Fire in the Unnameable Country (36 page)

Quincy heard the news and made a big row about inventory and demanded that the numbers of sleeping and working slaves be counted and rebranded.

Mouth agape, the overseers swore on his records the problem was so recent it had escaped even Tuesday's head count.

Who and where, Quincy flogged one adolescent red back and behind, and then an old woman begging and toothless. She kept pointing while they stuck pincers into her sides and no one could understand the howling words, though Caroline kept pursing her lips and thinking hard during the proceedings.

Unpredictable explosive bunch, Quincy laughed; stick a firecracker in the behind of this one, he ordered. While fifty-odd houseslaves gathered in the courtyard, the bottom half of the old woman disappeared into fire, and then the top half one or two writhing moments later.

Throughout these evil proceedings, Caroline Quincy noted the bubbling-to-surface of her husband's bloodlust, an energy that differed so greatly from his careful and supine performances in the marital chamber where he would lie next to her for a long time also flat on back, wondering, wandering eight fingers along her ribs, under her shoulder blades, distracted, aloof, alone in his own flybuzzing mind, that she came to understand in which corners of his spirit he stored his youth. She wanted to help. And yet what could she do. In her dreams the daily inquisitions replayed and the non-discoveries—for a week had passed, letters and telegrams had been sent out to nearby estates, none of whom had counted odd figures of missing slaves—until she gathered meaning.

The assexploded woman, she began.

Yes, he was listening. The covers of the bed crinkled closer together.

She gave us a clue, Caroline brought her face so close to Quincy's face, whispered so quietly even I can't hear.

Quincy thought for a second, hawing humming as if to vibrate the dying woman's words closer, then kissed his wife and leapt out of bed like a ten-year-old. He whistled out his dogs and whistled out his righthandmen. He rushed downstairs and gathered his infantryman's helmet from decades past. He gathered up his rifles and his six-shooters, his redcoat with its gold epaulets. He shone his blackarmy boots until he could see his chin on them. Then he went out in search of the man who was planning a rebellion.

Secretly, the knot tightened as the one hundred fourteen Maroons rested their horses and reviewed quietly the remaining tasks. Cattle and sheep grazed on wheat and cereals and other sun crops, several small fires gave light, hidden behind a rocky enclosure. The encampment stood four miles south of the shores of the Gulf of Eden along the mountainous region, at a point that would be later known as Maroon Peak. And it was, in fact, Ellipses, Quincy's righthandman,
who noticed the smoke first and asked if he should go up there and examine it.

No, Quincy whispered, let's make tracks.

They tethered the horses a safe distance away and treaded softly back. The encampment was high up and while there was a path, they could not risk being seen. They wanted only to hear, and craggy folds of grey mountain rock helped. They climbed into a crevasse.

Fifty metres above, on a plateau, the sentries that evening, Rudolfo and Solomon, watched the craggy moon face brighten as evening inked the sky a deeper violet. The russet soil augured no victors because there were looksees along every possible route. An hour earlier someone mentioned two separate horse pirates, fresh and dangerouslooking, but Rudolfo and Solomon who were weary from hewing firewood for the day's meal, made less of the discovery and shared a pipe. They had forgotten their original names on the Passage, though Solomon said he could remember it partially.

It was four syllables long, he could remember, and contained the sound ngua, but the memory ended there.

Rudolfo said all his memories before arriving to the unnameable country had been erased by the black milk they had been given to drink, and the lalapping strangewaters of the journey, and frankly, he didn't care.

Why not, Solomon handed him the pipe.

Because the past is a mist, friend, and the further you walk into the mist the more plain it is to see there is no way to go back where you came from.

They spoke on their disagreements as the soft sounds of hell emerged from the distance. Underneath the stage, fifty metres below their hidden crevasse, John Quincy and his righthandman listened as the scene unfolded. They could not see, but this only piqued their interest more.

What ho and who goes there, Solomon says at the ghost-pale apparition, which seems not to hear.

Stop where you are, Rudolfo lifts his rifle, and at this the old woman halts.

They approach her slowly and Solomon questions her in English and Quinceyenglish. What is a white woman doing so far from her home, alone and unguarded in these dangerous times.

She will not speak and her craggy face scares them because refracted by moonlight it looks a little too much like.

Torches and men wielding torches respond to all the shouting. The rule for intruders is immediate severe, but since this is an old woman and apparently deafanddumb, Amunji's word is necessary to make the decisions.

Amun asks them to leave the prisoner with him.

So you are the one, she says.

So you can speak.

Please untie me.

And what would I gain; the simple objective is to eliminate any intruders in this congress.

You Maroons, she laughs. That is the name others elsewhere have given such expeditions, so what's your point.

Nothing; they say you have violated the laws of the country, that you are renegades, and that you should return at once to estates and owners.

It was then Amunji noticed: her makeup had been carefully applied, so thickly that it was virtually a mask, and that her eyes shone too brightly for an old woman's face. He leaned over to examine her brow in the flickering firelight and got a faceful of mucus. Calmly, he produced a rag from somewhere in the tent, wiped his face before wetting it in bucketwater and cleaning off another time. What witch this one, he saw again the contrast of youthful skin and shock of white hair.
He knew her name also and said it now: Caroline Margarita Quincy. Ah you, bibi, he laughed, so they are sending you, he slipped into a more humorous tone. If this is the case, sky is falling and all is lost, no. So tell me, Margarita-begum, wifey of ol' Johnny boy: are you a messenger or just a plain old spy.

Neither.

Well, you've got to be one, he hopped on his left foot. Or another, he hopped on his right.

I am neither.

Well, explain then, because no doubt you have words.

I am a defector, she said straight-eyed, without a blink.

My great-grandfather laughed and laughed, he couldn't stop laughing, and then when he stopped he just started again.

Joke it up, said Caroline, but you're laughing away your opportunity to learn about Quincy's defences and his plan of attack.

We have our own plans, Caroline, and your involvement will only endanger them. Although, he stood up, you realize you have made the job a lot easier in some ways.

Is that right.

Absolutely, he came closer, lowered so that they were nearly eye-level. Your husband is a brutal man, as you know.

That's why I'm here, because brutality doesn't become me.

Amunji bit his lip to keep from laughing again. Nevertheless, he asked: Why did you disguise yourself.

Because I thought if your men recognized me they would kill me at once.

And if they saw an old woman they would have been more merciful to you.

Yes.

And that in my presence you could explain yourself.

I didn't know who you would be, so I didn't think that far ahead.

Hum.

Please, she sighed, you don't understand the meaning of living under the rule of such a dictator.

A butcher, he added.

Yes.

He had waited to call him the names, a scoundrel, a pirate. Not a pirate, Amunji shook his head, there is brotherly compassion among pirates, as far as I know.

The tent folds rustled, a stranger entered, whispers passed between him and Amunji. It seems, he returned his attention to that strange girlwoman with her smooth face gloved hands and her starched white hair, it seems your husband sent spies to follow you.

Do you know this for a fact; as far as I am aware, I stole away from home on the fastest horse on coarse rocky terrain and over water to avoid pursuit. If he is nearby, if he has followed me, it was his own doing, I didn't forewarn him.

Amunji paced, I have heard that ordinarily one sends a bloody ear or a digit of the captor's hand to alert the party in question of the seriousness of the matter. But, bibi, since you seem genuine, he italicized, there is no need to harm. I need, however, a token of your presence, something by which to indicate to your husband you are captured and that as many of us he kills, we have the one life he values most. Because he does, or does he, I should ask, love you.

Caroline Margarita blinked. Then with a savage expression she added: That man loves nobody.

Amunji untied her hands. Please give me your wedding band, he asked.

Caroline inhaled sharply. He withdrew his machete and she did not resist, slipped it off her finger.

Thank you, he said, you're going to be a great help.

Meanwhile—recall we left them hanging—Quincy and Ellipses heard a sound. It was a question first uttered in English and repeated in Quinceyenglish. Who could it be this sound, they gesticulated and quizzed each other with eye expressions. They waited three moments longer until torchlights passed over them and they were certain of danger.

They crept deeper into the gash in the rocks and the feeling of grey sediment fossilized molluscs and million-year animal bones frightened Quincy so much he began to pray to god as Hedayat would on one occasion in futuretime, for life and whatelse. Then the others were coming from above and across and they were stepping quietly, but they could still hear them. And then they went away. The Maroons, one presumes, began looking elsewhere, and in this gap Quincy and Ellipses made haste.

From a distance it was plain to see their horses had been slaughtered and that already magpies and buzzards had descended though it was not their hour. Without a way out, they meandered through the forest, which was as difficult as the most difficult segment of the labyrinth of hedge and grass that wandered so far off the estate and whose construction he himself had ordered. At that moment, Quincy felt like plucking out his eyes and eating them for what godforsaken and how did we arrive, as he forgot the games he had instructed the architects play, all the false and emergency exits they had written down for him on a map.

For two days they wandered. They wandered until Quincy lost the map he had kept inside his head, neatly folded and stored inside a crate whose lock and key were now lost. When at last they turned a corner and found themselves at the northern edge of the cornfield, Quincy's relief forbade all questions of why and how. The face of Bijou, his
manservant, descending the ship's now elegant staircase, elated him. But the sodden expression on that bright crinkling face told otherwise. The price of her release: his dry words blew the news simple and high off the paper that was produced: unchain the slaves, wake the others, the Somnambulists, abolish indenture and slavery, and declare the equality of all inhabitants of the unnameable country. Signed, Caroline Margarita
Quincy
. Below the signature, impressed upon the page with three drops of blood, was her plaintosee left thumbprint.

The questions abound who among the missing slaves, why did Caroline, and all the questions then. Quincy's anguish bore these added confused dimensions but he managed. Drag out the harnesses, whistle out the dogs, whistle out the men, and there were so many of them then, but Quincy had miscalculated his body because he landed assheap on his wheat stalks, confused by the lack of motion. Ellipses, Bijou, others carried him to his room where Moriah, his most trusted houseslave, prepared a goulash of tripe and barley and nightshade, which was supposed to. It slowed his breathing and his wild dreams of vengeance.