillaries spreading farther from his nostrils across his cheeks. The
négociant
gave his amiable smile and stood up as the doctor leaned forward to peruse the latest figures. A tidy balance in the favor of Habitation Thibodet was there recorded. At his usual somnolent, drifting pace, Monsieur Bourgois had reached his drinking cabinet.

“…let us toast your most excellent profit.” The
négociant
stepped from the cabinet, holding a brandy bottle in his right hand, two tumblers pinched together in his left.

“
Vous êtes gentil
,” said the doctor, as Bourgois poured the first measure. “I think I must accept.”

“
Santé
,” said Monsieur Bourgois. They clicked their glasses.

The doctor sipped and lowered his glass to rest beside the open ledger. Noticing the heavy book, Monsieur Bourgois folded it shut and slipped it into a desk drawer. Hitching halfway around in his chair, he turned his hazy regard to the window. The doctor followed the direction of his glance, enjoying the threads of alcoholic warmth that spread through his belly from the drink. The middle of the afternoon was just passing, with some slight abatement of the heat. Beyond the casements, the air was brilliant, clear, and still.

“No word of Madame Thibodet?” said Monsieur Bourgois.

“I have had none whatever,” the doctor said. “I suppose I need not ask if there has been any result to your inquiries.”

“Not the slightest.” Monsieur Bourgois tilted the bottleneck to pour them each another glass. “I’m told that you have been most assiduous in your searching.”

“One may say that I have fairly quartered the country.” The doctor delivered himself of a wintry smile. “Whether by accident or design.”

“I fear for her, and the child most of all.” Monsieur Bourgois’s eyes were welling, the doctor was surprised to see. Perhaps only from the sudden vigor with which he took his brandy. “There have been so many atrocities since the time they chose to vanish…”

“Oh, I have hope still she may have escaped all that,” said the doctor. “It may be they were out of the country before the troubles came.”

“But it’s I who ought to be reassuring you,” said Monsieur Bourgois. “I ask your pardon.”

“Well, never mind it,” the doctor began. But just then came the sound of heavy feet upon the stairs, and an urgent rapping on the office door. Monsieur Bourgois called to the knocker that the door was open. His black beard bristling, Monsieur Cigny strode into the room.

“You’re in a state,” said Monsieur Bourgois. “What is it, man? You’d better have some brandy.”

“You’d better lock up your bottle and come along to the quay,” Cigny said. “Something’s happening—in the harbor.”

Monsieur Bourgois stood up with unusual alacrity. “Galbaud.”

“What of Galbaud?” said the doctor. “I thought he had been deported.”

“He took ship, but has not left the harbor,” said Cigny. “There were boats going back and forth from ship to ship for half the night, and on into the morning.”

“More deportations, doubtless,” Bourgois said. “It no longer requires even a word against these Jacobins—if only a thought should cross one’s mind, then Sonthonax descends.”

“Yes, but I think he has overstepped himself this time,” said Cigny. “You know how his mulatto troops have been harassing the sailors on the quay…I think it is more than their pride will bear. But you would do well to come see for yourself.”

Through the open casements of Bourgois’s window, the doctor could see only an irregularly shaped section of the harbor, bounded by roofs of the intervening buildings. A pair of warships anchored in the area of his view were lowering longboats full of men—one, two, three…It was difficult to tell from this angle (and now Monsieur Bourgois had thrust his head through the window frame, interrupting more of the doctor’s view), but the boats seemed to be making in the direction of Fort Bizoton.

“Come down,” said Monsieur Cigny impatiently. “You can’t see anything here.”

There were a good many other onlookers already hurrying out of the warehouses all along the waterfront, though not enough to constitute a crowd. Some were already raising shouts of excitement, or dismay. It seemed that every ship was lowering its boats and all the boats were full of armed men. Some few of them were rowing toward the harbor forts and the rest were coming straight for the quay, toward a point near the fountain some way to the left of where the doctor and his companions stood to watch.

“How many sailors with the fleet?” the doctor asked.

“Two thousand, three thousand.” Cigny’s teeth flashed in his beard. “You may count them for yourself.”

“Then there are the deportees, who knows how many hundreds?” said Bourgois. “All the ships of the harbor are cram full of those.”

“I believe they have decided to undeport themselves,” said Cigny. “Look there—they have reached the fort.”

“The soldiers are not firing on them,” Bourgois said wonderingly.

“No, and I don’t think they will,” Monsieur Cigny said. “Those are troops of the line in those forts—the last shreds of the old regiments. Sonthonax stuck them there to be out of the way, you see? So they would not interfere with the oppressions of his colored army in the town…”

“Let him reap the fruit of that wisdom now.” Monsieur Bourgois was grinning too.

“Indeed. Galbaud is still governor-general to those soldiers,” said Monsieur Cigny. “No matter what fault that slithering weasel of a law-parsing Sonthonax may have found with his Commission—and be damned to every trick clause hidden in the disgusting
loi de quatre Avril
.”

The doctor stared. The men in the boats so rapidly approaching appeared to him as on the opposite side of a thick glass wall; doubtless the humidity promoted this odd sensation. He took off his hat and wiped a film of sweat from his balding dome. The beginnings of an unpleasant headache were focusing behind his eyes. The men laid on their oars so smartly that the boats almost seemed to leap from the water, and now the doctor could hear the goading shouts of a coxswain as the boats drew near. Monsieur Cigny had laid a brotherly arm around each of their shoulders.

“
Mes amis
,” he said, “I think we shall see a great righting of wrongs this day.”

Smoothly, Monsieur Bourgois disengaged himself. “I hope you are right,” he said. “Still, each must look to his own good now. I know for a fact those navy men have not had one pay in six these last nine months…”

“
Évidemment
,” said Cigny. “There will be looting, certainly.”

“Therefore I beg you to excuse me.” Monsieur Bourgois set out for his offices, at a high bounding step. The doctor remained in Monsieur Cigny’s peculiar embrace.

“He’s right about the looting,” said Cigny. “We’ll see a lot of that. You had better round up your colored harlot and her brat and bring them back to our house, for the moment. Oh, they have been comfortable enough there before, have they not? No, don’t say a word—we should be glad of another arm.” Still holding the doctor in the crook of his elbow, Cigny winked at him. “Arnaud has told us of your prodigies of marksmanship. You would be doing us a favor.”

“Is it so?” The doctor freed himself, ducking under Cigny’s arm. “You have a curious way of asking it.”

T
HE TROOPS OF THE LINE IN THE HARBOR
forts went over to Galbaud’s party without the slightest hesitation, and soon had joined the assault on the town. With his brother Cézar leading part of his force, Galbaud struck first at the arsenal, which was easily taken, none of the whites of the town being of a mind to defend it from them. Most of the
petit blancs
went over to Galbaud’s faction immediately, acting in concert with the
grand blancs
on this one rare occasion.

Sonthonax himself, however, was not to be so easily overcome. The National Guards, under Laveaux’s command, remained loyal to the commissioners, and the mulatto brigades were fighting well enough—so well that Cézar Galbaud, who’d overextended himself in their vicinity, was made prisoner before the end of that first day. To further boost the commissioners’ morale, all the black slaves of Le Cap spontaneously volunteered to fight in support of the
affranchi
and mulatto troops.

“Slave master! Whoremaster! Traitor to France!” Sonthonax was in such an apoplectic state that he sprayed Cézar Galbaud with spittle when the prisoner was paraded before him in the old Jesuit House where the commissioners were in residence. “Chain him! Let him taste iron for himself, and feel the shackle. But best of all, get him out of my sight.”

Cézar, speechless, was taken out. From a corner, Choufleur observed the scene, chewing on a cinnamon stick and half concealing his sardonic smile behind his fingers. Laveaux and Polverel sat soberly, though both were electrified by the general tension.

“Those ingrates who called themselves Jacobins—their treason is most bitter.” Sonthonax was traversing the room in a series of short lunges from his desk, like a wild dog roped to a tree. “I brought them the rights of French republicans, but they are all repulsive traitors, all
aristocrates de la peau
…”

“Yes, of course,” Polverel said, a trifle wearily. The older commissioner saw no use in observing that Sonthonax had disbanded the local Jacobin Club months before and since then had used his mulatto troops to hold its former members under martial law.

Sonthonax spun toward them, his pale face shining under the usual slick of sweat. “The
slaves
have joined us—good,” he said. “Now, we must lay open the
prisons
.” He aimed a vibrating finger at Laveaux. “Go at once and—no, you are worse needed here.” Sonthonax rushed over to Choufleur and hauled him up by his elbow. “You will go and liberate the prisons…” Together, they left the room; Laveaux and Polverel could hear Sonthonax’s voice still raving on the landing beyond the door.

“It’s not my place to say it,” said Laveaux, “but this decision strikes me as intemperate.”

“He is in a transport, as you can easily see,” said Polverel. “It may be that he believes this will be a reprise of the storming of the Bastille—I think he regrets missing it the first time…”

G
ALBAUD WAS UNABLE TO REDUCE
the Jesuit House that day; at night-fall, he withdrew most of his force to the safety of the ships. The town was not left precisely quiet, however, for there were parties of sailors still roaming the streets in search of pillage, skirmishing with bands of the local slaves who were abroad on similar missions of their own.

The night was busy with scattered shots, isolated cries. At the Cigny house, no one even tried to sleep. Arnaud and Grandmont had joined in the defense of the place, along with the doctor; Arnaud had tried to bring his wife to this shelter, but she insisted on remaining at Les Ursulines. Pascal, Madame Cigny’s disfavored young dandy, had also sought refuge
chez Cigny
. The men would periodically climb onto the roof to stare toward the harbor, and to soak the shakes with water; no fires had broken out near them as yet, but fire was their great fear, in this disorder. There were no slaves to perform this labor now, since all the household slaves but the children’s nurse had absconded to loot, or join the commissioners.

Monsieur Cigny, for his part, seemed less irascible than usual at passing the entire evening in his own salon. He and the doctor whiled away the time by teaching Isabelle and Nanon to load and prime the firearms. The doctor was feeling too unwell to join the bucket brigade on the roof. His strange sensations of the afternoon seemed to be flowering into fever, and now he very much regretted that he had not taken time, in going for Nanon and the child, to collect his herb stores from his makeshift laboratory.

Sometime short of midnight, there was a commotion on the street, and someone lobbed a stone through one of the Cignys’ ground-floor windows. Pascal, who’d been increasingly agitated for most of the night, returned fire with a pistol shot taken targetless from the middle of the room before the doctor could move, somewhat woozily, to prevent him.

“Sit down, you stupid whelp,” said Monsieur Cigny, seizing the hot gun from Pascal’s powder-blown fingers. “Go whimper in the corner if you must, but keep out of the way.”

From the street came a shout in Creole to the effect that if they did not open and surrender their valuables, the marauders would set the house on fire.

“Well, it doesn’t sound like he hit anyone,” said the doctor.

“No,” said Monsieur Cigny. “But I don’t like those torches.”

They had blown out the lamps within at the first disturbance so they could be less easily seen from the street, and now the torch-light threw a gay, red glow through the windows and onto the litter of broken glass in the middle of the carpet. The doctor picked up his rifle and went to the second-floor salon, where the women were waiting. Isabelle had crept to the window and was covertly observing the situation outside. As they came in, she turned toward them with pinched lips and her hands cocked on her hips.

“My own footman, if you please. Come back to sack the house…”

“And in his livery too,” said the doctor.

He settled himself beside the other window, kneeling down and bracing his heavy rifle barrel on the sill. There was a gang of twenty-some blacks on the street below him; he didn’t know if they’d seen his movement, but they brandished their torches and cried out new threats.

“He will certainly know where the plate is hidden,” said Isabelle.