Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [121]
Daspir drank and gave the cup to Cyprien. The water went on whispering from the spout into the pool.
“I saw him,” Daspir said abruptly.
“Saw whom?” said Cyprien.
“General Toussaint,” Daspir said. “Toussaint Louverture. He met us in the battle by Limbé. He was riding a tremendous white horse . . .” The image flashed behind Daspir’s eyes. Had it been yesterday? the day before? a year?
“I wonder that you did not bring him in on a string,” Cyprien said.
“Ah,” said Daspir, attempting a light tone. “There was a river between us.”
“Do let me know if you see him again,” Cyprien said and abruptly started—a small winged thing had flickered between them.
“It’s only a bat,” said the doctor’s voice. “It will not harm you.”
Cyprien sniffed and turned away, heading for the lights of an open arcade that ran along the side of the house. An agreeable smell of cooking came from that direction. Daspir swallowed, ran his tongue around his hollow mouth. White petals from a tree he did not recognize came drifting down over the path that Cyprien had followed.
Daspir reversed himself and stood beside the doctor, looking into the heart of the garden. There were still some dusty rose reflections from the clouds above the wall. The sound of water murmured, at their left. He wondered where Guizot was at this moment, if he were still alive and unhurt. Then for some reason his mind returned to the black men with their long knives, drifting dark as ghosts through the cane.
“The field hands here have just recently been mustered out of the army,” the doctor said. “It’s Toussaint’s system. You may be sure they have their firearms near at hand.”
Daspir glanced at him, then looked back into the leaves. There was a movement of the air, stirring the feathery shoots of the cocotiers, shivering the round leaves of the almonds. All the garden seemed to contract with an inhalation. Then release.
“He has been here, has he not?” Daspir said. “Not long ago.”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “I think he has.”
“But how can you know?”
“Sa nou pa wé yo,” the doctor said. “In this country, your knowledge comes to you out of the invisible. Or at least at this hour, when all of the garden breathes at one time, what you don’t see means more than what you do.”
In the quiet that ensued, Daspir felt the garden draw in its breath once more and let it go. The doctor touched him very lightly on his sleeve.
“Come,” he said. “Let us go in.”
13
From the clifftop retreat Arnaud had prepared, Claudine could still sense the curve of the earth below, though most of the horizon was blotted out by smoke. She sat on a stone with her ankles crossed, looking out beyond the gate of Habitation Arnaud, over the charcoal expanse of the Plaine du Nord. The light sound of water running from the spring purled on, behind and to her left. The crossing of her ankles brought her lean shanks wide, stretching the fabric of her skirt and framing the lower loop of a long chain of blue beads, which wrapped twice around her neck before releasing its last length to her kneecaps. The beads were a deep, dense blue, and very shiny and hard, like polished stone, or pottery fiercely fired and glazed; she did not know which.
She shuttled them across her lap with her fingers, one by one, with little clicks. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessèd art thou among women . . . And there she stuck, her mind refusing to advance the words of the prayer. She did not know where the beads had come from, or knew it only by hearsay. By hearsay and by her fatigue and the marks on her body she knew that two