Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [25]
Marie-Noelle came out onto the long porch to serve a platter of bananas and fried eggs. Arnaud helped himself generously, and covertly studied the black girl’s hips, moving deliciously under the thin cotton of her gown as she walked away. In the old days, he’d have had her before breakfast, and never mind who heard or knew. But now—he felt Cléo’s eyes were drilling him and looked away, from everyone; he hardly knew where to rest his gaze.
Down below the low hill where the big house stood, the small cabins and ajoupas of the field hands he’d been able to regather spread out around the tiny chapel Claudine had insisted that he build. The blacks were now taking their own morning nourishment and marshaling themselves for a day in the cane plantings or at the mill; soon the iron bell would be rung. Claudine and Arnaud were breakfasting on the porch, for the hypothetical cool, but there was none. The air was heavy, oppressively damp; drifts of soggy blue cloud cut off the sun.
Arnaud looked at his wife again, more carefully. It was true that she appeared quite well. There was no palsy, no mad glitter in her eye. Last night they had made love, an uncommon thing for them, and it had been uncommonly successful. They fell away from each other into deep black slumber, but sometime later in the night Arnaud had been roused by her spasmodic kicking. She thrashed her head in a tangle of hair and out of her mouth rose a long, high, silvery ululation. Then her voice broke and went deep and rasping, as her whole body became rigid, trembling as she uttered the words in Creole: Aba blan! Tuyé moun-yo! Then she’d convulsed, knees drawing to her chest, the cords of her neck all standing out taut as speechlessly she strangled. Arnaud had been ready to run for help, but then Claudine relaxed, went limp, and presently began to snore.
He himself had slept but lightly for what remained of the night. And now he thought that Cléo, who slept in the next room, beyond the flimsiest possible partition, must have heard it all. Down with the whites. Kill those people!
Down below the iron bell clanged, releasing him. Arnaud pushed back his chair and stood. When he bent down to peck at his wife’s cheek, Claudine turned her face upward so that he received her lips instead.
A hummingbird whirred before a hyacinth bloom, and Claudine felt her mind go out of her body, into the invisible blur of those wings. She had gone down the steps from the porch to watch her husband descend the trail to his day’s work. Behind her she heard Cléo and Marie-Noelle muttering as they cleared the table.
“Té gegne lespri nan têt li, wi . . .”
True for them, and Claudine felt no resentment of the comment. There was a spirit in her head . . . She was so visited sometimes when she slept, as well as when the drums beat in the hounfor. To others, a spirit might bring counsel, knowledge of the future even, but Claudine never remembered anything at all. Unless someone perhaps could tell her what words had been uttered through her lips—but she would not ask Arnaud. Afterward she normally felt clean and free, but today she was only more agitated. Perhaps it was the heavy weather. Her hands opened and closed at her hips. She could not tell which way to turn.
At this hour she might normally have convened the little school she operated for the smaller children of the plantation (though Arnaud thought it a frivolity and would have stopped it if he could). But in the heavy atmosphere today the children would be indisposed. And though her teaching often soothed her own disquiet, she thought today that it would not. She turned from the descending path and walked around the back of the house, swinging her arms lightly to dry the dampness of her palms.
Here another trail went zigzag up the cliff, and Claudine grew more damp and clammy as she climbed. A turn of the trail brought her to a flat pocket, partly sheltered by a great boulder the height of