Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [416]
“So,” Tocquet said, rocking back to his heels as the wind faded. “What is it that this spirit sees, that we can’t say?”
The doctor said nothing. They had come here to visit Elise, but the descent of the spirit had held them back, and still an invisible membrane seemed to divide them from her. He had let Tocquet know that Elise had miscarried, but no more.
“Pitit sé byen-o,” Tocquet whispered. Children are riches. There was just the ghost of a tune in his words. The doctor kept his silence. His mind ran to Paltre, borne to the hospital two hours before. Cases of the yellow fever were increasing day by day.
“Your sister and I have had fair days and foul ones,” Tocquet said. “I think you have been by to see some of both. You must know that with all that has passed, I would never raise a hand to harm her, no matter what she did. Had done. Do you care to tell me any more?”
“No,” said the doctor.
“Well,” Tocquet said, and almost with an air of relief. “Perhaps it’s better so.”
Maman Maig’ broke out of her stillness and moved toward the chamber where Elise lay. They watched her lower herself beside the couch of branches.
“I think we may as well leave them now,” Tocquet said. “I will come again tomorrow.”
“Yes,” said the doctor, and Tocquet nodded.
As they turned to leave the hûnfor, Tocquet did something that struck the doctor as strange, though he had sometimes seen the black men do it. He took the doctor’s hand in his own, and held it lightly for a pace or two, as they passed through the gate together, and then he let it go.
Maman Maig’ ’s smooth round face appeared in Elise’s vision like the rising of a full black moon. For some time after Ezili had left her, she had been drifting blurrily on the tides of her fever. But now as her eyes opened, her mind was clear and the pain was nearer to her than it had been before.
“Where is the child?” she said.
“Anba dlo,” Maman Maig’ said. Beneath the waters. She touched Elise on the cheek with her blunt finger: the spot where Ezili’s scars had been. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “Yours is not alone. Many, many have been sent back. When it would have been worse for them to live.”
Elise felt the sting as her tears spilled over the bone of her eye sockets. Maman Maig’ nodded, content to see her cry.
“Bay’l dlo nan je’w,” she said, encouraging. Give him water from your eyes. Her voice was gentler than Elise had ever heard it. “You are coming back to the world now.” She held Elise’s head between her hands. “There is no death,” she said. “There’s only change.”
Isaac was troubled, Placide felt, when Captain Paltre toppled from his place at the table, and convulsed with his vomiting on the floor. Isaac might even have gone to assist him, but Placide touched his knee beneath the table to hold him back. He himself felt only an abstract interest. The illness of Daspir or Guizot would have touched him more.
Toussaint was watching, his attention pointed, as Doctor Hébert went down the table to direct Paltre’s removal from the hall. He said no word and made no gesture, but Placide felt a phrase from long ago appear in his mind, as plainly as if his father had repeated it aloud. Konpè Général Lafièvre . . .
The banquet did not last much longer. When Toussaint had concluded his courtesies with Leclerc, all of them mounted and rode from the town. By midnight they had regained the camp of General Fressinet on the Mornet plateau, and there they halted for what remained of the night. Toussaint slept soundly, next to Isaac, surrounded by two thousand of his guard, but Placide volunteered for the watch. A very considerable guard had been posted, considering that all hostilities had officially ended.