Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [30]
Pursued by Etienne, Dieufait ran by outside, rolling a wooden hoop with a stick. The two children disappeared among the clay-walled cases. Grazing her fingertips over the lectern, Claudine left the shade of the school roof and walked toward the chapel. En route she passed the little case inhabited by Moustique and Marie-Noelle. The cloth that closed the doorway was gathered with a string, and glancing past its edges, Claudine saw Moustique’s ivory feet hanging off the edge of the mat where he lay. Marie-Noelle was on her side, turned toward him, and between them their new baby lay curled and quietly sleeping.
Envy pricked at Claudine again as she went into the chapel. There was no door, properly speaking, but close-hung bead strings in place of one whole wall, which could be pulled back to open a view of the altar to the compound outside. The interior space was very small, built on the same plan as a dog shed that had once stood there. The walls were whitewashed, and eight pegged benches like those in the school were arranged in a double row. Claudine sat down on the farthest bench from the altar—no more than an ordinary wooden table. Above it hung a crucifix carved in mahogany from the fevered imagination of one of the Africans of the plantation—or maybe it was drawn from life, for certainly there had been horrors enough, in the last ten years of war, to inspire such a grotesquerie as he had made.
Claudine sat still, her back rigorously straight, hands folded in her lap. The bead curtain hung motionless behind her, and on the roof the heat bore down. She could not pray or think or breathe. That drumbeat she almost thought she heard was only the pulse in the back of her neck, a headache rising; it would not move the spirit through her.
After a long time, the bead curtains rustled and Toussaint Louverture walked into the chapel. Claudine registered his presence without quite turning her head. Reciprocally, Toussaint displayed no consciousness of her. He walked slowly between the two rows of benches, stopped before the altar, and stood looking up at Christ’s carved wounds. After some time he crossed himself and sat down on the first bench, to the left of the cross. Reaching both hands to the back of his head, he undid the knot of his yellow madras, which he spent some time folding into a small triangular packet. Claudine had not seen him completely uncovered before. The dome of his head was high and long, the black skin gleaming on the crown. He gave his folded headcloth a couple of firm pats with his right palm, as if he meant to secure it to the bench, then joined his hands and bowed his head to pray.
As time passed the light seemed to grow dimmer. Claudine did not know if the clouds were thickening outside or if it were only an effect of her own fatigue. She watched Toussaint, whose right hand slowly clicked through the beads of a curiously carved wooden rosary. A movement of the damp air stirred the strings of the curtain behind her, and she felt a current lifting toward the roof, where the eaves had been left open for ventilation.
Finally Toussaint had concluded his prayer. He stood up, gathering his folded headcloth in the hand that held the rosary. When he turned toward Claudine, he enacted a startle of surprise.
“O,” he said. “Madame Arnaud.”
“Monsieur le général.” She made a slight movement as if