Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [262]
Quamba held the asson, with Loco on the other side of the cloth where we could not see him. He did so because, he told me, since it was Riau who had the questions, it was better for Quamba to bring the dead from beneath the waters this time.
Then we heard water gurgling from one jar to another, and a sound like the voice of a drowning man. But it was not Moyse who spoke. Bouquart was the first to come, and Zabeth was the first to speak to him.
“Who killed you, Bouquart?” Zabeth’s voice was choked and shaking. “Who was it brought your death to you?”
Now, I knew the answer to that question, and Zabeth too—there was no mystery. After Moyse’s rising was put down, Toussaint told Bouquart to step from the line and shoot himself, and he did so, and this Zabeth had seen with her own eyes, and Riau had seen it too, but maybe her grief was no sharper than mine. Bouquart was father of Zabeth’s Bibiane. But it was I, Riau, who cut the iron from Bouquart’s legs when we came out of Bahoruco together here to Thibodet, and his freedom was the work of my own hands.
Sé blan yo ki té touyé moin, Bouquart’s voice croaked. It was the whites who killed me.
Zabeth wept. Michau held her head against his chest, till all his shirt was wet with her tears. Merbillay and Guiaou stroked the fingers down her back, and Caco held her hand. Bouquart’s answer seemed strange to me. Yet I saw how this answer freed Zabeth from her hatred of Toussaint. Now she could give her hatred to the blancs, who had no faces. And the sense was this—it was the blanc slavemasters who stood behind Toussaint and moved his hands to make those actions. That was the reason Moyse made the rising at that time.
Then Bouquart went into the govi, and his voice stopped. Now it was dark, and the stars were coming, and I, Riau, felt the whirl in my head I knew through the days I had spent lying on the leaves with my face turned up to the emptying sky. But I held on to my own head now, till everything came steady. Moyse was the next to come. I could not mistake his voice, though his throat was full of water.
“Ki moun ki té touyé w, Moyse?” I said, and heard the choking in the sounds I made. Moyse, who killed you? Riau, Riau, might be his answer. Because although it was Toussaint who gave the order that Moyse be shot, Riau’s hands had worked in that affair. Riau’s voice loosed Guiaou to betray Moyse’s rising to Toussaint. If Moyse accused me, he would be just, though I never let myself know it before now.
Moin-même, said Moyse. I killed myself. Toussaint gave me time to run away, but I would not go. And when I came before the firing squad, it was I myself who told the men to fire.
I thought of it. These things were true. I had been there myself at Port-de-Paix, and heard Moyse’s voice give the order to the men who shot him. But I did not think that was the whole truth of his death, and Moyse had cursed Toussaint, also, before he died.
A different spirit is with Toussaint now, Moyse said, although I had not asked the question. I did not quite know how to ask it. But Moyse was ready with his answer just the same. You have seen how hard Toussaint has turned against the blancs, he said. And these soldiers in the ships have surely come to bring back slavery, no matter what they say. If you would keep your freedom, follow Toussaint.
Moyse went into his govi then, and I knew that my own face was all wet with tears, though I had never felt them begin. I was shivering too, like the leaves of the high palms that shivered in the wind above the hûnfor,but after a little time it stopped.
There were more dead who stood behind Moyse, a great many more. Quamba had not called them but still they came. Most of them were men who’d died in Moyse’s last rising. They kept on coming for a long time, and in the end Quamba did