Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [402]
A girl brought in cool water from the well. Madame Dessalines poured water into glasses for the three men at the table and the girl gave the clay jar to the standing men to share, smiling at them shyly as she went out. Then there was the sound of hooves outside, and Bienvenu, who had left Marmelade two days before, opened the door for General Dessalines.
When Dessalines had taken his chair at the far end of the table from Toussaint, Toussaint took a paper out of his coat. He held it out toward Dessalines, but the table was too long for him to reach. Monpoint and Placide passed the paper down. But instead of looking at the paper, Dessalines was looking at Guiaou and Guerrier and Riau. Guiaou did not like to have the eyes of Dessalines upon him so.
“Let them stay,” Toussaint said. “There is no secret here today that any of my men cannot know.”
Dessalines turned his eyes to Bienvenu, who began to close the first of three sets of doors that let onto the street. Guiaou moved to help him with the others. Now at last, Dessalines took up the paper.
“I don’t see well in this light,” he said.
“It’s you who have shut out the light,” Toussaint said. “Riau—”
Riau came forward and Dessalines gave him the paper, and when Madame Dessalines brought in a lamp Riau held it near to the light and began to read.
I see with pleasure, citizen general, the part you have taken to submit yourself to the arms of the Republic—
Riau stopped, for a moment, as if his tongue had frozen in his head. The lamplight flickered. Guiaou, who’d felt his stomach shrivel at these words, watched Dessalines breathe out a long wind of ill humor and sink more deeply into his seat. Riau was watching him too, his brown eyes calm in the yellow lamplight.
“Read it, then,” Dessalines said. He drew his snuffbox from his coat pocket and laid it on the glossy surface of the table.
Those who have sought to deceive you about the true intentions of the government are much to be blamed. Today, we must not preoccupy ourselves in reviewing past evils. I must only concern myself with the means of returning the colony, as quickly as possible, to its former splendor. You, the generals under your orders, as well as all the inhabitants of the colony, need not fear that I will seek out anyone for his past conduct. I cast the veil of oblivion over everything which took place in Saint Domingue before my arrival—
“ ‘The veil of oblivion . . .’ ” Dessalines batted the snuffbox from one hand to another on the tabletop. Toussaint nodded for Riau to go on with his reading.
Everyone here has a new career to pursue now, and in the future I will not recognize anyone but good or bad citizens. Your generals and your troops will be employed and treated the same as the rest of my army. As for yourself, you wish for rest; you have earned your rest; when one has borne the government of Saint Domingue for several years, I imagine anyone would need it. I leave you free to retire to whichever of your plantations suits you best—
“You are running to your doom,” Dessalines said. Guiaou looked at him. His features were heavy, mask-like, rigid—eyes wide so that the white showed around them—it was almost as if a spirit had taken him where he sat. He held the snuffbox under his left hand now, with a grip that might have crushed it. Guiaou could not keep on looking at him any more than he could have held, for more than a couple of seconds, the stony gaze of Baron Samedi. He shifted his eyes to Riau, who seemed to remain calm under the awful mystery he had unlocked from the letters on the paper.
“You are wrong,” Dessalines said. “Sooner or later our whole people