Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [321]
His Parisian friend had marked out a few lines for his special attention, perhaps in jest, or perhaps in all seriousness. Amiot narrowed his eyes at the passage: “. . . he ought to be chained alive to a stake, exposed by the wayside so that the crows and the vultures, charged with the vengeance of the colonists, can come each day to devour not his heart—for he has never had one—but the reborn liver of this new Prometheus.”
Having resumed his trousers and shirt, Toussaint stood with his bare feet on the hearthstone. The anger he’d held tight in the bottom of his belly drained out toward his extremities. It warmed his fingertips more than the fire. And thanks to Franz, the hearthstone had warmed at least to his body temperature or a little above.
He was tired now. His sleep twice broken. And it had been an effort to use that tight-folded packet of rage to repel Amiot’s searching hand from the yellow mouchwa têt. Though the headcloth had its own protective properties. Pa touché! Let the commandant so much as lay a finger on the knot in that yellow cloth, and Maît’ Kalfou would hound him to the very bottom of his dreams.
Disagreeable as the searches were, there was relief, a kind of novelty, in leaving the cell. Even to be naked in another room, and alone—for Amiot’s attentions conveyed no human presence—meant no more than the nuisance of a circling dog.
The emptiness of that other cell still held traces of the spirit of Mars Plaisir. Before he had been taken off to some other prison, the valet had been permitted to attend his master here. They passed their hours in praise of Suzanne and Placide and Isaac and Saint-Jean. Through the vestiges of Mars Plaisir, Toussaint still could feel a hint of his wife and his three sons, whenever he was led naked to that space.
Where were they now? He knew they lived, but his inner eye would not reveal them. He knew he would not see them again in the body.
A chunk of wood collapsing in the fire broke him out of his half-dozing state. A handful of coals, glittering red as jewels, had scattered on the hearth. Painfully, Toussaint stooped for the fire shovel and scraped the coals back into their bed. He tensed his diaphragm to hold back the cough and waited for the wave of it to roll past him.
Pain was general now, all through him. There was the pain of all his joints, from the ague of his fever, or only from the cold. But that was nothing. No real threat. The dangerous pain began behind his left eye and flowed under his cheekbone, and back along his lower jaw. It occupied his temple and the tube of his ear, crawled down through his left lung and, from the bottom of it, gripped at his entrails. Bending and stooping set off this whole recoil, so he avoided those movements as much as he could.
From where he crouched now he could reach the trencher, so he took it up, meaning only to dump the contents into his slop jar. The gluey oatmeal was almost inedible even when fresh and warm (Amiot was meaner with sugar than Baille had been), and after the guardsmen had stirred through it, in search of some ludicrous fantasy of contraband, Toussaint had no taste for it at all. But when he lifted the lid he discovered, atop the mush he had expected, a piece of sausage and a chunk of pale yellow cheese.
That was Franz, the old guardsman. His doing. Toussaint flushed with a sudden feeling. It had struck him earlier, in the other cell, that Franz had somewhat absorbed the spirit of Mars Plaisir. He’d taken his hand in the way of Toussaint’s own people, with warmth but no pressure. There was no blanc on earth who clasped a hand that way.
He sat down on the chair by the hearth,