Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [20]
Placide, then Isaac, clumped down to the officers’ mess, Monsieur Coisnon bringing up their rear. They found their places at the table. Certainly there was no one aboard enjoying better victuals. They ate not at the first table, with the ship’s captain and his mates, but at the second, in the company of four young army officers and a lone naval ensign whom everyone seemed to ignore. The army captains were Cyprien, Paltre, Daspir, and Guizot. No one seemed to be able to recall the ensign’s name, not even Monsieur Coisnon, who was armed with tricks for memorizing his ever-changing pupils.
“Thanks be to God,” Coisnon muttered, and inhaled a blast of rum from his cup. Placide and Isaac bowed their heads momentarily; the army captains avoided each other’s eyes. Tonight it was salt cod, as opposed to salt beef.
“One might try a hand at fishing,” Captain Guizot proposed.
“If one had line and a hook,” said Paltre.
Daspir lifted his plank of salt cod and held it dangling. He squinted at it comically. It was an unappealing ochre shade, with a rank smell that struck at a distance. The shifting light of the swinging lantern made its surface seem to crawl.
Placide looked away. He chewed mechanically, ignoring the sour flavor. There was a mess of boiled beans and meal to complement the fish. Isaac nibbled at the corner of the chunk of hardtack he’d tried to soften in his rum. Placide nudged him to encourage him to eat; the younger boy dutifully poked a spoonful of the bean mash into his mouth and struggled to swallow it down.
“Now, what shall we find delectable in Saint Domingue?” Daspir inquired.
Both Placide and Isaac looked up. Conversation at these meals was restricted to this sort of innocuous question. Or else there might be disquisitions from Coisnon on topics which had suggested themselves to him during the day. The army men were hard put to conceal their boredom with his lectures; yet their talk among themselves was constrained by the presence of the boys and their tutor. Placide remembered something of the same sort from his Egyptian voyage, the same hesitancy, same sense of withholding.
“Maïs moulin,” he said. It was the bean mash that prompted him. Maïs moulin stood in the relation of pure Platonic form to the sludge they were trying to eat now.
“C’est quoi ça?” Daspir said. What’s that? He was a plump young man, with round cheeks and shining olive skin; he loved good food and felt privation more keenly than the others. Placide described: stewed cornmeal mixed with highly seasoned beans, with onions, peppers, perhaps a dash of syrup whose sweetness worked against the spice.
“What else?” Daspir’s eyes were shining. “What for meat?”
Placide shrugged. “Goat. Fresh pork. Roasted on the boucan it is very good. There are many kinds of fish.”
“Lambi,” Isaac put in. “Lambi with green cashew sauce.” With a rapture rising to Daspir’s own, he told how the meat of the conch was tenderized with papaya juice, served with a sauce of tomatoes and fresh cashews, the soft consistency of mushrooms. Then to follow there might be fruit: oranges certainly, guava, mango, soursop, several different kinds of banana—banane figue, banane loup-garou, and Isaac’s own favorite, the tiny sweet banane Ti-Malice.
Inspired by these recollections, Isaac managed to empty most of his plate, as Placide noticed with some relief; his brother had not succeeded in taking much nourishment since he had been laid low by mal de mer. And thus another dinner hour had passed more agreeably than some. With Coisnon, the two boys climbed up to take their evening constitutional on the deck. There was no moon, and the night was marvelously clear, starlight blazing down on them from a black velvet sky. The swell seemed just a little stronger than before.
Raising his arm to the constellations, Coisnon began to recount the myths of Cepheus