Island Beneath the Sea (36 page)

A strong August hurricane flooded a large part of New Orleans--nothing serious, it often happened, and no one was too disturbed when the streets turned into canals and dirty water ran across their patios. Life went on as always, except that it was wet. That year the damages were few; only the destitute dead emerged from their graves to float in a muddy soup, while the wealthy dead in their mausoleums continued to rest in peace without being exposed to the indignity of losing bones to the jaws of vagrant dogs. In some streets water reached up to the knees, and several men found jobs transporting people on their backs from one place to another, while children had fun splashing around in puddles filled with rubbish and horse dung.

Physicians, always alarmists, warned there would be a terrible epidemic, but Pere Antoine organized a procession with the Most Holy in the lead and no one dared make fun of that method for dominating the climate because it always had a good result. By then the priest was already thought of as a saint, even though he'd been in the city only three years. He had lived there briefly in 1790 when the Inquisition sent him to New Orleans with the mission of expelling Jews, castigating heretics, and propagating the faith with blood and fire, but he had no tint of fanaticism and was happy when the indignant citizens of Louisiana, little prepared to tolerate an inquisitor, sent him to Spain without further thought. He returned in 1795 as rector of the St. Louis Cathedral, recently constructed after the previous one had burned. He arrived ready to tolerate the Jews, to turn a blind eye to heretics, and to propagate faith with compassion and charity. He treated everyone the same, without distinguishing among free and slaves, criminals and exemplary citizens, virtuous women and others of the merry persuasion, thieves, buccaneers, lawyers, hangmen, usurers, and excommunicants. They all fit elbow to elbow in his church. The bishops detested him for being insubordinate, but the flock of his faithful loyally defended him. This Pere Antoine, with his Capuchin habit and apostle's beard, was the spiritual torch of that sinful city. The day after his procession the water receded from the streets, and that year there was no epidemic.

The Valmorains' house was the only one in the center of the city affected by the flood. The water did not come from the street but surged through the floor, bubbling like heavy sweat. The foundations had heroically resisted the pernicious humidity for years, but that insidious attack won out. Sancho found a foreman and a team of stonemasons and carpenters who invaded the first floor with their scaffolds, crowbars, and cranes. The furniture was covered over with sheets and moved to the second floor, which piled up with boxes. They had to take up the paving stones in the patio, put in drains, and demolish the quarters of the domestic slaves, which had sunk into mud.

Despite inconveniences and the expense, Valmorain was satisfied; all that uproar gave him more time to confront the problem of Tete. During the visits to New Orleans he made with his wife, he for business and she for the social life, they stayed at the Guizots' home, a little crowded but better than a hotel. Hortense did not show any curiosity about seeing the work at their Valmorain house, but demanded that it be ready by October so the family could spend the season in the city. It was very healthy to live in the country, but it was also necessary to establish their presence among respectable folk, that is, those of their class. They had been away too long.

Sancho came to the plantation when the repairs to the house had been finished, boisterous as always, but with the contained impatience of one who must resolve a disagreeable matter. Hortense noticed, and knew instinctively that it had to do with the slave whose name was in the air, the concubine. Every time Maurice asked about her or Rosette, Valmorain turned purple. Hortense dragged out dinner and the game of dominos afterward so as not to give the men an opportunity to talk alone. She was afraid of the influence of Sancho, whom she considered a threat, and needed time to bolster in bed her husband's fortitude for any eventuality. At eleven o'clock, Valmorain stretched, yawning, and announced that the time had come to go to bed.

"I have to talk with you in private, Toulouse," Sancho announced, getting to his feet.

"In private? I have no secrets from Hortense," Valmorain replied, with good humor.

"Of course not, but this is a matter for men. Let's go to the library. Excuse me, Hortense," said Sancho, defying the woman with his eyes.

The white gloved majordomo awaited them in the library with the excuse of serving cognac, but Sancho ordered him to withdraw and close the door, then he turned to his brother-in-law, and told him that he had to make up his mind about Tete. It would be October in only eleven days, and the house was now ready to receive the family.

"I do not plan any changes. The woman will continue to serve as always, and she will do well to comply," Valmorain explained, cornered.

"You promised her freedom, Toulouse--you even signed a document."

"Yes, but I don't want her to press me. I will do it at the proper time. If the matter comes up, I will tell Hortense everything. I am sure she will understand. Why are you interested in this, Sancho?"

"Because it would be regrettable to affect your marriage."

"That will not happen. No one can say I am the first to have bedded a slave, Sancho, for God's sake!"

"And Rosette? Her presence will be humiliating for Hortense," Sancho insisted. "It's obvious she's your daughter. But I have a way to remove her from the center of things. The Ursulines accept girls of color and educate them as well as they do whites, but separately, of course. Rosette could spend the next years interned with the nuns."

"That doesn't seem necessary, Sancho."

"The document Tete showed me includes Rosette. When she's free she will have to earn a living, and for that a certain education is necessary, Toulouse. Or do you intend to keep supporting her forever?"

A
bout that time it was decreed in Saint-Domingue that colonists residing outside the island, anywhere except France, were considered traitors, and their properties would be confiscated. Some emigres attempted to reclaim their lands, but Valmorain hesitated; there was no reason to suppose that racial hatreds had diminished. He decided to accept the advice of his longtime agent in Le Cap, who proposed by letter that he temporarily register the Habitation Saint-Lazare in his own name to prevent its being taken. Hortense branded that idea grotesque--it was obvious that the Jew would appropriate the plantation--but Valmorain trusted the old man who had served his family for more than thirty years, and as she could offer no alternative, that is what he did.

Toussaint Louverture had been made the commander in chief of the armed forces; he reported directly to the government in France and had announced that he would reduce his troops by half so the rest could return to the plantations as free workers. That "free" was relative: they would have to complete at least three years of forced labor under military control, and in the eyes of many blacks that seemed a undisguised return to slavery. Valmorain thought of making a quick trip to Saint-Domingue to evaluate the situation himself, but Hortense sent screams of terror to the skies. She was five months pregnant and her husband could not abandon her in that state and risk his life on that accursed island, and even less sailing the high seas in the middle of hurricane season. Valmorain postponed the trip and promised her that if he recovered his property in Saint-Domingue he would put it in the hands of a manager and they would remain in Louisiana. That calmed the woman for a couple of months, but then she got it in her head that they should not have any investments in Saint-Domingue. For once, Sancho agreed with her. He had a terrible opinion of the island he'd visited a couple of times to see his sister Eugenia. He proposed the idea of selling Saint-Lazare to the first bidder, and with Hortense's help he twisted the arm of his brother-in-law, who finally yielded after weeks of indecision. That land was connected with his father, with the family name, with his youth, he said, but his arguments fell apart against the irrefutable reality that the colony was a battlefield of people of all colors mutually massacring each other.

The humble Gaspard Severin went back to Saint-Domingue, ignoring the warnings of other refugees, who kept arriving in Louisiana in a sad dribble. The news they brought was depressing, but Severin had not succeeded in adapting, and wanted to rejoin his family even though he had not been relieved of his bloody nightmares and trembling hands. He would have returned as poor as he left had Sancho Garcia del Solar not handed him a discreet sum in way of a loan, which was what he called it though both of them knew it would never be repaid. Severin carried Valmorain's authorization to sell the land to the agent. He found him at the address where he had always been though the building was new, the former having been reduced to ashes in the Le Cap fire. Among the articles stored for export that had burned in the warehouses was Eugenia Garcia del Solar's walnut and silver coffin. The old man was still conducting business, selling what little the colony produced and importing from America houses of cypress wood that arrived in pieces ready to be assembled like toys. The demand was insatiable because every skirmish among enemies ended in fire. There were no longer buyers for the things that had brought in so much money in the past: cloth, hats, ironwork, furniture, saddles, shackles, and large cauldrons for boiling molasses.

Two months after the tutor's departure, Valmorain received the agent's response: he had found a buyer for Saint-Lazare, a mulatto officer in Toussaint's army. He could pay very little, but he was the only one interested, and the agent recommended that Valmorain accept the offer because ever since the emancipation of the slaves and the civil war, no one gave anything for land. Hortense had to admit that she had been entirely wrong about the agent; he had turned out to be more honest than could be expected in such stormy times when moral compasses were spinning so madly. The agent sold the property, took his commission, and sent the rest of the payment to Valmorain.

Whiplashes

W
ith Severin's departure, Maurice's private lessons had ended and his calvary begun in an upper-class boys' school in New Orleans, where he learned nothing but had to defend himself from the bullies who cruelly harassed him; it had not made him bolder, as his father and stepmother had hoped, only more cautious, as his uncle Sancho had feared. He started to suffer again his nightmares of the prisoners in Le Cap, and once or twice wet his bed, though no one knew but Tete, who washed the sheets on the sly. He could not even count on the solace of seeing Rosette since his father did not let him visit her in the Ursulines' convent, and forbade him to mention her in front of Hortense.

Toulouse Valmorain had awaited with exaggerated dread Hortense's meeting with Tete he didn't know that in Louisiana something that banal did not merit a scene. Among the Guizots, as in all Creole families, no one dared question the patriarch's caprices; wives endured their husbands' cavortings as long as they were discreet, and they always were. Only the legitimate wife and children mattered in this world, and in the next; it would be demeaning to waste jealousy on a slave, better to reserve it for the famous New Orleans free quadroons, who could possess a man to his last breath. But even in the case of courtesans, a well born lady feigned ignorance and held her tongue; that was how Hortense had been brought up. Her majordomo, who was left on the plantation in charge of the large domestic staff, had confirmed her suspicions about Tete.

"Monsieur Valmorain bought her when she was about nine and brought her to Saint-Domingue. She is the only concubine he's known to have,
maitresse
," he told her.

"And the little brat?"

"Before he married, monsieur treated her like a daughter, and young Maurice loves her like a sister."

"My stepson has a lot to learn," Hortense muttered.

It seemed to her a bad sign that her husband had resorted to complex strategies to keep that woman away for months, perhaps she still attracted him, but the day they entered the renovated and refurbished house, Hortense felt reassured. The servants welcomed them in a row, dressed in their best, with Tete at their head. Valmorain made the introductions with nervous cordiality while his wife measured the slave from top to bottom and inside to out, deciding finally that she did not pose a temptation for anyone, and less for the husband she had eating from her hand. That mulatta was three years younger than she, but she was worn by work and lack of care; her feet were callused, her breasts drooping, and her expression somber. She admitted that Tete was slim and dignified, for a slave, and had an interesting face. She lamented that her husband was so weak; the woman had been spoiled and it had gone to her head. In the days to follow, Valmorain overwhelmed Hortense with attentions, which she interpreted as an express desire to humiliate the former concubine. You don't have to bother, she thought, I will take charge of putting her in her place; but Tete gave her no motive for complaint. The house that awaited them was impeccable, with not even a memory of the clamor of hammers, the mire in the patio, the clouds of dust, the sweat of stonemasons. Everything was in its place, the fire-places clean, the curtains washed, the balconies adorned with flowers, and the rooms well aired.

At first Tete was frightened and mute as she performed her duties, but at the end of a week she began to relax; she had learned the routines and whims of her new mistress and made a great effort not to provoke her. Hortense was demanding and inflexible; once she gave an order, however irrational it might be, it had to be carried out. She noticed Tete's long, elegant hands, and set her to washing clothes, while the washerwoman idled away the day in the patio because Celestine did not want her as helper; the woman was monumentally stupid and smelled of lye. Then Hortense decided that Tete could not go to bed before she did; she was to wait, dressed, until they came home, even though she rose at dawn and had to work the whole day, stumbling from missed sleep. Valmorain argued weakly that it wasn't necessary for Tete to wait for them--the errand boy was responsible for putting out lamps and closing up the house, and she had Denise to help her out of her clothing--but Hortense insisted. She was despotic with the servants, who had to put up with her screams and slaps, but, swollen from her pregnancy and very busy with her social life, soirees, and spectacles, in addition to her health and beauty treatments, she had neither the agility nor the time to have her way with the whip, as she had at the plantation.