The Kingdom Of This World

The exiled queen and princesses take up residence in Rome, and Soliman accompanies them, passing himself off to locals as a relative of Christophe. His Blackness is a source of fascination for the locals. Out with his lover, he comes upon a patio of marble statues. One is of a naked woman: As he touches it, he realizes it is the tomb of Pauline Bonaparte. He loses touch with reality and jumps to the street. He is inconsolable and prays to Papa Legba.

In Haiti, Ti Noël has furnished Lenormand de Mézy’s former plantation with looted goods from the palace. He wears Christophe’s coat and speaks continuously to people and objects. Old and experiencing cognitive changes, he gives long speeches to his “subjects” and creates orders of knights, inducting passersby. He holds parties in his “palace.”

Surveyors from Port-au-Prince arrive. They are of multiracial background and become “the new masters of the Plaine-du-Nord” (124). They are light-skinned, and the narrator says that none of the Black revolutionaries—even King Christophe—could have foreseen their dominance. Ti Noël is tired of seeing the seemingly inevitable “rebirth of shackles” (125). He develops the ability to transform into an animal and tries to escape humankind.