Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [141]
Now he had put the new baby into Merbillay, and he would lie beside her in the ajoupa all night. And my Caco, Pierre Toussaint who I had named, was with them in the ajoupa like he was their child and not Riau’s. Riau felt angry at this, but the sadness which came after was more great. I might slip into the ajoupa and kill the new man while he slept, as I had crept many times into the camps of whitemen in the hills to kill them with my knife. Or I might fight him when he woke, fight with the baton, to the death. That way it would be less sure what would happen, and Toussaint would be angry if he heard of it because he did not want his soldiers to waste themselves in fighting each other with the baton.
All these ideas I saw from a little distance, outside the head of Riau. They were not part of me at all, only things which might or might not happen. I did not know at all what I wanted to do.
I went away to look for Bouquart. When I found him, he was with the housemaid Zabeth, under the hedge of oranges in the dark. Zabeth was shy to see me come, and she pulled away and went back to the grand’-case. Bouquart did not seem to mind this very much. He smiled and took my hand. Bouquart was admired by many women here at Ennery because he was a big, fine man who could run faster and jump higher than other big, fine men, now his nabots had been struck off. I thought, while we were walking, after all it would not be a bad life for Riau, to go about as a blacksmith cutting iron off people. To be free was a great thing, but to free someone was greater.
I was thinking of this when we passed near the fires and Bouquart looked surprised to see my captain’s coat, because he was only an ordinary soldier. Guiaou did not have any captain’s coat either, I thought, or captain’s power to tell men what to do. Guiaou did not even have a shirt, it seemed. But that was a whiteman way of thinking.
Bouquart knew all the talk of the camp, because so many different women liked him, and from Zabeth he knew the talk of the grand’case, too. A quarrel had happened among the white people, he told me, after the colored woman Nanon had gone away with her child. A colored officer had come from Le Cap after Nanon, and the white mistress of the house had made her go away with him, or so Zabeth had told Bouquart. But afterward Tocquet had become very angry with his woman, and had gone away himself, and her own child Sophie was always sad, because she and Nanon’s boy Paul had been like brother and sister. Now the white mistress was sorry for what she had done, and she lay in bed until afternoon some days, Zabeth said, or even until dark, crying and calling her little girl to her. So the happiness had left that house and misery lay on it like a sickness.
That night I stayed in the ajoupa Bouquart had made, and for many nights. Sometimes I was alone there, if Bouquart went with a woman. There was not any fighting near Ennery then, and with Toussaint away there was not very much training or drilling either. The French whiteman officers Riau had known at this camp before had all gone to the fighting it seemed, if they had not been killed.
I stayed with Bouquart at night. By day I would sometimes see Merbillay, but I did not try to speak to her. I knew that she knew that Riau was there in the camp with her and Guiaou—let her think of that whatever she would. One day when she had gone off to the provision grounds, I went to that ajoupa and took down the banza I had made from the ridgepole where it hung. I struck one note softly with my thumb and bent the string to make it cry. Then I saw Caco looking at me shyly from the ajoupa doorway. I curled my fingers to him, and he came to me.
I took the banza to Bouquart’s ajoupa