Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [233]
Mèt Agwé, koté ou yé?
Ou pa wé mwen sou lanmè?
Gegne zaviro nan main mwen . . .
M’ pa kab tounen déyé . . .
Guiaou was shocked backward, his legs stuttering—I saw his eyes go white, but the hounsis caught him before he’d fallen to the ground, made a hammock of their arms where he lay with his arms and eyelids twitching.
Master Agwé, where are you?
Don’t you see I’m on the sea?
I have the rudder in my hand. . . .
There is no turning back for me . . .
Then he rose up smoothly from among them, and Agwé was in his head. Agwé rising like a cresting wave, a dolphin breaching out of the crest. Like water Agwé rippled toward Riau and caught his left arm which was not hurt and pulled him into the wave’s curl . . . smooth and glassy, collapsing on itself. The stars whirled and bled together white as milk and Riau was no more, but there was Ogûn.
In the next days, Riau was very calm within himself, and floating like a burned-out log floats as a boat on top of the water. There was the peace Quamba had wished me, though it had not come all at once. Riau was not moved to do anything, only to follow whatever would come. In those days Merbillay did not come at all, but Caco came and we did many things together. I saw there was no trouble in Caco’s head, which made me glad.
One day Guiaou himself came up the trail. He was not wearing the sling anymore. He had his coutelas and his musket on his shoulder, but I knew he had not brought those weapons against me. When he came in front of the ajoupa, he set down the musket against a sapling and told me that some men were moving to Mirebalais and that he would be going with them.
“Yes,” I said, because I had heard that there would be a movement of some troops, only Captain Riau was not going with them now, and would still be posted here at Ennery. I had not known that Guiaou’s company was ordered out, and I wondered why he would come to tell me.
Guiaou stretched his back and breathed deeply and worked his bare feet around in the dirt where the chickens scratched. At last he told me that Merbillay’s blood had stopped, which meant another child was coming.
“Ti-moun sa-a gegne dé pè,” I said. I don’t know why I had not thought till then that there must be another child. The words came from my mouth before I thought of them. That child will have two fathers.
“Sa!” Guiaou said, as if he had been searching all over the world for the words I had said and was very excited to find them. We looked at each other strangely for an instant, then turned and looked all around the hills and the sky in opposite directions. But then it seemed that my left hand was touching his right, palm to palm. The two hands held each other gently for a moment, then released, and Guiaou had shouldered his musket and was going down the hill again.
The same day the soldiers marched out of Ennery, I helped Merbillay move her things to the ajoupa on the hill. There were not so many things, but she made herself a great trouble arranging them in there. She would have made me the same trouble too, but seeing that Yoyo was restless and whimpering, I carried her outside. Caco had gone off in the woods alone somewhere. I thought he was happy to move to the hill for a time, because there were less people than down below who might catch him to do work.
Yoyo could crawl very well by then, and she could stand if someone held her by both hands. I lifted her to her feet that way and coaxed her to take a step or two, but she curled up her legs beneath her until I let her down again. She crawled in the dust, bubbling and humming. When she came to my legs and began playing with my toes, I caught her up into my arms. She smiled at me with her red gums and then she turned and nuzzled her damp mouth against my skin. She had a warm, important weight, like bread. This was the first day that I had held her, and I