Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [108]
“Madame Tocquet,” she said. “I am surprised.”
Elise climbed to her level, and stood a moment to catch her breath. Suzanne waited on her calmly, her eyes serene beneath the forehead knot of her blue mouchwa têt. Unlike most prosperous black women, she had put on no great storehouse of fat, though she had thickened somewhat with her years. A curl of hair that escaped the blue headcloth was white, but she still had in her least movement the grace which came from carrying large burdens on one’s head.
“Vous avez l’air d’une tête chargée,” Suzanne said quietly. You seem to have a heavy-loaded head.
“No, not at all.” Elise felt herself verging on a stammer—it was unnerving to have one’s thought read in that way, even if it were only by coincidence. Her fund of social banalities seemed to fail her before Suzanne Louverture. Isabelle, she thought fleetingly, would surely have done better in this situation. Suzanne did not go much into society, though she had been sometimes a guest at Habitation Thibodet, when Toussaint happened to be in the neighborhood. But Suzanne seldom attended his larger celebrations at Le Cap or Port-au-Prince, preferring to remain secluded here at Ennery.
“I am charged only with this missive.” Elise produced the letter from the folds of her clothing and held it out.
Suzanne looked down to see her own name inscribed—if she could read so much Elise was not certain. Saint-Jean was watching them, from the shadows of the doorway. Suzanne took the letter into her hand and looked from it into Elise’s face.
Piqued, Elise took off her hat and shook down her blond hair, which fell below her shoulders. As she tossed her head, she felt herself flushing. Well, even a blush was a white woman’s charm, though she must walk closely covered against the sun, to guard the responsiveness of her complexion.
“You must come in,” Suzanne was saying. “Take coffee.”
“No, no, I cannot stay . . .” Elise set about pinning up her hair again, turning her head to show her neck, a glimpse of her milky shoulder; she was after all a great many years the black woman’s junior.
“Let me,” Suzanne said and moved behind her to help with the hair. A few light flicks of her cool fingers, and it was arranged.
“Do come in,” Suzanne repeated, motioning toward the shade of the doorway, from which Saint-Jean had disappeared.
“Thank you, but no.” Elise could speak more easily now. She glanced down at the letter. “I had better leave you to the company of your husband.”
To this Suzanne only nodded and held out her hand. Elise clasped it briefly, let go, and turned to the steps.
After all, she did feel somewhat relieved, once she had crested the ridge behind the house and begun her descent through the coffee trees. It was not Suzanne’s jealousy that had been in question, but her own—which had obscurely plagued her from the moment she’d seen that the letter Toussaint had passed her at the church in Le Cap was meant for Suzanne, not for herself. And had Suzanne the skill to read it through? Well, Saint-Jean had some instruction, and might read it to her if need be.
The same laundresses smiled up at Elise again as she followed the stepping stones across the stream. Indeed, she thought she recognized some of Tocquet’s shirts in the hands of one. Well, perhaps Suzanne had learned to tolerate the wanderings of her husband, as French wives were obliged to do. And Toussaint’s dalliance with Elise had been so brief—a single instance—that it was likely Suzanne did not know of it. It was possible that no one did.
For the first time in a long while, Elise thought of her first husband, Thibodet, dead for the last decade, of yellow fever. By the luck of his draw, for he might equally have expired from excess of drink, or been shot dead for a gambling debt, or succumbed to the pox which his lechery had won him, or to the mercury treatments he took for the pox. But Elise had gone off with Xavier Tocquet