All Souls' Rising (4 page)

The pole still lay where it had been, but every part of the body had been removed and the nails also had been pulled out. Doctor Hébert stepped over it and walked back toward the
grand’case
. Arnaud was sitting on the gallery, dandling his cane, balancing it and letting it drop from the vertical and catching the ornate pommel just before it tilted out of his reach. The reddened point of his cheroot glowed and faded and swept down to his knee. The doctor wondered, as he came up, if he might have failed to notice his host there when he first left the house.

“You are wandering,” Arnaud said. He rested the cane against his outstretched leg.

The doctor walked up the steps and stood beside him. “Something woke me,” he said. “A silence. The dog stopped barking.”

“That’s how it is,” Arnaud said. He held a bottle up to the doctor, who swallowed from it, tasting a grapy thickness of sticks and stems and then the brilliant heat of
eau-de-vie
.

“The dog,” the doctor said. “That is an animal you have there. Do you always keep him penned?”

“It’s necessary,” Arnaud said. “I trained him for the
maréchaussée
. He only understands killing, this dog. There is a band of maroons in the area, very troublesome.”

“There?” Doctor Hébert said, swinging his shoulders toward where the pitch-black of the mountain interrupted the spangled blue-black of the sky. The movement of the deeper drum still trembled at the limit of his hearing. He noticed the shape of the mountain’s dark to be vaguely reminiscent of a hog’s head.

Arnaud pulled at his cheroot and flipped it over the edge of the board floor. It rolled a little way, sprinkling sparks, then stopped, the coal paling against the ground. Arnaud took the bottle from the doctor’s hands and poured from it into the glass he held. “That may be,” he said. “There will be slaves from this plantation, certainly. And from others which are near.”

“Why do you not forbid such gatherings?” said the doctor.

“Oh, of course they are forbidden,” Arnaud said, proffering the bottle. Doctor Hébert took it and held it out from the overhang of the roof so that it caught a glitter of the starlight. It was a slender, tapered vessel, the body just double the width of the elongated neck.

“They will be dancing,” Arnaud said. “There are dances for the dead. One knows, even when one does not hear.”

“Truly,” Doctor Hébert said.

Arnaud swallowed noisily from his glass. “To them everything is forbidden,” he said, “and to us everything is permitted. As you are a scientist, I leave it to you to determine the precise difference of our conditions.”

“You surprise me,” the doctor said, and took a last drink from the bottleneck. “Well, that will not be the work of a moment. I thank you again for everything.” He set the bottle on the floor by Arnaud’s chair and withdrew into the house.

The remainder of the night he slept without stirring, and woke automatically just at first light. He dressed quickly and quietly, lifted his saddlebags and passed through the main room, which seemed dim and dingy at this hour. There was no sign that anyone else had awakened within. Outdoors the compound was also deserted, except for a pair of chickens picking gravel around the back, but the dog began barking when he passed its shed. The doctor’s temples tightened at the sound.

In the stall the horse was nosing at the last scatter of a flake of hay. Doctor Hébert saddled and bridled it and gave it water at the trough. He had no appetite himself, and was eager to be gone. When the horse had drunk, he broke off another corner of sugar to give it. The horse took the sugar and then went on nuzzling and lipping the butt of his palm. The doctor curved his hand up to stroke the soft dark skin around its nostrils and spoke to the horse in gentle nonsense syllables. Thibodet had named it Espoir, which struck the doctor as somewhat ridiculous, considering that it was a gelding.

The dog broke off its barking sharply as Doctor Hébert led the horse outside and swung up into the saddle. He had scarcely had time to take note of the silence when he saw the chickens scatter and loft themselves into clumsy flight and the dog coming grimly between them, straight for him at a dead run. He yanked the horse in the direction of its leap and the dog struck the horse on its shoulder, sprawled back on the ground, and was up again instantly. The horse reared and let out a panicked whinny, wheeled and bunched itself to kick. The doctor leaned down into the horse’s mane and groped in the bottom of his right-hand saddlebag, blindly turning over his instruments and the sacks of medicines there. Again the dog was trying to close and, turning the horse more tightly with his left hand, the doctor kicked out at it clumsily with his boot still in the stirrup. The dog’s teeth clicked against the stirrup iron and it fell back and recouped itself. Doctor Hébert straightened up in the saddle, bringing the heavy double-barreled pistol out of the saddlebag and bracing it over his left arm, which held the reins. When the dog launched itself he shot it once in its open mouth, and the bullet, exiting from the base of the skull, flipped it over backward. The dog lay thrashing on the packed ground and the doctor sighted at a place behind its ear and fired the second barrel. The dog convulsed and stretched its legs, and the doctor felt confident that it was dead.

It seemed brighter and warmer than it had been, and from all sides there was a jabbering in Creole. Several of the house slaves had come out of the different outbuildings and were edging in cautiously on the carcass of the dog, whose big splayed paws were still twitching in the dust. The horse was moving in nervous jerks, and Doctor Hébert stroked its neck with the two free fingers of his left hand to calm it. His right hand still held the pistol pointing straight up. His ears were ringing from the shots and he felt giddy, as though the gunpowder smell had made him drunk. Arnaud had come out the back door of the
grand’case
and stood with his feet apart, looking from the doctor to the dog’s body and back.

“Accept my apologies,” Doctor Hébert said. “I had to give myself permission. You understand the predicament, I am sure.”

Arnaud said nothing in reply, but merely went on looking. He was standing just as the doctor had first seen him when he had arrived the afternoon before, holding his cane in two hands and pressing it into the meat of his thighs. The doctor contemplated the curious thought that possibly everything which had occurred between the one stance and the other was an illusion and no time had really passed at all. He saluted Arnaud with the sulfurous barrel of the pistol, and kicked the horse and cantered around the corner of the house toward the mouth of the green
allée
.

Chapter Two

T
HE WHITEMEN BELIEVE
that everything is a story. In their world that may be so. I will never live there. What men may do is flat like a road and goes along the skin of the world but because it does not begin in one place or end in another it is not a road at all. At the crossroads is where we must always meet but the other road does not lie on the earth. It comes out of the sky down the
poteau mitan
and through the earth
en bas de l’eau
, where Guinée is the sunken island beneath the waters, where the
loa
wait to meet us. That is the cross and what it means and it is everywhere. The white men say they nailed a man onto it, the man which their god chose.

Their story is not the same as ours. This is a story told by god, but a different god chose me.

In the summer before Boukman danced the death of all the whitemen at the edge of Bois Cayman, we were near the top of Morne Cochon, at the place we call the Pig’s Ear. There was a long narrow way between the rocks and then a wider lower spot and on the slope behind a shallow cave with a spring below it. A good place. At the bottom below the rocks we made a hut where a man would wait and watch for the
maréchaussée
, but we knew the
maréchaussée
would never come so high. The going was too steep for horses. A man who sat on the rock above the cave could see a long way over the northern plain to the curving of the ocean where the boats of the whitemen would come and go.

We were few and there were more men than women with us. I did not have any wife of my own, but I had been with Merbillay for three days in a place behind the Pig’s Neck, and I believed that she was big because of me, although Achille did not think so. Achille said that the child would be his and that it would be a son. He said that his
maît’tête
Ghede had told him so when Ghede was in his head, and no one would say differently because Achille was the
hûngan
. Achille was small and ugly and shriveled. When he was born his back was not straight and it never did straighten, and at the
habitation
which he had come from the whitemen used to laugh when they said his name. But he told us that he had poisoned the
gérant
and seen him dead on the floor of the
grand’case
before he ran away, taking the rifle. He had the rifle, that was true. It was our only gun.

Merbillay stayed with Achille again after we had come back from behind the Pig’s Neck, and I did not mind whatever she did, although I sometimes would remember how fat and tight her skin had felt, those three days and nights around the peak of the mountain. We had gone out gathering, I much farther than anyone else, to find new trees that no one had shaken or climbed. I went so far I thought no one could be near me, and so when I saw her coming through the lianas that hung from the lowest branch I knew that she must have been following me all that way. When I asked she showed me the white of her eyes and said that she had only come looking for something to fill her and I asked her what it was she hungered for. When I asked, she showed me the soft brown of her eye, so we both knew. Sometimes I could see again how she looked then, later when she was sitting with Achille and I sat on the rock above the cave and looked out over the ocean, or if at night I should suddenly wake and feel my
ti-bon-ange
traveling from my head.

There is my
ti-bon-ange
and my
gros-bon-ange
and my
gros-bon-ange
belongs to the life of all, but my
ti-bon-ange
is I, Riau. Waking at night, I would think that I wanted to take Merbillay and go around to the far side of the mountain with her to stay there, or to take her and go south perhaps. Or I heard my voice tell how I might whisper to the others and turn them from Achille, or pick poisonous herbs for him, or give him graveyard dirt to eat. Then my
ti-bon-ange
would whisper that after all Achille was a strong
hûngan
, who served the
loa
very well, and he was honored of the
loa
, even if Ghede had lied to him about the child. Also that we had all followed him from one good place to another, and that no harm had come to anyone in following him.

Merbillay changed in her
grossesse
, and from where I was watching I saw her temper sour. In the spring when we fed the
loa
, it was always the beautiful and loving Maîtresse Erzulie who came down into her head, who smiled with joy at the gifts we made her, a madras cloth or a polished stone or a bit of glass to see herself. But in that summer when we danced, it was Erzulie-gé-rouge that took her body, so red-eyed with weeping it appeared that her eyes themselves had been torn out from their holes. Erzulie-gé-rouge sat on the ground and clawed and beat on the dirt with her hands and screamed and cried and no offering could comfort her for her terrible losses. Also we had little to offer her by then.

Every day it was hot and dry and the winds on the mountain would make the skin rasp. Above us the peak of the mountain had turned red and bare. This Morne Cochon was not a true high mountain where a cloud always sits, only a small hill above the plain. The spring began to falter, running a little less each day. The wild pigs had gone lower on the slope, and the dry meat was coming to an end. Our only fresh meat was small birds caught with glue on the branches. Also there began to be a smell because Ti-Marie, who was old and lame, would not go farther than the edge of camp, and because it would never rain.

Merbillay was swollen at the belly but her face and her arms grew thin. There were new lines on her face which all pointed down and at night I knew she whispered to Achille that she wanted to go down to the plain, and for us all to go. My
gros-bon-ange
did not want to go raiding on the plain, and my
ti-bon-ange
was silent. I knew that Merbillay wanted to go to a
habitation
where other young women would be, she wanted to make a tall cone of cloths around her hair, and eat meal cakes and drink rum and dance at a big
calenda
. About being caught and sent into the cane field with a heavy chain on her feet, she was not thinking of that.

Then I went down to the hut below the rocks and sent Paul Lefu back up. There I stayed for most of two days. It was quiet and I had stopped talking in my head and my
ti-bon-ange
was silent. The runoff springs had stopped completely, but I had brought a little water with me in a skin, and I did not move much so I did not often need to drink, and I was not hungry. On the second day I saw a pig who had himself become thin, and I went after him for a way, but I could not catch him. Then there was a sound which was not the pig. I hid myself and saw Jean-Pic coming from behind a ceiba tree.

“Riau,” he said.

“Well, you have come back,” I said.

Jean-Pic was coming back all alone, and the sack on his back was wrinkled and limp. If he had got any food he had eaten it on his journey, and he had not any rum or gunpowder either. I went with him back to the main camp. The spring had become only a wet spot on the ground. I got water by pressing the back of my hand in the wet leaves and waiting for my palm to fill. The smell was worse. Merbillay was sitting on the rock above the cave, looking toward the ocean and saying that she wanted to eat a fish. Then she said only the one word again and again,
pwasô, pwasô
. Jean-Pic had not brought anything back in his sack except for a little cornmeal.

When the sun began to go down to meet the ocean I stood up and crossed over to Achille and asked him to make a
vévé
for Ogûn. He looked at me a little time before he nodded. His face was thin and sharp and he had a long nose like a whiteman’s, but there was no white blood in him. He nodded and picked up a spear and put it into the ground for a
poteau mitan
. He picked up the bag of meal. There was too little to waste and not enough to save. Achille mixed meal with some ash he took from the edge of the fire and crouched to make the
vévé
at the left of the
poteau mitan
. The mixed meal spilled in fine lines from the bottom edge of his hand and he moved over the ground like a spider, making the diamonds with the stars inside and lacing them together, never stopping till he made the last twirl at the corner of the square.

The
vévé
of Ogûn was there. Achille knocked on the ground beside the
poteau mitan
and stood and raised the
asson
. The strings of stones clashed on the side of the gourd. Achille turned and shuffled and began to sing.

Ogûn travay o li pa mâjé

Ogûn travay-o

Ogûn pa mâjé

Yé o swa Ogûn dòmi sâ supé
…

The
asson
said aclash-aclash and behind me I heard César-Ami beating the little drum, but there was a stone sitting on my teeth and my mouth would not open. Jean-Pic had begun to sing and Merbillay stopped saying
pwasô
and slipped down from the rock and began to sing the song for Ogûn.

Ogûn works, he doesn’t eat

Ogûn works-o

Ogûn hasn’t eaten

Last night Ogûn went to bed with no supper
…

Clash-aclash the
asson
said. Ogûn was talking to the drum but my feet were buried in the ground, I couldn’t lift them. My eyes were looking at the sun where it cut down through the clouds toward the water. It was round and red and its edges were sharpened like a knife. Jean-Pic stood up to dance. Merbillay’s hips went back to front and side to side. Then my knees loosened and my feet came free and I was moving with the two of them and with Achille. The
asson
said clash-aclash and the drum changed. My eyes were still on the red of the sun. I saw Achille jerk his head and he began to sing the song for Ghede.

Mwê li brav-o

Rélé brav-o, gasô témérè

Bat’ bânân li témérè

Mòso pul li témérè

Gnu ku kléré li témérè

Mòso patat li témérè

M’apé rélé brav Gédé
—

Then we were all dancing because we were hungry and others too were singing the song of Ghede.

I say brave-o

Call him brave-o, a bold fellow

His banana end is bold

His piece of chicken is bold

His bowl of rum is bold

His piece of sweet potato is bold

I am calling brave Ghede!

Achille’s mouth had fallen loose. His head was rolling unstrung on his neck. The
asson
swung low at his knees like an end of rope. Jean-Pic took the
asson
from his fingers and propped him up a little from behind. Achille had stopped singing but the others went on.

M’apé rélé brav Gédé
—

V’ni sové z-âfâ la-o

M’apé rélé brav Gédé
—

The drum changed. Ghede pushed himself up and away from Jean-Pic’s arm and walked away from him without looking back. Jean-Pic raised the
asson
high and shook it, clash-aclash. Ghede walked in a wide circle to the left around the
poteau mitan
. His knees came up almost to his chest as he marched, but his hands did not move at all. His arms were sticking at his ribs like the arms of a wooden man. Ghede’s neck was long and very stiff but he could not make Achille’s back come straight.

I am calling brave Ghede

Come and save the children here

I am calling Brave Ghede
—

The voice was coming out of Merbillay, though her mouth was no longer seeming to move and her eyes had closed in on her dancing. The rapping of the drum slowed and began, slowed and began a new speed. Ghede stopped before Jean-Pic and began to accuse him:
You have brought no bread for Ghede. You have brought no meat for Ghede. You have not brought any rum for Ghede. Ghede’s hunger is very strong. Why will you not feed Ghede?