All souls rising, p.9
All Souls' Rising, page 9
He read in a low voice, little better than a monotone, though he pronounced each word most clearly and went very slow, marking the page with the cracked yellow nail of his forefinger, so that Isaac and Placide could follow. Placide could, indeed, already read many of the words, and his eye went darting ahead on the page. Toussaint continued:
I am become a stranger to my brethren, even an alien unto my mother’s children.
For the zeal of thine house hath even eaten me; and the rebukes of them that rebuked thee are fallen upon me.
I wept, and chastened myself with fasting, and that was turned to my reproof.
I put on sackcloth also, and they jested upon me…
Suzanne, too, sat in an attitude of reverence, but keeping her hands busy. She cut fruit for the family to eat when prayer was done, and sliced cold yam and put it salted into a bag for them to carry for their midday meal.
But, Lord, I make my prayer unto thee in an acceptable time.
Hear me, O God, in the multitude of thy mercy, even in the truth of thy salvation.
Take me out of the mire, that I sink not; O let me be delivered from them that hate me, and out of the deep waters.
Let not the waterflood drown me, neither let the deep swallow me up; and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me…
The light was coming in at the cabin door, and with it a little blue-striped lizard, which froze just across the threshold, hanging in a brilliant beam. Toussaint felt Isaac shift his head to look at it. He continued to read, watching the child from the corner of his eye, thinking that these two might already be acquainted, for the lizard had given up one tail. A skinny new one was just beginning to sprout from the fat socket of the old. He caught the back of Isaac’s head in the pinch of his thumb and forefinger and so turned his attention to the Psalter again.
Draw nigh unto my soul, and save it; O deliver me, because of mine enemies.
Thou hast known my reproach, my shame, and my dishonour: mine adversaries are all in thy sight.
Reproach hath broken my heart; I am full of heaviness: I looked for some to have pity on me, but there was no man, neither found I any to comfort me…
Before he’d finished reading, the boys’ eyes were sliding toward the food, but he went on to the end of the psalm at the same slow rate and guided them through the Our Father before he let them eat. There were some cakes of cassava meal as well as mango and banana, but Toussaint took only a few slices of fruit and ate them quickly. Saint-Jean still slept, turned on his back. Toussaint knelt and laid his palm above the baby’s naked stomach, not quite touching, but near enough to feel the warmth. He moved his hand so that the infant’s breath stirred across his fingers, the broken one, stiff from its old injury, seeming to lift and flex with it. Sitting on the pallet’s edge he drew on his boots, then rose and took his green livery coat down from its peg. He stood fingering the faded bloodstains on the shoulders for a moment before he put it on. Suzanne was watching him from the corner, her lips drawn in.
He shrugged into the coat and snapped his fingers. Isaac and Placide ran out shouting into the new light. Toussaint moved to the corner, reached into the dim to take his wife’s hand. She bent her neck, for she was taller than he, and he touched his forehead to hers. Without saying anything, he went out after the boys, following them through the screen of trees between them and the row of other slave cabins, all stoutly built of plank, like the one they lived in, but thatched in the old way, with broad palm leaves. The young yellow rooster, new cock of the walk, strutted up and down before the empty doorways. The slaves in the main crew were already on their way to the fields, and Toussaint could hear their songs receding as he and his sons went toward the barn.
He walked with long assuring strides, though he was bandy-legged, and fast enough that a lace of sweat broke out across his high forehead. The heat was thick, like a damp blanket. He waved the boys into the barn and walked down to the stone water trough, which two slaves were just refilling. There was a tree beside the trough and Toussaint hesitated in its shade, feeling the sweat beads popping along the tight inner seams of his coat. The other slaves withdrew with their emptied vessels and Toussaint looked down at his own shadow trembling on the ruffled water, watched a green-winged dragonfly come hovering across the indistinct reflection. It was here, long ago when he was young, that he’d struck Béager, who’d been gérant in the days before Bayon de Libertat. For some reason his mind had run back almost daily to that time, ever since Bayon de Libertat had brought him to the Sieur Maltrot and their scheme had been partially unfolded.
Again he felt the rude shock to his knuckles, the twisting pain in his elbow since his blow was awkwardly struck. He saw Béager’s head snap to the side and then return, and felt again the strange airy certainty that now, no matter what followed, he would surely die. The dragonfly lifted from the stilling surface of the trough and Toussaint said a silent prayer of thanks to Jesus, that god who softened the hearts of white people. Sometimes softened them. At the same time a verse from his Psalter, not the one he’d read this morning but the one he would be reading three days hence, came unbidden into his mind.
Forsake me not, O God, in mine old age, when I am gray-headed, until I have showed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to all them that are yet for to come. But this thought made him uneasy; it did not belong in any prayer to Jesus, but was addressed to the angry, powerful God who was his father. It was wrong to invoke the two together, Toussaint felt, and it unsettled him to have done so inadvertently. But a shout from Isaac took his mind away.
Isaac was locked in a tug of war with the black gelding weirdly named Tire-bouchon. The horse had set his feet and Isaac had turned to face him, his teeth gritted, swinging the whole inconsequential weight of his body on the lead, while Tire-bouchon fought the halter with strong rips of his neck that fairly lifted the boy off his feet. Placide was watching from a couple of yards off, holding a brush and a curry comb in either hand.
“You know better,” Toussaint called to Isaac, taking a few steps toward them, but not coming too near. “Don’t face him so, you make him afraid…”
Immediately Isaac relaxed and turned to face forward, eyes just slightly interrogative. The horse stopped lunging but still wouldn’t follow.
“Yes,” Toussaint said. “Take the halter, under the chin. Like that. Don’t jerk him, but pull steady. Now, that will go better.”
Tire-bouchon snorted once, then gave in and followed the child, who led him to a mounting block beside the barn wall. Placide climbed the block and began to comb out the horse’s mane, while Isaac held the halter, his face blank and neutral now, though he was breathing a little hard. Toussaint watched them from the door. Placide was by far the lighter-colored, and it was true he had been born before Toussaint and Suzanne married—still Toussaint knew that many Aradas had that reddish tint. His own father, Giau-Ginou, had had it…So too did Jean-Baptiste, whom Toussaint called his parrain. Placide had large and luminous eyes which Toussaint thought resembled his own and he had long thought Placide to be the more intelligent.
He went into the barn and saddled the stallion Bellisarius, a mottled gray, his coat veined like blue cheese. Both boys brightened when they saw him lead the big saddlehorse into the yard. He would not let them use the block to mount. But once Toussaint himself was in the saddle, Placide was able to scramble up behind, clutching at his father’s knees. Bellisarius yawed around as the weight shifted, picking his feet up high, till Toussaint stilled him. Isaac couldn’t manage without help and after a false try or two Toussaint bent and caught his arms and swung him up in front, just before the saddle. Triple-mounted, they rode out of the yard.
On the road that ran between the cane fields, Toussaint pressed his heels lightly into the stallion’s blue-cheese flanks and brought him easily to a canter. Placide’s hands tightened on his hips as the horse picked up speed, hooves clattering on the heat-hardened track. Isaac rocked back against his father’s chest, and tried to hold on to the saddle, but Toussaint unpeeled his fingers one by one and rearranged them on the reins by his own hands, to show him how. It was not long before they had passed the cane fields and crossed the last irrigation ditch that brought water in from Rivière du Haut du Cap.
A half mile farther he pulled the horse up and left the road, guiding Belisarius at a walk over broken ground. Behind him, Placide relaxed his grip as the horse slowed, and let himself sway free of his father’s back, holding himself stable with his knees clamped to the dent of horseflesh just behind the saddle.
“Can I ride him?” Placide said. “Alone, can I ride him alone?”
Toussaint smiled privately, over Isaac’s head, but said nothing for the moment. They had come among the trees, where it was a little cooler under the shade, along the paths which the cattle had worn with their foraging. At any rate the cows had cleared the way enough for them to go through mounted. Placide leaned forward again; Toussaint felt him lay his cheek against his back.
“What do you remember,” Toussaint said, “from the psalm this morning?”
Neither boy answered. Toussaint gave Isaac a prod with his thumb; Isaac squeaked but said no word.
“Do you remember the first psalm from this morning?” There was no sound but the whisper of the horse’s hocks through the underbrush.
“‘They gave me gall to eat, and when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink.’” Placide said suddenly. “What’s gall?”
Toussaint didn’t answer. His bones moved to the rhythm of the stallion’s gait and to the beat of the verses that ran on in his head. Let their table be made a snare to take themselves withal; and let the things that should have been for their wealth be unto them an occasion of falling. Let their eyes be blinded, that they see not; and ever bow thou down their backs. Pour out thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful displeasure take hold of them. Let their habitation be void, and no man to live in their tents. His lips began to move as he followed the beat of the words with a whisper.
“What is it?” Placide repeated.
“It’s bitter,” Toussaint said. Let them fall from one wickedness to another, and not come into thy righteousness. Let them be wiped out of the book of the living, and not be written among the righteous… “It’s the bitter fruit.” Isaac twisted in the saddle, looked up round-eyed at the underside of his father’s jaw.
The ground grew steeper, as they went on, Toussaint rehearsing the psalm from the beginning, over and over, till both boys could repeat the first five verses. They rode up over a spur of Morne du Cap, and down into the ravine on the far side. Here Toussaint saw fresh cow patties, new marks of gnawing on the bark of the trees either side of the path. The fresh sign continued to where the ravine opened out into what had been a small grassy field, overgrazed now and gone to dust in the drought. Beyond the small expanse of this petit savanne, cloud-covered mountains rose in the interior.
At the field’s edge he noticed a spear belonging to the herdsman, Ti-Paul, lying beside a tree and when his eye traveled up the trunk he found the young slave himself in a high fork.
“Ki sa ou gêgnê?” Toussaint said. “What’s got after you?”
“Casques,” Ti-Paul said, with a queasy smile. His lanky legs were twined around the tree’s bole like a vine.
“Môntré mwê yo,” Toussaint said. “Show me.”
Ti-Paul’s smile flickered, then went completely out. He slid down the tree, and at Toussaint’s gesture he stooped and recovered his spear. He had grown much in his sixteenth year, so that the diminutive no longer suited him; now he stood high as the stallion’s shoulder. Still mounted between his sons, Toussaint walked Bellisarius after Ti-Paul, who waved his spear at the lean-to ajoupa which the wild dogs had wrecked. The broad leaves that had roofed it were broken and scattered on the ground among the windfall stakes. Ti-Paul dug his spear point into the ground among the dog tracks faintly circling in the dust and Toussaint peered down from the saddle at the prints. There were three different sets he could distinguish, and one whose large tracks wound away from the others seemed to be missing a foot.
“Did they kill?” he asked Ti-Paul.
“They got my food,” Ti-Paul said. His Adam’s apple shuddered in his skinny neck. “I had it hanging from the top, so that’s how they came to knock down my ajoupa.”
“Ah,” Toussaint said. “What food had you?”
“What I’m given,” Ti-Paul said, puzzled. “Yams and maize cakes, a little molasses.”
“They came a long way to eat cornbread, these casques,” Toussaint said. “They’ve not been seen here for ten years or more…Where are the cows?”
Ti-Paul cut off the reply he would have made, raised his spear and pointed, superfluously, for Toussaint had already made out the puff of dust, halfway across the small savannah to the next spur of the mountain rising like a bare worn bone.
“Wait here,” Toussaint said shortly. He headed Belisarius around and made toward the cattle. The movement was sudden enough that Placide, who’d leaned over to look at the dog tracks, was almost unseated. He caught himself on a fistful of Toussaint’s green coat, and let go as soon as he’d regained his balance.
“He’s afraid, Ti-Paul,” Placide said. “Is he afraid of the dogs?”
Toussaint shrugged. “It’s lonely, out with the cattle. It would be better to have two men, in case of trouble, but the master doesn’t like to lose main-d’oeuvre from the fields at this time.”
“Were you lonely?” Isaac said.
Toussaint rode on silently a little way, watching the backs of the cows define themselves more clearly, reflecting on the time he’d spent as cowherd in his teens, before Béager brought him back to work with the horses. “No,” he finally said. “It didn’t bother me.”
As they came trotting up the cattle spooked, perhaps at the sight of three riders on one horse. Toussaint dismounted and lifted Isaac down. The cattle regrouped themselves, eyeing the people. They were long-horned, shaggy and scrawny in the flanks; some had bloody foaming mouths from trying to eat the spiny nopal when there was nothing else to eat. He counted. All the full-grown cows were there but he didn’t have any previous count of calves to go by.
Of a sudden the cattle began to shift and low, their eyes rolling. They circled tightly in on themselves, dust rising from their hooves as if drawn by a small tornado. The little scrub bull hooked his horn toward the ground and veered away, and out of the gap he left in the dust swirl came loping the wild dogs which were called casques. There were four of them and the leader was making good time on his three legs—all four of them stretching out a little faster as they made straight for the children on the ground. Toussaint, who was unarmed except for a two-inch penknife, sprang into the saddle quick as a cat, not even touching a stirrup. Placide was up behind him on the instant, but Isaac couldn’t make it, and Toussaint turned the horse tightly on his hindquarters to shield him from the dogs. The second of the pack made a lunge for the horse’s head, and Bellisarius reared and struck at it with his front hooves. Toussaint could hear Isaac screaming—he brought the horse down with an effort and snatched the child one-handed from where he clung to the stirrup iron, heaved and loosed his grip and caught him again by the seat of the pants and slung him across the horse’s neck like a sack of meal.
The dogs fell back. Again Bellisarius clenched hindquarters as if he would rear, and Toussaint loosened the reins and stroked him and talked to him until he was able to stand foursquare, though still snorting and trembling some. He lifted Isaac then, and set him astride before the saddle. Placide’s arms were locked around his waist, and he could feel the smaller boy’s heart thumping against the flat of his hand, but there were no tears and he was pleased by that. He took a long full breath and sighed it out. The casques had disposed themselves around the horse like points on the compass. Only the three-legged leader was still bristling and snarling. He was prick-eared and vulpine, the fur of his humped back gone to silver, and his teeth were worn and brown with rot. He stopped snarling and looked at the horse and riders with an expression of intelligent consideration. One of the other dogs sat down abruptly and began to pant, tongue lolling, lips pulled back in what appeared to be an amiable smile.
“So after all they exist, his casques,” Toussaint said. “Are you afraid of them? Like Ti-Paul?”
The boys kept silent; Placide tightened his grip. Toussaint touched up the horse and rode toward the cattle, who’d bunched again a couple of hundred yards away. The casques did not follow, but filed off back toward the mountain slopes, the old three-legged one still leading the line.
“But you saw the tracks on the ground before,” Placide said, twisting around to watch the dogs retreat. “I saw them myself, m’pè.”
“I saw them, yes,” Toussaint said. “But who knows for certain if it’s real or not, what he sees?”
At the edge of the savannah Ti-Paul stood in a frozen pose. He wore only a loincloth and with the long spear held butt-down on the ground, the blade sticking a foot or more above his head, he looked like a warrior of Guinée, though of course he was a Creole. There were more infants born at Bréda than at many plantations, and more of them survived. Still, when Toussaint looked at Ti-Paul, somewhere down at the base of his brain he felt the tidal memory of Africa, that country which he’d never seen. He pulled Bellisarius to a halt in front of Ti-Paul and laid the reins loose on the stallion’s mane.
“So,” he said. “All the cows are there that should be. It’s been a long time since I came here, so I don’t know about the calves. But when I next come, then I’ll know.”
Ti-Paul looked away, thrusting out his lower lip.
“Have you seen maroons?” Toussaint said.
“No.” Ti-Paul’s tone was sulky, and he didn’t look up.
“Ah,” said Toussaint. “I saw some, and not a day’s ride from here. Riau’s band—do you remember Riau? Well, you were just a baby when he ran away from Bréda.”
