Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [388]
“It is now,” Riau said. “Still, and always.”
The doctor glanced at Moustique and saw that he was only feigning comprehension.
“Our dead do not leave us,” Riau said. “They do not go away into the sky like spirits of dead blancs.”
At this Moustique nodded, for they both knew this litany.
“They are with us here, although invisible, les Morts et les Mystères,” Riau said. He drew his sword and pierced the ground with its point. “They have their home beneath the surface of the earth—they are waiting beyond the gate, on the opposite side of the crossroads.”
The doctor, who knew some portion of this reasoning from his conversations with Moustique, felt the small hairs rising on his forearms nonetheless. Moustique went on nodding rhythmically in the flow of Riau’s words.
“At dawn or sunset, when the light makes the sea a mirror,” Riau said, “then they are very near, les Invisibles, beneath the surface of the waters.” He withdrew his sword from the ground and brushed the crust of dirt from its point. “When they come through the crossroads, then they move us,” Riau said, looking very pointedly at the doctor. “That is how it is at Bois Cayman. And we must move as we are moved.”
The doctor saw that Moustique had stopped nodding; the boy understood this last remark no better than he did himself. But Riau seemed satisfied, or finished, anyway. He turned, leading his horse after him out of the clearing. Under the trees again, he vaulted into the saddle, and took them on a spiraling route back home.
I, Riau, I did not know why I brought them to Bois Cayman at first, or even that I meant to do it. It was first one leaf, and then the other, the mushrooms, then we had arrived. Afterward I saw that I had wanted them to know, but especially the doctor, what was going to happen, what was happening already even then. I, Riau, had served at Bois Cayman once more this year, and with my spirit in my head. Six weeks before as Moustique had said, but that meant nothing. Time was nothing in that place. If Riau had brought his watch, it would have stopped ticking there, but I did not bring it. They did not understand what it all meant, but I was not sorry for bringing them there. I took them in and out again by such a twisted way that neither could have found the place again, alone.
At that time the division between Moyse and Toussaint was always growing greater. Moyse was made captain of the plantations in all the north, but he would not drive the men of the hoe to work as Dessalines did in the south and the west. Dessalines would drive, Dessalines would whip, Dessalines would kill any man who rebelled, and sometimes with torture equal to what the worst blanc could have dreamed. Dessalines had tasted it all in his own flesh, or much of it, and it seemed that he was willing to give it all back, and that he did not care in what direction he would give it. It began to be said that ten men who awaited an inspection from Dessalines could do the work of thirty under slavery.
Moyse looked at all this and said, My old uncle can do what he wants, but I will not be the executioner of my people.
By then, some people had begun to believe that Moyse really was Toussaint’s nephew, because Toussaint was always so easy with him. Maybe Moyse believed it himself. But in truth, Toussaint was Moyse’s parrain as he was mine, from our days at Bréda, and Toussaint had no blood tie with Moyse, any more than with Riau.
Moyse did not want to drive the men of the hoe to work, even on the lands which he now owned. He gave those lands to some whitemen to manage, and took a part of the money and did nothing more. Toussaint was very angry at this, and he let Moyse feel his anger. As captain of plantations in the north, Moyse ought to be managing his own land and making an example of how to squeeze more and more work from the men of the hoe, as Dessalines was doing in all the other parts of the country. Toussaint made his anger known, but Moyse was not in the humor to take that warning.
Moyse did not get much credit from the blancs for being captain-general