Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [373]
“Paul,” he said gently, “go and get your supper.”
When the boy had left, he disengaged his hand from the cradle and with the same finger lifted a heavy lock of hair from Nanon’s face. There was an ache all through him—blend of a strange sadness with desire. She looked up at him. He cupped her ear.
“I wish to be married,” he said.
Nanon turned, disengaging herself from his touch. Her face lowered like a flower wilting on the long stem of her neck.
“But what is it?” he said, confused, alarmed. Then he realized what she must be thinking: that he had found some eligible white woman and meant therefore to put her aside.
“No, no,” he said. Both hands now on both her shoulders, to turn and bring her nearer to him. “I mean, to you.”
He hung in darkness, over a torrent which roared in the sulfurous bowels of a cavern, twirling, left to a limit, then right to a limit, and very near to falling with each turn. He was hanging by just his left forefinger, and it was only the grip of the paler child, François, which kept him from pitching into the laval flow. Worst of all was his horrible, parching thirst. He had no strength to struggle, but somehow felt himself drawn upward. There was hope, then light. A gray light like the dawn. He saw the face of the black child, Gabriel, but larger, fixed like a stone idol. His own face was coming nearer to the parted lips of the child. At the moment of their kiss an immense flow of cool water poured from the infant’s mouth into his own, quenching his thirst and refreshing him.
He woke like a shot, sweating and trembling, yet at the same time happy and assured. Nanon was twined completely around him, her body touching every surface of his own. This was sweet, but in reality he was quite desperately thirsty. Carefully he untangled himself, stroking her long back as she murmured in her sleep. He pulled on his breeches and groped toward the door. His blind hands found a water jug on a stand. He lifted it and drank deeply and wet his fingers to stroke them over his face and the few remaining sprigs of hair on his head. Through the crack in the door he could see a light on the gallery, and he slipped out of the room and went toward it.
Tocquet was sitting at the table, turning the pages of a heavy ledger in the light of a small oil lamp. The parrot perched on the top rail of his chair, both eyes closed and apparently sleeping.
“Salut,” Tocquet said as the doctor came up.
The doctor sat down across the table from him, without replying. The banana stalk from Thibodet was on the table, slightly blackened after three days in the saddlebag. After the exertions of the day and evening, the doctor was rather hungry. He peeled a banana and began to eat.
“This Fortier woman knows her business,” Tocquet said, studying the close lines of script. “Someone has been making a good thing out of this place, and I do believe it must have been her. And her records are very meticulous. The plantings, the harvest, purchases and shipping. Every death and every birth—if it’s only a cat, she has written it.”
In the dark hills beyond the house, the siffleur montagne sang in a voice like water. The doctor inclined his head toward the sound.
“Of course, our lovely ladies of leisure have not been quite so exacting since. At least, not with the ledger.”
“Isabelle is not to be discounted,” the doctor observed.
“No,” Tocquet said. “Nor yet Nanon.” He turned back pages in the book. “But this is the hand of the other.” He reversed the book, holding it open for the doctor’s inspection. The words seemed to flutter in the wavering lamplight. The doctor leaned nearer, squinting.
To the quarteronée woman, Nanon, was born, 6 January 1800, a male child, quarteroné, to be called François.
“Well, then.” The doctor sat back, noncommittal. Tocquet picked up a cheroot from the table and bent to light it from the flame of the lamp.
“You have the name of an eccentric fellow,” he said, blowing smoke up toward the still fan blades