Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [367]
Then the two men were on the ground, tumbling over each other, and somehow a knife had come into play, in Choufleur’s hand; it hummed slightly, shallowly, over Dessalines’s back, unrolling a new hammock of red lines over the white lines of the whip scars. Dessalines did not seem to be much affected by the deft cuts. He got an arm around Choufleur’s back, lifted and dropped, driving his shoulder into Choufleur’s midsection. Choufleur’s mouth came open, tongue thrusting out. When they separated, Dessalines held the knife.
Darkness. Once the doctor’s eyes had cleared, he saw Dessalines and Choufleur both on their feet, circling, Choufleur breathing painfully by the look on his face, bruised from the deep blow to his chest. His movement had become a little dull. Dessalines feinted with the knife, then grinned and threw it up and away, out of the ring. Gone. Beads of blood stood out all over his back, on the fresh lines which had just been cut. He ran his left thumb along his inner forearm, tasted his own blood and charged.
Choufleur’s abdomen was caught between Dessalines’s scissoring legs, so that he writhed and strained for breath. Twisting, he got his hip engaged against Dessalines’s thigh, caught a breath—his arms were useless, pinned in a bear hug against his sides. He sank his teeth into the black man’s throat.
The clapping and chanting stopped. There was a horrible, motionless moment. The witnesses closed tighter around the men who struggled on the ground. Dessalines strained and squeezed with arms and legs, but Choufleur’s jaws did not loosen. The doctor wondered with an astral detachment whether the teeth might not actually find an important blood vessel.
Dessalines took one hand out of his octopus grip and caught hold of Choufleur’s ear. He wrenched, lifting, twisting; the pain must have been unimaginable, but Choufleur kept working with his teeth, a rime of blood running around his jaws. When the ear tore loose, flowering blood, Choufleur lost his jawhold for just a second, enough for Dessalines to push his chin up, wrap an arm snake-like around his neck. He turned on his hip, cradling Choufleur’s purpling face with a strange air of gentleness. Squeeze and relax. The clapping and chanting had resumed. With each relaxation Choufleur sucked for air while his ear poured blood down Dessalines’s forearm. With each squeeze, Choufleur’s face turned scarlet. The impulsion of the black man’s movement seemed to come from the net of scars, with blood flowing over them, the scars binding and loosening, more than the man. The scars refused to release the pressure, and Choufleur’s face went from purple to black. His boot heels drummed a tattoo on the ground. Dessalines shifted his grip, catching Choufleur’s chin and the back of his head, and with an unwinding movement of both arms rotated the head around until, following a dreadful ripping, crunching sound, it hung flaccid from the broken neck. With a sigh, he rolled away from the body.
Silence. Dessalines was up on his knees, the hollow of his chest pumping. They could all hear him breathe, like a saw on a log. The doctor began to consider his wounds. The cuts on his back were probably inconsequential, though of course one must treat them against infection. Was this the task for which he had been summoned? The sword cut on the inner forearm might very well be more serious, though from appearances it had severed no important ligament or tendon. Unless Dessalines had gone on using his hurt arm and hand by the sheer implacable force of his will alone. But the bite would be the worst of all, undoubtedly a very nasty thing.
The sun threw a red stain over the ground, darkening as the rain clouds began to blow up. Buzzards came flopping down out of the sky like stinking ragbags, hopping from one corpse to the next. Dessalines was on his feet, retrieving Choufleur’s sword. He stopped and lifted one of Choufleur’s limp, dead legs,