Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [234]
24
Though he normally used his cane only to swagger, Arnaud found himself depending on it, leaning into it, on the last twists and turns of the path up the hill. Dark faces peered out curiously from the huts that lined the path. Rare for a blanc to pass this way. He was sweating when he reached the rim of the hill below the church, but a stiff breeze came off the water, which quickly cooled him.
The hill was a dome, smooth as a skull. On the brow, three wooden crosses tilted into the wind; the center cross stood somewhat higher than the others. Arnaud turned in a circle, pivoting on his planted cane. Between the crosses and the church, his wife sat on a low wooden stool with her skirts spread all about her, catechizing a gaggle of black and colored children who sat in the dust at her feet under the shade of a scraggly flamboyant. Thin and reedy, her voice reached him against the wind.
Ki moun ki fé latè?
BonDyé! The children’s chorus swelled in answer.
Ki moun ki fils-li?
Jisit!
Claudine leaned forward to sketch the letters for Bon Dieu and Jésus Christ on a panel of dust one of the older girls had smoothed for her, using a pointed stick for a stylus. There was no paper for such a project—one of many shortages. She gave the stick to one of the colored girls, who crouched to begin copying the words, her tongue pushing out her cheek in her dense concentration. As Claudine straightened up on the stool, she caught Arnaud’s eye and smiled at him and perhaps even colored a little as she lowered her head. There was something in her movement that recalled for him an early meeting, though not their first, in France, when he had first desired her. The feeling confused him, but he continued to approach.
“You may go,” Claudine said, and as the dismissed children scattered she erased the dust slate with the sole of her worn shoe. Arnaud held out his hand to her and she took hold of it to rise.
“Well, my wife,” Arnaud said, with an ease of manner only partly forced. “Are your students attentive?”
“As you see them,” Claudine replied.
As she spoke, her eyes connected with his own. They were not rapt upon some hollow, holding phantoms only she could see—she was present with him now. At such moments he was wont to believe that her mind was healed, though he knew from experience that at some later time her thought would fail again into disorder, her eyes haze over on the void, her speech shatter into chants of Revelation, garbled with her private visions.
“That one has some natural quickness,” Claudine said, pointing to the colored girl who had copied the phrases in the dust and now ran laughing from teasing boys around the church steps.
“As well as a natural lightness of mind,” Arnaud said, watching the child scream and flee.
Claudine frowned to reprove him, and Arnaud repressed any further remark. There was a part of him that responded with frothing indignation to the notion of teaching blacks their letters—it was this sort of practice that led to rebellion, was it not? What could be more obvious? But her stints of teaching, which had been recommended to her by the Père Bonne-chance, seemed to clear and calm Claudine’s mind as nothing else could. Therefore, when Arnaud’s rage rose up at her fancies, he did his best to swallow it. When he was able (no more than half the time), he even sought to imitate her gentle, unassuming way with the blacks who served them still or whom they chanced to meet. The patience required for this effort was not natural to him. In former times he’d had no patience even for his wife, and now there were a great many moments when his patience failed him altogether.
Below, the red tile roofs of the houses spread to fill the pocket of level ground between the mountains and the sea. The sun was setting behind Morne du Cap and the blood-red waves rushed against the pilings of the harbor front. Doctor Hébert was laboring up the same path Arnaud had climbed. With a little resentment, Arnaud noticed that the doctor not only required