Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [330]
“You said that an earthquake is nothing to fear,” he reminded her. When she turned to him, he saw the thread of chain slip on her throat, and thought of Flaville with her, and dismissed the thought.
“Are you afraid of earthquakes?” she said.
Maillart reached for his drink. He had never admitted fear of anything to anyone, and certainly not to a woman. “There is no defense against an earthquake,” he said finally.
“And for that, no reason to fear them,” Isabelle said, with a click of her tongue, as if impatient at his lack of insight. But she stayed, her fingertips grazing the table, very near to his own hand which was curled around the glass. The air kept thickening, denser and denser, till the whole sky opened and the rain came down.
They stayed at Habitation Arnaud all through the next day and night, at the insistence of their hosts, who wished to make a token repayment of all the nights they’d spent under Isabelle’s roof in town, and also wanted to display their projects. Maillart chafed as he was shown around the mill. He sensed that the whole country was drawing itself in for another violent explosion, while he was stuck in these doldrums. It would take two more days to get the women and Paul even as far as Dondon, with the planned stopover at Habitation Cigny.
At the lowest terrace of the mill, Arnaud dipped his hand into a large wooden basin, and lifted it, spilling white granules over the pale mound inside.
“Do you see?”
“It is sugar,” the captain said, indifferently.
“White sugar.” Arnaud seethed with enthusiasm. “Do you know there are not five planters left on the plain who can refine it? All the skilled men have been killed, or disappeared into the hills.”
Maillart examined the sugar again with slightly quickened interest. True enough, it was pretty stuff. And it would please Toussaint to know that it existed. Arnaud whistled up his refiners to be introduced. Both were smiling, and seemed pleased and proud of their positions. One, he noticed, lacked an arm, which had been severed near the shoulder.
As Arnaud must go on with the work in the mill, Maillart excused himself and went to find the ladies at the school which Claudine was managing for the smaller Negro children, in the lean-to next to the new infirmary. He reached them at the moment of dismissal, for she let them go before it grew too hot—the heat muddied their attention, she had said. They were pressing around her now before they parted, and she gave them bits of hardened brown sugar to suck, and some of them kissed her fingers before they ran away. Maillart noticed that she carried her maimed hand without self-consciousness, and that it was less noticeable to him now than when she’d worn the glove.
“At eight years they must go to the fields,” Claudine was explaining to Isabelle and Nanon. “That took some argument with Arnaud, who would send them at six. Still, it is something.” She smiled, dimpling, and led them into the infirmary. In her renascent bloom, she even looked somewhat younger than before.
In the evening, Maillart was alone for a time with Isabelle on the gallery. Arnaud was detained at the mill, and Nanon and Claudine were with Cléo, the mulattress housekeeper, in the kitchen. Much as the delay annoyed him, the captain was looking forward to his supper; the night before Cléo had proved herself to be quite a remarkable cook.
“I must admit,” he said to Isabelle, “I don’t quite understand the situation here. One would take them for a pair of missionaries now. But in the old days there was no one in the colony with a worse reputation for cruelty to his slaves than Michel Arnaud. And the wife thought to be a gibbering lunatic . . .”
Isabelle nodded. “Some men improve under the pressure of necessity,” she said. “Arnaud has a strong will, and formerly there was nothing to oppose it. Now he seems to take a certain