Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [233]
Only Maillart respected Toussaint, though he had gone over to the other blancs as soon as they and he had met in Port-au-Prince. He seemed to do it without thinking. I did not know what was behind his head. He and I had not spoken of the choice he had made. Maybe he had not even seen that crossroads when he passed it. But when I left the card players I began to doubt the way that I, Riau, had taken from that kalfou.
Chancy was kept then in an old cachot for soldiers who had disobeyed. There was a hole in the stone floor of a fort, round with a stone rim like the rim of a well, and beneath it a square room all made of stone. There was not any other way in or out and no light except what came in through the hole. Chancy was down there in the dark. Once a day they lowered a bucket with bread and water on a rope and once a day if he was lucky they pulled up a bucket where he made his kaka.
Then I with Maillart and Paul Lafrance and some mulatto officers who had taken the side of the French blanc soldiers made a story about Chancy for the ears of Lacroix, because it was easy to speak to him, and then with his help the story came to General Boudet. Chancy was a mulâtre himself, the child of Toussaint’s sister with a blanc in Les Cayes as it was said, and the story we made told that he had fought with the mulattoes when Rigaud made war on Toussaint, and that afterward, not long ago, Toussaint had put him into prison—so he was not so loyal to Toussaint as the blancs would think from catching him with those letters. Now, there was enough truth in this story for it to be believed, yet Toussaint had adopted Chancy as if to be his son when the war with the mulattoes was finished, and there was no one who loved Toussaint better than Chancy, and though Chancy had been in prison for a time it was only because Toussaint was angry at him for making love to a married woman. But these things the blanc generals did not know. On the strength of the story Chancy was let out of his cachot and given the freedom of Port-au-Prince, on his parole that he would not run away to go back to Toussaint. All among us liked Chancy, and no one wanted to see him shot for carrying Toussaint’s messages. I made certain too that Chancy understood that Riau had helped him to get out, in case he might bring that word to Toussaint later on.
Chancy got a bath and a clean uniform and went with me to visit the daughters of Paul Lafrance. Madame Lafrance was there to give us lemonade with plenty of sugar and she gave us pieces of griot with a good sauce Ti Malice, and Paul Lafrance was with us too. One of the old ones was in the room with us all the time, because they knew Chancy too well to leave their girls alone with him. Chancy was a fine-looking young man, with clear skin and the hair of a blanc, and he had some education so that he spoke gracefully in proper French, and with wit enough to keep the girls laughing. I saw Marie-Odette begin to give him many of her smiles. But though everyone was laughing and glad, whenever I looked at the smiles of the girls I remembered what Paul Lafrance had said to General Lacroix, and the face of Lacroix as it had looked across his shoulder when he embraced Paul Lafrance, and I heard an echo of what Lamour Dérance had said, Gen dwa blan-yo bay menti. Lamour Dérance had sold himself to the blancs anyway, but still his words hung in my ears: Maybe the whites are lying.
24
Though he’d been offered a bed in the town of Petite Rivière, Doctor Hébert preferred to camp on the knoll above, where most of Toussaint’s wounded from Ravine à Couleuvre reposed within the walls of the old English fort. Fontelle and Paulette had found themselves a lodging below, but each morning they appeared to aid him in his nursing, walking slowly up the gentle grade which rose imperceptibly from the town. When they reached the fort, Fontelle immediately set to boiling water, but before they began the work of