Island Beneath the Sea (45 page)

One evening Parmentier sat talking with Tete and Adele on the patio of the bougainvillea, at that time of year pale bare sticks without flowers or leaves.

"Toussaint Louverture died seven months ago. Another of Napoleon's crimes. They killed him with hunger, cold, and loneliness in the prison, but he will not be forgotten; the general made his way into history," said the doctor.

They were drinking sherry after a meal of catfish and vegetables, since among her many virtues Adele was a fine cook. The patio was the most agreeable place in the house, even on cool nights like that one. A faint light shone from a brazier that Adele had lit to make charcoal for ironing and for keeping the small circle of friends warm.

"Toussaint's death did not mean the end of the revolution. Now General Dessaline is in command. They say he is unflinching," the physician continued.

"What must have happened to Gambo? He didn't trust anyone, even Toussaint," Tete commented.

"He later changed his opinion of Toussaint. More than once he risked his life to save him; he was the general's
homme de confiance
."

"Then he was with the general when he was arrested," said Tete.

"Toussaint went to a rendezvous with the French to negotiate a political settlement for the war, but he was betrayed. While he was waiting inside the house, they assassinated his guards and the soldiers who accompanied him. I'm afraid that Capitaine La Liberte fell that day defending his general," Parmentier explained sadly.

"Before, Doctor, Gambo used to be with me."

"How was that?"

"In dreams," said Tete vaguely.

She didn't clarify that she used to call to him every night in her thoughts, like a prayer, and sometimes was able to summon him so successfully that she waked beside his heavy, warm, languid body, with the happiness of having slept in her lover's arms. She felt the warmth and smell of Gambo on her skin, and when that happened she didn't wash, to prolong the illusion of having been with him. Those encounters in her dreams were the only solace in the loneliness of her bed, but that had been a long time ago, and now she had accepted Gambo's death; if he were alive he would somehow have communicated with her. Now she had Zacharie. On the nights they shared, when he was available, she rested satisfied and grateful after making love, with Zacharie's large hand on her. Ever since he had been in her life she had not returned to her secret habit of caressing herself as she called to Gambo, because to want another man's kisses, even a ghost's, would have been a betrayal Zacharie did not deserve. The secure and calm affection they shared filled her life; she did not need more.

"No one came out alive from the ambush they set up for Toussaint. There were no prisoners other than the general, and later his family, whom they also arrested," Parmentier added.

"I know they didn't take Gambo alive, Doctor, he would never have surrendered. So much sacrifice and so much war to have the whites win in the end!"

"They haven't won yet. The revolution is still going on. General Dessalines has just vanquished Napoleon's troops and the French have begun to evacuate. Soon we will have another wave of refugees here, and this time they'll be Bonapartists. Dessalines has called on the white colonists to take back their plantations; he says they are needed to produce the wealth the colony once enjoyed."

"We've heard that story several times, Doctor, Toussaint did the same thing. Would you go back to Saint-Domingue?" Tete asked him.

"My family is better here. We will stay. And you?"

"Yes, me too. Here I am free, and Rosette will be very soon."

"Isn't she very young to be emancipated?"

"Pere Antoine is helping me. He knows half the world up and down the Mississippi, and no judge would dare deny him a favor."

That night Parmentier asked Tete about her relationship with Tante Rose. He knew that besides helping her in births and healings, she also helped prepare her medications, and he was interested in the recipes for them. She remembered most of them and assured him they weren't complicated, they could obtain the ingredients from the
docteurs feuilles
in the Marche Francais. They talked about ways to lower fevers and prevent infections, about infusions to cleanse the liver and relieve bladder and kidney stones, about the salts for migraines, herbs to abort and to stop hemorrhages, about diuretics, laxatives, and formulas to build up the blood, all of which Tete knew from memory. Both laughed about the sarsaparilla tonic the Creoles used for all their illnesses, and agreed that Tante Rose's knowledge was greatly missed. The next day Parmentier called on Violette Boisier to propose that she broaden her beauty lotion business with a list of curative products from the pharmacopeia of Tante Rose, which Tete could prepare in the kitchen and he would agree to buy in their totality. Violette accepted with no hesitation. The arrangement seemed good all the way around: the doctor would get remedies, Tete would collect for her part, and she would be left with the rest without turning a hand.

The Americans

T
hen New Orleans was shaken by the most unlikely of rumors. In cafes and taverns, on street corners and squares, people stood around commenting, with irritation and exasperation, on the news, still unconfirmed, that Napoleon Bonaparte had sold Louisiana to the Americans. As the days raced by the idea prevailed that it wasn't true, but they kept talking about the accursed Corsican, because remember, monsieurs, that Napoleon is from Corsica; it can't be said that he's French, he has sold us to the Kaintucks. It was the most formidable and cheap land transaction in history, more than 828,000 square miles--by American reckoning--for the sum of fifteen million dollars, that is, a few cents an acre. The greater part of that territory, occupied by scattered indigenous tribes, had never been explored as it should by whites, and no one could imagine it, but when Sancho Garcia del Solar circulated a map of the continent showing the furthermost reaches, it could be calculated that the Americans had doubled the size of their country. And now what will become of us? How did Napoleon get his hand in this business? Are we not a Spanish colony? Three years before, in the secret treaty of San Ildefonso, Spain had handed Louisiana to France, but very few people knew that yet and life had gone on as usual. The change of government hadn't been noticed; the Spanish authorities stayed on in their posts while Napoleon fought against Turks, Austrians, Italians, and anyone else who got in his way, in addition to rebels in Saint-Domingue. He had to fight on too many fronts, even against England, his ancestral enemy, and he needed time, troops, and money; he could not occupy or defend Louisiana and was afraid it would fall into the hands of the British, so he preferred to sell it to the only interested party: President Thomas Jefferson.

In New Orleans everyone, except for the idlers in the Cafe des Emigres, who already had one foot on a boat to return to Saint-Domingue, heard the news with fear. They believed that Americans were barbarians in buffalo skins who ate with their boots on the table and had no trace of decency, moderation, or honor. Don't even mention class! All that interested them was betting, drinking, and shooting or knife fights; they were diabolically disorderly and to top it all off, Protestants. And they didn't speak French! Well, they would have to learn--if not, how did they plan to live in New Orleans? The entire city was in agreement that to belong to the United States was the equivalent of the end of family, culture, and the one true religion. Valmorain and Sancho, who dealt with Americans in their businesses, brought a conciliatory note to all that ruction, explaining that the Kaintucks were frontiersmen, more or less like buccaneers, and not all Americans could be judged by them. In fact, said Valmorain, in his travels he had known many Americans, well educated, sedate people; perhaps they could be reproached for being overly moralistic and Spartan in their habits, just the opposite of the Kaintucks. Their most notable defect was that they considered work a virtue, even manual labor. They were materialists, conquerors, and they were infused with a messianic enthusiasm for reforming those who did not think as they did; they did not, however, represent an immediate threat to civilization. No one wanted to hear that view save a pair of madmen: Bernard de Marigny, who could smell the enormous commercial possibilities to be gained by ingratiating himself among the Americans, and Pere Antoine, who lived in the clouds.

The first official event was the transfer of power, with three years' delay, from the Spanish colony to French authorities. According to the prefect's hyperbolic address at the ceremony, the residents of Louisiana had "souls inundated with the delirium of extreme felicity." They celebrated with balls, a concert, banquets, and theatrical spectacles in the best Creole tradition, a true competition of courtesy, nobility, and extravagance between the deposed Spanish and new French government. That did not last long, however, because just as the flag of France was being raised a ship from Bordeaux anchored carrying confirmation of the sale of the territory to the Americans. Sold like cattle! Humiliation and fury replaced the festive spirit of the previous day. The second transfer, this time from the French to the Americans, who were camped two miles outside the city, ready to occupy it, took place seventeen days later, on December 20, 1803, and it was no "delirium of extreme felicity" but of collective mourning.

That same month, Dessalines proclaimed the independence of Saint-Domingue under the name of the Republique Negre d'Haiti, with a new blue and red flag. Haiti, "land of mountains," was the name the vanished Arawak Indians had given their island. With the intent to erase the racism that had been the island's curse, all citizens, no matter the color of their skin, were designated
negs
, and all those who weren't were called
blancs
.

"I think that Europe, and even the United States, will try to sink that poor island for fear its example will incite other colonies to fight for independence. Neither will they permit the abolition of slavery to be propagated," Parmentier commented to his friend Valmorain.

"The disaster of Haiti will work to the benefit of those of us in Louisiana because we will sell more sugar, and at a better price," concluded Valmorain, to whom the fate of the island didn't matter since he no longer had investments there.

The Saint-Domingue emigres in New Orleans were not entirely absorbed by the news of that first black republic, as events in their city claimed all their attention. On a day of brilliant sunshine a multicolored crowd of Creoles, French, Spanish, Indians, and Negroes came together in the place d'Armes to watch the American authorities ride in, followed by a detachment of dragoons, two companies of infantry, and one of riflemen. No one had any sympathy for those men who swaggered as if each one had taken from his own pocket the fifteen million dollars that bought Louisiana.

In a brief official ceremony in the Cabildo, the keys of the city were handed to the new governor, and then the change of flags took place in the square; the tricolor pennant of France was slowly lowered and the starry flag of the United States raised. As they met midway they were stopped for a moment, and a cannon blast gave a signal, immediately answered by a cannonade from the ships in the port. A band of musicians played a popular American song and people listened in silence; many wept, and more than one lady swooned from grief. The new arrivals set about occupying the city in the least aggressive way possible, while the natives set about making their lives difficult. The Guizots had already circulated cards instructing their relations to keep the Americans at a distance; no one must collaborate with them or welcome them in their houses. Even the most pitiful beggar of New Orleans felt himself superior to the Americans.

One of Governor Claiborne's first measures was to declare English the official language, which was received with mocking incredulity by the Creoles. English? They had lived for decades as a French speaking Spanish colony; the Americans must be categorically demented if they expected their guttural jargon would replace the most melodic tongue in the world.

The Ursuline nuns, terrified by the certainty that first the Bonapartists and then the Kaintucks were going to level the city, profane its church, and rape them, hurriedly set sail, en masse, for Cuba, despite the pleas of their pupils, their orphans, and the hundreds of indigents they helped. Only nine of the twenty-five nuns stayed behind, the other sixteen filed in a row to the port, wrapped in veils and weeping, surrounded by a train of friends, acquaintances, and slaves who went with them to the ship.

Valmorain was sent a hastily written message warning him to withdraw his protegee from the school within twenty-four hours. Hortense, who was expecting another child with the hope that this time it was the immensely desired male, gave him to understand that that black girl would not set foot in her house, and that she never wanted anyone to see her with him. People had evil thoughts, and surely rumors would spread--false of course--that Rosette was his daughter.

With the defeat of the Napoleonic troops in Haiti came a second avalanche of refugees to New Orleans, just as Dr. Parmentier had predicted, first hundreds and then thousands. They were Bonapartists, radicals, and atheists, very different from the Catholic monarchists who had come before. A clash between the new refugees and the emigres was inevitable, and it coincided with the Americans' entrance into the city. Governor Claiborne, a young military man with blue eyes and a short yellow beard, did not speak a word of French and did not understand the mentality of the Creoles, whom he considered lazy and decadent.

Ship after ship came from Saint-Domingue loaded with civilians and soldiers sick with fever, who represented a political danger because of their revolutionary ideas, and a public health threat given the possibility of an epidemic. Claiborne strove to isolate them in distant camps, but that measure was roundly criticized and did not affect the stream of refugees who in some way were able to get into the city. He put the slaves the whites had brought in prison, fearing they would infect the local ones with the germ of rebellion, and soon there was no further space in the cells and the clamor of their indignant owners at the confiscation of their property spread far and wide. They claimed that their Negroes were loyal and of proven good character--they would not have brought them otherwise. In addition, they were badly needed. Even though in Louisiana no one respected the prohibition against importing slaves and the pirates supplied the market, there was still a great demand. Claiborne was not in favor of slavery but he had to yield to public pressure. He decided he would consider each case individually, which could take months, while all New Orleans was on edge.