All Souls' Rising (46 page)

“But not you,” the doctor said.

“Not yet,” the captain said. “Perhaps I’ll find a passage to Martinique, or else…They’ve murdered Lieutenant Baudin, you know. And I was very fond of that fellow.”

The doctor picked up the pistol and returned it to the box on the high shelf. In the back room, the children had resumed their game; there was a rustle as a stiff silk dress slipped down from a hanger.

“It’s true, there was no harm in him,” the doctor said. “I’m sorry.”

He circled a chair and sat down in it. After a moment, the captain followed suit. Nanon came out from the back with a basin of water and clean cloth. She knelt down at the captain’s side and began to sponge the blood marks from his hand.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

A
FTER WHAT HAPPENED AT
S
AINT
M
ICHEL
, and later at Le Cap, when we took the prisoners there, and when we passed Bréda on our way back to Grande Rivière, there was not much I wanted to do anymore except to kill whitemen. It was not Ogûn wanting to kill them as it had been before, but it was I, Riau, who wanted this thing for myself. With all our people there was anger and a hunger for blood, because we had let the white prisoners go for nothing and because the
colons
had tricked us again.

In this time we did kill many more of them. In this time, the way of our killing whitemen changed. Toussaint did not call himself a general yet, but he did not anymore call himself
médecin
. His old green coat was gone, but he had not then put on the coat of a whiteman officer. He would only whisper into the ear of Biassou, and other men, the younger ones he was teaching now, Moise and Dessalines and Riau and Charles Belair. Riau would be in the tent for talking and writing with these black men, because there were no whitemen anymore among us, no prisoners to be used for writing or planning. When writing was to be done, Riau would do it, or Charles Belair. But most of this time we did not write anything but only talked about the ways that were good for killing whitemen.

Jean-François did not like to hear the voice of Toussaint anymore in these days. He mistrusted him and was afraid, because he saw that Toussaint was sly, like a tricky spider of Guinée—the fly will not know he has touched his web until he is rolled up in it. And the spider only comes when he is ready. Jean-François had even moved his camp away from our camp. But when it was time for fighting, Jean-François and his men went with us. They were all ready to kill whitemen, and our new way for that worked well.

In the first beginning time after Boukman danced and the fire was struck and the blood was running, we used to fight like we were dancing
petro
. It would be a big crowd screaming and beating drums and blowing conchs, most ridden by the
loa
, or else half in our heads half out. We were many, and with
les Invisibles
at our backs, and maybe we would kill all the whitemen, or if they killed us instead we would only be going to join
les Morts et les Mystères
in the Island Below Sea, where is our home, Guinée. But now Toussaint was teaching this new way, because he did not want us to go to be with the dead any longer.

The whitemen had made strong places in the mountains of the east which were between us and the plain of Fort Dauphin. Many of these whitemen were old Creole
colons
who knew the hills, and there were too the soldiers of France with them, and also
gens de couleur
, Candi’s men who had changed their side, and all good fighters. But now the rains were heavy, and in the mountains it was cold at night. These whitemen were wet in their wool clothes, and they were beginning to sicken there. They had been holding these mountain places a long time.

When we moved into the mountains of the east, we did it slowly and not many at one time. I, Riau, and a few others went in front along with some of Toussaint’s band while the crowds of men belonging to Jean-François and Biassou came after us, in cover of the jungle. If we saw a few whitemen scouting or hunting away from their camps, then we would kill them all, but if they were many, we did not show ourselves at all. All this time when we were moving and watching, you would not know anyone was there at all except for the silence of the birds.

We had a game we liked to play, I and Chacha Godard and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. I did not like Chacha any more than Toussaint trusted him. He was not with us in the tent. And I knew what Biasssou meant for Chacha in the end. Still I saw that he would be a tricky spider in the dark. At night we went to a whiteman camp that was backed into some rocks. One side of it was fenced around with logs of wood that we could not come over, and there were sentries there. But we climbed around over the rocks and came down the cliff face on the strangler vines that hung down over it, slipping very quietly down the vines, with our knives held in our teeth. These were little knives and very sharp, much sharper and smaller than the big
coutelas
they use in the cane fields. We did not bring any guns at all for this game.

It was raining a little as we came down these vines, but very thinly, and sometimes the cloud would blow away from the moon, to make a little light. I saw the moon shine on Chacha Godard’s wet shoulders as he came down. We were naked all three of us except for our testicles bound up, and oiled like the warriors of Guinée.

The moon rode behind the cloud and it was dark again. I did not hear Dessalines come down behind me, but I felt that he was there. At one end of the camp was a small smudgy fire under a canvas, but it did not give much light. I could only see Chacha going over the rocks low like a crab toward a place where there was snoring to be heard. A minute later, the snoring stopped. By then I had crawled under an
ajoupa
where two whitemen were sleeping, and there I cut the throats of both. All this time there was no sound from anywhere except for sizzling when water ran off that canvas piece to drip into the fire.

When we came to the place where our camp was, we looked to see how many ears we had brought away each. Chacha had more, I had the same as Dessalines. But Dessalines traded us his share of
tafia
for our ears that we had taken. With a thread he sewed them altogether as a white
pompon
which he wore on his hat to show that he was for the King In France.

Toussaint did not like it though. Toussaint did not say a word when he saw this cockade of ears by daylight. He swung his sword and cut the ears loose from Dessalines’s hat and kicked them into the fire with his toe. It was a heavy sword and that surprised me, how he could cut the ears clean away without even knocking the hat crooked on the head of Dessalines. That whole time Dessalines stood straight and still like a soldier with a whiteman officer cursing him and his face did not change. No one said a word about it then or later. After this, we still took ears when we went out at night, but we did not show them.

There were others who played this game, besides us three. Sometimes the men from our old band of Achille, César-Ami and Paul Lefu, or sometimes others that I had not known before. So we made the whitemen fear, and we learned to know how all their camps were laid and how nearly we could come to them. The men of Jean-François and Biassou had all come up through the jungle by that time. By night we took our places all around the camps. I was so near the whiteman I had chosen I could hear him breathing through the night, but he knew nothing about me. We waited till first light came up, to have light for the killing. When I could see the slick black trunks of
gommier
and
bois bander
, and water beading on the elephant ears all around, then I saw the hairs of the mustache of my whiteman, and so I shot him with my gun.

Once the shooting started there was not a reason to be quiet and tricky any longer, so we blew conchs and screamed and beat the drums, and then we heard the voices of the
loa
. It was all right to frighten the whitemen then. Most of them were killed then at this camp and many of the others there were killed or chased away. Then the
cordon de l’est
was broken and we came into the eastern plain and burned the plantations there and killed all of the white-men we could find. We could not come into the town of Fort Dauphin, though, because of many soldiers who were there, and if we had fought them in the open, too many ones of us would have gone to be with the dead.

After this fight was finished up, Biassou took some people to fight the whitemen at Le Cap. Toussaint did not go that time, but some of his men slipped away, and so did I, Riau, because I was still hot for the death of more whitemen. Along the way we gathered some men of Pierrot and Macaya who were camped on the northern plain or in the hills outside the city, but still there were not so many as we had been on that plain by Fort Dauphin.

But the walls on the landcoming side were not so strong at Le Cap, because these
colons
who first built the town only expected war to come from oversea. We came over the low dirt walls fighting well and we ran all over the hospital of the
Pères de la Charité
, which was there at the edge of the town. That was the place where Biassou had been a slave and there was his mother still a slave, and he had come to take her from this place. It was the only thing he wanted, so when he had taken her he did not want to fight the whitemen anymore.

Then we all stopped the fight and went away. If not for Biassou, maybe we would have killed all the whitemen of Le Cap that time. But then I understood why it was that Toussaint did not go.

Toussaint had made two whitemen prisoners in the fighting around Fort Dauphin, an old whiteman who had been an officer, and one other of the militia too. When I came back from the fighting by Le Cap, I saw how these whitemen were drilling Toussaint’s people. The one old whiteman with his gray hairs, and the younger
colon
with his beard growing rough, were marching our people up and down. Moise and Dessalines and Charles Belair were with these whitemen, calling out commands like
halt
and
about face
and
quick march
. There was Moise, whose skin was black and shiny like a wet tree trunk, dressed in nothing but a dirty pair of cotton trousers hanging in rags around his knees. He had not even any shoes, but he was wearing two horns of a hat and shouting orders like a general.

These things all seemed foolish to me, because it was not our way to fight. It was for whitemen to row out in lines or box themselves in squares for shooting. Ours was another way. Also I did not like to see our people moving to these orders that came from the thin cold lips of these whitemen.

I wanted to stay away from Toussaint then, because when I saw what Moise and the others were doing, I knew that Toussaint would tell me to do the same, doing the words of the whiteman officers. I went to the
ajoupa
I had made and played with Caco and that night I lay with Merbillay. It was next day Toussaint came. We had already eaten in the morning and I was playing on the
banza
, sitting outside the
ajoupa
while Caco walked around smiling and shaking a long pod from a tic-tic tree I had picked for him to have for a rattle.

Toussaint was standing over me so that he was between me and the sun. He told me that I must go and learn the whiteman way of soldier with the others, as I had been knowing he would say. I could hear them already this morning, below in the clearing, the officers all barking like some
casques
outside a cowpen and the drum of men’s feet moving on the ground. There were seven or eight hundred men to fight with our band then—that was before Laveaux attacked us.

I could not tell Toussaint no or yes. I made the guts of the
agouti
cry under my fingers and I hit the drum of the
banza
with my hand. I was thinking how it might feel, if I did what he asked. I had not followed the say of any whiteman since I had fourteen years and ran away from Bréda. I thought of how Toussaint had taken the doctor and the priest and other whitemen into the tent at Grande Rivière and left us out, and how they would have sold us again to the
colons
, and I thought too of how he had taken my bayonet to kill this one whiteman at Haut du Cap who had once beaten him long ago. There was one thing I wanted to know of him but I did not know what I would ask before I heard my mouth start speaking.

“Tell me about Béager.”

Toussaint laughed. He must have been surprised. He did not often show his teeth in laughter, though he did smile behind his hand, and sometimes he would grin at you.

“What do you want to know, about Béager?”

“The story that they tell of him and you,” I said.

Toussaint squatted down beside me and the sun struck on my face again. Caco had broken the pod open and was spilling beans out of it onto the mud. Toussaint blinked at him. He hunkered with arms wrapped around his knees, all wrinkled up and knotted like old Legba. I knew that if he wanted he could squat so for one hundred years.

Béager was
gérant
of Bréda before Bayon de Libertat. I did not know him because he was gone before they sold me there, but not long gone. Bayon de Libertat was a kinder master, and the slaves of Bréda talked of that sometimes. But Béager had not been cruel like Lejeune or Arnaud, only hot-tempered, hasty and quick to strike in his anger.

“I was young then,” Toussaint said, looking at Caco smiling with his pink mouth open over the beans he was pushing in the mud. “I had no wife, but there was more than one woman that I knew.” He smiled his usual way, behind his hand, and above the hand the eyes looked at me craftily. “Then I worked mostly with the horses. It was summer, very hot. There was a fine horse, a black gelding with white socks and a white star on his forehead. They named him Treize. Béager took him out riding in the heat of the day. When I saw him come in I thought they must have gone at a gallop all the way to Le Cap and back. It was still hot when he brought him in all foamed up and slobbery. Béager took him to the water trough.”

“That’s how you kill a horse,” I said. “He must have known—what was he thinking?”

“I don’t know,” Toussaint said. “Sometimes I still wonder. Maybe he thought he had killed the horse already. And you know, Riau, that sometimes a Creole will destroy a thing only to show that he is master of it.”

“
Ouais
,” I said. “I know it well.”

“I called him to stop,” Toussaint said, “to think what he was doing.” His eyes were far away, over my shoulder. “He did not listen. I caught the bridle out of his hand. He pushed me out of the way and led the horse nearer the trough. I hit him with my fist before I knew that I would do it—never knew I’d done it till I saw him sitting on the ground.”