Carmen Boullosa - They're Cows, We're Pigs

On the other hand, when we were watching the astonishing evening light of Tortuga, Pineau’s words fell to the ground without a glimmer of illumination, as if they hardly sketched anything out, merely pointed in that direction, making clumsy strokes with efforts that were hesitant, naïve.

“France never had a sky like this.”

I, what could I say? I had no words to answer him. I decided to act the mimic. “No, Pineau, never.”

“France never had an ocean like this.”

“No, never.”

“Here the earth seems just recently created.”

“Yes, just made.”

“It seems to have been created later on.”

“Yes, here the earth was created afterward.”

“But, how do you dare say that, Smeeks? On the seventh day God rested, and the Holy Scriptures do not say he went back to work making earths again … Where did you get that from?”

“I was repeating what you just said, Pineau.”

“What are you talking about? Why would I say a thing like that? … Look at that strange bird there …”

It was just like all the herons that are so numerous along the coast of Tortuga, with a fish dangling from its long beak, Pineau wanting only to distract me with his remark so as to begin again with his “France never had …”

Perhaps the fascination he felt for those lands was what moved him to go for long walks from one side of the island to the other, from one to another of the accessible parts of Tortuga. These were not explorations, as Pineau would be covering the same ground he had walked many times over, but he would yet find something new in the forms of the animals, the plants, the texture of the earth, the insects that he trapped in order to observe them, not without arousing my fear and repulsion. He trapped butterflies, spiders (some as big as the palm of my hand), flies of all kinds … Afterward he would observe them for hours on end as if they would unlock for him the mysteries of the celestial vault, as if they would sing out the music of the spheres, as if they spoke with words that Smeeks did not hear, up until that moment having been deaf to the forms of life in those lands.

Through le Nègre Miel and Pineau I got an erroneous idea of the island’s inhabitants. The cruel nature of my previous master seemed rather the exception. I still did not know that on Tortuga there was no rule, that each man seemed made from a unique mold, but that cruelty was the natural thing in a world floated in blood, because I soon discovered that it was blood and not water that kept Tortuga afloat in the middle of the sea.

I did not need that dagger to liberate me from Pineau’s service. Weeks before, he had offered me my freedom in exchange for a hundred pesos, due whenever I was able to pay him, without insisting on a fixed date; and I was just waiting for the moment to enlist in the upcoming expedition for which they had already let him know they would be counting on one of his students as the ships’ surgeon, with L’Olonnais’s blessing. But Pineau was furiously opposed, asking me to wait until some other time, because in spite of being a staunch member of the Brethren of the Coast (and even more, as I would come to realize later on), he did not want to see my heart stained with the blood that was bound to flow profusely on any expedition under Nau’s command — L’Olonnais, whom I have already mentioned at the beginning of this book, and who Pineau thought had been left sick and ailing by the blows on the head given him by his buccaneer master, because such a thirst for blood can be nothing but a strange disease; for Nau’s illness was assuaged momentarily with blood, only to require it even more fiercely a few seconds later. Pineau did not have a slave of his own, black or matate or white, and to help him in his work as a surgeon and fix his daily meals he usually depended on some young sailor, so that for him to offer me my freedom was all the more reason to increase my gratefulness to him, he having made me his right arm; and if he released me in so generous a way, it was because inside him there lived a good soul.

What I could not get into my head, therefore, when I saw his body stretched out on the floor of the cabin, was that anyone might have wanted his death. Was there anyone capable of wishing evil upon a man like him, who never attempted to impose anything on anyone, who coveted nothing that belonged to anyone else, whose only wealth was his yearning for freedom of religion and thought? Although I should have wondered about this before seeing him motionless there with the dagger buried in his flesh and finding myself on my knees, attempting to heal, to sew up, to suture his wound, trying to contain the uncontainable hemorrhage, crying out to the gods of le Nègre Miel and begging the All-Powerful not to allow the great Pineau to die. I should have wondered what a man like him was doing in the Antilles, a territory where the strong man wins, the deceitful man strives to deceive, the clever man outwits the others; but not where nobility and intelligence have world enough and time to allow their indelible drop to fall: like a drop of oil, visible and calming, transparent and useless. I should have asked myself about all this and not responded lightly, because in that case I would have reminded myself, “He left Europe in search of a life where there is freedom of thought. He is living on Tortuga so that no one will hinder his being a Huguenot, the only law here being force.” Without the slightest doubt he had chosen Tortuga because the man who had built the island’s fort, who had made the island an impregnable center for contraband and a perfect asylum for pirates, the engineer who had conceived the system of order on the island, had landed there after having been cornered on Saint-Domingue and expelled from La Grande Terre because he was a Huguenot. Pineau talked to me often about Le Vasseur, not only about how, and how ingeniously, he had raised the fortress on Tortuga, turning the island into a key point in the commercial life of the Antilles, and in the trade between the West Indies and Europe. Pineau also recounted hundreds of anecdotes: most of them portraying Le Vasseur as a good man, others as a harsh tyrant. From among the first group I remember the story of the silver Virgin, abducted by some pirates from a Spanish ship, the most valuable article in the whole cargo. The Lieutenant Governor of Saint-Domingue, De Poincy, who had forced the Huguenot Le Vasseur to go to Tortuga, sent him a message requesting the image of the Virgin. Le Vasseur responded by sending a replica carved in wood, with this message as an inscription: I hasten to obey your order. I remembered that Catholics, because they are so spiritual, love not the material, while we Huguenots, as you well know, prefer the metal, and that is the reason we have had this wood replica made for Your Mercy and why we are keeping the elegant silver image .

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.