Island Beneath the Sea (55 page)

"Don't be silly, Maurice, how can I be making fun of you?" she told him, drying the tears of her laughter. "I am remembering the classes on making love that Madame Violette offered to the students of
placage
."

"Don't tell me she gave you classes!"

"Of course--did you think that seduction is improvised?"

"Maman knows this?"

"Not the details."

"What was that woman teaching you girls?"

"Not much, because soon madame had to stop the practical classes. Loula convinced her that the mothers would not tolerate it, and the ball would go to the devil. But she got in lessons for me. She used bananas and cucumbers to explain."

"Explain what!" Maurice exclaimed. He was beginning to find it amusing.

"How you men are, and how easy it is to manipulate you because you have everything outside. She had to teach me somehow, don't you see? I have never seen a naked man, Maurice. Well, just you, but you were a little boy then."

"Let's suppose that something has changed since then." He smiled. "But don't be expecting bananas or cucumbers. You'd be committing the sin of optimism."

"Oh? Let me see."

In his hiding place, the slave lamented that there wasn't a hole between the planks of the deck that he could look through. After the laughing followed a silence that seemed too long to him. What could those two be doing, and be so quiet? He couldn't imagine; in his experience love was much noisier. When the bearded captain opened the trapdoor to let him out to eat and stretch his bones, taking advantage of the noise from all the people gambling and drinking and the darkness of night, the runaway was at the point of telling him not to bother, he could wait.

Romeiro Toledano foresaw that the newly married pair, in accord with reigning custom, would not come out of their retreat. And following instuctions given by Zacharie, he took them coffee and pastries and set them discreetly at the door of the cabin. In normal circumstances Maurice and Rosette would have spent at least three days closed in the room, but they did not have that much time. Later the good captain left them a tray with delicious food from the Marche Francais Tete had sent: shellfish, cheese, warm bread, fruit, sweets, and a bottle of wine that hands quickly pulled inside.

In the too short hours of the one day and two nights that Rosette and Maurice had together, they made love with the tenderness they had shared in childhood and the passion that now inflamed them, improvising one thing and then another to please each other. They were very young, they had been in love forever, and there was the terrible incentive of parting: they did not need instructions from Violette Boisier. During some intervals they took time to talk, never breaking their embrace, of things unfinished and of their immediate future. The only thing that made it possible for them to endure the separation was the certainty that they would be together as soon as Maurice found work and a place where Rosette would be comfortable.

At dawn on the second day they dressed, kissed for the last time, and cautiously went out to face the world. The schooner was again anchored, and in the port Zacharie and Tete and Sancho were waiting with Maurice's trunk. The uncle also handed his nephew four hundred dollars, which he boasted he had won in a single night of playing cards. The youth had bought his passage using his new name, Maurice Solar, the abbreviated surname of his mother, which he pronounced "Soler" in English. That bothered Sancho a little, who was proud of the sonorous Garcia del Solar, pronounced as it should be, So-lar.

Rosette was left behind on land, brokenhearted inside but feigning the serene attitude of someone who has everything she could want in this world, while Maurice waved to her from the deck of the clipper that would take him to Boston.

Purgatory

V
almorain lost his son and his health at a single blow. At the same moment that Maurice left the paternal house, never to return, something broke inside him. When Sancho and the others were able to get him up from the floor, they found that one side of his body was dead. Dr. Parmentier determined that his heart was not damaged, as Valmorain had always feared, but that he had suffered a stroke. He was nearly paralyzed, he was drooling, and he had lost control of his sphincter. "With time and a little luck you can improve a lot,
mon ami
, although you will never be the same as you were," Parmentier told him. He added that he knew patients who had lived many years after a similar attack. By signs, Valmorain indicated that he wanted to talk to him alone, and Hortense Guizot, who was watching him like an owl, had to leave the room and close the door. His sputterings were nearly incomprehensible, but Parmentier was able to understand that he feared his wife more than his illness. There was no doubt that Hortense would rather be left a widow than take care of an invalid who peed on himself, and she might be tempted to precipitate his death. "Do not worry, I will take care of that with only a few words," Parmentier assured him.

The doctor gave Hortense Guizot the medications and necessary instructions for the ill man, and advised her to find a good nurse; the recovery of her husband depended very much on the care he received. They should not contradict him or worry him: calm was fundamental. As they said good-bye, he held the woman's hand in an attitude of paternal consolation. "I want your husband to come out of this difficulty well, madame, because I do not believe that Maurice is prepared to take his place," he said. And he reminded her that Valmorain had not had an opportunity to change his will, and legally Maurice was still the family's single heir.

Two days later, a messenger handed Tete a note from the Valmorains. She did not wait for Rosette to read it for her but went directly to Pere Antoine. Everything having to do with her former master had the power to knot her stomach with apprehension. She supposed that by then Valmorain had learned about the hurried wedding and his son's departure, the whole city knew, and his anger would be directed not against Maurice alone, whom gossips had already absolved--as the victim of black witchcraft--but against Rosette. She was guilty of causing the Valmorain dynasty to be cut off, ended without glory. After the patriarch's death, his fortune would pass into the hands of the Guizots, and the surname Valmorain would appear nowhere but on the stone in the mausoleum, since his daughters could not pass it down to their descendents. There were many reasons to fear Valmorain's vengeance, but that idea had not occurred to Tete until Sancho suggested she watch Rosette and not let her go out alone. What did he want to warn her of? Her daughter spent the day with Adele, sewing her modest new bride's trousseau and writing to Maurice. She was safe there, and Tete herself always went to pick her up at night, but they were forever on edge, always alert: the long arm of her former master could reach very far.

The note she received consisted of two lines from Hortense Guizot, notifying her that her husband needed to speak with her.

"It must have cost that prideful woman a lot to call upon you," the priest commented.

"I would rather not go to that house,
mon pere
."

"Nothing will be lost by listening. What is the most generous thing you can do in this case, Tete?"

"That's what you always say," she said, with a sigh of resignation.

Pere Antoine knew that the sick man feared the abysmal silence and inconsolable solitude of the tomb. Valmorain had ceased to believe in God when he was thirteen, and since then had boasted of a practical rationalism in which fantasies about the Beyond had no place; however, seeing himself with one foot in the grave, he had reverted to his childhood religion. Answering his call, the good Capuchin took him extreme unction. In his confession, mumbled through the contortions of twisted lips, Valmorain admitted that he had stolen Lacroix's money, the only sin that to him seemed relevant. "But tell me about your slaves," the priest said threateningly. "I accuse myself of weakness,
mon pere
, because in Saint-Domingue at times I could not prevent my head overseer from going too far in administering punishments, but I do not accuse myself of cruelty. I have always been a kind master." Pere Antoine gave him absolution and promised to pray for his health in exchange for a generous donation for his beggars and orphans; only charity softened God's gaze, he explained. After that first visit, Valmorain endeavored to make confession at every opportunity so death would not catch him unprepared, but the saint did not have time or patience for delayed scruples and sent communion with another priest twice a week.

The Valmorain residence had taken on the unmistakable smell of illness. Tete went in through the service door, and Denise led her to the drawing room, where Hortense Guizot was standing waiting, dark circles under her eyes and hair dirty, more furious than weary. She was thirty-eight years old and looked fifty. Tete caught a glimpse of four of her daughters, all so much alike that she couldn't pick out the ones she knew. In very few words, spit through clenched teeth, Hortense indicated that Tete was to go up to her husband's room. She stayed where she was, seething with frustration at seeing that wretched woman in her house, that abomination who had succeeded in getting her way and defying no less than the Valmorains, the Guizots...all society. A slave! She did not understand how she had let things get out of her hands. If her husband had listened to her, she would have sold that vixen Rosette when she was seven, and none of this would ever have happened. Everything was the fault of that stubborn Toulouse, who had not known how to bring up his son and who did not treat slaves as they should be treated. You could tell he was an immigrant. They come here and think they can play around with our customs. Look how he emancipated that Negress, and her daughter as well! Nothing like that would ever have happened among the Guizots, she could swear to that!

Tete found the sick man sunk among his pillows, his face unrecognizable, his hair awry, his skin gray, his eyes weepy, and one constricted hand tight to his chest. With his stroke Valmorain had acquired an intuition so powerful that it was a kind of clairvoyance. He supposed that he had waked a sleeping part of his mind while the other part, the one he had formerly used to calculate income from the sugar in only seconds, or move dominos, now did not function. With that new lucidity he divined other peoples' motives and intentions, especially those of his wife, who could no longer manipulate him as easily as she had. His own, and others', emotions had acquired a crystalline transparency, and in some sublime instants it seemed he was cutting through the dense mist of the present and moving, terrified, into the future. That future was a purgatory where he would pay eternally for errors he had forgotten or perhaps had not committed. "Pray, pray, my son, and do charitable works," Pere Antoine had advised, and the other priest, who brought the communion Tuesdays and Saturdays, told him the same thing.

With a grunt the sick man dismissed the slave who was with him. Saliva dribbled from the slit between his lips, but he had enough strength to impose his will. When Tete came closer in order to hear him, because she could not understand, he grabbed her arm with his healthy hand, and forced her to sit beside him on the bed. He was not a powerless old man; he still made her afraid. "You are going to stay here and take care of me," he demanded. It was the last thing Tete expected to hear, and he had to repeat it. Astounded, she realized that her former master did not have the least idea of how much she detested him; he knew nothing of the black rock she had carried in her heart from the time he raped her when she was eleven, he did not know guilt or remorse--maybe the minds of whites did not even register the suffering they caused others. Her rancor had choked her alone, it had not touched him. Valmorain added that she had taken care of Eugenia for many years, she had learned from Tante Rose, and according to Parmentier there was no better nurse. The silence that ate up those words was so long that Valmorain finally realized that he could not give this woman orders any longer and changed his tone. "I will pay you what is fair. No. What you ask. Do it in the name of everything we have gone through together, and our children," he said, words bubbling through drool and mucus from his runny nose.

Tete remembered Pere Antoine's usual counsel and dug very deep into her soul, but could not find the slightest spark of generosity. She wanted to explain to Valmorain that it was for those very reasons she could not help him, because of what they had gone through together, because of what she had suffered when she was a slave, and because of their children. He had taken the first child from her when he was born, and he could destroy the second this minute, unless she was careful. But she was not able to articulate any of that. "I cannot. Forgive me, monsieur," was the only thing she said. She stood, unsteady, shaken by the beating of her own heart, and before going left on Valmorain's bed the useless burden of her hatred, which she did not want to keep dragging with her. She silently left that house by way of the servants' door.

Long Summer

R
osette was not able to rejoin Maurice as quickly as they had planned; the winter was extremely harsh in the north, and it wasn't possible to make the trip under sail. Spring came late, and in Boston the ice lasted until the end of April. By then she couldn't make the voyage. Her pregnancy was not as yet noticeable, but she was supernaturally beautiful, and the women around her had perceived her state. She was rosy, her hair shone like glass, and her eyes were deeper and sweeter; she radiated warmth and light. According to Loula that was normal: pregnant women have more blood in their bodies. "Where do you think the baby gets its blood?" Loula asked. Tete found that explanation irrefutable; she had seen more than a few births and was always amazed by how generously women gave their blood. But she was not having Rosette's symptoms. Her belly and breasts weighed like stone, she had dark streaks on her face, the veins on her legs stood out, and she couldn't walk more than two blocks because of her swollen feet. She didn't remember having felt that weak and ugly in previous pregnancies. She was embarrassed to find herself in the same condition as Rosette: she was going to be a mother and grandmother at the same time.