The Marquise of O and Other Stories (24 page)
Read The Marquise of O and Other Stories Online
Authors: Heinrich von Kleist
And here this legend ends. The woman, realizing that
her presence in Aachen served no purpose, left behind her a small capital sum to be held in trust by the courts for the benefit of her poor sons, and returned to the Hague, so deeply moved by the whole incident that a year later she was received back into the bosom of the Catholic Church; her sons, for their part, lived to an advanced age and died happily and peacefully, after once more, as was their custom, performing the
Gloria in excelsis
.
O
N
Monsieur Guillaume de Villeneuve's plantation at Port-au-Prince in the French sector of the island of Santo Domingo there lived at the beginning of this century, at the time when the blacks were murdering the whites, a terrible old negro called Congo Hoango. This man, who came originally from the Gold Coast of Africa, had seemed in his youth to be of a loyal and honest disposition, and having once saved his master's life when they were sailing across to Cuba, he had been rewarded by the latter with innumerable favours and kindnesses. Not only did Monsieur de Villeneuve at once grant him his freedom, and on returning to Santo Domingo make him the gift of a house and home; a few years later, although this was contrary to local custom, he even appointed him as manager of his considerable estate, and since he did not want to re-marry provided him, in lieu of a wife, with an old mulatto woman called Babekan, who lived on the plantation and to whom through his first wife Congo Hoango was distantly related. Moreover, when the negro had reached the age of sixty he retired him on handsome pay and as a crowning act of generosity even made him a legatee under his will; and yet all these proofs of gratitude failed to protect Monsieur de Villeneuve from the fury of this ferocious man. In the general frenzy of vindictive rage that flared up in all those plantations as a result of the reckless actions of the National Convention, Congo Hoango had been one of the first to seize his gun and, remembering only the tyranny that had snatched him from his native land, blew his master's brains out. He set fire to the house in which Madame de Villeneuve had taken refuge with her three children and all the other white people in the settlement,
laid waste the whole plantation to which the heirs, who lived in Port-au-Prince, could have made claim, and when every single building on the estate had been razed to the ground he assembled an armed band of negroes and began scouring the whole neighbourhood, to help his blood-brothers in their struggle against the whites. Sometimes he would ambush travellers who were making their way in armed groups across country; sometimes he would attack in broad daylight the settlements in which the planters had barricaded themselves, and would put every human being he found inside to the sword. Such indeed was his inhuman thirst for revenge that he even insisted on the elderly Babekan and her young daughter, a fifteen-year-old mestiza called Toni, taking part in this ferocious war by which he himself was feeling altogether rejuvenated: the main building of the plantation, in which he was now living, stood in an isolated spot by the road, and since it often happened during his absences that white or creole refugees came there seeking food or shelter, he instructed the two women to offer assistance and favours to these white dogs, as he called them, and thus delay them in the house until his return. Babekan, who suffered from consumption as a result of a cruel flogging that had been inflicted on her when she was a girl, used on these occasions to dress up her young daughter in her best clothes, for Toni's yellowish complexion made her very useful for the purpose of this hideous deception; she urged her to refuse the strangers no caresses short of the final intimacy, which was forbidden her on pain of death; and when Congo Hoango returned with his negro troop from his expeditions in the surrounding district, immediate death would be the fate of the wretches who had allowed themselves to be beguiled by these stratagems.
Now in the year 1803, as the world knows, when General Dessalines was advancing against Port-au-Prince at the head of thirty thousand negroes, everyone whose skin was white retreated to this stronghold to defend it. For it was the
last outpost of French power on this island, and if it fell no white person on Santo Domingo had any chance of escape. And thus it happened that just when old Hoango was not there, having set out with his black followers to take a consignment of powder and lead right through the French lines to General Dessalines, on a dark and stormy and rainy night someone knocked at the back door of his house. Old Babekan, who was already in bed, got up, merely throwing a skirt round her waist, opened the window and asked who was there. âBy the Blessed Virgin and all the saints,' said the stranger in a low voice, placing himself under the window, âbefore I tell you, answer me one question!' And reaching out through the darkness of the night to grasp the old woman's hand, he asked: âAre you a negress?' Babekan said: âWell, you must surely be a white man, since you would rather look this pitch-black night in the face than a negress! Come in,' she added, âthere's nothing to fear; I am a mulatto woman, and the only person except myself who lives in this house is my daughter, a mestiza!' and so saying she closed the window, as if intending to come down and open the door to him; but instead, on the pretext that she could not at once lay hands on the key, she snatched some clothes out of the cupboard, crept upstairs to her daughter's bedroom and woke her. âToni!' she said, âToni!' âWhat is it, mother?' âQuick!' said Babekan. âGet up at once and dress! Here are clothes, clean white linen and stockings! A white man on the run is at the door and wants to be let in!' âA white man?' asked Toni, half sitting up in bed. She took the clothes which the old woman handed to her and said: âBut mother, is he alone? and will it be safe for us to let him in?' âOf course, of course!' replied the old woman, striking a light, âhe is unarmed and alone and trembling in every limb for fear of being attacked by us!' And so saying, as Toni got up and put on her skirt and stockings, she lit the big lantern which stood in the corner of the room, quickly tied the girl's hair up on top of her
head in the fashion of the country, laced up her bodice and put on her hat, gave her the lantern and ordered her to go down to the courtyard and fetch the stranger in.
Meanwhile the barking of some dogs in the yard had wakened a small boy called Nanky, an illegitimate son of Hoango's by a negress, who slept in the outhouses with his brother Seppy; and seeing in the moonlight a man standing by himself on the steps at the back door, he at once, as he was instructed to do in such cases, rushed to the main gate through which the man had entered, and locked it. The stranger was puzzled by this and asked the boy, whom to his horror he recognized at close quarters as a negro: âWho lives in this settlement?' And on hearing his answer that since Monsieur de Villeneuve's death the property had been taken over by the negro Hoango, he was just about to hurl the boy to the ground, snatch the key to the main gate from his hand and escape into the open, when Toni, holding the lantern, came out of the house. âQuick!' she said, seizing his hand and drawing him towards the door, âcome in here!' As she spoke she was careful to hold the lantern in such a way that its beam would fall full on her face. âWho are you?' exclaimed the stranger, struggling to free himself and gazing, surprised for more reasons than one, at her lovely young figure. âWho lives in this house in which you tell me I shall find refuge?' âNo one, I swear by the heavens above us, but my mother and myself!' said the girl. And she renewed with great eagerness her efforts to draw him in after her. âWhat, no one!' cried the stranger, snatching his hand from hers and taking a step backwards. âDid this boy not tell me just now that a negro called Hoango is living here?' âNo, I tell you!' said the girl, stamping her foot with an air of vexation, âand although the house belongs to a monster of that name, he is absent just now and ten miles away!' And so saying she dragged him into the house with both hands, ordered the boy to tell no one who had arrived, seized the stranger by the hand as they passed through the door, and led him upstairs to her mother's room.
âWell,' said the old woman, who had been listening to the whole conversation from the window and had noticed by the lamplight that their visitor was an officer, âwhat's the meaning of that sword you're wearing under your arm all ready to draw?' And she added, putting on her spectacles: âWe have risked our own lives by granting you refuge in our house; have you come in here to reward this kindness with treachery, as is customary among your fellow countrymen?' âGod forbid!' replied the stranger, who was now standing right in front of her chair. He seized the old woman's hand, pressed it to his heart, cast a few diffident glances round the room and then unbuckled his sword, saying: âYou see before you the most wretched of men, but not an ungrateful villain!' âWho are you?' asked the old woman, pushing up a chair for him with her foot and telling the girl to go into the kitchen and prepare as good a supper for him as she could manage in a hurry. The stranger replied: âI am an officer in the French army, but as you may already have guessed, not myself a Frenchman; my native country is Switzerland and my name is Gustav von der Ried. How I wish I had never left home for this accursed island! I have come from Fort Dauphin, where as you know all the whites have been murdered, and my purpose is to reach Port-au-Prince before General Dessalines succeeds in surrounding and besieging it with the troops under his command.' âFrom Fort Dauphin!' exclaimed the old woman. âSo you actually succeeded, with your white face, in travelling all that way right through a nigger country in revolt?' âGod and all the saints protected me!' replied the stranger. âNor am I alone, my good old woman; I have left some companions behind me, including a venerable old man who is my uncle, with his wife and five children, not to mention several servants and maids who belong to the family; a company of twelve souls, with only two wretched mules to help us, and I have to escort them in indescribably laborious night marches, for we dare not let ourselves be seen by daylight on the highway.' âWhy,
heaven save us!' exclaimed the old woman, shaking her head compassionately and taking a pinch of snuff. âAnd where are your travelling companions at this moment?' The stranger hesitated for a moment and then replied: âYou are someone I can trust; in your face, like a gleam of light, there is a tinge of my own complexion. I will tell you that my family is hidden a mile from here, by the seagull pond, in the thick woods that cover the hills round it; hunger and thirst forced us the day before yesterday to take refuge there. We sent our servants out last night to try to buy a little bread from the country people, but in vain; for fear of being caught and killed they made no effective attempt to do so, and consequently I myself, at mortal risk, had to leave our hiding-place tonight to try my luck. If I am not much deceived,' he continued, pressing the old woman's hand, âheaven has led me to compassionate people who do not share the cruel and outrageous resentment that has seized all the inhabitants of this island. Please be kind enough â I will pay you very well for it â to let me have a few baskets full of food and refreshments; we are only five more days' journey from Port-au-Prince, and if you would provide us with the means to reach that town, we shall forever afterwards think of you both as the saviours of our lives.' âIndeed, indeed, this frenzy of resentment,' said the old woman hypocritically. âIs it not as if the hands of one and the same body or the teeth of one and the same mouth raged against each other simply because they were differently made? Am I, whose father came from Santiago in Cuba, responsible for the faint gleam that appears on my face during the day? And is my daughter, who was conceived and born in Europe, responsible for the fact that the full bright light of that part of the world is reflected in her complexion?' âWhat!' exclaimed the stranger, âdo you mean to say that you yourself, who as the whole cast of your features shows are a mulatto and therefore of African origin, that both you and this charming mestiza who opened
the door of the house to me, are condemned to the same fate as us Europeans?' âBy heaven!' replied the old woman, taking her glasses from her nose, âdo you suppose that this little property, which through years of toil and suffering we acquired by the work of our hands, does not provoke the rapacity of that horde of ferocious plundering devils? If we did not manage to protect ourselves from their persecution by means of the only defence available to the weak, namely cunning and every imaginable dissimulation, then let me assure you that that shadow of kinship with them which lies on our faces would not save us!' âIt's not possible!' cried the stranger. âWho on this island is persecuting you?' âThe owner of this house,' answered the old woman, âthe negro Congo Hoango! Since the death of Monsieur de Villeneuve, the previous owner of this plantation, whom he savagely murdered at the outbreak of the revolt, we who, as his relatives, keep house for him are subject in every way to his whims and brutalities. Every time we offer, as an act of humanity, a piece of bread or a drink to one or other of the white refugees who sometimes pass this way, he repays us for it with insults and ill-treatment; and it is his dearest wish to inflame the vengeance of the blacks against us white and creole half-dogs, as he calls us, partly in order to get rid of us altogether because we reproach him for his savagery against the whites, and partly in order to gain possession of the little property that we would leave behind us.' âPoor creatures!' said the stranger, âpoor pitiable wretches! And where is this monster now?' âWith General Dessalines' army,' answered the old woman. âHe set out with the other blacks from this plantation to take him a consignment of powder and lead which the General needed. We are expecting him back in ten or twelve days, unless he has to go off on other business; and if on his return he should discover, which God forbid, that we have given protection and shelter to a white man on his way to Port-au-Prince while he has been devoting all his efforts to the
extermination of the entire white race on the island â then believe me, the lives of all of us would be forfeit.' âGod, who loves humanity and compassion,' replied the stranger, âwill protect you in your kindness to a victim of misfortune! And since in that case,' he added, moving closer to the old woman, âyou have incurred the negro's resentment anyway, so much so that even if you were to go back to obeying him it would no longer do you any good, could you perhaps see your way, for any reward you like to name, to giving shelter for a day or two to my uncle and his family, who are utterly exhausted by our journey, and could here recover their strength a little?' âYoung man!' said the old woman, in amazement, âwhat are you asking of me? How could we possibly lodge a party of travellers as big as yours in a house standing right by the roadway without the fact becoming known to the whole neighbourhood?' âWhy not,' urged the stranger, âif I myself were to go out at once to the pond and lead my party back to this settlement before day break? If we were to lodge them all, masters and servants alike, in one and the same room in this house, and perhaps even take the precaution, in case of the worst, of carefully shutting up the doors and windows there?' The old woman, after considering the suggestion for a little, replied that if he were to attempt to fetch his companions from the mountain ravine and bring them to the settlement that night, he would undoubtedly encounter a troop of armed negroes who were expected to be advancing along the military highway, as some forward patrols had already reported. âVery well,' replied the stranger, âthen for the present let us content ourselves with sending the poor wretches a basket of food, and postpone till tomorrow night the operation of conducting them to the settlement. Are you willing to do that, my good woman?' âWell,' said the old woman, as the stranger showered kisses on her bony hand, âfor the sake of the European who was my daughter's father I will do this kindness for you, as his fellow countrymen
in distress. At daybreak tomorrow sit down and write a letter to your friends inviting them to come here to me in this settlement; the boy you saw in the yard can take them the letter together with some provisions, stay overnight with them in the mountains to make sure they are safe, and at dawn the following day, if they accept the invitation, act as guide to bring the party here.'
In the meantime Toni had returned with the meal she had prepared in the kitchen, and as she laid the table she asked the old woman, throwing a roguish glance at the stranger: âWell, tell me, mother! Has the gentleman recovered from the fright he was in at our door? Is he now convinced that there is no one lying in wait for him with poison and dagger, and the negro Hoango is not at home?' Her mother said with a sigh: âMy child, as the proverb says, once burnt twice shy of the fire. The gentleman would have acted foolishly if he had ventured into this house without making sure to what race the people living here belonged.' The girl, standing in front of her mother, told her how she had held the lantern in such a way that its full beam had fallen on her face. âBut,' she said, âhis imagination was obsessed with blackamoors and negroes, and if a lady from Paris or Marseilles had opened the door to him, he would have taken her for a negress.' The stranger, putting his arm round her gently, said in some embarrassment that the hat she had been wearing had prevented him from seeing her face. âIf I had been able,' he continued, pressing her ardently to his breast, âto look into your eyes as I am doing now, then even if everything else about you had been black, I should have been willing to drink with you from a poisoned cup.' He had flushed red as he said these words, and the girl's mother now urged him to sit down, whereupon Toni seated herself beside him at the table and, propping her head in her hands, gazed at the stranger as he ate. The latter asked her how old she was and what was her native town; her mother spoke for her and told him that when she had been
accompanying her former employer, Madame de Villeneuve she had conceived Toni in Paris and that that was where, fifteen years ago, she had been born. She added that the negro Komar, whom she had afterwards married, had in fact adopted the child, but that her real father had been a rich merchant from Marseilles called Bertrand, and that consequently her name was Toni Bertrand. Toni asked him whether he knew a gentleman of that name in France; the stranger answered he did not, that it was a big country, and that during the short time he had spent there before embarking for the West Indies he had met no one called Bertrand. The old woman added that in any case, according to fairly reliable reports she had received, Toni's father was no longer living in France. She said that his ambitious and enterprising temperament found no satisfaction within the restrictions of bourgeois life; at the outbreak of the Revolution he had involved himself in public affairs and in 1795 had joined a French diplomatic mission to the Ottoman court; from there, so far as she knew, he had never returned. The stranger, smiling at Toni, took her hand and said: âWhy, in that case you are a nobly born and rich girl!' He urged her to make use of these advantages, saying that she might well expect, with her father's assistance, to rise again to a social position more distinguished than her present one. âThat can hardly be so,' replied the old woman, restraining her evident resentment at this remark. âDuring my pregnancy in Paris, Monsieur Bertrand, feeling ashamed of me because he wanted to marry a rich young lady, went before a court and formally repudiated the paternity. I shall never forget the brazen perjury he committed to my face; the consequence was that I fell into a bilious fever, and soon after that Monsieur de Villeneuve ordered me to be given sixty lashes too, as a result of which I have suffered from consumption to this day.' Toni, resting her head pensively on her hand, asked the stranger who he was, where he had come from and where he was going; to which
he replied, after a short pause of embarrassment at the old woman's embittered speech, that he was accompanying his uncle Herr Strömli's family from Fort Dauphin and had left them behind him at the seagull pond on the wooded mountainside under the protection of two young cousins. At the girl's request he gave some details of the outbreak of the rebellion in Fort Dauphin. He told how at midnight, when everyone was asleep, a treacherous signal had been given for the blacks to start massacring the whites; how the leader of the negroes, a sergeant in the French pioneer corps, had had the malevolence to set fire at once to every ship in the harbour in order to cut off the whites' retreat to Europe; how their family had only just had time to escape from the town with a few possessions and how, the revolt having flared up everywhere simultaneously all along the coast, they had no choice but to set out, with two mules they had managed to find, heading straight across the island for Porte-au-Prince, which being defended by a strong French army was now the only place still holding out against the increasing power of the negroes. Toni asked how it was that the whites had come to incur such hatred in this place. The stranger, a little disconcerted, replied that the cause lay in the general relationship which as masters of the island they had had with the blacks. âAnd to tell you the truth,' he added, âI will not attempt to defend that situation, but it is one which has lasted for many centuries. The mad lust for freedom which has seized all these plantations has driven the negroes and creoles to break the chains that oppressed them, and to take their revenge on the whites for much reprehensible ill-treatment they have had to suffer at the hands of some of us who do our race no credit.' After a short pause he continued: âI was particularly struck and horrified by the action of one young girl, a negress, who was lying sick with yellow fever just at the time when the revolt broke out, for the plight of Fort Dauphin had been greatly worsened by an epidemic of this disease. Three years earlier
she had been the slave of a white planter, who because she would not let him have his way with her had vented his spite on her by harsh treatment and later sold her to a creole planter. On the day of the general uprising the girl heard that her former master, pursued by the furious negroes, had taken refuge in a woodshed nearby; remembering his ill-treatment of her, she therefore sent her brother to him as evening fell, inviting him to stay the night with her. The wretched man, who knew neither that the girl was sick nor what disease she was suffering from, came to her room full of gratitude, thinking himself saved, and took her in his arms; but he had scarcely been half an hour in her bed caressing her and fondling her when she suddenly sat up with an expression of cold, savage fury and said: “I whom you have been kissing am infected with pestilence and dying of it: go now and give the yellow fever to all your kind!”' And as the old woman loudly proclaimed her abhorrence of such a deed, the officer asked Toni: âCould
you
ever do a thing like that?' âNo!' said Toni, casting her eyes down in confusion. The stranger, laying his napkin on the table, declared that it was his deep inner conviction that no tyranny the whites had ever practised could justify a treachery of such abominable vileness. âHeaven's vengeance is disarmed by it,' he exclaimed, rising passionately from his seat, âand the angels themselves, filled with revulsion by this overturning of all human and divine order, will take sides with those who are in the wrong and will support their cause!' So saying, he walked across for a moment to the window and stared out at the night sky, where stormy clouds were drifting past the moon and the stars; then, as he had the impression that the mother and daughter were looking at each other, although he could see no sign of any communication between them, an unpleasant feeling of annoyance came over him; and turning to them he asked to be shown the room where he could sleep.