It was after midnight before he awoke against the pillow. She had a plate of oysters for him, hot bread with lots of b.u.t.ter, and a cup of thick soup which he drank, chewing the bits of meat with a slight moan. He stretched, his knuckles sc.r.a.ping the mahogany behind him, and snuggled back into the pillow, his eyes closing. "And Marcel?" he whispered drowsily, his head turned away from her, on the verge of sleep.
"Gone to the country, Monsieur, for a long visit," Cecile said. "Do you want your nightshirt, Monsieur?"
"No, chere chere, just your arms," he sighed. "A long visit, in the country, a nice long, long visit, that"s that"s good." good."
After a week, he sent the miserable and anxious Felix back to Bontemps Bontemps for his trunk. Marcel had already been in the Cane River country for two months, and it would be three months more before he was to come home. for his trunk. Marcel had already been in the Cane River country for two months, and it would be three months more before he was to come home.
V.
NONE OF THE NIECES and nephews, the cousins, aunts, and uncles had left and nephews, the cousins, aunts, and uncles had left Sans Souci Sans Souci though it was four days after New Year"s. And the eleven rooms of the rambling mansion were fragrant with blazing fires, and the smell of roasting meat still wafted from the slave cabins on the cold air. The day was mild, however, for this time of year. though it was four days after New Year"s. And the eleven rooms of the rambling mansion were fragrant with blazing fires, and the smell of roasting meat still wafted from the slave cabins on the cold air. The day was mild, however, for this time of year.
Marcel rose early despite a long night of toasting and dancing, and after a brief bit of small talk in the parlors, went off for a walk along the Cane River, alone. He was worried about the family in New Orleans, and he found it soothing to wander the banks of this broad swiftly moving stream, at times approaching the very edge of the water, at others roaming some thick bracken for a silent visit to an oak or a tall stiff magnolia which had become a milestone on his private landscape for mornings such as this.
He loved this river; far smaller than the Mississippi it was manageable for his heart. One could row across it, fish in it, wade in it, with none of that awe or reverence which the Mississippi inspired. The sky was streaked with clouds, and a pale blue, the sun slanting warm through the crisp air.
It was midmorning when he came back, and he was tempted to send for his horse and ride out beyond the borders of the plantation through an uncleared and eternally mysterious land just to the south. But he was still tentative with the horse. He had learned to ride in spite of his fear, and he rode well. But a tension always preceded the decision to mount. He thought better of it as he came up the broad front steps, and pushing open the double doors on the immediate warmth of the parlor, saw a letter from Christophe lying on Tante Josette"s desk.
Christophe had written faithfully since Marcel had left, letters coming as often as three times a week by the steamboats that plied the river, and the letters were always candid, leaving nothing to doubt. Chris said things Rudolphe would have never committed to paper. Richard"s notes contained no information whatsoever, and Marie did not write at all. And often Christophe wrote, "Burn this when you are finished," and as Marcel tore open the soft blue paper and found the usual three pages crowded with a remarkably clear though ornate script, he saw these words again: "Burn this when you are finished." He had not burned a single letter and he would not burn this one.
It is as bad as rumor would have it. I can confirm this now because I met Monsieur P. last week and was invited up for cards in the garconniere garconniere. Let me add that your mother gave me the evil eye when she saw me, but I accepted this invitation out of concern for you as you will understand. The man is drinking suicidally. He has sent for much furniture from the country and carved out a regular parlor for gambling next to your old room, taking over that as well for his wardrobe and that valet, Felix, who appears the most miserable of men. Monsieur P. has company continually there, and there were two white men when I arrived, both of them spiffily dressed with no breeding, river gamblers I suspect, though your father despite the amounts of liquor he pours down his throat, is sharp.I lost fifty dollars before I had sense enough to become a spectator, and Monsieur P. lost two hundred, but it could have been much much more.And this between Christmas and New Years. He did not go to the country at all. Your mother is terrified, or so I"m told, now that she sees the man is seriously ill.Lisette finally came back, and there is no doubt now she was earning something for her favors wherever she was lodged. I"ve pleaded again with her to be patient, not to quarrel or run off, to wait until you can come home.Marie is gone completely to your aunts now. And meantime there can be no talk of the wedding while Monsieur P. is so ill. Rudolphe is furious, and Richard at school is a loss. Take this advice. Write to your mother and urge this marriage, now.Don"t be so much ashamed with me of enjoying the country life. There is n.o.bility in every pleasure you describe to me, the riding, the hunting, the good company by the fire. Learn all that you can from this, and stop deriding your own weakness for loving it. You weren"t sent there to suffer, and even if you were, you are free to do with any experience what you like. That you have "given yourself over to it" is a credit to you.Au revoir, pet.i.t frere. Stop asking about Maman. Hers is a treacherous nature because it is so simple. And I have always relied upon you to be clever in this regard. But never mind, she misses you in her own way. She hit me with an iron pan the other day for teasing her. An iron pan.Chris.
Marcel put the letter into his pocket, and felt, as he always did after Christophe"s letters, that he couldn"t bear to stay away a moment longer, he had to find some way to go home. That he could be of no help to his mother or to Marie stung him. However, he was loving the life of the Cane River country, and when he had written Christophe that he had given himself up to it completely he had been telling the truth. But there was so much more that he wanted to tell Christophe, so much he was aching to tell, and soon after his arrival, he had realized he could not commit the real content of his feelings to paper. He simply lacked any gift with the pen. Another failing in a series of personal failings, which in some way was the real drama of his life: that discovering music in earnest that first year at the opera, he himself could do nothing with it; and loving art always as he trudged here and there with his sketchbooks, he himself could do nothing with it; and now it was the same with literary expression, his pa.s.sion for literature not lending him the slightest gift for writing of his own. And his mind teemed. Not only with thoughts of those he loved at home, but with a thousand realizations that had come to him in the country, and he wanted so much to talk with Christophe, to feel the easy exchange of ideas between them, that this desire approached physical pain.
It was a Creole plantation, Sans Souci Sans Souci, not one of those ma.s.sive Grecian temples, cold and indifferent, and come so late to Louisiana with the Americans. Rather it was the old style of house, simple, harmonious, and built for the climate and the terrain. And Marcel had come upon it quite unawares in the hour just before dawn as his packet wound its way through the Riviere aux Cannes, not knowing that this distant lovely house, a vision emerging from the mist beyond a thinning line of forest, was in fact his aunt"s home.
He had left the great palatial steamboat on the Mississippi the night before, transferring to this smaller boat which then chugged inland on its serpentine route at an abominable pace, time and again stopping at a darkened pier beyond which the swamp, not so dense perhaps or so forbidding as it was one hundred miles south, nevertheless threw up its mysterious wall against the impenetrable and starless sky. And unable to sleep, he had come out on deck in the dark to find the morning warm and alive with whispering creatures and the slapping of the smaller paddle wheel somewhat soothing to the anxiety which had increased as he drew closer and closer to this unknown world. And then the sleepy porter had come out with the trunk behind him and as a slave appeared on the pier beyond, his lantern high in the clearing mist, had said, "B"jour, Michie, c"est Sans Souci." "B"jour, Michie, c"est Sans Souci."
High on a foundation of whitewashed pillars it stood, its broad verandas enclosing the main floor on three sides and supporting its deeply pitched roof with slender graceful columnettes. Narrow gabled attic windows looked out over the river, and a broad stairway ran down from the front gallery with its double doors to the avenue of young oaks below.
Marcel"s heart was pounding as he mounted the steps. It had been years since he had seen his Tante Josette, and there came a sweet moment then when she took him in her arms. She was the eldest of the three sisters, and seemed vastly older than either Louisa or Colette, her hair pure white now, waving tightly back from her high forehead to a pair of pearl-studded combs. Tall, stiffly slender, she could look Marcel straight in the eyes in spite of his height, and when she kissed him there was a simple sincerity of affection to it which put him at once at ease. Memories came back to him, myriad impressions of her which had lain dormant in his childhood soul. The special perfume she always wore, a mixture of verbena and violets, and the particular feel of her firm hand.
She took him directly into the big parlor, its French doors open to the mild September air. There was strong coffee for him at once, and he sat back on a long couch and surveyed this high-ceilinged room with its immense old-fashioned fireplace (no mean coal grates here) and its many oil portraits hung over mantel, sideboard, between the windows, everywhere indeed that he might look. They were all dark faces, some bronze, amber, others the perfect cream of cafe au lait cafe au lait, and he recognized Tante Louisa and Tante Colette among them, and men and women he did not know. He had never seen such a vast collection of painted gens de couleur gens de couleur, and he was to remember the curious effect of it afterwards because it forecast the particular world to which he had just been admitted, the nature of which he could not have really guessed. In the coming months he was to study these pictures often, noting a style that ranged from a Parisian perfection to a cruder, ill-proportioned work, very expressive, however, which reminded him painfully of his own sketches. Tante Josette meantime settled at her high secretaire secretaire against the wall, turning to face him in a Queen Anne chair. Her eyes had an intensity he remembered at once. They were youthful or timeless as was her voice which hadn"t the slightest timbre of old age. But the face was lined, the cheeks slightly sunken, and the dark blue broadcloth dress with its somewhat narrow sleeves and proper white lace collar completed the figure of advancing age. None of that frivolity that marked her sisters, the abundance of rings and frills. Only the two pearl-studded combs. against the wall, turning to face him in a Queen Anne chair. Her eyes had an intensity he remembered at once. They were youthful or timeless as was her voice which hadn"t the slightest timbre of old age. But the face was lined, the cheeks slightly sunken, and the dark blue broadcloth dress with its somewhat narrow sleeves and proper white lace collar completed the figure of advancing age. None of that frivolity that marked her sisters, the abundance of rings and frills. Only the two pearl-studded combs.
"You"re in good health," she said. "And you"ve got your father"s height which is always an advantage and your mother"s delicate bones. And I see an animation and intelligence in your face which seems the best of them both. So tell me why you did such a foolish thing as to go to your father"s plantation, why you let that man humiliate you, why you let him put his boot in your face."
All this was said so calmly that it took Marcel"s breath away.
But Tante Josette went on in the same even voice.
"Don"t you know who you are, and who your people are, Marcel?" she gave a short sigh. "When you let a white man humiliate you, we are all humiliated. When you give that man the opportunity to degrade you, we are all degraded. He knocked you down on the floor of a slave cabin, and so he knocked us all down. Do you understand?"
Not even Rudolphe could have said it better, if Christophe had ever given him the chance. Marcel felt his cheeks grow hot but he didn"t take his eyes off his aunt.
"Well," he said, "at least we come right to the point."
She uttered a small dry laugh. He himself did not realize he had said these words somewhat casually and confidently in a voice that was no longer the child"s voice she remembered, and she respected him for it.
"I was angry and bitter, Tante," he continued. "I lived all my life with the idea I would go to Paris when I was of age, that I had a future. All that was changed, and I was angry, and bitter, and foolish."
"I know that," she said. "But had you no pride in yourself in the here and now, where you are? Paris may be the City of Light, Marcel, however, it is not the world. This is the world. Where was your pride?"
"I should have had it," he said. But he could divine from her expression that she knew he did not entirely mean what he said. This, the world? How could he live in this world? He wondered if his mouth showed the bitterness, the positive anguish he felt at being on her charity here, on her hands. After all, she was not really his aunt, these were not really his people, he found himself looking off and shaking his head. "I have no fortune now, Tante, and no future, but I have money enough that I won"t be a burden to you while I"m here. I regret that..."
"Nonsense, you insult me. You are my nephew and this is my house."
"Tante, I know about my mother. Years ago I got it out of Tante Colette. I know you picked her up off a street in Port-au-Prince in the time of Dessalines. It"s quite an accident my being here..."
"It"s an accident any of us being here or anywhere," she said at once, with the same calm but quick manner. "It"s all an accident and we don"t care to realize that because it confuses us, overwhelms us, we couldn"t live our lives day to day if we did not tell ourselves lies about cause and effect."
This he hadn"t expected. He turned slowly to her again and saw her meditative face in profile, the white hair rippling back through those combs to the chignon on the nape of her neck. An uncomfortable realization confronted him which was at once exciting. Why had he thought this woman so peculiar in years past, so eccentric? Because she was intelligent?
"Tante, I wouldn"t insult you for the world," he said. "I"m painfully aware, however, that I"m a burden to you whether you say so or not. I occupy s.p.a.ce and I require food and drink. I"m on your hands. Please understand my anger in this helplessness and allow me my apologies. You"ve always treated me as if I were your own flesh and blood, my unhappiness now is no recrimination."
"Hush, Marcel," she said, but again she had been secretly impressed. "You"re being a bit of a fool. I love you and your sister just as I love your mother, don"t you understand the true nature of love?"
Of course he understood it. It was unselfish and unquestioning in the final a.n.a.lysis and it was loyal. He was humiliated by this love.
"You misunderstand it all," she said. She had made her narrow fingers into the steeple of a church which she touched lightly to her lips, her eyes on the wall above her. "I know what my sisters told you, of how I s.n.a.t.c.hed your mother from the shadow of that dead Frenchman in Port-au-Prince. But that"s the mere bones of the matter, not the real flesh and blood. Love can be quite selfish, Marcel, love can serve itself."
She shifted in her chair so that she might see him. Her slight eyebrows were black still against her brown skin and arched lightly over the deep-set black eyes. Her thin Caucasian mouth was only a line now in old age. But her expression leapt from the eyes. "I had no right to take your mother from that street. She was a dark child for all her French features, those soldiers of Dessalines would not have harmed her. Oh, starved and lost for a while she might have been, you cannot imagine the sheer clumsiness and confusion of war. But she was not orphaned. Yet I took her, took her as if she were the spoils of a battle in which I myself was not even engaged."
He looked away. This seemed absurd. But Tante Josette went on.
"I took her on the spur of the moment, Marcel, and plunged her into my world of my own will because I wanted to do it. She became my property at that moment, and my responsibility my responsibility thereafter. More keenly perhaps than any child which G.o.d has sent to me since." thereafter. More keenly perhaps than any child which G.o.d has sent to me since."
There was no doubt she meant these rather extraordinary sentiments. She was not speaking this way merely to put him at ease. And seen in this light, the sordid battle, the moaning frightened child, and the brave woman going down the stairs to rescue her from the torn street-these images changed in Marcel"s mind slowly but richly; however, nothing distinct emerged. He attempted, just for a moment, to see it her way.
"Some would not have bothered, Tante," he said. "Some would have trampled her underfoot in the escape."
"I wanted her," she said, arching those fine eyebrows. "Wanted her." "Wanted her." She studied him. "It was that desire for her, and certainly an impulsive desire, that lay at the root of the magnanimous act. I was widowed then, and barren. I wonder if she had not been such a beautiful child whether I would have noticed her at all." She studied him. "It was that desire for her, and certainly an impulsive desire, that lay at the root of the magnanimous act. I was widowed then, and barren. I wonder if she had not been such a beautiful child whether I would have noticed her at all."
Marcel"s eyebrows knit tightly in a frown.
"Later, there was war between my sisters and myself when I came here to the country. They wanted to keep her, I wanted to take her with me. She decided it herself, loving Colette as she did and crying not to be taken with me here. Did you ever think what the lives of my sisters might be today if it weren"t for your mother? If it weren"t for your mother, and your sister, and you?"
He had never perceived it in that light. Of course Tante Louisa and Tante Colette had their lady friends. But they had lost all the babies they had ever carried, their lovers were long gone now, and it was the little Ste. Marie family that rooted them deeply and firmly into the community with its generations, it was the Ste. Marie family that was their world.
Of course Tante Josette had married again, Gaston Villier who had built Sans Souci Sans Souci, and one son born late in his mother"s life had survived the scourges of childhood to run this plantation after his father"s death with two sons of his own. But Louisa and Colette? Marcel, Marie, and Cecile were their life.
But how could he not be grateful for this, nevertheless? How could he wish himself back on that blood-torn island, if, in fact, he would ever have been born at all? Tante Josette was watching his expression, she was studying all of him as if she had only just had the vantage point from which to see the young man who he was. "You are part of me, Marcel," she said, "just as I am part of you. And you belong here now."
He wished he could believe it. He wished above all he could convince her that he believed it, so that he might stop causing her trouble, and find some corner here out of the way where he would not be underfoot for however long this exile must last.
"Thank you, Tante."
"You did not acquire this wit from your mother or your father, I suspect," she said, musing, her fingers made into the church steeple against her mouth. "You must have got it from G.o.d. Shall I make my point more keenly? Turn those blue eyes to me again, and let me see if you would really care to know the truth?"
"Don"t I know it already?" he said. "Isn"t the rest a matter of comprehension which must come with time?"
She gave a short negative shake of the head. "This will make it clear."
Just a flicker of fear showed in his eyes, but there was no shrinking.
"We didn"t leave the island the day that we found your mother," Josette said. "The ma.s.sacre of the French continued, so did all the random and dreadful acts that are inevitable in war. But there were Americans left unmolested in Port-au-Prince, and it was with them that we planned to escape.
"Meantime our house was shuttered like a fortress. We bathed your mother, rocked her, combed her long hair. Whatever food we had we gave to her. But she was stunned. She whimpered like an animal. When she did say a few words they were African, quite distinctly African, though what tongue it was I couldn"t have told you then nor could I tell you now.
"But it was on the morning before we were to leave that we heard a frightful banging below. I heard it all the way to the back of the house where I was sleeping with your mother. Your aunts, Colette and Louisa, were huddled together in the front room. Of course I demanded to know what was it, and why hadn"t one of them even peeked from the shutters to the street. "You leave it alone," they said to me, both of them, "just some mad woman down there, some savage right from Africa, don"t even look." Well, my sisters could never fool me for long. I knew there was more to this, and I was bound and determined to tell what.
"It was a savage all right, a tall woman, very black, handsome I suppose, I couldn"t tell you, but dressed in nothing but a swath of red cloth and African to the marrow of her bones. She was pounding on the door with both fists and when she heard the shutter creak above she shouted in Gombo French, "You give me back my child!""
Tante Josette paused. Marcel was staring at her, enrapt.
"Others had seen us take your mother, others were standing about, watching, as this woman pounded on the door. But that house had survived years of siege, and we huddled inside of it not making the slightest sound. I crept to the back and gathered little Cecile in my arms again, covering her ears.
"An hour pa.s.sed, perhaps more. Yet the woman would not give up. She threw stones, brickbats. And at last she attempted to wrench the door from its hinges with a wedge. My nerves were on the breaking point, and unable to bear it a moment longer, I threw open the shutters and looked down at her in the street.
"But understand Marcel before you judge: the smell of fire eternally in the air, the stench of rotting flesh. That woman in her bare feet, her breast naked, that Frenchman"s body bloated, festering on the hook. And the little ebony child, your mother, the flawless and beautiful little face with eyes closed against my bosom, hair in ringlets, skin like silk.
"I screamed at that woman, "Your child"s not here. Go away from here, your child"s dead! They took her body away last night, they put her on the common pyre.""
Tante Josette stopped. She was staring forward, and Marcel, speechless, watched her remote but agitated face.
She sighed. "I will never forget the sound of that woman"s howl. I will never forget that face with the hands pressed on both sides of it, that round hole of a mouth.
""Cecee, Cecee, Cecee!" she bellowed before she went down on her knees. And two days later when I said that name, "Cecee" to your mother in the hold of the ship that was taking us to New Orleans, she smiled for the first time."
Marcel had brought his hand up to shield his eyes and he said nothing, nor did he move.
"Don"t you understand?" she asked softly. "Your mother is more mine than any child I ever bore, and you belong to me, too. It was evil what I did, willful, wrong. You do not know the hours I have spent begging forgiveness for it, begging G.o.d to give me some sign that I was right; But G.o.d has been easy with me, easy with us all. And in telling the truth to you now, I should rather lose your love, Marcel, than have you come to believe that you are not my own."
Once alone in the s.p.a.cious room of the garconniere garconniere behind the house, Marcel cried like a child against his knotted fists while beyond the open windows the vast plantation with its spreading fields of cotton came awake. behind the house, Marcel cried like a child against his knotted fists while beyond the open windows the vast plantation with its spreading fields of cotton came awake.
It was a week before he could write of this to Christophe and how stiff and stilted the words seemed. Tante Josette"s feeling eluded him, the voice so enriched with grief and remorse had not been his to convey.
Christophe"s reply was prompt, however, and brief: Pity your mother, she was old enough to remember all of it. And your Tante Josette, who if she could have put her conscience to rest would not have told you the tale.
But it was neither Cecile nor Josette who concerned him during those first few nights when darkness came so totally to the country, it was the black woman beating on the door in Port-au-Prince. The family portrait was now complete: the white Frenchman dangling eternally on his hook, and the African with her bare breast howling as she dropped to her knees. How wish Josette had not done it? How reach back across four decades to touch that black hand? And finally sitting bolt upright in the dark one night he had wandered down to the main house just before dawn to find Tante Josette reading by the light of a lamp. She reached out for him when he came in. It was so easy to cry against her, to encircle her small waist and press his forehead to her withering breast. "You are my own," she said again softly. And this time, he answered, "Yes."
It seemed those early weeks at Sans Souci Sans Souci pa.s.sed in confusion. He had been burnt by these early revelations, and the recent past in New Orleans was never far from his mind. And all he wanted finally was to speak with Tante Josette while instead he went through the elaborate motions of a visiting nephew in the midst of a large family as if he were an actor playing the part. pa.s.sed in confusion. He had been burnt by these early revelations, and the recent past in New Orleans was never far from his mind. And all he wanted finally was to speak with Tante Josette while instead he went through the elaborate motions of a visiting nephew in the midst of a large family as if he were an actor playing the part.
But in the next few months Marcel was to spend long mornings in Tante Josette"s company during which she revealed to him her entire world. She had gone to Paris when she was very young with a white lover who had her educated by tutors in their Paris flat. She remembered another age of three-cornered hats and knee breeches and the turmoil of Paris under the Directory still vibrating with the horrors of the guillotine.
And unlike her sisters, and the pretty women who surrounded her all her life, she was an obsessive reader of papers and books. Her corner of the parlor at Sans Souci Sans Souci revealed a library behind locked cabinet doors, and it was from these carefully concealed shelves that she commenced Marcel"s education on the history of his people and the island of Haiti or Saint-Domingue. revealed a library behind locked cabinet doors, and it was from these carefully concealed shelves that she commenced Marcel"s education on the history of his people and the island of Haiti or Saint-Domingue.
And baroque and filled with blood these books were. They were, some of them, violently opposed to the revolution, and painted the rising slaves as monsters, cruel beyond civilized reason, while others made heroes of these same men, detailing the life and speeches of Toussaint L"Ouverture, the little black general who had commanded the first great organized uprising, and his successors, Dessalines, who had given the island the name of Haiti, and its first emperor, the magnetic and enigmatic Henri Christophe.
Night after night, Marcel (forbidden to show these books in the house) fell asleep with these histories open beside him on the pillow and the chronicle of horrors bled into his dreams. And it was during this time that he first read of the brigands, those runaway slaves who had lived for so many generations in the mountains of the old French colony of Saint-Domingue that the Crown had finally recognized their independence, a status which in the days of the black revolution they had been loath to lose. They fought for the king at one point, the rebels at another, and sometimes it seemed only for themselves.
Juliet"s father, the "Old Haitian," had been of this breed. And only now did Marcel come to understand, as Tante Josette answered his eager questions, all that had long puzzled him in Juliet herself. Had she been reared in those mountains, with a brigand band? Was it not natural then for her to wring the chickens" necks so easily, to pull the yams from the backyard, to carry her market basket with such perfect grace on her head? What kind of life had she lived there, what violence had seared her mind leaving her, as Christophe had often said, a mere sh.e.l.l? One thing was certain in Tante Josette"s mind, that Juliet had believed her father murdered by one of the ever-changing factions in power when she had found her way to the Louisiana sh.o.r.e. And the name Mercier was that of the first white man who had put her up as his mistress in the house in the Rue Dauphine.
"A cunning woman, that," Tante Josette said. "She"d let them drag her by her hair across the floor if they liked, but she hid the money they gave her, and never let them lay hands on her son. I rather think the old man gave her a mortal fright when he appeared in New Orleans, and G.o.d only knows from whom he got the wealth he brought with him, and where he had been. The portrait painter, Belvedere, came up this way just after he had done the old man"s portrait in that house in 1829, and what tales he told. Sometimes I think a traveling artist shouldn"t talk anymore than a doctor should or anyone who comes to render a service in the privacy of a home."
"But tell me!" Marcel said with a characteristic impatience which, more than once, had made his aunt laugh.
"The old man drove off Juliet"s lovers, he paid her debts, bought the house, and all of this in gold. But he beat that poor exuberant Christophe, and the pretty mother would burst into tears when he was shaking the boy and beat on the old man with her fists. There was a power to that man, think of all he survived. And a power to her, too, I should think. She was scrubbing floors when she first came, and G.o.d knows what else until she took a good look in the mirror and then around herself at what was to be had. Tell me, Marcel, does that power persist in your teacher, today?"
Marcel"s short bitter laugh gave her the answer. How could one compare these generations? It dazzled the mind. "Christophe"s a European," he said more to himself than to her. "Somewhere in the oldest capitals of the world, he contracted a fatal case of ennui."
"What does it all come to?" she sighed. And then after considering it for more than a moment she surprised Marcel. "And Juliet, my dear nephew?" she shot him a subtle smile. "Ah, but you"re a gentleman and a gentleman shouldn"t be tempted to tell tales."
Marcel made his face a mask.
"I don"t know what you mean, Tante."
"Well, my dear nephew," she drawled slowly, "if I had seen those brilliant blue eyes of yours in my prime, I might have bent the rules and folded back the coverlet myself."
Marcel merely smiled and with a light graceful shrug shook his head.
But as Marcel read on, it was not the personal history of those around him that kept him enthralled. It was the unfolding tale of the revolution itself. Jean Jacques had been right when he had told Marcel it was the gens de couleur gens de couleur that lent the powder keg of the colony its spark. It amazed Marcel to discover the height to which his people had risen, the wealth, the number of plantations, how in such impressive numbers they were educated and burning finally for their full rights. Then came the French Revolution, that lent the powder keg of the colony its spark. It amazed Marcel to discover the height to which his people had risen, the wealth, the number of plantations, how in such impressive numbers they were educated and burning finally for their full rights. Then came the French Revolution, Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. How grand it must have seemed. Who could have guessed in 1791 that the island would reek with blood and fire for decades afterwards, its fantastical wealth consumed and scattered, its luxurious capitals burnt over and over to the ground?
Why did the whites come back and back? Why did any of them ever remain? It was the wealth that must have seduced them throughout the struggle, the old tales of fortunes made overnight, the pet.i.te bourgeoisie pet.i.te bourgeoisie from Paris become millionaires with a single harvest of coffee, tobacco, cane. Napoleon"s finest men had pitted all their strength and reserves to subdue the island and lost it forever in 1804, the richest colony of the French Crown. from Paris become millionaires with a single harvest of coffee, tobacco, cane. Napoleon"s finest men had pitted all their strength and reserves to subdue the island and lost it forever in 1804, the richest colony of the French Crown.
And who could deny the measure of greatness that the rebel slaves had produced? Toussaint himself a loyal servant to the age of forty-one; had the man ever dreamed of such a destiny? That he would take the reins of the rebel forces and bring them from savage pitched battle to a disciplined and often invincible army of soldiers willing with a fanatic"s courage to fight to the death? The French had gotten him finally, lured him with lies. And Marcel felt anguish to read of Toussaint"s death in some cold damp dungeon on French soil.
But what of the others, Dessalines, whom Marcel"s aunts had once called "the black devil," the man who ma.s.sacred the trusting whites who stayed to rebuild the Republic of Haiti? Who could deny that man"s courage, quite larger than life, and the hold he had once maintained on his fighting men?
And the emperor, Henri Christophe. Born a servant, and destined to build at the northern tip of the island a mighty fortress where he was to reign in a fairy-tale kingdom ever ready for a French invasion which never came again?
But it was Marcel"s own people who continued to touch him with a particular emotion. He understood their dilemma and how so often they were exploited and distrusted by both sides. They fought for the French for so long, and then against them, and for and against the blacks. It seemed no concept of brotherhood, born of necessity, had ever truly united the black men and the men of color until they realized that it was only their combined effort which could forever drive the European from Haitian soil. And even then the island was split in half, because as black Henri Christophe reigned in the north, so the man of color, Petion, had ruled the south.
It seemed at times Marcel would never grasp the whole. He drew maps, made little charts of battles and events and read over and over the gruesome travelers" accounts. But what came clear to him again and again was that in Haiti his people had had a power and a history like nothing he had ever known in his native Louisiana in his own time. They had borne arms for their rights, and even today on that island in the Caribbean they lived along with the blacks in the Republic of Haiti as fully enfranchised men.
But how to separate a n.o.ble history from this world of horrors he did not precisely know. Haiti was drenched with all manner of human blood. Marcel shuddered to read of the slaves tortured, burnt, brutalized under the French; and the pa.s.sion to which those slaves had been driven once they had rebelled.
But what had it finally to do with him? An earlier century with its near incomprehensible barbarity, a world of gens de couleur gens de couleur that dwarfed and sterilized his own? that dwarfed and sterilized his own?
One night late in October when he wandered into the front parlor to put a pair of volumes back into Tante Josette"s shelf, he found her writing still in the plantation ledger by the light of a candle, her left hand rubbing at her reddened eyes.
"Read this to me, Marcel," she said sitting up very straight and pressing the heels of her palms against the side of her head. "Take the candle over there."
As soon as he was seated on the couch, he saw that it was a list of names made that day, and it was the numerical figure in the farthest column opposite each name that Tante Josette wished to hear. He had read perhaps half of it before he realized these were the names of her slaves, and the figures were the weight of the cotton which each man or woman had picked that day. A curious revulsion came over him. In his mind, he had been fighting pitched battles in the Haitian hills, but he realized that those battles too had filled him with revulsion and he felt an oppression that seemed almost as endless as life itself.
"Is it good, Tante?" he asked.