Le Vasseur had certainly reigned in Tortuga more like a king than like a governor. During the twelve years of his rule, he persecuted the residents’ slightest infractions with inflexible rigor. He invented a terrifying machine for torture, The Inferno, through which he made everyone pass who had to spend time in Purgatory, Tortuga’s fortress prison. Whoever went through The Inferno remained marked forever.
This Calvinist tyrant made an armed citadel out of the island, choosing the best and most advantageous spot to locate his fortress, a little distance from the sea, a high rocky platform, around which he built a series of regular terraces, capable of quartering up to four hundred men. In the middle of this platform, the rock stood erect thirty feet high in a monticule that was sheer on all sides, a rather common formation on the island. He built steps only halfway up, and to climb any farther he used a stairway of iron that he drew up at his convenience, so that his living quarters and the stores of powder were isolated whenever he wished. At the base of the column of rocks gushed forth a jet of water as thick as a man’s arm, which never ceased its abundant flow. It was not merely with the fortifications that he took pains. He also looked after the industry (sugar, the distillery), agriculture, and efficient administration and rule of his territory, prudently and calmly waiting on Tortuga for whatever the pirates brought in to do his business and never making raids on La Grande Terre, as De Fontey, his successor, would do, inspiring fierce attacks by the Spanish.
Le Vasseur died in an assassination by his two godsons and protégés whom he had declared successors to his fortune because of the affection he professed for them: Thiébaut, who maintained a beautiful prostitute (a constant motive for feuding with Le Vasseur), and Martin. One morning, when Le Vasseur went down to his warehouse, his two protégés waited to attack him along with eight others, first with musket blasts that missed their mark because they confused him with his image in a mirror he had had brought directly from Murano (which was made of glass and extremely faithful) in a caprice that no one understood in him, but which nonetheless saved him from death for a moment. When he heard the shots, Le Vasseur, in order to protect himself, ran toward the black who was carrying his sword, moving out of the mirror’s range and making a real target of himself, upon which Thiébaut intercepted him and killed him by stabbing him with his knife. Before dying, Le Vasseur recognized his beloved murderer and in his shock, repeated Caesar’s remark to Brutus, “Is it you who kill me, Thiébaut?” and Thiébaut, as if such a remark had disarmed him, settled the government on De Fontey (an enemy of his protector and victim Le Vasseur), abandoned the prostitute, leaving her whatever was now his through his inheritance from Le Vasseur, and spent the rest of his short life in a hell comparable to The Inferno, until he put a rope around his own neck to end his days.
Pineau on the floor did not have the appearance of wanting to say a last word. That night we had not been alone. A surgeon’s apprentice, come there to relieve me in my duties, was staying with us, and also a pirate whose wounded knee had become infected, perhaps because of a splinter still lodged deep inside; the following morning we were to explore it with surgery to find out. He had arrived close before nightfall, borne on his companion’s shoulder, enveloped in the fetid odor of a wound in bad state, in search of help and afraid of losing the leg for which he would not even receive compensation now, the booty being already distributed.
Pineau and I were in the habit of chatting until the night was very far gone, though we would go to sleep early if we wished to rise early to undertake one of our endless walks.
In the afternoons I would read and study the treatises of Paré while Pineau would go to the meetings of the Brethren, in the mornings I would sometimes assist Pineau with his operations, and now and then he would allow me to put my hand in while he observed and made remarks; or if not we would go exploring the whole day, even several days in a row, where, listening to Pineau, I learned to observe, to love nature, and to understand the appearance and history of Tortuga, which he knew so well and about which he talked so much.
We would always talk in the dark, and some nights he would seize me by the hips and, mimicking le Nègre Miel with Smeeks or Smeeks with Isabelle, would make use of Smeeks. On one or two occasions I took him to Isabelle, when I was there to administer some remedy and did not feel in the mood to ask for payment, with the object of having him collect it instead, but he seemed as little interested in women as I was at that time; or perhaps I only imagine it, because the truth is that we never spoke directly about our sexual activities with them.
About women, yes. He was the most ardent proponent of forbidding them on Tortuga. He believed the Brethren of the Coast would come crashing down in a heap if women came on the island, that rivalries would enter in, that it would be impossible to go on prohibiting private ownership because everyone would want his woman for himself as an untransferable property, and they in their turn would want their own things and their own land because women do not know how to think about any moral good, that they would take it on themselves to spread envy, that they, being anxious for a more complicated daily life, would infest the island with useless slaves, with a shoddy servant class that would only bring more problems, and many other arguments it would make no sense to note down here, they being not to the point; saving the one that if women serve to clean men of their seed, the body of another man can do that just as well, and better, and whoever does not believe this should practice it, as it does no harm. Moreover, there would never be a shortage of youths on Tortuga, Europe being sure to birth and supply them, and the island relieved of caring for the children.
We were not alone that night, and we were not silent. Something made us laugh, I do not recall what it was, for that night’s high spirits have been erased from my memory, as if there were no longer room therein for all our laughter and good feelings, which surely must have irritated the foul-smelling pirate (although behind Pineau’s back I had already fixed him up with something to put his wound to sleep, and in truth his leg was more than asleep), on the night of the treacherous murder of Pineau.
Suddenly, a troop of men burst into the dark room without offering a word. It was not just two or three, I calculate there must have been twelve, fifteen, as many as could fit in there, all milling about, bringing a strangely quiet turmoil with them. They quickly pounced on us without giving us time to take up our weapons to defend ourselves. Without understanding what was taking place, I pulled and tugged and screamed out, “Let loose of me, what are you doing?” and what the devil else I shouted at them in the midst of their silence I do not know. A muffled, brief grunt came from Pineau, and I stopped tugging: I knew, I felt, that they had come to murder him. “They,” whoever they were.
“We’ve poisoned le Nègre Miel, like we promised. And now we’ve stuck it into you, you pigs. We’re cattle, cattle, cattle!” They ran out shouting their “cattle!” as I jumped over to Pineau’s bleeding body and begged the gods to bring him back to life, enveloped in tears, examining that body pocked with punctures by the dagger, a heart that beat no longer; and hoping to feel the breath that his motionless body no longer exhaled.
SIX