Читать книгу Lydia Bailey - Kenneth Roberts - Страница 15

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He was now, King Dick told me as we slowly made our way through the crowded streets, a “Général de Place.” Before that he had been a regular general in the Negro army of Toussaint L’Ouverture when the mulattoes of the south had revolted in 1799 because they objected to the freeing of Negro slaves, and to being ruled by Negroes.

“Everybody always revolting till Toussaint came along,” King Dick said. “Negroes always revolting against Blancs and burning everything and everybody. Blancs always revolting against Negroes and killing everyone. Mulattoes always revolting against Blancs and Negroes and tearing everyone to pieces.” Undisciplined Negroes and mulattoes, he observed darkly, were the killingest people, outside of Blancs.

Toussaint, King Dick said, had put an end to most of this slaughtering in 1795 by organizing the Negroes into an army; and in 1798 he had driven out the English, who with “English boggetedness” had wasted a hundred thousand men trying to capture the island, and had “sweppup” all the French; following which Toussaint set up his black government, and declared a general amnesty to all enemies, whether black, white, or mulatto, and even though they had helped the English.

“That’s interesting,” I said. “He must be a great man. I’d like to see him. Is he hard to see?”

“Hard? Oh, my goo’ness no!” King Dick said. “He that little gray-headed man in white sat beside me at dinner. He built that hotel. He stop in there whenever he come to Cap François; take any seat, any table; talk to anybody unless they talk big. That something Toussaint can’t stand: big talk.”

As if in proof of this, King Dick went on to say that when the last war was over, Toussaint urged all plantation-owners, even though they’d opposed him, to return to their plantations. If plantation-owners had been massacred, or had fled Haiti and were afraid to return, Toussaint turned over the management of their plantations to high officers in his army, and every plantation-manager became a general—a Général de Place. All blacks who had been freed by the Revolution were ordered back to the plantations for five years on a profit-sharing basis. The workmen got a quarter of the profits, the government a quarter, and the remainder went to the owner or the Général de Place appointed by Toussaint.

“Very good profits I realize last year,” King Dick said. “Two hundred sixteen thousand dollars. Workmen divide fifty-four thousand; government take same amount.” He eyed me pensively. “That leave me a hundred eight thousand. That not bad, my my no!”

I found it hard to believe the things he told me so carelessly in that faintly lackadaisical voice of his; and when I asked him how he had happened to become a black general in the first place, I found it even harder. I didn’t know then, as I do now, that there are some persons to whom things always happen, so that their lives are as eventful as those of most persons are uneventful. I thought King Dick must be drawing the long bow: that no one person could have so many things happen to him. But we live and learn; I know better now.

He was born, he said, in the Sudan, where his father was a king who was unlike most African kings in that he urged agricultural pursuits on his people instead of inflicting war on them. When he was eighteen years old his father had sent him to purchase jewelry for his wives from a trader who had traveled all the way from Alexandria. King Dick smiled enormously when he spoke of this trader and wagged his head as if in delight at fond memories. The trader was a gentleman from Vienna, he said, who knew everything and had been everything—a soldier, a sailor, a Frenchman, an Italian, an Arab, a doctor, a dervish, a Marabout, an engineer, a monk, an actor, a Prince of Trebizond. King Dick had taken to me when he first saw me in the hotel dining-room, he said, because I reminded him of this trader. His head-wagging and chuckling continued as long as he spoke of him, as at a thousand amusing recollections.

The trader’s name was Eugene Leitensdorfer, and by some chance that name clung in my memory and kept recurring to my mind for no reason whatever; so that I have come to believe, as do the Arabs, that certain things are ordained, and that some of us, at any mention of that which is ordained, ring feebly deep within, as if a toy tuning fork were vibrating in a closed chamber of the mind.

It was Leitensdorfer who had taught King Dick about pearls: how to tell real ones from imitations, and how to distinguish between those that were good and those that were not so good. In teaching him about pearls, he said, Eugene Leitensdorfer had taught him many other things as well: how to move three nut-shells over a pearl in such a way that nobody on earth could tell correctly under which shell the pearl rested. Also he had taught King Dick how to make money vanish into thin air, and other similar tricks which he had found extremely valuable in business as well as in war, since the vanishing-pearl trick is based on nothing but deception and tricking people into watching the wrong thing, which—according to King Dick—is almost all there is to business and to war.

In all likelihood, he said, Leitensdorfer had saved his life; for on his return to the Sudan he had fallen into an ambush, been captured by another king and sold to Arab traders, who hustled him off to Timbuktu, the great caravan center and slave market.

Because of King Dick’s size and powers of endurance, he said, he would probably have been sent to the salt mines and died there; but the tricks that Leitensdorfer had taught him made people laugh—especially a rich date merchant from the oasis of Jalo, who had paid high for him so that he could learn the pearl trick. The date merchant had taken him on the long road to Jalo, kept him there for a few months, and then had taken him to Derna where he had presented him to a friend, an English naval captain, who wanted him because he was big enough and strong enough to work a pivot-gun by himself. It was the naval officer who had taught him English and given him the name King Dick.

When the English naval captain retired and went to Spain to make his fortune in the sherry business, he had taken King Dick along—first to Xeres; then to Surinam to sell sherry to rich Surinam planters; then to New Orleans, where the English captain gave him his freedom and set him up in business for himself.

Thus he knew all about wine, guns, and countless other things, such as all the caravan routes in North Africa, the quality of the various oases—of which Jalo seemed to him infinitely the best—and cities, of which Derna was the most beautiful; the methods of making cous-cous among the innumerable different tribes of Arabs and Moors, the method of baking beans peculiar to the Jews of North Africa, the odd habits of Arab Marabouts, the ways of African witch doctors, the fighting qualities of the different people among whom he had sojourned—the best, he thought, being the Negro Rangers of Surinam and the black Arabs of Jalo.

It was his wine business in New Orleans that had brought him into contact with the Spanish governor of New Orleans, who in turn had used him as a confidential agent. It was this work, he said, which had led him to become General Wilkinson’s secretary.

He rolled his eyes at me. “You know General Wilkinson?”

I said I didn’t.

“Hoy!” he said. “You don’t know General James Wilkinson, biggest general in America? Biggest round! Biggest everything! My goo’ness!”

“Well, I never heard of him,” I said. “What was he general of?”

“Everything,” King Dick said promptly. “He was general of everything on the Mississippi River and everywhere else he ever heard about; and if you named a new place to him, he’d be general of it that same day, as soon as he got opened.”

“I beg your pardon,” I said. “Did you say ‘opened’?”

King Dick nodded.

I shook my head. “But how did you become associated with this General Wilkinson?”

“Commercial business,” King Dick said. “First time sick thousand dollars: second time sem thousand dollars. That what he get.”

“From whom and for what, for God’s sake?”

King Dick spoke carelessly. “Favors for the Spanish governor.”

“An American general did favors for a Spanish governor? Do you realize what you’re saying? That would make him a traitor!”

King Dick said nothing—just strode ponderously along beside me, making dainty dabs at flies with the knob of his cocomacaque as if it were fragile as a lady’s fan.

“It’s all beyond me,” I said. “What you tell me doesn’t explain how you got to be Wilkinson’s secretary, or how that made you a general in San Domingo.”

He began again to explain patiently. When he carried the second package of money from the Spanish governor to Wilkinson, he said, Wilkinson had seemed unwilling to let him go back to New Orleans, and had offered him a position of trust. Wilkinson was a great hand with the botto (which I interpreted as “bottle”) and with what King Dick called “litto open pills that made him feel nice.” (“Open,” after more puzzlement, I then translated as “opium.”) Thus Wilkinson needed near him someone who could pick him up and carry him home when overcome by open pills or the botto—who could also be trusted to take messages to the Spanish governor when more money was needed.

I looked hard at King Dick to see whether he was serious. Apparently he was.

“But what brought you to Haiti?” I asked.

His head drooped on his shoulder and he tittered. I almost expected to see him put a bashful finger to his lips. Wilkinson, he explained, had a strong leaning toward new and elaborate uniforms, and although he was—as King Dick put it—a boopety, short man, he had an enormously corpulent upper body. Thus his upper garments weren’t a bad fit for King Dick, and the King frequently tried on the general’s uniform coats and weskits and practised military gestures and movements before a mirror. Unhappily for him, the general surprised him at this pastime one afternoon when King Dick thought him in bed and unconscious from overindulgence in open pills and whisky. Not being quite himself, the general had reached for his pistols with the obvious intention of wiping out what he regarded as a stain upon his honor; so King Dick had left him at top speed.

Because of Wilkinson’s influence everywhere along the Mississippi, King Dick hadn’t even stopped at New Orleans, but had taken informal passage in the hold of a ship bound for parts unknown. Unfortunately the vessel was a privateer, and King Dick had chosen for his resting-place the housing of a Long Tom which had been concealed in the hold. When the crew came to the hold to sway-up the gun, he had been discovered. The captain, a Frenchman, had promptly taken advantage of King Dick’s strength and knowledge of pivot-guns, and given him the freedom of the ship—which made it possible for him to fall overboard at the first port: Cap François. He made for the nearest wharf, arrived still wearing the general’s coat and weskit, both badly strained at the seams, and created a profound impression even in the act of wading ashore. He was at once taken before Toussaint, who asked him a few questions and promptly the next day made him a real general for three reasons: King Dick could read and write; his association with General Wilkinson, when the latter was sober, had taught him how to behave like a general even though he knew nothing of the prescribed military science of generaling; and, third, he explained to Toussaint some ideas he had of teaching other strong Negroes how to operate artillery, even when reluctant to do so.

King Dick talked and talked. He told me that he preferred white Englishmen and white Americans to people of his own color, though he was hard put to it to explain why. I gathered that he trusted them more, and the good ones gave him a feeling of mental satisfaction that he couldn’t get from those with darker skins. In his opinion, the best army officers were those who were intelligent and lazy; the second best were those who were intelligent and industrious; the third best were those who were lazy and thick-witted; while the lowest and most dangerous were those who were both industrious and thick-witted—and a soldier should instantly rid himself of such men. I gathered further that he was suspicious of any man, white or black, who was always doing and saying things designed to further his own interests.

Before we’d come to the end of our walk, it seemed to me that I knew King Dick about as well as I knew anybody in the world.

The Consulate General of the United States of America was housed in three high-ceilinged rooms above a bank on the corner opposite the Cap François opera house. When I walked into its outer office, with King Dick looming behind me like a black cloud, I found three American sea captains already there, restlessly fingering their caps and, as they talked, staring from the dusty windows at the fleet of American ships in the harbor.

They glanced up at us as we came in. At sight of King Dick, one, who was sallow-faced and lank-haired, pointedly turned his back and said to the other two in a querulous southern voice, “What I say is, they ain’t got any right to make a white man eat with niggers; and the way things are now, you got to eat with niggers if you want to eat at all. Either that, or put your food in a basket and go out and eat it on the sidewalk.”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” another of the three said. “You got to be mighty careful how you do your complaining, or Lear’ll pretend not to understand what you’re talking about. He’s one of those damned New Englanders.”

“No, he ain’t,” the first one said. “He had the bad luck to be born there, but he married a Custis and lived around slaves all his life. He knows just as well as we do that no decent white man ought to be expected to eat with ’em.”

“He may know it,” the third one said; “but I’ll bet you anything he won’t try to argue that little black Toussaint bastard into letting white men have a dining-room to themselves.”

“Listen”—this was the first one again; “what do you think would happen to him if I went home and told my senator that a respectable American sea captain had refused to complain because white men had been made to eat with niggers? Why, he’d get up in the Senate and tear that Toussaint limb from limb.”

The word “limb” seemed to distract him from the subject in hand. “Say, that one I was with last night, I learned something from her I never knew before.” He cast a glance over his shoulder at King Dick and me, then lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. “I’ve been paying her two dollars a night, every time I make port, and that runs into money. Well, you know what she’d rather have than all the two-dollar bills in the world? One of those Chinese bone sewing sets that sell for seven dollars in New York! I asked her, ‘If I bring you one of those next time I make port, how many nights is that good for?’ She said, ‘Every night for five years.’ Yes, sir, that’s what she said, and she’s high-class stuff, like all the rest of ’em at No. 16. There ain’t one of ’em that ain’t been kept by a rich Frenchman, one time or another, and there ain’t one of ’em that’s darker than octoroon.”

The second captain made a clucking sound. “Last time Captain Jennings of the Barkentine Jupiter came back from Canton,” he said, “he sold fifty of those boxes for five dollars. I could ’a’ saved some money if I’d bought half a dozen!”

The first nodded. “I figure I spent over a hundred and eighty dollars on that yellow wench when I could ’a’ had her for less’n twenty.”

I looked at King Dick. There was no expression at all on his black face, and I wondered what he thought of white men who couldn’t sit at the same table with colored people, but went out of their way to sleep with them and have children by them. I didn’t wonder long, for he gave me an odd, blank look and said faintly, “My, my! Some folks, they born to see everything wrong-end-to.”

“ ‘Blind guides,’ the Bible calls ’em,” I reminded him. “ ‘Blind guides, which strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.’ “

I hadn’t lived long enough to know that men seldom have the good fortune to follow a guide who isn’t blind.

When the door of the inner office at last opened, revealing the imposing figure of Colonel Lear bidding farewell to the caller with whom he had been closeted, King Dick got suddenly to his feet, gave me a peremptory nod, smiled engagingly at the three American sea captains who had risen to take advantage of that open door, and walked straight past Lear and his departing caller.

I thought for a moment that the three sea captains and Lear, too, were about to protest; but seemingly all four of them thought better of it, and when Lear closed the door on his caller and turned to greet us he was affability itself. “My dear Hamlin,” he said, “I have wondered whether French Spoliation Claims might not bring you here.”

He turned to King Dick. “My dear good friend,” he said, “this is indeed a pleasure! Sit down, gentlemen. Sit down!

“I’m afraid,” he went on to me, “that you’re going to be disappointed in finding documents to support your claims. Things are very much upset in all government offices—papers misplaced, you know.”

“Have you been looking for some of them?” I asked.

“Oh no, no,” Lear said hastily. “My reference was to documents in general. I’ve found it extremely difficult to locate anything.”

“Well,” I said, “don’t worry about my Spoliation Claims, because that isn’t what’s brought me here.” I unfastened the catch on the case that held Lydia’s portrait and set it on Lear’s desk.

“That’s why I’m in Haiti,” I told him. “Have you ever seen that lady, by any chance? Her name’s Lydia Bailey and she’s a governess for the children of a French planter somewhere on this island.”

“No,” Lear said, “I haven’t. It’s not a face you’d forget, once you’d seen it. What’s the planter’s name?”

“I don’t know. The documents in her case have been lost. All we know is that she’s here. Captain George Lee of Philadelphia saw her in this city late in November. She was with two young boys, her charges, and all three were in riding dress.”

Lear studied the portrait carefully. “No,” he said, “no. I’m very sorry to say I don’t know.” He looked up at me quickly. “Is she by any chance one of the clients that had a Spoliation Claim?”

“Well,” I said, “I never thought of it in exactly that way, but as a matter of fact she is. At least, she’s the rightful claimant to a number of shares in a ship that was captured and sold here.”

“Well,” Lear said heartily, “we must see what we can do about the lady. Now let me think. If her plantation was in this part of the island, or anywhere near it, I’m sure I’d know of her. Since I don’t, she must be in the south. Yes—she must be in the south. If I were you, I’d take a boat and go by sea to St. Marc. That’s where wealthy planters often go for sea bathing and amusement.”

“Used to,” King Dick put in abruptly.

Lear looked puzzled. “Used to?”

“Dessalines live there now,” King Dick said.

“Oh, yes, I see what you mean,” Lear said. “Still, St. Marc seems to me the most likely place for Mr. Hamlin to start his hunt.”

“I’ll need a passport, won’t I?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” Lear said; “I’ll make out one for you immediately! Immediately!” He rose from his desk and went to an inner office where I heard him speaking to a clerk.

King Dick’s eyes slid around and fastened on mine. “That kind, nice gentleman, he very anxious to help you go somewhere else, just as far away from here as you can get.”

“Who’s Dessalines?” I asked.

“Big general,” King Dick said. “Big, big general.” He rolled his eyes in such a way that I got the impression of something enormous, frightening, overwhelming. “Don’t like Blancs,” King Dick added.

“Do you think Lear’s advice is good?” I whispered.

King Dick snorted. “Good for him,” he said. “That Colonel Lear, he very nice man. Nice to himself. Don’t you worry, though. Tomorrow we go to my house and I show you things Colonel Lear don’t know and don’t believe.”

In no time at all Colonel Lear, all smiles and amiability, was back with my passport. “I wish you the very best of luck, Mr. Hamlin,” he said, handing it to me. “You may be sure I’ll spare no efforts to find your charming client. Now let me see, what shall I do in case I come across information you should have?”

“Send it to Mirafleur,” King Dick said. “I get it to him.”

“But you won’t know where he is, will you?” Lear asked.

“Oh, yes,” King Dick said. “I see with drums.”

To me he sounded in earnest, but Lear apparently didn’t think so; for he laughed heartily and wagged a sly finger at my black friend.

It seemed to me, as we left, that Lear might easily have shown more hospitality—though I admitted to myself that I wouldn’t have accepted it; and I took considerable satisfaction in having King Dick murmur to me, as we emerged again on the white pavement of the garish Plaza, that Colonel Lear was so kind and good that he always believed the wrong things, and usually at the wrong time.