There were slaves who had already tried it, either from him or from other masters who were just as cruel. I saw them strung up, hanged, exposed to the sight of all until the worms and the birds had left no more of them than their bones. Then bits of them fell to the ground in a jumble. The punishment that others received for their attempt was to have a leg cut off, and such legless slaves came to be so numerous that a French colonist on Martinique invented a way to make his slaves secure by a kind of imitation of those who were already missing a leg, with a short chain fastened at one end to an iron collar and at the other to one ankle, encircled in iron like the neck. So that some slaves, even though in possession of both their legs, hobbled around as if they had only one, with added injuries caused by the infernal heat, aggravated by the sun, that condensed on the metal collar and the ring that went around their ankle.
One slave who escaped was caught in the forest. His master had him tied to a tree, where he beat him on the back with sticks and bathed him in so much blood that it was running on the ground. Then the master had his wounds dressed with bitter lime juice mixed with salt and ground pepper, leaving him tied to the tree in that state for twenty-four hours, and repeating the torture later, until from being beaten and so badly mistreated the slave died, not without first screaming out, in a sharp, piercing voice that seemed to reach beyond the forest and lose itself in the sea, “May the powerful God of the Heavens and earth permit the devil to torment you as much before your death as you have done me before mine!”
Three or four days later, the evil spirit fell on that landowner. His own hands were his executioners, as he beat himself and scratched his own face so severely that it lost its shape, and he died in a pool of his own blood, like his slave, intensifying his torment with the salt and pepper of a punishment he never expected; the usual thing being that the landowners did whatever their ill will desired, and they could offer their slaves, no matter what their race, any maltreatment whatsoever, even death, because they were not within anyone’s jurisdiction. Thus, for the slaves (Nau aside, for he was always out of the ordinary) the only possible escape, if they could not stick it out for the period of their indenture, being three years for the French and seven for the English, was death. The white slaves (black slaves and those who are a mixture of blacks and Indians, called matates, are not forced to work as hard as the Europeans, the landowners saying that the former should be taken care of since they belong to them forever, while the whites, on the other hand, who cares about them! they only have their services for three years), some sooner and others later, would fall into a certain sickness called mal d’estomac there, which is a total privation of all the senses and comes from their maltreatment and the change from the air of their natal land into something completely the opposite. If, as everyone knows, people die of sadness, of disillusionment, of the state of mind caused by deception in love, why should the French slaves not die under such cruel treatment in lands so different from those they are used to? They did not hear, they did not see, they did not feel the intense heat, nothing pained them, they suffered neither hunger nor thirst: before dying they entered into the realm of the stones.
I was not the only slave of the governor, but I was the only white one, so that, for the reasons just stated, the worst part fell to me, the hardest labor. My condition was not so strong as to be able to resist it, being as yet unused to Tortuga, because of the state of my convalescent heart and because my body, tortured by hunger, was still growing — as my nature, perhaps touched by Tortuga, dictated: hastily and excessively (in a short time having made me a tall man, unusually thin, but a man and no longer a boy, to whom she would not dare confess her secret now as she had done to my small, child’s body). Several times I was on the verge of breaking down under the beatings and the harshness of my master, and doubtless I would have done so had it not been for two consolations: my new living quarters, less strange, barren, and severe, a stone building that formed part of the island’s fort; and second, though of much greater importance, my relationship with the man who occupied the room next to mine, le Nègre Miel, who, though half blind, took me in without caring that I was a white Frenchman, finding me merely a young man tormented by a cruel master. Such compassion did I awaken in le Nègre Miel as he showed affection and generosity, bequeathing me his wisdom on the one hand and eternity on the other, through my account of his reminiscences and thoughts, which I will offer very shortly. My ability to substitute lies for work also provided no small aid for my survival, although for every ten lies I came up with, my master would catch me out in one, and then he really made me pay for it with his whip.
I wish to yield the right to speak to this man, to le Nègre Miel, just as I heard him tell his story more than once as he was healing my back injured by the beatings, furtively giving me extra portions of food, smoked meat, cassava bread, fruits, and plants that he was familiar with on Tortuga (to which, perhaps, I owe my unusual height), or restoring my wasted limbs with concoctions he brewed and administered, and that he taught me how to prepare and prescribe, during time snatched from my labors, behind my master’s back, with the help of my clever lies:
lE nÈGRE mIEL’S taLE
I was born where the earth reaches its perfection. The climate is perfect: neither heat nor cold offers any reason to cover the body because the air itself clothes the skin exquisitely. There are wonders and an abundance of fruits, and the plants without exception are edible from flower to root, seeds, stems, leaves, branches and all. Water runs everywhere in cool branches, like that here in Tortuga which flows ceaselessly inside the fort, crossing the land here and there, so that no one ever suffers thirst and the earth is always covered with green. Zebras, lions, giraffes, elephants, antelopes: these are some of the wondrous animals, as varied as the fruits of the land, that populate the perfect valley in which I was born. Since I was very little, my father, my mother, and their brothers would teach me the secrets of nature, which spirits are hidden in which forms, and how to invoke them in order to cure diseases, heal wounds, make sadness depart. I also learned French, and even how to write it, because my mother’s brother lived in a French city for several years. When it was time to cease being a child, I was initiated into virility. Then I learned greater secrets. A new initiation, which we called “Entering the World,” took place when I was eighteen. In it, they sewed to my chest, transversally, from my left shoulder to the ribs on my right, the sash of leather and fabric that identifies those of us who come from that place where nature reaches its perfection; the rite being concluded, I left my own land, in the belief that I would return, as all my people had done before me, and without imagining that I would be plucked out of my beloved valley forever. That is why le Nègre Miel no longer sees. He prefers his sight to concern itself with memories, with what his eyes would not see were they to be opened. That is why le Nègre Miel always uses French when he speaks out loud. We should preserve by our silence the languages that our parents taught us, so they do not become wasted, so that in silence they can take pains deep within us to keep our spirits focused on high, and thus the gods will not ignore us and instead will protect us. The first village I served got into a bloody struggle with another village nearby. I will not give an account of the battles, to which my blood is so opposed, my time being spent healing wounds, curing the sick, strengthening people’s broken health; thinking, when I was alone, that when seventy full moons had come and gone I would return to my own people, to the valley where all is perfection, to teach the children what had been taught to me plus what I had learned during the seventy moons, and to start a new line of descendants with someone of my own blood.