A Rendezvous in Haiti (18 page)

They did no such thing. They lined the streets in silence and directed their sullen hatred at the policeman, who was called a chasseur or hunter. The word also meant lackey. Many of the spectators flung powders in his direction, and some brought small bowls and sat grinding at invisible ingredients. Others chanted softly, sly of eye.

Martel was direct, logical and fluent. The combination of popular disapproval, open witchcraft and Martel's persistent eloquence converted the chasseur, who in September joined him in flight to the mountains, where Martel rallied a band of guerrillas and led them south, toward the center of Haiti. Less than a month later, the corvée was abolished. Martel laughed. For him history was the French Revolution, Napoleon and several dozen Haitian tyrants: he knew how often kings made concessions a day late.

He had three thousand followers, but let the world believe that there were five thousand, ten, a whole nation ready to rise. Of the three thousand, perhaps three hundred were experienced bandits. The rest were farmers, wood gatherers, river fishermen, goatherds, village distillers—men and women and a number of growing children for whom war was a complicated new recreation.

Some of his people were giants like himself, some grandmothers, some crafty runts, some born to shop-keeping families with an impressive income like $100 a year, and some thieves, pimps, and dedicated troublemakers. Within fifty miles of Deux Rochers he had a thousand part-time rebels. He could dress as a beggar, walk stooped through a village at dusk, and tell by the look on a face or the hint of a swagger that this was his man, his woman. What he could not do was mass a well-drilled army. An ancient paradox, an ancient flaw: good guerrillas made bad regiments, and so often today's revolution became tomorrow's tyranny.

Martel stood tall among his bad regiments and surly civilians; concealed his doubts and fears and angers; acted the shrewd, revered patriot, hated by the rich, beloved by the poor. His principal woman was called Zan Rousse, which meant Susanna the redhead. There were always three or four others; he was a man of large appetites practicing a dangerous trade, and he was a man who knew the value of trappings. He often carried a bullwhip: it evoked the enemy, and roused his people to useful anger.

He had said often that he wanted only to raise a family, and to love his neighbor. This was appreciated as high good humor.

Later the two entered the forest, and to the priest it was Eden: fruit and flower, dove and wild goat, gnarled cedar and broadleaf—here, he said in Irish, the hand of man has never set foot. The distant drumbeats were muffled. He meditated Martel, struggling for this primeval kingdom. How long since their last boyish impassioned talk? Twenty years? He calculated: fifteen, sixteen. Now and then a greeting, via some third party. Martel had won battles, killed, lost friends, women; this would be another Martel entirely. A Martel who saw Caroline Barbour as plunder.

Here in the shadowy forest, the priest led the way: the perils, if any, lay hidden, and the soutane was their shield. They chattered, tried to laugh and be boisterous; they must travel openly. But not dawdle, and McAllister complained: “You're poking along.”

“You're nervous,” Scarron said. “Shall we race through the forest, and be taken and bound and flung in a hut while messages limp back and forth?”

“I want to ride my horse into the ground,” McAllister said, “and I see Martel behind every tree, and I wonder if Healy is playing tricks and planning an attack right behind us, and I wonder if Lafayette is a Caco, and I wonder if Caroline is dead.”

“Stop it now,” Scarron said. “Caroline is worth more unharmed.”

“My men can make ready for a week's patrol in half an hour. And you poke along.”

Scarron said, “You won't see Martel at all without me. Besides, you're dressed for this and I'm not. I am not one of your hussars. Respect for the cloth, please.”

“Yes. You're right. Are you really immune? Safe? You're like some good luck charm.”

“No one will fire upon us. These more remote Haitians may go a year without a visit from a priest. My own predecessor administered the last rites, post mortem, to seventeen of twenty-eight villagers struck down by a bloating disease never identified—high fever, watery bowels, fire in the bones and joints. They had not seen a doctor or a priest for eighteen months. He described it in writing for a medical magazine in Paris. The eleven survivors were emaciated but Catholic, and they wept when he offered Mass. They then sang to Papa Legba, and sacrificed a hen.”

“As Dillingham says, some Catholics.”

“It is perfectly natural. You Protestants seem to believe in at most one God, but saints and angels are more than abstract here; they are the spirits of fire and storm, rain and tree, yam and drought.”

“Our saints lived or died for the faith,” McAllister said.

“Ours are far more versatile,” Scarron assured him. “There is even a sort of hermaphroditic oracle who negotiates with the dead, and the lord of the graveyard is called Baron Saturday.”

On the second day they emerged from the forest and crossed more plain; and in mid-afternoon they reached a broad stream and a ford that McAllister knew well. Halfway across they were halted by one rifle shot; the round whizzed by them, and the report echoed off the hillside. On the far bank there suddenly stood two armed men, naked to the waist, ouanga bags dangling.

No one stirred. McAllister's mount strained to drink. McAllister hauled roughly on the reins and called, “Is the blanche here?”

One said, “No blanche.”

McAllister said, “Christ. Do you know where she is?”

The other said, “No.”

Scarron told the men, “Martel is my old friend.”

They were much alike, these two sentries, ragged but bright-eyed. One said, “You must give the password.”

“I'm afraid I don't know the password,” Scarron said. “But Martel will be angry if you turn me away.”

McAllister interrupted: “Last month it was ‘Ouvri chemin'.”

Scarron said, “Oho.”

“Open the way?” McAllister asked.

“Yes. It's from an incantation in vodun.”

The second guerrilla said, “Your guide will be back in a little moment.”

“Guide?”

“We saw you an hour ago,” the man said, “and watched you, and when we saw that you were a priest, Oreste ran up the hill for orders.”

“Then we may cross? My horse is restless here.”

“Cross. And listen, blanc, keep your hands off your weapons.”

McAllister said, “I think our guide should carry them—Oreste, is it? Martel would call it good soldiering.”

The sentry made moon eyes.

But Scarron saw the reluctance, the disquiet, when Oreste returned and McAllister disarmed himself; rifle, pistol, bayonet.

“My God, what a mob,” McAllister said. “Last time there were a couple of dozen women and a swarm of kids.”

Their armed escort was hostile and silent; six men; Oreste bore McAllister's arms proudly.

Outside each hut men and women stared, and most of the men held weapons. Children clung to the women. The men lounged and spat. On the green lay crates; on a crate lay a goat, chewing the cud.

Scarron sketched a sign of the cross, and a subdued cheer arose. “B'jou mon père!”

“B'jou mes enfants, and God bless you all!” He led McAllister to the houmfort and crossed himself again before the crucifix-cum-serpent.

As if in answer, Martel emerged. He was shirtless and barefoot. He wore a conical straw hat and a pair of white cotton trousers, cut off just below the knee. In his right hand he carried a coiled bullwhip.

Immediate silence: Martel measured McAllister, and tried obviously to stare him down; McAllister held his ground. Martel looked for the Marine's weapons, frowned, glanced at Oreste. His brows shot up, and he shifted his attention to Scarron, who was impressed again by the man's sheer size: tall, massive, well-fed now and hard.

“Ti-Jean!” Martel barked. “A ghost from the past! Not yet unfrocked, hey? You had better tell me what the devil is going on, and introduce me to your foolish friend.” And copiously, deliberately, he hawked and spat, and said to McAllister, “B'jou, macaque!” The villagers seemed to exhale one sweeping musical sigh.

McAllister said, “That means ‘monkey', I believe.”

Martel said, “Yes. One stage above ‘Marine'.”

Scarron laid a hand on McAllister's shoulder.

McAllister said, “Never mind. We're not waging war today. Call me what you want.”

Martel called out, “Everybody! Look at this blanc! This servant! This paid killer!”

McAllister reddened. The priest asked Martel, “You've heard about the blanche?”

“Of course I've heard. It was done at my order.”

Scarron knew immediately that the man was lying: the tone was that of a confessant inventing sins.

McAllister said, “And you call me—” but did not finish. “Where is she?”

Martel slapped the bullwhip against his thigh. “I have no idea. On her way here, I should think. Now: I'm placing you under close arrest. You will confine yourself to the hut. Armed men will guard you and women will tend to your needs. Consider your sins, improve your Creole. This is the Haiti no blanc knows. Travel broadens one.”

“The seed corn,” McAllister said, “and the bolts of cloth: my men and I brought those to the village. You ambushed us, and killed a boy.”

“We killed a killer,” Martel said. “The ambush was not my idea, but it was a good one. We never invited you. Now go away, Lieutenant. My social graces are rusty.”

“For the love of God, can you help?” McAllister pressed him. “Will you take me instead?
What can I do?
”

“Nothing,” said Martel. “I have no idea where she is, and Blanchard is a cold man. Unpredictable. He may have her on a ship, or across the border in San Domingo, or harnessed to a mill-wheel in a village.”

“Blanchard! Who's Blanchard?”

Martel snickered: “He is the white Caco, my chief of staff and French poodle. You will occupy his hut. Now leave me. You understand: I cannot like you.”

“Blanchard!” McAllister said. “French! Not a deserter?”

“He came from Europe,” Martel said, “and his old-fashioned French is more formal than mine.” He dismissed the blanc.

Two guards grasped McAllister, each by an arm.

“No need for that,” McAllister said.

“You're a prisoner,” Martel said.

McAllister studied him. “I'll do anything. Remember that.”

Again Martel gestured; the guards marched off with the blanc.

“He is not a bad man,” Scarron said. “He is in fact a rather good man.”

Martel said, “Oh well,
you
.”

The two Haitians strolled the village. “You will say a Mass,” Martel assured him. “Now: who else is on the way? What have the Americans planned for me?”

Scarron noted the preponderance of men over women, perhaps three to one, and both sexes a mixed bag, all sizes and shapes and degrees of beauty. Some of the men wore felt hats and some cloth caps, and one or two campaign hats, and Scarron saw more than one Marine Corps globe-and-anchor; and some were bareheaded, and many sported a scarlet token. Some looked like brave soldiers and some looked altogether evil, shifty-eyed and sullen, half-drunk. Many strutted armed—ancient rifles or modern, pistols, daggers and bayonets and cutlasses. The men paraded with their weapons while the women worked. “No one else is coming,” he said. “It is only he and I, and we only want the woman.”

“Ah! A wistful note! Has the priest met the beast within?”

“I met him years ago,” Scarron said, “and slew him. Charlot! Charlot! You are not a man for molestations, for atrocities, for dismal ugly venial sins!”

Martel rambled, and Scarron heard the qualms, the note of underlying apprehension. He had expected a god, a massive statue in ebony, but here was a human being struggling against doubt, restive, loquacious. “My old Ti-Jean! How long has it been? You keep low company, my friend. Cabinet ministers. American officers. We are planning a Petro service, you know, a fine wholesome blood sacrifice to raise our spirits. And to shock our old friend the priest. Perhaps in a day or two? Men and women have been pouring in from everywhere, whole families. They come from fifty miles away—they come for the vodun and the rum and the feasting but they come for God too, and for Martel, and for a raid or two, hey? They swarm in, and pray to the two great boulders, and ask permission to drink and bathe. They bring a kerchief full of beans and bag of ground maize. Deux Rochers can hardly accomodate them. They stake claims and tear down patches of young forest and braid together little huts. What shall we sacrifice? A goat? A bull? Your Marine? Wait till you see our Petro girl. You must purify us next day. Look here: see these stones? Deux Rochers is what remains of a plantation built in seventeen seventy-two by slave labor.”

Scarron saw the ruins, the cornerstones exposed now and weathered; they served as querns or chopping-blocks. There remained curious boundaries and scraps of stone wall. Beyond the village, sloping down in all directions, stood true forest, dense stands of mahogany uncut for a century save as casual village need arose, with here and there a field of cane patiently expanding, season by season over that same century.

A Petro service. He was not shocked. They would kill a bull and slice him up and it was a way to share the wealth. It was rather Martel who shocked him, volatile, fizzy, chattering away, a man approaching some inner limit. No ebony god at all, Martel was subdued and melancholy over rum and beancake: “I have not enjoyed myself. It is a barbarous life. I was once a Catholic, remember. I should like to win my war and be a family man like Toussaint.”

Scarron said, “The colonel told me you should have been an officer in the Gendarmerie.”

“He did, hey? And what did you tell him?”