Island Beneath the Sea (23 page)

The members of the commission, impotent before such anarchy, gave up and abandoned Saint-Domingue, and shortly after, another three delegates, led by the French commissioner Sonthonax, a plump young attorney, arrived with six thousand reinforcements and new instructions from Paris. The law had again been changed to grant free mulattoes the rights of every French citizen, the thing they had previously been denied. Several
affranchis
were appointed officers in the army, and many white soldiers refused to serve under their orders and deserted. That stirred up feelings, and the hundred year hatred between whites and
affranchis
reached biblical proportions. The Assemblee Coloniale, which had until then managed the island's internal affairs, was replaced by a commission composed of six whites, five mulattoes, and one free black. In the midst of the growing violence, which now no one could control, Gouverneur Blanchelande was accused of ignoring the mandate of the republican government and favoring the monarchists. He was deported to France with shackles on his legs and shortly after lost his head on the guillotine.

The Taste of Freedom

T
hat is how things were the summer of the following year, when one night Tete suddenly waked with a firm hand over her mouth. She thought it was finally the attack on the plantation they had feared for so long, and prayed that death would be quick, at least for Maurice and Rosette, sleeping beside her. She waited without trying to defend herself to keep from waking the children, and also because of the remote possibility that it was all a nightmare, until she could make out a figure bending over her in the light reflected from the patio torches filtering through the waxed paper at the window. She did not recognize the person because the boy had changed in the year and a half they'd been separated, but then he whispered her name, Zarite, and she felt a flash in her breast, not of terror but of joy. She raised her hands to pull him to her and felt the metal of the knife he held between his teeth. She took it from him, and he, with a moan, dropped down upon the body that shifted to receive him. Gambo's lips sought hers with a thirst stored up during a long absence; his tongue found its way into her mouth, and his hands grasped her breasts through her light shift. She felt him hard between her thighs and opened to him, but she remembered the children she had for a moment forgotten and pushed him away. "Come with me," she whispered.

They got up with care and stepped over Maurice. Gambo recovered his knife and put it in the strip of goat leather at his waist as she closed the mosquito netting to protect the children. Tete made a sign for him to wait and went out to be sure the master was in his room, just as she had left him a couple of hours earlier, then blew out the lamp in the corridor and went back for her lover. Feeling her way, she led him to the madwoman's room on the other side of the house, empty since her death.

Arms around each other, they fell upon the mattress that smelled of moisture and abandon and made love in the darkness, in total silence, choked with unspoken words and shouts of pleasure that evaporated into sighs. During his absence Gambo had found relief with other women in the camps, but he had not been able to sate his appetite of unsatisfied love. He was seventeen years old and lived in the flames of a persistent desire for Zarite. He remembered her tall, abounding, generous, but now she was smaller than he, and her breasts, which then had seemed enormous, fit easily into his hands. Zarite became foam beneath him. In the anguish and voracity of love so long contained he was not quick enough to penetrate her, and in an instant his life escaped in a single burst. He sank into the void, until Zarite's hot breath in his ear brought him back to the madwoman's room. She hummed to him, lightly patting his back, as she did with Maurice to console him, and when she felt he was beginning to return to life she turned him over on the bed, immobilizing him with a hand on his belly as with the other, along with her bitten lips and hungry tongue, she massaged and sucked him, lifting him to the firmament where he was lost among the racing stars of love he had imagined at every instant of repose and in every pause in battle and in every misty dawn in the millenary canyons of the Indian chiefs where he had so many times stood guard. Unable to submit any longer, the boy lifted Tete by the waist and she swung astride him, ramming into herself that burning member she had so longed for, bending down to cover his face with kisses, lick his ears, caress him with her nipples, rock on his hips, squeeze him between her Amazon's thighs, undulating like an eel on the sandy floor of the sea. They romped as if it were the first and the last time, inventing new steps in an ancient dance. The air in the room became saturated with the fragrance of semen and sweat, with the prudent violence of pleasure and the lacerations of love, with smothered moans, silenced laughter, desperate attacks, and nearly moribund panting that in the instant changed into happy kisses.

Exhausted with happiness, they fell into sleep pressed together in a knot of arms and legs, stunned by the heavy heat of that July night. Gambo waked after a few minutes, frightened for having let down his guard, but when he heard the abandoned woman purring in her sleep, he gave himself time to lightly run his hand over her, without waking her, and to take note of the changes in that body that when he left had been misshapen with child. Her breasts still held milk but they were less firm, the nipples distended; her waist seemed very slim, but he did not remember how it had been before her pregnancy; her belly, her hips, her buttocks and thighs, were pure opulence and smoothness. Tete's scent had also changed; she no longer smelled of soap but of milk, and in that moment she was imbued with their blended odors. He sank his nose into her neck, feeling the blood running in her veins, the rhythm of her breathing, the beating of her heart. Tete stretched with a long, satisfied sigh. She was dreaming of Gambo, and it took her an instant to realize that they were actually together and she did not have to imagine him.

"I came to look for you, Zarite. It is time for us to go," Gambo whispered.

He explained that he'd not been able to come earlier because he didn't have anywhere to take her, but now he could not wait any longer. He didn't know if the whites would be able to crush the rebellion but they would have to kill the last Negro before they could proclaim victory. None of the rebels was prepared to be a slave again. Death was on the loose and lying in wait across the island. There was no safe corner, but for them to continue to be apart was worse than fear and war. He told her he did not trust the chiefs, not even Toussaint; he owed them nothing and planned to fight in his own way, changing bands or deserting, according to how things went. For a while they could live together in his camp, he told her; he had built an
ajoupa
with poles and palm leaves, and they would not lack for food. Though she was used to the comforts of this white man's house, all he could offer was a hard life, but she would not be sorry because once you taste freedom you can never turn back. He felt the hot tears on Tete's face.

"I can't leave the children, Gambo," she told him.

"We will take my son with us."

"She is a girl, her name is Rosette, and she isn't your daughter, she is the daughter of the
maitre
."

Gambo sat up, surprised. In that year and a half, thinking about his son, the black boy named Honore, the possibility that "he" was the mulatta girl child of the master had never crossed his mind.

"We can't take Maurice because he's white, nor Rosette, for she is too small to survive hardship," Tete explained.

"You have to come with me, Zarite. And it has to be tonight--tomorrow will be too late. These are the white man's children. Forget them. Think of us and the children we will have. Think of freedom."

"Why do you say tomorrow will be too late?" she asked, wiping away tears with the back of her hand.

"Because the plantation will be attacked. It is the last one left; all the rest have been destroyed."

Then she understood the magnitude of what Gambo was asking; it was much more than her leaving the children, it was to abandon them to a horrible fate. She turned to him with an anger as intense as the passion of minutes before: she would never leave them, not for him and not for freedom. Gambo held her tight against his chest, as if he meant to pick her up and carry her. He told her that Maurice was lost at any rate, but in the camp they would accept Rosette, as long as she was not too light-skinned.

"Neither of them would survive among the rebels, Gambo. The only way to save them is for the
maitre
to take them. I am sure he will protect Maurice with his life, but not Rosette."

"There's no time for that, your master is already a corpse, Zarite," he replied.

"If he dies, the children will die too. We have to take all three away from Saint-Lazare before dawn. If you don't want to help me, I will do it alone," Tete decided, pulling on her shift in the darkness.

Her plan was of a childish simplicity, but she presented it with such determination that Gambo finally agreed. He could not force her to go with him, and neither could he leave her. He knew the area, he was used to hiding out, he could move at night, escape danger, and defend himself, but she couldn't.

"Do you think the white man will agree to this?" he asked finally.

"What choice does he have? If he stays, he and Maurice will be disemboweled. Not only will he accept, he will pay a good price. Wait for me here."

Zarite

M
y body was hot and moist, my face swollen with kisses and tears, and my skin scented with what I'd done with Gambo, but I didn't care. In the corridor I lighted one of the oil lamps, went to the
maitre's
room, and entered without knocking, something I had never done before. I found him limp with liquor, lying on his back, his mouth gaping open with a thread of saliva down his chin
;
he had a two-day beard, and his pale hair was wild. Suddenly, all the repulsion I felt for him seized me, and I thought I was going to vomit. My presence and the light took an instant to penetrate the fog of the cognac
;
he waked with a cry and with one quick move pulled out the pistol he kept beneath his pillow. When he recognized me, he lowered the gun but did not put it down. "What is it, Tete?" he said with a tone of rebuke, and jumped out of the bed. "I have come to propose something to you
, maitre,"
I told him. My voice did not tremble, nor did the lamp in my hand. He didn't ask me how it had occurred to me to wake him in the middle of the night, sensing that it had to be something very serious. He sat on the edge of the bed with the pistol on his knees as I explained that within hours rebels would attack Saint-Lazare. It was useless to alert Cambray, it would take an army to hold them back. Just as everywhere else, his slaves would join the attackers, there would be a slaughter and a fire, and that was why we had to flee immediately with the children or tomorrow we would be dead. And that would be the good fate--worse would be to die slowly in horrible pain. This is how I told him.
And how did you know? he asked. One of your slaves, who escaped more than a year ago, came back to warn me. And he was going to lead us, because alone we would never reach Le Cap
;
the region was in the hands of the rebels.

"Who is he?" he asked while he hurriedly threw on some clothes.

"His name is Gambo, and he is my lover--"

He slapped me so hard that I was dazed, but when he started to hit me again, I grabbed his wrist with a strength I didn't know I had. Up to that very moment, I had never looked him in the eye, and I didn't know that he had light-colored eyes, like a cloudy sky.

"We are going to try to save you and Maurice, but the price will be my freedom, and Rosette's
,"
I told him, enunciating every word very clearly so he would understand.

He dug his fingers into my arms, and his face was menacingly close to mine. He ground his teeth as he cursed me, his eyes bulging with rage. An eternal moment passed
;
again I felt nausea, but I did not drop my eyes. At last he sat back down with his head in his hands, defeated.

"You go with that bastard. You don't need for me to free you."

"And Maurice? You can't protect him. I don't want to live always running away, I want to be free."

"Very well, you will have what you ask. Come, hurry, get dressed and get the children ready. Where is that slave?" he asked.

"He isn't a slave any longer. I will call him, but first you write me the paper that will free Rosette and me."

Without another word, he sat down at his desk, took a piece of paper and hurriedly wrote, dried the ink with talc, blew on it, then imprinted his ring on sealing wax, as I had always seen him do with important documents. He read it to me aloud, since I couldn't read. My throat clutched and my heart began to pound in my chest
:
that sheet of paper had the power to change my and my daughter's lives. I folded it four times and put it in the little pouch of Dona Eugenia's rosary I always wore around my neck beneath my blouse. I had to leave the rosary and hope that Dona Eugenia would forgive me.

"Now give me the pistol
,"
I asked.

He did not want to let go of the weapon
;
he explained that he did not mean to use it against Gambo because he was our only means of salvation. I do not remember very well how we got organized, but within a few minutes he was armed with two additional pistols and had collected his gold from the office while I gave the children laudanum from one of Dona Eugenia's blue vials we had kept. They were knocked out, and I was afraid I had given them too much. I didn't worry about the field slaves--tomorrow would be their first day of freedom--but in those attacks the fate of the domestics was usually as atrocious as that of the masters. Gambo decided to warn Tante Mathilde. The cook had provided him an advantage of several hours when he'd run away and had been punished for it
;
now it was up to him to return the favor. Within a half hour, when we were far enough away, she could gather the domestics and go mix in with the field slaves. I tied Maurice to his father's back, handed two packets of provisions to Gambo, and strapped on Rosette. The master thought it was madness to leave on foot--we could take horses from the stable--but according to Gambo that would attract the vigilantes, and the route we were going to follow was not for horses. We crossed the patio in the shadows of buildings, stayed away from the coconut palm avenue, where there was a guard, and started toward the cane fields. The hideous long-tailed rats that infest the fields scurried ahead of us. The master hesitated
;
Gambo put his knife to his throat but did not kill him because I held his arm. We needed him to protect the children. This I reminded him.