Drum (17 page)

The eyes in the room were contemplating the pair as the door of the dining room banged open. Tamboura transferred fhis eyes from the dainty morsel beside him to the white woman who entered. Even more than Julita he desired her, for despite her rage she was beautiful.

"Raimundo, what is the meaning of all this?" She looked around the room, conscious for the first time of the men sitting there, but their presence did not deter her.

Don Raimundo lifted his hands high over his head, his fists clenched.

"Caramba! Was ever a man so beset with problems? And now my wife! Questions, questions, questions, while I try to do a little business. What does she care if this plantation goes to ruin? If every slave dies off and we have none to replace them? Ay, ay, ay!" His voice rose in anger, then dropped suddenly, and he spoke calmly to his wife, spacing his words carefully so that no disrespect might be apparent.

"Senora mia, our good friend, don C^sar, has made us a most generous offer—an offer which will be much to our advantage. He is lending me the services of his finest slave— probably the finest in all Cuba. The delicacy of the situation prohibits me from putting it into words, Senora."

She glared at the assemblage. "Delicacy of the situation! Bah I" She stamped her foot. "In other words, you would bed my Julita with that giant. He would kill her." Don Raimvmdo's wife was not one to mince words.

"If you prefer to put it that way, that is exactly what I intend to do. But have no fear, she will survive."

"Ay, la pobrecita!" The senora rushed across the room and put a protective arm around the girl. She looked up searchingly at Tamboura beside her. "But that is the lot of women! And just where do you intend to perpetrate this crime?"

The mechanics of the situation had never occurred to don Raimundo. Any place, he had supposed, would be good enough for a slave.

"The man has been allotted a space in the quarters for the house servants. He can take her there."

"My Julita on a pallet on the floor? Dios mio!" It was the senora's turn to throw up her hands in horror. "Never. Since she was a young girl she has slept in her bed in the little room beside my own. If you insist that this must, happen, and I see that you fully mean to carry out your evili intentions, it will take place in her own room."

"That may be as you desire, seriora. If you wish this musky buck in your quarters I cannot stop you but I assure i you—" ' 1

"The room can be aired afterwards and the bedding'

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changed. Come Julita," the senora held out her hand, "and you too. What is your name?"

'Tamboura, ama."

•Then come, Tamboura." She started for the doorway but turned to speak to her husband.

"Clemente informs me that you have ordered him whipped."

Don Raimundo bowed assent.

**Then add ten extra lashes on my account. A week ago he dropped a rare bowl of crystal and broke it. I had it in mind to have him punished then."

Don Raimundo and all the other gentlemen bowed deeply as the froth of her skirts swept out the door with JuUta and Tamboura following.

As they walked through the big rooms, Tamboura reached out and clutched the girl's hand. It was small, soft, damp and trembling. With the other she brushed the tears from her eyes but lifted her face and smiled up at him. They followed the senora out into the patio and up the stairs to the wide balcony. She led them through a room all pink and blue and gold and into a smaller room, where she herself puUed the clean white embroidered cover from the bed. Her heels clicked over the tiles as she went out into her own room and returned with a bottle of scent which she Uberally doused on Tamboura.

"There, Julita, he will smell Uke jasmine instead of a nigger. Ay, mi querida, I should have prepared you for this for in truth, you are like my own sister. My heart bleeds, Julita, actually bleeds for you but I must say my poor stupid Raimundo has done well by you. See, Julita, the brute is really handsome." She wet her fingers with the perfume and rubbed it on Tamboura's cheek. "Don Raimundo really knows best, my dear. We mustn't oppose him and now do be a good girl and do not scream for it would upset me dreadfully. Here, take this jar of ointment and have him use it. It may help you. I shall take my siesta in another room. And remember not to scream as it would awaken me." Her finger tapped Tamboura's cheek. "Do be gentle with her."

She left, closing the door behind her and they heard the click of a key in the lock.

It was Tamboura's first time in a bed. The soft mattress

enchanted him. And the girl beneath him was far more

beautiful than any he had ever had before. From far off they

i heard the panicked screams of a man, regularly spaced,

scream following scream until there was finally silence. The girl was weeping and moaning in her own pain and the distant shrieks made her cry even more. But gradually everything became quiet as the whole household settled down for its daily siesta. The girl had stopped her moaning and she was resting, her head in the hollow of Tamboura's arm. He stretched comfortably, pulling her closer to him, and closed his eyes. The girl's hand crept up and rested lightly against the throbbing artery in his neck. He took her hand and lowered it, far down across his body, to where the moving fingers produced an ecstasy of perfect contentment.

chapter xii

Alix, Comtesse de Vaux, (the title was certainly ci-devant and its legitimacy doubtful) closed the slats of the persianas to keep out the glare of the noonday Havana sun and abate, if possible, the raucous noises which, day and night, arose continuously from the street below. Mon Dieu! These Cubans! For all their thin veneer of civilization, they were nothing but savages. Havana might boast of being larger than Cap Francois but Cuba would never achieve the cosmopolitan culture of St Domingue. Well, that was the difference between the French and the Spanish. The culture of France was innate and born with them; what the Spanish managed to acquire they wore on their sleeve.

But, culture or not, it was far better to be here in Havana than back in Cap Francois where the blacks now had the upper hand. At least the Spanish knew how to keep them imder control. Of course the French were more humane and what had happened in St. Domingue was entirely their own fault. All this silly talk about liberty, equality and fraternity had swept across the ocean to France's colony and there were always some crackpots who believed in it even in St. Domingue. The slaves had really had nothing to complain about. They had always been treated well on the plantation and she herself had been kind to them, indeed she had!

How kind she had been to her own dear Bonaventure. Mais oui! The fellow had been aptly named. It had been a "good adventure"—a thrilling adventure—for the fellow had been so savagely male and so superlatively handsome. Not particularly handsome of face, according to the accepted European standards, for his face was typically negroid. But what a superb body! No European possessed a body that could compare with his—a carved and polished statue of hard black ebony. And Bonaventure had been faithful, too. He had even sacrificed his life for her that last fateful night on the plantation when the slaves of Bouckmann's uprising had

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swept down out of the hills, burning the plantation and killing her husband, poor, simple, old Jean Albert. But Bona-venture had given her a chance to escape, at the cost of his life, and she had managed to flee from the plantation with only her maid Rachel. By hiding out in the cane fields by day and traveling along the roads infested with bands of wandering slaves at night, she and Rachel had made their way to Cap Francois with nothing but the clothes on her! back and her precious jewels sewn inside them. How she! had missed the strength of Bonaventure during those days and nights of horror on the road.

Her stay in fear-laden Cap Francois had been a brief one. For anyone who had been forced to flee the terror of the , Revolution in France, there was no incentive to remain through what promised to be an even worse period in St. Domingue, so she had lost no time in quitting the island on the first ship that sailed. That it had brought her to Havana was immaterial. She might have preferred New Orleans where they spoke French, but she was here now and she was safe. Learning Spanish had not been difficult and perhaps Havana had been more generous than New Orleans might have been. At least here in Havana she had met don C6sar Montalvo.

Her hand rested on the damask upholstery of the chair as she glanced around the room, dim now in its shuttered obscurity. To be sure it was his house, but through his generosity she had made it her own. Cesar had been most willing for her to dispense with the stiff Spanish furniture and replace it with the more delicate and graceful Louis Seize which made a better background for her fragile beauty. Yes, C&ar had been most generous in everything, but then, why shouldn't he be? God knows, she had been most generous, too. Mais oui, most generous! Every week when he came to Havana she must be an actress, playing the role of a woman madly in love, and each week she must repay him for what he had given her. It wasn't easy. C6sar was at least twenty-five years older than she—^well, actually if she admitted to her real age, which was thirty, he probably wasn't more than twenty years older—but it was not easy to feign a biiming passion for a man whose fires had already started to die down and needed so much work on her part to rekindle.

Mon Dieu! What a difference between Cesar's quickly satiated desires and the long nights of ecstasy she had spent with Bonaventure when Jean had been absent in Cap Francois. Fortunately he had had to go frequently and poor old

Jean was so abysmally stupid. He had never guessed and of course such a thought would never have entered his head. His wife bedded with a slave? Impossible! White men might bed with black wenches but no white woman ever bedded with a black man. Aiel What stupid fools they were not tol What joys they missed! She touched again in memory the smooth satin of Bona venture's skin; felt the ripple of his muscles and yielded to the all-consuming animality of his fire which never needed to be rekindled. How she longed for it again.

Damne! She must put such thoughts from her mind. But ... it had been wonderful! At least she would always have those nights to remember. Now she had this little house and, small though it was, it was in a good location, wedged between two big palaces on the Calle Colon; she had, too, a precarious toehold in Cuban society, for some few had been impressed with her title. She really did have a right to it. Cyprien, her first husband, would surely have been the Comte de Vaux as soon as his old uncle died, had he not been so careless as to have his head sliced off by Madame Guillotine.

With all its noise and dirt, Havana represented security, and she needed security, for her liffr had been a series of flights—^first from Paris to escape the reign of terror of the Revolution and then from St. Domingue to escape another reign of terror of the slaves. Two husbands already dead and both by violence.

Thank God she would never have to flee again. The Spanish might be barbarians but they knew enough to maintain a stable government in Cuba with no talk of liberty, equality and fraternity. And they certainly knew how to control their slaves. She had passed the public whipping yard in Havana and heard the screams coming from behind the high walls. They said that half an hour under the whips would kill any slave. The Spanish had worked out an admirable system. If any slave, regardless of his ownership, jostled you in the street or displayed any rudeness, you had only to write your name on a slip of paper and hand it to him, with what you considered the requisite number of lashes he should receive written in the upper right hand comer. He was duty bound to carry it to his master and within a few days you received a delicately written note stating that the punishment had been carried out. Leave it to the Spanish to think of something like that—the French never would.

Soon she would be mistress of the big Montalvo plantation, with an assured place in Cuban society as the wife of the richest Creole on the island. How she would entertaini She'd insist that Cesar buy an imposing palace in Havana because she had no intention of burying herself in the country. This little house might have been good enough for the first Senora Montalvo who, from all she could hear, was a meek little woman, entirely subservient to Cesar. But it certainly wouldn't serve for the second Senora Montalvo, who, after all, was willing to trade her title of Comtesse de Vaux to become a simple Cuban senora. What a sacrifice!

And what jewels she would have! She loved jewels, but although their scintillating beauty appealed to her, she had a deeper reason for loving them. TTiey represented security. Of what avail were the furnishings, the paintings, the gold plate and the rich tapestries of the Hotel de Vaux in Paris when she had to leave so precipitately? Of what avail the vast fields, the slaves and the big house in St. Domingue when she had been forced to sneak out at night and hide in the cane fields? They had all been left behind, all lost forever. But each time the thought of the jewels stitched into her corset had been comforting. One diamond, weighing nothing at all, represented a whole bag of gold and it was certainly far easier to carry. Ah well, she needn't bother her head about such things any more.

The street outside seemed quieter. Now there was only a man shrieking at regular intervals about the mangoes he was trying so hard to sell. Perhaps if she rang for Rachel and had the slave bathe her with eau de cologne, she might sleep. An hour or so of sleep would erase any lines that thinking might have caused and she wanted to be looking her best tomorrow when Cesar came. The mirror of her table d toilette, even in the dim light, assured her that there were no particular lines which needed to be erased. Her hair was still as palely gold as when she had married Cyprien twelve years ago; her skin was as white as the bisque statue of Eros which stood at the side of the table and a dab of rouge would quickly bring a faint pink flush to her cheeks. The shuttered light made her blue eyes a deep violet and although the blonde lashes caused them to appear rather weak and unimportant, a bit of maquillage, applied by Rachel's clever fingers, would rim her eyes with a darkness that would make them large and brilliant. She opened the filmy pinkness of her robe de chambre and lifted up her breasts with both hands.