Island Beneath the Sea (38 page)

Once the mother was clean and had the baby on her chest, they cleaned up the bloody rags and remnants from the birth and went to sit on a bench at the door, resting beneath a black, star-filled sky. That was how Owen Murphy found them when he arrived swinging a lantern in one hand and a jug of hot coffee in the other.

"How are things going?" the burly man asked, passing them coffee without coming too close--he was intimidated by female mysteries.

"Your employer has another slave and I have a helper," his wife answered, pointing to Tete.

"Don't complicate my life, Leanne. I have an order to put her in a crew in the cane fields," Murphy mumbled.

"Since when do you obey someone else's orders over mine?" She smiled, standing on tiptoes to kiss him on the neck where the black beard ended.

So that is how it was, and no one asked because Valmorain did not want to know and Hortense had dealt with the irritating matter of the concubine and cleared it from her mind.

On the plantation, Tete shared a cabin with three women and two children. She got up like all the rest with the morning bells and spent the day working in the hospital, the kitchen, with domestic animals, the thousand chores assigned to her by the manager and Leanne. The work seemed light compared with Hortense's whims. Tete had always served in a house, and when she'd been ordered to the field, she believed she was sentenced to the slow death she'd seen in Saint-Domingue. She had never imagined she would find anything resembling happiness.

There were nearly two hundred slaves, some from Africa or the Antilles, but most born in Louisiana, all joined together by the need to support each other and the misfortune of belonging to another human. After the evening bell, when the crews returned from the fields, real life in the community began. Families got together and while there was light stayed outdoors, because there was no space or air in the cabins. From the kitchen in the plantation they were sent soup, which was shared from a cart, and people brought vegetables and eggs and, if there was something to celebrate, hens or hares. There were always chores waiting: cooking, sewing, watering the garden, repairing a roof. Unless it was raining or very cold, the women took time to talk and the men to play the banjo or a game with little stones on a design drawn on the ground. The girls combed each other, the children raced around, groups formed to listen to a story. The favorites about Bras Coupe terrorized both children and adults; he was a gigantic man with one arm who wandered the swamps and had escaped death more than a hundred times.

It was a hierarchical society. The most appreciated were the good hunters, whom Murphy sent to look for meat for the soup--deer, birds, and wild boars. At the top of the ranks were those who had a trade, like the blacksmiths or carpenters, and the least valued were newcomers. Grandmothers gave the orders, but the one who had most authority was the preacher, some fifty years old with skin so dark it looked blue; he was in charge of the mules, oxen, and draft horses. He directed religious songs in an irresistible baritone voice, quoted parables from saints of his invention, and served as arbiter in disputes, because no one wanted to air their problems outside the community. The overseers, though they were slaves and lived with the rest, had few friends. The domestics tended to visit their cabins, but no one liked them because they were arrogant, dressed and ate better than the others did, and might be spies for the masters. Tete was welcomed with cautious respect when it became known that she had turned the baby inside its mother. She said it had been a combined miracle of Erzulie and Saint Raymond Nonatus, and her explanation satisfied everyone, even Owen Murphy, who had never heard of Erzulie and confused her with a Catholic saint.

During hours of rest, the overseers left the slaves in peace; there were no patrolling, armed men or constant barking of tracking dogs, nor a Prosper Cambray in the shadows with his rolled whip claiming an eleven-year-old virgin for his hammock. After dinner, Owen Murphy, with his son Brandan, went around for a last look, ensuring order before going to the house where family was waiting for them to eat and pray. He pretended not to notice if at midnight the odor of burned meat told him that someone had gone out to hunt possum in the dark. As long as the man showed up punctually at dawn, no measures were taken.

As happened everywhere, discontented slaves broke tools, started fires, and mistreated the animals, but those were isolated cases. Others got drunk, and there was always someone reporting to the hospital with a feigned illness to get some rest. Those who were truly ill relied on traditional remedies: slices of potato applied to where it hurt, caiman grease for arthritic bones, boiled thorns to wash out intestinal worms, and Indian roots for colic. It was pointless for Tete to try to introduce any of Tante Rose's formulas; no one wanted to experiment with their health.

Tete found that very few of her companions were obsessed with escaping, as had been true in Saint-Domingue, and if they did, they generally were captured by the highway vigilantes or came back on their own after two or three days, tired of wandering through the swamps. They were flogged and rejoined the community humbled; they did not find much sympathy, no one wanted problems. Itinerant priests and Owen Murphy drove in the virtue of resignation, whose reward was in heaven, where all souls enjoyed equal happiness. Tete thought that seemed more rewarding for whites than for blacks--it would be better if happiness were fairly distributed in this world--but she didn't dare tell Leanne that, for the same reason she good-naturedly attended masses: she didn't want to offend her. She had no faith in the religion of her masters. The voodoo she practiced in her way was also fatalistic, but at least she could experience divine power when mounted by the
loas
.

Before she lived with the field people, Tete didn't know how solitary her life had been with only Maurice and Rosette's affection, without anyone with whom to share memories and hope. She quickly settled into that community; all she missed were the two children. She imagined them alone at night, frightened, and her heart broke with the pain.

"The next time Owen goes to New Orleans, he will bring you news of your daughter," Leanne promised.

"When will that be, madame?"

"It will have to be when the master sends him, Tete. It is very expensive to go to the city, and we are saving every centime."

The Murphys dreamed of buying land and working it along with their children, as so many immigrants did, as well as some free mulattoes and Negroes. There were not many plantations as large as Valmorain's. Most were medium size fields or small ones cultivated by modest families, who if they possessed a few slaves gave them almost the same life as their own. Leanne told Tete that she had come to America in the arms of her parents, who had contracted to work on a plantation as indentured servants for ten years to pay the cost of the passage from Ireland, which in practice was no different from slavery.

"Did you know there are white slaves too, Tete? They're worth less than blacks because they aren't as strong. They do pay more for white women, though. And you know what they use them for."

"I have never seen white slaves, madame."

"There are a lot of them in Barbados, and also here."

Leanne's parents did not calculate that their masters would charge them for each piece of bread they threw in their mouths, or that they would discount each day they didn't work, even if the fault of the weather, so that their debt kept growing, not decreasing.

"My father died after twelve years of forced labor, and my mother and I kept serving for several years more, until God sent us Owen, who fell in love with me and spent all his savings to cancel our debt. That was how my mother and I gained our freedom."

"I never imagined that you had been a slave," said Tete, moved.

"My mother was ill and died shortly after, but she lived to see me free. I know what slavery means. You lose everything--hope, dignity, faith," Leanne added.

"M-monsieur Murphy..." Tete stammered, not knowing how to put her question.

"My husband is a good man, Tete, he tries to ease the lives of his people. He does not like slavery. When we have our land, we will cultivate it using only our sons. We will go north, it will be easier there."

"I wish you luck, Madame Murphy, but all of us here will be desolate if you go."

Capitaine La Liberte

D
r. Parmentier arrived in New Orleans at the beginning of the year 1800, three months after Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed first consul of France. The physician had left Saint-Domingue in 1794, following the massacre of more than a thousand white civilians executed by the rebels. Among them had been several of his acquaintances, and that, plus the certainty that he could not live without Adele and their children, had decided him to leave. After sending his family to Cuba, he had continued to work in the Le Cap hospital with the irrational hope that the storm of the revolution would subside and his family would be able to return. Because he was one of the few medical men left, he was safe from roundups, conspiracies, attacks, and killings, and Toussaint Louverture, who respected that profession like no other, extended him his personal protection. More than protection it was a veiled arrest order, which Parmentier was able to contravene only with the secret complicity of one of Toussaint's closest officers, his
homme de confiance
, a Capitaine La Liberte. Despite his youth--he was just twenty--the capitaine had given proof of absolute loyalty; he had been beside his general day and night for several years, and Toussaint pointed him out as an example of the true warrior, courageous and cautious. It would not be the rash heroes who defied death that would win that long war, Toussaint said, but men like La Liberte, who wanted to live. He assigned him his most delicate missions because of his discretion, and his boldest because of his sangfroid. The capitaine was an adolescent when he put himself under Toussaint's command; he came nearly naked and with no capital but swift legs, a razor-sharp knife for cutting cane, and the name his father had given him in Africa. Toussaint elevated him to the rank of capitaine after the youth saved his life for the third time; another rebel leader set an ambush for him near Limbe in which his brother Jean Pierre was killed. Toussaint's revenge was instantaneous and definitive: he leveled the traitor's camp. In a long conversation near dawn, while survivors dug graves and women piled up bodies before the vultures stole them, Toussaint asked the youth why he was fighting.

"For the same reason we all are fighting, Mon General, for freedom," he had replied.

"We have that already--slavery was abolished. But we can lose it at any moment."

"Only if we betray one another, General. United we are strong."

"The road of freedom twists and turns, son. At times it will seem that we are retreating, making pacts, losing sight of the principles of the revolution," the general murmured, observing him with his dagger sharp eyes.

"I was there when the leaders offered the whites a pact to send Negroes back to slavery in exchange for liberty for themselves, their families, and some of their officers," the youth countered, aware that his words could be interpreted as a reproach or a provocation.

"In the strategy of war very few things are clear, we move among shadows," Toussaint explained, unaffected. "Sometimes it is necessary to negotiate."

"Yes, Mon General, but not at that price. None of your soldiers will be a slave again; we would all prefer death."

"I as well, son," said Toussaint.

"I am sorry about the death of your brother Jean-Pierre, General."

"Jean-Pierre and I loved each other very much, but personal lives must be sacrificed for the common cause. You are a fine soldier, boy. I will promote you to capitaine. Would you like a last name? What, for example?"

"La Liberte, Mon General," the youth replied without hesitation, snapping to attention with the military discipline Toussaint's troops copied from the whites.

"Very well. From this day you will be Gambo La Liberte," said Toussaint.

Capitaine La Liberte decided to help Dr. Parmentier quietly leave the island after he placed on the balance scales the strict fulfillment of duty Toussaint had taught him and the debt of gratitude he owed the doctor. The gratitude weighed more. Whites left the island as soon as they obtained a passport and arranged their finances. Most of the women and children had gone to other islands or to the United States, but it was very difficult for the men to get a passport since Toussaint needed them to swell his troops and manage the plantations. The colony was nearly paralyzed; it was short of artisans, planters, businessmen, officials, and professionals of every kind; the only oversupply was in bandits and courtesans, who survived under any circumstance. Gambo La Liberte owed the discreet doctor General Toussaint's hand and his own life. After the nuns emigrated, Parmentier managed the military hospital with a team of nurses he had trained. He was the only doctor and the only white man in the hospital.

In the attack on Fort Belair a cannon ball destroyed Toussaint's fingers, a dirty, complicated wound for which the obvious solution would have been to amputate, but the general believed that should be a last resort. In his experience as a
docteur feuilles
, Toussaint had preferred to keep his patients whole, as long as it was possible. He wrapped his hand in a poultice of leaves, mounted his noble horse, the famous Bel Argent, and with Gambo La Liberte rode at full gallop to the hospital in Le Cap. Parmentier examined the wound, astonished that without treatment and exposed to the dust of the road, it had not become infected. He ordered half a liter of rum to stun his patient and two orderlies to hold him, but Toussaint refused that help. He was abstemious and he did not allow anyone outside his family to touch him. Parmentier cleaned the wounds, inflicting agonizing pain, and reset the bones, one by one, under the attentive eye of the general, whose solace was to bite into a thick piece of leather. When the doctor completed bandaging him and put the arm in a sling, Toussaint spit out the chewed leather, thanked him courteously, and told him to tend to his capitaine. Then Parmentier turned for the first time toward the man who had brought the general to the hospital, and saw him leaning against the wall, standing in a pool of blood, his eyes glassy.