Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [145]
Placide slept in a blank oblivion, as if he were hiding from fear. At the end of an hour he woke like a shot and rushed in his nightshirt to the window. Outside there was no alarming sound, only muttering and the chink of harness rings as Toussaint’s escort remounted their horses. The standards wavered on their rods. His father was leaving then, already, and Placide felt riven by abandonment; after the years of separation, Toussaint had seen them no more than one hour. In the hollow of his father’s collarbone, he had caught Toussaint’s familiar scent, submerged but unforgotten during all their time in France—an odor of oiled leather and horsehair, and beneath these a faint musk all Toussaint’s own.
His father was in the saddle now, supple and straight and ready to ride, revealed in a generous spill of moonlight. He turned to salute Placide with a sweep of his hat, and the release of one of his rare unconcealed smiles . . . as if he’d known Placide would be there at the window to watch him go, as if they shared a secret understanding.
Soon after first light, before the heat had risen, Elise and Isabelle, with Doctor Hébert and Captain Daspir, set out from Ennery toward Gonaives, on a mission to buy saltwater fish. Or it was this aspect of their journey which most intrigued Captain Daspir, who rode between the ladies, prattling of the fine points of cuisine. The doctor scarcely listened to their talk. He was still stunned by yesterday’s journey, but remained watchful as they rode now, though the way was quiet, out of the cleft in the green hills from Ennery onto the wider, tree-shaded road that ran to the south. From the mango sellers on the crossroads, he learned that Papa Toussaint had also come and gone from Ennery during the night just past.
A pale wisp of moon hung in the cloudless sky as they came onto the white dusty plain that, below Gonaives, rolled on into the Savane Désolée. They overtook files of market women, singing and moving with dancers’ rhythm as they balanced their baskets toward the markets of the town. There was no sign of any alarm or disturbance on the road or in the square of Gonaives. Perhaps the black soldiers bunched on the street corners looked a little more edgy than usual, that was all.
Isabelle was hailed by an acquaintance, a refugee from Le Cap like herself, who’d seen Toussaint at mass that morning. Indeed, she said, he had only just left the church and sealed himself up in the headquarters building on the next street, with a gang of secretaries, to draft his correspondence. There’d been a great scouring of the town for well-lettered folk, she said, with several hauled from their beds before dawn. Meanwhile, Toussaint had communed with his usual devotion, as Isabelle’s ladyfriend hissed in a piercing whisper, “—the hypocrite, and when he went to the confessional, did he admit he is the author of our ruin?”
But Isabelle hushed her quickly, and the doctor moved a little away from these two as their voices fell, wondering why he had not been called to Toussaint’s escritoire himself, where he often did assist in the black general’s minute phrasing and rephrasing of the many, many letters he drafted and only sometimes sent. Maybe Toussaint had not known the doctor was at Ennery, or maybe he would not trust a white man with the correspondence of this moment. The doctor knew that Toussaint rarely missed a morning mass any day of the week, and that his faithful attendance was worthless to predict his actions for the rest of the day.
They rode on to the waterfront, where Elise and Isabelle bargained with the fishermen who’d come in with their dug-out canoes and little sailboats, for a supply of shrimp and sole and little Caribbean lobsters to be cooked for a banquet at Thibodet that night. With their purchase wrapped in layers of damp leaves to preserve its freshness, they started back the same way they had come. Two blocks past the pale brick headquarters building, they were overtaken by four of Toussaint’s silver-helmed honor