Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [63]
Major O’Farrel was waiting for him downstairs, fingers drumming on the table. “At last,” he said, as Maillart strolled in. “Your horses are fed and watered and saddled and your men are waiting at the gate. As I believe your business here is very much concluded—”
“Doucement,” Maillart said. “I have not yet breakfasted.”
“I would not linger over the meal,” O’Farrel said, “unless you want to be hanged for a spy. Major Grant has taken very much against you—he has been making inquiries, since your visit. Were he ever so slightly less muddled, you would have been in the guardhouse since yesterday noon. You understand, I can do nothing—I have already done more than I should.”
Maillart sat down and called for coffee. The major jumped up, twitching.
“If you mean to dally after that devil of a woman,” he said, “consider if it’s worth your life. You waste your time, in any case—she has forsworn her amours to devote herself to that swinish husband, for what reason I do not comprehend. Or perhaps she is moved by some other fancy.”
Maillart burst out laughing and leaned back in his chair.
“I am delighted to have so amused you,” O’Farrel said frostily.
Maillart caught his breath. “I mean no offense,” he said. “Indeed I’m grateful for the warning.” He touched a cautious finger to the swelling on his cheekbone. “But go—before you’re compromised by being seen here. I’ll not be ten minutes behind you.”
At the edge of town Maillart took counsel with a convoy of water sellers headed for the river, and was directed to a trail barely passable by horsemen, which in theory led directly across the peninsula down to the town of Gonaives. In an hour they had reached the height of the dry mountains. Maillart pulled his horse up sharply and turned back toward Le Môle. He dismounted and, while the black men watched him gravely, took off his civilian shirt, ripped it down the middle and tried to throw it off the cliff. The wind caught the shirt and blew it loosely back so that Maillart’s horse shied and bucked. The captain choked up on the reins and calmed his animal, then turned toward the distant sea and began to shout, cursing women and politics equally, mostly in French but with some excursions into English, Spanish and Creole. When he was breathless, the black men laughed and applauded him. Maillart took his French uniform from a saddlebag and put it on, adjusted the epaulettes and pulled the seams straight. Once content with the fit of his coat, he swung back into the saddle and rode on, much relieved.
8
Doctor Hébert had elaborated the water project for Habitation Thibodet many times, both in imagination and in fact, but now it was finally finished in both departments. On the slope above the grand’case, a pool had drained the swamp and now fed two channels which divided around the house and then rejoined in a second pool, directly in front of the gallery where the doctor sat now, drinking his morning coffee and nibbling at a sugared piece of flat cassava bread.
The lower pool was edged with stones, laid in a ring without mortar. At its far rim, another channel took the water out, down toward the kitchen garden. The doctor thought the irrigation might reclaim the yard before the house, which had degenerated into a bare expanse of baked clay or mud, depending on the season, trampled by the feet of men and horses. He had already planted a few flowering shrubs around the pool, and four coconut palms which might one day grow tall. He closed his eyes, pictured a fountain, but that was absurd.
“It’s lovely . . .” The voice was melodic, soft, but a little teasing too. The doctor opened his eyes to greet his sister, who had just settled into the chair next to his own.
“Lovely . . .” she said again, smiling sleepily at him. “But now how will you fill your days?”
“Haven’t I enough to do?” The doctor heard the note of pique in his own voice and realized Elise