Toussaint tied his horse to a stake and watched his son do the same. They had come to the Georges plantation, where Brunet had made his camp. This plantation, unlike many others, had been well looked after, and fat ears of corn swayed in the breeze.
Brunet came out of the house to meet them, his wife beside him pretty under a parasol. Brunet had an honest countenance, the face lined a little by age, but otherwise handsome. Instead of a mustache he wore a close-cropped beard.
— Governor-General, he said. What a pleasure it is to meet you. I’m a long-standing admirer of what you have achieved in this country. Securing freedom for the slaves! It’s a feat that will resound through the ages.
— Freedom wasn’t my idea, said Toussaint. In fact, we have you French to thank for that. I only helped to spread the idea here.
Brunet gave a little bow.
— Well said, he pronounced. You are as humble as you are noble.
— Oh, I’m not noble, said Toussaint. The slaves are free, granted, but we’re still low-born in the eyes of the whites. Besides, I thought your revolution had done away with nobility.
Brunet smiled. Toussaint was glad to see it – it showed the man was not an idiot.
— The Revolution did, said Brunet, but Bonaparte seems determined to bring nobility back.
Toussaint laughed out loud. He liked a man who was willing to criticize his consul – that suggested he was able to think for himself. He had known Brunet for all of two minutes and already he preferred him to that pompous prig Leclerc.
— Isaac I’ve met before, of course, said Brunet. In Paris.
— Indeed, said Isaac. You are well met, sir. I trust you’re finding Haiti to your liking?
— Well, said Brunet, I found it, which is all credit to my ship’s navigator. As to whether it’s to my liking, I believe I shall take a view on that once the brigands and thieves are dealt with. I prefer a law-abiding country, I must say – that’s so much better for trade.
— On that we concur then, said Toussaint. I’m sure that with the cooperation of my armies we can render Haiti safe for everyone, and provide a fertile ground for society.
Brunet nodded.
— As am I, he said.
He introduced his wife, who smiled demurely when Toussaint kissed her on the hand and did not shrink at all from contact with his negro lips. He appreciated this gesture, as not all well-bred white ladies behaved so.
— Now, please, do enter, said Brunet. We’ll have some refreshments.
Toussaint went first, Isaac behind him. The interior was cool and dim, the light filtered by gauze curtains. A glass and brass chandelier hung above a leather-topped desk, several comfortable armchairs, a chaise longue, and a beautifully polished floor. The room was tastefully decorated in the colonial tradition, but was markedly different from many Toussaint had seen in that it hadn’t been defaced, burned, or looted. The master here must have been good to his slaves to see his property respected in this way.
Madame Brunet excused herself, saying she felt that politics were best left to men. Toussaint didn’t necessarily agree, but he nodded politely and bowed as she left the room.
They chatted idly for some minutes, sizing one another up, then Brunet made a slight noise of irritation.
— The servants are taking their time with the wine I ordered, he said. I’ll just check on it.
He stepped from the room.
A moment later the door opened and a dozen men entered, armed with pistols and swords. They trained the guns on Toussaint. For a moment – just a moment – he didn’t understand, then a heaviness settled on his heart.
I wonder if they think me some kind of black magician, he thought, that I should require so many men to restrain me.
Isaac turned to him in bewilderment.
— Father . . . he stammered. What are they doing?
— What do you think they’re doing? said Toussaint.
Paris had provided his son with an excellent academic education, but in many ways it had taught him nothing.Toussaint looked into his son’s eyes, where he saw something of himself and was glad. He pushed Isaac behind him and drew his saber to face the twelve men.
Yes, perhaps this was his destiny.
The door opened again and Brunet stood there, a sad look on his face.
— Put away the sword, Governor, he said. We’re not here to kill you, but to arrest you for treason. You won’t be harmed. I promise you that, nor your son.
Toussaint laughed.
— You promise?
Brunet had just enough grace to look ashamed.
— I apologize for the ruse, he said. It was the only way to resolve the situation without bloodshed.
— The situation being the inconvenience of my wishing Haiti to be free?
Brunet ignored that, instead gesturing to the sword in Toussaint’s hand.
— Lower that, he ordered.
Sighing, Toussaint complied.
— Just one thing, said Toussaint, please, before you restrain me.
— Yes? said Brunet.
Toussaint moved his hand toward his trousers and the soldiers aimed their guns at him, eyes narrow, fingers white on triggers.
— Don’t shoot, he said. Don’t shoot.
Toussaint held one hand up in front of him as if it could stop a bullet if one came, and reached very slowly into his pocket. He drew out the pwen and handed it to Isaac, his movements as exaggerated as mime so that the soldiers would see he wasn’t producing some hidden weapon.
— What’s that? said Isaac, who had been educated in Paris, and who had never fought anyone in his life, nor been whipped, nor stood in a swamp as a houngan danced and beat his drum.
— A pwen. It contains the spirit of a lwa – a lwa of war, I believe. It belonged to Boukman and now it belongs to you. It . . . It’s Haiti.
Toussaint found that there were tears in his eyes. Isaac looked at him like he was mad, but he took the stone.
Toussaint nodded to Brunet to indicate that he was ready.
The men rushed forward and tied his arms behind his back. They marched him from the house and into a carriage.
They’re taking me to Cape Town, he thought.
But they didn’t take him there. They proceeded straight to the coast and, separating him from Isaac, pushed him into a boat, then rowed him out to a frigate anchored offshore. A gentle breeze carried to him the scent of the land – spice and earth and sugar – but the scent grew fainter and fainter as it was drowned in salt. Then he could smell only the sea, which was the smell of death to him because the sea was everything that lay beyond Haiti, and Haiti was life.
It would have been kinder to shoot me, he thought.
Night had fallen and, as he listened to the clapotis of the sea against the wood of the rowing boat, Toussaint was reminded of that night when he and Jean-Christophe had swum out to the French ships. We should have burned them.
As soon as he was hauled on board he heard the heavy metallic rattle of the anchor being pulled up, and he knew he had lost. Haiti was lost, and he would never see her again. He felt the motion of the ship and realized that he was leaving the island the same way his father had come to it – over the ocean. For the first time he understood why vodou believed the dead to rest under the sea, for the narrative of the world was one of exodus – from the womb, from Eden – and return. The slaves had come to Haiti by the sea, and it seemed that it was to the sea that they were destined to return.
He had been denied even a porthole, as he was locked in a cargo hold, and he wept to know that they had taken his country from him. Still, he refused to give up hope. He dried his tears and straightened his back to show that he had not been broken. In the darkness, he thought about death because he knew that was what awaited him. He knew that they could never truly take Haiti from him, because in death he would know those he had lost once again, would speak with them and hold them again. In killing him, the French would be returning him to his ancestors, to his wife, would in some sense be giving him what he wanted.
He thought about the Rapture, the moment when all the dead would rise up to heaven together. His father had taught him that this event would occur when Jesus returned to the earth, perhaps in ten years, perhaps in ten thousand. Then all death would be undone and all calamities reversed in a single stroke. It had always seemed a remarkable idea to Toussaint. He pictured the drowned walking up from the bottom of the sea, pirates and the navy alike, their skeletons barnacled and clothed in seaweed, to join the general drift up to heaven, as the gravity of the dead reversed itself. He saw graves open and spill their contents upward; he saw battlefields scatter into the air in a clatter of bones and armor.
But this version was wrong, he understood now. The dead did not have to wait for some unknown day for their reunions. Bois Caiman and the stone had taught Toussaint that the version presented in vodou was closer to the truth, that people were always traveling to death, always accompanying Baron Samedi and la Sirene to the land under the sea to meet their missed ones there. Death was a constant welcoming, with those already dead always waiting, and a perpetual reunion. Because what, otherwise, could come after? Once the Rapture is done, what then? Then there would be nothing but stillness, and the world abhors stillness.
No, he thought. There is no stillness, not now, not ever. There is another version. A true version.
Death will continue. There will be no triumphant ending with souls ascending through the sky, no waiting for a reunion that might only happen after ten thousand years. There will be a steady and endless stream of the dead, filling the land under the sea that can never be filled.
But this is not sad.
This is beautiful.
The beauty of this is that when you die there will always be someone waiting, there will always be those you have lost, standing there, the curve of their back and the stance of their feet so familiar. There will always be someone there, saying:
— We have waited so long. It is so good to see you. Come here.
Come here.