Island Beneath the Sea (30 page)

"Is anything the matter with you?" he asked when he saw that she had not made a move to pick up the pouch of money.

"I'm sorry, monsieur, but...I do not want to go to that place," she mumbled.

"What did you say, idiot? Obey me and say no more!"

"Is the paper of my freedom good there, too?" Tete dared ask.

"Is that what's worrying you? Of course it's good there, it's good anywhere. It has my signature and my seal; it's legal even in China."

"Louisiana is a long way from Saint-Domingue, isn't it?" Tete persisted.

"We are not going back to Saint-Domingue, if that is what you're thinking. Wasn't what we went through there enough for you? You are more thickheaded than I thought!" Valmorain exclaimed, irritated.

Head hanging low, Tete went to prepare for the journey. The wood doll the slave Honore had carved for her when she was a girl had been left at Saint-Lazare, and now she missed that good luck fetish.
Will I see Gambo again, Erzulie? We are going farther away, more water between us
. After the siesta she hoped the sea breeze would cool the afternoon, and she took the children shopping with her. By order of the master, who did not want to see Maurice playing with a ragged little girl, she dressed the two of them in clothing of the same quality, and to anyone's eyes they would pass as wealthy children with their nursemaid. As Sancho had planned, they would stay in New Orleans, since the new plantation was only a day's journey from the city. They had land but needed everything else: mills, machines, tools, slaves, slave quarters, and the big house. They had to work the land, and plant, and for a couple of years there would not be any crop, but thanks to Valmorain's reserves they would not want for anything. As Sancho said, money does not buy happiness but it does buy nearly everything else. They did not want to arrive in New Orleans with the look of escaping from somewhere; they were investors, not refugees. They had left Le Cap with only the clothing they had on, and in Cuba had bought the minimum, but before traveling to New Orleans they needed a complete wardrobe, and trunks and cases. "All the best quality, Tete. And a dress or two for you, I don't want to see you looking like a beggar woman. And put on shoes!" the master ordered, but the one pair of high-top shoes she owned were a torment. In the
comptoirs
of the center, Tete bought what was needed, after a lot of bargaining, which was the custom in Saint-Domingue and she assumed would be in Cuba. Everyone in the street spoke Spanish, and although she had learned a little of that language from Eugenia, she did not understand the Cuban accent, slippery and singsong, very different from the hard, sonorous Castilian of her deceased mistress. In the city market she wouldn't have been capable of bargaining, but in commercial establishments French was also spoken.

When she had completed her purchases she asked for them to be sent to the hotel, in accord with her master's instructions. The children were hungry and she was weary, but when they went outdoors they heard drums, and she could not resist the call. From one little street to the next, they came upon a small plaza where a crowd had gathered, people of color dancing unconstrained to the sound of a band. It had been a long time since Tete had felt the volcanic impulse to dance in a
kalenda
; she had spent more than a year of fear on the plantation, she'd been assaulted by the howls of the condemned in Le Cap, then fleeing, saying good-bye, waiting. The rhythm rose in her from the soles of her bare feet to the knot of her
tignon
, the drums possessed her entire body with the same jubilation she had felt making love with Gambo. She let go of the children's hands and joined the joyful throng: the slave that dances is free as he dances, as Honore had taught her. But she was not a slave any longer, she was free, all she needed was a judge's signature. Free! Free! And we are moving with our feet cleaving to the ground, legs and hips animated, buttocks gyrating provocatively, arms like the wings of the dove, breasts bouncing, heads in a fog. Rosette's African blood also responded to the formidable summons of the music, and that three-year-old child jumped into the center of the dances, swaying with the same pleasure and abandon as her mother. Maurice, on the other hand, retreated until he was stopped by a wall. He had witnessed slave dances at the Habitation Saint-Lazare as a spectator, safe holding his father's hand, but in this unfamiliar plaza he was alone, sucked up in a frenetic mass of humankind, stunned by the drums, forgotten by Tete, his Tete, who had been transformed into a typhoon of skirts and arms, forgotten too by Rosette, who had disappeared among the legs of the dancers, forgotten by all. He burst out crying and wailing. A teasing black, barely covered by a loincloth and three rows of shiny beads, jumped in front of him, leaping and shaking a maraca with the intention of distracting him, but all he did was terrorize him further. Maurice went flying away as fast as his legs would carry him. The drums continued thrumming for hours, and maybe Tete would have danced till the last one went silent at dawn had four powerful hands not grabbed her arms and dragged her out of the music and revelry.

It had been almost three hours since Maurice went running, by instinct, toward the sea, which he had seen from the balconies of his suite. He was undone with fear, he didn't remember the hotel, but a blond, well dressed boy, cowed and weeping in the street, could not pass unnoticed. Someone stopped to help him, found out his father's name, and asked at various establishments until he found Toulouse Valmorain, who had not had time to worry about his son; with Tete he was safe. When he was able to pull from the sobbing boy what had happened, he whirled off like a waterspout to look for the woman, but before he'd gone a block he realized that he didn't know the city and could not locate her, and turned to the city guard. Two men went out to look for Tete, following Maurice's vague indications, and soon from the noise of the drums found the dance in the plaza. They dragged Tete kicking and screaming to the calaboose, and as Rosette followed them, shrieking at them to let her mother go, they locked her up as well.

In the suffocating darkness of the cell, stinking with urine and excrement, Tete crawled into a corner with Rosette in her arms. She realized that there were other people, but it was a while before she could make out a woman and three men in the shadows, silent and motionless, waiting for their turn to receive the lashing ordered by their masters. One of the men had been several days recovering from the first twenty-five lashes to gain enough strength to endure the remainder of his punishment. The woman asked Tete something in Spanish, which she didn't understand. She had just begun to measure the consequences of what she had done: drawn into the vortex of the dance she had abandoned Maurice. If anything bad had happened to the boy she would pay for it with her life; that is why they had arrested her and why she was in that filthy hole. More than what they would do to her, she worried about the fate of her son.
Erzulie, mother
loa,
have Maurice be safe
. And what would happen to Rosette? She touched the pouch under her bodice. They were not yet free, no judge had signed the paper, her daughter could be sold. They spent the rest of that night in the cell, the longest night Tete could remember. Rosette had tired of crying and asking for water and finally fallen asleep, feverish. The implacable Caribbean sun shone in through the thick bars at dawn, and a crow landed on the stone frame of the one window to peck at insects. The woman began to moan, and Tete didn't know whether it was because of the bad omen of the black bird or because this day would bring her turn. Hours went by, it grew hotter, the air was so thin and fiery that Tete felt as if her head was filled with cotton. She didn't know how to calm her daughter's thirst; she put her to her breast but now she had no milk. Sometime around noon the iron-barred door opened and a large figure blocked the space and called her by name. On the second attempt, Tete managed to get to her feet; her legs were wobbly and her thirst caused her to see visions. Without letting go of Rosette, she staggered toward the opening. Behind her back she heard the woman bid her good-bye with words that were familiar because she had heard them from Eugenia:
Virgen Maria, madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores.
Tete answered inside because her voice would not pass her dry lips:
Erzulie
, loa
of compassion, protect Rosette
. The man took her to a small patio with one door, surrounded with high walls, where there were a gibbet, a post, and a black tree trunk stained with dried blood from amputations. The hangman was a Congo as broad as an armoire, his cheeks crisscrossed with ritual scars, his teeth filed to points, his torso naked except for a leather apron covered with dark stains. Before the man touched her, Tete pushed Rosette aside and told her to stay far away. The child obeyed, sobbing, too weak to ask questions. "
Soy libre!
I'm free!" Tete shouted in the little Spanish she knew, showing the executioner the pouch she wore around her neck, but the man's slashing hand ripped it off along with her blouse and bodice. The second sweep of his ham of a hand tore away her skirt, and she was naked. She made no attempt to cover herself. She told Rosette to turn her face to the wall and not to look around for any reason, then she let herself be led to the post and held out her hands so her wrists could be bound with sisal cord. She heard the terrible hiss of the whip in the air and thought of Gambo.

Toulouse Valmorain was waiting on the other side of the door. Just as he had instructed the hangman; for the usual pay and a tip he was to give this slave an unforgettable fright but not harm her. Nothing serious had happened to Maurice, after all, and within two days they would be leaving on the voyage; he needed Tete more than ever and could not take her along striped by a recent lashing. The whip cracked, making sparks on the paving of the patio, but Tete felt it on her back, her heart, her gut, her soul. Her knees doubled, and she was left hanging by her wrists. From far away she heard the loud laughter of the hangman and a cry from Rosette: "Monsieur! Monsieur!" With a brutal effort she opened her eyes and turned her head. Valmorain was standing a few steps away, and Rosette had her arms around his knees, with her face buried in his legs, choked with sobs. He stroked her head and picked her up, and the child sank against his chest, inert. Without a word to his slave, he made a sign to the hangman and turned toward the door. The Congo untied Tete, picked up her torn clothing, and handed it to her. She, who instants before couldn't move, rushed to follow Valmorain, stumbling with an energy born of terror, naked, holding her rags to her chest. The hangman caught up with her at the door and handed her the leather pouch with her freedom.

Part
Two

LOUISIANA

(1793-1810)

Blue-Blooded Creoles

T
he house in the heart of New Orleans, the quartier where Creoles of French descent and old family lived, was a find of Sancho Garcia del Solar's. Each of these households formed a patriarchal clan, large and closed, that mixed only with others of their same level. Money did not open those doors, contrary to what Sancho claimed, although he should have been better informed since neither did they open among Spaniards of similar social caste. However, when the refugees from Saint-Domingue began to arrive a crack opened that could be slipped through. At first, before the stream became a human avalanche, some Creole families took in the
grands blancs
who had lost their plantations, feeling compassionate and frightened by the tragic news coming from the island. They could not imagine anything worse than an uprising of Negroes. Valmorain dusted off his title of chevalier to introduce himself to society, and his brother-in-law made sure to mention the chateau in Paris, unfortunately abandoned since Valmorain's mother had found a home in Italy in order to escape the terror imposed by the Jacobin Robespierre. The tendency to decapitate people for reasons of ideas or titles, as was happening in France, roiled Sancho's gut. He did not sympathize with the nobility, but neither did he admire the mob; the French republic seemed as vulgar to him as American democracy. When he learned that Robespierre had been decapitated some months earlier, on the same guillotine where hundreds of his victims had perished, he celebrated with a two-day drinking spree. That was the last time, for while no one was abstemious among the Creoles, drunkenness was not tolerated; a man who lost his composure because of drink did not deserve to be accepted anywhere. Valmorain, who had for years ignored Dr. Parmentier's warnings about alcohol, also had to be more moderate, and in doing so discovered that he did not drink as a vice, as deep down he had suspected, but as a palliative for loneliness.

As they had proposed, the brothers-in-law did not arrive in New Orleans as mere refugees but as owners of a sugar plantation, the most prestigious rank on the scale of castes. Sancho's vision in having acquired land had turned out to be providential. "Do not forget, Toulouse, the future lies in cotton. Sugar has a bad name," he warned Valmorain. Blood-chilling tales circulated about slavery in the Antilles, and the abolitionists were waging an international campaign to sabotage sugar stained by blood. "Believe me, Sancho, even if the lumps were crimson, consumption would continue to increase. Sweet gold is more addictive than opium," Valmorain replied. No one spoke about that in the closed circle of the Creoles, who affirmed that the atrocities of the islands did not occur in Louisiana. Among those people, united by a complex network of family relationships in which it was impossible to keep secrets--everything was known sooner or later--cruelty was badly viewed and inappropriate as well, since only a fool damaged his property. Besides, the priests, led by the Spanish friar Antonio de Sedella, known as Pere Antoine and feared for his reputation as a saint, made it a point to drive home their responsibility before God for the bodies and souls of their slaves.