Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [222]
They could not investigate in person, Isabelle said, when the girl had scurried back to the house. Pas question. No decent woman could be seen even on the same block as that establishment. But she would make inquiry; there were other ways. Indeed word came to them that night, by way of Major Joseph Flaville, that Paul had been in that house for several days, but that he had run away.
The thrill with which Elise received this news was soon replaced by discouragement. If Paul was alone and adrift on the streets of Le Cap, they ought already to have run across him. And if not, what hope was there? At supper she could scarcely follow the talk, and that night she slept poorly.
Next day she and Isabelle sallied out as before, this time to search the poorer quarters of the town where indigents fetched up. They explored the huts on the marshland near the cemetery ground of La Fossette, and then the marché des nègres at the Place Clugny. Elise sensed Isabelle’s interest flagging. The excursions on the arm of her disguised friend were losing their novelty, as the likelihood of finding Paul declined.
But as they were leaving by one of the byways running out of the Place Clugny, Isabelle snatched at Elise’s sleeve and pulled her back the way they had come. The street was crowded with market stalls and market women, so that Elise could not make out what her friend had seen.
“What?” she said, “What is it?” But Isabelle did not hear her, Elise realized. A handcart loaded with flour inched past, and a string of four mules went by in the opposite direction.
“Maman Maig’,” Isabelle said. “I am sure it is she!”
On the opposite side of the street a gigantic black woman sat on a block of stone, eating fish and rice with her fingers from a halved calabash.
“Who is it?” said Elise.
“The midwife,” Isabelle hissed. “She attended Nanon when the boy was born.”
They stood before the black woman, who did not look up. With an unaccustomed diffidence, Isabelle explained whom they were looking for, mentioning his connection to Maman Maig’. All the while the black woman went on eating. Her fingers were shiny with oil from the food. It was not clear if she were listening or not.
“Pa konnen,” she said, when Isabelle had stopped talking. I don’t know. The denial seemed universal, as if Maman Maig’ knew nothing on any topic at all, or nothing she would tell these questioners. But she did look up, not at Isabelle, but at Elise, who felt a ring of sweat breaking out where the band of Tocquet’s hat compressed her skull. The black woman’s eyes were narrow, squeezed slantwise by rolls of fat. Elise felt that her disguise was penetrated, not only that but all her being. The cloth binding her breasts cut into her ribs, hindering her breath. The energy that had animated her drained away and was replaced by unbounded hopelessness. Then Maman Maig’ was not looking at her anymore, and Isabelle was leading her away, toward the Cigny house for shelter from the sun.
She lay on a low daybed still in the same shirt and trousers (Isabelle had ordered them washed and pressed the night before), having only removed her boots and loosened the shirt at the throat. Above her the attic walls slanted to a peak. At one end of the room a round window like a porthole cast a magnified round of sunlight across her hips and legs. She occupied this little room because Arnaud and his wife were installed in the larger guest room on the floor below. Nanon had stayed here, Isabelle had told her, in the last weeks of her grossesse.
She could not sleep, nor truly rest. The room was too warm, close under the roof, at that hour. Isabelle had urged her to lie down in her own bedchamber, or on a divan in the parlor on a lower floor, but Elise had very much preferred to be alone. She flattened her hands over a point below her navel, pressing against