Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [19]
The nausea scarcely troubled Placide this time out, not after the first day. Isaac was making a slower adjustment, though he looked a little better now than the day before, favoring Placide with a weak smile as he stopped beside him.
“Ki jan ou yé?” Placide asked him, “W byen?”
“Pa pi mal.” Isaac drew himself a little straighter. “M’ap kenbe.” He rocked back on his heels, catching his weight against his handgrip on the rail. No worse; I’m hanging on . . . During their years in France they’d spoken Creole seldom, even among themselves. The patois was frowned upon at the Collège de la Marche, though many of the other students had it as their mother tongue.
A flying fish came out of a billow, whirred toward them, then drilled into another wave. Isaac’s breath caught, and Placide turned to smile at him again. Ill below decks for so many days, Isaac had till now missed most of the wonders the sea had to display.
The first fish was followed by another, and another; then dozens all at once were in the air, glittering, wet, and iridescent red in the light of the setting sun. Placide wondered what the appearance of the fish might augur. This thought too had the taste of home, where every natural manifestation had its meaning if one could know it. He and Isaac had been children when they left Saint Domingue. Now they had the age of men. When he’d summoned them to that audience before their departure, the First Consul had presented them each a splendid uniform, a brace of pistols, and a sword. But they had little knowledge of the use of these arms.
Nor did they know what awaited them in Saint Domingue. Placide’s memories of that land were fractured; his brother’s still less clear. Placide had been tantalized with the prospect once before, for when that other fleet had sailed to Egypt, Saint Domingue had been the declared destination—his own presence meant only to lend credence to that deception. When the real mission was revealed to him (at the same time as to most of the rest of the passengers), Placide had soothed his disappointment with the thought that he might look upon the Pyramids, and especially the Great Sphinx, which he had seen in pictures. But the English navy, undeceived by the ruse, had intercepted them and turned them back to a French port.
Monsieur Coisnon, their tutor, now appeared beside Isaac, the skirt of his dark cassock snapping in the wind. The flying fish were still exploding from the waves, and Coisnon began to speak of them in terms of natural history. Placide’s mind drifted. He recalled that, on his return from that aborted voyage to Egypt, Monsieur Coisnon had told him how in reality the Great Sphinx was somewhat diminished from what he’d seen in the engravings, the vast sad features of her face blown to flinders by Bonaparte’s artillerymen, practicing their aim. Coisnon had meant that tale for consolation, Placide thought, but he had not been much consoled.
Amidships, a brass bell clanged.
“Mess call,” Coisnon said. Isaac and Placide looked at each other grimly. Coisnon shaded his eyes to peer up at the sky.
“You will remember,” he said, “that when Columbus first undertook this voyage, his men thought to mutiny when he would not turn back, sick as they were of salt meat spoiled in the cask, and fearful they’d sail off the edge of the world altogether. It was the birds flying out from the islands that saved him then, restoring the confidence of the crew. As the dove saved Noah from the failing faith of his companions, returning with the olive branch.”
Placide followed his tutor’s expansive gesture. For a moment it seemed to him he caught the scent of flowers. He looked again; there were no birds.
“Come,” said Monsieur Coisnon. “Let us to table.”
Isaac gulped. They did not eat as poorly as Columbus’s men in the last days of that first voyage, and there was plenty of