And in smaller handwriting in the corner, this appendix: Those who are loyal to King or Cardinal are not people, they are cattle.
Very carefully I coiled it up and put it inside the other, folded sheet, just as it had come. Why had Jambe-de-bois given this to me? It was getting too dark to read any more. I went back and found the Brothers in the cave. We performed the rites of the Brethren, all of us eating from the same loaf of cassava bread, and singing songs in which we swore eternal loyalty to each other. And drinking.
In the same spot we kept vigil over Jambe-de-bois’s dead body. No one spoke of avenging him, but they did speak of not buying any of the women brought by the governor. I did not mention the papers, nor did I cease to think about the prophecy.
Yet, as I have already mentioned, twenty-seven more women were bought, the majority by men who had still not been initiated into the Society, matelots whom we would expel for that reason before they got to be freebooters. But there were also two of the older Brothers, something I was unable to explain.
It was rumored that they, with connections to the governor, had been Jambe-de-bois’s murderers. Even if they were, the count was not exact. I had heard three gunshots. Who was missing?
Had I known for sure, I would have killed the three of them by kicking them to death, pounding their cattle flesh as they deserved.
FOURTEEN
When I finished reading the document written in the tight, neat hand of Pineau, I was moved, and also contrite. Why had I not been aware before? How was it I had entered the Brotherhood in a cloud of alcohol to take an active part in that marvelous dream without knowing that I was part of this utopia of great hearts? How was it that I had benefited from many of those aspirations without being shaken by the thrill of it, simply turned into a brute animal being fed choice tidbits without understanding or enjoying any of them, without knowing that I formed a part of what the girl on the ship (my beloved she) had told me about as we voyaged from gloomy Europe to sublime Tortuga (In the lands we are going to, I have heard it said that there is no “yours” and “mine” but that everything is “ours.” And that no one asks, “Who goes there?” and no doors are secured with locks and chains, because everyone is everyone’s brother. I have heard this said. And the only rule is that of loyalty to the Brothers. To be one of them you cannot be weak, a coward, a woman. I will go to a nearby island and see if I can fit in with that better life)? But it all seems to be read now in some other way because the ambitiousness of a few of them (piglets who dare to call themselves hogs) did its best to turn their faces away from it, because on Tortuga “yours” and “mine” and “Who goes there?” are now alive and well, because even though Benazet the owner of the gaming enterprise is dead, there were now three others just like him that I was unable to kill because I did not know who they were, and still others powerful and wealthy who were well protected and who would not let anyone take “theirs” away from them. Even worse, with gambling they dulled men’s desire for adventure, drawing them back to land, clipping their wings with the false battlefields represented in the card decks and chips, turning their wild energy into straw to feed the fires of their riches.… Now they let themselves sign on with the governor in exchange for a few coins to pay for their card games that take the place of their adventures, or to allow them to bring home a few trifles for their women.
The dream of the Brethren had come to an end, and I saw no way we could make it live again.
The last one to sign the document was Jambe-de-bois, and now he was dead. With the knife I carried at my belt, I punctured the tip of my thumb and signed the document with my blood, trying to keep my name readable, “Le Trépaneur,” shaping the letters with the knifepoint.
I kept it beneath my belt, flush against the skin, and carried it there for years, until I lost it during an assault from which I have never been able to explain how I got out alive.
Thirty more years did I spend in those islands after having signed the Law of the Coast, not among those magnificent men for whom there was no other law than that of God, but among pimps and muggers of the lowest sort who accepted the policy of paying taxes and tribute to d’Ogeron, to his nephew and whoever followed them, puppet governors who represented a king from beyond the sea. If I resisted living together with them, it was because I knew that they were the unworthy heirs of a magnificent dream that allowed men to take what belonged to no one by any legitimate law, and because the wave that formed out of that dream, though drenched in violence or alcohol, one or the other or both, gave me something that no other kind of life was able to. I must confess this to be so, now as I write these pages with the eyes, the ears, and the heart of J. Smeeks, Le Trépaneur, to keep alive the memory of le Nègre Miel, I who have had a run with the good fortune of preserving the remembrance of a place where the earth reaches its perfection.