Madison Smartt Bell - The Stone That the Builder Refused

Table of Contents

Thanks to David Baker for patient, painstaking, and skillful work on these long and sometimes trilingual manuscripts.

Without Dan Frank, Jane Gelfman, Altie Karper, Suzanne Williams, and Sonny Mehta, Id never have rolled this stone to the top of the hill.

To those whove helped me on my ways in and out of HaitiRolph Trouillot, Jean de la Fontaine, Gesner Pierre, Faubert Pierre, Ll Beaubrun, Manz Beaubrun, Guidel Prsum, Alex Roshuk, Handy Laporte, Robert Stone, Lyonel Trouillot, Michelle Karshan, Patrick Delatour, Eddy Lubin, Rachel Beauvoir, Nicolas Bussenius, Uriode Orelien, Abraham Joanis, Evelyne Trouillot, Rodney Saint Eloi, Georges Castera, Pre Max Dominique, Pre William Smarth, Marie-Claudette Edoissaint, Laetitia Schutt, Gerard Barthelmy, Richard Morse, Anne-Carinne Trouillot, Max Beauvoir, Bob Shacochis, Myrieme Millot-Colas, Ephle Milc, Tequila Minsky, Bob Corbett ak tout moun nan Corbettland, tout mounnan Morne Calvaire, tout moun nan Lakou Jisoumap di gran msi.

To the spirit of Pre Antoine Adrien, who put every day of his life on the line for Haitis history and Haitis future, benediksyon pou moun kapgoumen pou la jistis.

The stone that the builder refused will always be the head cornerstone.

Bob Marley

Praise for Madison Smartt Bells

The Stone That The Builder Refused

Extraordinary.... Exhilarating.... Bells supple, exact prose... [has] hallucinatory force.... Almost every moment is full, like some great narrative painting, alive with the detail that puts you on the road or in the house where some murder or meeting is about to take place.... These books do what novels are meant to do: they propose their own vivid and inexorable history.

The New York Times Book Review

A towering work.... Bell has emerged as one of the most brilliant, artistic and daring historical novelists of our time, creating a vividly imagined, nearly week-by-week fictionalization of the bloody birth of a nation, synthesizing and transforming an enormous amount of research into tales that are extraordinarily empathetic and rich in emotions that range from hatred, fury, terror and bloodlust to humor, joy, ecstasy and love. He has brought messianic Toussaint LOuverturea courageous warrior, master strategist and heroic champion of human rightsto vital and poignant life as no one has ever done before.... In sum, Bell has created that rarest of works, a masterpiece.

Chicago Tribune

Bell uses fiction to take us where history books cannot gointo the thoughts and fears of the revolutionaries and plantation owners and those in between who got caught up in the riots and bloodshed.... These three novels succeed in redefining American cultural history in powerful and profound ways.

San Francisco Chronicle

Epic.... Heartbreaking.... Absorbing.... Strikingly rich detail.... Riveting and immensely satisfying.... A masterly piece of work.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Astonishing.... Bells immersion in the world he creates [is] so complete that... [it] has an osmotic effect.... Its hard to imagine that anyone could have chronicled Haiti and the travails of Toussaint with an eye more unblinking or with a hand so steady.

The Washington Post Book World

Breathtaking.... Bell has crafted such a profound page-turner, full of action and high drama.... A spectacular achievement.

The Miami Herald

Remarkable.... Bell is a gifted craftsman.... Hes the sort of writer one can always turn to on faith; he seems incapable of writing an inelegant phrase. He captures the flavor of the island with depth and obvious love, including enough French and Creole for linguistic flavor, and interweaving English translations for clarity. The balance is close to perfect.

The Seattle Times

Dazzling.... With assiduousness that does not flag even through the most detailed of battle scenes, Bell has taken this shadowy historical figure and revealed what is essential, heroic and lasting in his legacy.... A masterpiece.

The Boston Globe

Powerful.... Bell manages both to render a readable narrative... and to use language with skill and beauty.... Its hard to say anyone is writing better.

Houston Chronicle

[Bell] has proved himself to be a master of historical fiction.... There is no question that this trilogy will make an indelible mark on literary historyone worthy of occupying the same shelf as Tolstoys War and Peace.... No matter what readers take away from it... Bell has triumphed.

The Baltimore Sun

Breathtakingly successful on so many levels.... One wonders how the events of today will be drawn in two hundred years, if a writer should exist of Mr. Bells masterful abilities.

New York Post

Riveting.... Bells formidable achievement not only makes impressive literature, but he has managed to turn military, political and colonial history into such delicious reading that I found myself still going at 4 AM, unwilling to put sleep before pleasure.

Annie Dawid, The Oregonian

Triumphant.... By turns powerful and appalling.... Bell does a superb job with an incredible mass of material, but he never lets the material overwhelm the story.... [He] has created an amazing work of historical fiction.

The Tennessean

Moyse Dzo
Prann sa pou prinsip-O
Map pot dlo par kiy pou plen kanari mwen

FOR ALL WHO WALK WITH THE SPIRIT OF TOUSSAINT
LOUVERTURE IN THE FIGHT FOR HAITIS FREEDOM,
THEN AND NOW

Fort de Joux, France

October 1802

Toussaint sat hunched forward, consumed by his shadow, which the firelight threw huge and dark and shuddering behind him on the glistening wall. He was cold, mortally cold, with his ague. Drawing closer about his shoulders the ratty wool blanket hed taken from his cot, he thought of adding to the fire one of the three or four chunks of wood that remained in the cell. But his trembling would not permit this action. His teeth chattered with the vibration of his chill, so that the bad teeth in his injured jawbone shot a bolt of pain to the very top of his skull. The white flash seared away everything. He gripped the blanket closer to his throat and dug the fingertips of his free hand around the swelling of his jaw, containing the pain, compressing it.

His trembling stopped. So, apparently, did the cold. He felt a moment of equilibrium. The blanket slipped down on his shoulders. Experimentally he spread both arms. The shadow loomed, and startled him; he tilted slightly in his chair.

Baron de la Croix. Lord of the Cemetery... In a voice not his own he seemed to hear the whispered phrase If its not your time, Ghede wonttake you.

He gathered his feet beneath him, feeling capable now of a balanced movement, but before he could rise, the fever swelled into the space the chill had vacated. The blanket slithered down around his waist. He heard his voice, harsh and distant: Tuez les responsables!