Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [343]
“The house is yours, Riau, if you want to make a service,” he said.
“I know it,” I said. “I am only waiting.”
Quamba went inside the kay mystè and did something there, I don’t know what, and then he went away. I stayed where I was until after dark, until the stars had moved halfway across the sky. What I expected I did not know. I wanted to feel my spirit guiding me again, and no longer be the prisoner of my thoughts.
Before the night was finished I went back to Merbillay’s case. I had not been near the grand’case or seen Merbillay all day. But when I pulled the cloth back from the door, I saw that Yoyo was sleeping on the paillasse near Caco. That made me smile. The shell Guiaou had sent to her was by her on the floor.
In the morning I ate mangoes with Caco and Yoyo and then I rode again to the Ennery crossroads where the mango sellers were. There I learned from the marchandes going up and down the big road that there were plenty of French blanc soldiers at Gonaives, and ships on the harbor with their cannons. In the afternoon I rode back to Thibodet and let Caco take my horse while I walked up to the hûnfor again. All afternoon I sat where I had sat before. At nightfall Quamba passed and put out the maman tambou and the asson and a pair of ringing irons where I could reach them if I wanted, but for the first time in my life I was afraid to touch these things.
Yoyo brought Marielle to Merbillay’s case that night, so all three of the children were sleeping there with me. Marielle woke and cried for her mother, but Yoyo shook the turtle shell and sang to her and made her sleep again. I lay awake, thinking of Guiaou. We both knew Guiaou was Yoyo’s father, as Riau was Caco’s. Which one of us was father of Marielle we did not know for certain, but we had agreed that both of us would be, though we had tried to kill each other first. Once Riau was much more like Guiaou. When the spirit came it filled his head completely and left no place for doubts or thoughts to quarrel with each other. Guiaou was like that still, but now Riau was different.
I slept through a long part of the next day, and climbed to the hûnfor after the heat was less. This day the wind blew from the sea, and it was not so dry. The red flag on the tall cane pole was stretching for the mountains. At the end of the day a little malfini came on the wind from the west, and turned into the wind above the hûnfor. The wind was so strong that the hawk hung in the air above my head without moving, and my vision rose into the eye of the hawk. In one direction I could see as far as Gonaives harbor where the ships of the blancs were waiting with their guns, but invisible beneath the water Lasirène was swimming, and her tail was big and strong enough to overturn those boats. It came to me that Lasirène was the spirit with Placide Louverture, the day we fought the soldiers under Hardy. I saw the green mornes and the dark hollows between them rolling back to the east until the clouds had swallowed up the trees. There was the black scar on the ground where Habitation Sancey had been burned, and around some bends of the ravine the grand’case of Descahaux was still standing. I could even see as far as Marmelade, where Toussaint was, if I could not see what Toussaint was planning.
When the sky grew darker there was the smell of rain, although it did not rain this night. I touched the drum so that it spoke one time, and lifted the asson just enough to stir the seeds inside the gourd, and touched the irons together once, then sat with a piece of iron in each of my open hands. One was a curved piece from a collar, and the other a nail that had closed that collar around some man’s throat. By tossing the curved piece in my hand and striking it with the straight one, I might make a ringing sound to lead the drums. But I held the irons silent, feeling them warm the points at the center of my palms. It was dark, and now the hawk was gone.
After the darkness had settled, Quamba came and sat across from me, waiting for me to speak.
“If I made the service before I was ready,