Island Beneath the Sea Page 15

  Finally he came to the foot of the mountains, and began the difficult climb, stone by stone, never looking down, to avoid succumbing to vertigo, or up to escape despair. He spit out the last wad of leaves and was again assaulted by thirst. His lips were swollen and split. The air was boiling, he was confused, dizzied, he could barely remember Tante Rose's instructions and he cried out for shade and water, but he kept climbing, clinging to rocks and roots. Suddenly he found himself near his village, on infinite plains, tending long-horned cattle and getting ready for the meal his mothers would serve in his father's hut at the center of the family compound. Only he, Gambo, the eldest son, ate with the father, side by side, like equals. He had been readying himself since his birth to take his place. He tripped, and the sharp pain of striking rock brought him back to Saint-Domingue; the cattle disappeared, his village, his family, and his ti-bon-ange was again trapped in the bad dream of slavery, which had now lasted a year. He ascended sheer mountainsides for hours and hours, until it was no longer he who was moving but another: his father. His father's voice repeated his name: Gambo. And it was his father who held at bay the black bird with the slick featherless neck flying in circles over his head.

  He reached a very high area with a narrow path that bordered a precipice, snaking among peaks and crevasses. At one turn he saw the suggestion of steps carved into solid rock, one of the hidden paths of the Arawak chieftains who, according to Tante Rose, had not disappeared when the whites killed them because they were immortal. Shortly before nightfall, he came to one of the feared crossroads. Signs of it warned him before he saw it: a cross formed of two poles, a human skull, bones, a handful of feathers and hair, another cross. The wind carried an echoing of wolves among the rocks and two black vultures had lighted on the first, observing him from above. The fear he had kept behind him for three long days attacked head-on, but he could not retreat. His teeth chattered, and his sweat froze. The fragile path of the caciques suddenly disappeared before a lance driven into the ground and held by a pile of stones: the poteau-mitan, the intersection between the sky and the place lower down, between the world of the loas and that of humans. And then he saw them. First, two shadows, then the gleam of metal: knives or machetes. He did not look up. He said a humble "Greetings," repeating the password Tante Rose had given him. There was no answer, but he could feel the warmth of those beings so near him, as if by putting out a hand he could touch them. They did not smell of rottenness or the cemetery, but emitted the same odor as the people in the cane fields. He asked permission of Baron Kalfour and Ghede to continue, and again there was no answer. Finally, with what little voice he could drag through the rough sand that closed his throat, he asked which path he should follow. He felt something take his arms.

  Gambo awaked much later in darkness. He tried to sit up, but every fiber in his body hurt and he could not move. A moan escaped his lips; he closed his eyes again and sank into the world of Les Mysteres, one that is entered and left unwillingly, at times shrunken with suffering, at others floating in a dark, deep space like the firmament of a moonless night. Slowly he recovered consciousness, wrapped in fog, stiff. He lay quiet and in silence as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. No moon or stars, no murmuring breezes, only silence, cold. All he could remember was the lance at the crossroad. He perceived a vacillating light moving a short distance away, and soon after, a figure with a small lamp bent down beside him; a woman's voice said something he could not understand, an arm helped him sit up, and a hand put a gourd filled with water to his lips. He drank all it held, desperately. That was how he knew he had reached his destination; he was in one of the sacred caves of the Arawaks that served the Maroons as a guard post.

  During the days, weeks, and months that followed, Gambo would be discovering the world of the runaways, which existed on the same island and in the same time but in a different dimension, a world like that of Africa, although much more primitive and miserable. He would hear familiar tongues and known stories, he would eat the fufu his mothers made, he would again sit beside a fire to sharpen his weapons of war, as he had done with his father, but beneath other stars. The camps were scattered about the most impenetrable parts of the mountains, true little villages, thousands and thousands of men and women who had escaped slavery, and their children, born free. They lived on the defensive and did not trust the slaves who had escaped from the plantations because they could betray them, but Tante Rose had communicated to them through mysterious channels that Gambo was on his way. Of the twenty runaways from Saint-Lazare, only six had reached the crossroads, and two of them were so badly wounded they did not survive. Then Gambo confirmed his suspicion that Tante Rose acted as contact between the slaves and the bands of Maroons. No torture could tear the name of Tante Rose from the men Cambray had captured.

  The Conspiracy

  Eight months later, in the big house of the Habitation Saint-Lazare, Eugenia Garcia del Solar died without either agitation or anguish. She was thirty-one years old; she had passed seven years out of her mind and four in the wake-sleep of opium. That early morning the slave caring for her overslept, and it fell to Tete, who came in as always to give her mistress her breakfast pap and clean her up for the day, to find her drawn up like a newborn babe among her pillows. Her mistress was smiling, and in the contentment of dying she had regained a certain touch of beauty and youth. Tete was the only person who lamented her death; after taking care of her for so long, she had ended by truly loving her. She washed her, dressed her, combed her hair for the last time, and placed her missal between Eugenia's hands, crossed over her breast. Tete took the blessed rosary in its chamois pouch, her mistress's bequest to her, hung it around her neck, and tucked it beneath her bodice. Before making her final farewell, she removed a small gold medallion graced with the image of the Virgin, one Eugenia always wore, to give to Maurice. Then she went to call Valmorain.

  Little Maurice was not aware of his mother's death because for months "the ill lady" had been secluded, and now they did not let him see the corpse. As they took the silver-studded walnut coffin from the house, the one Valmorain had bought as contraband from an American during the time she tried to kill herself, Maurice was in the patio with Rosette, improvising a funeral for a dead cat. He had never witnessed rites of that kind, but he had a lively imagination, and he buried the animal with more feeling and solemnity than his mother received.

  Rosette was daring and precocious. She made surprising speed across the floor on her plump knees, followed by Maurice, who never left her from sunrise to dark. Tete locked the chests and other furniture in which she might catch her fingers and used chicken wire to block entries to the gallery to keep her from wandering outside. She gave up on mice and scorpions because her daughter was a curious girl and could have held the hottest chili to her nose, something Maurice, who was much more prudent, would never think of doing. She was a pretty child. Her mother admitted it unhappily, because for a slave beauty was no favor, invisibility was much more desirable. Tete, who at the age of ten had wished so strongly to be like Violette Boisier, saw with wonder that through some trick of destiny's sleight of hand Rosette, with her wavy hair and captivating, dimpled smile, resembled that beautiful woman. In the island's complex racial classification she was a quadroon, the daughter of a white man and a mulatta, and in color she had come out looking more like the father than the mother. At her early age Rosette was mumbling a jargon that sounded like a language of renegades, and Maurice translated with difficulty. The boy put up with her whims with the patience of a grandfather, which later was transformed into an unflagging affection that would mark their lives. He would be her only friend, he would console her in her sorrows and teach her what was indispensable for her to know, from staying away from fierce dogs to learning her ABCs, but that would be later. The essential thing he imparted to her from the beginning was the direct path to her father's heart. Maurice did what Tete did not dare to; he kept the girl near Toulouse in ways that could not be challenged. Her master stoppe
d thinking of her as one of his properties and began to search for something of himself in her features. He did not find it, but at any rate he gave her the tolerant affection pets inspire and allowed her to live in the big house instead of sending her to the slave quarters. Unlike her mother, in whom seriousness was nearly a defect, Rosette was talkative and seductive, a whirlwind of activity that brightened the house, the best antidote against the uncertainty prevalent in those years.

  When France dissolved the Assemblee Coloniale in Saint-Domingue, the Patriots, as the monarchist colonists called themselves, refused to submit to authorities in Paris. After having spent so much time in the isolation of the plantation, Valmorain now began to plot along with his peers. As he often went to Le Cap, he rented the furnished house of a wealthy Portuguese merchant who had returned for a period to his country. It was near the port and comfortable for him, but he nevertheless planned to acquire a house of his own very soon using the help of the agent who handled his sugar dealings, the same extremely honorable old Jewish man who had served his father. It was Valmorain who initiated the secret conversations with the English. In his youth he had known a sailor who now commanded the British fleet in the Caribbean, whose instructions were to intervene in the French colony the minute there was opportunity. By then the confrontations between whites and mulattoes had reached unimagined violence, and the blacks took advantage of that conflict to rebel, first in the western part of the island and then in the north, in Limbe. The Patriots followed events with close attention, anxiously awaiting the moment to betray the French government.

  Valmorain spent a month in Le Cap with Tete, the children, and Eugenia's coffin. He always traveled with his son, and in turn Maurice was not going anywhere without Rosette and Tete. The political situation was too unstable for him to be apart from his son, and neither did he want to leave Tete at the mercy of Prosper Cambray, who had his eye on her, to the point that he had tried to buy her. Valmorain supposed that another man in his situation would sell her to keep his head overseer happy, and in the process get rid of a woman who no longer excited him, but Maurice loved her like a mother. Besides, the matter of Tete had become a silent struggle of wills between him and the overseer. During those weeks in Le Cap he had attended the political meetings of the Patriots, who gathered in his house in an atmosphere of secrecy and conspiracy though in truth no one was watching them. Valmorain planned to look for a tutor for Maurice, who was turning five in a state of total wildness. It was his duty to give him the rudiments of education that would allow him in the future to enter a boarding school in France. Tete prayed that that moment would never come, convinced that Maurice would die if he were far away from her and Rosette. He also had to dispose of Eugenia. The children were used to the coffin lying in corridors and accepted with all naturalness that it contained the mortal remains of "the ill lady." They never asked exactly what the "mortal remains" were, saving Tete the necessity of explaining what would have caused Maurice new nightmares, but when Valmorain caught them trying to open it with a knife from the kitchen, he realized it was time to make a decision. He ordered his agent to send it to the nuns' cemetery in Cuba, where Sancho had bought a mausoleum because Eugenia had made him swear he would not bury her in Saint-Domingue, where her bones could end up in a Negro drum. The agent intended to send the coffin by way of a ship sailing in that direction, and in the meantime left it in a corner of the storeroom, where it stood forgotten until it was consumed in flames two years later.

  Uprising in the North

  At the plantation, Prosper Cambray waked at dawn to a fire in one of the fields and the yelling of slaves, many of whom did not know what was happening because they had not been included in the secret of the uprising. Cambray used the general confusion to surround the area and to subdue the slaves who'd had time to react. The domestic servants took no part in any of it but clustered together in the big house, expecting the worst. Cambray gave orders for the women and children to be enclosed, and he himself carried out the purge among the men. Not much had been lost: the fire was quickly controlled, only two fields of dry cane burned; it was much worse on other plantations to the north. When the first detachments of the marechaussee arrived with the mission of restoring order to the region, Prosper Cambray limited himself to handing over those he considered guilty. He would have preferred to deal with them personally, but the idea was to coordinate efforts and crush out the rebellion at the roots. The suspects were taken to Le Cap to tear from them the names of the leaders.

  The chief overseer did not notice Tante Rose's disappearance until the next day, when those who'd been flogged at the Habitation Saint-Lazare needed to be treated.

  In the meantime in Le Cap, Violette Boisier and Loula had finished packing the family's possessions and had stored them in a warehouse in the port to await the ship that would take the family to France. Finally, after nearly ten years of waiting, work, saving, moneylending, and patience, the plan conceived by Etienne Relais in the early days of his relationship with Violette was coming about. They had begun bidding farewell to their friends when the major was summoned to the office of the Gouverneur, Vicomte Blanchelande. The building lacked the refinement of the Intendance; it had the austerity of a barrack and smelled of leather and metal. The vicomte was a mature man with an impressive military career, who had been Marechal and Gouverneur of Trinidad before being assigned to Saint-Domingue. He had just arrived and only begun to take the pulse of the situation; he did not know a rebellion was brewing outside the city. His authority on the island depended on his mandate from the Assemblee Nationale in Paris, whose capricious delegates could withdraw their support as quickly as they bestowed it. His noble origins and fortune weighed against him among the most radical groups, the Jacobins, who intended to do away with every vestige of the monarchical regime. Etienne Relais was led to the vicomte's office through several nearly bare rooms hung with paintings of multitudinous battles blackened by soot from the lamps. The Gouverneur, dressed in civilian clothes and not wearing a wig, was barely visible behind a rough barracks table battered by many years of use. At his back hung the flag of France, topped by the coat of arms of the Revolution, and to his left, on another wall, was pinned an fanciful unfolded map of the Antilles, illustrated with marine monsters and ancient galleons.

  "Major Etienne Relais, from the Regiment Le Cap," Relais presented himself, feeling ridiculous in the dress uniform and decorations that so strongly contrasted with his superior's simplicity.

  "Have a seat, Major. I imagine you would like a coffee." The vicomte, who looked as if he'd passed a bad night, sighed.

  He stepped from behind the table and led Relais toward two worn leather armchairs. Immediately, from out of nowhere, sprang an orderly followed by three slaves, four people for two little cups: one of the slaves held the tray, another poured the coffee, and the third offered sugar. After serving, the slaves withdrew, backing out of the room, but the orderly stood at attention between the two chairs. The Gouverneur was a man of medium height, slim, with deep wrinkles and sparse gray hair. At close sight he looked much less impressive than he did on horseback in his plumed hat and his medals, with the sash of his charge across his breast. Relais perched uncomfortably on the edge of the chair, clumsily holding the porcelain cup that he could have shattered with a breath. He was accustomed to observing the rigid military etiquette imposed by rank.

  "You must be wondering why I have called you here, Major Relais," said Blanchelande, stirring sugar into his coffee. "What is your view of the situation in Saint-Domingue?"

  "What is my view?" Relais repeated, disconcerted.

  "There are colonials who want to be independent, and we have an English flotilla in sight of the port ready to help them. What would England love more than to annex Saint-Domingue! You must know the ones I am referring to-you can give me the names of the seditionists."

  "That list will include some fifteen thousand people, Marechal, all the property owners and people with money, as many whites as a
ffranchis."

  "I was afraid of that. I do not have enough troops to defend the colony and to see that the new laws from France are carried out. I will be frank with you, Major, some decrees seem absurd to me, like the one dated May 15, which gives political rights to the mulattoes."

  "That affects only the affranchis, born of free, property-owning parents, fewer than four hundred men."

  "That is not the point!" the vicomte interrupted. "The point is that whites will never accept equality with mulattoes, and I do not blame them for that. It would destabilize the colony. Nothing is straightforward in the politics of France, and we suffer the consequences of that imbalance. The decrees change from day to day, Major. One ship brings me instructions, and the next one brings me the counterorder."

  "And there is the problem of the rebellious slaves," Relais added.

  "Ah, the blacks…I cannot bother about that now. The rebellion in Limbe has been crushed, and soon we will have the leaders."

  "None of the prisoners have revealed names, monsieur. They will not speak."

  "We shall see. The marechaussee knows how to manage these matters."

  "With all respect, Marechal, I think this deserves your attention," Etienne Relais insisted, setting his cup on a little table. "The situation in Saint-Domingue is different from that in other colonies. Here the slaves have never accepted their fate, they have risen up again and again for almost a century; there are tens of thousands of Maroons in the mountains. And at the present we have half a million slaves. They know that the republic abolished slavery in France, and they are ready to fight to obtain the same here. The marechaussee will not be able to control them."