Island Beneath the Sea (8 page)

Zarite

I
n their tent, the masters ate as they did in the dining room of the big house. A slave swept insects from the ground and waved away mosquitoes, while another two stood behind the masters' chairs, barefoot, their livery dripping sweat and their white wigs stinking, ready to serve them. The master swallowed distractedly, barely chewing, while Dona Eugenia spit out mouthfuls into her napkin because to her it all tasted of sulfur. Her husband repeated over and over that she must be calm and eat, the rebellion had been crushed before it began, and its ineffective leaders were locked up in Le Cap in more iron than they could lift, but she feared the chains would burst, the way the witch doctor Macandal's had done. The master's idea to tell her about Macandal had not been a good one, it had ended up frightening her. Dona Eugenia had heard of heretics being burned at the stake before it occurred in her own country, and she had no desire to witness such a horror. That night she complained that a tourniquet was tightening around her head, she could not bear more
;
she wanted to go to Cuba to see her brother, she could go alone, it was a short journey. I wanted to dry her face with a kerchief, but she pushed me away. The master told her not even to think of it, it was very dangerous and it would not be appropriate for her to arrive alone in Cuba. "Speak no more of this!" he exclaimed angrily, jumping to his feet before the slave could pull back the chair, and went outside to give the last instructions to Prosper Cambray. She gestured to me, and I picked up her plate, covered it with a rag, and took it to a corner to eat later what was left, and then I got her ready for the night. She no longer wore the corset, hose, and petticoats she had in her bridal trunks
;
on the plantation she went around in light shifts, but she always dressed for dinner. I took off her clothes and brought her the chamber pot
;
I washed her with a wet cloth, I powdered her with camphor to ward off mosquitoes, I bathed her face and hands with milk, I took the pins from her hair and brushed the chestnut hair one hundred times, while she sat there wearing a lost expression. She was transparent. The master said she was very beautiful, but to me her green eyes and pointed teeth did not look human. When I finished tidying her up, she knelt on her prie-dieu and in a loud voice prayed an entire rosary, chorused by me, as was my obligation. I had learned the prayers, though I did not understand what they said. By then I knew several Spanish words and could obey, she did not give orders in French or Creole. It was not her responsibility to make the effort to communicate, it was ours. This is what she said. The mother-of-pearl beads slipped through her white fingers as I calculated how long before I could eat and lie down to sleep. Finally she kissed the cross on the rosary and put it into the leather bag, flat and long as an envelope, she usually wore around her neck. It was her protection, as mine was my doll Erzulie. I served her a goblet of port to help her sleep, which she drank with a grimace of nausea. I helped her into the hammock, covered it over with a mosquito net, and began to rock her, praying she would soon sleep without being distracted by the winging bats, the quiet padding of animals, and the voices that harassed her at that hour. They were not human voices--that she had explained to me--they came from the shadows, the jungle, below the ground, hell, Africa
;
they did not speak with words but with howls and strident laughter. "They are the specters the Negroes summon
,"
she wept, terrified. "Shhh, Dona Eugenia, close your eyes, pray..." I was as frightened as she, though I had never heard the voices or seen a specter. "You were born here, Zarite, that is why your ears are deaf and your eyes blind. If you came from Guinea, you would know that there are ghosts everywhere
,"
I'd been assured by Tante Rose, the healer of Saint-Lazare. They had assigned her to be my
marraine,
my godmother, when I arrived at the plantation
;
she had to teach me everything and watch that I didn't escape. "Don't even think of it, Zarite, you would be lost in the cane fields, and the mountains are farther than the moon."

Dona Eugenia fell asleep, and I crawled to my corner
;
the trembling light of the oil lamps didn't reach there, and I felt blindly for my plate. I picked up a bite of lamb stew and found that ants had beat me to it
;
I like their spicy flavor. I was reaching for the second mouthful when the master and a slave came in, two long shadows on the canvas of the tent and the men's strong odor of leather, tobacco, and horses. I covered the plate and waited, not breathing, trying with all the strength of my heart not to be noticed by them.
"Virgen Maria, Madre de Dios,
pray for us sinners
,"
my mistress murmured in her dreams, and with a cry added, "Devil's whore!" I flew to rock the hammock before she waked.

The master sat in his chair and the slave took off his boots
;
then he helped him out of his breeches and the rest of his clothes, leaving him clad only in his shirt, which fell to his hips and left his sex exposed, rosy and limp, like hog tripe, in a nest of straw-colored hair. The slave held the chamber pot for the master to urinate, waited to be dismissed, extinguished the oil lamps but left the candles burning, and left. Dona Eugenia again stirred, and this time she woke, terror in her eyes, but I had already served her another goblet of port. I kept rocking her, and soon she was asleep again. The master came over with a candle, and its light fell on his wife. I don't know what he was looking for, perhaps for the girl who had attracted him a year before. He reached out to touch her but thought better, and merely observed her with a strange expression.

"My poor Eugenia. She spends the night tormented by nightmares and the day tormented by reality
,"
he murmured.

"Yes
, maitre."

"You do not understand anything I am saying, do you, Tete?"

"No
, maitre."

"Better that way. How old are you?"

"I don't know
, maitre.
Ten, more or less."

"Then you are not yet a woman, are you?"

"That may be
, maitre."

His glance went all over me, head to toe. He touched his member and held it as if weighing it. I lowered even farther my burning face. A drop of wax from the candle fell on his hand and he cursed
;
then he ordered me to sleep with one eye open to look after my mistress. He climbed into his hammock, and I scurried like a lizard to my corner. I waited till my master was sleeping and then ate, very carefully, not making a sound. Outside it began to rain. This is how I remember it.

The Intendant's Ball

T
he exhausted travelers from Saint-Lazare reached Le Cap the day before the execution of the Maroons, when the city was palpitating with anticipation, and such a crowd had gathered that the air smelled of horse manure and too many people. There was no place to stay. Valmorain had sent a messenger galloping ahead to reserve a barracks for his slaves, but he had arrived late and could rent space only in the belly of a schooner anchored in the port. It was not easy to load the blacks into skiffs and from there to the boat because they threw themselves on the ground yelling with fright, convinced that the deathly voyage that had brought them from Africa was going to be repeated. Prosper Cambray and the commandeurs herded them by force and chained them in the hold to prevent them from jumping into the sea. The hotels for whites were filled; they had arrived a day late, and the owners had nothing available. Valmorain could not take Eugenia to an
affranchi
boardinghouse. Had he been alone, he would not have hesitated to go straight to Violette Boisier, who owed him a few favors. They were not lovers anymore, but their friendship had been strengthened when she decorated the house in Saint-Lazare, as well as by a few donations he'd made to help her with debts. Violette had amused herself buying on credit without adding up the costs, until the reprimands of Loula and Etienne Relais obliged her to live more prudently.

That night the Intendant was offering a dinner for the most select of civil society, while a few blocks away the Gouverneur received the upper echelon of the army to celebrate in advance the end of the Maroons. In view of the urgent circumstances, Valmorain presented himself at the Intendant's mansion to ask for lodging. He arrived three hours before the reception and was met by the scurrying about that precedes a hurricane; slaves were running with bottles of liquor, large vases of flowers, last minute furniture additions, lamps, and candelabras, while the musicians, all of them mulattoes, were setting up their instruments under the orders of a French director, and the majordomo, list in hand, was counting the gold place settings for the table. An unhappy Eugenia arrived half swooning in her litter, followed by Tete with a flask of salts and a chamber pot. Once the Intendant had recovered from the surprise of seeing them at his door so early, he welcomed them though he scarcely knew them, mellowed by Valmorain's prestigious name and the lamentable state of his wife. The Intendant had aged prematurely; he must have been a little over fifty, but fifty years badly lived. He could not see his feet for his belly, he walked on stiff, spraddled legs, his arms were too short to button his waistcoat, he huffed like a bellows, and his aristocratic profile disappeared amid fiery red cheeks and the bulbous nose of a bon vivant; his wife, however, had changed very little from girlhood. She was ready for the reception, attired in the latest mode from Paris, wearing a wig adorned with butterflies and a dress covered with bows and cascades of laces, its deep decolletage hinting at childlike breasts. She was the same insignificant sparrow she'd been at nineteen, when from a box of honor she had watched Macandal burn at the stake. From that time she had witnessed enough torture to feed all the rest of her nights with nightmares. Dragging the weight of her gown, she led her guests to the second floor, showed Eugenia to a room, and gave orders for a bath to be prepared for her, though all her guest wanted was to rest.

A few hours later the guests began to arrive, and soon the mansion was animated with music and voices that reached Eugenia, flat on her bed, as muted sounds. Nausea kept her from moving, and Tete fanned her and applied compresses of cold water to her forehead. Her elaborate iridescent brocade finery awaited on a sofa, along with white silk stockings and high-heeled black taffeta slippers. Down on the first floor the ladies were drinking their champagne while standing, the width of their skirts and their tight bodices making it difficult to sit down, while the gentlemen were commenting on the next day's spectacle in measured tones, since it was not good taste to be overly excited by the torture of some rebellious blacks. After a bit, the musicians interrupted conversation with a blast of cornets, and the Intendant made a toast to the colony's return to normal. Everyone lifted a glass, and as Valmorain drank from his, he wondered what the devil "normal" meant: whites and blacks, free and slaves, all living sick with fear.

The majordomo, in a theatrical admiral's uniform and with the appropriate pomp, struck the floor three times with a gold staff to announce dinner. At the age of twenty-five, the man was too young for a post of such responsibility and dazzle. Neither was he French, as might be expected, but a handsome African slave with perfect teeth; some of the female guests had already cast him a wink. But why would they not notice him, considering that he was six and a half feet tall and bore himself with more grace and authority than the highest of the guests? After the toast, those gathered glided toward the sumptuous dining hall illuminated by hundreds of candles. Outside, the night had grown cooler, but inside the heat was rising. Valmorain, crushed beneath the clinging odor of sweat and perfumes, took in the long tables gleaming with gold and silver, Baccarat crystal and Sevres porcelain, the liveried slaves, one behind each seat and others lined along the walls to pour wine, pass the platters, and take away the plates, and calculated that it was going to be a very long night indeed; the excessive etiquette caused him as much impatience as the banal conversation. Perhaps it was true that he was turning into a savage man, an accusation his wife frequently made. The guests slowly took their seats in the midst of a confusion of pulled out chairs, crackling silks, conversation, and music. Finally the servants entered in a double row with the first of fifteen dishes announced on a gold lettered menu: tiny quail stuffed with dried plums and presented in the blue flames of blazing brandy. Valmorain had not yet finished digging among the minuscule bones of his bird when the remarkable majordomo came to him and whispered that his wife was indisposed. At the same moment another servant was giving the same message to the hostess, who made a sign to Valmorain from the other side of the table. Both got up without attracting attention amid the hubbub of voices and noise of silver against porcelain, and went up to the second floor.

Eugenia was green, and the room stank of vomit and excrement. The Intendant's wife suggested that Eugenia be examined by Dr. Parmentier, who fortunately was in the dining hall, and immediately the slave at the door ran to look for him. The physician, some forty years old, small, slim, with nearly feminine features, was the
homme de confiance
of the
grands blancs
of Le Cap for his discretion and professional skill, although his methods were not the most orthodox; he preferred the herbarium of the poor in place of the purges, bloodletting, enemas, poultices, and fantasized remedies of European medicine. Parmentier had succeeded in discrediting the elixir of lizard sprinkled with gold dust, which had the reputation of curing the yellow fever of the wealthy--others could not afford it. He had been able to prove that the brew was so toxic that if the patient survived the dread fever,
mal de Siam
, he would die of the poison. He did not have to be begged to go up and see Madame Valmorain, at least he would be able to draw a breath of air that wasn't as thick as that in the dining hall. He found Eugenia weak among the pillows of her bed and proceeded to examine her while Tete removed the basins and rags she had used to cleanse her mistress.