Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [423]
They waited. Daspir was restless, crossing and uncrossing his legs, leaning forward, leaning back. His movements kept him well heated, kept the sweat rolling from his plump cheeks to the hollow of his throat. Maillart, whose years in Saint Domingue had taught him better, kept perfectly still, except for his breath, not even troubling to wipe his face or forehead. He watched Dessalines’s hat, which hung from a peg; every so often a faint hint of breeze passed through the broken casements and stirred the plume that ornamented it. With the breeze, a few small golden bees hummed in and out of the comb of crazed lead. Presently Maillart’s sweat had dried and he was cool enough that it scarcely bothered him when Dessalines came glowering out.
The black general did not seem to notice the two white officers either. His face was knotted; one hand gripped his ornate snuffbox as if he meant to crush it. He turned and snarled into the inner chamber:
“Mwen di—depi nan Ginen, li magouyé.”
There was no reply from within. Daspir was staring frankly when Dessalines swung forward and locked eyes with him until he quailed. Then he snatched his hat down from the peg and stalked out of the antechamber.
I say—since Africa, he has been a treacherous man.
Maillart weighed the statement in his mind. Toussaint had not come from Africa; he was born here, in Saint Domingue, but Maillart knew the expression was figurative, and had little doubt it was Toussaint that Dessalines meant so to denounce. Leclerc did not understand much Creole, though, and if he did not have a translator with him, Dessalines’s parting shot would have been more on the order of a ritual curse.
Now Leclerc himself appeared in the doorway, gripping a sheet of paper in his hand.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “I have mastered them. I have mastered them all, and Dessalines especially.”
“All?” Maillart got up to shut the outer door of the anteroom, which Dessalines had left ajar, and which Leclerc had not at all seemed to notice.
“Christophe, Maurepas, Dessalines—they have each come to me separately to warn me of the threat Toussaint presents—to ask, as privately as they may, for his removal. So cunningly I have played them one against the other.”
“But Toussaint has already been removed,” Maillart said. “What threat can he offer, retired at Ennery?”
His reaction was a little too quick, he saw. It had, in fact, been spontaneous. Leclerc was looking at him a little sharply, and Maillart, remarking the glitter of his eyes, realized that at least a portion of his elevation came from fever.
“I wanted you, Major Maillart,” he said, as if he had forgotten until now. “I sent for you—and you too—come in, Captain Daspir.” He gestured with the paper in his hand, which he had crumpled to a fan shape.
Maillart went slowly into the inner room, which was small and narrow, windowless, mostly filled with a long chart table, lined with shelves whose blank lines were occasionally broken by this or that old wormholed book. Even during Toussaint’s rule he had not much frequented this place, whose closeness, must, and darkness now oppressed him. The clatter of hammers on the roof was audible here, though distant.
“You see,” Leclerc nodded to them both. “As I am placed . . . it is the only way . . .”
This would not be yellow fever, Maillart reflected, for that would have laid the Captain-General low immediately; it must be one of the lesser malaises, which might derange the senses no more than a glass too many of rum. Daspir, where he stood next to the door, looked quite uncomfortable, but maybe that was only the queer light of the oil lamp flickering on his face. After all, there was some