The Salt Roads Read online

  Next day we woke up and saw goats from de Mézy’s plantation wandering through our master’s roses, feasting. Makandal was gone again. He had just left them. Gone for good now, people said. On grand marronage, hiding out with the maroons. Marie-Claire mourned little bit, but she was young, and her sadness passed. She would have plenty more sorrow in her life before life was done. Simenon sold her away to Philomise, the way he had planned. Tipi wept and wept, but there was nothing to do. Marie-Claire might be better off so. He might free her some day, her new man. And he was one of the rich free coloureds, they said. Born to his money. Richer than Simenon.

  Soon after Makandal was gone, we started hearing the stories. A plantation burned further over by the Cap there. Another one where all the blans died one night; sat down to a dinner party, began to eat, and started from the table with blood running from their noses and mouths. Poison, they said. Black man’s poison. Blans afraid to drink from their own wells. They started drinking only water from sealed barrels. But when they broached the barrels, most times that was poisoned too. Patrice told me how Makandal did it; sharpened splinters with poison on them inserted between the staves of the barrels. The same splinters I used to heal, to protect our children from smallpox.

  Makandal, Makandal; his name was spoken wherever a white died.

  And now Patrice was whispering here and there amongst the Ginen, telling them we must stand up, must rise up. Saying there were more of us than there were blans in Master’s household. Stupid man. More bullets in this whole land of Saint Domingue than all of we blacks.

  Saturday, 27 March 1852

  In the past, Mother, she had some qualities, but she has lost them; and I, I see more clearly. TO LIVE WITH A BEING who has no gratitude for your efforts, who thwarts them with permanent malice and stupidity, who considers you her servant, and her property, and with whom it is impossible to exchange the least conversation on politics or on literature, a creature who will not learn anything, though you yourself have offered to give her lessons, a creature who DOES NOT RESPECT ME, who is not even interested in what I do, who would fling my manuscripts into the fire if it would bring more money than letting them be published . . .

  Every time your dreaming mind sets me free, I float into the spirit place, into that aether that birthed me. There I can perceive a little bit more clearly. There are currents there. There is movement. Helpless, I tumble and splash from one to the next. Each eddy into which I fall immerses me into another story, another person’s head. The streams are stories of people; I can/will/did see them, taste them, smell them, hear and touch them. I can perceive where one man’s telling tongue will take him if he follows that branch of the river, or this. Where another woman will find the tributary that leads her finally to love, or to ruin. When I fall into the aether, I can sometimes choose to ride on someone’s shoulders like a head on a neck, like a rider on a horse. It is difficult for me yet. I am a toddler. But at least I am no longer crawling. My perceptions are diminished when I am astride a horse, but if my steed has welcomed me, I can borrow that person’s body for a little time; borrow their understanding of how to make their limbs move, make their tongues talk. In a willing head, I can dance and sway like the rushing spirit waters. Can sing and laugh like bubbling currents. Can speak. Tell fortunes. Give advice.

  And then Jeanne wakes, and yanks me back into her.

  I want to always be free, to choose to be enhorsed, or to navigate the aether world! I cannot make Jeanne’s body do my bidding, can only be carried along in the waters of her flesh.

  When I perceive the many stories of the folk of Africa, I like the love stories best.

  Tide

  As Jeanne nods off, the rhythms of her breathing—of her brackish, beating blood—wash me to other places; often to that Hayti land, that Saint Domingue where women, men, and children in all the polished wood colours of blackness dance at night around poles set in the ground. Sometimes I arrive in other times, and their clothing is different; frocks so spare, so brief that Jeanne would think them scandalous; fabric that stretches marvellously, but that never tears. Jeanne would find the glass in the windows of future Hayti impossibly thin and clear. She would marvel at the bulbs of light in the ceilings. For me, infant that I am, everything is so strange—telephones as well as petticoats—that nothing is more strange than any other thing, and I become accustomed to them quickly.

  Ebb

  They dance in those places, those times; they sing, and the drummers pound, pound out the pulsebeats. Sometimes it is French they sing, or a kind of French, different in one century than another. Those dancing people call, they implore, and suddenly I am there. I have lurched into another head, another body; not Jeanne’s, for she sleeps.

  The other head’s thoughts fall away, except for a kind of ecstasy of surrender, the hint of a whispered name. And I make the body dance, jerk, prance. I make it leap. It falls into the arms of the people around it, who hold it up. Their touch; oh, their touch of skin on this skin I have borrowed. Its eyes roll in its head. The other people cluster around and implore me: I dare not have another child lest I die of it; how can I keep my husband from me?

  And: I want the woman who lives in the shack down by the river, how can I make her look on me?

  I talk of pennyroyal for keeping man’s seed from flowering. I speak of how kind attentions and sweet breath can lead another to love. They say, thank you, Mother, thank you. They clothe me in fine gowns, give me money, put lace fans in my hands. In honour of me they cook sumptuous feasts and give to the poorer among them. They love me, and I am good for them. And I dance. Truly, though I am mother to none, I care for them all. And I dance.

  Each time, the aether shows me more stories. Seas, breathing deep in their waters, carrying ships on their backs. Whole histories, of people, of places. I see the fifty male wives, adorned in dresses, of the warrior queen Nzingha of N’gola. She and her sisters Kifunji and Mukumbu hold off for a time the Portuguese who want the riches of Nzingha’s country. I see a black beggar man in a land of snows, wearing a ship on his head for a hat, and for his bread telling tales of capture and adventure. I see the spring-fed lakes of newborns’ minds. I swim in them, and they are clear as air. I splash in joined tributaries of lives, watery webs that connect each one’s story to each. Then Jeanne wakes again, and the leash draws tight once more.

  Beat

  This sleeping night though, I do not dream the column of the peristyle, the centre pole by which I descend to walk amongst my supplicants. I do not dream the herky-jerky bodies as they tump and sway. Instead I am otherwhere, in a room of massive columns, painted in bright pictures. The beautiful pictures on the columns are echoed in the things that lie before me: lotuses standing gracefully tall; people seated, or singing, or kneeling, their foreheads touching the ground in front of me. I see tables full of food, of loaves of bread and pitchers of grain beer. The heat here is bright as the sun. There are women dancing, their linen dresses a weave so fine I can see their bouncing breasts and pumpkin-round asses and the shadows of their vulvas. They shake belled rattles, like many assons. What is this I am seeing? The dancing women call and bow and shake their bells. It is not any kind of French that they sing.

  There is another here, in the aether with me! She is gracefully dressed, like the women, in transparent linen. She turns her head towards me, reaches out a hand. Her head is a cow’s. I do not know how I do it, but I jerk myself back along the storystream, out of her reach. She is terrifying, and the women are singing for her. I know that if she responds to their song, the tree-trunk-thick columns would shake with the power of her. I want to creep back to witness. Who is she? Does she do it? Does she low her love in large words to the women who so honour her? I am about to know who she is, when Jeanne, unknowing, drags me back into her wakening head, and we both find ourselves still trapped in her living body.

  But a whisper has followed me back from the aether. Hathor. A goddess of love, of elder Egypt.

  She loves. She love
s those people. Is she like me, then? Am I like her?

  Jeanne, wake up!” Charles’s hand on my shoulder sucked my dream out of my head. Sweet Choux-choux and Tatiana on my lap yipped at him for disturbing me.

  “Jeanne,” Charles said, “where is the cat?”

  Was that gold I saw in my dreams? And music I heard? “Shh, Choux-choux,” I said, petting my darlings. “Did nasty Charles frighten you?”

  Charles took me by both shoulders. He was frowning. “Never mind those mangy mutts, Lemer; where is Mignonne?”

  Beautiful, shameless women, dancing in gauze garments? So I had danced for Nadar in my private rooms when I was still at the theatre.

  “Lemer? The cat?” Charles is sounding peevish now, and angry. Time to handle this.

  “It snapped at me, chéri,” I told him sweetly, so sweetly. Had there been a statue too? And perhaps an animal of some kind? “See, look where it scratched me.” Nasty cat. Always peering at me like it knows my secrets.

  “Have you locked her away, then? She will be frantic!”

  “It kept stealing Tatiana’s food. Poor baby was getting so thin.”

  “Where did you put her, Jeanne?”

  I only looked at him, and stroked my babies. They licked my hand. Their breath was sour with the cheese I’d given them hours since; I could smell it. Perhaps it was a cow, that animal?

  “My God! You’ve done away with her!”

  “No! I only put her outside for a bit.” Or maybe it was the statue, not an animal; had it had a calm, bovine head?

  “Out of doors? You ran her away?”

  “Oh, Charles. I’m sure the wretched thing will come back.” I pulled back little bit in the bed and clutched Tatiana and Choux-choux to me tighter, for Charles was red in the face. When he makes his lips thin like that, I must be wary. But he only said,

  “When?”

  “What?”

  “When did you put Mignonne out into the street to die? Tell me, quickly!”

  I pouted. “Not long. Before I fell to sleep. She won’t die.”

  He glared at me and raced to the door, muttering, “Perhaps she’s still in the doorway.”

  Serve him right for selling my jewellery. Now I didn’t have nothing to buy medicine with for Maman. And she with the croup so bad. I settled back on the divan to try again to escape into sleep. Bells, had those been in my dream? Bells, and a pagan statue.

  The door slammed and Charles was a flurry of black, at me before I even understood that he was there. Silent, so silent, this man of words. He seized me by the shoulders. Choux-choux growled and leapt at him. He swiped the little dog off the bed, and I screamed. My poor Choux-choux thumped when he hit the floor. Tatiana leapt down after him. They cowered, whimpering. Charles was shaking me so hard, I thought my neck would snap. I grabbed at his wrists to stop him. Strange; in moments like this, you forget that you can speak. Wordless, I wrenched his thumb up off my throat and bit. He hissed and threw me from him. The back of my head crashed into the corner of the divan, and I fell to the floor. My body was too hurt and stunned to speak then, even if I had wished to. Charles, he just stood over me, glowering. “She is gone,” was what he said. “Thanks to you. She will be trampled in this city! Some street urchin will kill her and roast her for his dinner.”

  He turned and left again. My head hurt. My arms were numb with the shock and pain. I couldn’t raise myself up for many a minute. Tatiana came and crouched by me, and licked my tears away. I lay till I was no longer shaking, then I dragged myself to my feet and began to dress. Going to my own apartments, me. Wouldn’t let him find me here when he returned.

  But next day, there he was outside my door. I had drowned hot chilies in rum, had been drinking that brew all night for the pain, but my head still ached. I opened the door a sliver only. There he stood, the beast, all solemn. In a breath of fire I whispered, “The dogs will bite you if you’re not civil.”

  “My God,” he whispered. “What have I done to you? Oh, Jeanne, I am so sorry.”

  Drums in my head; drums. “Then go away back again,” I muttered, and closed the door very softly, so as not to jar my poor skull.

  Thursday, 11 September 1856

  Dear Mother,

  My liaison, my liaison of fourteen years with Jeanne, is broken. I did all that was humanly possible to prevent the rupture. This tearing apart, this struggle, has lasted fifteen days. Jeanne replies imperturbably that nothing can be done with my character, and that anyhow I shall myself some day thank her for her resolution. There you see the gross bourgeois wisdom of women. For myself, I know that, whatever agreeable happening comes to me, joy, money or vanity, I shall always regret this woman. Lest my sorrow, whose cause you may not understand very easily, should appear too childish to you, I will confess that on that head, like a gambler, I had rested all my hopes; that woman was my sole distraction, my only pleasure, my one comrade, and despite all the interior torment of so tempestuous a relation, never had I envisaged the idea of an irreparable separation.

  Break/

  September 1857

  What should I think when I see you flinching from my caresses, if not that you’re thinking of that other woman, she whose black face and black soul have come between us? Upon my word, I feel humiliated and shamed. If I didn’t have so much self respect, I would bury you in insults. I should like to see you suffer.

  —Apollonie Sabatier in a letter to Baudelaire

  1859, Paris Maison Municipale de Santé

  Prends garde! Careful there, Lemer. Here, take my arm.”

  “Thank you, chéri.” I stood up slowly from the bed and rested awhile until the small cough passed. I tottered towards Charles, leaning on my cane. So feeble my legs were after the stroke. Too young for a stroke, me. The doctors said it was my illness brought me to it.

  The nurse in her nun’s white smiled with all her rotten teeth to encourage me. “That’s it, dearie. You’ll have clean fresh sheets when you come back.”

  “Yes, Sister,” I mumbled from my half-ruined mouth. “Thank you, Sister.”

  So sweet she smiled at me, and started pulling the bedclothes off the musty bed. Eh. I was a better actress, in my day. All her pleasantry was for Charles’s benefit, so the fine gentleman would be impressed. When he wasn’t visiting me, the damned nurses took their sweet time to come and see to me, no matter how I called.

  The weak and twisted right side of my body dragged. Charles looked at me, then pulled a kerchief out of his pocket. He dabbed at the right corner of my mouth. I felt to perish from shame. The lax right side dribbled sometimes, and I couldn’t feel it. Angry, I jerked my head away, but that made the little phthisic cat-cough start up again.

  “All is well, Lemer,” he told me, gently as to any baby. He put the damp kerchief away and bent his arm so that I might hang on to it. He had to pull my right arm into his; I couldn’t make it move. “I hate being this way!” I said to him, trying not to let my mouth spit.

  “Shh. You are beautiful. Come, let me promenade you to the world.”

  Despite my despair, I giggled at his silliness. He kissed my cheek. The right one. I felt only a ghost of a kiss. Slowly, he walked me outside and down the steps of the nursing home.

  Paris was changing. Prefect Hausmann was making this city a vision of France’s future, a sparkling jewel. I leaned my head against Charles’s shoulder and marvelled at being able to see clearly in the street so long after dark. Wondrous, how the streetlamps had a glow around them. The gas flames would flicker and burn all night and never go out. Who could ever have conceived of such a thing? As the carriages went by, the horses’ hooves made wet clomping noises in the damp. Paved streets in Paris, imagine it! Of good, strong wood, no less. No more ruining one’s dress from carriage wheels splashing stinking mud. Yet my cane broke the crust on a pile of dung, releasing its smell of rotting grass. When the streets used to be hard-packed earth, the dung from the horses was soon mashed into it by the feet of passers-by. Now it falls from their rears and si
ts there, waiting to foul a gentleman’s shoe or a fine lady’s skirts.

  “How are Tati and Choux-choux?” Charles asked. He had that look and that wheedling voice you get when you humour a child.

  “My dogs? Lise is looking after them for me. She likes them.” He never had.

  I could see my body reflected in the glass windows that so many establishments had bought with grants from Hausmann’s administration. Cane strike, heel strike, drag the useless leg.

  I looked in the window of Boutique Vernon, where Charles had bought me that cunning blue silk gown. I looked old. I tried to draw myself up tall, to smile. The frozen side of my face wrenched the smile into a grimace. I could feel the tears start down, warm on my left cheek, cold on my insensible right one. “I am become a monster,” I whispered with my slushy mouth to Charles. “Take me back.”

  “Shh, shh. Sois tranquille, Lemer,” he said. “You will get better. You will be the beauty of Paris once more. Here, just one step. Then another. Yes, like that, Lemer. The walking will make you strong. Come.”

  And cane strike, heel strike, drag, off he led me down the boulevard.

  “I have almost enough for a new book of poems,” he said to me.

  “Huh.” Taking the chance to speak, I said, “Rude ones like the last ones? You going to make the law fine you again?”