Island Beneath the Sea (31 page)

As he began to acquire laborers for the plantation, Valmorain encountered a reality very different from that in Saint-Domingue: the price of slaves was high. That meant a larger investment than he had calculated, and he had to be prudent about expenses, but he also felt secretly relieved. Now there was a practical reason for taking care of one's slaves, not merely humanitarian scruples that could be interpreted as weakness. The worst of the twenty-three years at Saint-Lazare had been the absolute power he held over other lives, with its burden of temptations and degradation, worse than his wife's madness, the climate that corroded health and dissolved man's most decent principles, the solitude and the hunger for books and conversation. Just as Dr. Parmentier had maintained, the revolution in Saint-Domingue had been the inevitable revenge of slaves against the colonists' brutality. Louisiana offered Valmorain the opportunity to revive the youthful ideals smoldering in the embers of his memory. He began to dream of a model plantation capable of producing as much sugar as Saint-Lazare, but one where slaves lived a human existence. This time he would take much better care in selecting a manager and overseers. He did not want another Prosper Cambray.

Sancho devoted himself to cultivating friendships among the Creoles, without whom they could not prosper, and within a brief time he became the soul of parties, with his guitar and silken voice, his talent for losing at gaming tables, his sleepy eyes and fine humor with the matriarchs on whom he lavished praise--without their approval, after all, no one crossed the threshold of their houses. He played billiards, back-gammon, dominos, and cards, he danced gracefully, he was informed on every subject, and he had the art of always being in the right place at the right time. His favorite stroll was along the tree-lined road bordering the dike that protected the city from floods, where everyone mixed together, from distinguished families to noisy sailors, slaves, free people of color, and the ever-present Kaintucks, with their reputation for drunkenness, killings, and whoring. Those men came down the Mississippi from Kentucky and other regions to the north to sell their tobacco, cotton, hides, and wood, encountering hostile Indians and a thousand other dangers along the way, which was why they went around well armed. In New Orleans they sold their rowboats for firewood, caroused a couple of weeks, and then undertook the arduous return.

Sancho, if only to be seen, attended theater and opera just as he went to mass on Sundays. His simple black suit, hair pulled into a ponytail, and waxed mustache contrasted with the brocade and lace attire of the French, giving him a slightly dangerous air that attracted the women. His manners were impeccable, an essential requirement in the upper class, where the proper use of the fork was more important than moral tenets. Such splendid virtues would have served that somewhat eccentric Spaniard for nothing without his relationship to Valmorain, a Frenchman of wealth and good family name, but once he was introduced in those salons, no one thought of dismissing him. Valmorain was a widower, only forty-five years old, not bad looking, though several kilos too heavy, and naturally enterprising patriarchs tried to trap him for a daughter or niece. The brother-in-law with the unpronounceable name was also a candidate; even a Spanish son-in-law was preferable to the embarrassment of an unwed daughter.

There were comments, but no one offered any opposition when that pair of strangers rented one of the mansions in the quartier, or later when the owner sold it to them. It had two floors and a mansard, but lacked a cellar because New Orleans floated on water, and digging only a palm's width was enough to get wet. The mausoleums of the cemetery were raised so that the dead would not sail away with every storm. Like many others, Valmorain's house was wood and brick, Spanish in style, with a wide entry for the coach, a patio cobbled with paving stone, a tile fountain, and cool balconies with iron railings covered with fragrant climbing vines. Valmorain avoided any ostentation in decorating the house, for that was a sign of being nouveau riche. He could not carry a tune, but he invested in musical instruments because at every social event the mademoiselles showed their skill at the piano, the harp, or the clavichord, and the young gentlemen shone on their guitars.

Maurice and Rosette had to take music and dance lessons with private instructors, like any other wealthy children. A refugee from Saint-Domingue gave them music classes, using his corrective rod, and a plump, affected man taught them the dances in vogue, also with a rod. In the future those lessons would be as useful to Maurice as fencing for fighting a duel and salon games, and for Rosette they would serve for entertaining visitors, though never competing with white girls. She had grace and a good voice, whereas Maurice had inherited his father's tin ear and attended the classes with the resigned attitude of a galley slave. He preferred books, which were not going to do anything for him in New Orleans, where intellect was considered suspicious; much more appreciated was a talent for light conversation, gallantry, and living the good life.

To Valmorain, accustomed to a hermit's life at Saint-Lazare, the hours of banal chatter in the cafes and bars Sancho dragged him to seemed a waste. He had to make an effort to participate in the games and betting; he detested the cockfights that left the attendees spattered with blood as well as the horse and greyhound racing at which he always lost. Every day of the week there was a gathering in a different drawing room, presided over by a matron who kept track of who attended and what gossip they brought. Bachelors went from house to house, always with some gift, usually a monstrous sugar and nut dessert heavy as a cow's head. According to Sancho, these
reunions des amis
were obligatory in that closed society. Dances, soirees, picnics, always the same faces with nothing new to say. Valmorain preferred the plantation, but he realized that in Louisiana his taste for seclusion would be interpreted as arrogance or miserliness.

The dining and drawing rooms of the city house were on the first floor, the bedchambers on the second, and the kitchen and slave quarters off the back patio, in separate buildings. The windows gave access to a small but well tended garden. The most spacious room was the dining hall, as it was in all Creole houses, in which life turned around the dining table and the pride of hospitality. A respectable family owned china for at least twenty-four guests. One of the rooms on the first floor had a separate entrance intended for the bachelor sons; in that way they could come and go without offending the ladies of the family. On the plantations their
garconnieres
were octagonal quarters near the road and separated from the main house. Maurice was twelve years short of qualifying for that privilege; for the moment he slept alone, for the first time, in a room between those of his father and his uncle Sancho.

Tete and Rosette did not have quarters with the other seven slaves--cook, washerwoman, coachman, seamstress, two personal servants, and an errand boy--but slept together in the mansard among the family's trunks. As she always had, Tete managed the house. A little bell on a cord that ran through the rooms allowed Valmorain to summon her at night.

The minute Sancho saw Rosette, he knew his brother-in-law's relationship with the slave, and anticipated the problem. "What are you going to do with Tete when you marry?" was his point blank question to Valmorain, who had never mentioned the subject to anyone and, caught by surprise, mumbled that he was not planning to marry. "If we are to live under the same roof, one of us will have to marry or people will think we're perverts," Sancho concluded.

In the confusion of escaping from Le Cap that fateful night, Valmorain had lost his cook, who had stayed hidden as he fled with Tete and the children, but he did not lament that because in New Orleans he needed someone experienced in
cuisine creole
. His new friends warned him that it was not safe to buy the first cook who turned up in the Maspero Echange, no matter that it was the best slave market in America, nor in the establishments along Chartres, where they disguised the slaves in elegant clothing to impress their customers but offered no guarantee of quality. The best slaves were obtained in private among families or friends. That was how he acquired Celestine, who was about forty, had magical hands for stews and pastries, and had been trained by one of the marquis de Marigny's eminent French cooks and sold because no one could put up with her fits of temper. She had thrown a plate of shrimp gumbo at the feet of the imprudent marquis because he dared ask for more salt. Valmorain was not frightened by that anecdote; doing battle with her would be Tete's task. Celestine was thin, dry, and jealous by nature. She did not allow anyone to step into her kitchen or her larder; she herself chose the wines and liquors and did not accept suggestions regarding menus. Tete explained that she would have to be moderate with spices because her master had stomach troubles. "He'll have to put up with it. If he wants a sick man's broth, you fix it," had been her answer, but ever since she reigned among the cookpots Valmorain had been healthy. Celestine smelled of cinnamon, and in secret, so no one would suspect her weakness, she prepared beignets light as sighs for the children, tarte tatin with carameled apples, mandarin crepes with cream,
mousse au chocolat
with little honey biscuits, and other treats, which proved the theory that humankind would never tire of consuming sugar. Maurice and Rosette were the only ones in the house who did not fear the cook.

The life of a Creole monsieur was spent at leisure; work was a vice of Protestants in general and Americans in particular. Valmorain and Sancho had a problem hiding the effort required to start up their plantation, which had been abandoned for more than ten years after the death of the owner and the methodical ruin of the heirs.

The first matter was to acquire slaves, some hundred and fifty to begin with, a lot fewer than Valmorain had had at Saint-Lazare. Valmorain installed himself in one corner of the ruined house as another was built following the plans of a French architect. The slave quarters, eaten by termites and humidity, were torn down and replaced by wood cabins with overhanging roofs to give shade and protect from rain; each had three rooms to house two families, lined up in parallel rows perpendicular to a small central square. The brothers-in-law visited other plantations, like so many who arrived at them uninvited on weekends, taking advantage of the tradition of hospitality. Valmorain concluded that compared with the slaves on Saint-Domingue, those in Louisiana could not complain, but Sancho found out that some masters kept their workers nearly naked, fed with a mush poured into a trough like the ones for animals, from which each slave took his portion with an oyster shell, a chipped tile, or hand, because there was no spoon.

It took two long years to construct the basics: to plant, build a mill, and organize work. Valmorain had grandiose plans, but he had to concentrate on the immediate. There would be time later to turn his fantasies into reality: a garden, terraces, gazebos, a decorative bridge over the river, along with other amenities. He lived obsessed with the details, which he discussed with Sancho and lectured Maurice about.

"Look, son, all this will be yours," he said, pointing to the cane fields from his horse. "Sugar doesn't fall from the sky, it requires a lot of work."

"The Negroes do the work," Maurice observed.

"Don't be deceived. They do the manual labor, because they don't know how to do anything else, but the master is the one responsible. The success of the plantation depends on me and, in a certain measure, your uncle Sancho. Not a single stalk of cane is cut without my knowledge. Pay attention, because one day it will be up to you to make decisions and command your people."

"Why don't they command themselves, Papa?"

"They can't, Maurice. You have to give them orders. They're slaves, son."

"I wouldn't like to be like them."

"You never will be, Maurice." His father smiled. "You are a Valmorain."

He could not have shown Saint-Lazare to his son with the same pride. He was determined to correct the errors, weaknesses, and omissions of the past and secretly atone for the atrocious sins of Lacroix, whose money had been used to buy this land. For each man tortured and each girl stained by Lacroix there would be a healthy, well-treated slave on the Valmorain plantation. That justified his having appropriated his neighbor's money, it could not be better invested.

Sancho was not overly interested in his brother-in-law's plans; they did not carry the same weight in his conscience, and he thought only of entertaining himself. The contents of the slaves' soup or the color of their cabins were nothing to him. Valmorain was set on changing his life, but for the Spaniard this adventure was but one among many undertaken with enthusiasm and abandoned without regret. As he had nothing to lose--his partner was assuming all the risks--he had audacious ideas that tended to give surprising results, such as a refinery that would allow them to sell white sugar, which was much more profitable than other planters' molasses.

Sancho found a manager, an Irishman who advised him on purchases of field labor. His name was Owen Murphy, and he set the rule from the beginning that the slaves must attend mass. They would have to build a chapel and find itinerant priests, he said, to fortify Catholicism before the Americans got to the slaves to preach their heresies and innocent people be condemned to hell. "Morality is more important than anything," he announced. Murphy agreed completely with Valmorain's suggestion not to abuse the whip. That huge man with the look of an elite Turkish guard, heavy black hair on his chest, and hair and beard equally black, had a sweet soul. He moved his large family into a campaign tent while their living quarters were being built. His wife, Leanne, who came to his waist, looked like an undernourished adolescent with the face of a fly, but her fragility was deceptive: she had given birth to six male children and was expecting the seventh. She knew it would be male because God was determined to test her patience. She never raised her voice, but one glance and her children and her husband obeyed. Valmorain thought that finally Maurice would have someone to play with and not cling to Rosette every minute; that herd of Irish boys was from a social class very inferior to his, but they were white and free. He could not have imagined that the six Murphys would also trail around enraptured behind Rosette, who had turned five and possessed the arresting personality her father would have wished for Maurice.