Master of the Crossroads (76 page)

It seemed then that Rigaud and Toussaint might come back to the good understanding which had been between them before, as the agent Roume had wished it. Rigaud had a letter from Hédouville, which said he did not have to obey Toussaint any more. I, Riau, knew of this letter from Pascal and the doctor, but Rigaud had not showed it to the whole world yet. When he showed this letter to Roume, the old man told him that his own words were now stronger than the words of Hédouville, and that Rigaud must give obedience to Toussaint, even though in the south it was really Rigaud who commanded.

Rigaud did not like to hear this very much. Maybe he would have accepted it, though, if it had been a matter only of making words and a show of respect to the General-in-Chief. But Rigaud wanted Petit Goâve and Grand Goâve and Léogane to be a part of his command. These were the nearest towns to the south of Port-au-Prince, and they had all been places where Dieudonné was, before he was taken, and now Laplume commanded them in Toussaint’s name, so there was the same old trouble which began when Laplume gave himself to Toussaint instead of to Rigaud. Roume did not agree that Rigaud should have those towns, and Rigaud grew angry when he was refused, because his temper was too quick and hot. In anger he rushed out of Port-au-Prince with the men he had brought with him, and perhaps before he had well thought of what would follow.

Then there was a lot of confusion in Port-au-Prince, because it seemed that the people there might take the part of Rigaud. Even Christophe Mornet, who commanded for Toussaint at Port-au-Prince and who had served under him for a long time and won battles for Toussaint against the Spanish and the English too—the whisper was that Christophe Mornet was with Rigaud in his heart and making ready to betray Toussaint at any moment. Maybe it was true, or at least Toussaint believed it, because later on Christophe Mornet was arrested and killed with bayonets at Gonaives.

During this time there had been a rising against Rigaud near Jérémie, which was very far out on the southern peninsula where Rigaud was supreme. Rigaud had been all around Jérémie with his soldiers and believed he had driven the English away from that town, although it was also because of Toussaint’s talk with Maitland that the English sailed away. This rising was supposed to be in favor of Toussaint and some said it was begun by Toussaint’s secret hand, but the colored men put it down soon enough, and afterward there were forty black men who were crushed into a prison cell so tightly that, for want of air to breathe, they died.

Toussaint was very angry at this, and he declared that it was always the blacks who ended up dying in such affairs. Most times until then, Toussaint had not been so strictly bound to his own color, but had been as friendly to whites and blacks, and to colored men also if he trusted them. But this thing that happened in the prison was very bad. It made me think of Dieudonné, with the air smashed out of him by his chains, and when Guiaou heard of it, though he said nothing, I saw that he was thinking of the Swiss.

It was all so uneasy at Port-au-Prince that Roume thought we must move the government to Le Cap, where it was safer. Toussaint agreed to do this, but before he took the army away from Port-au-Prince, he called all the colored people to the church so that he could speak to them. Toussaint climbed to the high place where the priest stands in the church. His eyes were red and he shook with anger from his bootheels up and when he took off his general’s hat, he was wearing the red
mouchwa têt
beneath it, instead of the yellow one. I thought maybe war would begin that same day. I stood in the back of the church, with some of my men mixed with some of Laplume’s. Guiaou was near me, and Bouquart, and also Bienvenu who was then one of Laplume’s men, but Toussaint was speaking to the colored men and not to us.

“You colored people who have always betrayed the blacks from the beginning of the revolution—what is it that you want today? There is no one
who does not know: you want to be masters of the colony, to exterminate
the whites and enslave the blacks! But, perverse men that you are, you
ought to consider that you are forever dishonored already by the deportation
and the murder of the those black troops who were known as the Swiss. Did
you for one instant hesitate to sacrifice, to the hatred of the whites, those
unfortunate men who had spilled their blood for your cause? Why did you
sacrifice them?—because they were black.”

When Toussaint said that, I could feel Guiaou’s thought—that at last the Swiss would be avenged, and with his help, because it was Guiaou who had brought the story of the Swiss to Toussaint. I felt the thought flow over him, and his body moved like a tree in the wind.

“Why,”
Toussaint shouted,
“does General Rigaud refuse to obey me?
Because I am black! Why else should he refuse to obey a French general
like himself, and one who has contributed more than anyone else to the
expulsion of the English? You colored men, through your treachery and
your insane pride, you have already lost the share of political power you
once had. As for General Rigaud, he is utterly lost; I see him before my eyes
in the depths of the abyss; rebel and traitor to his country, he will surely be
devoured by the troops of liberty. You mulattos
—” Toussaint raised his right arm high and closed his hand into a fist.
“—I see to the bottom of
your souls; you are ready to rise against me, but although my troops are
leaving the west, I leave here my eye to watch you, and my arm, which will
always know how to reach you.”

Then Toussaint brought his arm down like a sword cut and walked out of the church to his horse, which was held waiting for him while he spoke. We all of us rode north then, without stopping. Of course Toussaint’s words came quickly enough to the ears of Rigaud, and not long after, Rigaud showed Hédouville’s letter to everyone and laid claim to the powers that Hédouville had promised him. Then we all knew that the next war would not come from the whitemen over the sea, but that it would begin among ourselves.

32

In that close, blind, secret room of the Cigny house, Captain Maillart tumbled with Isabelle—
his
Isabelle again, or soon to be. It was midday, but no way to know in that windowless room with its shrouded lamps, except for the heat. Bathed in slicks of heavy sweat, they slithered against each other like eels. The thrill, so long deferred, bulged in the back of the captain’s throat. It took him some time to realize that the excitement was not reaching the rest of his body and that the most salient part of him had declined to respond to this great occasion.

He sat up, more puzzled than distressed; he’d never, ever had such a difficulty—well, not since his first inexperienced fumbling which now seemed several lifetimes in the past. Isabelle plunged her face in her hands and began to cry, her fingers knotting in her black curls, her pale shoulders heaving.

“It’s my fault, my fault,” she choked. “I wanted to use you . . .”

“But what?” Maillart laid his hand on her back. “I don’t understand you.”

“Oh, it’s all hopeless, I don’t know—only I am in such trouble.”

Maillart’s hand kept dropping on her back in a slow, steady rhythm; some hollow within her answered, like a drum.

“But tell, my dear,” he said. “What is your trouble?”

Isabelle straightened and turned to him her tear-streaked, distraught face. Her hips were caught in a pool of her skirt, her small bare breasts still alert from their unconsummated encounter.

“I’m with child.” She collapsed on his neck.

“Well now,” Maillart murmured. Their position was awkward. He sat on the edge of the divan where they’d struggled, with both his feet on the floor, his upper body twisted to support her. He glanced down at his numb and shriveled member. Could this portend some sudden vocation for the priesthood? He laughed, silently, at the absurdity. “Well, now,” he repeated. “How terrible can that be?”

“Oh, you don’t know.” She snuffled against his collarbone. Maillart’s fingers counted up the knobs of her spine. He rubbed her bowed neck. The chain was gone. He recalled the pendant that had shocked him before—that stone phallus more dependable than his own.

“Where did you get it?” he said absently. “That . . . thing, which you’re not wearing now.”

Isabelle pulled a little away from him. “I took it off for you,” she said. “It was a gift, from Joseph.”

Vomit squirted into the back of the captain’s gullet. He clapped both hands over his mouth and forced himself to swallow it back. His mind went through a series of sickening swoops. Flaville’s constant proximity, the quiet concentration of his power, like her shadow. Only because it was unthinkable had he failed to think of it before. An eruption of images fumed up at him like bats emerging from a cave: black limbs intertwined with white; her mouth on his, the red yawn of her nether lips. He gagged again, and with an effort calmed the convulsion of his belly.

“You see?” Isabelle was huddled in her own arms. “Even you reject me. The whole world will.”

“No,” said Maillart. “No.” The sweat on his face and forehead had turned chilly. “I don’t mean that . . . It’s something of a shock.”

He straightened his spine and looked at her carefully. She was still herself, still Isabelle. “You do have a difficulty,” he admitted.

Isabelle rocked forward, with fresh sobs.

“And your husband?”

“He’ll murder me,” Isabelle said simply, cutting off her tears. “Oh, there is much he overlooks, but he has his limits, and I know them.” She sat up, wiping her eyes on her forearm. “Incidentally, our children are his own.”

“Well, then,” Maillart looked away from her. “How far is it along? There are ways, I’m told . . .”

“No,” Isabelle said. “I cannot. If I did so, even God would turn His face from me.”

“I had not known you were so devout.”

“No,” she said. “But I too have my limits.”

“Ah,” said Maillart, rubbing his temples. “In that case, I don’t quite see . . .” He was still looking at the opposite wall. “Does Flaville know?”

“I don’t mean to tell him,” she said. “It would make trouble.”

“You’ve made your share of that, in any case.” Maillart smoothed his mustache with his thumb. “Well, perhaps you’re right.”

“Oh,” Isabelle wailed softly. “This time I am truly lost.”

“Wait,” said Maillart. “Don’t despair. I’ll get you out of it.”

“Will you?”

“Yes,” he said, though his mind had locked. But there
was
a way, some way. He could feel it, if he could not yet see it. “Yes, I will.”

“Oh, my true friend, I knew only you would save me.” Isabelle drove her small body against his again, and with the greatest abandon ever—as he felt how wholly she abandoned herself to him, his male vigor returned full force. But he shifted from her, even as she began to croon over his return.

“No,” he said.

“But I want it!”

“No, we mustn’t—”

“Oh, do I disgust you so?”

“Not in the slightest, my dear—the evidence to the contrary is in your hand.” So saying Maillart disengaged himself cautiously from her hot grasp. “Only, as things are now, we mustn’t chance spoiling our friendship.”

The heat had begun to slacken a little by the time he left her. The captain walked down to the harbor front, to freshen himself in the sea breeze. Porters were laboring up the gangway of a cargo ship, bowed double under great sacks of sugar or coffee. A harbor pilot Maillart knew slightly hailed him from the bow of the ship. The captain responded with a nod and a flick of his hand and walked on, fidgeting unconsciously with the points of his mustache. When he had reached the Customs House he turned away from the water and began walking back into the town.

Bold as he’d been to say he’d solve her problem, no solution had come to him so far. Maillart was unaccustomed to worry, but he did worry now. He knew there must be some path out of the difficulty, but the route was far from evident to him. In a state of abstraction, unaware of anything around him, he walked all the way up the sloping streets to the
casernes,
where he found Doctor Hébert waiting for him. At that, it occurred to him that the doctor was probably the only white person in the colony to whom it would be safe to confide his quandary.

Maillart had a jug of rum in his quarters, and the doctor sat on the edge of a cot, sipping thoughtfully from a chipped glass, while the captain told as much of the story as he knew.

“Well, that
is
serious,” he muttered, at the end. “Well, what to do . . . There are certain herbs, I have been told, though I have not tested their use myself . . .”

“She wouldn’t,” the captain said. “That is, she won’t.”

“Ah well, I don’t much like the thought of it either.” The doctor hugged his knees and squinted through the open door. The light in the yard of the
casernes
was turning an ominous purple-streaked color, and the thunder rose from behind Morne du Cap.

“But where does that leave her?” the doctor said. “She must put herself out of the way somehow, so no one is there at the time of the birth . . . Who else knows about it, did you say?”

“I’d wager no one but myself,” the captain told him, and, thinking of the afternoon’s aborted dalliance, “I can testify, it doesn’t yet show.”

“So much the better,” the doctor said. “Hmmmm . . . You know, Nanon is in the same state.”

“Félicitations,”
said Maillart. But at the doctor’s expression he bethought himself that this child too might have a somewhat irregular paternity.

“Yes,” said the doctor. “I had meant to bring her down to Ennery, as soon as it was possible to go with her myself. But that wouldn’t do for our Isabelle—she and my sister are great friends, but this would try their friendship sorely. Besides, there are too many visitors at Habitations Thibodet.”

He stood up and padded to the doorway and peered for a moment up at the sky. The thunder pounded once again. The doctor turned back to face the room. “If we could get her up into the interior somehow . . .”

“On what pretext?”

“Health, perhaps. The fever season is coming on—it’s healthier in the mountains, away from the swamps. Also there’s trouble brewing around Le Cap, I think—Rigaud’s partisans, you know. One of the reasons I’d like to get Nanon and Paul away.” He stooped to pour himself another short measure of rum. “Isabelle could always visit her own plantation with no need for a pretext at all.”

“Yes, but Cigny is there himself as often as not, now that the cane mills are working again,” said the captain. He twisted up the end of his mustache. “Arnaud certainly owes her hospitality.”

“But imagine his reaction when she presents the world with a Negro baby,” the doctor said. “You know, that child is apt to be black as your hat.”

The captain said nothing. He felt that the predicament had impaled him with a barb which no effort could draw.

“Now then,” the doctor mused. “Nanon has some connection in the mountains above Dondon, and at Vallière. I wouldn’t so much mind it if she went in that direction—at least till all this dispute with Rigaud is settled. If it goes poorly, there will be fighting all up and down the coast, and Ennery isn’t as far away as I should like.”

“True enough,” said the captain. “And it’s not likely to go well.”

“My thought, exactly,” the doctor said. “Well, let us say that Nanon is to go as far as Dondon. With Paul, and perhaps with Paulette. Then leave it to Isabelle to devise her pretext to go with her. I expect that will be within the range of her imagination.”

“Undoubtedly,” the captain, feeling somewhat more at ease. The doctor drained his glass and set it on the floor beside the jug. As he did so, the thunder rolled again and the sky opened all over the town. Both men stretched out on their parallel cots and lay half dozing, listening to the roar of the rain.

On the morning of June fifteenth, the doctor, asleep in the narrow attic room of the Cigny house, was roused by a shudder of the bed beneath him. Nanon turned toward him, without waking, and held him for an anchor. His pistols, arranged beneath the bed where another man might have left his slippers, skittered and clacked together. In the parlor downstairs, Isabelle braced herself against a doorframe and watched as the china bibelots on the mantel danced and rattled against each other and the small rococo clock. The mirror frame slapped once against the wall. Then her reflection steadied and all was still.

Before nightfall a courier came up from Gonaives with the news that Rigaud had published Hédouville’s letter generally, the letter which released him from Toussaint’s authority and left him sole and supreme commander of the Department of the South. According to the whisper, which traveled with Pascal, Roume was drafting a proclamation which would declare Rigaud a rebel and outlaw . . . for the second time. Toussaint’s reaction was unknown, as were his whereabouts.

The miniature earthquake was the first topic of discussion round the Cigny dining table that night. There had been more severe
tremblements
de terre
in the region before now, strong enough to level buildings and start fires which consumed whole neighborhoods. Was the morning’s convulsion truly finished or was it a harbinger of worse to come? Monsieur Cigny opined the former—it was nothing, he assured the company; there would be no sequel. But Isabelle laid down her spoon and folded her little hands together.

“You know,” she said. “Although an earthquake is nothing to fear, I rather think that with all the other eruptions that seem likely to come our way, one might be well advised to retire from the town for a period.”

“Other eruptions?” Cigny inquired.

“The, er, political instability,” the doctor said rapidly, picking up the cue. “I think she may be right, at that.” He shot a covert glance at Maillart.

“Unfortunately, yes,” the captain added. “Even the loyalty of some of Toussaint’s officers has been cast into doubt.” He was thinking uneasily of Pierre Michel, though he did not say so. “And of course one must consider all the partisans of Villatte who have only been waiting for a favorable occasion.”

Major O’Farrel, who’d so recently adjusted his own allegiance, let the conversational bubble drift past him.

“I don’t call this occasion so favorable to the partisans of Villatte,” Cigny grunted, still plying his soup spoon. “They can assemble no plausible force against Toussaint’s black army.” He held out an empty hand for bread. Isabelle hurried to supply him.

“Not in the north, certainly,” Maillart agreed. “Nor in the Western Department. In the South, of course, Rigaud is master for the moment.”

Cigny stared. “One wearies of these conflicts,” he pronounced. “What profit is there in them—for anyone? It is a mere perversity of General Rigaud to refuse Toussaint’s authority.”

“It is the legacy of Agent Hédouville, and his cursed letter,” O’Farrel said unexpectedly. “He would divide, where he could not conquer.”

“But surely that must pass,” Cigny said. “Rigaud may be strong in his own region, but he has no force to reach us here.”

“Force of arms, no,” Maillart said, “but Hédouville has formally released him from Toussaint’s command. The letter gives him a position to promote dissension here, and have we not already heard the rumors he has loosed? Toussaint is in league with the proscribed
émigrés—
in thrall to them, I’ve heard it said. And Toussaint’s policy of forced labor, on which your enterprises depend, Monsieur, is no more than a ruse to restore slavery . . .”

Cigny laid down his chunk of bread untasted. “And Toussaint?”

He was looking at the doctor, who covered himself for a moment by gulping from his glass of water. Because of his secretarial privileges, people were apt to assume that he knew Toussaint’s mind, when nothing could be further from the truth. Toussaint’s mind was like a mirror in a lightless room, and no one knew whence came the light that gave it clarity . . . Of course, the doctor could not say this, and everyone was waiting.

“If trouble comes it will not find him unprepared,” he pronounced. “I believe in the end he will master this difficulty as he has mastered others.”