Island Beneath the Sea (58 page)

Authors: Isabel Allende

Tags: #Latin American Novel And Short Story, #Historical - General, #Caribbean Area, #Sugar plantations, #Women slaves, #Plantation life, #Fiction - General, #Racially mixed women, #Historical, #Haiti, #General, #Allende; Isabel - Prose & Criticism, #Fiction

BOOK: Island Beneath the Sea

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Zacharie and I now have a history
;
we can look to the past and count the days we've been together, add up our sorrows and joys, that's the way love grows, no hurry at all, day after day. I love him as I always have, but I feel more comfortable with him than I once did. When he was handsome, everyone admired him, especially the women, who boldly offered themselves to him, and I fought against the fear that vanity and temptations would take him away from me, though he never gave me any reason to be jealous. Now you have to know the man inside him, as I do, to realize what he is worth. I don't remember how he was
;
I like his strange, broken face, the patch over his dead eye, his scars. We have learned not to argue over trivial things, only those that are important, which are many. To save him from restlessness and irritation, I take advantage of his absences to entertain myself in my fashion, that's the advantage of having a hardworking husband. He doesn't like for me to walk barefoot through the street because I am not a slave, or for me to go with Pere Antoine to comfort sinners in Le Marais because it's dangerous, or for me to attend the
bambousses
in the place Congo, because they are vulgar. I tell him none of that, and he doesn't ask. Just yesterday I was dancing in the square to the magical drums of Sanite Dede. Dancing and dancing. From time to time Erzulie
, loa
of motherhood and love, comes and mounts Zarite. Then we go galloping together to visit my dead ones on the island beneath the sea. That is how it is.

About the Author

Born in Peru and raised in Chile,
ISABEL ALLENDE
is the author of nine novels, including
Ines of My Soul, Daughter of Fortune,
and
Portrait in Sepia,
all of which were
New York Times
bestsellers. She has also written a collection of stories, four memoirs, and a trilogy of children's novels. Her books have been translated into more than twenty-seven languages and have become bestsellers across four continents. In 2004 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Isabel Allende lives in California.

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ALSO BY
Isabel Allende

The House of the Spirits

Of Love and Shadows

Eva Luna

The Stories of Eva Luna

The Infinite Plan

Paula

Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses

Daughter of Fortune

Portrait in Sepia

My Invented Country

Zorro

Ines of My Soul

The Sum of Our Days

THE JAGUAR AND EAGLE TRILOGY

City of the Beasts

Kingdom of the Golden Dragon

Forest of the Pygmies

Credits

Jacket photography: woman (c) Symphonie/Getty Images; palm frond (c) Trevor Payne/Arcangel Images; gardenia (c) Jill Lang/iStockphoto; sugar cane (c) William Wang/iStockphoto; ochre wall (c) Juan Facundo Mora Soria/iStockphoto

Jacket design by Gabrielle Bordwin

ISLAND BENEATH THE SEA. Copyright (c) 2010 by Isabel Allende. English-language translation copyright (c) 2010 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Allende, Isabel.

[Isla bajo el mar. English]

Island beneath the sea: a novel / Isabel Allende; translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden--1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: "The story of a mulatta woman, a slave and concubine, determined to take control of her own destiny in a society where that would seem impossible"--Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-06-198824-0 (hardback)

1. Racially mixed women--Fiction. 2. Women slaves--Fiction. 3. Sugar plantations--Fiction. 4. Plantation life--Fiction. 5. Haiti--Fiction. 6. Caribbean Area--Fiction. I. Peden, Margaret Sayers. II. Title.

PQ8098.1.L54I7813 2010

863'64-dc22

2009046251

EPub Edition (c) March 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-200289-1

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