Capitaine La Liberte

Dr. Parmentier arrived in New Orleans at the beginning of the year 1800, three months after Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed first consul of France. The physician had left Saint-Domingue in 1794, following the massacre of more than a thousand white civilians executed by the rebels. Among them had been several of his acquaintances, and that, plus the certainty that he could not live without Adele and their children, had decided him to leave. After sending his family to Cuba, he had continued to work in the Le Cap hospital with the irrational hope that the storm of the revolution would subside and his family would be able to return. Because he was one of the few medical men left, he was safe from roundups, conspiracies, attacks, and killings, and Toussaint Louverture, who respected that profession like no other, extended him his personal protection. More than protection it was a veiled arrest order, which Parmentier was able to contravene only with the secret complicity of one of Toussaint's closest officers, his homme de confiance, a Capitaine La Liberte. Despite his youth-he was just twenty-the capitaine had given proof of absolute loyalty; he had been beside his general day and night for several years, and Toussaint pointed him out as an example of the true warrior, courageous and cautious. It would not be the rash heroes who defied death that would win that long war, Toussaint said, but men like La Liberte, who wanted to live. He assigned him his most delicate missions because of his discretion, and his boldest because of his sangfroid. The capitaine was an adolescent when he put himself under Toussaint's command; he came nearly naked and with no capital but swift legs, a razor-sharp knife for cutting cane, and the name his father had given him in Africa. Toussaint elevated him to the rank of capitaine after the youth saved his life for the third time; another rebel leader set an ambush for him near Limbe in which his brother Jean Pierre was killed. Toussaint's revenge was instantaneous and definitive: he leveled the traitor's camp. In a long conversation near dawn, while survivors dug graves and women piled up bodies before the vultures stole them, Toussaint asked the youth why he was fighting.

"For the same reason we all are fighting, Mon General, for freedom," he had replied.

"We have that already-slavery was abolished. But we can lose it at any moment."

"Only if we betray one another, General. United we are strong."

"The road of freedom twists and turns, son. At times it will seem that we are retreating, making pacts, losing sight of the principles of the revolution," the general murmured, observing him with his dagger sharp eyes.

"I was there when the leaders offered the whites a pact to send Negroes back to slavery in exchange for liberty for themselves, their families, and some of their officers," the youth countered, aware that his words could be interpreted as a reproach or a provocation.

"In the strategy of war very few things are clear, we move among shadows," Toussaint explained, unaffected. "Sometimes it is necessary to negotiate."

"Yes, Mon General, but not at that price. None of your soldiers will be a slave again; we would all prefer death."

"I as well, son," said Toussaint.

"I am sorry about the death of your brother Jean-Pierre, General."

"Jean-Pierre and I loved each other very much, but personal lives must be sacrificed for the common cause. You are a fine soldier, boy. I will promote you to capitaine. Would you like a last name? What, for example?"

" La Liberte, Mon General," the youth replied without hesitation, snapping to attention with the military discipline Toussaint's troops copied from the whites.

"Very well. From this day you will be Gambo La Liberte," said Toussaint.

Capitaine La Liberte decided to help Dr. Parmentier quietly leave the island after he placed on the balance scales the strict fulfillment of duty Toussaint had taught him and the debt of gratitude he owed the doctor. The gratitude weighed more. Whites left the island as soon as they obtained a passport and arranged their finances. Most of the women and children had gone to other islands or to the United States, but it was very difficult for the men to get a passport since Toussaint needed them to swell his troops and manage the plantations. The colony was nearly paralyzed; it was short of artisans, planters, businessmen, officials, and professionals of every kind; the only oversupply was in bandits and courtesans, who survived under any circumstance. Gambo La Liberte owed the discreet doctor General Toussaint's hand and his own life. After the nuns emigrated, Parmentier managed the military hospital with a team of nurses he had trained. He was the only doctor and the only white man in the hospital.

In the attack on Fort Belair a cannon ball destroyed Toussaint's fingers, a dirty, complicated wound for which the obvious solution would have been to amputate, but the general believed that should be a last resort. In his experience as a docteur feuilles, Toussaint had preferred to keep his patients whole, as long as it was possible. He wrapped his hand in a poultice of leaves, mounted his noble horse, the famous Bel Argent, and with Gambo La Liberte rode at full gallop to the hospital in Le Cap. Parmentier examined the wound, astonished that without treatment and exposed to the dust of the road, it had not become infected. He ordered half a liter of rum to stun his patient and two orderlies to hold him, but Toussaint refused that help. He was abstemious and he did not allow anyone outside his family to touch him. Parmentier cleaned the wounds, inflicting agonizing pain, and reset the bones, one by one, under the attentive eye of the general, whose solace was to bite into a thick piece of leather. When the doctor completed bandaging him and put the arm in a sling, Toussaint spit out the chewed leather, thanked him courteously, and told him to tend to his capitaine. Then Parmentier turned for the first time toward the man who had brought the general to the hospital, and saw him leaning against the wall, standing in a pool of blood, his eyes glassy.

Gambo twice had one foot in the grave during the five weeks Parmentier kept him in the hospital, and each time had come back to life smiling and with the memory intact of what he had seen in the paradise of Guinea; his father was waiting, there was always music, the trees were bent down with fruit, vegetables grew untended, fish leaped from the water and could be caught without effort, and everyone was free: the island beneath the sea. He had lost a lot of blood from the three shots that had perforated his body: two in a thigh and the third in his chest. Parmentier spent whole days and nights by his side, battling tooth and nail without ever yielding, because he had taken a liking to the capitaine. He was an exceptionally brave man, something he himself would have liked to be.

"It seems to me I've seen you somewhere before, Capitaine," he told him during one of his excruciating treatments.

"Ah! I see you are not one of those whites incapable of distinguishing one black from another," Gambo jested.

"In this work, the color of one's skin matters little; we all bleed alike, but I confess that sometimes it's difficult for me to tell one white from another," Parmentier replied.

"You have a good memory, Doctor. You must have seen me on the Saint-Lazare plantation. I was the cook's assistant."

"I don't remember that, but your face seems familiar," said the physician. "During that time I used to visit my friend Valmorain, and Tante Rose, the healer. I think she got away before the rebels attacked the plantation. I have never seen her again, but I think of her always. Before I knew her, I would have started by cutting off your leg, Capitaine, and then tried to heal you with bloodlettings. I would have quickly killed you even with the best intentions. If you come out alive it's because of methods she taught me. Do you have any news of her?"