Island Beneath the Sea Read online

  "I suppose that you have seen the damage caused by the rebellion, Doctor," Valmorain commented. "These bands have devastated the region."

  "That is so. As we were coming here, we saw smoke from a fire at the Lacroix plantation," Parmentier told him. "When we got closer, we could see that the cane fields were still burning. There wasn't a soul around. The silence was terrifying."

  "I know, Doctor, because I was among the first to reach the Habitation Lacroix after the assault," Valmorain explained. "The entire Lacroix family and their overseers and domestics were massacred; the rest of the slaves disappeared. We dug a grave and buried the bodies temporarily, until the authorities could investigate what had happened. We could not leave them strewn around like carrion. The blacks treated themselves to an orgy of blood."

  "Aren't you afraid something like that will happen here?' Parmentier asked.

  "We are armed and on guard, and I trust Cambray's ability," Valmorain replied. "But I confess that I am very worried. The blacks vented their rage on Lacroix and his family."

  "Your friend Lacroix had a reputation for being cruel," the physician interrupted. "That inflamed the attackers even more, but in this war no one has any consideration for anyone, mon ami. You must be prepared for the worst."

  "Did you know that for a banner the rebels carry a white infant impaled on a lance, Doctor?"

  "Everyone knows it. In France there is a reaction of horror to these events. The slaves can no longer count on any sympathizer in the Assemblee-even the Societe des Amis des Noirs is quiet-but these atrocities are the logical response to what we have done to them."

  "Do not include us, Doctor!" exclaimed Valmorain. "You and I have never committed such excesses!"

  "I am not referring to anyone in particular, only to the norm we have imposed. The Negroes' revenge was inevitable. I am ashamed of being French," Parmentier said sadly.

  "If it is a matter of revenge, we have reached the point that it is either them or us. We planters will defend our lands and our investments. We are going to restore the colony as it was. We will not sit here with our arms crossed!"

  Their arms were not crossed. The colonists, the marechaussee, and the army went on the hunt, and any black rebel they caught, they flayed alive. They imported fifteen hundred dogs from Jamaica and twice that number of mules from Martinique trained to climb mountains, dragging cannons.

  The Terror

  One after another, the plantations in the north began to blaze. The fires lasted months, the splendor of the flames could be seen at night in Cuba, and the dense smoke choked Le Cap and, according to the slaves, reached as far as Guinea. Major Etienne Relais, who was in charge of informing the Gouverneur of losses, had by the end of December counted more than two thousand among the whites, and if his calculations were correct, there were ten thousand more among the blacks. In France, opinion changed after people learned of the colonists' suffering in Saint-Domingue, and the Assemblee Nationale annulled the recent decree that granted political rights to the affranchis. Just as Relais had told Violette, that decision was completely lacking in logic, since the mulattoes had nothing to do with the uprising; they were the Negroes' worst enemies and the natural allies of the grands blancs, with whom they had everything in common except color. Gouverneur Blanchelande, whose sympathy did not lie with the republicans, had to use the army to quash the revolt of the slaves, which was taking on the proportions of catastrophe, and to intervene in the barbarous conflict between whites and mulattoes that had begun in Port-au-Prince. The petits blancs carried out a massacre against the affranchis, and they answered by committing worse savagery than the blacks and whites combined. No one was safe. The entire island shook from the clash of an age-old hatred that had awaited an excuse to burst into flames. In Le Cap the white rabble, fired up by what had happened in Port-au-Prince, attacked people of color in the streets, broke into and wrecked their houses, ravished their women, slit their children's throats, and hanged the men from their own balconies. The stench of corpses could be smelled on the ships anchored outside the port. In a note Parmentier sent Valmorain, he commented on news of the city: "There is nothing as dangerous as impunity, mon ami, that is when people go mad and commit the most hideous bestial acts; it doesn't matter the color of the skin, everyone is the same. If you had seen what I have seen, you would have to question the superiority of the white race, a topic we have so often discussed."

  Terrified by the turbulence, the doctor asked for an appointment and presented himself at the spartan office of Etienne Relais, whom he knew from his work in the military hospital. He knew that Relais had married a woman of color and that he went out with her on his arm with no concern for malicious tongues, something he himself had never dared do with Adele. He calculated that the man would understand his situation better than anyone, and was ready to tell him his secret. The officer offered him a seat in the only available chair.

  "Forgive my daring to bother you with a personal matter, Major," Parmentier stammered.

  "How may I help you, Doctor?" Relais replied amiably; he owed the doctor the lives of several of his subalterns.

  "The truth is that I have a family. My wife's name is Adele. She is not exactly my wife-you take my meaning, yes? But we have been together many years and have three children. She is an affranchie."

  "I already knew that, Doctor," Relais told him.

  "How is that?" Parmentier exclaimed, taken aback.

  "My position demands that I keep informed, and my wife, Violette Boisier, knows Adele. She has bought several dresses from her."

  "Adele is an excellent seamstress," the doctor added.

  "I suppose you have come to speak to me about the attacks against the affranchis. I cannot promise that the situation will improve any time soon, Doctor. We are trying to control the population, but the army does not have sufficient resources. I am very worried. My wife has not put her nose outside the house for two weeks."

  "I am afraid for Adele and the children, Major."

  "In regard to what concerns me, I believe that the only way to protect my family is to send them to Cuba until this storm passes. They are leaving on a ship tomorrow. I can offer the same possibility for yours, if you like. They will be uncomfortable, but it is a short voyage."

  That night a squad of soldiers escorted the women and children to the ship. Adele was a dark, heavyset mulatta, unattractive at first view, but she had an inexhaustible sweetness and good humor. No one could help but notice the difference between her, dressed like a servant and intent on staying in the shadow to protect the reputation of her children's father, and the beautiful Violette with her queenly bearing. They were not of the same social class, separated by various degrees of color, which in Saint-Domingue determined one's fate, and by the fact that one was a seamstress and the other a client, but they embraced with sympathy since they would face together the hazards of exile. Loula was weeping, with Jean-Martin clinging to her hand. She had hung Catholic and voodoo fetishes beneath his jacket so that Relais, a resolute agnostic, would not see them. The slave had never been in a dory, much less on a ship, and she was horrified about venturing onto a shark-filled sea in that bundle of badly put together boards with a few sails that looked like petticoats. While Dr. Parmentier made discreet signs of good-bye to his family from a distance, Etienne Relais, in full view of his soldiers, made his farewell to Violette, the only woman he had ever loved in his life, with a desperate kiss and an oath that they would soon be together. He would never see her again.

  By now no one was going hungry in Zambo Boukman's camp, and people were beginning to get stronger. The men's rib cages were no longer visible, the few children were not skeletons with bloated stomachs and eyes from beyond the tomb, and the women were beginning to hold their pregnancies. Before the uprising, when the Maroons were living hidden in the canyons of the mountains, hunger was eased by sleeping and thirst with drops of rain. Women cultivated scrawny patches of corn, which often had to be abandoned before picking, and defe
nded with their own lives their few goats because there were children who had been born in freedom but destined to a very brief life without milk from those noble animals. Gambo and five other men, the most daring, were in charge of obtaining provisions. One of them carried a musket and could drop a hare on the run from an impossible distance, but their few balls were kept for grander prey. The men crept onto the plantations at night, where slaves shared with them what they had, willingly or not, but that presented a formidable danger of being betrayed or surprised. If they succeeded in getting as far as the kitchens or domestic quarters they could slip out a couple of sacks of flour or a barrel of dried fish, which might not be much but far better than chewing lizards. Gambo, who had a magical hand with animals, sometimes led away an old mule from the mill that would later be used down to the last bone. That maneuver took as much luck as audacity, for if the mule was stubborn there was no way to move it, and if it was docile it had to be hidden until they reached the shadows of the jungle, where they asked its forgiveness for taking its life, as his father had taught him when they went hunting, and then sacrificed it. Among the men they carried the meat up the mountain, erasing tracks to elude pursuers. However, those desperate excursions were different now. No one opposed them any longer at the plantations; they were nearly all abandoned, and they could take anything that had been saved from the fire. Thanks to that there was no shortage in the camp of hogs and hens; there were more than a hundred goats, sacks of corn, cassava, sweet potatoes, and beans, even rum; they had all the coffee they could wish, and sugar, which many slaves had never tasted though they had spent years producing it. The former fugitives were now revolutionaries. It was no longer a matter of squalid bandits but of determined warriors; there was no turning back: a man died fighting, or he was tortured to death. They could only place their bets on victory.

  The camp was surrounded with stakes holding skulls and impaled bodies rotting in the sun. They kept the white prisoners in a corral, awaiting their turn to be executed. The women were converted into slaves and concubines, just as black women had been on the plantations. Gambo felt no compassion for the captives-he himself would finish them off if the need to do so arose, but he had not been given that order. As he had swift legs and good judgment, Boukman sent him out to spy and to carry messages to other chiefs. Gambo knew the region, which was dotted with rebel bands, very well. The worst camp for whites was the one headed by Jeannot, where every day several men were selected to be given a slow and macabre death inspired by the atrocities begun by the colonists themselves. Jeannot, like Boukman, was a powerful houngan but the war had changed him, and his appetite for cruelty became insatiable. He boasted of drinking the blood of his victims from a human skull. Even his own people were terrified of him. Gambo heard the other chiefs discussing the need to eliminate him before his excesses irritated Papa Bondye, but he did not repeat it, because as a spy he valued discretion.

  In one of the camps Gambo met Toussaint, who performed the double role of counselor for the war and doctor; he knew curative plants, and he exercised notable influence over the chiefs, although in that period he kept himself in the background. He was one of the few blacks able to read and write, and thus he learned, though with delays, what was happening on the island and in France. No one knew the mentality of the whites better than he. He had been born and lived as a slave on a plantation in Breda; he educated himself, embraced the Christian religion with fervor, and gained the esteem of his master, who even entrusted his family to him when the moment came to flee. That relationship raised suspicions; many believed that Toussaint subjected himself to whites like a servant, but many times Gambo heard him say that the goal of his life was to end slavery in Saint-Domingue, and nothing or no one would stop him. His personality impressed Gambo from the beginning, and he decided that if Toussaint became a chief, he would change bands without hesitating. Boukman, that giant with the voice of a tempest, the chosen of Ogu-Fer, had been the spark that lighted the fire of rebellion in Bois Cayman, but Gambo sensed that the most brilliant star in the heavens belonged to Toussaint, the ugly little man with a protruding jaw and bowed legs, who spoke like a preacher and prayed to the Jesus of the whites. And he was not mistaken, because a few months later Boukman the invincible, who dodged enemy fire by swatting at bullets with an ox tail as if they were flies, was captured by the army in a skirmish. Etienne Relais gave the order to execute him immediately, to be ahead of the reaction of rebels in other camps. His head was skewered on a lance and planted in the center of the place in Le Cap, where no one could fail to see it. Gambo was the only one who escaped death in that ambush, thanks to his awesome speed, and was able to take back the news. Then he joined the camp where Toussaint was, though Jeannot's had more people. He knew that Jeannot's days were numbered. Jeannot's camp was attacked at dawn, and he was hanged without the torture he had imposed on his victims; as there was not enough time preparations were being made to parley with the enemy. Gambo believed that after the death of Jeannot and several of his officers, the time of the white captives had also come, but Toussaint's plan to keep them alive and use them as hostages in negotiations prevailed.

  In view of the disaster in the colony, France sent a commission to speak with the black chiefs, who declared themselves ready to return the hostages as a sign of goodwill. They arranged a meeting at a plantation in the north. When the white prisoners, who had survived months of the hell invented by Jeannot, found they were near the house and realized that they were being taken there not to be killed in some horrible manner but to be freed, a stampede followed, and women and children were trampled by the men running to safety. Gambo arranged to stay with Toussaint and the others chosen to confer with the commission. A half dozen grands blancs, representing the rest of the colonists, accompanied the authorities just arrived from Paris, who still did not have a clear idea of how things were run in Saint-Domingue. With a start, Gambo recognized among them his former master and stepped back to hide, but quickly realized that Valmorain had not noticed him, and that if he did, he would not recognize him.

  The conversations took place outdoors, beneath trees on the patio, and from the first words the tension was palpable. Distrust and rancor reigned among the rebels, and blind pride among the colonists. Stunned, Gambo listened to the terms for peace his chiefs proposed: freedom for themselves and a handful of their followers, in exchange for which the rest of the rebels would quietly return to slavery on the plantations. The commission from Paris accepted immediately-the clause could not be more advantageous-but the grands blancs of Saint-Domingue were not ready to grant anything; they wanted the slaves to surrender en masse, without conditions. "What are they thinking! That we are going to make a deal with Negroes? Let them be satisfied with saving their lives!" one of them exclaimed. Valmorain tried to reason with the others, but in the end the voice of the majority prevailed, and they decided not to give anything to the blacks. The rebel leaders withdrew, offended, and Gambo followed, blazing with fury to know that they were ready to betray the people with whom they lived and fought. As soon as I have a chance I will kill them all, one by one, he promised himself. He had lost faith in the revolution. He could not foresee that at that moment the future of the island was being decided; the colonists' intransigence would force the rebels to continue the war for many years, until victory and an end to slavery was achieved.

  The members of the commission, impotent before such anarchy, gave up and abandoned Saint-Domingue, and shortly after, another three delegates, led by the French commissioner Sonthonax, a plump young attorney, arrived with six thousand reinforcements and new instructions from Paris. The law had again been changed to grant free mulattoes the rights of every French citizen, the thing they had previously been denied. Several affranchis were appointed officers in the army, and many white soldiers refused to serve under their orders and deserted. That stirred up feelings, and the hundred year hatred between whites and affranchis reached biblical proportions. The Assemblee Coloniale, which had
until then managed the island's internal affairs, was replaced by a commission composed of six whites, five mulattoes, and one free black. In the midst of the growing violence, which now no one could control, Gouverneur Blanchelande was accused of ignoring the mandate of the republican government and favoring the monarchists. He was deported to France with shackles on his legs and shortly after lost his head on the guillotine.

  The Taste of Freedom

  That is how things were the summer of the following year, when one night Tete suddenly waked with a firm hand over her mouth. She thought it was finally the attack on the plantation they had feared for so long, and prayed that death would be quick, at least for Maurice and Rosette, sleeping beside her. She waited without trying to defend herself to keep from waking the children, and also because of the remote possibility that it was all a nightmare, until she could make out a figure bending over her in the light reflected from the patio torches filtering through the waxed paper at the window. She did not recognize the person because the boy had changed in the year and a half they'd been separated, but then he whispered her name, Zarite, and she felt a flash in her breast, not of terror but of joy. She raised her hands to pull him to her and felt the metal of the knife he held between his teeth. She took it from him, and he, with a moan, dropped down upon the body that shifted to receive him. Gambo's lips sought hers with a thirst stored up during a long absence; his tongue found its way into her mouth, and his hands grasped her breasts through her light shift. She felt him hard between her thighs and opened to him, but she remembered the children she had for a moment forgotten and pushed him away. "Come with me," she whispered.