“I don’t remember that it was like this in Venezuela. Was it because I lived in the town? When I visited the plantations or estates of friends, they seemed easygoing places. I took it for granted that they would have their own rules and customs; everywhere had its own rules. Of course, it was a long time ago, before the great revolutions, and perhaps there were things I would think differently about now.
“Twenty years ago, when I was in Russia, I went and spent an hour in a public bath. This was in Moscow, in 1787, in the early summer. A Russian I had got to know told me it was something I should do. It was one of the sights for visitors. I found when I went that you could see the women from the men’s area. They were completely naked and you could see the lacerations and whip-marks on their bodies. The bath attendant allowed me to walk among the women. No one paid me any attention. It wasn’t arousing. The indifference and the damaged bodies were things I couldn’t ignore. I don’t think my Russian friend saw it like that. I kept my thoughts to myself, and very soon allowed myself to forget what I had seen.
“No one can ever read the eyes, Bernard says. There is no way of knowing who has begun to eat dirt or who has laid by a store of poison. A few years ago the poisoner on Dominique Dert’s estate, on the western boundary of the town, was the commandeur himself. He had formed a strong attachment to his master. Bernard says this often happens with trusted estate servants. The commandeur poisoned his fellows whenever he thought they were getting too close to Dert. When the commandeur was found out, he had the atelier assembled — as though he was still commandeur—and the story is that he made quite a speech to them. He became quite exalted. They didn’t know, he said, but for months he had had it in his power to poison them all. Then he spoke directly to Dert. ‘I could have poisoned all these Negroes of yours at any time. In one night I could have ruined you.’ That speech was the big moment of his life. It was like something he had been living for. The master, the atelier, the estate — this was his complete world. Nothing existed outside. A few days later he took some of his own poison.
“The poisoner on St. Hilaire Begorrat’s estate in one of the valleys to the west was the nurse in the estate hospital. This was a famous case, Bernard says. Begorrat was an early immigrant from Martinique, and he is very much like one of the old Venezuelan marquises of cocoa and tobacco, as we used to call them. Though Begorrat is a good deal more educated than they were.
“At the time of the hundred and twenty poisonings at Montalembert’s some of Begorrat’s people were also poisoned. The old marquis of cocoa didn’t like this at all. He thought it showed disrespect. Montalembert was a newcomer. He, Begorrat, was the senior planter in the place. He had established the style of the place, and even some of the institutions. Everyone deferred to him on estate matters.
“He pretended to be very angry. He lined up everybody on his estate, had one of the corpses brought out, and said he intended to find out who the poisoner was. The estate doctor cut the corpse open and he and Begorrat began to look at it very closely.
“It was too much for the poisoner, who was the hospital nurse. Her name was Thisbe. She broke from the watchers and ran through the cocoa woods to the neighbouring estate and asked there for sanctuary. Bernard tells me that this is what they do in certain parts of Africa: people from one village can claim sanctuary in another village nearby. She was handed back. Begorrat had pack thread tied around her thumbs and she was suspended by the thumbs until she gave the names of about twenty poisoners and sorcerers on other estates.
“It frightened people that there were so many. That very day they were all picked up and taken to Vallot’s jail in the town. They were kept apart from one another. They were chained or put in irons and some were shut up in the special hot chambers below the roof. Some of them were chained so that they couldn’t move. Some of those in the hot chambers quickly became demented. They were fed on plantains and water and over three weeks they were examined and examined in the jail by Begorrat and a poisoning commission of planters. Thisbe was repeatedly tortured. When it came to the judgements the planters followed Spanish forms. The people judged to be poisoners and sorcerers were heavily chained and made to kneel to hear their sentences. Some of them were hanged and decapitated. The new Negroes among them were first baptized; Africans are considered infants by the Church, and can be baptized without instruction. One man was burned alive. Thisbe was hanged and decapitated. Her body was burned and her head was staked on a pole in Begorrat’s estate.
“Begorrat tells Thisbe’s story like a story he has told many times. The pole on which Thisbe’s head was staked is still there, facing the Negro houses, almost on the spot where the corpse was cut open.
“He said with a smile, ‘There’s nothing there now. But they see the pole all the time and they know what they’re seeing. It’s magic against magic. I’ve told Bernard many times. It’s the only way. Here it’s my magic against theirs.’
“He told this story in the little grotto he has created in the hillside, and his current favourite — Bernard says he has had several — threw himself about with laughter whenever Begorrat smiled. He smiled often. He smiled especially when he talked about opening the corpse and pretending to look carefully at it, like a Roman reading the entrails, and when he said it was his magic against theirs.
“His lips are soft, but his speech is precise, biting and witty. The elderly cocoa marquis is much better educated than most people here, and he knows it. The people who defer to him tell you behind his back that when he came here from Martinique all those years ago he was bankrupt. All the Negroes he brought with him were mortgaged in Martinique; so the big tract of valley land he got free from the Spanish administration, sixteen acres for each Negro — the land that is today his little kingdom — was fraudulently obtained. I am sure he knows the stories. I don’t think he minds in the slightest. He has calculating, merry eyes. He is like a man who knows he can afford to laugh.
“It isn’t only Thisbe’s head-pole that’s still there at Begorrat’s. The old jailer Vallot is also there. He is the man who tortured Thisbe and many others. He would like to go to the United States, to Louisiana. He says he has relations there, and he might get a job. There is nothing for a free man to do here. But Hislop is not giving him a passport. It was Vallot who tortured the free man of colour in Hislop’s first week as governor here — the man of colour who used a love potion to get the black woman to sleep with him, and got people frightened all over again with thoughts of poison and sorcery. This is the case that has been tormenting Hislop ever since the Picton conviction last year. The free people of colour have raised a fund and retained a lawyer in Red Lion Square in London and are pressing the matter hard. Hislop is determined that if the case comes up, Vallot will bear responsibility as an official who exceeded his duty.
“Vallot is an elderly, pasty-faced Frenchman from Martinique. He came here in the Spanish time and acted as jailer for thirteen years. He has had no job for some years now. The local people decided to get rid of him at the time of Picton’s arrest. He has used up his savings and is dependent on Begorrat’s charity. He lives on slave rations in a Negro hut among people like those he used to flog and mutilate. Apparently they accept him. And he, curiously, has no feeling of humiliation or danger. Bernard says that no one at Begorrat’s will poison Vallot. Poison is a weapon only against the master. The man who is almost certain to be poisoned is Begorrat’s current favourite, and everyone knows it.