Thousands of Maroons descended from the mountains. Gambo arrived with the group of Zamba Boukman, a giant who inspired double respect for being a houngan and a war chief. In the year and a half he had been free, Gambo had grown to man size; he had broad shoulders, untiring legs, and a machete for killing. He had won Boukman's trust. He slipped onto plantations to steal food, tools, weapons, and animals, but he had never come near Saint-Lazare to see me. I got news of him through Tante Rose. My godmother did not tell me how she received the messages, and I came to fear that she made them up to calm me, because during that time my need to be with Gambo had returned and was burning me like hot coals. "Give me a remedy for this love, Tante Rose." But there is no remedy for it. I went to bed exhausted by the day's chores, with a child on either side, but couldn't sleep. For hours I listened to Maurice snorting and Rosette purring, the sounds of the house, the dogs barking, the frogs croaking, the cocks crowing, and when finally I fell asleep it was like sinking into molasses. I tell this with shame: sometimes, when I lay with my master, I imagined I was with Gambo. I bit my lips to hold back his name and in the darkness behind my closed eyes pretended that the white man's smell of alcohol was the green grass breath of Gambo, who had not yet rotted his teeth by eating bad fish, and that the heavy, hairy, panting man atop me was Gambo, slim and agile, his young flesh crisscrossed with scars, his sweet lips, his curious tongue, his whispering voice. Then my body would open and sway, remembering pleasure. Afterward my master would slap my buttocks and laugh smugly, and with that my ti-bon-ange would return to that bed and that man and I would open my eyes and realize where I was. I would run to the patio and wash myself in fury before going to lie down with the children.
People traveled for hours and hours to reach Bois Cayman. Some left their plantations by day, others came along the inlets of the coast; they all arrived in the dark of night. It is said that a band of Maroons traveled from Port-au-Prince, but that is very far and I don't believe it. The forest was filled, men and women stealthily gliding through the trees in total silence, blended with the dead and the shadows, but when they felt the vibration of the first drums on their feet they were energized, they picked up their pace, speaking in whispers, and then shouts; they greeted one another, they gave their names. The forest grew light with torches. Some knew the road and guided others toward the great clearing that Boukman, the houngan, had chosen. A necklace of fires and torches lighted the hounfor. The men had prepared the sacred poteau-mitan, a tall, thick tree trunk, because the road for the loas had to be wide. A long line of girls dressed in white, the hounsis, arrived escorting Tante Rose, also all in white, carrying the asson for the ceremony. People bowed to touch the hem of her skirt or the bracelets that tinkled on her arms. She had grown younger, because Erzulie had been with her since she left the Habitation Saint-Lazare: she had grown able to walk great distances without tiring and without her cane, and had become invisible, so the marechaussee could not find her. The drums in the semicircle were calling, tam, tam, tam. People gathered in groups and told what had happened in Limbe, and the suffering of the prisoners in Le Cap. Boukman took the word to invoke the supreme god, Papa Bondye, and to ask that he lead them to victory. "Hear the voice of freedom that sings in our hearts!" he shouted, and the slaves answered with a clamor that shook the island. This is how they told it.
The drums began to talk and answer, to set the rhythm for the ceremony. The hounsis danced around the poteau-mitan, moving like flamingos, crouching, rising up, long necks, winged arms, and they sang calling to the loas, first Legba, as is always done, then the rest, one by one. The mambo, Tante Rose, traced the veve around the sacred post with a mixture of flour to feed the loas, and ash to honor the dead. The drums augmented her purpose, the rhythm grew faster, and the whole forest throbbed, from the deepest roots to the most remote stars. Then Ogoun descended with the spirit of war, Ogu-Fer, the virile god of weapons, aggressive, irritable, dangerous, and Erzulie released Tante Rose to make way for Ogoun to mount her. Everyone saw the transformation. Tante Rose rose straight up to double her size, with neither lameness nor years on her back; with her eyes rolled back, she made an astounding leap and landed nearly ten feet away before one of the fires. From Ogoun's mouth came a bellow of thunder and the loa danced, rising up from the ground, falling, and bouncing back like a ball, with the strength of the loas, accompanied by the roar of the drums. Two men approached, the most courageous, to give him sugar to calm him, but the loa picked them up like rag dolls and threw them far from him. He had come to give a message of war and justice and blood. Ogoun picked up a red hot coal, placed it in his mouth, whirled completely about, sucking fire, and then spit it out without burning his lips. Then he took a large knife from the man nearest him, set the asson on the ground, went to the sacrificial black pig tied to a tree, and with his warrior's arm cut its throat with a single slash, severing the thick head from the trunk and soaking himself in its blood. By then many followers had been mounted, and the forest had filled with Invisibles, Morts, and Mysteres, with loas and spirits mixed in with humans, all scrambled together, singing, dancing, leaping, and rolling to the beat of the drums, walking on burning coals, licking red hot knife blades, and eating handfuls of hot chilis. The night air was charged as it is during a terrible storm, but not a breeze stirred. The torches made a light like midday, but the nearby marechaussee saw nothing. This is how they told it.
Much later, when the huge crowd was shaking like a single person, Ogoun loosed a lion's roar to impose silence. The drums immediately stilled, and all except the mambo were again themselves as the loas retired to the tops of the trees. Ogu-Fer lifted the asson toward the sky, and the voice of the most powerful loa issued from Tante Rose's mouth to demand the end of slavery, to call for a total rebellion, and to name the chiefs: Boukman, Jean-Francois, Jeannot, Boisseau, Celestin, and several others. Toussaint was not named, because at that moment the man who would become the soul of the rebels was at a plantation in Breda, where he served as coachman. He did not join the uprising until several weeks later, after he had put his master's entire family in a safe place. I did not hear Toussaint's name until a year later.
That was the beginning of the revolution. Many years have gone by and blood keeps running, soaking the soil of Haiti, but I am not there to weep.
Revenge
As soon as he learned about the uprising of the slaves and the affair of the prisoners in Limbe, all of whom died without confessing, Toulouse Valmorain ordered Tete to quickly prepare the return to Saint-Lazare, ignoring everyone's warnings, especially those of Dr. Parmentier, about the danger whites were running on the plantations. "Do not exaggerate, Doctor. The blacks have always been rebellious. Prosper Cambray has them under control," Valmorain replied emphatically, although he had doubts. While the echo of the drums was resonating in the north, calling the slaves to the meeting at Bois Cayman, Valmorain's coach, protected by a reinforced guard, headed at a trot for the plantation. They arrived in a cloud of dust, hot, anxious, with the children swooning and Tete jarred by the tossing and bumping of the vehicle. The master leaped from the carriage and closed himself in his office with his head overseer to receive a report of losses, which in fact were minimal, and then look around the property and confront the slaves that according to Cambray had revolted, but not enough to hand them over to the marechaussee, as he had done with others. It was the kind of situation that made Valmorain feel inadequate, and that in recent times had been repeated frequently. The overseer looked after the interests of Saint-Lazare better than the owner; he acted with firmness and few inhibitions, while Valmorain vacillated, little disposed to dirty his hands with blood. Once again he confirmed his own ineptitude. In the twenty-some years he had been in the colony he had not adapted; he continued to have the sensation he was only passing through, and his most disagreeable burden was the slaves. He was not capable of ordering a man to be roasted over a slow fire, though Cambray considered that measure indispensable. His argument with the overseer and the grands blancs, since he had had to justify his position on more than one occasion, was that cruelty turned out to be ineffective; the slaves disabled or destroyed what they could, from knife edges to their own health; they committed suicide or ate carrion and wasted away vomiting and shitting, extremes that he attempted to avoid. He wondered whether his considerations served any purpose, or if he was hated as much as Lacroix. Perhaps Parmentier was right, and violence, fear, and hatred were inherent in slavery, but a planter could not allow himself the luxury of scruples. On the rare occasions he went to bed sober he couldn't sleep, tormented by visions. His family's fortune, begun by his father and multiplied several times over by him, was soaked in blood. Unlike other grands blancs, he could not ignore the voices rising in Europe and America in denunciation of the hell on Antillean plantations.