Caribbean by James A. Michener
Since it was impossible for César to imagine any better system of slavery than the one he knew, he accepted the belief voiced so often at Colibri: ‘Ours the best plantation. I been others where they whip. Nobody as good as Monsieur Espivent.’ Now as the fateful year 1789 edged toward the middle of summer, tremendous events were convulsing metropolitan France, but the slaves of St.-Domingue were prevented from learning about them. Fearful lest black yearnings for freedom be ignited into conflagrations that could not be controlled, Espivent encouraged the grands blancs in a campaign to keep all news from France away from the slaves, and he succeeded.
If the black Vavals knew nothing of the revolutionary fires that swept France in the tumultuous days following the attack on the Bastille, the free-colored Xavier Prémord and his wife, Julie, certainly did, for their two sons in France sent them detailed letters about the changes then under way. ‘Things won’t be the same after this,’ Xavier told his wife, but the improvements he sought were superficial compared to the root-and-branch alterations Julie dreamed of. ‘It’s all got to be different,’ she said repeatedly as news filtered in of peasant uprisings in the French countryside, mob action in Paris and proposed new forms of government.
Xavier’s reaction to this physical and intellectual violence was: ‘Now we free-coloreds will get the vote and gain some respect in Cap-Français,’ but his wife aspired to a complete modification in social patterns: ‘No more will we coloreds be the despised and trod upon,’ and she was determined that Espivent in his prosperous château cease serving as arbiter of the political and social life of the northern community. Listening to Xavier, one could visualize a slow but steady transition to new patterns of life, but if one attended to what Julie was saying, one heard echoes of revolution.
Although he detested doing so, when Espivent wanted choice material from India for a new cape, he had to buy it from Xavier Prémord’s shop near the theater, and when he needed a new jacket and trousers of a special cut he also had to go there, as did the other dandies of Le Cap, for Prémord had not only arranged with weavers of Bordeaux and Nantes to use him as their exclusive agents for the importation of fine wool and sheerest cotton, but he had also made arrangements with the best local seamstresses and tailors to work only for him. Any Frenchman in Le Cap who wanted to be really well dressed had to do business with Prémord, who was usually dressed more modishly than any of them.
Xavier and his wife were prime examples of why the grands blancs feared the free-coloreds. He was a tall, handsome man in his thirties, obviously intelligent and prudent in the management of his business; while she was the type of colored woman against whom Espivent railed—slim, attractive and with an amber skin that enshrined her in a golden glow. In addition to this visible benediction from nature, she was a sharp-minded, canny businesswoman with those instincts of caution and profit which seemed to come easily to Frenchwomen of the middle class.
She did not help her husband in his shop; she assumed responsibility for the small plantation inherited from her father near Meduc, a village opposite the pirate island of Tortuga. In fact, it was to the land now occupied by this plantation that the buccaneers Ned Pennyfeather and his uncle Will Tatum had come hunting wild boar more than a century ago.
Once when Espivent met the Prémords as they emerged from Xavier’s shop on the way to the opera, the doyen of Le Cap society explained to white friends standing nearby: ‘That saucy fellow’s about eighty-eight white, forty black, very presumptuous type. She? I’d say ninety-six white, thirty-two black, and it’s a good thing she’s already married, because young officers just out from France would grab at her.’ And then he gave her high praise: ‘She runs her plantation out at Meduc as good as any man.’
Like all the other free-coloreds who owned land, the Prémords relied upon some forty slaves to cultivate and press the cane, but Julie had, in her first days of management, differentiated herself from the other owners. They often treated their slaves worse than whites treated theirs. This was caused in part by the visceral fear in which they held their slaves, for they saw them as creatures in the abysmal pit from which they themselves had climbed, and back into which they might someday be pushed by the grands blancs like Espivent. Julie, in contrast, saw her slaves as human beings and tried to treat them as such.
Her husband’s basic position, the one to which he constantly returned, was clearly stated one night in August: ‘Each year the black population increases. When the slave ships bring in replacements for those that have died, they drop off a couple of hundred extra new Africans. They must in time overrun us. Our only hope is to ally ourselves—now and strongly—with the whites, to make them see that their only hope of survival is allegiance with us.’
‘I used to think that,’ Julie said, choosing her next words carefully. ‘But recent experiences at the plantation have begun to make me wonder. We have an enormous number of slaves in this colony. They outnumber us fearfully.’
‘We’ve always known that.’
‘And I’m quite sure they aren’t always going to remain slaves. The disturbances in France will someday filter down to us.’
‘They’re illiterate. They’re savages. They know nothing of France.’
‘Our grandfathers were too, but they learned.’
In response, Xavier retreated to one of the great clichés of social analysis: ‘That was different.’
‘When our slaves start to move the way our grandfathers did, hundreds of thousands of them, we’d better surrender your vain hopes of acceptance by the whites and join the slaves, for they will prevail.’ He started to rebut, but Julie forestalled him: ‘We must do it quickly and firmly, so they see that we do it of our own free will … and that we do it to help them gain their liberation.’
‘Not in our generation, Julie,’ her husband said. ‘We coloreds are civilized, they aren’t.’
The Prémords had as friends two married couples who were also free-coloreds and who also owned plantations out toward Meduc, so that sometimes discussions of these vital matters involved six concerned people, the division being three who wanted to ally with the whites, Julie who advised joining the blacks, and two who counseled: ‘Wait and see.’ But one of these rather destroyed his own argument by adding: ‘I listen in Le Cap. I’ve been to Port-au-Prince. And I’ve never felt tensions so high. Events may do the choosing for us.’
‘You’re contradicting what you’ve been saying,’ Julie cried in exasperation. ‘Say it clear and simple, what should we do?’ and the man said petulantly: ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to say. Do nothing. Go ahead as we are. Don’t allow ourselves to be used by either side. And when the smoke clears, because I’m sure there’s going to be smoke, we’ll be in position to dictate our own terms.’ And whenever the discussion reached this point the participants looked at each other in silence, for they realized that they were debating the chances of life or death.
The Prémords were accustomed to tension, for the laws of St.-Domingue, as dictated and enforced by Espivent and his grands blancs, were infuriating in their pettiness toward the free-coloreds. When Xavier talked with others of his caste during chance meetings in the rear of his shop, the men ventilated their fury at the injustices under which they were forced to live. Said one: ‘We’re forbidden to use the good seats in the theater,’ but another complained: ‘What irritates me is that I’m the best shot in this colony. Proved it in a score of competitions, but I’m not allowed to serve in the militia. The French say they can’t trust a man like me … wrong color.’
They were forbidden to copy the dress styles of Paris or play European-type games. But what galled Julie whenever she joined these discussions was the mean spirit of the rules enforced by the white women of the colony: ‘I am forbidden to entertain six of my free-colored women friends at lunch lest we conspire, and there cannot even be a group celebration when two of our young people marry. “Free-coloreds may not engage in any activities which might become boisterous,” the law says, and if a spy c
She and Xavier were delighted, therefore, when on cherished occasions a cadre of gallant free-coloreds in Meduc invited friends from the northern part of the colony to a clandestine dinner-discussion-dance. When Julie whispered: ‘Xavier, they’re doing it again,’ he knew that the courageous Brugnons were once more assembling the free-coloreds illegally, and so he and Julie quietly joined two other couples at the edge of Le Cap. On horseback, with three slaves attending them on mules to mind the horses and the baggage, they rode west. The air was quite festive, a real vacation from sugar and shopkeeping and daily duties. But Julie grew increasingly apprehensive as they neared Meduc, and warned her husband: ‘None of that foolishness at the dance this year,’ and when he reassured her: ‘I’ve no taste for it either,’ she made him promise: ‘You’ll keep an eye on me and grab me for your partner at once.’ He said he would, and on those terms they entered the beautiful little seaport, found lodging with their free-colored friends, and spent the rest of the afternoon in deep discussion about events in Paris and the future of St.-Domingue.
A stranger of unknown credentials, with a livid scar across his face, attracted considerable attention by whispering to the men: ‘Vincent Ogé, one of us and well regarded by the revolutionists in Paris, may be calling upon you for help.’
‘For help on what?’ Xavier asked, and the man replied evasively: ‘Sooner or later, won’t you, too, have to strike for freedom, eh? The way we did in Paris?’ When Prémord ignored the question, the man shrugged and moved along to others, posing the same question.
An orchestra of six slaves played light theater airs during supper, changing to animated dance music when the chairs were pushed back for the real entertainment. It was a vigorous affair, this lively dancing of the free-coloreds, and as movements became increasingly uninhibited, Julie caught her husband’s eye, and he nodded, assuring her that he would be staying close.
In those moments before the riot of the night began, he had strongly mixed feelings. As a young man he had found wild delight in these dances of his people, but now, as an older man with a pretty wife and a position of some importance in the colony, he felt that the untrammeled behavior which he knew was about to begin denigrated the free-coloreds and gave the whites justification for some of the ugly things they said about them. So he felt both a sense of increasing excitement, as in the old days, but also a revulsion when he remembered that the stranger from Paris would see how the free-coloreds misbehaved.
At a signal from the men running the dance the orchestra began playing faster and faster, and both men and women started calling to other dancers and even shouting into the air with no message intended. At a sudden cry from the managers, the music stopped, the lights were blown out, and men and women began groping almost blindly one for the other. A particularly attractive young woman, and many were present, might be grabbed at by three or four men, while a handsome fellow like Prémord would be certain to have several women fighting for him.
When the random pairs were established, with the less aggressive men and women having to accept what was left over, the couples retired upstairs, or to hiding places on the lawn, or to the stables behind the square, or wherever they could find reasonable privacy, and there the lovemaking and the squealing and the oaths began, to last long into the night as partners switched and fights began.
Prémord, as promised, leaped to his wife’s side as soon as the music stopped and had her safely under his protection when the pairing began. He led her onto a porch away from the activities, and as she whispered: ‘Thank you, Xavier,’ the stranger with the scar on his face joined them, and with a shrug of his shoulder toward the now-silent dance floor, said: ‘No wonder they say we’re not worthy of any higher place in society than we now have.’
‘It will change when we gain the respect that all men desire,’ Xavier said.
‘Why are you here?’ Julie asked in the blunt way that her husband knew so well.
‘Visiting.’
‘And what have you been whispering to our men?’
In the dim light provided by a solitary lamp at the far end of the porch, the visitor looked quizzically at Xavier, who nodded: ‘She knows all that I know,’ and the man said approvingly: ‘Good. My wife, the same. What I’m here for, Madame Prémord, is to inform you people that Vincent Ogé, a free-colored leader of some talent, may be calling upon you for help … soon.’
‘To accomplish what?’ Julie asked evenly, and the stranger said: ‘The freedoms that we must have.’
‘Is this Ogé talking revolution?’ Julie asked, and the man said quickly: ‘No! No! He knows what you and I know, that your group of gens de couleur is the smallest in the colony. You’re nothing, except that you attend to the management that keeps your colony surviving, and if under Ogé’s leadership you present our demands in the proper style …’
‘We will be slain,’ Julie said quietly, and to her surprise the man said quietly: ‘Then we will be slain, but we can wait no longer.’ Julie, noticing that in this firm declaration he had switched from the pronoun you to we, asked: ‘Are you then one of us?’ and he replied: ‘From the day of my birth.’
‘Where?’ Julie probed, for she feared alien agents provocateurs, and he said: ‘Down south. In the port town of Jérémie,’ and she asked: ‘Who owns the big store in the public square?’ and he said without hesitation: ‘The Lossiers,’ and she said: ‘They’re my cousins.’ Upon her direct questioning he refused to give his own name, but as he left the saturnalia Julie could see the disgust on his face as he watched two men shedding their clothes as they chased after two almost-naked girls.
While César Vaval’s parents were still alive they spent much effort in teaching him the things they believed he ought to know: ‘No slavery is any good. Danish is worst by far. French is best, maybe. But you live for one thing only, to be free.’ His parents had died at about the same time, worked to death by the owner of their plantation, but before they died they told their son: ‘Study everything the white man does. Where does he get his power? Where does he hide his guns? How does he sell the sugar we make? And no matter how you do it, learn to read his books. There’s where he keeps his secrets, and unless you master them, you’ll always be a slave.’
They had spent their last days persuading a knowledgeable slave to teach their son the alphabet, and as a result, César had, through the subsequent years, read accounts of what was happening in France and other parts of the world. He knew, for example, that the American colonies not far to the northwest had won their freedom from Great Britain, which also owned Jamaica, a colony much like St.-Domingue not far to the south. But the news in which he would have been most interested, the fiery rebellions in France, was still kept from him, for Espivent preached constantly in his club: ‘Do not allow the slaves to know anything. Madness seems to have taken over in France, and it would be a good idea to keep papers and journals away from the free-coloreds, too.’ But from a dozen subtle hints, César deduced that things of moment were happening, either in France or in other areas of St.-Domingue, and he was eager to learn more about them.
At thirty-three César was an intelligent, self-respecting black, but he had one limitation which would diminish him throughout his life: he despised free-coloreds. Because he saw so clearly that the ultimate enemy of the blacks was the white man like Jerome Espivent who controlled all sources of money and power, and because he saw that conflict between the grands blancs and the noirs was inevitable, he resented the intrusion of a formless middle group which interposed itself between the two contestants. ‘Who are these free-coloreds?’ he asked the wiser slaves who looked to him for guidance. ‘They’re not white, they’re not black. They can’t be trusted by anybody. What’s worse, they take the good jobs we ought to have if we do good work, like caretaker and work fixing things. That means we always gots to be field hands.’ When, on the occasions he was allowed into Le Cap, he viewed free-colored
Julie Prémord perplexed him, for she was obviously a most lovely woman, but the fact that she managed a plantation which had many slaves made her a kind of enemy, except that he had been told by other blacks: ‘That one, she the best. Her plantation hard rules but you get enough to eat, you get extra clothes.’ Once as he was lugging plants to beautify Château Espivent he had come face-to-face with her in the street, and for no reason that he could see she had smiled at him, a warm, human gesture that had both pleased and bewildered him. That night he told his wife back at Colibri: ‘She seem almost like one of us, more black than white,’ but as soon as he said this he realized how preposterous it sounded: ‘No, they’re far, far from us, all of them, and in the end they’ll be worse than the whites.’
Despite these feelings, he and his family did not hate anyone, except for one beastly overseer, but they were all prepared to take whatever steps would be necessary to attain the kind of freedom his father Vavak had spoken of. The word revolution, with its attendant burnings and killings, would have been anathema to them, but in recent months a new force had come into their lives, one which brought the concept of revolution right onto their plantation. It came in the form of a man, a runaway slave no longer attached to any specific plantation, a fiery-tempered man named Boukman, who said: ‘Don’t ask me where I come from. Ask me only where I’m goin’.’