The Salt Roads Read online

  “No, matant.”

  “What did you say?”

  “No, matant.”

  “Remember that, and keep your lips buttoned, unless you can speak with respect. Go and do what I told you.”

  His little face was like thunder as he went, but he didn’t make a sound this time. He squatted beside the woman and began to fan the flies away. She scowled at him, but then she sighed and closed her eyes. I must wash her wound out again soon, or it might become maggoty.

  I knelt beside the new man’s palette and put the mortar full of ginger root mash on the ground beside me. “Mathieu,” I said, “hold out your hand.”

  Nothing.

  “Mathieu.”

  “Mamadou,” he croaked. But still his eyes were to the ceiling.

  So. A Muslim name. He must forget it now, in this land. Must learn to speak like the Ginen.

  “Your name is Mathieu.” I reached and took his swollen wrist. He stiffened at first, then with a sigh he let the arm go limp. I took it in my lap and began packing the ginger paste around the puffy wrist joint. I wrapped the cloth strips over the wrist, over the paste. Pretty soon, warmth would rise up all over the wrist; ease the pain in it. I laid his arm over his breast. Not a sound he made, not a look he gave me. I took up the calabash of cornmeal mush I had got from the barracks where they seasoned the new prisoners to do hard labour. I scooped some onto my fingers. Tried to put them in his mouth. He turned his head aside. “Haram,” he croaked out. Forbidden.

  “Yes, I know,” I told him. “It’s salted pig tail they cook it with.” To Muslims, pig is taboo, unclean. “But you need to eat, Mathieu.” I tried to feed him again, but he kept his lips sealed from me. I put the bowl down, and gently took his bandaged wrist. “You see this swelling here?” I said. “It’s because you’re starving yourself.”

  He just sniffed, and still looked at the ceiling. Some of the new ones did send themselves back to Africa that way, by not eating. Their limbs shrank, and their faces, but their joints and bellies bloated up. If they were determined, they starved to death.

  “Plenty of the Ginen find ways to die when they come here first, yes? When they’re being seasoned to this life. The blans throw you in the barracks, feed you pork, and dried salted fish with worms in it, and dayclean to daylean, they work you, work you in the fields. Cutting cane—”

  Mathieu leaned away from me and spat over the side of the bed. A disgusted look on his face, he. Why? Maybe he was understanding some of my words? Probably. He’d been with us two months already; plenty of time to start to learn Saint Domingue French. I kept on: “—cutting cane, weeding cane, breathing cane, cane, cane. If you straighten up from out of the cane, they beat you.” He jerked little bit. I said, “If you sleep through the morning bell, they beat you.”

  There. His throat was working. Crafty devil did understand me, after all. I touched his shoulder. He flinched from the touch. “Mathieu,” I said softly; “you’re never going to see your family again. Maybe you had a wife, children. A father or mother. Never again. They have to live only in your head now.”

  His shoulders were shaking. I could glimpse the fat tears running down his face. Ti-Bois had crept over to see. I let him stay. “Maybe you were a farmer, with your own land. Or a scribe, or a teacher. Maybe you were a soldier. All done now. Now you work in the cane.”

  He sobbed, like a dying gasp.

  “I know you miss your family, Mathieu,” I said. “I know the work is so hard that you ache all the time. I know how the food is dry and tough in your mouth, and you’re shamed to let people see you with only rags or maybe nothing to cover your skin. Naked like a child.”

  His sobs were coming loud and fast. I whispered, “And I know that you don’t want to live this life no more. You feel to just die. I know the way that feels.”

  Mathieu turned on the palette and flung himself into my arms, wailing. Ti-Bois giggled. “Ti-Bois,” I said, “go back over there and tend to the lady. You’re doing a good job.” He cut his eyes at me, little méchant, but he went.

  I held on to Mathieu’s weeping body. He was thin. This had always been a thin man, I could tell, but now with the way he was starving himself, he was only bones. He spoke through his tears, a language foreign to me. I knew the grieving in his voice, though; the mourning. On and on he went. I heard one familiar word: “Allah, Allah,” over and over. Mathieu was calling on his god. I rocked him, thought a bit. When he got little more quiet, I took his face between my two hands. Such woe in his eyes. “Mamadou,” I said, using his real name for the last time: “one thing that I can say to you that you will understand.” I had known some Muslims in my African home. In church Arabic I told him: “No man should take a life, even his own. Only talk to Allah; he is merciful.”

  He snuffled, deep in his nose, and pouted like a child. His face collapsed into grief. And he bawled again. So loud he bawled.

  “Matant,” called the woman who was having her back fanned by Ti-Bois. “Pity, do. Tell that man to hush up his crying. People are trying to rest here.”

  “He will stop soon,” I told her.

  He pushed himself from me, took up the calabash of cornmeal mush and took some of it on two of his fingers. He gagged on the first mouthful, poor soul. Me, I gave thanks that I was not so foolish, to scorn what little meat the blans gave us. The gods understand. They tell me that even the Muslim book says so. If haram is the only food you have to keep you from death, then eat haram. God is merciful.

  I watched Mathieu force himself to swallow. “Good, Mathieu,” I said. “Try again. You must eat and be strong.”

  Patrice came crashing in through the doorway. “Mer! Come! Now!”

  Mathieu looked up at Patrice, curious.

  “What is it, Patrice?” I said. “Someone’s sick? Where?”

  “It’s Marie-Claire!” His face was grey with panic. “Please, Mer; somebody poisoned her!”

  Marie-Claire! I was to my feet before I knew it, packing up my things. “Where is she?” I asked Patrice.

  Jittering, he; anxious to go. “At Tipi’s. You ready?”

  “Almost.” Oh, Marie-Claire. “Ti-Bois,” I called, “go to my garden and pick a big handful of mint leaves. You know mint?”

  “Yes, matant.” He started quick for the door. Mint might ease Marie-Claire’s stomach a little.

  “Bring them to Tipingee’s hut! Don’t stay to wash them this time! Gods, I’m coming, Patrice.”

  As we left, I glanced back at Mathieu. He put a lump of the cornmeal into his mouth. Made a face, he, then swallowed, hard, without chewing.

  I scurried fast as I could. Patrice was impatient, I could tell, but he slowed his pace to match me. We rushed past the Ginen working in their gardens this Sunday, cooking on fires, or just sitting in the sun, enjoying the little few hours of no work.

  “What happened, Patrice?”

  “Nobody knows. She was visiting her mother, they were making supper. Marie-Claire was all the time saying she didn’t feel so good.”

  “Didn’t feel good how?”

  “Her belly’s paining her.”

  “She ate meat from the great house!”

  “No. Tipi asked her. Marie-Claire knows better than that, Mer!”

  “It’s true,” I said. “She knows.” But what, then? “Is anybody vex with her, Patrice?”

  “I don’t know, Mer! Who could vex with Marie-Claire?”

  She was about to be given to free Philomise, a rich coloured man. “Anybody envy her, maybe?” Mama, some jealous somebody put ouanga on Marie-Claire?

  “Don’t know, Mer. Don’t know. Hurry.”

  Seemed like forever before we reached Tipi’s hut. We crashed inside. Nimble little Ti-Bois had run faster than my legs could carry me. He was already there, standing by the window, clutching the mint tightly in his sweaty hands. And oh, gods, there was Marie-Claire, on the floor where she had fallen. It was worse than I thought. Tipi held her child’s upper body in her arms. She was brushing and brushing th
e hair out of Marie-Claire’s eyes. Tipingee looked up at me, her face wet. “Save her, Mer. This one can’t go yet. Can’t go and leave me yet. Please, Mer.”

  I bent down to them. Thank you, Mama; Marie-Claire was breathing. Fast and shallow, but breathing. Sweat, drops of it, standing forth on her forehead. But so cold her hands were! And her lips gone purplish. I looked at her fingertips. No blisters there. Maybe not something she touched, then. Maybe not. One sandal was still on one foot; the other lying beside it. Master Simenon gave his house slaves shoes. Marie-Claire told us it’s because he didn’t want them trekking dust over his carpets. “Patrice,” I said, “pass me Marie-Claire’s sandals there.”

  He eased the one off her foot, fetched the other one, handed them both to me. I looked at the shoes carefully, me. No holes jooked in the bottoms of them. Not a piquette she’d stepped on, then. Nothing she’d touched. I examined her clothes and her whole body, all of it, like she was a newborn. No ouanga tangled in her hair or sewn into her dress or apron. Nothing in her mouth. No scratches on her skin, not even a mosquito bite.

  Her eyes were gone red. I must hurry. “It’s something she ate,” I told her parents.

  “Can’t be,” Tipi said. She brought her voice down low. Plenty ears everywhere, and not all of them friendly. “She knows what to eat and what not to eat.”

  “Then it’s something she doesn’t know about,” I insisted. “Maybe some new food for the great house, come from France on one of their ships. Something she ate, something she drank.”

  “Drank?” Patrice repeated. His voice sounded strange. I looked up at him. He threw a look for Tipi. Her eyes got big. She grabbed my arm.

  “Mer,” she said, “save her, Mer; it’s the water. I think she drank great house water!”

  “The water? That wouldn’t harm her. Great house water is always clean. One whole well, just for them.”

  Tipingee got a guilty, shamed look. She gazed deep into her daughter’s face, smoothed her cheek with one hand. “Not any more, Mer. It’s Makandal. He’s poisoning the wells and barrels the backra drink from. Is she going to die?”

  “What? The water? Oh, you gods. That man is just a curse.”

  “That man loves the Ginen,” Patrice said. “He’s fighting for us.”

  I looked at him, astonished. Looked to Tipi. But she just nodded at Patrice’s words and stroked her daughter’s face, love and sorrow in her eyes. “Makandal is our weapon, Mer,” Tipingee said. “Sometimes the machète slips in your hand and cuts you. It’s not the machète at fault then, it’s your carelessness.”

  Marie-Claire began to convulse in Tipingee’s arms. With a small cry, Tipi held her tight, tried to keep her arms from thrashing. She got a blow from Marie-Claire’s hand for her trouble. Patrice leapt to them and helped to hold down Marie-Claire’s legs. He got them still, then smoothed her skirts down. Such a frightened look there was on his face.

  “I have to purge her,” I told them. “Ti-Bois, you must run fast, you hear?”

  “Yes, matant,” he said in a high, frightened voice. Marie-Claire bent her body into a bow. Tipi held her and started praying in her tongue.

  She had swallowed the poison already. It was in her belly. Must drive it right on through her. She must shit. “You know aloe, Ti-Bois?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Run back to my garden. Bring back two fat aloe leaves. And tell somebody to boil a pot of water and bring it here, to Tipingee’s hut. You understand?”

  “Yes, matant.”

  “Run, then! Go!”

  He left, running fast on his little legs. Oh, Mama. Help me to heal this child.

  “Mer, I have senna pods,” Tipi said.

  Yes, that would work to get the purging started. “Where?”

  I found them in the calabash Tipi pointed out to me. Took three. No time to wait for hot water. I chewed the bitter brown pods into a paste. “Hold her good,” I said to Tipi and Patrice. I pried Marie-Claire’s jaws open and put the paste inside. Another convulsion took her. She bit me. I pulled my hand from her mouth and stroked her throat. “She must swallow,” I told them. “It must go down inside her. And we have to give her a healing bath. We need a cauldron.”

  “Fleur has one,” said Tipingee.

  Yes, it’s true. She would boil corn in it for all the Ginen on Christmas day.

  Marie-Claire still hadn’t swallowed the paste. She must swallow. “Hold her,” I told them again. Then I pinched her nose shut and held her mouth closed with the other hand. Her chest started to heave. Then she swallowed, finally. I let her go so she could breathe. She lurched in our arms. We three held her. Slowly, the fit passed.

  “I’ll go and get the cauldron,” Patrice said.

  And here was Ti-Bois with the aloe, and his mother Doucette, her face anxious. They stepped into the little hut, and behind them came someone else. Makandal. Come from his marronage.

  “I was flying over, and I saw the commotion. I came down and people told me what happened. How is she, Mer?” he asked. Grave, his face was. Hypocrite. Was him that did this.

  “Get away from this house,” I said to him. Then I had to ask, “Unless you know how to cure her?” The words were sour like gall in my mouth. Me, asking Makandal for help. But he was a powerful bokor, wise with herbs, and there lay Marie-Claire, her skin gone ashy. This wasn’t a time for pride.

  Makandal knelt by Marie-Claire. Tipi looked at him like he was her only hope. His face was stricken. “Has she vomited?” he asked.

  “No,” I replied.

  He touched Tipi’s shoulder. “I’m very sorry for this, mother. Marie-Claire knew not to drink the water from the great house well. Must have been an accident.”

  She knew? Everybody knew about this but me, it seems. “You’re sitting there, flapping your lips,” I said to Makandal, “but you’re not saying; you can help her?”

  He held out a handful of bush. I didn’t recognise it. It chagrined me not to know it. “When I heard about Marie-Claire, I went and found some of this where it grows. Boil it,” he said, “and make her drink the water from it. She will vomit out the poison.”

  If she came back to her senses enough to drink. If we got it into her in time. “You go and boil some water, then,” I told him. “Quickly.”

  With her child still in her arms, Tipi reached up and got a pot off the table. She dumped out the peas that were in it, right onto the floor. The green pods scattered. She handed the pot to Makandal. “You know where the river is,” she said.

  He nodded and turned for the door.

  “You still want the aloe, Mer?” asked Doucette.

  “No!” said Makandal from the doorway. “That would only drive the poison through her body faster.”

  Ti-Bois, poor little Ti-Bois, started to cry. “What I must do with them, then?” He held the aloe leaves out to me, begging me to take them from him. “I don’t want Marie-Claire to die.”

  Makandal got a look of sorrow. “Oh, petit,” he said to Ti-Bois, “this is not your trouble. We are adults. We will try to help her to live.” He turned again, and put the pot handle in his mouth. Through the doorway I saw him become a dog, bounding away to the river. I heard some of the Ginen exclaim when he changed. Tipi and me, we held Marie-Claire. And we just prayed. Up to Makandal now. Patrice and Fleur came back with the cauldron. Doucette jumped up to help them. They set it on the fire outside. Fleur and Patrice must have said what we needed to the other Ginen, for people began to come one-one with buckets of water. They were filling up the cauldron.

  Then back came Makandal, a three-legged monkey running on its hinders, with Tipingee’s pot in its hand. He turned to a man again and cotched the pot beside the fire next to the cauldron. Patrice looked at him. I couldn’t hear what Patrice said, but Makandal reached and touched Patrice’s arm, soft. Then he came back in and got his bush from me. Put it into the pot. Pretty soon, was steam rising from the pot. Marie-Claire was quiet little bit now. Too quiet. Tipi was quiet too. Not praying any more. Only
tears streaming down her face. Only her eyes watching Makandal, pleading with Makandal.

  He came back in the cabin. “How is she?”

  “Still with us,” I said.

  “Mash’allah.” God be praised. He found a calabash and poured some of his tea into it. Blew on it to cool it. He came over and crouched by us. “Hold her head up.”

  Me and Tipi, we did what he said.

  “Mer, open her jaws for me.”

  “This must work, Makandal.”

  “I know. Help me, please. I only have the one hand to pour with.”

  I pried open Marie-Claire’s jaws. So soft her breathing, so fast. Makandal poured, but it all just spilt out her unconscious mouth again.

  “What can we do?” cried Tipingee. “It’s too late!”

  “No.” I took the calabash from Makandal, took a mouthful of the hot tea. Acrid. Leaned over Marie-Claire, me. Made a seal between my mouth and hers, and spat the tea down her throat. She gulped. It went down. Thank you, Mama.

  Makandal tilted the calabash to my mouth again. “Give her more.” So I did that. After three times, the little bit of tea I had swallowed began to work on me. I had to go outside to vomit. Tipingee took a turn spitting the tea down her daughter’s throat, but pretty soon it made her sick, too. So it was that when Marie-Claire vomited out a great gout of liquid threaded with blood and woke up, it’s Makandal was holding her, begging her with his eyes to be well. We came back in the cabin, me and Tipi, and he had helped her to sit up. She was on her knees, spitting out the poison. He had his whole arm around her belly, massaging it. And she was holding on to the stump of the half a right arm. Holding on like it was life. Marie-Claire coughed, spat a last time, and sat herself down. Kept a hand on Makandal’s thigh, for balance. Not seemly that she should do so, but what was manners right now? More important to see to the girl’s health. She looked good at Makandal, soul-deep. “What happened to me?”

  He bowed his head. “It’s my fault. You must have drank something, eaten something, that had great house water in it.”

  She whispered, “You saved me?”

  I saw the tightness of her grip on his thigh, and how Makandal gazed long at her, and I knew that we had lost her, Tipi, Patrice, and me, for all that she would live now. But Tipi looked on the two of them, Marie-Claire and Makandal, and just smiled a grateful mother’s smile.