Island Beneath the Sea

Blue-Blooded Creoles

The house in the heart of New Orleans, the quartier where Creoles of French descent and old family lived, was a find of Sancho Garcia del Solar's. Each of these households formed a patriarchal clan, large and closed, that mixed only with others of their same level. Money did not open those doors, contrary to what Sancho claimed, although he should have been better informed since neither did they open among Spaniards of similar social caste. However, when the refugees from Saint-Domingue began to arrive a crack opened that could be slipped through. At first, before the stream became a human avalanche, some Creole families took in the grands blancs who had lost their plantations, feeling compassionate and frightened by the tragic news coming from the island. They could not imagine anything worse than an uprising of Negroes. Valmorain dusted off his title of chevalier to introduce himself to society, and his brother-in-law made sure to mention the chateau in Paris, unfortunately abandoned since Valmorain's mother had found a home in Italy in order to escape the terror imposed by the Jacobin Robespierre. The tendency to decapitate people for reasons of ideas or titles, as was happening in France, roiled Sancho's gut. He did not sympathize with the nobility, but neither did he admire the mob; the French republic seemed as vulgar to him as American democracy. When he learned that Robespierre had been decapitated some months earlier, on the same guillotine where hundreds of his victims had perished, he celebrated with a two-day drinking spree. That was the last time, for while no one was abstemious among the Creoles, drunkenness was not tolerated; a man who lost his composure because of drink did not deserve to be accepted anywhere. Valmorain, who had for years ignored Dr. Parmentier's warnings about alcohol, also had to be more moderate, and in doing so discovered that he did not drink as a vice, as deep down he had suspected, but as a palliative for loneliness.

As they had proposed, the brothers-in-law did not arrive in New Orleans as mere refugees but as owners of a sugar plantation, the most prestigious rank on the scale of castes. Sancho's vision in having acquired land had turned out to be providential. "Do not forget, Toulouse, the future lies in cotton. Sugar has a bad name," he warned Valmorain. Blood-chilling tales circulated about slavery in the Antilles, and the abolitionists were waging an international campaign to sabotage sugar stained by blood. "Believe me, Sancho, even if the lumps were crimson, consumption would continue to increase. Sweet gold is more addictive than opium," Valmorain replied. No one spoke about that in the closed circle of the Creoles, who affirmed that the atrocities of the islands did not occur in Louisiana. Among those people, united by a complex network of family relationships in which it was impossible to keep secrets-everything was known sooner or later-cruelty was badly viewed and inappropriate as well, since only a fool damaged his property. Besides, the priests, led by the Spanish friar Antonio de Sedella, known as Pere Antoine and feared for his reputation as a saint, made it a point to drive home their responsibility before God for the bodies and souls of their slaves.

As he began to acquire laborers for the plantation, Valmorain encountered a reality very different from that in Saint-Domingue: the price of slaves was high. That meant a larger investment than he had calculated, and he had to be prudent about expenses, but he also felt secretly relieved. Now there was a practical reason for taking care of one's slaves, not merely humanitarian scruples that could be interpreted as weakness. The worst of the twenty-three years at Saint-Lazare had been the absolute power he held over other lives, with its burden of temptations and degradation, worse than his wife's madness, the climate that corroded health and dissolved man's most decent principles, the solitude and the hunger for books and conversation. Just as Dr. Parmentier had maintained, the revolution in Saint-Domingue had been the inevitable revenge of slaves against the colonists' brutality. Louisiana offered Valmorain the opportunity to revive the youthful ideals smoldering in the embers of his memory. He began to dream of a model plantation capable of producing as much sugar as Saint-Lazare, but one where slaves lived a human existence. This time he would take much better care in selecting a manager and overseers. He did not want another Prosper Cambray.

Sancho devoted himself to cultivating friendships among the Creoles, without whom they could not prosper, and within a brief time he became the soul of parties, with his guitar and silken voice, his talent for losing at gaming tables, his sleepy eyes and fine humor with the matriarchs on whom he lavished praise-without their approval, after all, no one crossed the threshold of their houses. He played billiards, back-gammon, dominos, and cards, he danced gracefully, he was informed on every subject, and he had the art of always being in the right place at the right time. His favorite stroll was along the tree-lined road bordering the dike that protected the city from floods, where everyone mixed together, from distinguished families to noisy sailors, slaves, free people of color, and the ever-present Kaintucks, with their reputation for drunkenness, killings, and whoring. Those men came down the Mississippi from Kentucky and other regions to the north to sell their tobacco, cotton, hides, and wood, encountering hostile Indians and a thousand other dangers along the way, which was why they went around well armed. In New Orleans they sold their rowboats for firewood, caroused a couple of weeks, and then undertook the arduous return.

Sancho, if only to be seen, attended theater and opera just as he went to mass on Sundays. His simple black suit, hair pulled into a ponytail, and waxed mustache contrasted with the brocade and lace attire of the French, giving him a slightly dangerous air that attracted the women. His manners were impeccable, an essential requirement in the upper class, where the proper use of the fork was more important than moral tenets. Such splendid virtues would have served that somewhat eccentric Spaniard for nothing without his relationship to Valmorain, a Frenchman of wealth and good family name, but once he was introduced in those salons, no one thought of dismissing him. Valmorain was a widower, only forty-five years old, not bad looking, though several kilos too heavy, and naturally enterprising patriarchs tried to trap him for a daughter or niece. The brother-in-law with the unpronounceable name was also a candidate; even a Spanish son-in-law was preferable to the embarrassment of an unwed daughter.

There were comments, but no one offered any opposition when that pair of strangers rented one of the mansions in the quartier, or later when the owner sold it to them. It had two floors and a mansard, but lacked a cellar because New Orleans floated on water, and digging only a palm's width was enough to get wet. The mausoleums of the cemetery were raised so that the dead would not sail away with every storm. Like many others, Valmorain's house was wood and brick, Spanish in style, with a wide entry for the coach, a patio cobbled with paving stone, a tile fountain, and cool balconies with iron railings covered with fragrant climbing vines. Valmorain avoided any ostentation in decorating the house, for that was a sign of being nouveau riche. He could not carry a tune, but he invested in musical instruments because at every social event the mademoiselles showed their skill at the piano, the harp, or the clavichord, and the young gentlemen shone on their guitars.

Maurice and Rosette had to take music and dance lessons with private instructors, like any other wealthy children. A refugee from Saint-Domingue gave them music classes, using his corrective rod, and a plump, affected man taught them the dances in vogue, also with a rod. In the future those lessons would be as useful to Maurice as fencing for fighting a duel and salon games, and for Rosette they would serve for entertaining visitors, though never competing with white girls. She had grace and a good voice, whereas Maurice had inherited his father's tin ear and attended the classes with the resigned attitude of a galley slave. He preferred books, which were not going to do anything for him in New Orleans, where intellect was considered suspicious; much more appreciated was a talent for light conversation, gallantry, and living the good life.

To Valmorain, accustomed to a hermit's life at Saint-Lazare, the hours of banal chatter in the cafes and bars Sancho dragged him to seemed a waste. He had to make an effort to participate in the games and betting; he detested the cockfights that left the attendees spattered with blood as well as the horse and greyhound racing at which he always lost. Every day of the week there was a gathering in a different drawing room, presided over by a matron who kept track of who attended and what gossip they brought. Bachelors went from house to house, always with some gift, usually a monstrous sugar and nut dessert heavy as a cow's head. According to Sancho, these reunions des amis were obligatory in that closed society. Dances, soirees, picnics, always the same faces with nothing new to say. Valmorain preferred the plantation, but he realized that in Louisiana his taste for seclusion would be interpreted as arrogance or miserliness.

The dining and drawing rooms of the city house were on the first floor, the bedchambers on the second, and the kitchen and slave quarters off the back patio, in separate buildings. The windows gave access to a small but well tended garden. The most spacious room was the dining hall, as it was in all Creole houses, in which life turned around the dining table and the pride of hospitality. A respectable family owned china for at least twenty-four guests. One of the rooms on the first floor had a separate entrance intended for the bachelor sons; in that way they could come and go without offending the ladies of the family. On the plantations their garconnieres were octagonal quarters near the road and separated from the main house. Maurice was twelve years short of qualifying for that privilege; for the moment he slept alone, for the first time, in a room between those of his father and his uncle Sancho.

Tete and Rosette did not have quarters with the other seven slaves-cook, washerwoman, coachman, seamstress, two personal servants, and an errand boy-but slept together in the mansard among the family's trunks. As she always had, Tete managed the house. A little bell on a cord that ran through the rooms allowed Valmorain to summon her at night.

The minute Sancho saw Rosette, he knew his brother-in-law's relationship with the slave, and anticipated the problem. "What are you going to do with Tete when you marry?" was his point blank question to Valmorain, who had never mentioned the subject to anyone and, caught by surprise, mumbled that he was not planning to marry. "If we are to live under the same roof, one of us will have to marry or people will think we're perverts," Sancho concluded.

In the confusion of escaping from Le Cap that fateful night, Valmorain had lost his cook, who had stayed hidden as he fled with Tete and the children, but he did not lament that because in New Orleans he needed someone experienced in cuisine creole. His new friends warned him that it was not safe to buy the first cook who turned up in the Maspero Echange, no matter that it was the best slave market in America, nor in the establishments along Chartres, where they disguised the slaves in elegant clothing to impress their customers but offered no guarantee of quality. The best slaves were obtained in private among families or friends. That was how he acquired Celestine, who was about forty, had magical hands for stews and pastries, and had been trained by one of the marquis de Marigny's eminent French cooks and sold because no one could put up with her fits of temper. She had thrown a plate of shrimp gumbo at the feet of the imprudent marquis because he dared ask for more salt. Valmorain was not frightened by that anecdote; doing battle with her would be Tete's task. Celestine was thin, dry, and jealous by nature. She did not allow anyone to step into her kitchen or her larder; she herself chose the wines and liquors and did not accept suggestions regarding menus. Tete explained that she would have to be moderate with spices because her master had stomach troubles. "He'll have to put up with it. If he wants a sick man's broth, you fix it," had been her answer, but ever since she reigned among the cookpots Valmorain had been healthy. Celestine smelled of cinnamon, and in secret, so no one would suspect her weakness, she prepared beignets light as sighs for the children, tarte tatin with carameled apples, mandarin crepes with cream, mousse au chocolat with little honey biscuits, and other treats, which proved the theory that humankind would never tire of consuming sugar. Maurice and Rosette were the only ones in the house who did not fear the cook.

The life of a Creole monsieur was spent at leisure; work was a vice of Protestants in general and Americans in particular. Valmorain and Sancho had a problem hiding the effort required to start up their plantation, which had been abandoned for more than ten years after the death of the owner and the methodical ruin of the heirs.

The first matter was to acquire slaves, some hundred and fifty to begin with, a lot fewer than Valmorain had had at Saint-Lazare. Valmorain installed himself in one corner of the ruined house as another was built following the plans of a French architect. The slave quarters, eaten by termites and humidity, were torn down and replaced by wood cabins with overhanging roofs to give shade and protect from rain; each had three rooms to house two families, lined up in parallel rows perpendicular to a small central square. The brothers-in-law visited other plantations, like so many who arrived at them uninvited on weekends, taking advantage of the tradition of hospitality. Valmorain concluded that compared with the slaves on Saint-Domingue, those in Louisiana could not complain, but Sancho found out that some masters kept their workers nearly naked, fed with a mush poured into a trough like the ones for animals, from which each slave took his portion with an oyster shell, a chipped tile, or hand, because there was no spoon.

It took two long years to construct the basics: to plant, build a mill, and organize work. Valmorain had grandiose plans, but he had to concentrate on the immediate. There would be time later to turn his fantasies into reality: a garden, terraces, gazebos, a decorative bridge over the river, along with other amenities. He lived obsessed with the details, which he discussed with Sancho and lectured Maurice about.

"Look, son, all this will be yours," he said, pointing to the cane fields from his horse. "Sugar doesn't fall from the sky, it requires a lot of work."

"The Negroes do the work," Maurice observed.

"Don't be deceived. They do the manual labor, because they don't know how to do anything else, but the master is the one responsible. The success of the plantation depends on me and, in a certain measure, your uncle Sancho. Not a single stalk of cane is cut without my knowledge. Pay attention, because one day it will be up to you to make decisions and command your people."

"Why don't they command themselves, Papa?"

"They can't, Maurice. You have to give them orders. They're slaves, son."

"I wouldn't like to be like them."

"You never will be, Maurice." His father smiled. "You are a Valmorain."

He could not have shown Saint-Lazare to his son with the same pride. He was determined to correct the errors, weaknesses, and omissions of the past and secretly atone for the atrocious sins of Lacroix, whose money had been used to buy this land. For each man tortured and each girl stained by Lacroix there would be a healthy, well-treated slave on the Valmorain plantation. That justified his having appropriated his neighbor's money, it could not be better invested.

Sancho was not overly interested in his brother-in-law's plans; they did not carry the same weight in his conscience, and he thought only of entertaining himself. The contents of the slaves' soup or the color of their cabins were nothing to him. Valmorain was set on changing his life, but for the Spaniard this adventure was but one among many undertaken with enthusiasm and abandoned without regret. As he had nothing to lose-his partner was assuming all the risks-he had audacious ideas that tended to give surprising results, such as a refinery that would allow them to sell white sugar, which was much more profitable than other planters' molasses.

Sancho found a manager, an Irishman who advised him on purchases of field labor. His name was Owen Murphy, and he set the rule from the beginning that the slaves must attend mass. They would have to build a chapel and find itinerant priests, he said, to fortify Catholicism before the Americans got to the slaves to preach their heresies and innocent people be condemned to hell. "Morality is more important than anything," he announced. Murphy agreed completely with Valmorain's suggestion not to abuse the whip. That huge man with the look of an elite Turkish guard, heavy black hair on his chest, and hair and beard equally black, had a sweet soul. He moved his large family into a campaign tent while their living quarters were being built. His wife, Leanne, who came to his waist, looked like an undernourished adolescent with the face of a fly, but her fragility was deceptive: she had given birth to six male children and was expecting the seventh. She knew it would be male because God was determined to test her patience. She never raised her voice, but one glance and her children and her husband obeyed. Valmorain thought that finally Maurice would have someone to play with and not cling to Rosette every minute; that herd of Irish boys was from a social class very inferior to his, but they were white and free. He could not have imagined that the six Murphys would also trail around enraptured behind Rosette, who had turned five and possessed the arresting personality her father would have wished for Maurice.

Owen Murphy had worked directing slaves since he was seventeen, and he knew by memory the errors and successes of that unpleasant labor. "You have to treat them like children. Authority and justice, clear rules, punishment, reward, and some free time or they get sick," he told his employer; he added that slaves had the right to come to the master regarding a sentence of more than fifteen lashes. "I trust you, Monsieur Murphy, that will not be necessary," replied Valmorain, little disposed to assume the role of judge. "But for my own peace I would prefer it be done that way, monsieur. Too much power destroys the soul of any Christian, and mine is weak," the Irishman explained to him.

In Louisiana the labor force of a plantation cost a third of the value of the land; they had to be looked after. Production was at the mercy of unforeseen mishaps, hurricanes, drought, floods, plagues, rats, fluctuations in the price of sugar, problems with machinery and animals, loans from the banks, and other uncertainties, say nothing of the bad health or spirits of the slaves, said Murphy. He was so different from Cambray that Valmorain wondered whether he'd made a mistake in hiring him, but he soon observed that he worked untiringly and imposed his will with his presence, not brutality. His overseers watched closely, followed his example, and the result was that the slaves produced more than those under Prosper Cambray's regime of terror. Murphy organized them using a system of turns that gave them rest during the perishing day in the fields. His former employer had dismissed Murphy because when he was ordered to discipline a slave woman, Murphy's whip cracked against the ground without touching her, though she screamed at the top of her lungs. The slave was pregnant, and as was done in such cases, she had been laid on the ground with her belly in a depression. "I promised my wife I would never beat children or pregnant women," was the Irishman's explanation when Valmorain asked.

The slaves were given two days a week rest to cultivate their gardens, care for their animals, and tend to their domestic chores, but on Sunday they had to attend the mass decreed by Murphy. They could play music and dance in their free hours, and even-under the manager's supervision-attend the bambousses, modest slave gatherings on the occasion of a wedding, a funeral, or other celebration. In principle, slaves could not visit other properties, but in Louisiana few masters paid attention to that rule. Breakfast on the Valmorain plantation consisted of a soup with meat or bacon-none of the stinking dried fish of Saint-Lazare; lunch was a maize tart, fresh or salted meat, and pudding, and dinner a hearty soup. They fitted out a cabin to be used as a hospital and contracted a doctor who came once a month for prevention and when called for an emergency. They gave more food and rest to pregnant women. Valmorain didn't know-he had never asked-that at Saint-Lazare the slaves gave birth while crouching in the cane fields, that there were more abortions than births, and that most of the children died before they were three months old. On the new plantation, Leanne Murphy acted as midwife and looked after the children.

Zarite

From the boat New Orleans looked like a waning moon floating on the sea, white and luminous. When I saw it I knew I would never return to Saint-Domingue. Sometimes I have these premonitions and I don't forget them, so I will be prepared when they happen. The pain of having lost Gambo was like a lance in my chest. Don Sancho was waiting for us in the port. Dona Eugenia's brother had arrived a few days before us and already had a house where we were going to live. The street smelled of jasmine, not smoke and blood like Le Cap when it was burned by the rebels before they moved on to continue their revolution elsewhere. The first week in New Orleans I did all the work myself, helped at times by a slave lent to us by a family Don Sancho knew, but then the master and his brother-in-law bought servants. Maurice was assigned a tutor, Gaspard Severin, who had fled from Saint-Domingue like us, and was poor. Refugees were arriving gradually; first the men to find a place somehow, and then women and children. Some brought along their families of color, and slaves. By then there were already thousands, and the people of Louisiana resented them. The tutor did not approve of slavery; I think he was one of those abolitionists Monsieur Valmorain detested. He was twenty-seven years old, he lived in a rooming house for Negroes, he always wore the same suit, and his hands trembled from the fright he'd suffered on Saint-Domingue. Sometimes, when the master wasn't there, I washed his shirt and removed stains from his jacket, but I was never able to get the smell of fear out of his clothing. I also gave him food to take with him, subtly, so as not to offend him. He took it as if he were doing me a favor, but he was grateful, and that was why he let Rosette attend his classes. I pleaded with the master to let her study, and in the end he yielded, though it is forbidden to educate slaves. He had plans for her; he wanted her to care for him in his old age and read to him when his vision failed. Had he forgotten that he owed us our freedom? Rosette did not know that the master was her father but she adored him, and I suppose that in his way he loved her too. No one could resist being bewitched by my daughter. From the time she was a child, Rosette was seductive. She liked to admire herself in the mirror, a dangerous habit.

At that time there were many free people of color in New Orleans, for under the Spanish government it was not difficult to obtain or buy freedom and the Americans had not as yet imposed their laws on us. I spent most of my time in the city looking after the house and Maurice, who had to study, while the master was out at the plantation. On Sundays I never missed the bambousses in the place Congo, drums and dancing, only a few blocks from where we lived. These bambousses were like the kalendas in Saint-Domingue, but without the services of the loas because at that time everyone in Louisiana was Catholic. Now many are Baptist, because there is singing and dancing in their churches, so it is joyful to worship Jesus. Voodoo, brought from Saint-Domingue by the slaves, was just getting started, and it mixed so much with Christian beliefs that now it's difficult for me to recognize it. In the place Congo we danced from midday to night, and the whites came to be scandalized, and to give them bad thoughts our behinds whirled like windmills, and to make them envious we rubbed against each other like lovers.

In the morning, after buying the water and firewood that was distributed from house to house in a cart, I would go out shopping. The Marche Francais had been in existence for a couple of years, but now it covered several blocks and, after the dike, was the preferred place for social life. It still is. They sell everything there from food to jewels, and there you find the stalls of seers, magicians, and docteurs feuilles. There is no shortage of charlatans who "cure" with red-dye water and a tonic of sarsaparilla for sterility, birth pain, rheumatic fever, bloody vomit, heart fatigue, broken bones, and almost every other misfortune of the human body. I have no faith in that tonic. If it were that miraculous, Tante Rose would have used it, but she was never interested in the sarsaparilla vine, even though it grew around Saint-Lazare.

In the market I made friends with other slaves and so learned the customs of Louisiana. As it was in Saint-Domingue, many free persons of color are educated, living from their work and professions, and some are owners of plantations. They say they tend to be more cruel with their slaves than the whites, but I haven't seen that. This is what they told me. In the market you see women of color and whites with their maids carrying baskets. They themselves carry nothing in their hands except gloves and a little bead embroidered reticule for their money. By law, the mulattas dress modestly so as not to annoy the whites. They keep their silks and jewels for nighttime. The men wear ties, wool breeches, high boots, kidskin gloves, and rabbit hair hats. According to Don Sancho, the quadroons of New Orleans are the most beautiful women in the world. "You could be like them, Tete. Look how they walk, light on their feet, swishing their hips, head proud, buttocks held high, bosom defiant. They move like fine fillies. No white woman can walk like that," he told me.

I will never be like those women, but Rosette may be. What would become of my daughter? The master asked me the same thing when I mentioned my freedom again. "Do you want your daughter to live in misery? A slave cannot be emancipated before she is thirty. You have six years to go, so don't bother me with this again!" Six years! I didn't know that law. It was an eternity for me, but it would give Rosette time to grow up protected by her father.

Festivities

In 1795 the Valmorain plantation was inaugurated with a country festival that lasted three days, pure extravagance, as Sancho wanted and as was the practice in Louisiana. The house, Greek in inspiration, was rectangular with two floors; it was surrounded by columns, with a gallery below and a roofed balcony overhead that went around the four sides, with bright rooms and mahogany floors. It was painted with pale colors as the French Creoles and Catholics chose to do, unlike the houses of the American Protestants, which were always white. According to Sancho, it looked like a sugar copy of the Acropolis, but the general opinion cataloged it as one of the most beautiful mansions along the Mississippi River. It still lacked adornment, but it wasn't bare because it was filled with flowers and so many lights that the three nights of celebration were as bright as day. Everyone in the family came, including the tutor, Gaspard Severin, wearing a new jacket, a gift from Sancho, and a less pathetic air because in the country he ate and took the sun. In the summer months, when he was taken to the country so Maurice could continue his classes, he could send his entire salary to his siblings in Saint-Domingue. Valmorain rented two barges with bright canopies and twelve oarsmen to transport his guests, who arrived with trunks and personal slaves, even their hairdressers. He hired orchestras of free mulattoes, who took turns so there would always be music, and had obtained enough porcelain plates and silver settings for a regiment. There were walks, horseback riding, hunts, salon games, dances, and always the soul of the gaiety was the indefatigable Sancho, much more hospitable than Valmorain, comfortable either on binges with troublemakers in Le Marais or at parties demanding the best etiquette. The women spent the morning resting; they went outdoors after siesta wearing heavy veils and gloves, and at night attired themselves in their finest gowns. In the gentle lamplight they all seemed natural beauties, with dark eyes, shiny hair, and mother-of-pearl skin, none of the brightly painted faces and false beauty spots used in France, but in the intimacy of the boudoir they darkened their eyebrows with charcoal, rubbed red rose petals on their cheeks, traced their lips with carmine, and burnished their gray hair-if they had any-with coffee grounds, and half the curls they pinned atop their heads had belonged to a different head. They wore pastel colors and light fabric; not even recent widows dressed in black, a lugubrious color neither becoming or consoling.

At the three balls the women competed in elegance, some followed by little slaves carrying their trains. Maurice and Rosette, eight and five, performed a demonstration of the waltz, the polka, and the cotillion, which justified the dance teacher's thumps with the rod and provoked exclamations of delight among the crowd. Tete heard the comment that the girl must be Spanish, the daughter of the brother-in-law, what is his name? Sancho or something like that. Rosette, dressed in white silk and black slippers, with a pink ribbon in her long hair, danced with aplomb while Maurice perspired with embarrassment in his gala outfit, counting his steps: two hops to the left, one to the right, bow and half turn, back, forward, and deep bow. Repeat. She led him, ready to disguise with a pirouette of her own inspiration her companion's bumbles. "When I grow up, I will go to balls every night, Maurice. If you want to marry me, you had better learn," she warned him in their practices.

Valmorain had acquired a majordomo for the plantation, and Tete performed the same function, impeccably, in New Orleans, thanks to her lessons in Le Cap from the handsome Zacharie. Both respected the limits of their mutual authority, and during the party had collaborated so that service would run as smooth as oil. They chose three slaves just to carry water and remove chamber pots, and a boy to clean up the foul trail left by two little dogs belonging to Mademoiselle Hortense Guizot that had fallen ill. Valmorain hired two cooks, free mulattoes, and assigned several helpers to Celestine, the house cook. Even among all of them they were barely able to prepare all the fish and shrimp, domesticated and wild birds, Creole dishes, and desserts. A calf was slaughtered, and Owen Murphy directed the outdoor roasting. Valmorain showed his guests the sugar factory, the rum distillery, and the stables, but what he exhibited with most pride were the slave quarters. Murphy had given the slaves three free days, clothing, and sweets, and afterward had them sing in honor of the Virgin Mary. Several women were moved to tears by the blacks' religious fervor. All the guests congratulated Valmorain, although more than one commented behind his back that he would be ruined by such idealism.

At first Tete did not distinguish Hortense Guizot from the other ladies, except by the picky little diarrhea plagued dogs; her instinct failed to warn her of the role that woman would play in her life. Hortense had reached twenty-nine and still was not married, not because she was ugly or poor but because the sweetheart she'd had when she was twenty-four had fallen from his horse while prancing and pirouetting to impress her, and broken his neck. It had been a rare courtship of love, not of convenience, as was usual among Creoles of high breeding. Denise, her personal slave, told Tete that Hortense was the first to come running and find him dead. "She had no chance to tell him good-bye," she added. At the end of the official mourning, Hortense's father began to look for another suitor. The young woman's name had gone from mouth to mouth because of her fiance's premature death, but she had an irreproachable past. She was tall, blond, rosy cheeked, and robust, like so many Louisiana women who ate with gusto and had little exercise. Her bodice lifted her breasts like melons, to the pleasure of masculine glances. Hortense Guizot spent those three days changing clothing every two or three hours, happy that the memory of her fiance had not followed her to the celebration. She took over the piano, singing with a soprano voice, and danced with brio till dawn, exhausting all her partners except Sancho. The woman capable of outdoing him had not been born, he said, but he admitted that Hortense was a formidable contender.

On the third day, when the barges had left with their cargo of weary visitors, musicians, servants, and lap dogs and the slaves were cleaning up the scattered trash, an agitated Owen Murphy brought the news that a band of Maroons were coming upriver, killing whites and inciting the Negroes to rebel. It was known that American Indians were sheltering runaway slaves, and others were surviving in the swamps, transformed into beings of mud, water, and green water growth, immune to mosquitoes and serpents' poisons, invisible to the eye of their pursuers, armed with rusted knives and machetes and sharpened rocks, wild with hunger and freedom. First it was heard that there were about thirty attackers, but within a few hours that number had risen to a hundred and fifty.

"Will they come here, Murphy? Do you think our blacks will join them?" Valmorain asked.

"I don't know, monsieur. They're nearby, and they can overrun us. As for our people, no one can predict how they will react."

"And why can't that be predicted? They receive every kind of consideration here-they would not be better off anywhere. Go talk with them!" exclaimed Valmorain, pacing around the drawing room, extremely perturbed.

"These things are not arranged by talking, monsieur," Murphy explained.

"This nightmare is following me! It's useless to treat the blacks well! They are all incorrigible."

"Be calm, brother-in-law," Sancho interrupted. "Nothing has happened yet. We are in Louisiana, not Saint-Domingue, where there were a half million up in arms Negroes and a handful of merciless whites."

"I must save Maurice. Get a boat ready, Murphy," Valmorain ordered. "I am going to the city immediately."

"No, not that!" yelled Sancho. "No one moves from here. We are not going to scurry away like rats. Besides, the river isn't safe; the rebelling blacks have boats. Monsieur Murphy, we are going to protect the property. Bring all the weapons you can lay hands on."

They lined up the weapons on the dining table, and Murphy's two older sons, thirteen and eleven, loaded them and then distributed them among the four whites, including Gaspard Severin, who had never pressed a trigger and could not aim with his trembling hands. Murphy looked to the slaves, locking the men in the stables and the children in the master's house; the women would not move from the cabins without their children. The majordomo and Tete took charge of the domestics, disoriented by the news. All the Louisiana slaves had heard the whites talk about the danger of an uprising, but they thought that happened only in exotic places, and could not imagine it. Tete charged two women with looking after the children, then helped the majordomo bolt the doors and windows. Celestine reacted better than expected, given her character. She had worked frenetically during the festival, quarrelsome and despotic, competing with the cooks from outside: "Lazy and impudent," she muttered, "being paid for what I am doing for free." She was soaking her feet when Tete came to tell her what was happening. "No one will be hungry," she announced, and with her helpers went into action to feed everyone.

They waited that entire day, Valmorain, Sancho, and the terrified Gaspard Severin with pistols in hand, while Murphy mounted guard in front of the stables and his sons watched the river to raise the alarm should it be necessary. Leanne Murphy calmed the women with the promise that their children were safe in the house, where they had been given cups of chocolate. At ten o'clock that night, when they were so fatigued that no one could keep on their feet, Brandan, the eldest of the Murphy boys, came on horseback with a torch in one hand and a pistol at his waist to announce that a patrol was approaching. Ten minutes later the men dismounted in front of the house. Valmorain, who by that time had relived the horrors of Saint-Lazare and Le Cap, received them with such a show of relief that Sancho was embarrassed for him. He listened to the report from the patrol and ordered bottles of his best liquor uncorked to celebrate. The crisis had passed: nineteen black rebels had been arrested, eleven were dead, and the rest would be hanged at dawn. All the others had dispersed and were probably headed to their refuges in the swamps. One of the militiamen, a redhead about eighteen years old, excited by the night of adventure and the alcohol, assured Gaspard Severin that from living so long in mud the men they hanged had feet like frogs, gills like fish, and a caiman's teeth. Several planters in the area had joined the patrols with enthusiasm for the hunt, a sport they rarely had opportunity to practice on a big scale and swearing to crush the insurgent Negroes to the last man. The losses on the white side were minimal: a murdered overseer, a planter, three wounded patrolmen, and a horse with a broken leg. The uprising was suffocated quickly because a domestic slave had given the alarm. Tomorrow, when the rebels are hanging from their nooses, that man will be free, thought Tete.

The Spanish Hidalgo

Sancho Garcia del Solar came and went between the plantation and the city; he spent more time on a boat or on horseback than in either of the two destinations. Tete never knew when he was going to appear, his horse winded, in the house in the city, day or night; he was always smiling, noisy, gluttonous. One early Monday he fought a duel with another Spaniard, a government official, in the Saint Antoine gardens, the usual place for gentlemen to be killed or at least wounded, the only way to avenge honor. It was a favorite pastime, and the gardens, with their leafy trees, offered the needed privacy. In the house no one knew anything about it until time for breakfast, when Sancho arrived wearing a bloody shirt and asking for coffee and cognac. Laughing heartily, he announced to Tete that he had only a scratch on his ribs, whereas his rival was left with a slash across his face. "Why were you dueling?" she asked as she cleaned the path of the sword thrust, so near the heart that had it entered a little deeper she would be dressing him for the cemetery. "Because he looked at me the wrong way," was his explanation. He was happy he didn't have a dead man on his back. Later Tete found out that the duel had been over Adi Soupir, a quadroon with disturbing curves whom both men claimed.

Sancho would wake the children in the middle of the night to teach them card tricks, and if Tete objected he lifted her off her feet, gave her a couple of whirls, and proceeded to explain that no one can survive in this world without a trick or two, and it was best to learn as soon as possible. At six in the morning it would suddenly occur to him that he wanted roast pig, and she had to fly to the market looking for one, or he would announce that he was going to the tailor, disappear for two days, and come home stupefied with whiskey, accompanied by several comrades to whom he had offered hospitality. He dressed with great care, although soberly, scrutinizing each detail of his appearance in the mirror. He trained the slave who ran errands, a fourteen-year-old boy, to wax his mustache and shave his cheeks with the Spanish gold-handled razor that had been in the Garcia del Solar family for three generations. "Are you going to marry me when I grow up, Uncle Sancho?" Rosette would ask. "Tomorrow if you wish, precious," he would answer, and plant a couple of big smacks on her cheek. Tete he treated like a relative fallen on bad times, with a mixture of familiarity and respect, spiced with jokes. Sometimes, when he suspected she had reached the limit of her patience, he brought her a gift and gave it to her with a compliment and a kiss on the hand, which she accepted with embarrassment. "Hurry and grow up, Rosette, before I marry your mother," he would tease.

In the mornings, Sancho went to the Cafe des Emigres, where he joined friends to play dominos. His entertaining hidalgo fanfaronades and his inalterable optimism were in sharp contrast to the French refugees, shrunken and impoverished by exile, who passed through life lamenting the loss of their wealth, real or exaggerated, and discussing politics. The bad news was that Saint-Domingue continued to be sunk in violence; the English had invaded several cities along the coast, though they had not been able to occupy the center of the country, and for that reason the possibility of the colony's achieving independence had cooled. Toussaint, what is that bastard named now? Louverture? Now there's a name he invented! Well, that Toussaint, who was on the side of the Spanish, turned coat and is now fighting at the side of the republican French, who without his aid would be nowhere. Before he changed over, Toussaint massacred the Spanish troops under his command. You judge whether you can trust that kind of rabble! General Laveaux promoted him to commandeur in the Cordon Occidental, and now that monkey goes around in a plumed hat. Makes me die laughing. What we have come to, my compatriots! France allied with Negroes! What historical humiliation! the refugees exclaimed between games of dominos.

But there was also optimistic news for the emigres, since in France the influence of the monarchical colonists was growing and the public did not want to hear another word about the rights of the blacks. If the colonists won the necessary votes, the Assemblee Nationale would be obligated to send enough troops to Saint-Domingue to end the revolt. The island was a fly on the map, they said, it could never confront the power of the French army. With victory, the emigres could return, and everything would be as it was before; there would be no mercy for the blacks, they would kill them all and bring fresh meat from Africa.

As for Tete, she learned the news from gossips in the Marche Francais. Toussaint was a wizard and a seer; he could send a curse from afar and kill with his thoughts. Toussaint won battle after battle, and no shot could penetrate him. Toussaint enjoyed the protection of Jesus, who was very powerful. Tete asked Sancho-she didn't dare bring the subject up with Valmorain-whether some day they would return to Saint-Lazare, and he answered that they would have to be insane to go back into such a slaughterhouse. That confirmed her presentiment that she would never see Gambo again, even though she had heard her master making plans to recover his property in the colony.

Valmorain was concentrating on the plantation rising from the ruins of the previous one, and spent a good part of the year there. In the winter season he moved unwillingly to the house in town. Tete and the children lived in New Orleans and went to the plantation only in the months of heat and epidemics, when all the powerful families escaped from the city. Sancho made hurried visits to the country because he still clung to his idea of planting cotton. He had never seen cotton in its primitive state, only in his starched shirts, and he had a poetic vision of the project that did not include his personal effort. He hired an American agronomist, and before the first plant had been put in the ground was already planning to buy a recently invented cotton picker he believed was going to revolutionize the market. The American and Murphy proposed alternate crops, so when the soil grew weary of cane they would plant cotton, and then the reverse.

The one constant affection in the capricious heart of Sancho Garcia del Solar was his nephew. Maurice had been small and fragile when born, but he turned out to be healthier than Dr. Parmentier had predicted, and the only fevers he suffered were from nerves. He made up in good health what he lacked in toughness. He was studious, sensitive, and quick to weep; he would rather sit contemplating an anthill in the garden or reading stories to Rosette than participate in the Murphy boys' rough games. Sancho, whose personality could not be more different, defended him from Valmorain's criticism. To prevent disappointing his father, Maurice swam in cold water, galloped on unbroken horses, spied on slave girls when they were bathing, and rolled in the dust with the Murphys till their noses bled, but he was incapable of shooting hares or cutting open a live frog to see what was inside. There was nothing of the boastful, frivolous, or bully about him, unlike other boys raised with the same indulgence. Valmorain was worried that he was so quiet and soft hearted, always ready to protect the most vulnerable; to him those seemed signs of a weak character.

Maurice found slavery shocking, and no argument had been able to make him change his mind. Where does he get those ideas when he has always lived surrounded with slaves? his father wondered. The boy had a deep and unremitting vocation for justice, but he had learned early not to ask too many questions in that regard; the subject was not welcome, and the answers left him unsatisfied. "That isn't fair!" he would say before any form of abuse. "Who told you that life is fair, Maurice?" his uncle Sancho would reply. It was the same thing Tete said. His father delivered complicated speeches on the categories imposed by nature that separated human beings and are necessary for the equilibrium of society, and how it must be taken into account that commanding is very difficult, it is much easier to obey. Maurice lacked the maturity and vocabulary to debate with him. He had a vague notion that Rosette was not free, as he was, though in practical terms the difference was imperceptible. He did not associate that girl or Tete with the domestic slaves, and much less with those in the field. He had had his mouth washed out with soap so often that he stopped calling Rosette his sister, but not enough to make him stop loving her with that terrible, possessive, absolute love that solitary children give. Rosette returned his love with an affection free of jealousy or anxiety. He could not imagine life without her, without her incessant chatter, her curiosity, her childish caresses, and the blind admiration she showed him. With Rosette he felt strong, protective, and wise, because that was how she saw him. Everything made him jealous. He suffered if she paid attention, even if for an instant, to any of the Murphy boys, if she made a move without consulting him, if she kept a secret from him. He needed to share with her his most intimate thoughts, fears, and desires, to dominate her and at the same time serve her with total abnegation. The three years that separated them in age were not noticeable. She seemed older than she was, and he younger; she was tall, strong, clever, vivacious, daring, and he was small, naive, withdrawn, timid; she intended to swallow the world and he lived crushed by reality. He lamented in advance the mishaps that could separate them, but she was still too young to imagine a future. Both understood instinctively that their complicity was forbidden; it was made of crystal, transparent and fragile, and had to be defended with eternal pretense. In front of adults they maintained a reserve that Tete found suspicious, and for that reason she spied on them. If she caught them in corners hugging each other, she pulled their ears with excessive fury and then, repentant, covered them with kisses. She could not explain to them why those private little games, so common among other children, were with them a sin. During the time the three of them shared a room, the children felt for each other in the dark, and later, when Maurice slept alone, Rosette visited him in his bed. Tete would wake at midnight without Rosette by her side and have to go on tiptoe to look for her in the boy's room. She would find them sleeping, arms around each other, still in childhood, innocent, but not so innocent that she could ignore what they were doing. "If I catch you in Maurice's bed one more time I am going to give you a thrashing you will remember for the rest of your days, do you understand?" Tete threatened her daughter, terrified of the consequences their love could have. "I don't know how I got here, Maman," Rosette would cry with such conviction that her mother came to believe she walked in her sleep.

Valmorain watched the behavior of his son closely, fearing that he might be weak or suffering some mental disturbance, like his mother. Sancho considered his brother-in-law's doubts absurd. He gave his nephew fencing lessons and proposed to teach him his version of boxing, which consisted of punches and kicking without mercy. "He who strikes first strikes twice, Maurice. Don't wait for them to provoke you, get off a first kick right to the balls," he explained while the boy cried, trying to elude blows. Maurice was bad at sports, but did have a taste for reading he'd inherited from his father, the only planter in Louisiana to have included a library in the plans of his house. Valmorain was not opposed to books in principle, as he himself collected them, but he was afraid that after so much reading his son would turn out to be a weakling. "Open your eyes, Maurice! You have to be a man!" he exhorted, and proceeded to inform him that women are born women, but men are formed through bravery and toughness. "Leave him alone, Toulouse. When the moment comes I will take charge of initiating him into men's ways," Sancho jested, but Tete did not find it amusing.

The Stepmother

Hortense Guizot became Maurice's stepmother a year after the festival at the plantation. For months she had been planning her strategy with the complicity of a dozen sisters, aunts, and cousins determined to resolve the drama of her spinsterhood, and of her father, enchanted with the prospect of attracting Valmorain to his henhouse. The Guizots had a smothering respectability but were not as rich as they tried to appear, and a union with Valmorain would have many advantages for them. At first Valmorain was not aware of the strategy being used to catch him; he believed that the Guizot family's attentions were directed toward Sancho, much younger and handsomer than he. When Sancho himself pointed out his error, Valmorain wanted to flee to another continent; he was very comfortable in his bachelor routines, and something as irreversible as matrimony frightened him.

"I scarcely know that demoiselle, I have seen her very little," he contended.

"Neither did you know my sister, and you married her," Sancho reminded him.

"And look at the trouble it caused me!"

"Bachelors always arouse suspicion, Toulouse. Hortense is a stupendous woman."

"If you like her so much, you marry her," Valmorain replied.

"The Guizots have already sniffed me over, brother-in-law. They know I am a poor devil with dissolute habits."

"Less dissolute than some others around here, Sancho. In any case, I do not plan to marry."

But the idea was planted, and in the following weeks he began to consider it, first as foolishness and then as a possibility. He was still young enough to have more children-he had always wanted a large family-and Hortense's voluptuousness seemed a good sign; she was a young woman ready for motherhood. He did not know that she shaved off her years; in fact, she was thirty.

Hortense was a Creole of impeccable lineage and good education; the Ursulines had taught her the basics of reading and writing, geography, history, domestic arts, embroidery, and catechism; she danced with grace and had a pleasant voice. No one doubted her virtue and she was generally well-liked; because of a gentleman's inability to sit his horse she was widowed before she was wed. The Guizots were pillars of tradition; the father had inherited a plantation and Hortense's two older brothers had a prestigious legal office, the only acceptable profession for that class. Hortense's family line compensated for her minimal dowry, and Valmorain wanted to be accepted in society, not so much for himself as to smooth the way for Maurice.

Trapped in the strong web woven by the women, Valmorain agreed to let Sancho lead him through the twists and turns of courtship, more subtle in New Orleans than in Saint-Domingue or Cuba, where he'd fallen in love with Eugenia. "For the moment, no gifts or messages for Hortense; concentrate on the mother. Her approval is essential," Sancho warned him. Marriageable girls were seldom seen in public and only a time or two at the opera, accompanied by the family en masse, because if seen out and about too often they would appear to be a little shady and could end up as spinsters looking after their sisters' children; however, Hortense had a little more freedom. She had passed the age of being "ripe"-between sixteen and twenty-four-and entered the category of a little "stale."

Sancho and the marriage arranging harpies saw that Valmorain and Hortense were invited to soirees, as the dinner and dancing events were called, of family and friends in the intimacy of the home, where they could exchange a few words, though never alone. Protocol forced Valmorain to announce his intentions promptly. Sancho went with him to speak with Monsieur Guizot, and in private they worked out the financial terms of the union, cordially but with absolute clarity. Shortly after, the agreement was celebrated with a dejeuner de fiancailles, a luncheon at which Valmorain handed a fashionable ring to his fiancee, a ruby surrounded with diamonds set in gold.

Pere Antoine, the most notable priest in Louisiana, married them on a Tuesday afternoon in the cathedral, the only witnesses the close Guizot relatives, a total of ninety-two persons. The bride wanted a private wedding. They entered the church escorted by the Gouverneur's guards, as was de rigueur, and Hortense shone in a pearl embroidered silk gown that had been worn by her grandmother, her mother, and several of her sisters. It was a little snug, even after the work of seamstresses. Following the ceremony, the bouquet of orange blossom and jasmine was sent to the nuns to place at the feet of the Virgin in the chapel. The reception took place in the Guizots' house, with an array of sumptuous dishes prepared by the same caterer Valmorain had hired for the festival at his plantation: pheasant stuffed with chestnuts, duck in marinade, crab blazing in liqueur, fresh oysters, fish of various kinds, turtle soup, cheeses brought from France, and more than forty desserts in addition to a wedding cake of French inspiration: an indestructible edifice of marzipan and dried fruit.

After the guests bid them good-bye, Hortense awaited her husband arrayed in a muslin gown, her blond hair loose across her shoulders, in her virginal chamber; her parents had replaced her bed with one with a canopy. In those years a great fuss was made over the bride's canopy: blue silk imitating a clear sky with a cloudless horizon and a profusion of plump cupids with bows and arrows, bunches of artificial flowers, and lace bows.

The newlyweds spent three days enclosed in that room, as custom demanded, attended by a pair of slaves who brought them food and removed chamber pots. It would have been disgraceful for the bride to appear in public, even in front of her family, as she was being initiated into the secrets of love. Suffocating with heat, bored in the closed space, with a headache from so many youthful capers at his age, and aware that outside the room a dozen relatives had their ears glued to the wall, Valmorain realized that he had married not only Hortense but the entire Guizot tribe. Finally on the fourth day he could emerge from that prison and escape with his wife to the plantation, where they would learn to know each other with more space and air. Just that week the summer season was beginning and everyone was fleeing the city.

Hortense never doubted that she would trap Valmorain. Even before the relentless procuresses swung into action she had ordered the nuns to embroider sheets with her and Valmorain's initials intertwined. The ones with the initials of the previous fiance, perfumed with lavender and kept for years in a hope chest, were not wasted; she simply had flowers embroidered over the letters and destined those sheets to guest rooms. As part of her dowry, she brought Denise, the slave who had served her since she was fifteen, the only one who knew how to dress her hair and iron her gowns to her pleasure, and another house slave her father gave her as a wedding present when she mentioned doubts about the majordomo on the Valmorain plantation. She wanted someone she could trust absolutely.

Sancho again asked Valmorain what he planned to do with Tete and Rosette, since the situation could not be hidden. Many whites kept their women of color, but always separate from the legal family. The case of a slave concubine was different. When the master married, the relationship was ended, and he had to give up the woman, who was sold or sent to the fields where the wife would not see her; having a lover and her daughter in the same house, as Valmorain intended to do, was unacceptable. The Guizot family, and Hortense herself, would understand that he had consoled himself with a slave during his years as a widower, but now the problem had to be resolved.

Hortense had seen Rosette dancing with Maurice at the country party and perhaps had suspicions, though Valmorain believed that in all the boisterous confusion she had not noticed much. "Don't be naive, brother-in-law, women have an instinct for these things," Sancho told him. On the day Hortense, accompanied by her court of sisters, came to inspect the house, Valmorain ordered Tete to disappear with Rosette until the end of the visit. He did not want to do anything hurried, he explained to Sancho. Faithful to his character, he preferred to postpone the decision and hope that things would work out on their own. He did not broach the subject with Hortense.

For a while the master continued to sleep with Tete when they were beneath the same roof, but he had not thought it necessary to tell her he was planning to marry; she found that out through the gossip circulating like a windstorm. During the plantation festival she had talked with Denise, a woman of loose tongue, whom she saw again from time to time in the Marche Francais, and through her learned that her future mistress was of a fiery and jealous nature. Tete knew that any change would be unfavorable, and that she would not be able to protect Rosette. Once again, crushed by anger and fear, she realized how profoundly powerless she was. If her master had given her an opening, she would have prostrated herself at his feet, she would have gratefully submitted to all his caprices, whatever he wished, as long as he kept the situation as it was, but as soon as he announced his courtship with Hortense Guizot he had stopped calling her to his bed. Erzulie, mother loa, at least protect Rosette. Pressured by Sancho, Valmorain came up with the temporary solution that from June to November Tete would stay with the little girl and look after the house in the city while he went with the family to the plantation; in that way he would have time to prepare Hortense. That meant six months more of uncertainty for Tete.

Hortense installed herself in a chamber decorated in imperial blue, in which she slept alone; neither she nor her husband had the custom of sleeping with someone, and after their suffocating honeymoon they needed their own space. Her childhood toys, horrid dolls with glass eyes and human hair, adorned her room, and her curly-haired little dogs slept on her bed, a piece of furniture three meters wide, with carved pillars, a canopy, cushions, curtains, fringe, and pompons, plus a petit-point head-board she had embroidered in the Ursulines' school. Above the bed hung the same silk sky and butterball angels her parents had given her for the wedding.

The recent bride arose after lunch and spent two-thirds of her life in bed, from which she managed the destinies of others. Their first night as a married couple, while still in the paternal house, she welcomed her husband in a negligee with swan plumes around the neckline, very becoming, but deadly for him because the feathers produced an uncontrollable attack of sneezing. Such a bad beginning did not prevent the marriage from being consummated, and Valmorain had the agreeable surprise that his wife responded to his desires with more generosity than either Eugenia or Tete had ever demonstrated.

Hortense was a virgin, but barely. In some way she had succeeded in escaping family vigilance and learned things that maidens had no knowledge of. The deceased fiance had gone to the grave without knowing she had surrendered to him with great ardor in her imagination, and would continue to do so in all the following years in the privacy of her bed, martyrized by unsatisfied desire and frustrated love. Her married sisters had provided basic information. They were not expert, but at least they knew that any man appreciates a certain show of enthusiasm, though not enough to arouse suspicion. Hortense decided on her own that neither she nor her husband were at an age for prudery. Her sisters told her that the best ways to dominate a husband were to play the fool and to please him in bed. The first would prove to be much more difficult than the second, for there was not one ounce of fool in her.

Valmorain accepted his wife's sensuality as a gift, without asking questions whose answers he would rather not know. Hortense's remarkable body, with its hills and dales, reminded him of Eugenia before her madness, when she still overflowed her gown and naked seemed sculpted of almond paste: pale, soft, fragrant, nothing but abundance and sweetness. Later, the poor woman was reduced to a scarecrow figure, and he could embrace her only when desperate or stupefied with drink. In the golden splendor of the candles, Hortense was a delight to the eyes, the opulent nymph of mythological paintings. He felt his virility, which he had considered irreversibly diminished, reborn. His wife excited him as once Violette Boisier had done in her apartment on the place Clugny, and Tete in her voluptuous adolescence. He was amazed by his ardor, renewed every night, and even at times at midday, when he arrived unexpectedly, boots covered with mud, and surprised her embroidering among the pillows of her bed, expelled the dogs with one sweep of his hand, and fell upon her with the jubilation of again feeling eighteen. Once during his bucking and curveting a cupid from the sky of the bed broke loose and fell on the nape of his neck, stunning him for brief moments. He awaked covered in icy sweat because his old friend Lacroix had appeared in the fog of his unconsciousness to reclaim the treasure he'd stolen from him.

Hortense exhibited the best side of her character in bed; she made little jokes, like crocheting a beautiful cone-shaped hat to tie around her husband's bayonet, and others darker, like inserting a chicken gut in her ass and telling him her intestines were falling out. From so much entanglement in the nun-initialed sheets the two ended by falling in love, just as she had forseseen. They were made for the complicity of marriage because they were essentially different; he was fearful, indecisive, and easy to manipulate, and she had the implacable determination he lacked. Together they would move mountains.

Sancho, who had advocated marriage for his brother-in-law so strongly, was the first to understand Hortense's true character and repent. Outside her blue chamber, Hortense was a different person, mean, avaricious, and fastidious. Only music could elevate her, briefly, above her devastating common sense, illuminating her with an angelic brilliance and filling the house with tremulous trills that awed the slaves and provoked howls from the lapdogs. She had spent several years in the unpleasant role of spinster and was tired of being treated with barely hidden disdain; she wanted to be envied, and for that to happen, her husband would need to be highly placed. Valmorain would need a great deal of money to compensate for his lack of roots among old Creole families and the lamentable fact that he came from Saint-Domingue.

Sancho proposed to keep the woman from destroying the brotherly camaraderie between him and his brother-in-law, and dedicated himself to flattering her with his smooth talk, but Hortense was immune to any squandering of charm that did not serve an immediate practical purpose. She did not like Sancho and kept him at a distance, though she treated him with courtesy in order not to wound her husband, whose weakness for his brother-in-law was to her incomprehensible. Why did he need Sancho? The plantation and the house in the city were his; he could rid himself of that partner who brought in nothing. "The plan to come to Louisiana was Sancho's, it occurred to him before the revolution in Saint-Domingue, and it was he who bought the land. I would not be here if it weren't for him," Valmorain explained when she asked. For her, that male loyalty was a useless and onerous sentimentality. The plantation was just getting under way; it would be at least three years before they could declare it a success, and meanwhile her husband was investing capital, working, and saving, while the other man lived like a duke. "Sancho is like my brother," Valmorain said, with an air of putting an end to the matter. "But he isn't," she replied.

Hortense kept everything locked up, assuming that the servants all stole, and she imposed drastic economic measures that paralyzed the house. The little pieces of sugar they chiseled from the rock hard cone hanging from a hook in the ceiling were counted before being put in the sugar bowl, and someone kept count of how many were used. The food left over from the table was no longer shared among the slaves, as it always had been, but transformed into other dishes. Celestine grew more and more angry. "If they want to eat leftovers of leftovers and crumbs of crumbs, they don't need me, any Negro from the cane fields can serve them as cook," she announced. Her mistress could not abide Celestine, but word had spread about her garlic frog legs, roast chicken with orange, pork gumbo, and little mille-feuille baskets filled with crawfish, and when a couple of offers came to buy Celestine for an exorbitant price, she decided to leave her in peace and turn her attention to the field slaves. She calculated that they could gradually reduce their food to the degree they increased discipline, without drastically affecting productivity. If they'd had a good result with the mules, it would be worthwhile to try it with the slaves. Valmorain opposed those measures in principle because they did not coincide with his original project, but his wife argued that that was how it was done in Louisiana. Her plan lasted a week, until Owen Murphy erupted in a rage that shook the trees and the mistress grudgingly had to accept that the cane fields, like the kitchen of her house, were not her purview. Murphy won, but the tone of the plantation had changed. The house slaves went around on tiptoes, and the ones in the fields were afraid the mistress would dismiss Murphy.

Hortense replaced and eliminated servants in an unending game of chess; one never knew whom to ask for something, and no one had a clear idea of duties. That irritated her, and she ended by lashing them with a coachman's whip she carried in her hand the way other women carry a fan. She convinced Valmorain to sell the majordomo and replace him with the slave she'd brought from her parents' house. That man ran around with handfuls of keys, spied on the other workers, and kept Hortense informed. The process of change did not take long because she had the unconditional approval of her husband, whom she would notify of her decisions between trapeze swings in bed. "Come over here, my love, and show me how seminarians ease their stress." Then, once the house was moving along as she wanted, Hortense got ready to confront three pending problems: Maurice, Tete, and Rosette.

Zarite

The master got married; he took his wife and Maurice to the plantation, and I was left for several months alone with Rosette in the house in the city. The children kicked and wept when they were separated and afterward went around peevish for weeks, blaming Madame Hortense. My daughter didn't know her but Maurice had described her, making fun of her songs, her little dogs, her dresses, and her ways; she was the witch, the intruder, the stepmother, the fat woman. He refused to call her Maman, and as his father would not allow him to address her in any other way he stopped speaking to her. He was compelled to greet her with a kiss, but always managed to leave traces of saliva or food on her face, until Madame Hortense herself liberated him from that obligation. Maurice wrote notes and collected little gifts for Rosette, which he sent via Don Sancho, and she answered with drawings and what words she knew how to write.

It was a time of uncertainty, but also of freedom because there was no one to give me orders. Don Sancho spent a good part of his time in New Orleans, but he paid no attention to details; it was enough that I attended to the little he asked. He was entrapped by that quadroon for whom he had fought a duel, a certain Adi Soupir, and was with her more than with us. I asked around about her and did not like what I heard. At eighteen she already had the reputation of being frivolous, greedy, and of having plucked the fortunes of several suitors. This is what I was told. I did not dare warn Don Sancho, he would have been furious. In the mornings Rosette and I went to the Marche Francais where I mingled with the other slaves and sat in the shade to talk. Some cheated on their masters' change and bought a glass of lemonade, or a dozen fresh oysters with lime to squeeze over them, but there was no one to ask an accounting of me, and I didn't have to steal. That was before Madame Hortense came to live in the master's house. Many people noticed Rosette, who looked like a little girl from a good family in her taffeta dress and black patent high-button shoes. I have always liked the market, with its fruit and vegetable stands, the spicy fried food, the noisy crowd of shoppers, preachers and charlatans, filthy Indians selling baskets, mutilated beggars, tattooed pirates, priests and nuns, street musicians.

One Wednesday I came to the market with my eyes swollen from crying all night from thinking about Rosette's future. My friends asked so often that finally I admitted the fears that had not let me sleep. The slave women advised me to get a gris-gris for protection, but I already had one of those amulets: a little sack of herbs, bones, my daughter's fingernails and mine, prepared by a voodoo priestess. It had not helped at all. Someone mentioned Pere Antoine, a Spanish priest with an enormous heart, who served the gentry and slaves equally. People adored him. "Go confess to him, he has magic," they told me. I had never confessed, because in Saint-Domingue the slaves had ended by paying for their sins in this world and not the next, but I had no one to go to, and for that reason I took Rosette to see him. I waited a good while; I was the last in the line of supplicants, each with her own guilt and petitions. When my turn came I didn't know what to do, I had never been so close to a Catholic houngan before. Pere Antoine was still young, but he had an old man's face: long nose, dark, kind eyes, beard like a horse's mane, and turtle feet in very worn sandals. He called us in with a gesture, lifted Rosette up, and sat her on his knees. My daughter did not resist, though he smelled of garlic and his dark brown habit was grimy.

"Look, Maman! He has hairs in his nose and crumbs in his beard," Rosette commented, to my horror.

"I am very ugly," he replied, laughing.

"I am pretty," she said.

"That is true, child, and in your case God forgives the sin of vanity."

His French sounded like Spanish with a cold. After joking with Rosette for a few minutes, he asked how he could help me. I sent my daughter outside to play so she wouldn't hear. Erzulie, friend loa, forgive me, I wasn't planning to go to the Jesus of the whites, but the affectionate voice of Pere Antoine disarmed me and I began to cry again, even though I had cried most of the night. Tears never run out. I told him that our fate was hanging by a thread; the new mistress had a hard heart, and as soon as she suspected that Rosette was her husband's daughter she would take revenge not on him, but on us.

"How do you know that, my daughter?" the priest asked.

"Everything is known, mon pere."

"No one knows the future, only God. At times what we most fear turns out to be a blessing. The doors of this church are always open, you can come whenever you want. Perhaps God will allow me to help you when the moment comes."

"The god of the whites frightens me, Pere Antoine. He is crueler than Prosper Cambray."

"Than who?"

"The overseer of the plantation on Saint-Domingue. I am not a servant of Jesus, mon pere. My gods are the loas that came with my mother from Guinea. I belong to Erzulie."

"Yes, daughter, I know your Erzulie." The priest smiled. "My God is the same as your Papa Bondye, but with a different name. Your loas are like my saints. There is room in the human heart for all the divinities."

"Voodoo is forbidden in Saint-Domingue, mon pere."

"Here you may follow your voodoo, my daughter, because no one cares as long as there is no scandal. Sunday is God's day-come to mass in the morning and in the afternoon go the place Congo to dance with your loas. What is the problem?"

He handed me a filthy piece of cloth, his handkerchief, to wipe away my tears, but I preferred the hem of my skirt. When we were leaving, he told me about the Ursuline nuns. That same night I spoke with Don Sancho. This is how it was.

A Time of Hurricanes

Hortense Guizot was a whirlwind of renovation in Valmorain's life, for she filled him with optimism, the opposite of what the rest of the family and the people on the plantation felt. Some weekends the couple received guests in the country, following the custom of Creole hospitality, but the visits diminished and soon ended; Hortense's annoyance was evident when someone came without being invited. The Valmorains spent their days alone. Officially, Sancho lived with them, like so many other bachelors attached to a family, but they saw little of him. Sancho looked for reasons to avoid them, and Valmorain missed the camaraderie they'd always shared. Now he passed his hours playing cards with his wife, listening to her sing at the piano, or reading while she painted scene after scene of maidens in swings and little cats with balls of yarn. Hortense's crochet hook flew, making doilies to cover all available surfaces. She had delicate, plump, white hands with perfect fingernails, busy hands for labors of crocheting and embroidering, agile on the keys, audacious in love. They spoke very little, but they understood each other through affectionate gazes and kisses blown from one chair to another in the enormous dining hall where they ate alone. Sancho rarely appeared, and Hortense had suggested that Maurice, when he was with them, should have his food with his tutor in the gazebo in the garden, if the weather permitted, or in the everyday dining room, and in that way take advantage of that time to continue his lessons. Maurice was nine years old but he acted like a baby, according to Hortense, who had a dozen nieces and nephews and considered herself an expert in raising children. He needed to be around boys of his social class and not just those Murphys, so common. He was very spoiled, and he acted like a girl; he should be exposed to the rigors of life, she said.

Valmorain, rejuvenated, shaved off his sideburns and lost a little weight between his nocturnal acrobatics and the meager servings given him at table. He had found the conjugal happiness he had never had with Eugenia. Even his fear of a slave uprising, which had pursued him from Saint-Domingue, was pushed to the background. The plantation did not keep him from sleep because Owen Murphy's efficiency was ever to be praised; what he did not get done he turned over to his adolescent son Brandan, who was robust like his father and practical like his mother, and had worked on horseback since he was six.

Leanne Murphy had given birth to a seventh baby, identical to his brothers, robust and black-haired, but she took time to look after the slave hospital, going there every day with her baby in a little cart. She could not bear the sight of her employer. The first time Hortense tried to meddle in Leanne's territory, the Irishwoman planted herself in front of her with her arms crossed and an expression of icy calm on her face. That was how she had dominated the Murphy clan for more than fifteen years, and it also worked with Hortense. If the manager had not been such a good employee Hortense would have sent all of them packing just to crush that Irish insect, but she was more interested in production. Her father, a planter with antiquated ideas, said that sugar had maintained the Guizots for generations and they had no need to experiment, but she had discussed the advantages of cotton with the American agronomist and, like Sancho, was considering the advantages of cultivating that crop. She could not do it without Owen Murphy.

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?"

About 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

With 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.

After lunch, Hortense filled some hours with her voice exercises and getting dressed and combed. She did not emerge until four or five in the afternoon, when she was adorned for going out and ready to devote her complete attention to Valmorain. The prevailing style in France was becoming to her: lightweight gowns in pastel colors trimmed with Grecian frets, high waists with pleated full skirts, and the indispensable lace shawl across her shoulders. Hats were solid constructions with ostrich feathers, ribbons, and tulles that she herself transformed. Just as she had tried to redo leftover food, she recycled her hats; she took pom-poms off one to put on another and removed flowers from a second to add to the first; she even dyed the feathers without affecting their shape, so that every day she displayed a different look.

One Saturday at midnight, when she had been in the city for a couple of weeks and was returning from the theater in their coach, Hortense asked her husband about Tete's daughter.

"Where is that little mulatta girl, my dear? I haven't seen her since we arrived, and Maurice never tires of asking about her," she said in an innocent tone.

"Are you r-referring to Rosette?" Valmorain stuttered, loosening the loop at his neck.

"Is that her name? She's about Maurice's age, isn't she?"

"She's almost seven. She is quite tall. I didn't think you would remember her, you saw her only once," Valmorain answered.

"She was charming dancing with Maurice. She's old enough now to be working. We can get a good price for her," Hortense commented, caressing the nape of her husband's neck.

"I have no plans to sell her, Hortense."

"But I already have a buyer! My sister Olivie noticed her at the party and wants to give her to her daughter when she is fifteen-that will be two months from now. How can we deny her?"

"Rosette is not for sale," he repeated.

"I hope you won't have reason to regret that, Toulouse. That little sniveler is no help to us in any way and can create problems."

"I do not want to discuss this any further!" her husband exclaimed.

"Please, don't yell at me…" Hortense murmured on the verge of tears, clutching her round belly with gloved hands.

"Forgive me, Hortense. How hot it is in this coach! Later we will make a decision, dear, there's no hurry."

Hortense realized she had made a mistake. She had to do as her mother and her sisters did, who pulled strings in the darkness, cleverly, without confronting their husbands and letting them think they made the decisions. Marriage was like stepping on eggs: you had to walk with great caution.

When Hortense's belly was obvious, and she had to stay in-no lady appeared in public showing proof of having copulated-she lay in bed spinning her crocheted webs like a tarantula. Without moving a hair, she knew exactly what was going on in her fiefdom, society gossip, the local news, friends' secrets, and every step taken by a miserable Maurice. Only Sancho escaped her vigilance; he was so disorderly and unpredictable that it was difficult to follow his trail. Attended by New Orleans 's most renowned physician, Hortense gave birth on Christmas Day, in a house invaded by Guizot women. Tete and the rest of the domestics did not have enough hands to serve the visitors. Even in winter, the atmosphere was suffocating, and two slaves were assigned to swing the ventilators in the drawing room and madame's room.

Hortense was no longer in the bloom of youth, and the doctor warned that complications might arise, but in less than four hours a little girl was born, as rubicund as all the Guizots. Toulouse Valmorain, on his knees beside his wife's bed, announced that the child would be named Marie-Hortense, as was appropriate for the firstborn female, and everyone applauded emotionally, except Hortense, who wept with rage because she wanted a male child to compete with Maurice for the inheritance.

A wet nurse was installed in the mansard and Tete sent to a cubicle off the patio, which she shared with two other slaves. According to Hortense, that measure should have been taken much sooner to end Maurice's bad habit of going over to where the slave slept.

Marie-Hortense rejected the teat with such determination that the doctor counseled replacing the wet nurse before the little thing died of malnourishment. That coincided with her baptism, which was celebrated with the best of Celestine's repertoire: suckling pig with cherries, marinated duck, spiced shrimp, different kinds of gumbo, a turtle shell filled with oysters, French pastry, and a cake of several layers crowned with a porcelain cradle. By custom the godmother was from the family of the mother-in this case one of her sisters-and the godfather from the father's, but Hortense did not want a man as dissipated as Sancho, her husband's only relative, to be her daughter's moral guardian, so the honor fell to one of her brothers. That day there were silver boxes engraved with the baby's name and filled with caramel almonds for each of the guests, and a few coins for the slaves. While the diners dug into the food, newly baptized Marie-Hortense bawled with hunger; she had also rejected the second wet nurse. The third did not last two days.

Tete tried to ignore that desperate wailing, but her will weakened, and she presented herself before Valmorain to tell him that at Saint-Lazare Tante Rose had treated a similar case with goat milk. While they found a goat, she boiled rice till it dissolved, added a pinch of salt and a small spoonful of sugar, strained it, and gave it to the baby. Four hours later she prepared a similar brew, this time with oats, and thus from pap to pap, and with the goat they milked in the patio, the baby was saved. "Sometimes these blacks know more than we think," the doctor commented, amazed. Then Hortense decided that Tete should return to the mansard to care for her daughter full time. As her mistress was still secluded, Tete no longer had to wait till the cock crowed to go to bed, and as the child was no bother at night, at last she could rest.

The mistress spent nearly three months in bed, her dogs around her, the fireplace burning, and curtains open to let in the winter sun, consoling her boredom with female friends and plates of sweets. She had never appreciated Celestine so highly. When finally she ended her repose, at the insistence of her mother and her sisters, who were worried about that odalisque lethargy, no dress fit her, so she kept wearing the ones she had worn during her pregnancy, with alterations to make them look different. She emerged from her prostration with new airs, ready to take advantage of the pleasures of the city before the season ended and they had to go back to the plantation. She went out in the company of her husband or her women friends to take a turn along the broad dike, well called the longest road in the world, with its shady trees and enchanting nooks and crannies, where there were always coaches and girls with their chaperones and young men on horseback sneaking glances at them out of the corner of their eyes, along with the rabble that were invisible to Hortense. At times she sent a pair of slaves ahead with the dogs and a picnic, while she took a stroll, followed by Tete carrying Marie-Hortense.

About that time the marquis de Marigny offered his splendid hospitality to a member of the French royalty during his prolonged visit to Louisiana. Marigny had inherited an extraordinary fortune when he was barely fifteen, and it was said that he was the richest man in America. If he weren't, he did everything possible to seem so, lighting his cigars with paper bills. His squandering and extravagance was so extreme that even the decadent upper class of New Orleans was shocked. Pere Antoine denounced those displays of opulence from his pulpit, reminding the parishioners that a camel would pass through the eye of a needle before a rich man through the gates to heaven, but his message of moderation went right through his congregation's ears. The proudest families crawled to get an invitation from Marigny; no camel, however biblical, would make them miss those parties.

Hortense and Toulouse were invited not because of their names, as they had hoped, but thanks to Sancho, who had become Marigny's companion and between drinks had hinted that his in-laws would like to meet the noble guest. Sancho had a lot in common with the young marquis-the same heroic bent for risking his skin in duels over imaginary offenses, an inexhaustible energy for entertainment, an extreme gusto for gaming, horses, women, good food, and liquor, and the same divine scorn for money. Sancho Garcia del Solar deserved to be treated like a Creole of purest stock, proclaimed Marigny, who prided himself on being able to recognize a true gentleman with his eyes closed.

The day of the ball, the Valmorain house entered a state of emergency. From the break of dawn the servants trotted back and forth, fulfilling Hortense's peremptory orders, up and down stairs with pails of hot water for the bath, massage creams, diuretic teas to evaporate several years of fat in three hours, applications to clear the skin, shoes, gowns, shawls, ribbons, jewels, face paints. The seamstress was exhausted, and the French hairdresser swooned and had to be resuscitated with a vinegar rub. Valmorain, run into a corner by the frenetic agitation, went with Sancho to kill a few hours in the Cafe des Emigres, where there was never a shortage of friends to bet on cards. Finally, after the hairdresser and Denise had shored up Hortense's tower of curls, which were adorned with pheasant feathers and a gold and diamond brooch that matched her necklace and earrings, came the solemn moment of putting on the dress from Paris. Denise and the seamstress had her step into it in order not to disturb the hairdo. It was a prodigy of white veils and deep pleats that gave Hortense the disturbing aspect of an enormous Greco-Roman statue. When they attempted to fasten the back, with its thirty-eight minuscule mother-of-pearl buttons, they found that even with all their tugging and pulling it would not close; despite the diuretics she had, suffering nerves, just that week put on another five pounds. Hortense let out a shriek that nearly shattered the lamps and attracted everyone in the house.

Denise and the seamstress retreated to a corner and curled up on the floor, awaiting death, but Tete, who knew less than they about her mistress, had the bad idea of suggesting she fasten the dress with pins hidden beneath the bow of the sash. Hortense answered with another strident screech, picked up the whip, which she always had near, and threw herself upon Tete, spitting out sailors' curses and lashing her with all the resentment she had accumulated against her, the concubine, as well as irritation she had for herself for having gained the five pounds.

Tete fell to her knees, bent over, covering her head with her arms. Ssssh, crack! sang the whip, and every moan from the slave inflamed her mistress further. Eight, nine, ten lashes fell, resounding like powder kegs, and Hortense, red and sweating, her tower of hair collapsed into pathetic hanks, showed no signs of being satisfied.

At that instant Maurice charged into the room like a bull, scattering the paralyzed onlookers, and with one great shove, totally unexpected in a boy who had spent the eleven years of his life trying to avoid violence, he pushed his stepmother to the floor. He grabbed the whip and delivered a blow meant to mark her face, but it landed on her neck, cutting off both her breath and the scream in her throat. He lifted his arm to strike again, as beyond himself as a second before she had been, but somehow Tete got to him, caught hold of his breeches, and pulled him back. The second lash fell on the pleats of Hortense's dress.

The Slave Village

Maurice was sent to a boarding school in Boston, something his father had so often threatened, where strict American teachers would make him a man using didactic and disciplinary methods of military inspiration. Maurice went off with his few belongings in a trunk, accompanied by a chaperon hired for the purpose, who left him at the doors of the establishment with a pat of consolation. The boy had not been able to say good-bye to Tete, because the morning after the incident of the whip she was sent without discussion to the plantation, with instructions to Owen Murphy to put her immediately to cutting cane. The manager saw her arrive covered with welts, each the width of a rope for driving oxen, but fortunately none on her face, and sent her to his wife's hospital. Leanne, occupied with a complicated birth, pointed to an aloe pomade Tete should apply, as she was concentrating on a screaming girl terrified by the torment that had been shaking her body for many hours.

Leanne, who had quickly and without much ado given birth to seven sons that were spit out from her chicken frame between two Our Fathers, realized she had a calamity on her hands. She took Tete aside and explained in a low voice, so the girl wouldn't hear, that the baby was lying crossways in the womb, and there was no way for it to get out. "I have never lost a woman in birth, this will be the first," she whispered. "Let me see her, madame," Tete replied. She convinced the girl to let her examine her, oiled her hand, and with her fine and expert fingers found that the mother was dilated and that Leanne's diagnosis was accurate. Through the tight skin of the belly she followed the baby's form as well as if she could see it. She had the girl get on her knees with her head on the floor and rear in the air to relieve pressure on the pelvis as she massaged her belly, pressing with both hands to turn the baby from outside. She had never performed that maneuver but she had watched Tante Rose do it and had not forgotten. At that instant Leanne cried out: a tiny fist had appeared from the birth canal. Tete delicately pushed it back inside to keep from dislocating the arm, until it disappeared inside the mother, and then continued her task with patience, talking with the woman to calm her. At the end of a time that seemed very long, she felt the little creature move, slowly turning to finally slip its head into the birth canal. She could not contain a sob of gratitude, and seemed to see Tante Rose smiling at her side.

Leanne and she each took one arm of the mother, who had realized what was happening and was helping instead of madly resisting, and they walked her in circles, talking to her and stroking her. Outdoors the sun had set, and they realized that they were in the dark. Leanne lighted an oil lamp and they continued until the moment came to receive the baby. "Erzulie, mother loa, help it be born," Tete prayed aloud. "Saint Raymond Nonatus, pay attention, do not let an African saint get ahead of you," Leanne answered in the same tone, and they both burst out laughing. They had the mother crouch over a clean cloth, holding her under her armpits, and ten minutes later Tete held a purplish baby in her hands that, as Leanne cut the cord, she forced to breathe with a slap on the backside.

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

Dr. 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.

Gambo twice had one foot in the grave during the five weeks Parmentier kept him in the hospital, and each time had come back to life smiling and with the memory intact of what he had seen in the paradise of Guinea; his father was waiting, there was always music, the trees were bent down with fruit, vegetables grew untended, fish leaped from the water and could be caught without effort, and everyone was free: the island beneath the sea. He had lost a lot of blood from the three shots that had perforated his body: two in a thigh and the third in his chest. Parmentier spent whole days and nights by his side, battling tooth and nail without ever yielding, because he had taken a liking to the capitaine. He was an exceptionally brave man, something he himself would have liked to be.

"It seems to me I've seen you somewhere before, Capitaine," he told him during one of his excruciating treatments.

"Ah! I see you are not one of those whites incapable of distinguishing one black from another," Gambo jested.

"In this work, the color of one's skin matters little; we all bleed alike, but I confess that sometimes it's difficult for me to tell one white from another," Parmentier replied.

"You have a good memory, Doctor. You must have seen me on the Saint-Lazare plantation. I was the cook's assistant."

"I don't remember that, but your face seems familiar," said the physician. "During that time I used to visit my friend Valmorain, and Tante Rose, the healer. I think she got away before the rebels attacked the plantation. I have never seen her again, but I think of her always. Before I knew her, I would have started by cutting off your leg, Capitaine, and then tried to heal you with bloodlettings. I would have quickly killed you even with the best intentions. If you come out alive it's because of methods she taught me. Do you have any news of her?"

"She is a docteur feuilles and a mambo. I have seen her several times because even my General Toussaint consults her. She goes from camp to camp healing and giving advice. And you, Doctor, do you know anything about Zarite?"

"About whom?"

"A slave of the white man Valmorain. Tete they called her."

"Yes, I knew her. She went with her master after the Le Cap fire, I think to Cuba," said Parmentier.

"She isn't a slave though, Doctor. She has her freedom. Signed and sealed on a paper."

"Tete showed me that paper, but when they left they still had not legalized her emancipation," the doctor clarified.

During those five weeks, Toussaint Louverture often asked about the capitaine, and on each occasion Parmentier's answer was the same: "If you want me to send him back, don't hurry me, General." The nurses were in love with La Liberte and could scarcely leave him alone; more than one slipped into his bed at night, climbed upon him without crushing him, and administered in measured doses the best remedy for anemia, as he murmured Zarite's name. Parmentier was not unaware, but concluded that if with love the man was getting well, then let them keep loving him. Finally Gambo recovered sufficiently for him to get on his stallion, throw a musket over his shoulder, and go to rejoin his general.

"I thank you, Doctor. I thought I would never know a decent white man," he said in farewell.

"And I thought I would never know a grateful black one," the doctor replied, smiling.

"I never forget a favor or an offense. I hope to be able to repay you for what you have done for me. Count on me."

"You can do that now, Capitaine, if you wish. I need to join my family in Cuba, and you know that leaving here is nearly impossible."

Eleven days later, on a moonless night, Dr. Parmentier was rowed in a fisherman's skiff to a frigate anchored a certain distance from the port. Capitaine Gambo La Liberte had obtained a safe conduct and a passage, one of the few arrangements he made behind Toussaint Louverture's back during his brilliant military career. As a condition, he charged the physician with delivering a message to Tete should he see her again: "Tell her that my life is war and not love; not to wait for me because I have forgotten her." Parmentier smiled at the discrepancy in the message.

Adverse winds pushed the frigate in which Parmentier was traveling with other French refugees to Jamaica, where they were not allowed to debark, but after many changes of course in the treacherous waters of the Caribbean to elude typhoons and buccaneers, they reached Santiago de Cuba. The doctor traveled by land to Havana to look for Adele. He had not been able to send her money during the time they'd been separated and did not know in what state of poverty he would find his family. He had an address she had sent by mail several months before, so he reached a barrio of modest but well tended buildings on a paving stone street: saddlers, wig makers, cobblers, furniture makers, painters, and cooks who were preparing food on their patios to sell in the street. Large, majestic black women in starched cotton dresses and brightly colored tignons were coming out of their houses balancing baskets and trays with delicious fried foods and pastries, surrounded by naked children and dogs. The houses had no numbers but Parmentier had a description, and it was not difficult to find Adele's; it was painted cobalt blue and had a red tile roof and a door and two windows embellished with pots of begonias. A card hanging on the front of the house announced in large Spanish letters: "Madame Adele, modas de Paris." He knocked with his heart racing, heard a bark and some running footsteps; the door opened, and before him was his youngest daughter, a hand's breadth taller than he remembered her. The girl gave a shout and threw her arms around his neck, wild with joy, and within a few seconds the rest of the family was around him, as his knees doubled with fatigue and love. He had often imagined that he would never see them again.

Refugees

Adele had changed so little that she was wearing the same dress in which she had left Saint-Domingue a year and a half before. She earned her living sewing, as she always had done, and with great difficulty stretched her modest income to pay her rent and feed her children; it was not in her character to complain about what she didn't have but to be grateful for what she did. She and her children adapted among the many free blacks in the city, and soon she acquired a faithful clientele. She knew her needle and thread trade very well but did not understand fashion. For designs she enlisted Violette Boisier. The two women shared that intimacy that tends to unite people in exile who would not have given each other a second glance in their place of origin.

Violette, with Loula, had settled into a modest house in a barrio of whites and mulattoes, several grades above Adele in the hierarchy of class thanks to her distinction and the money she had saved in Saint-Domingue. She had emancipated Loula against her wishes and put Jean-Martin in a Catholic school to give him the best possible education. She had ambitious plans for him. At eight, the boy, who had the skin of a bronzed mulatto, had such harmonious features and gestures that if he had not worn his hair very short he could have passed for a girl. No one-he least of all-knew he was adopted; that was a secret sealed between Violette and Loula.

Once her son was safe in the hands of the priests, Violette put out her nets to connect with people of the upper classes who could make their life easier in Havana. She moved among the French because the Spanish and Cubans scorned the refugees who had invaded their island in recent years. The grands blancs who arrived with money ended up going out to the provinces, where there was land to spare and they could plant coffee or sugarcane, but the rest survived in the cities, some from their savings or from renting out their slaves; others worked or had businesses, not always legitimate, while the newspaper denounced the seditious competition of the foreigners who were threatening Cuba's stability.

Violette did not have to take badly paying work, like so many of her compatriots, but the cost of living was high, and she had to be careful with her savings. She was not of an age, nor did she have the will, to return to her former profession. Loula intended to trap an affluent husband but Violette still loved Etienne Relais and did not want to impose a stepfather on Jean-Martin. She had spent her life cultivating the art of being well liked, and soon she found a group of women friends among whom she sold Adele's dresses and the beauty lotions Loula prepared and earned a living that way. Violette and Adele came to be close friends, the sisters neither had. They had coffee together on Sundays, in house slippers, under an awning on the patio, making plans and adding up bills.

"I will have to tell Madame Relais that her husband died," Parmentier told Adele when he heard that story.

"You won't have to, she knows already."

"How could she know that?"

"Because the opal in her ring broke," Adele explained, serving him a second helping of rice with fried plantain and chopped meat.

Dr. Parmentier, who had proposed in his solitary nights to make it up to Adele for the unconditional love, always in the shadows, she had given him for years, took a separate house and re-created in Havana the dual life he had lived in Le Cap, hiding his family from others' eyes. He became one of the most sought after physicians among the refugees, although he did not gain access to high Havana society. He was the only doctor able to cure cholera with water, soup, and tea, the only one sufficiently honest to admit that there is no remedy for syphilis or yellow fever, the only one who could stop infection in a wound or prevent a scorpion bite from ending in a funeral. His one drawback was that he attended people of all colors. His white patients put up with it because in exile differences of nature tend to be erased and they were not in a situation to demand exclusive attention. They would not, however, have forgiven him a wife and children of mixed blood. That is what he told Adele, though she never asked for explanations.

Parmentier rented a two story house in a barrio for whites and used the first floor as an office and the second for his living quarters. No one knew that he spent his nights several blocks away in a little cobalt blue house. He saw Violette Boisier on Sundays at Adele's. The woman was a very well preserved thirty-eight and in the community of emigres had the reputation of being a virtuous widow. If someone thought he recognized in her a famous cocotte of Le Cap, he immediately discarded that idea as an impossibility. Violette always wore the ring with the broken opal, and there was not a single day she didn't think of Etienne Relais.

None of them had been successful in adapting, and now, several years later, they were just as much foreigners as they'd been on the first day, with the added aggravation that the Cubans' resentment of the refugees had become worse as their numbers grew; they were no longer the wealthy grands blancs but ruined people who clustered in barrios where crime and illness fermented. No one liked them. The Spanish authorities harassed them and strewed their paths with legal obstacles, hoping they would succeed in sending them off forever.

A governmental decree annulled any professional license that had not been obtained in Spain, and Parmentier found himself practicing medicine illegally. The parchment with the royal seal of France had no value, and under those conditions he could treat only slaves and poor who rarely were able to pay him. Another difficulty was that he had not learned a single word of Spanish, unlike Adele and his children, who spoke it at top speed with a Cuban accent.

For her part, Violette finally yielded to Loula's pressure and was on the verge of marrying a sixtyish Galician hotel owner, rich and in ill health, perfect according to Loula because he would soon be gone of a natural death, or with a little aid on her part, and leave them well set. The hotel owner, maddened by that late-in-life love, did not try to clarify rumors that Violette wasn't white because it didn't matter to him. He had never loved anyone as he did that voluptuous woman, and when finally he had her in his arms, he discovered that she provoked in him a senseless grandfatherly tenderness that was comfortable to her because it did not compete with the memory of Etienne Relais. The Galician opened his purse, and she could have spent like a sultana, had she wished, but he had forgotten to mention one thing: he was married. His wife had remained in Spain with their only son, a Dominican priest, and neither of them had any interest in that man whom they hadn't seen in twenty-seven years. Mother and son supposed that he was living in mortal sin, pleasuring himself with fat-assed women in the depraved colonies of the Caribbean, but as long as he sent them money regularly they were not concerned with the state of his soul. This suitor believed that if he married the widow Relais his family would never hear of it, and he would have done so had it not been for the intervention of a greedy lawyer who learned about his past and proposed to reap a good harvest. The Galician realized that he could not buy the lawyer's silence, and that the blackmail would be repeated a thousand times. An epistolary battle was begun, and a few months later the son unexpectedly appeared, prepared to save his father from the claws of Satan and the inheritance from the claws of the harlot. Violette, advised by Parmentier, backed out of the marriage, although she continued to visit her lover from time to time so he would not die of sorrow.

That year Jean-Martin turned thirteen, and for five years had been saying that he was going to follow a military career in France, as his father had. Proud and stubborn, as he had always been, he refused to listen to the arguments of Violette, who did not want to be parted from him and who had a horror of the army, where a boy as handsome as he could end up sodomized by a sergeant. Jean-Martin's insistence was so unshakable that finally his mother had to yield. She used her friendship with a ship captain she had known in Le Cap to get him to France. There he was welcomed by a brother of Etienne Relais, also a military man, who took him to the Paris school for cadets in which all the men of his family had been formed. He knew that his brother had married an Antillean woman and so was not surprised by the boy's color; he would not be the only one of mixed blood in the academy.

Considering that the situation in Cuba was continuously growing worse for refugees, Dr. Parmentier decided to test his fortune in New Orleans, and if things went well, he would send for his family later. Then, for the first time in the eighteen years they had been together, Adele spoke up and stated that they would not be separated again; they would all go together, or no one would go. She was prepared to continue to live a clandestine life, hidden, like the sin of the man she loved, but she would not allow her family to be torn apart. She proposed that they travel on the same ship, she and the children in third class, and that they debark separately, so that no one would see them together. She herself got passports, after bribing the proper authorities, as was the usual custom, and proving that she was free and could support her children with her work. She was not going to New Orleans to ask for charity, she told the consul with her characteristic smoothness, but to be a seamstress.

When Violette Boisier learned that her friends were planning to emigrate for the second time, she exploded in a fit of rage and weeping, something that had often happened when she was young but not in recent years. She felt betrayed by Adele.

"How can you follow that man who does not recognize you as the mother of his children?" she sobbed.

"He loves me the best he can," Adele replied, without anger.

"He has taught his children to pretend in public that they don't know him!" Violette exclaimed.

"But he supports them, educates them, and loves them very much. He is a good father. My life is bound to his, Violette, and we are not going to be apart again."

"And me? What's to become of me here alone?" Violette asked her, disconsolate.

"You could come with us," her friend suggested.

That idea seemed splendid to Violette. She had heard that there was a flourishing society of free people of color in New Orleans, where all of them could prosper. Without losing a minute, she consulted with Loula, and they both agreed that nothing was holding them in Cuba. New Orleans would be their last chance to put down roots and make plans for their old age.

Toulouse Valmorain, who had by means of sporadic letters kept in touch with Parmentier during those seven years, offered him his aid and hospitality, but he warned that there were more physicians in New Orleans than bakers, and the competition would be strong. Fortunately Parmentier's French royal license would be good in Louisiana. "And here," he added in his letter, "you won't have to speak Spanish, my most esteemed friend, because the language is French." Parmentier descended from the ship and fell into the embrace of his friend, who was waiting on the dock. They hadn't seen each other since 1793. Valmorain did not remember his friend being so small and fragile, and in turn Parmentier did not remember Valmorain that rotund. Valmorain had a new air of satisfaction; there was no trace of the tormented man with whom he'd had those interminable philosophical and political discussions in Saint-Domingue.

While the rest of the passengers debarked, they waited for the luggage. Valmorain did not notice Adele at all, a dark mulatta with two boys and a girl, who was attempting to hire a cart to transport her bundles, but he did notice among the crowd a woman wearing a handsome vermilion travel suit with a hat, bag, and gloves of the same color, so beautiful it would have been impossible not to notice her. He recognized her immediately, although that was the last place he expected to see her. He shouted out her name and ran to greet her with a boyish enthusiasm. "Monsieur Valmorain, what a surprise!" Violette Boisier exclaimed, holding out a gloved hand, but he put his hands on her shoulders and planted three kisses on her face, in the French style. He found, enchanted, that Violette had changed very little, and that the years had made her even more desirable. She told him in a few words that she was widowed, and that Jean-Martin was studying in France. Valmorain did not remember who that Jean-Martin was, but when he learned that she'd come alone, he was overcome by his youthful desires. His farewell words, "I hope you will allow me the honor of visiting you," were spoken in the intimate tone he hadn't used with her for a decade. They were interrupted at that instant by Loula, who was cursing at a pair of porters to get them to carry their trunks. "The rules haven't changed," she told him, elbowing him aside; "you will have to get in line if you plan to be received by madame."

Adele rented a small cottage on Rampart Street, where many free women of color lived, most of them kept by a white protector, according to the traditional system of placage, or "left-handed marriage," which had started in the early times of the colony when it was not easy to convince a young European woman to follow a man to those savage lands. There were nearly two thousand arrangements of that kind in the city. Adele's dwelling was similar to others on her street: small, comfortable, well ventilated, with a back patio with walls covered in bougainvillea. Dr. Parmentier had an apartment a few blocks away, where he had also installed his clinic, but he spent his free hours with his family much more openly than he had in Le Cap or Havana. The only thing strange about this situation was the age of the participants, because a placage was an arrangement between white men and girls about fifteen; Dr. Parmentier was nearly sixty, and Adele could have been the grandmother of any of her neighbors.

Violette and Loula found a larger house on Chartres. It took them only a few turns around the place d'Armes, the dike at the hour of the afternoon strolls, and Pere Antoine's church at midday on Sunday to assess the vanity of the local women. The whites had succeeded in passing a law that forbade women of color to wear a hat, jewels, or showy clothes in public places, under threat of a lashing. The result was that the mulattas adorned themselves in their tignons with such charm that they surpassed the finest hat from Paris, and displayed necklines so tempting that any jewel would have been a distraction; they had such elegant bearing that by comparison the white women looked like washerwomen. Violette and Loula immediately calculated the money they could make with their beauty lotions, especially the snail slime creme and pearls dissolved in lemon juice to clear the skin.

The School in Boston

The whiplash Maurice had dealt Hortense Guizot had not prevented her from attending Marigny's celebrated ball; she masked it under a fine veil that draped to the floor and covered the pins that closed the dress at the back, but the blow left an ugly bruise for several weeks. Using that blemish she had convinced Valmorain to send his son to Boston. She also had another point: she had menstruated only once since the birth of Marie-Hortense. She was pregnant again and had to pamper her nerves; it would be better to send the boy away for a while. Her conception was not a marvel, the rumor she attempted to spread among her friends, but due to the fact that two weeks after giving birth she was frolicking with her husband with the same determination as during her honeymoon. This time it would be a son, she was sure, destined to carry on the family name and the family dynasty. No one dared remind her that a Maurice Valmorain already existed.

Maurice detested the school from the moment he crossed the threshold and the heavy wooden double door closed behind his back. His displeasure lasted unrelieved to the third year, when he had an exceptional teacher. He arrived in Boston in winter beneath an icy mist and found an entirely gray world: overcast sky, squares covered with frost, and skeletal trees with ugly, numbed birds on the naked branches. He had never known true cold. The winter went on forever; he went around with pains in his bones, ears blue with cold, and hands red with chilblains; he did not take off his overcoat even to sleep and lived with one eye on the sky, hoping to see a miserable ray of sun. The dormitory had a coal stove at one end that was lighted only two hours in the evening, so the boys could dry their socks. The sheets were always icy, the walls stained with greenish mold, and to wash in the mornings he had to break a skim of ice on the basins.

The boys, noisy and quarrelsome, in uniforms as gray as the landscape, talked a language Maurice could barely decipher-his tutor Gaspard Severin had had only a smattering of English-and he had to improvise the rest in his classes with the help of a dictionary. Months went by before he could answer his teachers' questions, and a year before he shared in the jokes of his American companions, who called him "the Frenchy" and bedeviled him with ingenious torments. His uncle Sancho's peculiar notions of boxing were useful because they enabled him to defend himself by kicking his enemies' balls, and his practices in dueling served him well to emerge victorious in the tourneys imposed by the school director, who made bets with the teachers and then punished the loser.

The food had the purely didactic purpose of tempering character. Whoever was capable of swallowing boiled liver or chicken necks with bits of feathers still attached, accompanied by cauliflower and burned rice, could confront the hazards of life, including war, for which the Americans were always preparing. Maurice, used to Celestine's refined kitchen, fasted like a fakir for thirteen days without anyone's caring a whit, and finally, when he fainted from hunger, there was no alternative left but to eat what was put on his plate.

Discipline was as iron hard as it was absurd. The unhappy boys had to leap out of bed at dawn, wash off with icy water, run three times around the courtyard, slipping in pools of water, to warm up-if tingling in your hands can be called warm-and study Latin for two hours before a breakfast of hot chocolate, dry bread, and lumpy oatmeal, then endure several hours of classes and sports, at which Maurice was incompetent. At the end of the day, when the victims were swooning with fatigue, they were given a moralizing lecture for one or two hours, depending on the director's inspiration. Their calvary ended in reciting in chorus the Declaration of Independence.

Maurice, who had been spoiled by Tete growing up, submitted to that prison routine without complaint. Following in the footsteps of the other boys and defending himself from the bullies kept him so busy that his nightmares ended, and he did not think anymore of the gallows in Le Cap. He enjoyed learning. At first, he hid his eagerness for books so as not to be perceived as arrogant, but soon he began to help the others with their lessons and that way earned respect. He did not confess to anyone that he knew how to play the piano, dance a quadrille, and write poetry; the other boys would have drawn and quartered him. His companions watched him write letters with the dedication of a medieval monk, but did not openly make fun because he told them they were for his invalid mother. The mother, like the homeland, was not a subject for jokes: she was sacred.

Maurice coughed throughout the winter, but with spring it cleared up. For months he had huddled in his overcoat, with his head sunk between his shoulders, stooping, invisible. When the sun warmed his bones and he could take off his two jackets, his wool underdrawers, the mufflers, the gloves, and the overcoat, and walk erect, he realized his clothing was too tight and too short. He had undergone one of those classic growth spurts typical of pubescent boys, and from being the thinnest in his level had become one of the tallest and strongest. Observing the world from above, with several centimeters' advantage, made him feel safe.

The summer with its warm humidity did not bother Maurice, used to the boiling climate of the Caribbean. The college emptied, the students and most of the teachers left on vacation, and Maurice was left nearly alone, awaiting instructions to return to his family. Those instructions never arrived; instead his father sent Jules Beluche, the same chaperon who had come with him on the long, depressing voyage on the ship from his home in New Orleans, across the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, sailing around the peninsula of Florida, slipping along the Sargasso Sea, and facing the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, to the school in Boston. The chaperon, a remote relative of the Guizot family who'd fallen on bad times, was a middle-aged man who took pity on the boy and tried to make the voyage as agreeable as possible, but in Maurice's memory it would always be associated with his exile from his paternal hearth.

Beluche appeared at the school with a letter from Valmorain, explaining to his son the reasons why he would not go home that year and containing enough money to buy clothing, books, and any whim he might want to indulge. His orders were to take Maurice on a cultural trip to the historical city of Philadelphia, a place every young man of his position should know because it was there that the seed of the American nation had germinated, as Valmorain's letter pompously stated. Maurice left with Beluche, and for those weeks of forced tourism he remained silent and indifferent, trying to disguise the interest the trip aroused in him and to fight off the sympathy he was beginning to feel for that poor devil Beluche.

The next summer the boy was again left waiting two weeks at the school with his trunk all packed, until the same chaperon showed up to take him to Washington and other cities he had no desire to visit.

Harrison Cobb, one of the few teachers who stayed at the college during Christmas week, had noticed Maurice Valmorain because he was the only student who did not have visitors or gifts, and who spent the holidays reading alone in the nearly empty building. Cobb belonged to one of the oldest families in Boston, established in the city since the beginning of the seventeenth century and of noble origin, as everyone knew but he denied. He was a fanatic defender of the American republic and abominated nobility. He was the first abolitionist Maurice met, and he would mark the boy profoundly. In Louisiana abolitionism was considered worse than syphilis, but in the state of Massachusetts the subject of slavery was discussed constantly because the state's constitution, written twenty years before, contained a clause that prohibited it.

Cobb found an avid intellect in Maurice, and a fervent heart in which his humanitarian arguments immediately took root. Among other books, he had him read The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, published in 1789 in London with enormous success. This dramatic story of an African slave, written in the first person, had caused a commotion among European and American audiences, but few knew of it in Louisiana, and the boy had never heard it mentioned. The teacher and his student spent evenings studying, analyzing, and discussing; Maurice could at last articulate the uneasiness slavery had always caused him.

"My father has two hundred plus slaves that one day will be mine," Maurice confessed to Cobb.

"Is that what you want, son?"

"Yes, because I will be able to emancipate them."

"Then there will be two hundred plus Negroes abandoned to their fate and an imprudent boy in poverty. What is gained by that?" his teacher rebutted. "The struggle against slavery is not done plantation by plantation, Maurice, the way people think; the laws in this country and the world must be changed. You must study-prepare yourself and get involved in politics."

"I'm no good for that, sir!"

"How do you know? We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test."

Zarite

I had stayed on the plantation almost two years, according to my calculations, before my masters again brought me to serve with the domestics. In all that time I had not seen Maurice because during his vacations his father did not let him come home; he always arranged to send him on a trip to other places, and finally, when his studies were complete, he took him to France to meet his grandmother. But that came later. The master wanted to keep him far away from Madame Hortense. Neither was I able to see Rosette, but Monsieur Murphy brought me news of her every time he went to New Orleans. "What are you going to do with that pretty girl, Tete? You'll have to lock her up to keep her from stirring a storm in the street," he would joke with me.

Madame Hortense gave birth to a second daughter, Marie-Louise, who was born with a tight chest. The climate did not suit her but since no one can change the weather, except Pere Antoine in extreme cases, not much could be done to make her comfortable. It was because of her that they brought me back to the house in the heart of the city. That year Dr. Parmentier had arrived in New Orleans after a long time in Cuba, and he replaced the Guizot family's physician. The first thing he did was stop the leeches and mustard rubs, which were killing the child, and the next was to ask about me. I don't know how he remembered me after so many years. He convinced the master that I was the best person to look after Marie-Louise because I had learned a lot from Tante Rose. Then they ordered the manager to send me to the city. It was very sad to bid farewell to my friends and the Murphys and travel for the first time alone, with a permit to keep from being arrested.

Many things had changed in New Orleans during my absence; more garbage, more coaches and people, and a fervor of constructing houses and extending streets. Even the market had been expanded. Don Sancho no longer lived in the house with the Valmorains, he had moved to an apartment in the same neighborhood. According to Celestine, he had forgotten Adi Soupir and was in love with a Cuban woman whom no one in the house had ever seen. I moved into the mansard room with Marie-Louise, a pale little thing so weak she didn't even cry. It occurred to me to bind her to my body-that had given a good result with Maurice, who was also born sickly-but Madame Hortense said that that might be fine for blacks but not for her daughter. I did not want to put her in a cradle-she would have died-so I opted to always carry her in my arms.

As soon as I had a chance, I spoke with my master to remind him that I would be thirty that year and was due my freedom.

"Who will care for my daughters?" he asked me.

"I will, if that is what you want, monsieur."

"You mean that everything will be the same?"

"Not the same, monsieur; if I am free, I can leave if I want, none of you can beat me, and you will have to pay me a little so I can live."

"Pay you!" he exclaimed with surprise.

"That's how coachmen, cooks, nurses, seamstresses, and other free persons make a living, monsieur."

"I see you are very well informed. Then you know that no one employs a nursemaid; she is always part of the family, like a second mother, and later like a grandmother, Tete."

"I am not a part of your family, monsieur. I am your property."

"I have always treated you as if you were family! Well, then, if that is what you plan, I will need time to convince Madame Hortense, though it is a dangerous precedent and it will cause a lot of gossip. I will do what I can."

He gave me permission to go see Rosette. My daughter had always been tall and at eleven she looked fifteen. Monsieur Murphy had not lied, she was very pretty. The nuns had succeeded in curbing her impetuousness but had not erased her dimpled smile and seductive gaze. She greeted me with a formal curtsy, and when I hugged her she went rigid. I think she was embarrassed that her mother was a cafe au lait slave. My daughter was what mattered most to me in the world. We had lived like a single body, a single soul, until my fear that she would be sold, or that her own father would rape her, as he had me, had forced me to separate from her. More than once I had seen the master feeling her, the way men touch girls to know if they're ripe. That was before he married Madame Hortense, when my Rosette was an innocent little girl and he set her on his lap with affection. My daughter's coolness hurt me; to protect her, I might have lost her.

Nothing was left of Rosette's African roots. She knew about my loas, and Guinea, but in the school she had forgotten all that and become a Catholic; the nuns were nearly as horrified by voodoo as by Protestants, Jews, and Kaintucks. How could I reproach her for wanting a better life than mine? She wanted to be like Valmorain, not me. She talked to me with false courtesy, in a tone I didn't recognize, as if I were a stranger. This is how I remember it. She told me she liked the school, that the nuns were kind and were teaching her music, religion, and to write with a good hand, but no dance because that tempted the devil. I asked about Maurice, and she told me he was fine but that he felt lonely and wanted to come back. She knew about him because they wrote each other, as they'd done ever since they were separated. The letters took a long time to arrive, but they kept sending them without waiting for answers, like a conversation between fools. Rosette told me that sometimes a half dozen came the same day, but then several weeks would go by with no word. Now, five years later, I know that they addressed each other as "brother" or "sister" to throw off the nuns, who opened their students' correspondence. They had a religious code for referring to their feelings: the Holy Spirit meant love, prayers were kisses, Rosette posed as the guardian angel, he could be any saint or martyr from the Catholic calendar, and, logically, the Ursulines were devils. A typical letter from Maurice said that the Holy Spirit visited him at night, when he was dreaming of the guardian angel, and that he waked with a desire to pray and pray. She answered that she prayed for him and had to be careful among the hordes of devils that were always threatening mortals. Now I guard those letters in a box, and though I can't read them, I know what they say because Maurice read me some parts, those that were not too daring.

Rosette thanked me for the gifts of sweets, ribbons, and books that came, though I didn't know who sent them. How could I buy anything for her without money? I thought that Master Valmorain sent them, but she told me he had never visited. It was Don Sancho who gave the gifts in my name. May Papa Bondye bless the good Don Sancho! Erzulie, mother loa, I have nothing to offer my daughter. This is how it was.

A Promise to Be Kept

At the first possible opportunity Tete went to talk with Pere Antoine. She had to wait a couple of hours because he was making his rounds at the jail, visiting prisoners. He brought them food and cleansed their wounds and the guards did not dare stop him because word of his holiness had spread everywhere; some claimed that he had been seen in several places at the same time, and that sometimes a luminous plate floated above his head. Finally the Capuchin monk returned to the little stone house that served as his dwelling and office with his basket empty, wanting only to sit down and rest, but other needs awaited him and it was some time before sunset, the hour of prayer, when his bones took their ease as his soul rose to heaven. "I greatly regret, Sister Lucie, that I do not have the energy to pray more and better," he would say to the nun who attended him. "And why do you need to pray more, mon pere, if you are already a saint?" she invariably replied. He welcomed Tete with open arms, as he did everyone. He hadn't changed; he had the same sweet eyes of a big dog and the smell of garlic, he wore the same filthy robe, his wood cross, and prophet's beard.

"Where have you been, Tete!" he exclaimed.

"You have thousands of parishioners, mon pere, and you remember my name," she said, moved.

She explained that she had been at the plantation, and showed him for the second time the yellowed and brittle document of her freedom that she had been keeping for years, though it had done nothing for her because her master always found a reason to postpone what he had promised. Pere Antoine put on some thick astronomer's spectacles, took the paper over to the one candle in the room, and slowly read.

"Who else knows of this, Tete? I'm referring to anyone who lives in New Orleans."

"Dr. Parmentier saw it when we were in Saint-Domingue, but he lives here now. I also showed it to Don Sancho, my master's brother-in-law."

The priest sat down at a table with wobbly legs and wrote with difficulty, for the things he saw in this world were enveloped in a light fog, though he saw things in the other world with clarity. He handed her two messages spattered with ink stains and gave her instructions to take them herself to the two gentlemen.

"What do these letters say, mon pere?" Tete wanted to know.

"For them to come speak with me. And you, too, must be here next Sunday after mass. In the meantime I will keep this document," said the priest.

"Forgive me, mon pere, but I have never been parted from that paper," Tete replied with apprehension.

"Then this will be the first time." The Capuchin smiled and put the paper in a drawer in the table. "Don't worry, child, it is safe here."

That broken down table did not seem the best place for her most valuable possession, but Tete did not dare show misgivings.

On Sunday half the city gathered in the cathedral, among them the Guizot and Valmorain families with several of their domestics. It was the one place in New Orleans, aside from the market, where white people and those of color, free and slaves, mixed together, though the women were seated on one side and the men on the other. A Protestant pastor visiting the city had written in a newspaper that Pere Antoine's church was the most tolerant place in Christianity. Tete could not always attend mass-that depended on Marie-Louise's asthma-but that morning the baby waked feeling well, and they could take her out of the house. After the mass, Tete turned over the two girls to Denise and announced to her mistress that she had to stay a while; she needed to talk with the saint.

Hortense did not object, thinking that at last the woman was going to confession. Tete had brought her satanic superstitions from Saint-Domingue, and no one had greater authority than Pere Antoine to save her soul from voodoo. With her sisters she often commented that the Antilleans were introducing that fearsome African cult in Louisiana, as they had seen when, out of healthy curiosity, they went with their husbands and friends to the place Congo to witness the Negroes' orgies. Once it had been nothing more than shaking and twisting and noise, but now there was a witch who danced as if possessed with a long, fat snake coiled round her body, and half of the participants fell into a trance. Sanite Dede she was called, and she had come from Saint-Domingue with other Negroes and with the devil in her body. It was something to see the grotesque spectacle of men and women foaming at the mouth and with their eyes rolled back, the same ones who later crawled behind the bushes and wallowed like animals. Those people adored a mixture of African gods, Catholic saints, Moses, the planets, and a place named Guinea. Only Pere Antoine understood that hodgepodge and, unfortunately, allowed it. If he weren't a saint, she herself would initiate a public campaign to have him removed from the cathedral, Hortense Guizot made clear. People had told her of the voodoo ceremonies in which they drank the blood of sacrificed animals and the devil appeared in person to copulate with women from the front and the men from behind. It would not surprise her if the slave to whom she entrusted nothing less than her innocent daughters participated in those bacchanals.

In the little stone house the Capuchin, Parmentier, Sancho, and Valmorain were already seated in their chairs, intrigued; they did not know why they had been called. The saint knew the strategic value of the surprise attack. The ancient Sister Lucie, who came in shuffling her house slippers and with difficulty balancing a tray, served them an ordinary wine in chipped little clay cups and withdrew. That was the signal that Tete awaited to go in, as the priest had ordered.

"I have called you to this house of God to rectify a misunderstanding, my sons," said Pere Antoine, taking the paper from the desk drawer. "This good woman, Tete, should have been emancipated seven years ago, according to this document. Is that not so, Monsieur Valmorain?"

"Seven? But Tete has just turned thirty! I couldn't have liberated her any sooner!" the one addressed replied.

"According to the Code Noir, a slave who saves the life of a family member of the master has an immediate right to freedom, whatever her age. Tete saved the lives of you and your son Maurice."

"That cannot be proved, mon pere," replied Valmorain with a disdainful sneer.

"Your plantation on Saint-Domingue was burned, your overseers were murdered, all your slaves escaped to join the rebels. Tell me, my son, do you believe you would have survived without the aid of this woman?"

Valmorain took the paper and glanced over it, breathing heavily.

"This has no date, mon pere."

"Of course, it seems you forgot to write it in your haste and your anxiety to escape. That is easily understood. Fortunately, Dr. Parmentier saw this paper in 1793 in Le Cap, and that is how we can estimate that it dates from that time. But that is not important. We are among Christian gentlemen, men of faith, with good intentions. I am asking you, Monsieur Valmorain, in God's name, to effect what you promised." The sunken eyes of the saint bored into his soul.

Valmorain turned toward Parmentier, whose eyes were fixed on his cup of wine, paralyzed between loyalty to his friend, to whom he owed so much, and his own nobility, to which Pere Antoine had appealed in masterly fashion. Sancho, in contrast, could scarcely hide the smile beneath his bristling mustache. The matter pleased him enormously; for years he had been reminding his brother-in-law of the need to resolve the problem of the concubine, but it had taken nothing less than divine intervention for him to pay attention. He did not understand why he kept Tete if he no longer desired her; she was an obvious nuisance to Hortense. The Valmorains could get another nursemaid for their daughters among their many female slaves.

"Don't worry, mon pere, my brother-in-law will do what is just," he offered after a brief silence. "Dr. Parmentier and I will be his witnesses. Tomorrow we will go to the judge to legalize Tete's emancipation."

"Agreed, my sons. So now, Tete, from tomorrow on you will be free," Pere Antoine announced, lifting his cup in a toast.

The men made the gesture of emptying theirs, but none of them could swallow the concoction, and stood to leave. Tete stopped them.

"Just a minute, please. And Rosette? She has the right to be free too. That is what the document says."

Blood rushed to Valmorain's head, and he could not catch his breath. He clutched the head of his walking stick with pale knuckles, scarcely containing himself from lifting it against the insolent slave, but before he could do that the saint intervened.

"Of course, Tete. Monsieur Valmorain knows that Rosette is included. Tomorrow she, too, will be free. Dr. Parmentier and Don Sancho will see that everything is done in accord with the law. May God bless all of you, my sons…"

The three men left, and the priest invited Tete to have a cup of chocolate to celebrate. One hour later, when she returned to the house, her masters were waiting for her in the drawing room, seated side by side in high-backed chairs like two severe magistrates. Hortense was rabid and Valmorain offended; he could not get it in his head that this woman whom he had counted on for twenty years had humiliated him before the priest and his closest friends. Hortense announced that they would take the affair to the courts, the document had been written under duress and was not valid, but Valmorain would not allow her to continue in that direction. He did not want a scandal.

The masters showered the slave with recriminations that she did not hear because merry bells were jingling in her head. "Ingrate! If all you want is to go, then go immediately. Even your clothing belongs to us, but you can take it so you do not leave naked. I will give you half an hour to get out of this house, and I forbid you ever to enter again. We shall see what becomes of you when you are out in the street! Offer yourself to the sailors like any strumpet, that's the only thing you'll be able to do!" roared Hortense, striking the legs of her chair with her whip.

Tete left the room, closed the door carefully, and went to the kitchen, where the rest of the slaves already knew what was happening. At the risk of attracting her mistress's wrath, Denise offered to let Tete sleep with her and leave at dawn so she would not be in the street at night without a safe conduct. Tete wasn't free yet, and if picked up by the guard would end up in prison, but she was impatient to leave. She embraced each of them with the promise to see them at mass, on the place Congo, or in the market; she did not plan to go far. New Orleans was the perfect city for her, she said. "You won't have a master to protect you, Tete, anything can happen to you, it's very dangerous out there. How are you going to make a living?" Celestine asked her. "The way I always have, working."

She did not stop in her room to collect her meager possessions; she took only her document of freedom and a small basket of food, crossed the square almost floating, turned toward the Cathedral, and knocked on the saint's door. Sister Lucie opened it, holding a candle in her hand, and without a question led her down the hall joining the dwelling with the church to a badly lighted room where a dozen indigents were sitting at a table with plates of soup and bread. Pere Antoine was eating with them. "Have a chair, daughter, we've been expecting you. For now, Sister Lucie will provide you a corner to sleep in," he told her.

The next day the saint accompanied her to the court. At the exact hour Valmorain, Parmentier, and Sancho appeared to make legal the emancipation of "the woman Zarite, who is called Tete, a thirty-year-old mulatta of good behavior and loyal service. By way of this document her daughter Rosette, a quadroon of eleven, belongs as a slave to the aforementioned Zarite." The judge ordered a public notice hung so that "any person who has a legal objection should present himself before this Court in the maximum period of forty days from this date." When the ceremony, which lasted barely nine minutes, was ended, they all left in good spirits, including Valmorain. During the night, once Hortense slept, weary from rage and lamentation, he had time to think things through and realized that Sancho was right; he should let Tete go. At the door of the building he touched her arm.

"Although you have inflicted a great injury on me, I hold no rancor against you, woman," he said in a paternal tone, satisfied with his own generosity. "I suppose you will end up begging, but at least I shall save Rosette. She will continue with the Ursulines until she completes her education."

"Your daughter will thank you for it, monsieur," she replied, and danced off down the street.

The Saint of New Orleans

The first two weeks Tete earned her food and a straw mat to sleep on by helping Pere Antoine in his many charitable tasks. She got up before dawn, when he had already been praying a good while, and accompanied him to the prison, the hospital, the asylum for the mad, the orphanage, and a few private houses to give communion to the old and the sick abed. The whole day, under sun or rain, the frail figure of the priest with his dark brown robe and tangled beard moved around the city; he was seen in the mansions of the wealthy and in miserable huts, in convents and brothels, seeking charity in the market and cafes, offering bread to mutilated beggars and water to slaves in the auctions at the Maspero Echange, always followed by a pack of starving dogs. He never forgot to console the punished in the stocks installed behind the Cabildo, the most unfortunate of his flock, whose wounds he cleaned with such awkwardness, being as nearsighted as he was, that Tete had to take over.

"What angel hands you have, Tete! The Lord has pointed you out to be a nurse. You will have to stay and work with me," the saint suggested.

"I am not a nun, mon pere. I cannot work for nothing forever, I must look after my daughter."

"Do not give in to greed, daughter; service to one's neighbor has its payment in heaven, as Jesus promised."

"Tell him to pay me better right here, even if only a little."

"I will tell him, daughter, but Jesus has a lot of expenses," the priest replied with a sly laugh.

At dusk they would return to the little stone house, where Sister Lucie would be waiting with soap and water to clean up before eating with the indigents. Tete would soak her feet in a basin of water and cut strips to make bandages while the priest heard confessions, acted as arbiter, resolved quarrels, and dispelled animosities. He did not give advice, which according to his experience was a waste of time; each person commits his own errors and learns from them.

At night the saint covered himself with a moth-eaten mantle and went out with Tete to rub elbows with the most dangerous rabble, equipped with a lantern since none of the eighty lamp posts in the city was placed where it would help him. The lawless troublemakers tolerated him because he responded to their curses with sarcastic blessings, and no one could intimidate him. He did not come with an attitude of condemnation, or a determination to save souls, but to bandage knife wounds, separate the violent, prevent suicides, succor women, collect corpses, and lead children to the nuns' orphanage. If out of ignorance one of the Kaintucks dared touch him, a hundred fists were raised to teach the foreigner who Pere Antoine was. He went into Le Marais, the most depraved place along the Mississippi, protected by his inalterable innocence and his indistinct aureole. There oarsmen, pirates, pimps, whores, army deserters, bingeing sailors, thieves, and murderers gathered in gaming dens and whorehouses. Tete, terrified, inched forward through clay, vomit, shit, and rats, clinging to the Capuchin's habit and invoking Erzulie in a loud voice while the priest savored the thrill of danger. "Jesus watches over us, Tete," he assured her happily. "And if his attention wanders, mon pere?"

By the end of the second week, Tete had battered feet, an aching back, a heart depressed by human misery, and the suspicion that it would be easier to cut cane than distribute charity among the ungrateful. One Tuesday in the place d'Armes she ran into Sancho Garcia del Solar, dressed in black and so perfumed that not even flies approached him, very happy because he had just won a game of ecarte from an overly confident American. He greeted her with a flowery bow and kiss on the hand before several astonished gazes, then invited her to have a cup of coffee.

"It will have to be quick, Don Sancho, because I am waiting for mon pere, who is off healing the sores of a sinner, and I don't believe he will be long."

"Aren't you helping him, Tete?"

"Yes, but this sinner suffers from the Spanish illness, and mon pere does not let me see the man's private parts. As if that were a novelty for me."

"The saint is completely right, Tete. If I were attacked by that-may God forbid!-I would not want a beautiful woman to offend my modesty."

"Don't make fun, Don Sancho; that misfortune can happen to anyone. Except Pere Antoine, of course."

They sat down at a table facing the square. The owner of the cafe, a free mulatto acquaintance of Sancho's, did not hide his surprise at the contrast presented by the Spaniard and his companion, one with the air of royalty and the other that of a beggar. Sancho also noticed Tete's pathetic appearance, and when she told him what her life had been during those two weeks he burst out laughing.

"Sainthood certainly is a burden, Tete. You have to escape from Pere Antoine or you will end up as decrepit as Sister Lucie," he said.

"I cannot abuse Pere Antoine's kindness too much longer, Don Sancho. I will leave when the forty days of the notice in the court ends and I have my freedom. Then I will see what I am going to do; I have to find work."

"And Rosette?"

"She is still with the Ursulines. I know you visit her and take gifts in my name. How can I repay you for your goodness to us, Don Sancho?"

"You owe me nothing, Tete."

"I need to save something to support Rosette when she gets out of the school."

"What does Pere Antoine say of all this?" Sancho asked, stirring five spoonfuls of sugar and a dash of cognac into his cup of coffee.

"That God will provide."

"I hope that is the case, but perhaps it would be a good idea if you had an alternate plan. I need a housekeeper-my house is a disaster-but if I hire you the Valmorains will never forgive me."

"I understand, monsieur. Someone will hire me, I'm sure."

"The slaves do all the hard work, from tending the fields to raising the children. Did you know there are three thousand slaves in New Orleans?"

"And how many free persons, monsieur?"

"Some five thousand whites and two thousand of color is what they say."

"That is, there are twice as many free persons as slaves," she calculated. "How can I help but find someone who needs me? An abolitionist, for example."

"An abolitionist in Louisiana? If there are any, they are well hidden," Sancho laughed.

"I don't know how to read, write, or cook, monsieur, but I know how to do things in the house, bring babies into the world, sew up wounds, and heal the sick," she insisted.

"It will not be easy, woman, but I am going to try and help you," Sancho told her. "A friend of mine claims that slaves are more expensive than employees. It takes several slaves to grudgingly do the work one free person does with good will. You understand?"

"More or less," she admitted, memorizing every word to repeat to Pere Antoine.

"A slave lacks incentives; for him it is better to work slowly and badly, since his effort benefits only the master, but free people work hard to save and get ahead, that is their incentive."

"At Saint-Lazare, Monsieur Cambray's whip was the incentive," she commented.

"And you've seen how that colony ended, Tete. You cannot impose terror indefinitely."

"You must be a disguised abolitionist, Don Sancho; you talk like Monsieur Zacharie and that tutor in Le Cap, Gaspard Severin."

"Don't repeat that in public, you will cause me problems. Tomorrow I want to see you right here, clean and well dressed. We are going to call on my friend."

The next day Pere Antoine left alone to do his tasks, while Tete, wearing her one dress, recently washed, and her starched tignon, went with Sancho to apply for her first job. They did not go far, only a few blocks along picturesque Chartres with its shops of hats, laces, buttons, cloth, and everything that exists to nourish female coquetry, and stopped before a small two story house painted yellow, with green iron railing on the balconies.

Sancho rapped at the door with a small knocker in the shape of a toad, and a fat black woman opened. When she saw Sancho, her expression of bad humor was replaced with an enormous smile. Tete thought she had traveled twenty years in circles, to end at the same place she was when she left Madame Delphine's house. It was Loula. The woman did not recognize her-that would have been impossible-but since she was with Sancho she greeted her and led them to the drawing room. "Madame will be right here, Don Sancho. She is expecting you," she said, and disappeared, making the boards of the floor resound with her elephantine tread.

Minutes later Tete, with her heart leaping, saw the same Violette Boisier of Le Cap at the door, as beautiful as then and with the assurance years and memories bestow. Sancho was transformed in the instant. His Spanish male pomposity disappeared, and it was a timid boy who bent to kiss the beauty's hand, as the tip of his sword caught and turned over a little table. Tete managed to catch on the fly and clutch to her chest a porcelain medieval troubadour as she stared at Violette with awe. "I suppose this is the woman you were telling me about, Sancho," Violette said. Tete noticed the familiarity of her tone and Sancho's shyness; she remembered the gossip and understood that Violette was the Cuban who, according to Celestine, had replaced Adi Soupir in the Spanish lover's heart.

"Madame…we met a long time ago. You bought me from Madame Delphine when I was a girl," Tete managed to get out.

"I did? I d-don't remember," Violette stammered.

"In Le Cap. You bought me for Monsieur Valmorain. I am Zarite."

"Of course! Come to the window so I can see you better. How could I recognize you! You were a skinny little girl then, obsessed with running away."

"I am free now. Well, almost free."

"My God, this is the strangest coincidence. Loula! Come see who's here!" Violette shouted.

Loula came, dragging her huge body, and when she realized who it was, grabbed Tete in a gorilla embrace. Two sentimental tears rose in the woman's eyes when she remembered Honore, associated in her memory with the little child Tete had been. Loula told Tete that before Madame Delphine went back to France, she had tried to sell him, but he wasn't worth anything, he was just a sick old man, and she had to let him go; he would take care of himself begging.

"He went with the rebels before the revolution. He came to tell me good-bye-we were friends. That Honore was a true gentleman. I don't know if he managed to reach the mountains; the road was steep, and he had twisted bones. If he got there, who knows whether they accepted him. He was in no condition to fight in any war," Loula sighed.

"I am sure they accepted him-he knew how to drum and to cook. That is more important than carrying a weapon," Tete said to console her.

She told the priest and the ancient Sister Lucie good-bye, promising to help them tend the sick whenever she could, and moved in with Violette and Loula, as she had longed to do when she was nine. To satisfy a leftover curiosity from two decades back, she asked how much Violette had paid Madame Delphine for her and learned it was the cost of a pair of goats, even though her price went up 15 percent when she was turned over to Valmorain. "That was more than you were worth, Tete. You were an ugly, ill mannered kid," Loula assured her with all seriousness.

They gave Tete the only room for slaves in the house, a room without ventilation but clean, and Violette dug among her clothes and found something adequate for her to wear. Her tasks were so many she couldn't list them, but basically consisted of carrying out the orders of Loula, who no longer had the age or breath for domestic chores and spent the day in the kitchen preparing salves for beauty and syrups for sensuality. No sign on the street announced what was offered inside those walls; word of mouth was enough to attract an endless line of women of all ages, most of them of color, though some whites also came wearing heavy veils.

Violette appeared only in the afternoons; she had not lost the habit of devoting the morning hours to her personal care and to leisure. Her skin, rarely touched by direct sunlight, was as delicate as creme caramel, and the fine lines around her eyes gave her character; her hands, which had never washed clothing or cooked, were young, and she had added several pounds that softened her without making her appear matronly. Mysterious lotions had preserved the jet black of her hair, which she combed as she always had in a complicated bun, with a few curls hanging loose to delight the imagination. She still provoked desire in men and jealousy in women and that certainty added a swing to her walk and a purr to her laughter. Her clients confided their cares to her, asked her advice in whispers, and bought her potions without haggling, all with the most absolute discretion. Tete went with Violette to buy the ingredients, from pearls to clear the skin, which she obtained from pirates, to painted glass vials a captain brought her from Italy. "The container is worth more than the content. What matters is the look," Violette told Tete. "Pere Antoine maintains the opposite," Tete countered, laughing in return.

Once a week they went to a scribe, who wrote a letter Violette dictated for her son in France. The scribe took responsibility for putting her thoughts into florid phrases and handsome calligraphy. The letters took only two months to reach the hands of the young cadet, who punctually replied with four sentences in military jargon to say that his condition was positive and he was studying the language of the enemy, without specifying which enemy in particular, given that France had several. "Jean-Martin is just like his father," Violette sighed when she read those missives written in code. Tete dared asked how it was that maternity had not made her flesh flabby, and Violette attributed it to her Senegalese grandmother. She did not confess that Jean-Martin was adopted, just as she never mentioned to Tete her affair with Valmorain. However, she told her all about her long relationship with Etienne Relais, her lover and husband, to whose memory she had been faithful until Sancho Garcia del Solar came onto the scene; she had not fallen in love with any of the earlier suitors in Cuba, including the Galician who was on the verge of marrying her.

"I have always had company in my widow's bed to keep myself in shape. That's why I have good skin and good humor."

Tete judged that she herself would soon be wrinkled and melancholy from having consoled herself alone for so many years, with no incentive but the memory of Gambo.

"Don Sancho is a very good man, madame. If you love him, why don't you two get married?"

"What world do you live in, Tete? Whites do not marry women of color, it's against the law. Besides, at my age I have no reason to marry, especially an incurable carouser like Sancho."

"You could live together."

"I don't want to maintain him. Sancho will die a poor man, while I intend to die rich and be buried in a mausoleum crowned with a marble archangel."

A day or two before the time for Tete's emancipation was reached, Sancho and Violette went with her to the Ursulines' school to tell Rosette the news. They met in a room for visitors, large and nearly empty, with four rough wooden chairs and a large crucifix hanging from the ceiling. On a table sat cups of warm chocolate, with a coagulated skim floating on the top, and an urn for the alms that helped maintain the beggars that came to the convent. A nun attended the interview and kept watch out of the corner of her eye; the students could not be in the presence of a male, even the bishop, without a chaperone, and all greater reason a man as seductive as that Spaniard.

Tete had rarely mentioned the subject of slavery with her daughter. Rosette knew vaguely that she and her mother belonged to Valmorain and compared it with the situation of Maurice, who depended completely on his father and could not decide anything for himself. It did not seem strange to her. All the women and girls she knew, free or not, belonged to a man: father, husband, or Jesus. That was, however, the persistent subject of her letters from Maurice, who being free was nevertheless more affected than she by the absolute immorality of slavery, as he called it. In childhood, when the differences between them were less apparent, Maurice had tended to sink into tragic states of mind caused by the two subjects that obsessed him: justice and slavery. "When we grow up, you will be my master and I will be your slave, and we will live together very happy," Rosette told him once. Maurice shook her, choked with tears. "I will never have slaves! Never! Never!"

Among all the students of color Rosette had the lightest skin, and no one doubted that she was the daughter of free parents; only the mother superior, who had accepted her because of the donation Valmorain made to the school, along with the promise that she would be emancipated in the near future, knew her true situation. This visit turned out to be lengthier than the previous ones in which Tete had been alone with her daughter with nothing to say, both of them uncomfortable. Rosette and Violette hit it off immediately. Tete thought that in a certain way they were alike, not so much for their features as for their color and attitude. They passed the visiting hour in lively chatter, while she and Sancho mutely looked on.

"What a clever and pretty girl your Rosette is, Tete! She's the daughter I wish I'd had!" Violette exclaimed as they left.

"What will happen to her when she leaves school, madame? She is used to living like a rich girl; she has never worked, and she thinks she is white." Tete sighed.

"That is still a while away, woman. We'll see," Violette replied.

Zarite

On the appointed day I waited for the judge at the door of the court. The notice was still attached to the wall, as I had seen it every afternoon for those forty days, when I'd gone, with my soul on a thread and a good luck gris-gris in my hand, to find out whether anyone had opposed my emancipation. Madame Hortense could stop it, it was very easy for her-all she had to do was accuse me of debauchery or bad character-but it seems she did not dare defy her husband. Monsieur Valmorain had a horror of gossip. In those days I'd had time to think, and I had many doubts. Celestine's warnings were ringing in my head, as well as Valmorain's threats; freedom meant I had no help I could count on, no protection or security. If I did not find work, or fell ill, I would end up in the line of beggars the Ursulines fed. And Rosette? "Be calm, Tete. Have faith in God, who never abandons us," Pere Antoine would reassure me. No one came to the court in opposition, and on November 30, 1800, the judge signed my freedom and turned Rosette over to me. Only Pere Antoine was there; both Don Sancho and Dr. Parmentier, who had promised to come, had forgot. The judge asked me what surname I would like to have and the saint gave me permission to use his. Zarite Sedella, thirty years old, mulatta, free. Rosette, eleven, quadroon, slave, property of Zarite Sedella. That is what the paper said; Pere Antoine read it to me word by word before giving me his blessing and a tight hug. This is how it was.

The saint left immediately to tend to his obligations, and I sat down on a little bench in the place d'Armes to weep with relief. I don't know how long I was there, but it was a long weeping because the sun moved across the sky and my face dried in the shade. Then I felt someone touch my shoulder, and a voice I instantly recognized greeted me: "At last a little calm, Mademoiselle Zarite! I thought you were going to dissolve in tears." It was Zacharie, who had been sitting on another bench watching me, in no hurry. He was the most handsome man in the world, but I had never noticed that before because I was blindly in love with Gambo. In his gala livery at the Intendance in Le Cap he cut an imposing figure, and there in the plaza, in a waistcoat bound with moss colored silk, a batiste shirt, boots with tooled buckles, and several gold rings, he looked even better. "Monsieur Zacharie! Is it really you?" He looked a vision, very distinguished, with a few white hairs at his temples and a slim walking stick with an ivory handle.

He sat down by me and suggested we get past any formal treatment and speak like old friends in view of our long relationship. He told me he had hurried away from Saint-Domingue the minute the end of slavery had been announced and set sail on an American clipper that left him in New York, where he did not know a soul, shivering with cold and unable to understand a word of the gibberish those people speak. He knew that most of the refugees from Saint-Domingue had gone to New Orleans, and so managed to come here. He was doing very well. A couple of days before he had by chance seen the notice of my freedom on the wall of the court; he had investigated, and when he was sure it was the same Zarite he had known, the slave of Monsieur Toulouse Valmorain, he had decided to come on the indicated date, since his boat would be anchored in New Orleans anyway. He had seen me go into the court with Pere Antoine, had waited for me in the place d'Armes, and then had the delicacy to let me cry myself out before he said hello.

"I have waited thirty years for this moment, and when it comes, instead of dancing with joy I weep," I told him, embarrassed.

"You have time to dance now, Zarite. We will go out and celebrate this very evening," he offered.

"I don't have anything to wear!"

"I will buy you a dress, it is the least you deserve on this day, the most important one in your life."

"Are you rich, Zacharie?"

"I am poor but I live like a rich man. That is wiser than being rich and living like a poor man." He burst out laughing. "When I die, my friends will have to take up a collection to bury me, but my epitaph will say in gold letters: 'Here lies Zacharie, the wealthiest black man along the Mississippi.' I already ordered the inscription on the stone, and I keep it under my bed."

"That's the same thing Madame Violette Boisier wants: an impressive tomb."

"It is the only thing that stays on, Zarite. In a hundred years visitors to the cemetery will be able to admire the tombs of Violette and Zacharie and imagine that we had a good life."

He went to the house with me. Halfway there we met two white men, almost as well dressed as Zacharie, who looked him up and down with a sardonic expression. One of them spit very close to Zacharie's feet, but he didn't notice, or preferred to ignore it.

He didn't have to buy me a dress; Madame Violette wanted to get me ready for the first evening out of my life. Loula and she bathed me, massaged me with almond cream, polished my nails, and did the best they could with my feet, though of course they couldn't hide the calluses from so many years of going without shoes. Madame painted my face, and in the mirror I didn't see a gaudily colored me but an almost pretty Zarite Sedella. I put on a muslin dress of Violette's with an empire cut and cape of the same peach color, and she knotted on a silk tignon in her style. She lent me her taffeta shoes and her large golden earrings, her one jewel aside from the ring with the broken opal that she never removed from her finger. I did not have to leave in clogs and carry the slippers in a bag in order not to dirty them in the street, the usual way, because Zacharie came for me in a rented coach. I supposed that Violette, Loula, and several neighbors who came to look out of curiosity wondered why a gentleman like Zacharie would waste his time with someone as insignificant as me.

Zacharie brought me two gardenias, which Loula pinned onto my decolletage, and we went to the theater at the Opera. That night they were presenting a work by the composer Joseph Bologne, the chevalier de Saint-Georges, the son of a planter from Guadalupe and his African slave. King Louis XVI named him director of the Paris Opera, but he didn't last long because the divas and tenors refused to perform under his baton. That is what Zacharie told me. Perhaps none of the whites in the audience that applauded so loudly knew that the music had been composed by a mulatto. We had the best seats in the part reserved for people of color, second floor center. The heavy air in the theater smelled of alcohol, sweat, and tobacco, but I smelled only my gardenias. In the galleries were a number of Kaintucks, who interrupted with jeering shouts, until finally they were pulled out and the music could continue. After that we went to the Salon Orleans, where they were playing waltzes, polkas, and quadrilles, the same dances Maurice and Rosette had learned under their tutor's rod. Zacharie led me without stepping on my feet or running into other couples; we had to cut figures on the floor without flapping our arms or sticking out our rears. There were some white men but no white woman, and Zacharie was the blackest Negro aside from the musicians and waiters, and also the handsomest. He surpassed everyone in height and danced as if he were floating, his smile showing his perfect teeth.

We stayed to dance a half hour, but Zacharie realized that I did not fit in there, and we left. The first thing I did when I got into the coach was take off my shoes. We ended up near the river on a discreet little street far from most of the city's residences. I noticed that there were several coaches with their drivers dozing on the seats, as if they had been waiting quite some time. We stopped before an ivy covered wall with a narrow door, the overhanging lantern shedding a pale light. This entry was guarded by a white man armed with two pistols, who saluted Zacharie respectfully. We walked into a courtyard where a dozen saddled horses stood, and heard the chords of an orchestra. The house, which could not be seen from the street, was a good size, unpretentious, and I couldn't see the inside because heavy drapes were pulled across all the windows. "Welcome to Chez Fleur, the most famous place in New Orleans to come for gaming," Zacharie announced with a broad gesture that took in the entire surroundings. Soon we found ourselves in a large room. Through the cigar smoke I saw white men and men of color, some crowded around gaming tables, others drinking, and some dancing with women in deeply cut dresses. Someone put goblets of champagne in our hands. We could not move forward because someone stopped Zacharie at every step to say hello.

Suddenly an argument broke out among several players and Zacharie made a move to intervene, but faster than he was an enormous person with a mat of hair like wire, a cigar clamped between the teeth, and a wood cutter's boots, who delivered a few ringing slaps that dissolved the argument. Two minutes later the men were sitting with cards in their hands, joking, as if they'd never been cuffed. Zacharie introduced me to the person who had restored order. I thought it was a man with breasts, but it turned out to be a woman with hair on her face. She had the name of a delicate flower and bird that did not go with her looks: Fleur Hirondelle.

Zacharie explained to me that with the money he'd saved for years to buy his freedom, which he'd brought with him when he left Saint-Domingue, plus a bank loan obtained by his partner, Fleur Hirondelle, they were able to buy the house, which had been in bad shape, but they repaired it and put in all the necessary comforts, and even touches of opulence. They had no interference from the authorities, since a part of the take was designated for the inevitable bribes. They sold liquor and food, there was merry music from two orchestras, and they offered the most luscious ladies of the night in Louisiana. These were not employed by the house but were independent artists, as the Chez Fleur was not a brothel; there were many of those in the city and there was no need for another. At the tables fortunes were lost and sometimes won, but the largest part stayed with the house. The Chez Fleur was a good business, though they were still paying off the loan and had a lot of expenses.

"My dream is to have several of these gaming houses, Zarite. Of course it would take white partners, like Fleur Hirondelle, to get the money."

"She's white? She looks like an Indian."

"She is pure blooded French, just burned from the sun."

"You had luck to find her, Zacharie. Partners are not easy; it's better to pay someone to lend you a name. That's what Madame Violette does to get around the law. Don Sancho is a front, but she doesn't let him nose into her business."

At Zacharie's gaming house we danced in my style, and the night went flying by. When he took me back to the house it was nearly dawn, and he had to hold me by one arm because my head was spinning from contentment and champagne, which I'd never had before. Erzulie, loa of love, do not allow me to fall in love with this man because I will suffer, I prayed that night, thinking how the women in the Salon Orleans had looked at him, and how the ones at the Chez Fleur had offered themselves to him.

From the window of the carriage we saw Pere Antoine returning to the church, his feet dragging after a night of good works. He was exhausted and we stopped to pick him up, though I was ashamed that my breath smelled of alcohol and my dress was cut low. "I see you have celebrated your first day of freedom in grand style, my daughter. Nothing more deserved in your case than a little dissipation," was all he said before he gave me his blessing.

Just as Zacharie had promised, that was a happy day. This is how I remember it.

The Politics of the Day

In Saint-Domingue, Toussaint Louverture maintained precarious control under a military dictatorship, but the seven years of violence had devastated the colony and impoverished France. Napoleon was not going to allow that bow-legged black, as he called him, to impose conditions. Toussaint had proclaimed himself Gouverneur a Vie, for life, inspired by Napoleon's title of Premier Consul a Vie, and treated him as an equal. Bonaparte planned to crush him like a cockroach, put the blacks to work on the plantations, and return the colony to dominion by the whites. In the Cafe des Emigres in New Orleans, the clients followed the confused events of the following months with fervent attention; they had not lost hope of going back to the island. Napoleon sent a large expedition under the command of his brother-in-law, General Leclerc, who brought with him his beautiful wife Pauline Bonaparte. Napoleon's sister traveled with courtesans, musicians, acrobats, artists, furniture, and decorative objects, everything desirable to establish in the colony a court as splendid as the one she had left behind in Paris.

They left Brest at the end of 1801, and two months later Le Cap was bombarded by Leclerc's ships and reduced to ashes for the second time in ten years. Toussaint Louverture did not blink an eye. Unmoved, he awaited at every instant the precise moment to attack or to fall back, and when that happened his troops left the land leveled, not a tree standing. The whites who were unable to find refuge under Leclerc's protection were massacred. In April, yellow fever fell like another curse upon the French troops, so little accustomed to the climate and defenseless against the epidemic. Of the seventeen thousand men Leclerc had at the beginning of the expedition, seven thousand were left in lamentable condition; of the remainder, five thousand were dying and another five thousand were in the ground. Again Toussaint was grateful for the timely aid of Macandal's winged armies.

Napoleon sent reinforcements, and in June another three thousand soldiers and officers died of the same fever; there was not enough lime to cover the bodies in the mass graves, where vultures and dogs tore the bodies apart. However, that same month, Toussaint's z'etoile burned out in the firmament. The general fell into a trap set by the French under the pretext of a parley; he was arrested and deported to France with his family. Napoleon had conquered the "greatest Negro general of history," as he was defined. Leclerc announced that the only way to restore peace would be to kill every black in the mountains and half those in the plains, men and women, and to leave alive only children under twelve, but he was not able to execute his plan because he fell ill.

The white emigres in New Orleans, including the monarchists, toasted Napoleon, the invincible, as Toussaint Louverture was slowly dying in an icy cell in a fort in the Alps, at two thousand nine hundred meters near the Swiss border. In Saint-Domingue the war continued, inexorable, through 1802, and very few realized that in that brief campaign Leclerc lost nearly thirty thousand men before he himself perished of the same yellow fever in November. The Premier Consul promised to send another thirty thousand soldiers to the island.

One winter afternoon in 1803, Dr. Parmentier and Tete were talking on Adele's patio, where they often met. Three years before, when the doctor saw Tete in the Valmorains' house, shortly after he'd arrived from Cuba, he had given her Gambo's message. He told her of the circumstances under which they'd met, his horrible wounds, and the long convalescence that had allowed them to get acquainted. He also told her about how the brave capitaine had helped him get away from Saint-Domingue when that was nearly impossible. "He said for you not to wait for him, Tete, because he had forgotten you, but if he sent you that message it is because he hadn't," the doctor had commented on that occasion. He supposed that Tete had freed herself from the ghost of that love. He had met Zacharie, and anyone could discern his feelings for Tete, though the doctor had never glimpsed between them those possessive gestures that signal intimacy. Perhaps the habit of caution and pretense that had served them in slavery had roots too deep. The Chez Fleur kept Zacharie very busy, and from time to time he also made trips to Cuba and other islands to stock up on liquors, cigars, and other necessities for his business. Tete was never prepared when he appeared at the house on the rue Chartres. Parmentier had met him several times when Violette invited him to dinner. He was friendly and formal, and always came with the classic almond tart to end the meal. With Parmentier, Zacharie talked politics, about which he was obsessive; with Sancho, bets, horses, and his fanciful businesses; and with the women, anything that delighted them. From time to time when Zacharie's partner, Fleur Hirondelle, came with him she seemed to have a curious affinity with Violette. She put her weapons down at the front door, sat to have tea in the little drawing room, and then disappeared inside the house, following Violette. The doctor could swear that she emerged without hair on her face, and once had seen her drop a vial into her powder pouch, surely perfume; he had heard Violette say that all women have a smattering of coquetry in their soul, and a few fragrant drops are enough to awaken it. Zacharie pretended to ignore his partner's weaknesses while he was waiting for Tete to get dressed to go out with him.

Once they took the doctor to the Chez Fleur, where he could appreciate Zacharie and Fleur Hirondelle in their normal surroundings and appreciate Tete's happiness dancing barefoot on the small circular floor in the bar. Just as he had imagined when he met her at the Habitation Saint-Lazare, when she was very young, Tete possessed a great reserve of sensuality, though at that time it had been hidden beneath her severe expression. Watching her dance, the physician concluded that being emancipated had changed not just her legal status but also liberated that aspect of her character.

In New Orleans, Parmentier's relationship with Adele was not unusual; several of his friends and patients kept families of color. For the first time the doctor did not have to resort to unworthy strategies to visit his wife-none of that sneaking around at dawn, taking a criminal's precautions not to be seen. He had dinner nearly every night with her, slept in her bed, and the next morning tranquilly returned to his consulting office at ten in the morning, deaf to any commentary he might arouse. He had acknowledged his children, who now bore his surname; the two boys were studying in France and the girl was with the Ursulines. Adele worked on her sewing and, as she always had, saved as much as she could. Two women helped her with Violette Boisier's corsets, armor reinforced with whalebone, which gave curves to the flattest woman and could not be seen, so dresses seemed to float over a naked body. The whites wondered how a style inspired by ancient Greece could look better on Africans than on them. Tete came and went between houses with patterns, measurements, cloth, corsets, and finished dresses, which Violette was then responsible for selling among her clients.

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

Then 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.

Violette Boisier was quick to adjust to the impact of the Americans. She sensed that the amiable Creoles, with their culture of leisure, would not resist the push of those enterprising and practical men. "Pay attention to what I tell you, Sancho; in no time at all those parvenus are going to wipe us off the face of the earth," she warned her lover. She had heard of the egalitarian spirit of the Americans, inseparable from democracy, and thought that if once there had been room for free people of color in New Orleans, with greater reason there would be room in the future. "Make no mistake, they're more racist than the English, French, and Spanish put together," Sancho argued, but she didn't believe him.

While others were refusing to mix with the Americans, Violette devoted herself to studying them up close, to see what she could learn from them and how she could keep afloat through the inevitable changes they would bring to New Orleans. She was satisfied with her life; she had her independence and comfort. She was serious when she said she was going to die rich. With her earnings from her creams and advice on fashion and beauty she had in less than three years bought the house on Chartres and was planning to acquire another. "I have to invest in properties, it's the only thing that lasts, everything else blows away on the wind," she kept saying to Sancho, who owned nothing, the plantation belonged to Valmorain. The project of buying land and making it yield had seemed fascinating to Sancho the first year, bearable the second, and from then on torment. His enthusiasm for cotton evaporated as soon as Hortense showed interest in it; he preferred not to have any dealings with that woman. He knew that Hortense was conspiring to get him out of their lives, and recognized that she was not without reason, he was a burden Valmorain carried out of friendship. Violette advised him to resolve his problems by finding a wealthy wife. "Don't you love me?" Sancho replied, offended. "I love you, but not enough to support you. Get married, and we will go on being lovers."

Loula did not share Violette's enthusiasm for property, she maintained that in that city of catastrophes they were subject to the whims of climate and fires; she should invest in gold, and dedicate herself to loaning money, as they'd done before with good results, but Violette was not eager to make enemies for herself by practicing usury. She had reached the age of prudence, and was working on her social position. Her only worry was Jean-Martin, who, to judge by his cryptic missives, was still unmovable in his proposal to follow in the footsteps of his father, whose memory he venerated. She wanted something better for her son, and knew all too well how harsh military life was; just consider the disastrous conditions in which the defeated soldiers arrived from Haiti. She could not dissuade him with the letters she dictated to the scribe; she would have to go to France and convince him to study a money making profession like the law. However incompetent he might be, no lawyer ended up poor. The fact that Jean-Martin had not demonstrated interest in the law was of no importance-very few lawyers did. Afterward she would marry him, in New Orleans, to the whitest girl possible, someone like Rosette but with a fortune and good family. In her experience, light skin and money made almost anything easier. She wanted her grandchildren to come into the world with an advantage.

Rosette

Valmorain had seen Tete in the street; it was impossible not to run into her in that city. He hadn't spoken to her, but he knew she was working for Violette Boisier. He had little contact with his beautiful former lover because before he could renew their friendship, as he had planned when he saw her arrive in New Orleans, Sancho had cut him off using his gallantry, his good looks, and the advantage of being a bachelor. Valmorain still did not understand how his brother-in-law could have won the game from him. His relationship with Hortense had lost its luster since she, absorbed in maternity, had grown negligent about her acrobatics in the large matrimonial bed with the carved angels. She was always pregnant; she could not get over only having girls, and she had no time to recover from each birth before she was expecting the next one, surely a boy-each time becoming more weary, fat, and tyrannical.

Valmorain found the months in New Orleans tedious, he suffocated in the female atmosphere of his house and the constant presence of the Guizots; for that reason he escaped to the plantation, leaving Hortense and the girls to the activities in the city. In truth, she too preferred it that way; her husband took up too much space. On the plantation it wasn't as noticeable, but in the city the rooms grew small and the hours very long. He had his own life out of the house, but unlike other men in his situation he did not keep a lover to sweeten a few afternoons a week. When he'd seen Violette Boisier on the dock he'd thought she would be the ideal lover, beautiful, discreet, and not fertile. The woman wasn't young any longer, but he didn't want a girl whom he would soon tire of. Violette had always been a challenge and with maturity was doubtlessly more so, with her he would never be bored. However, because of a tacit agreement among gentlemen, he had not made a move after Sancho fell in love with her. That day he went to the yellow house, hoping to see her, with the Ursulines' note in his waistcoat. Tete, to whom he'd not spoken a word in three years, opened the door.

"Madame Violette is not in at the moment," she announced at the door.

"It doesn't matter-I came to speak with you."

She led him to the drawing room and offered him a cup of coffee, which he accepted in order to catch his breath, although coffee made his stomach burn. He sat down on an armchair that scarcely accepted his rear, his walking stick between his legs, gasping. It wasn't hot, but recently he frequently felt short of breath. I have to slim down a bit, he said every morning as he was struggling with his belt and the tie with three turns around his neck; even his shoes were tight. Tete returned with a tray, served him coffee the way he liked it, dark and bitter, then another cup for herself with a lot of sugar. Valmorain noticed, between amusement and irritation, a touch of arrogance in his former slave. Although she did not meet his eyes and did not commit the insolence of sitting, she dared drink coffee in his presence without asking his permission, and in her voice he did not hear the former submission. He admitted that she looked better than ever, surely she had learned a few of Violette's tricks. Remembering that woman, her gardenia skin, her black mane, her eyes shadowed by long eyelashes, made his heart flutter. Tete couldn't compare, but now that she didn't belong to him, she seemed desirable.

"To what do I owe your visit, monsieur?" she asked.

"It's about Rosette. Don't be alarmed. Your daughter is fine, but tomorrow she must leave the school, the nuns are going to Cuba because of the Americans. It is an exaggerated reaction, and without doubt they will return, but for now you have to take charge of Rosette."

"How can I do that, monsieur?" said Tete, startled. "I don't know whether Madame Violette would accept her if I brought her here."

"That isn't my concern. Tomorrow early you must go to get her. You can figure out what to do with her."

"Rosette is also your responsibility, monsieur."

"That girl has lived like a mademoiselle and received the best education thanks to me. The hour has come for her to face reality. She will have to work, unless you find a husband for her."

"She's only fourteen years old!"

"More than old enough to marry. Negro girls mature early." With an effort, Valmorain stood to leave.

Indignation burned through Tete like a flame, but years of obeying that man and the fear she had always had of him kept her from saying what was on the tip of her tongue. She had not forgotten the first time she was raped by her master when she was a girl, the hatred, the pain, the shame, nor the later abuses she'd borne for years. Silent, trembling, she handed him his hat and led him to the door. At the threshold he stopped.

"Has your freedom done you any good? You are poorer than you were, you don't even have a roof over your head for your daughter. In my house Rosette always had a place."

"The place of a slave, monsieur. I would rather live in poverty and be free," Tete replied, holding back her tears.

"Your pride will be your damnation, woman. You don't belong anywhere, you don't have a job or skill, and you're not young any longer. What are you going to do? I feel sorry for you, and that's why I'm going to help your daughter. This is for Rosette."

He handed her a pouch with money, went down the five steps to the street, and walked away, satisfied, in the direction of his house. Ten steps more and he'd forgotten the matter; he had other things on his mind.

During that period an idee fixe had begun to stir around in Violette Boisier's head, one that had first taken shape a year before, when the Ursulines put Rosette out on the street. No one knew men's weaknesses better than she, or women's needs; she planned to take advantage of her experience to make money and, in passing, offer a service that was greatly lacking in New Orleans. With that goal in mind, she offered her hospitality to Rosette. The girl came to the house in her school uniform, serious and haughty, followed two steps behind by her mother, who was carrying her bundles and had not stopped blessing Violette for having taken them under her roof.

Rosette had noble bones and eyes with her mother's golden streaks, the almond skin of the women in Spanish paintings, dark lips, wavy hair to the middle of her back, and the soft curves of adolescence. At fourteen she was already fully aware of the fearsome power of her beauty, and unlike Tete, who had worked from childhood, she appeared to have been born to be served. "She's going to have a hard time. She came into this world as a slave and she gives herself the airs of a queen. I will be putting her in her place," Loula observed with a disdainful snort, but Violette made her see the potential of her idea: investment and income, American concepts that Loula had adopted as her own. That convinced her to give her room to Rosette and go sleep with Tete in the servants' cell. The girl would need her rest, Violette said.

"Once you asked me what you were going to do with your daughter when she got out of school. The solution has occurred to me," Violette announced to Tete.

She reminded her that for Rosette the alternatives were scarce. To marry her without a good dowry would be to condemn her to forced labor at the side of a destitute husband. They could not even consider a Negro, it had to be a mulatto-but they tried to marry above them to better their social or financial situation, something Rosette could not offer. Neither did she have the makings of a seamstress, hairdresser, nurse, or any other of the jobs suitable to her situation. For the moment, her only capital was beauty, but there were a lot of beautiful girls in New Orleans.

"We are going to arrange things so that Rosette lives well without having to work," Violette declared.

"How will we do that, madame?" Tete smiled, incredulous.

"Placage. Rosette needs a white man to keep her."

Violette had analyzed the mentality of the clients who bought her beauty lotions, her whalebone armament, and the airy dresses Adele sewed. They were as ambitious as she was, and they all wanted their descendants to prosper. They gave a skill or a profession to their sons but they trembled in fear of the future for their daughters. To place them with a white man was usually better than marrying them to a man of color, but there were ten available girls for every white bachelor, and without good connections it was difficult to accomplish. The man chose the girl and then treated her as he wished, a very comfortable arrangement for him but risky for her. Usually the union lasted until the hour came at around thirty for him to marry someone of his own class, but there were also cases when the relationship continued for the rest of the man's life, and some in which a man remained a bachelor out of love for a woman of color. Whichever way it was, her luck depended on her protector. Violette's plan consisted of imposing fairness: the girl placee would demand security for herself and her children, since in turn she gave him total devotion and faithfulness. If the young man could not offer guarantees, his father had to do it for him, just as the mother of the girl guaranteed the virtue and good conduct of her daughter.

"W-what will Rosette think of this, madame?" Tete stammered, frightened.

"Her opinion doesn't count. Think about it, woman. This is a long way from prostitution, though some say it is. I can assure you, from personal experience, that protection by a white is indispensable. My life would have been entirely different without Etienne Relais."

"But you married him…" Tete contended.

"That is impossible here. Tell me, Tete, what difference is there between a married white woman and a placee girl of color? Both are kept, subjected, destined to serve a man and give him children."

"But marriage means security and respect," Tete asserted.

"Placage should be the same," said Violette emphatically. "It must be advantageous for both parties, not another notch in his hunting knife for the white. I am going to begin with your daughter, who has neither money nor good family but is pretty and already free, thanks to Pere Antoine. She will be the best placee girl in New Orleans. In a year's time we will present her to society, I just need the right amount of time to prepare her."

"I don't know…" And Tete stopped protesting because she had nothing better for her daughter and she trusted Violette Boisier.

They did not consult with Rosette, but the girl turned out to be more willing than they'd expected; she guessed what they were up to and didn't object because she had her own plan.

During the following weeks, Violette visited, one by one, the mothers of adolescent girls in the highest echelon of color, the matriarchs of the Societe du Cordon Bleu, and explained her idea to them. Those women commanded in their world; many owned businesses, lands, and slaves, who in some cases were their own relatives. Their grandmothers had been emancipated slaves who had children by their masters for whom they received help and prospered. Family relations, though of different races, were the structure that held up the complex edifice of Creole society. The idea of sharing a man with one or several women was not strange to quadroons whose great-grandmothers came from polygamous families in Africa. Their obligation was to provide well-being for their daughters and grandchildren, even if that came by way of the husband of another woman.

Those formidable, doting mothers, five times more numerous than men of the same class, rarely found an appropriate son-in-law; they knew that the best way to care for their daughters was to place them with someone who could protect them, otherwise they were at the mercy of any predator. Physical violence and rape were not crimes if the victim was a woman of color, even if she were free.

Violette explained to the mothers that her idea was to hold an extravagant ball in the best available hall, financed by their donations. Only young whites with a fortune, and those seriously interested in placage, would attend, accompanied by their fathers if necessary, no philandering gallants looking for a careless girl for entertainment without commitment. More than one mother suggested that the men should pay to enter, but in Violette's view that would open the door to undesirables, as happened in the carnival balls, or those in Orleans Hall and the Theatre Francais, where for a modest price anyone could go in as long as they weren't black. This would be a ball as selective as those held by white debutantes. There would be time to look into the background of those who were invited, since no one wanted to hand over her daughter to someone with bad behavior or debts. "For once, the whites will have to accept our conditions," said Violette.

To avoid upsetting the mothers, she didn't tell them that in future she planned to add Americans to the list, despite Sancho's having warned her that no Protestant would understand the advantages of placage. There would be time for all that; for the moment, she had to concentrate on the first ball.

The white man could dance with the girl he chose a couple of times, and if he liked her, he or his father should immediately begin negotiations with the girl's mother; no time to be wasted in pointless courting. The protector had to contribute a house, a yearly pension, and an agreement to educate the couple's children. Once these points were agreed on, the placee would be installed in her new house and cohabitation would begin. She would assure him of discretion during the time they were together and the certainty that there would be no drama when the relationship ended, which would depend entirely on him. "The placage must be a contract of honor; it behooves everyone to respect the rules," said Violette. The whites could not abandon their young lovers to poverty because that would endanger the delicate balance of accepted concubinage. There was no written contract, but if a man violated his given word, the women would make sure his reputation was ruined. The ball would be called Cordon Bleu, and Violette would be responsible for making it the most anticipated event of the year for young people of all colors.

Zarite

I ended by accepting the idea of placage, which the mothers of other girls agreed to quite naturally, but it shocked me. I didn't want that for my daughter, but what else could I offer her? Rosette understood immediately when I dared tell her about it. She had more common sense than I did.

Madame Violette organized the ball with the help of some French men who produced spectacles. She also created an Academy of Etiquette and Beauty that came to be called the Yellow House, where she prepared the girls who took her classes. She said they would be the most sought after and they could be sure of being selected by a protector; that convinced the mothers, and no one complained about the cost. For the first time in her forty-five years Madame Violette got out of bed early. I waked her with strong black coffee and ran before she threw it at my head. Her bad humor lasted half the morning. Madame accepted only a dozen students, she didn't have room for more but she planned to find a better space next year. She hired instructors for singing and dancing; the girls practiced walking with a cup of water on their heads to improve posture, she taught them to comb their hair and paint their faces, and in their free hours I explained how to run a house, something I knew a lot about. She also designed a wardrobe for each one according to her figure and color, and Madame Adele and her helpers produced the dresses. Dr. Parmentier suggested that the girls should also have subjects for conversation, but according to Madame Violette no man is interested in what a woman says, and Don Sancho agreed. The doctor, on the other hand, always listens to Adele's opinions and follows her advice, for he has no head for anything but doctoring. She makes the decisions in their family. They bought the house on Rampart and are educating their sons about work and investments since the doctor's money turns into smoke.

Halfway through the year, the students had progressed so well that Don Sancho made a large bet with his friends at the Cafe des Emigres that every one of the girls would be well placed. I watched the classes discreetly, to learn if any of it could help me in pleasing Zacharie. Beside him I look like a servant; I don't have Madame Violette's charm or the intelligence of Adele, I'm not a coquette, as Don Sancho counseled me to be, nor as entertaining as Dr. Parmentier would wish.

During the day my daughter went around pressed into a bustier, and at night she slept slathered with creme to lighten her skin, with a headband to press back her ears and a girth constricting her waist. Beauty is illusion, madame said; at fifteen all girls are pretty, but to keep being that way requires discipline. Rosette had to read aloud the manifest of the cargo on the ships in port, in that way training herself to bear with a happy expression a boring man; she scarcely ate, she straightened her curls with hot irons, removed hair with caramel, rubbed herself with oats and lemon, spent hours practicing curtsies, dances, and drawing room games. What would it benefit her being free if she had to behave that way? No man deserves that much, I said, but Madame Violette convinced me that it was the only way to ensure her future. My daughter, who had never been docile, submitted without complaint. Something in her had changed; she no longer took pains to please anyone, she had gone silent. Once she had spent her time looking at herself in the mirror, but now she used it only when madame demanded in classes.

Madame taught the way to flatter without servility, to hold back reproaches, to hide jealousy and overcome the temptation to try other kisses. Most important, according to her, was to take advantage of the fire we women have in our belly. That is what men most fear and desire. She advised the girls to know their bodies and to pleasure themselves with their fingers, because without pleasure there is neither health nor beauty. Tante Rose had tried to teach me the same thing when Master Valmorain began to rape me, but I paid no attention, I was just a child and was afraid of everything. Tante Rose bathed me in herbs and spread a clay dough on my belly and thighs, which at first felt cold and heavy but then got warm and seemed to bubble, as if it were alive. Earth and water heal the body and the soul. I suppose that with Gambo I felt for the first time what madame was talking about, but we were pulled apart too soon. Then for years I felt nothing, until Zacharie came along to waken my body. He loves me, and he is patient. Aside from Tante Rose, he is the only person who has counted the scars in the secret places where sometimes my master put out his cigar. Madame Violette is the only woman I've ever heard use that word: pleasure. "How are you going to give it to a man if you don't know what it is?" she asked her students. Pleasure of love, of nursing a baby, of dancing. Pleasure is also waiting for Zacharie, knowing he will come.

That year I was very busy with my responsibilities in the house besides tending the students, running messages to Madame Adele, and preparing remedies for Dr. Parmentier. In December, just before the Cordon Bleu ball, I counted and realized it had been three months since I bled. The only surprise was that I hadn't got pregnant before, because I had been with Zacharie for some time without taking the precautions Tante Rose had taught me. He wanted to marry me as soon as I told him, but first I had to place my Rosette.

Maurice

During the vacation time of the fourth year of school, Maurice waited for Jules Beluche as he always did. By then he didn't want to meet his family, and the only reason to go back to New Orleans was Rosette, although the possibility of seeing her would be remote. The Ursulines did not allow spontaneous visits from anyone, much less a boy unable to prove a close relationship. He knew that his father would never give him the necessary authorization, but he never lost hope of going with his uncle Sancho, whom the nuns knew because he had never stopped visiting Rosette. Through his letters Maurice learned that Tete had been relegated to the plantation after the incident with Hortense, and he could only blame himself; he imagined her cutting cane from sunup to sundown and felt a fist in the pit of his stomach. Not only he and Tete had paid dearly for that one crack of the whip, apparently Rosette had fallen into disgrace too. The girl had written several times to Valmorain, asking him to come see her, but she got no answer. "What have I done to lose your father's esteem? Once I was like his daughter, why has he forgotten me?" she repeated in her letters to Maurice, but he could not give her an honest answer. "He hasn't forgotten you, Rosette-Papa loves you the way he always has and he wants you to be doing well, but the plantation and his businesses keep him busy. I haven't seen him myself for more than three years." Why tell her that Valmorain had never thought of her as a daughter? Before he'd been sent to Boston, he had asked his father to take him to visit his sister at the school, and with great anger Valmorain replied that Maurice's only sister was Marie-Hortense.

That summer Jules Beluche did not show up in Boston, instead Sancho Garcia del Solar, in his wide-brimmed hat, thundered up at full gallop with another horse in tow. He jumped down and brushed off the dust with his hat before embracing his nephew. Jules Beluche had been knifed over some gambling debts, and the Guizots intervened to squelch gossip; however distant the relationship that united them, sharp tongues would associate Beluche with the honorable branch of the family. They did what any Creoles of their class did in similar circumstances: they paid his debts, took him in until his wound healed and he could look after himself, gave him pocket money, and put him on a boat with instructions not to get off until he reached Texas, and never to return to New Orleans. Sancho told Maurice all that, doubled over with laughter.

"That could have been me, Maurice. Up till now I've been lucky, but any day they will bring you the news that your favorite uncle has been stitched like a quilt in some hole of a gaming house," he added.

"May God not let that happen, Uncle. Have you come to take me home?" Maurice asked in a voice that shifted from baritone to soprano in the same sentence.

"What makes you think that, boy! Do you want to be buried all summer on the plantation? You and I are going on a trip," Sancho announced.

"That's what I did with Beluche."

"Don't compare me to him, Maurice. I do not intend to contribute to your civic formation by showing you monuments, I mean to pervert you, what do you think of that?"

"How, Uncle?"

"In Cuba, my nephew. No better place for a couple of truants like us. How old are you?"

"Fifteen."

"And your voice hasn't changed yet?"

"It changed, Uncle, but I have a c-cold," the boy stammered.

"By your age I was a hell raiser. You're a little behind, Maurice. Pack your things, because we leave tomorrow," Sancho ordered.

Sancho still had many friends and no few lovers in Cuba, who proposed to shower him with attention during that vacation and put up with his companion, that strange boy who spent his time writing letters and suggested absurd subjects of conversation like slavery and democracy, something none of them had formed an opinion about. It amused them to see Sancho in the role of nursemaid, which he performed with unsuspected dedication. He turned down the best sprees in order not to leave his nephew alone, and stopped going to animal fights-bulls with bears, snakes with weasels, cocks with cocks, dogs with dogs-because they disturbed Maurice. Sancho decided to teach the boy to drink and, halfway through the night ended by cleaning up his vomit. He taught him all his card tricks, but Maurice lacked malice and instead had to pay up after others less principled fleeced him. Soon Sancho had also abandoned the idea of initiating him into the free-for-alls of love, for when he tried it Maurice nearly died of fright. He had arranged the details with a good-hearted woman friend, not young but still attractive, who was willing to act as teacher to the nephew for the pure pleasure of doing the uncle a favor. "This kid is still green behind the ears," Sancho muttered, mortified, when Maurice ran away upon seeing the woman in a provocative negligee reclining on a divan. "No one has ever rebuffed me like that, Sancho." She laughed. "Close the door and come console me." Despite those stumbles, Maurice had an unforgettable summer and returned to school taller, stronger, tanned, and with a definite tenor voice. "Don't study too hard, because it will ruin your sight and your character, get ready for next summer. I'm going to take you to Mexico," Sancho told his nephew as he left. He did as he promised, and from then on Maurice eagerly looked forward to summer.

In 1805, Maurice's last year of school, it was not Sancho who came for him, as he had before, but his father. Maurice deduced that he was there to announce some bad news and was afraid for Tete or Rosette, but it wasn't anything like that, it seemed. Valmorain had organized a trip to France to visit a grandmother and two hypothetical aunts his son had never heard mentioned. "And then we will go home, monsieur?" Maurice had asked, thinking of Rosette, whose letters lined the bottom of his trunk. He had written her one hundred ninety-three letters without a thought for the inevitable changes she had experienced in those nine years they'd been apart; he remembered her as the little girl dressed in ribbons and laces that he'd seen for the last time shortly before his father's marriage to Hortense Guizot. He couldn't imagine her at fifteen, just as she couldn't think of him as eighteen. "Of course we'll go home, son, your mother and sisters are waiting to see you," Valmorain lied.

The journey on a ship that had to skirt summer storms and with difficulty escape an attack by the English, and then a coach to Paris, did not bring the father and son together. Valmorain had conceived the trip in order to postpone for a few months more his wife's displeasure at seeing Maurice again, but he couldn't put it off indefinitely; soon he would have to confront a situation that had not been eased by the years. Hortense never lost a chance to spew venom upon that stepson whom each year she tried vainly to replace with her own son without producing anything but girls. For her, Valmorain had exiled Maurice from the family, and now he repented. A decade had gone by without a serious concern for his son; he was always occupied with his own affairs, first in Saint-Domingue, then in Louisiana, and last with Hortense and the births of the girls. The boy was a stranger who answered his sparse letters in a couple of formal sentences regarding the progress of his studies but he never asked about any member of the family; it was as if he wanted to leave it settled that he had no connection to them. He didn't even react when his father wrote him in a single line that Tete and Rosette had been emancipated and were no longer connected to the Valmorains.

Valmorain was afraid he'd lost his son at some point during those hectic years. This introverted young man, tall and handsome, with his mother's features, did not in any way resemble the rosy-cheeked boy he'd cradled in his arms, praying heaven to protect him from all harm. He loved him as much as he ever had, maybe more, because his emotion was stained with guilt. He tried to convince himself that his fatherly affection was returned by Maurice, even though they were temporarily distanced, but he had his doubts. He had laid out ambitious plans for his son without ever having asked him what he wanted to do with his life. In truth, he knew nothing about his interests or experiences; it was centuries since they had spoken. He wanted to win him back, and had imagined that those months alone together in France would act to establish an adult relationship. He had to prove to him his affection and to make clear that Hortense and her daughters would not change Maurice's situation as his only heir, but every time he tried to broach the subject there was no response. "The tradition of primogeniture is very wise, Maurice; wealth must not be divided among sons because with each division the family's fortune is lessened. Being the firstborn, you will receive my entire estate, and you will have to look after your sisters. When I'm no longer here, you will be the head of the Valmorains. It's time to start preparing you; you will learn to invest money, manage the plantation, and make your way in society," he told him. Silence. Conversations died before they began. Valmorain navigated from one monologue to another.

Maurice took in without comment Napoleonic France, always at war, the museums, palaces, parks, and avenues his father wanted to show him. They visited the ruined chateau where his grandmother was living out her last years, caring for two unwed daughters more deteriorated by time and loneliness than she. A prideful old woman dressed in Louis XVI style, determined to ignore the changes in the world, she was firmly ensconsed in the epoch prior to the French Revolution, and had erased from her memory the Terror, the guillotine, exile in Italy, and the return to an unrecognizable country. Seeing Toulouse Valmorain, that son absent for more than thirty years, she held out a bony hand with antique rings on each finger for him to kiss, and then ordered her daughters to serve chocolate. Valmorain introduced her grandson to her and tried to summarize his own story from the time he embarked for the Antilles up to the present. She listened without a word while the sisters offered steaming little cups and plates of stale pastries, eyeing Valmorain with caution. They remembered the frivolous young man who told them good-bye with a distracted kiss and left with his valet and several trunks to spend a few weeks with their father in Saint-Domingue, only never to return. They didn't recognize that brother with the scanty hair, double chin, and paunch, who spoke with a strange accent. They knew something of the uprising of slaves in the colony-they'd heard a few sentences here and there about atrocities on that decadent island, but they'd not connected them to a member of their family. They had never been curious to know where the funds that supported them came from. Bloodstained sugar, rebel slaves, burned plantations, exile, and all the rest their brother mentioned was as incomprehensible to them as a conversation in Chinese.

The mother, on the other hand, knew exactly what Valmorain was referring to, but now nothing interested her too much in this world; her heart was too dry for affection and news. She listened to him in an indifferent silence, and at the end, the one question she asked was if she could count on more money because what he regularly sent barely covered things. It was absolutely necessary to repair that house depleted by the years and vicissitudes, she said; she couldn't die leaving her daughters unsheltered. Valmorain and Maurice stayed inside those lugubrious walls for two days that seemed as long as two weeks. "We won't see each other again, better that way," were the elderly dame's words as she told her son and grandson good-bye.

Maurice docilely went everywhere with his father, except the classy brothel where Valmorain planned to fete him with the most expensive cocottes in Paris.

"What is it with you, son? This is normal and necessary. One must discharge the body's humors and clear the mind, that way one can concentrate on other things."

"I have no difficulty concentrating, monsieur."

"I've told you to call me Papa, Maurice. I suppose that in your trips with your Uncle Sancho…well, you wouldn't have been lacking for opportunities…"

"That is a private matter," Maurice interrupted.

"I hope that the American school hasn't made you religious or effeminate," his father commented in a jesting tone, but it came out with a growl.

The boy gave no explanations. Thanks to his uncle he wasn't a virgin; in the last vacation time Sancho had succeeded in initiating him, using an ingenious scheme dictated by necessity. He suspected that his nephew suffered the desires and fantasies proper for his age but was a romantic and was repelled by the idea of love reduced to a commercial transaction. It was up to him to help Maurice, he decided. They were in the prosperous port of Savannah, in Georgia, which Sancho wanted to know through the countless diversions it offered, and Maurice as well, because Professor Harrison Cobb had cited it as an example of negotiable morality.

Georgia, founded in 1733, was the thirteenth and last of the colonies founded in the new world and Savannah was its first city. The settlers maintained friendly relations with the indigenous tribes, thus avoiding the violence that was the scourge of other colonies. In the beginning, slavery-along with liquor and lawyers-was forbidden in Georgia, but soon it was realized that the climate and the quality of the soil were ideal for cultivating rice and cotton, and slavery was legalized. After independence, Georgia was converted into another state of the Union, and Savannah flourished as the port of entry for the traffic in Africans that supplied the region's plantations. "This demonstrates, Maurice, that decency quickly succumbs before greed. If it's a matter of getting rich, the majority of men will sacrifice their soul. You cannot imagine how well the planters in Georgia live, thanks to their slaves," Harrison Cobb had declared. The youth did not have to imagine it-he had lived in Saint-Domingue and New Orleans -and he accepted his uncle Sancho's suggestion that they spend their vacation in Savannah so as not to disappoint his teacher. "Love of justice is not enough to defeat slavery, Maurice; you have to see the reality and know in detail the laws and gears of politics," Cobb maintained, who was preparing his student to triumph where he himself had failed. The man knew his limitations; he had neither the temperament nor the health to fight in Congress, as he had dreamed of in his youth, but he was a good teacher; he knew how to recognize the talent of a student and to mold his character.

While Sancho Garcia del Solar fully enjoyed the refinement and hospitality of Savannah, Maurice suffered the guilt of having a good time. What would he tell his teacher when he returned to school? That he had stayed in a charming hotel, attended by an army of solicitous servants, and that there had not been hours enough to indulge his life as an irresponsible bon vivant?

They had scarcely been a day in Savannah when Sancho made friends with a Scots widow who lived two blocks from the hotel. The woman offered to show them the city, with the mansions, monuments, churches, and parks that had been beautifully reconstructed after a devastating fire. Faithful to her word, the widow appeared with her daughter, the delicate Giselle, and the four went out in the afternoon, thus beginning a very convenient friendship for uncle and nephew. They spent many hours together.

While the mother and Sancho played interminable games of cards, and from time to time disappeared from the hotel without explanation, Giselle took charge of showing Maurice around. They went out alone on horseback, far from the vigilance of the Scots widow, which surprised Maurice, who had never seen a girl have such freedom. Several times Giselle took him to a solitary beach, where they shared a light lunch and bottle of wine. She didn't talk much and what she said was so categorically banal that Maurice didn't feel intimidated, words he normally stored in his chest spilled out in torrents. At last he had a listener who did not yawn at his philosophical thoughts but listened with obvious admiration. From time to time her feminine fingers would carelessly brush him, and from those touches to more daring caresses took only three setting suns. Those outdoor assaults, peppered with insects, entangled in clothing, spiced by the fear of discovery, left Maurice in glory, and Giselle quite bored.

The rest of the vacation went by too quickly, and naturally Maurice fell in love like the teenager he was, love heightened with remorse at having stained Giselle's honor. There was only one gentlemanly way to remedy his fault, as he explained to Sancho as soon as he gathered his courage.

"I am going to ask for Giselle's hand," he announced.

"Have you lost your mind, Maurice? How can you marry her if you don't know how to blow your nose!"

"Have some respect, Uncle. I am a man from head to toe."

"Because you bedded the girl?" and Sancho let out a noisy guffaw.

The uncle barely avoided the punch Maurice aimed at his face. The matter became crystal clear to Maurice shortly after, when the Scots woman told him that the girl was not really her daughter and Giselle confessed that that was her theater name; she wasn't sixteen but twenty-four, and Sancho Garcia del Solar had paid her to entertain his nephew. The uncle admitted that he'd committed a monstrous foolishness, and tried to joke about it, but he had gone too far, and Maurice, devastated, swore he would never speak to him as long as he lived. Nonetheless, when they reached Boston there were two letters from Rosette waiting, and his passion for the beauty of Savannah evaporated, and he was able to forgive his uncle. When they said good-bye, they embraced with their usual camaraderie and the promise to see each other soon.

On the trip to France, Maurice did not tell his father anything about what had happened in Savannah. Valmorain, after softening his son with liquor, insisted twice more that he pleasure himself with ladies of the dawn, but he was not able to make Maurice change his mind, and in the end decided not to mention the subject again until they reached New Orleans, where he would provide him a garconniere, a bachelor apartment like those young Creoles of his social position enjoyed. For the time being, he would not allow his son's suspicious chastity to endanger the tenuous equilibrium of their relationship.

Spies

Jean-Martin Relais turned up in New Orleans three weeks before the first Cordon Bleu ball his mother organized. He came without the military academy uniform he had worn since he was thirteen in the role of secretary to Isidor Morisset, a scientist who was traveling to evaluate the properties of the land in the Antilles and Florida; he had the idea of establishing sugar plantations, given the losses reported by the colony in Saint-Domingue, which seemed definitive. In the new Republique Negre d'Haiti, General Dessalines was massacring, in systematic fashion, all whites, the very ones whom he'd invited to return. If Napoleon was planning to reach a commercial accord with Haiti, since he'd not been able to occupy it with his troops, he desisted after these horrible slaughters, in which even infants ended in common graves.

Isidor Morisset was a man with an impenetrable gaze, a broken nose, and wrestler's shoulders that burst the stitching of his jacket; he was red as a brick from the merciless sun on the crossing and equipped with a monosyllabic vocabulary that made him disagreeable from the minute he opened his mouth. His sentences-always too brief-sounded like sneezes. He wore the suspicious expression of someone who expects the worst from his fellow man, and answered questions with snuffs and snorts. He was immediately welcomed by Governor Claiborne with the attentions due to a stranger owed the respect attested to in the letters of recommendation from a number of scientific societies, delivered by the secretary on a carpet of embossed green leather.

Claiborne, dressed in mourning because of the death of his wife and daughter, victims of the recent epidemic of yellow fever, took note of the secretary's dark skin. From the way Morisset introduced him, he supposed that this mulatto was free and greeted him as such. One never knows what the proper etiquette is with these Mediterranean peoples, the governor thought. He was not a man to appreciate male beauty easily, but he could not help staring at the youth's delicate features-the thick eyelashes, the feminine mouth, the round, dimpled chin-in such contrast to the slim, limber body of undoubted masculine proportions. The youth, cultivated and with impeccable manners, served as interpreter, since Morisset spoke only French. The secretary's command of English left a great deal to be desired, but it was enough, given that Morisset was a man of very few words.

The governor's sharp nose warned him that the visitors were hiding something. The sugar mission seemed as suspicious as the man's muscular physique, which did not correspond to Claiborne's concept of a scientist, but those doubts did not excuse him from greeting him with the hospitality that was de rigueur in New Orleans. After a frugal luncheon, served by free Negroes since he did not own slaves, he offered his guests lodging. The secretary translated that it would not be necessary; they had come for a few days and would stay in a hotel while they awaited the ship that would take them back to France.

As soon as they left, Claiborne had them followed discreetly, and so learned that in the evening the two men left the hotel, the dark young man in the direction of Chartres Street and the muscular Morisset on a rented horse to a modest blacksmith shop at the end of Saint Philip Street.

The governor had been right in his suspicions: of science, Morisset had not a smattering; he was a Bonapartist spy. In December 1804 Napoleon had become the emperor of France; he himself placed the crown on his head, since he did not consider even the pope, especially invited for the occasion, worthy to do it. Napoleon had conquered half of Europe, but he still faced the problem of Great Britain, that tiny nation of horrible climate and homely people, defying him from the other side of the narrow English Channel. On October 21, 1805, those nations met in conflict off Cape Trafalgar, on the southwest coast of Spain, on one side the Franco-Spanish fleet of thirty-three ships and on the other the English twenty-seven, under the command of the celebrated admiral Horatio Nelson, genius of war at sea. Nelson died in the battle, following a spectacular victory in which the enemy fleet was destroyed and the Napoleonic dream of invading England was ended. Just at that time Pauline Bonaparte visited her brother to offer her condolences for the bad news of Trafalgar. Pauline had cut her hair to place in the coffin of her cuckolded husband, General Leclerc, dead of fever in Saint-Domingue and buried in Paris. The dramatic gesture of the inconsolable widow drew laughter across Europe. Without her long mahogany-colored hair, worn in the style of the Greek goddesses, Pauline looked so young that soon the style became the vogue. That day she arrived adorned with a tiara of famous Borghese diamonds, accompanied by Morisset.

Napoleon suspected that the visitor was another of his sister's lovers, and received him in bad humor, but he was immediately interested when Pauline told him that the ship in which Morisset had sailed across the Caribbean had been attacked by pirates, and that he had been the prisoner of Jean Lafitte for several months, until he could pay his ransom and return to France. During his captivity he had developed a certain friendship with Lafitte based on chess matches. Napoleon interrogated the man about Lafitte's noteworthy organization, which controlled the Caribbean with its ships; no boat was safe except those of the United States, which, because of the pirate's capricious loyalty to the Americans, were never attacked.

The emperor led Morisset into a little room where they spent two hours in private. Perhaps Lafitte was the solution to a dilemma that had tormented him since the disaster at Trafalgar: how to prevent the English from controlling maritime commerce. As he did not have the naval capacity to stop them, he had thought of allying himself with the Americans, who had been in a dispute with Great Britain since the War of Independence in 1775, but President Jefferson wanted to consolidate his territory and was not thinking of intervening in European conflicts. With a spark of inspiration, like so many that had taken him from a modest rank in the army to the peak of power, Napoleon charged Isidor Morisset with recruiting pirates to harass English ships in the Atlantic. Morisset understood that this was a delicate mission, since the emperor could not appear to be allied with buccaneers, and conjectured that, with his cover as a scientist, he could travel without attracting too much attention. The brothers Jean and Pierre Lafitte had grown untouchably rich over the years from piratical booty and every kind of contraband, but American authorities did not tolerate evasion of taxes, and despite Lafitte's manifest sympathy for the United States ' democracy, he was declared an outlaw.

Jean-Martin Relais did not know the man he was going to accompany across the Atlantic. One Monday morning the director of the military academy had called him to his office, handed him money, and ordered him to buy civilian clothing and a trunk; he was going to sail in two days. "Do not say a word of this, Relais, it is a confidential mission," the director instructed. Faithful to his military education, the young man obeyed without asking questions. Later he learned that he'd been selected for being the sharpest in the English course, and because the director thought that since he came from the colonies he would not drop dead at the first bite of a tropical mosquito.

The youth rode at full gallop to Marseille, where Isidor Morisset was waiting with tickets in hand. Jean-Martin silently gave thanks that the man scarcely looked at him; he'd been nervous, thinking they would share a narrow stateroom during the voyage. Nothing injured his monumental pride as much as intimations from other men.

"Don't you want to know where we're going?" Morisset asked when they'd been several days on the high seas without any conversation other than a few words of courtesy.

"I am going wherever France commands me," Relais replied, snapping to attention, on the defensive.

"No military moves, boy. We're civilians, understood?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Speak like normal people do, man, for God's sake!"

"At your orders, sir."

Jean-Martin soon discovered that Morisset, so somber and unpleasant in company, could be fascinating in private. Alcohol loosened his tongue and relaxed him to the point he seemed a different man, amiable, sarcastic, smiling. He played a good game of cards and had a thousand stories that he told without elaboration, in a few sentences. Between glasses of cognac they were coming to know each other, and between them grew the natural intimacy of good comrades.

"Once Pauline Bonaparte invited me to her boudoir," Morisset told him. "An Antillean black, covered only by a loincloth, carried her in and bathed her in front of me. La Bonaparte took pride in being able to seduce anyone, but it didn't work with me."

"Why not?"

"I am annoyed by female stupidity."

"Do you prefer male stupidity?" the youth joked with a touch of a tease; he too had had a few glasses and felt at ease.

"I prefer horses."

But Jean-Martin was more interested in the pirates than in equine virtues or the beautiful Pauline's bath, and again turned the conversation to the subject of the adventure his new friend had lived among them when he was held on Barataria Island. As Morisset knew that not even imperial warships dared approach the Lafitte brothers' island, he had flatly discarded the idea of going there without being invited; their throats would be slit before they stepped onto the beach, not giving them any opportunity to lay out their daring proposition. In addition, he wasn't sure that Napoleon's name would open the Lafittes' door-it might be just the opposite-and that is why he had decided to approach them in New Orleans, a neutral territory.

"The Lafittes are outlaws. I don't know how we're going to find them," he told Jean-Martin.

"It will be very easy, they don't hide," the youth assured him.

"How do you know that?"

"From my mother's letters."

Until that instant it hadn't occurred to Relais to mention that his mother lived in that city; it seemed an insignificant detail, given the magnitude of the mission the emperor had charged them with.

"Your mother knows the Lafittes?"

"Everyone knows them, they are the kings of the Mississippi," Jean-Martin answered.

At six o'clock in the evening, Violette Boisier was resting naked and damp with pleasure in the bed of Sancho Garcia del Solar. Ever since Rosette and Tete had been living with her and her house was invaded by students for the placage, she had preferred her lover's apartment for making love, or just to have her siesta if the spirit did not move them to more. At first Violette tried to clean and beautify the place, but she hadn't the least inclination to play at being a maid, and it was absurd to lose precious hours of intimacy trying to sort out Sancho's monumental clutter. Sancho's only servant did nothing but brew coffee. Valmorain had lent him to Sancho because it was impossible to sell him; no one would have bought him. He'd fallen from a roof and done something to his brain that caused him to wander around alone, laughing. With good reason, Hortense Guizot could not stand to have him around. Sancho tolerated him and even had a liking for him, for the quality of his coffee and because he didn't steal change when he went shopping in the Marche Francais. The man disturbed Violette; she thought that he spied on them when they made love. "That's just your idea, woman. He is so dim-witted he doesn't have the sense to do that," her lover said soothingly.

At that same moment Loula and Tete were sitting in wicker chairs on the street in front of the yellow house, as neighbors did at dusk. The notes of a piano exercise hammered the peace of the autumn evening. Loula was smoking her black cigar with half-closed eyes, savoring the rest her bones demanded, and Tete was sewing a baby's gown. The curve of her belly was not yet noticeable but she had already told her small circle of friends about her pregnancy, and the only one who'd been surprised was Rosette, who went around so self-absorbed that she hadn't noticed the love between her mother and Zacharie. That was where Jean-Martin Relais found them. He hadn't written to announce his voyage because his orders were to keep it secret, and in addition the letter would have arrived after he did.

Loula wasn't expecting him, and as it had been several years since she had seen him she didn't recognize him. When he stopped before her, all she did was take another puff on her cigar. "It's me, Jean-Martin," the boy exclaimed emotionally. It took the huge woman seconds to make him out through the smoke and to be aware it was in fact her boy, her prince, the light of her old eyes. Her shrieks of pleasure shattered the street. She hugged him around the waist, lifted him off the ground, and covered him with kisses and tears while he stood on tiptoe, trying to defend his dignity. "Where is Maman?" Jean-Martin asked as soon as he could free himself and pick up his hat from under their feet. "At church, son, praying for the soul of your departed father. Let's go inside; I'm going to make some coffee while my friend Tete goes to look for her," Loula replied without an instant's hesitation. Tete went running off in the direction of Sancho's apartment.

In the drawing room of the house, Jean-Martin saw a girl dressed in blue playing the piano with a cup on her head. "Rosette! Look who's here! My boy, my Jean-Martin!" Loula screeched in introduction. Rosette interrupted her musical exercises and slowly turned. They greeted each other, he with a stiff nod and click of his heels and she with a fluttering of her giraffe eyelashes. "Welcome, monsieur. Not a day goes by that madame and Loula do not speak of you," said Rosette with the forced courtesy learned from the Ursulines. Nothing could be more true. The memory of the young man floated through the house like a ghost, and from hearing about him so often Rosette already knew him.

Loula took Rosette's cup and went to tend to the coffee, and her exclamations of joy blasted in from the patio. Rosette and Jean-Martin, sitting in silence on the edge of their chairs, cast furtive glances at each other with the feeling they had met before. Twenty minutes later, when Jean-Martin was on his third piece of pastry, Violette came panting in, with Tete close behind. Jean-Martin thought his mother looked more beautiful than he remembered, and did not wonder why she was coming from mass with her hair in a tangle and dress badly buttoned.

From the doorway Tete watched the uncomfortable youth with amusement as Loula pinched his cheeks and his mother kissed and kissed him without letting go of his hand. The salt winds of the crossing had darkened Jean-Martin's skin several tones, and the years of military formation had reinforced the stiffness inspired by the man he thought was his father. He remembered Etienne Relais as strong, stoic, and severe, and for that treasured even more the tenderness he had showered on him in the strict intimacy of the home. His mother and Loula, on the other hand, had always treated him like a baby, and apparently would continue to do so. To compensate for his pretty face, he always kept an exaggerated distance, an icy posture, and that stony expression military men tend to have. In his childhood he'd had to put up with being mistaken for a girl, and in adolescence his schoolmates taunted him or fell in love with him. Those family caresses in front of Rosette and the mulatta, whose name he hadn't caught, embarrassed him, but he did not dare reject them. Tete did not notice that Jean-Martin had the same features as Rosette, she had always thought her daughter resembled Violette Boisier, and that seemed to have been accentuated in the months of training for the placage, during which the girl imitated her teacher's mannerisms.

In the meantime, Morisset had gone to the blacksmith shop on Saint Philip Street, which he had found out was a screen for illegal transactions; he did not, however, find the person he was looking for. He was tempted to leave a note for Jean Lafitte asking for a meeting and reminding him of the relationship they had developed over a chessboard, but realized that would be a major mistake. He had been spying for three months, posing as a scientist, and still was not used to the caution his mission demanded; at every turn he surprised himself on the verge of being imprudent. Later that same day, when Jean-Martin introduced him to his mother, his precautions seemed ridiculous, she offered quite casually to introduce him to the pirates. They were in the drawing room of the yellow house, which had become a little crowded with the family and those who had come to meet Jean-Martin: Dr. Parmentier, Adele, Sancho, and some neighbor women.

"I understand that they've put a price on the Lafittes' heads," said the spy.

"That's something the Americans are doing, Monsieur Moriste!" Violette laughed.

"Morisset. Isidor Morisset, madame."

"The Lafittes are highly esteemed because they sell at a good price. It would never occur to any of us to turn them in for the five hundred dollars offered for their heads," intervened Sancho Garcia del Solar.

He added that Pierre had a reputation for being crude, but Jean was a gentleman from head to toe, gallant with the women and courteous with men; he spoke five languages, wrote with impeccable style, and entertained with the most generous hospitality. He was of often tested courage, and his men, who numbered nearly three thousand, would die for him.

"Tomorrow is Saturday, and there will be an auction. Would you like to go to the Temple?" Violette asked.

"The Temple, you say?"

"That is where they have the auctions," Parmentier clarified.

"If everyone knows where they are, why haven't they been arrested?" Jean-Martin put in.

"No one dares. Claiborne has asked for reinforcement because those men are something to be feared; their law is violence, and they are better equipped than the army."

The next day Violette, Morisset, and Jean-Martin went on an outing, provided with a basket containing a lunch and two bottles of wine. Violette arranged to leave Rosette behind using the pretext of piano exercises; she had noticed that Jean-Martin was looking at her rather too frequently, and her duty as mother was to prevent any inconvenient fantasy. Rosette was her best student, perfect for the placage, but absolutely inadequate for her son, who needed to enter the Societe du Cordon Bleu by way of a good marriage. She intended to choose her daughter-in-law with an unswerving sense of reality, without giving Jean-Martin the opportunity to commit sentimental errors. As they left, Tete was added to the party. She climbed into the boat at the last minute with some misgivings because she was suffering the usual nausea of the first months of pregnancy, and she was also afraid of the caimans and snakes that infested the water, and others that sometimes fell from overhead branches of the mangroves. The fragile boat was steered by an oarsman who knew his way with his eyes closed in that labyrinth of canals, islands, and swamps eternally enshrouded in pestilent vapors and clouds of mosquitoes-ideal for illegal traffic and imaginative felons.

The Bastard

The Temple turned out to be an island in the swamps of the delta, a compact mound of shells ground by time, with a forest of oaks that once had been a sacred site of the Indians and still held the remains of one of their altars; the name derived from that. The brothers Lafitte had been there since early morning, as they were every Saturday of the year, unless it fell on Christmas or the Virgin's Ascension. Along the shore were lined up flat bottom skiffs, fishing boats, pirogues, canoes, small private boats with awnings for the ladies and rough barges for transporting products.

The pirates had set up several canvas tents, in which they exhibited their treasures and distributed free lemonade for the ladies, Kentucky whiskey for the men, and sweets for the children. The air smelled of stagnant water and the spicy fried crawfish served on corn husks. There was a spirit of carnival, with musicians, jugglers, and a show with trained dogs. A few slaves were on display on a platform, four adults and a naked little boy about two or three years old. Interested parties were examining their teeth to calculate age, the whites of their eyes to check health, and their anuses to be sure they were not stuffed with tow, the most common trick for hiding diarrhea. A mature woman with a lace parasol was weighing with gloved hand the genitals of one of the males.

Pierre Lafitte had already begun the auction of merchandise, which at first view lacked any logic, as if it had been selected with the single purpose of confusing the shoppers, a mixture of crystal lamps, bags of coffee, women's clothing, weapons, boots, bronze statues, jam, pipes and razors, silver teapots, sacks of pepper and cinnamon, furniture, paintings, vanilla, church goblets and candelabra, crates of wine, a tame monkey, and two parrots. No one left without buying; the Lafittes also acted as bankers and lenders. Every object was exclusive, as Pierre shouted at the top of his lungs, and should be, since it all came from boarding merchant ships on the high seas. "Look what we have here, mesdames and messieurs, see this porcelain vase worthy of a royal palace! And what will you give for this brocade cape bordered in ermine! You won't have a chance like this again!" The public responded with clowning and whistling, but the bids kept rising with an entertaining rivalry, which Pierre knew how to exploit.

In the meantime, Jean, dressed in black, with white lace cuffs and collar and pistols at his waist, was strolling through the crowd, seducing the incautious with his easy smile and the dark, beguiling gaze of a snake charmer. He greeted Violette Boisier with a theatrical bow, and she responded with kisses on both cheeks, like the old friends they'd come to be after several years of deals and mutual favors.

"May I ask what might interest the only woman capable of stealing my heart?" Jean asked.

"Don't waste your gallantries on me, mon cher ami, because today I am not here to buy." Violette laughed. She gestured to Morisset, four steps behind her.

Distracted by the explorer garb, the shaved face, and the thick spectacles, it took Lafitte a moment to recognize the man he had known with mustache and side-whiskers.

"Morisset? C'est vraiment vous!" he finally exclaimed, slapping him on the back.

The spy, uneasy, looked around and pulled his hat down to his eyebrows; it wouldn't help for news of this effusive show of friendship to reach the ears of Governor Claiborne, but no one was paying attention because at that instant Pierre was auctioning an Arab stallion that all the men coveted. Jean Lafitte led him to one of the tents where they could talk in private and refresh themselves with white wine. The spy told him of Napoleon's offer: a corsair's permit, une lettre de marque, which was the same as an official authorization to attack other ships, in exchange for which he would vent his spleen on the English. Lafitte replied amiably that in fact he didn't need permission to keep doing what he had always done, and the lettre de marque would be a limitation, since it meant abstaining from attacking French boats, with consequent losses.

"Your activities would be legal. You would not be pirates but corsairs, more acceptable to the Americans," Morisset argued.

"The only thing that would change our situation with the Americans would be to pay taxes, and to be frank, we haven't as yet considered that possibility."

"A corsair's license is valuable-"

"Only if we sail under a French flag."

The somber Morisset explained that the emperor's offer did not include that-they would have to continue flying the Cartagena flag, but they could count on impunity and refuge in French territories. That was more words at a time than he'd spoken in a long while. Lafitte agreed to send Morisset their decision since such matters were decided by a vote among his men.

"But in the end the only votes that count are yours and your brother's," Morisset persisted.

"You're mistaken. We are more democratic than the Americans, and certainly much more so than the French. You will have your answer in two days."

Outside the tent, Pierre Lafitte had begun the slave auction, the most awaited part of the fair, and the noise of bids was rising in volume. The one woman in the lot pressed the boy against her and implored a couple of buyers not to separate them; her son was clever and obedient, she said, as Pierre Lafitte described her as a good breeder who'd had a number of children and was still very fertile. Tete watched with her guts in a knot, and a scream caught in her throat, thinking of the children that pitiful woman had lost and the indignity of being auctioned. At least she had not gone through that, and her Rosette was safe. Someone commented that these slaves came from Haiti, delivered directly to the Lafittes by the agents of Dessalines, who was financing arms that way and in passing getting rich selling the same people with whom he'd fought for freedom. If Gambo could see this, he would explode with rage, Tete thought.

When the sale was nearly over, the unmistakable booming voice of Owen Murphy was heard, offering fifty dollars more for the mother and a hundred for the boy. Pierre waited the required minute, and as no one raised the price, shouted that both now belonged to the customer with the black beard. On the platform the woman half collapsed with relief, never loosing her hold on the child, who was crying with terror. One of Pierre Laffite's helpers took her by the arm and turned her over to Owen Murphy.

The Irishman had started off toward the boats, followed by the slave and her child, when Tete came out of her stupor and ran after them, calling to him. He greeted her without any excessive show of affection, but his expression betrayed the pleasure he felt at seeing her. He told her that Brandan, his oldest son, had married overnight and soon would make them grandparents. He also mentioned the land they'd bought in Canada, where they planned to go very soon, and all the family would begin a new life, including Brandan and his wife.

"I imagine that Monsieur Valmorain will not approve of your leaving," Tete commented.

"For some time now Madame Hortense has wanted to replace me. We don't have the same ideas," Murphy replied. "It's going to annoy her that I bought this black boy, but I've held to the Code. He's not old enough to be separated from his mother."

"There is no law here worth anything, Monsieur Murphy. The pirates do whatever they please."

"That's why I'd rather not deal with them, but I'm not the one who decides, Tete," the Irishman informed her, pointing to Toulouse Valmorain in the distance.

The master was standing away from the crowd, talking with Violette Boisier under an oak, she protected from the sun by a Japanese parasol and he leaning on his walking stick and wiping away sweat with a handkerchief. Tete stepped back, but it was too late; they had seen her, and she felt obliged to go over to them. She was followed by Jean-Martin, who was waiting for Morisset near the Lafittes' tent, and a moment later they were all together under the faint shade of the oak. Tete greeted her former master without looking him in the eye, but was able to note that he was even fatter and redder. She lamented that Dr. Parmentier was treating Valmorain with remedies she herself prepared to cool the blood. That man could with a single wave of his walking stick demolish Rosette's and her precarious existence. It would be better if he were in the grave.

Valmorain was very attentive as Violette Boisier introduced her son. He looked Jean-Martin over from head to toe, appreciating his slim build, the elegance with which he wore the inexpensive waistcoat, the perfect symmetry of his face. The youth greeted him with a bow, respectful of the difference in class and age, but Valmorain held out a fat, yellow-splotched hand he had to shake. Valmorain kept the youth's hand in his much longer than was acceptable, smiling with an indescribable expression. Jean-Martin felt his cheeks blaze red and brusquely pulled back. It wasn't the first time a man had made an insinuation, and he knew how to manage that kind of mortification without a fuss, but the brazenness of this inverti was particularly offensive, and he was shamed that his mother witnessed the scene. The rebuff was so obvious that Valmorain realized he had been misinterpreted. Far from being bothered, he snorted a laugh.

"I see that this slave's son has come out a little touchy!" he exclaimed, amused.

A paralyzing silence fell over them as those words dug in their claws. The air became hotter, the light more blinding, the smells of fear more nauseating, the noise of the crowd more deafening, but Valmorain did not notice the effect he had provoked.

"What did you say?" Jean-Martin managed to spit out, livid, when he recovered his voice.

Violette seized his arm and tried to drag him away, but he broke loose from her to confront Valmorain. From habit, his hand went to his hip, where the haft of his sword would have been were he in uniform.

"You have insulted my mother!" he exclaimed hoarsely.

"Don't tell me, Violette, that this boy doesn't know where he comes from," Valmorain commented, still in a mocking tone.

She didn't answer. She had dropped her parasol, which was rolling over the white shell ground, and covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes wide and staring.

"You owe me an apology, monsieur. I will see you in the Saint Antoine gardens with your seconds within a period of no more than two days, because on the third I leave to return to France," Jean-Martin announced, chewing each syllable.

"Don't be ridiculous, son. I'm not going to engage in a duel with anyone of your class. I've spoken the truth. Ask your mother," Valmorain added, pointing at the women with his cane before turning his back and walking without haste toward the boats, stumbling along on swollen knees, to rejoin Owen Murphy.

Jean-Martin tried to follow him, with the intention of pounding his face to a pulp, but Violette and Tete held on to his clothing. At that point, Isidor Morisset, seeing his secretary struggling with the women, red with fury, immobilized him from behind. Tete was quick enough to invent that there'd been an altercation with a pirate, and they should go immediately. The spy agreed-he did not want to endanger his negotiations with Lafitte-and subduing the youth with his woodsman's hands led him, followed by the women, to the boat, where the oarsman was waiting with the untouched lunch.

Worried, Morisset put an arm about Jean-Martin's shoulders in a paternal gesture and tried to find out what had happened, but the youth pulled away and turned his back to him, with his eyes fixed on the water. No one said a word during the hour and a half it took to make their way through that labyrinth of swamps and reach New Orleans. Morisset went alone to his hotel. His secretary ignored his order to accompany him and followed Violette and Tete to the house on Chartres. Violette went to her room, closed the door, and threw herself on the bed to weep her last tear, as Jean-Martin paced like a lion on the patio, waiting for her to calm down enough to question her. "What do you know about my mother's past, Loula? You have an obligation to tell me!" he demanded of his nana Loula, who had no idea what had happened at the Temple; she thought he was referring to the glorious days when Violette had been the most divine poule in Le Cap and her name traveled in the mouths of captains on remote seas, something she didn't plan to tell her boy, her prince, however much he yelled at her. Violette had striven to erase every trace of her past in Saint-Domingue, and it would not be she, her loyal Loula, who betrayed the secret.

As night fell, when she did not hear the weeping any longer, Tete took Violette a cup of tea for her headache, helped her take off her clothing, brushed the hen's nest her hair had become, sprinkled her with rosewater, pulled a light nightgown over her head, and sat beside her on the bed. In the shadow of the closed shutters, she dared talk with the confidence cultivated day by day during the years they had lived and worked together.

"It isn't that serious, madame. Pretend that those words were never spoken. No one will repeat them, and you and your son can go right on as you always have," she consoled her.

She supposed that Violette Boisier had not been born free, as she had told her once, but had been a slave in her childhood. She couldn't blame her for having kept it secret. Maybe she'd had Jean-Martin before Major Relais emancipated her and made her his wife.

"But Jean-Martin knows now! He will never forgive me for having deceived him," Violette answered.

"It isn't easy to admit that you've been a slave, madame. What is important is that now you both are free."

"I have never been a slave, Tete. The truth is that I am not his mother. Jean-Martin was born a slave, and my husband bought him. The only one who knows is Loula."

"And how did Monsieur Valmorain know?"

So Violette Boisier told her the circumstances under which they'd taken the baby, how Valmorain had brought the infant wrapped in a blanket to ask them to look after it for a while, and how she and her husband ended up adopting him. They didn't know whose baby he was but imagined he was the son of Valmorain by one of his slaves. Tete was not listening any longer-she knew the rest. She had prepared during a thousand sleepless nights for the moment of that revelation, when finally she would learn about the son who had been taken from her, but now that he was within reach of her hand she felt no flash of happiness, not a sob stuck in her breast, not an irrepressible wave of affection, not an impulse to run and throw her arms around him, but a low rumbling in her ears like the wheels of a cart on a dusty path. She closed her eyes and brought up the image of the youth with curiosity, surprised that she hadn't had the least indication of the truth; her instinct had not advised her, she had not even noted his resemblance to Rosette. She raked through her emotions, searching for the bottomless maternal love she knew so well because she had lavished it on Maurice and Rosette, but found only relief. Her son had been born under a good star, under a radiant z'etoile, and for that reason he had fallen into the hands of the Relais couple and Loula, who spoiled and educated him, and for that reason the military man had bequeathed him the legend of his life and Violette had worked untiringly to assure him a good future. Tete was grateful without a trace of jealousy, for she could not have given him any of that.

Tete's rancor against Valmorain, that black, hard rock she had felt forever in her breast, seemed to shrink, and the drive to take revenge on her master dissolved in appreciation of those who had taken such good care of her son. She did not have to think too much about what she would do with the information she had just received, gratitude decided that. What would she gain by announcing to the four winds that she was the mother of Jean-Martin and claiming an affection that with justice belonged to another woman? She chose to confess the truth to Violette Boisier, without wallowing in the suffering that had crushed her in the past, for that had eased in recent years. The youth who at that moment was pacing the patio was a stranger to her.

The two women wept, holding hands, joined by a delicate current of mutual compassion. At last the tears dried, and they concluded that what Valmorain had said could not be erased but they might soften its impact on Jean-Martin. Why tell him that Violette was not his mother, that he was born a slave, the bastard offspring of a white man, and that he was given away? It was better for him to continue to believe what he heard from Valmorain, which in essence was true: that his mother had been a slave. Neither was it necessary for him to know that Violette was a cocotte, nor that Relais had a reputation for being cruel. Jean-Martin would believe that Violette had hidden the stigma of her slavery to protect him, but he could always be proud of being the Relais's son. In a couple of days he would return to France and his army career, where prejudice regarding his origins was less harmful than in America or the colonies, and where Valmorain's words could be relegated to a lost corner of memory.

"We will bury this forever," said Tete.

"And what will we do about Toulouse Valmorain?" Violette asked.

"You go see him, madame. Explain to him that it is not wise to divulge certain secrets, or you will be sure that his wife and the entire city know that he is the father of Jean-Martin and Rosette."

"And also that his children can claim the Valmorain name and a part of the inheritance," Violette added with an impish wink.

"Is that true?"

"No, Tete, but scandal would be fatal for the Valmorains."

Fear of Dying

Violette Boisier knew that the first Cordon Bleu ball would be the model for all future balls, and that she had to establish from the beginning the difference between it and the other festivities that entertained the city from October to the end of April. The large hall was decorated without thought of expense. Stages were built for the musicians, tables set with embroidered cloths, and felt armchairs for the mothers and chaperones were placed around the dance floor. A carpeted runway was constructed for the triumphal entrance of the girls onto the dance floor. The day of the ball all the drains in the street were cleaned and covered with planks, colored lanterns were lit, and the surroundings were enlivened by musicians and black dancers, just as it was during Carnival. The atmosphere inside the hall, nevertheless, was very sober.

In the Valmorain house not too far away they had heard the distant sound of music, but Hortense Guizot, like all the other white women in the city, pretended not to. She knew what was going on; no one had talked about anything else for several weeks. She had finished dinner and was embroidering in the drawing room, surrounded by her daughters, who were playing with dolls while the youngest slept in her cradle, all as blond and rosy as she once had been. Now, ground down by maternity, she used rouge on her cheeks and relied on a blond switch her slave Denise artfully combed in with her own straw-colored hair. Dinner consisted of soup, two main courses, salad, cheeses, and three desserts; nothing too complicated because she was alone. The girls were not yet eating in the dining hall, nor was her husband, who was following a rigorous diet and preferred not to be tempted. He was in the library, where he'd been sent chicken and rice cooked without salt; he was trying to follow Dr. Parmentier's strict orders. Besides starving, he had to take walks in the fresh air and deny himself alcohol, cigars, and coffee. He would have died of boredom without his brother-in-law Sancho, who visited him every day to bring him up to date on news and gossip, cheer him up with his good humor, and beat him at cards and dominos.

Parmentier, who complained so often about his own heart, was not following the monkish regimen he imposed on his patient because Sanite Dede, the voodoo priestess at place Congo, had read his fortune in the cowrie shells, and according to her prophecy he was going to live till he was eighty-nine years old. "You, white man, are going to close the eyes of that saintly Pere Antoine when he dies in 1829." That soothed him in regard to his health but created the sadness of losing in that long life his dearest beloveds, like Adele and perhaps even one of his children.

The first alarm that things were not going well with Valmorain had occurred during his trip to France. Following the lugubrious visit with his hundred-year-old mother and unmarried sisters, he left Maurice in France and set sail for New Orleans. On the ship he suffered several attacks of fatigue, which he attributed to the buffeting of the waves, excess of wine, and bad food. When he got home, his friend Parmentier diagnosed high blood pressure, fluttering pulse, bad digestion, abundance of bile, flatulence, festering humors, and palpitations of the heart. He told him with no beating about the bush that he must lose weight and change his life or end up in his mausoleum in Saint Louis Cemetery before the end of a year. Terrified, Valmorain submitted to the doctor's demands and the despotism of his wife, who had become his jailer under the pretext of caring for him. Just in case, he went to docteurs feuilles and magi, whom he had always mocked until his fright made him change his mind. Nothing to lose by trying it, he thought. He had obtained a gris-gris, he had a pagan altar in his room, he drank potions impossible to identify that Celestine brought from the market, and he had made two nocturnal excursions to an island in the swamp so Sanite Dede could cleanse him with her incantations and the smoke of her tobacco. Parmentier did not question the priestess's competence, faithful to his idea that the mind has the power to cure, and if the patient believed in magic, there was no reason to discourage him from it.

Maurice, who was working in a sugar importing agency in France, where Valmorain had placed him to learn that aspect of the family business, took the first available ship when he learned of his father's illness and reached New Orleans at the end of October. He found Valmorain transformed into a voluminous sea lion in a large chair beside the hearth, with a knit cap on his head, a shawl over his legs, and a wood cross and a rag gris-gris around his neck, vastly deteriorated in comparison to the haughty, extravagant man who had wanted to introduce his son to the dissolute life in Paris. Maurice knelt beside his father, who clasped him in a trembling embrace. "My son, at last you have come, now I can die in peace," he murmured. "Don't be foolish, Toulouse!" Hortense Guizot interrupted, watching them with disgust. And it was on the tip of her tongue to add that he wasn't going to die yet, unfortunately, but she caught herself in time. She had been looking after her husband for three months and had run out of patience. Valmorain irritated her all day and woke her at night with repeated nightmares about some Lacroix, who came to him in raw flesh, dragging his skin along the ground like a bleeding shirt.

The stepmother welcomed Maurice curtly, and his sisters greeted him with learned curtsies, keeping their distance because they had no idea who this brother was, he was mentioned very rarely in the family. The eldest of the five girls, the one Maurice had known before she could walk, was eight, and the youngest was in the arms of a wet nurse. As the house had become crowded with the family and servants, Maurice took lodging at his uncle Sancho's apartment, an ideal solution for everyone except Toulouse Valmorain, who meant to keep his son by his side to shower him with advice and pass on to him how to manage his wealth. That was the last thing Maurice wanted, but it wasn't the moment to contradict his father.

The night of the ball, Sancho and Maurice did not dine at the Valmorain residence, as they did almost daily, more as obligation than pleasure. Neither of the two was comfortable with Hortense Guizot, who never had wanted the stepson and grudgingly tolerated Sancho, with his dashing mustache, his Spanish accent, and his shamelessness; he had to be brazen to parade around town with that Cuban woman, a mixed-blood vixen directly to blame for the much talked about Cordon Bleu ball. Only her impeccable upbringing kept Hortense from bursting out with insults when she thought about that: no lady ever alluded to the fascination those mulatta courtesans exercised over white men or to the immoral practice of offering them their daughters. She knew that uncle and son were making preparations to attend the ball, but not even in the clutch of death would she mention it to them. Neither could she talk about it with her husband; that would be to admit she spied on their private conversations, just as she went through his correspondence and looked into the secret compartments in his desk where he hid his money. That was how she learned that Sancho had received two invitations from Violette Boisier because Maurice wanted to go to the ball. Sancho had to consult Valmorain because his nephew's inopportune interest in placage required financial support.

Hortense, who was listening with her ear glued to a hole she had drilled in the wall, heard her husband immediately approve the idea and assumed that Maurice's eagerness had dispelled his doubts regarding his son's virility. She herself had contributed to those doubts, using the word effeminate in more than one conversation about her stepson. To Valmorain, placage seemed appropriate, seeing that Maurice had never shown any appetite for brothels or the family slaves. He was young, and had at least ten years to think about marriage, and in the meantime he needed to unburden himself of his masculine impulses, as Sancho called them. A young girl of color, clean, virtuous, faithful, offered many advantages. Sancho explained to Valmorain the financial considerations, which previously had been left to the protector's goodwill but now, since Violette Boisier had taken charge of things, were stipulated in an oral contract, which if it lacked legal value was nonetheless inviolable. Valmorain had not objected to the cost: Maurice deserved it. On the other side of the wall, Hortense Guizot was close to screaming.

Ball of the Sirens

Jean-Martin confessed to Isidor Morisset, with tears of shame, what Valmorain had said, and his mother not denied it, simply refused to speak of it. Morisset listened to what he said with a mocking laugh-What the devil does that matter, son!-but immediately he was moved and pulled him to his ample chest to console him. He was not sentimental and was himself surprised at the emotion the youth aroused in him, desires to protect him and kiss him. He pushed him away gently, picked up his hat, and went to take a long walk along the dike until he cleared his mind. Two days later they sailed for France. Jean-Martin bid his small family farewell with his usual public rigidity, but at the last minute he threw his arms around Violette and whispered that he would write her.

The Cordon Bleu ball turned out to be as magnificent as Violette Boisier had conceived it and others had anticipated. The men arrived in full dress, punctual and correct, and scattered into groups beneath the crystal chandeliers alight with hundreds of candles as an orchestra played and the servants passed light drinks and champagne, no strong liquors. The banquet tables were waiting in the next room, but it would be considered impolite to assault them ahead of time. Violette Boisier, soberly dressed, welcomed the men; soon the mothers and chaperones arrived and took their seats. The orchestra attacked a fanfare, a theater curtain opened at one end of the hall, and the girls made their appearance on the walkway, slowly advancing in single file. There were a few dark mulattas, several sang-meles who passed as European, including two or three with blue eyes, and a vast array of quadroons of diverse shades, all attractive, reserved, docile, elegant, and educated in the Catholic faith. Some were so timid that they did not lift their gaze from the carpet, but others, more daring, cast sidelong glances at the gallants lined up against the walls. Only one came stiff, serious, wearing a defiant, almost hostile, expression. That was Rosette. The floating dresses in pastel colors had been ordered from France or copied to perfection by Adele, the simple hairdos emphasized lustrous manes, arms and necks were bare, and faces seemed clean of paint. Only the women knew how much effort and art each innocent face had cost.

A respectful silence welcomed the first girls, but after a few minutes there was spontaneous applause. Never had such a notable collection of sirens been seen, those fortunate enough to have been present reported the next day in cafes and taverns. The candidates for placage glided like swans around the hall, the orchestra abandoned the trumpet salute to play danceable music, and the white youths began their advances with unusual etiquette, none of the bold familiarity that erupted at the quadroons' parties. After exchanging a few words of courtesy to test the terrain, the young men requested a dance. They were allowed to dance with all the girls, but they had been instructed that the second or third dance with the same girl meant they had a decision to make. The chaperones watched everything with eagle eyes. Not one of those arrogant youths, accustomed to doing whatever they pleased, dared violate the rules. They were intimidated for the first time in their lives.

Maurice did not look at anyone. The mere idea that these girls were being offered to benefit the white men made him ill. He was sweating, and felt a pounding at his temples. He was interested only in Rosette. Ever since he got off the ship in New Orleans several days before, he had looked forward to the ball as the way to meet her, a plan they had agreed to in their secret correspondence; however, since he had not even caught sight of her earlier, he was afraid he wouldn't recognize her. The instinct and nostalgia nourished within the stone walls of the school in Boston nevertheless allowed Maurice to deduce at first glance that the haughty girl dressed in white, the prettiest of all, was his Rosette. By the time he was able to pry his feet from the floor, she was already surrounded by three or four interested young men; she scrutinized each one, trying to discover the person she wanted to see. She, too, had anxiously awaited that moment. From childhood she had protected her love for Maurice with duplicity, disguising it as love for a sibling, but she did not plan to do that any longer. This was the night of truth.

Maurice approached, elbowing his way, tight, rigid, and stopped in front of Rosette with bedazzled eyes. They gazed at each other, searching for the person they remembered: she the crybaby with green eyes who had followed her like a shadow in her childhood, and he the bossy little girl who came at night and slipped into his bed. They met in the embers of memory, and in an instant were again the ones they had been: Maurice, unable to speak, and trembling, waited, and Rosette, tossing aside norms, took his hand and led him to the floor.

Through her white gloves the girl felt the heat of Maurice's skin, which traveled down her spine to her feet, as if she had come close to a fireplace. She felt her knees buckling; she stumbled and had to hold on to him to keep from dropping to her knees. The first waltz went by without their knowing it; they could not say anything, only touch and sum each other up, completely indifferent to the other couples. The music ended, and they went on dancing, engrossed in themselves, moving with the awkwardness of the blind, until the orchestra began again and they picked up the rhythm. By then several persons were watching sneeringly, and Violette Boisier had realized that something was threatening the strict etiquette of the ball.

With the last chord, a youth more daring than the others stepped up to dance with Rosette. She didn't notice the interruption, she was clinging to Maurice's arm with her eyes locked on his, but the man insisted. Then Maurice seemed to wake from a sleepwalker's trance; he turned abruptly and shoved away the intruder with a push so unexpected that his rival stumbled and fell to the floor. A collective Oooooh! paralyzed the musicians. Maurice stammered an apology and held out his hand to the fallen rival to help him to his feet, but the insult had been too evident. Two of the youth's friends had already rushed to the floor and confronted Maurice. Before anyone could call for a duel, as happened all too frequently, Violette Boisier intervened, trying to ease the tension with jokes and little taps of her fan, and Sancho Garcia del Solar took a firm grip on his nephew and led him to the dining room, where the older men were already savoring the delicious plates of the best cuisine creole.

"What are you doing, Maurice! Don't you know who that girl is?" Sancho asked.

"Rosette-who else would it be? I've waited nine years to see her."

"You can't dance with her. Dance with the other girls, several are very beautiful, and once you choose, I will take care of the rest."

"I came only for Rosette, Uncle."

Sancho took a deep breath, filling his chest with a mouthful of air redolent of cigars and the sweetish fragrance of flowers. He was not prepared for this; he had never imagined that it would be up to him to open Maurice's eyes, and even less that such a melodramatic revelation would happen in this place, and so quickly. He had perceived that passion ever since he first saw Maurice with Rosette in Cuba, in 1793, when they were escaping from Le Cap with torn clothing and the ash from the fire on their skin. At that time they were little children walking along holding hands, frightened by the horror of what they had seen, and it was obvious they were united by a strong and possessive love. Sancho could not understand how the others couldn't help but notice.

"Forget Rosette. She is your father's daughter. Rosette is your sister, Maurice." Sancho sighed, his eyes focused on the tip of his boots.

"I know that, Uncle," the youth replied serenely. "We've always known, but that will not prevent us from marrying."

"You must be demented, son. That's impossible."

"We'll see about that, Uncle."

Hortense Guizot had never dared hope that heaven would rid her of Maurice without direct intervention on her part. She satisfied her rancor by conceiving ways to eliminate her stepson, the one dream that practical woman allowed herself, though she had nothing to confess to because those hypothetical crimes were only dreams, and to dream is not a sin. She had tried so hard to separate him from his father and replace him with the son she had not been able to conceive that when Maurice sank himself, leaving the way open for her to manage her husband's estate in her own way, she felt vaguely defrauded. She had spent the night of the ball in her queenly bed beneath the canopy of angels that was transported between the city house and the plantation every season, tossing and turning without being able to sleep, thinking that at that very moment Maurice was selecting a concubine, the definitive sign that he had left adolescence behind and fully entered adult life. Her stepson was a man now, and naturally he would begin to take over the family businesses, at which time her own power would be badly diminished because she did not have the influence over him she did over her husband. The last thing she wanted was to see Maurice digging into the accounts or putting limits on her spending.

Hortense could not sleep until finally at dawn she took a few drops of laudanum and was able to fall into a restless state peopled with disturbing visions. She waked near midday, cross from the bad night and bad omens, and pulled the cord to summon Denise and ask her to bring a clean chamber pot and her cup of chocolate. She thought she heard a muffled conversation that seemed to come from the library on the floor below. She knew that the conduit for the cord to call the slaves, which ran through two floors and the mansard, served to help her hear what was going on in the rest of the house. She put her ear to the hole and heard irate voices, but as she could not distinguish the words, she sneaked out of her room. On the stairway she ran into her slave, who, seeing her slipping along like a thief, barefoot and in her nightclothes, pressed against the wall, invisible and mute.

Sancho had come ahead to explain to Toulouse Valmorain what had happened at the Cordon Bleu ball and to prepare him for what was coming, but had not found a tactful way to tell him about Maurice's mad intention to marry Rosette, so he poured out the news in one sentence. "Marry?" Valmorain repeated, incredulous. It seemed hugely comic to him, and he bellowed with laughter, but as Sancho kept telling him more about his son's determination, his laughter turned into violent indignation. He poured himself a cognac, the third of the morning, despite Parmentier's prohibition, and quaffed it in one swallow, which left him coughing.

Shortly afterward, Maurice arrived. Valmorain met him, gesticulating and beating the table, the same old song but this time yelling: he was Valmorain's only heir, destined to carry the title of chevalier with pride and to increase the family's power and fortune, which had been earned with great effort; he was the last male who could perpetuate the dynasty, that was what Valmorain had trained him for, he had imbued him with his principles and sense of honor, he had offered him everything a father can give a son, he would not permit him to stain the illustrious name of the Valmorains with a youthful impulse. No, no, he corrected, it wasn't an impulse it was a vice, a perversion, it was nothing less than incest. He collapsed into his armchair, breathless. On the other side of the wall, glued to her spy hole, Hortense Guizot choked back an exclamation. She had not expected her husband to admit to his son his paternity of Rosette, which he had so carefully hidden from her.

"Incest, monsieur? You forced me to swallow soap when I called Rosette sister," Maurice argued.

"You know very well what I am referring to!"

"I will marry Rosette even though you are her father," said Maurice, attempting to keep a respectful tone.

"But how can you marry a quadroon!" roared Valmorain.

"Apparently, monsieur, you are bothered more by Rosette's color than by our being related. But if you engender a daughter with a woman of color, you should not be surprised that I love another."

"Insolent pup!"

Sancho tried to pacify them with conciliatory gestures. Valmorain understood that he was not getting anywhere down that path and forced himself to appear calm and reasonable.

"You are a good boy, Maurice, but overly sensitive and dreamy," he said. "It was a mistake to send you to that American school. I don't know what ideas they put in your head, but it seems that you do not know who you are, what your position is, or the responsibilities you have to your family and society."

"The school has given me a broader vision of the world, monsieur, but that has nothing to do with Rosette. My feelings for her are the same now as they were fifteen years ago."

"These impulses are normal at your age, son. There's nothing original about your case," Valmorain assured him. "No one marries at eighteen, Maurice. Choose a lover like any other boy of your position. That will calm you down. If there is anything we have a lot of in this city, it's beautiful women of color-"

"No!" his son interrupted. "Rosette is the only woman for me."

"Incest is very serious, Maurice."

"Much more serious is slavery."

"What does one have to do with the other!"

"A great deal, monsieur. Without slavery, which allowed you to abuse your slave, Rosette would not be my sister," Maurice explained.

"How dare you speak that way to your father!"

"Forgive me, monsieur," Maurice replied with irony. "In truth, the mistakes you have made cannot serve as an excuse for mine."

"What you have, son, is lust," said Valmorain with a theatrical sigh. "Nothing easier to understand. You must do what we all do in such cases."

"What is that, monsieur?"

"I thought I did not have to explain these things to you, Maurice. Bed your girl once and for all, and then forget her. That's how it's done. What else can you do with a Negress?"

"That is what you want for your daughter?" Maurice asked, pale, clenching his teeth. Drops of sweat were streaming down his face, and his shirt was damp.

"She is the daughter of a slave! My children are white!" Valmorain shouted.

A frigid silence fell over the library. Sancho backed away, rubbing the back of his neck, with the sensation that all was lost. His brother-in-law's clumsiness seemed irreparable.

"I shall marry her," Maurice said finally, and strode out of the room, ignoring his father's string of threats.

To the Right of the Moon

It had never crossed Tete's mind to go to the ball, and neither had she been invited. She understood it wasn't for people of her status: the other mothers would have been offended and her daughter would have choked with embarrassment, so she worked out an agreement with Violette to act as Rosette's chaperone. The preparations for that night, which had taken months of patience and work, gave the hoped for results: Rosette looked like an angel in her ethereal gown, with jasmine pinned in her hair. Before her daughter climbed into the rented coach, viewed by neighbors who'd come outside to applaud them, Violette repeated to Tete and Loula that she was going to get the best of the young protectors for Rosette. No one imagined that she would come dragging the girl back an hour later, when neighbors were still in the street chatting.

Rosette burst into the house with the mulish expression that had this year replaced her coquetry. She tore off her dress, and locked herself in her room without a word. Violette was hysterical, screaming that that little troublemaker was going to pay, that she had nearly destroyed the ball, that she had deceived everyone, and that she had made her waste time, effort, and money because she had never intended to be placee, the ball had been a vehicle for meeting that wretched Maurice. Violette was certain. Rosette and Maurice had in some inexplicable fashion planned to meet there, because the girl could not go out alone. How she sent and received messages was a mystery she refused to reveal, despite the slapping Violette gave her. That confirmed a suspicion Tete had always had: the z'etoiles of those two children were joined in heaven: some nights they were clearly visible to the right of the moon.

After the scene in the library of the house where he had confronted his father, Maurice left determined to cut his ties to his family forever. Sancho was able to soothe Valmorain a little and then follow his nephew to the apartment they shared, where he found Maurice distraught, red with fever and with pain in his gut. With his servant's help, Sancho got Maurice's clothing off and put him in bed, then forced him to drink a glass of warm whiskey with sugar and lemon, an improvised remedy that occurred to him as a palliative for the pangs of love and which also tumbled Maurice into a deep sleep. He told his servant to keep him cool with wet cloths to bring down his temperature, but that did not keep Maurice from raving with delirium the rest of the afternoon and a good part of the night.

The next morning the youth waked with less fever. The room was dark because the drapes had been closed but he did not want to call the servant, although he needed water and a cup of coffee. When he tried to get up to use the chamber pot, all his muscles were sore, as if he had galloped horseback a week, and he chose to go back to bed. Shortly afterward Sancho arrived with Parmentier. The doctor, who had known Maurice since he was a boy, could only repeat the cliche observation that time slips away faster than money. Where had the years gone? Maurice had gone out the door in short pants and returned through another changed into a man. The doctor examined him meticulously without reaching a diagnosis; the picture still was not clear, he said, he would have to wait. He ordered Maurice to stay in bed and see how he got along. He had recently attended two sailors in the nuns' hospital who had typhus. It wasn't an epidemic, he assured them, these were isolated cases, but they should be aware of that possibility. Rats from the ships often spread the illness, and perhaps Maurice had been infected on the voyage.

"I am sure it isn't typhus, Doctor," Maurice mumbled, embarrassed.

"What is it then?" Parmentier smiled.

"Nerves."

"Nerves?" Sancho repeated, highly amused. "The thing old maids suffer?"

"This is something I haven't done since I was a boy, Doctor, but I haven't forgotten, and I suppose you haven't either. Don't you remember Le Cap?"

Parmentier saw the little boy Maurice had been at that time, raging with fever from being harassed by ghosts of the tortured men who walked through his house.

"I hope you're right," said Parmentier. "Your uncle Sancho told me what happened at the ball and the fight you had with your father."

"He insulted Rosette! He spoke of her as if she were a tramp," said Maurice.

"My brother-in-law is very angry, as is logical," Sancho interrupted. "Maurice has it in his head to marry Rosette. He not only means to defy his father but the entire world."

"All we ask is for everyone to leave us in peace, Uncle," said Maurice.

"No one will leave you in peace, because if you go ahead with your plan society will be endangered. Imagine the example you two will set. It would be like a hole in the dike. First a trickle and then a deluge that would destroy everything in its path."

"We would go far away, where no one knows us," Maurice insisted.

"Where? To live with Indians, covered with stinking skins and eating corn? I'd like to know how long love would last under those conditions!"

"You are very young, Maurice, you have your whole life ahead of you," the physician argued weakly.

"My life. Apparently that's the only thing that counts. And Rosette? Maybe her life doesn't count too? I love her, Doctor!"

"I understand you better than anyone, son. My lifetime companion, the mother of my three children, is a mulatta," Parmentier confessed.

"Yes, but she isn't your sister!" Sancho exclaimed.

"That doesn't matter," Maurice replied.

"Explain to him, Doctor, that defective children are born of such unions," Sancho insisted.

"Not always," the doctor murmured, thoughtful.

Maurice's mouth was dry, and again he felt his body burning. He closed his eyes, annoyed with himself for not being able to control his shivers, undoubtedly caused by his accursed imagination. He wasn't listening to his uncle; he had the sound of a roaring waterfall in his ears.

Parmentier interrupted the list of Sancho's arguments. "I think there is a way we can satisfy everyone, and for Maurice and Rosette to be together." He explained that very few people knew they were half siblings, and besides, it would not be the first time that something like that had happened. The masters' promiscuity with their slaves produced every kind of confused relationship, he added. No one knew absolutely what happened in the intimacy of a house, to say nothing of a plantation. The Creoles did not attach too much importance to love affairs among relatives of different races-not only among brother and sister but also father and daughter-as long as it wasn't aired in public. Whites with whites, on the other hand, was intolerable.

"Where are we going with this, Doctor?" asked Maurice.

"Placage. Think about it, son. You would treat Rosette the way you would a wife, and although you did not live with her openly you could visit her whenever you wanted. Rosette would be respected in her circles. Your position would not change, and that way you could protect her much better than if you were a pariah, and poor in addition, as you would be if you persist in marrying her."

"Brilliant, Doctor!" Sancho burst out before Maurice could open his mouth. "All we need is for Toulouse Valmorain to accept it."

In the following days, while Maurice fought what turned out to be typhus, definitively, Sancho tried to convince his brother-in-law of the advantages of placage for Maurice and Rosette. If previously Valmorain had been willing to finance the expenses of a girl he didn't know, there was no reason to refuse it to the only girl Maurice desired. Up to that point, Valmorain listened with lowered head, but attentive.

"Besides, she was brought up in the bosom of your family, and you can be sure that she's decent, refined, and well educated," Sancho added, but the minute he said it, he realized the error of reminding Valmorain that Rosette was his daughter: it was as if he had pinched him.

"I would rather see Maurice dead than keeping that strumpet!" he bellowed.

The Spaniard crossed himself automatically: that was tempting the devil.

"Pay no attention to me, Sancho, that slipped out without my thinking," his brother-in-law mumbled, also shaken by superstitious apprehension.

"Calm down, dear friend. Children always rebel, it's normal, but sooner or later they become reasonable," said Sancho, serving himself a cognac. "Your opposition merely strengthens Maurice's stubbornness. All you will do is drive him away."

"The one who's losing is him."

"Think it over. You are losing too. You aren't young anymore, and your health is failing. Who will look after you in your old age? Who will manage the plantation and your businesses when you can no longer do it? Who will look after Hortense and the girls?"

"You."

"Me?" and a happy laugh burst from Sancho. "I'm a rogue, Toulouse! You can see me becoming the pillar of the family? Not even God would wish that!"

"If Maurice betrays me you will have to help me, Sancho. You are my partner and my only friend."

"Please, don't frighten me."

"I think you're right. I must not fight Maurice face to face but be shrewd. The boy needs to cool down, think of his future, enjoy himself as befitting his age, and meet other women. That little cheat needs to disappear."

"How?" Sancho asked.

"There are ways."

"What ways?"

"For example, offer her a good sum to go away and leave my son alone. Money buys everything, Sancho, but if that doesn't work-well, we would take other measures."

"Don't count on me for anything like that!" said Sancho, alarmed. "Maurice would never forgive you."

"He wouldn't have to know."

"I would tell him. Precisely because I love you like a brother, Toulouse, I'm not going to let you do such an evil thing. You would regret it all your life," Sancho replied.

"Don't fret, my friend. I was joking. You know I'm not capable of killing a fly."

Valmorain's laugh sounded like a bark. Sancho left, worried, while his brother-in-law kept thinking about the placage. It seemed the most logical alternative, but to sponsor such a relationship between brother and sister was very dangerous. If it came to be known, his honor would be irreparably stained, and everyone would turn their backs on the Valmorains. How would they show themselves in public? He had to think about the future of his five daughters, his businesses, and his social position, just as Hortense had pointed out to him. He could not have imagined that Hortense herself had already circulated that news. Put in the position of choosing between saving her family's reputation, every Creole lady's first priority, or ruining her stepson's, Hortense ceded to the temptation of the second. If the matter had been in her hands, she herself would have married Maurice to Rosette, gladly, to destroy him. She didn't like the placage Sancho proposed because once their spirits cooled, as always happened over time, Maurice could exercise his rights as firstborn son without anyone's remembering his slip. People have bad memories. The only practical solution was for her stepson to be forever repudiated by his father. "Marry a quadroon? Perfect. Let him do it and live among blacks, as he deserves," she had commented to her sisters and friends, who in turn made it their business to repeat it.

In Love

Tete and Rosette had left the yellow house on Chartres the day after the embarrassing episode at the Cordon Bleu ball. Violette Boisier's fit of rage had quickly passed, and she forgave Rosette because she was always moved by thwarted love, but nevertheless she felt relieved when Tete announced that she did not want to abuse her hospitality any longer. It was better to put a little distance between them, she thought. Tete took her daughter to the boardinghouse where years ago the tutor Gaspard Severin had lived, while the little house Zacharie had bought two blocks from Adele was being remodeled. She continued to work with Violette as she always had, and started Rosette sewing with Adele, it was time for the girl to earn a living. She was powerless before the hurricane that had been unleashed. She inevitably had compassion for her daughter but could not get close enough to try to help her, Rosette had closed up like a mollusk. Rosette was not talking to anyone. She sewed in a hostile silence, waiting for Maurice with granite hardness, blind to the curiosity of others and deaf to the advice of the women around her: her mother, Violette, Loula, Adele, and a dozen nosy neighbors.

Tete learned of the confrontation between Maurice and Toulouse Valmorain from Adele, who had been told by Parmentier, and from Sancho, who made a quick visit to the pension to bring her news of Maurice. He told her that the youth was weakened by the typhus, but out of danger, and that he wanted to see Rosette as soon as possible. "He asked me to intercede and ask if you would see him, Tete," he added. "Maurice is my son, Don Sancho, he doesn't need to send me messages. I am waiting to see him," was her response. She could speak with frankness, since Rosette had gone to deliver some sewing. It had been several weeks since they had seen each other; Sancho had disappeared from the neighborhood. He hadn't dared be seen near Violette Boisier since she caught him with Adi Soupir, the same frivolous girl he had been close to earlier. Sancho won nothing by swearing he had run into her in the place d'Armes and invited her to have an innocent glass of sherry, that was all. What was bad about that? But Violette had no interest in competing with any rival for the artichoke heart of that Spaniard, least of all with someone half her age.

According to Sancho, Toulouse Valmorain had demanded that his son come speak with him as soon as he was on his feet. Maurice struggled to dress and went to his father's house, he didn't want to keep putting off a resolution. Until he clarified things with his father he was not free to present himself to Rosette. When he saw his son's yellow skin and the way his clothes hung off him-he had lost several kilos during his brief illness-Valmorain was frightened. The old fear that death was going to carry him off that had so often assaulted him when Maurice was a boy again squeezed his chest. Urged by Hortense Guizot, he was prepared to impose his authority, but he realized that he loved Maurice too much: anything was preferable to fighting with his son. On impulse, he opted for the placage he previously had opposed out of pride and his wife's advice. He saw lucidly that it was the only possible way out. "I will give you what is suitable, son. You will have enough to buy a bungalow for that girl and keep her as is expected. I will pray that there is no scandal and that God will pardon you both. I ask only that you never speak of her in my presence, or in your mother's," Valmorain told him.

Maurice's reaction was not what had been expected by either his father or Sancho, who was also in the library. He replied that he appreciated his father's offer of help, but that was not the destiny he would choose. He did not intend to continue to submit to society's hypocrisy or to expose Rosette to the injustice of placage, in which she would be trapped while he enjoyed total freedom. In addition, that would be a stigma for the political career he was planning to follow. He said that he was going to return to Boston and live among more civilized people; he would study law, and then, from Congress and newspapers, he would try to change the Constitution, the laws, and finally the customs not only in the United States but in the world.

His father stopped him, convinced that the delirium of typhus had returned. "What are you talking about, Maurice?"

"Abolition, monsieur. I am going to devote my life to struggling against slavery," Maurice replied firmly.

That was a blow a thousand times more grave to Valmorain than the matter of Rosette: it was a direct attack on the interests of his family. His son was more out of his mind than he had imagined; he intended nothing less than to destroy the foundation of civilization and of the Valmorain fortune. Abolitionists were tarred and feathered and hanged, as deserved. They were fanatic madmen who dared to defy society, history, even the divine word, because slavery appeared in the Bible. An abolitionist in his own family? Unthinkable! He let loose a yelling harangue without taking a breath, and ended by threatening to disinherit his son.

"Do so, monsieur, because if I inherited your estate, the first thing I would do would be to emancipate the slaves and sell the plantation," Maurice replied calmly.

The youth got to his feet, leaning on the back of the chair because he was still a little light-headed, said good-bye with a slight bow, and left the library, trying to hide the trembling in his legs. His father's insults followed him to the street.

Valmorain lost control; his anger turned him into a whirlwind; he cursed his son, he screeched that Maurice was as good as dead to him, and that he would not receive a single coin of his fortune. "I forbid you ever to step inside the house or use the Valmorain name! You are no longer a member of this family!" He could not go on because he collapsed, dragging with him an opaline lamp that shattered against the wall. Hortense and several domestics had come at the sound of his yelling; they found him turned purple with his eyes rolled back in his head, while Sancho, on his knees beside him, was trying to loosen the tie buried in the folds of the double chin.

Blood Ties

An hour later Maurice appeared, without notice, at Tete's pension. She had not seen him for several years, but to her that tall, serious youth with a wild head of hair and round glasses seemed unchanged from the child she had cared for. Maurice had the same intensity and tenderness he'd had as a boy. They hugged for a long while, she repeating his name and he whispering Maman, Maman, the forbidden word. They were in the small, dusty drawing room of the pension, which was kept in eternal darkness. What little light filtered through the shutters fell upon the rickety furniture, a threadbare carpet, and yellowed paper on the walls.

Rosette, who had so eagerly awaited Maurice, did not speak, stunned with happiness and upset to see him so shrunken, so different from the well-built youth she had danced with two weeks before. Mute, she watched as if the unexpected visit of her beloved had nothing to do with her.

"Rosette and I have loved each other forever, Maman, you know that. Ever since we were children, we have talked about marrying, do you remember," asked Maurice.

"Yes, son, I remember. But that is a sin."

"I never heard you use that word; have you become a Catholic maybe?"

"My loas are always with me, Maurice, but now I go to Pere Antoine's mass as well."

"How can love be a sin? God put it on us. Before we were born, we already loved each other. We aren't guilty because we have the same father. The sin isn't ours, it's his."

"There are consequences…" Tete murmured.

"I know that. Everyone insists on telling me that we can have abnormal children. We are ready to run that risk, aren't we, Rosette?"

The girl didn't answer. Maurice went to her and put an arm around her shoulders in a protective gesture.

"What will become of the two of you?" Tete asked with anguish.

"We are free and young. We will go to Boston, and if things do not go well we will look for another place. America is very large."

"And her color? You will not be accepted anywhere. They say that in the free states the hatred is worse, and that blacks and whites do not live or mix together."

"True, but that is going to change, I promise. There are many people working to abolish slavery: philosophers, politicians, church people, every person with any decency…"

"I will not live to see it, Maurice. But I know that even if the slaves are emancipated, there will be no equality."

"Over time there will have to be, Maman. It's like a snowball that when it begins to roll grows larger, faster, and then no one can stop it. That is how the great changes in history take place."

"Who told you that, son?" Tete asked, who was not sure what snow was.

"My teacher, Harrison Cobb."

Tete realized that it was useless to reason; the cards had been thrown fifteen years before, when he leaned over for the first time to kiss the face of the newborn baby Rosette.

"Don't worry, we will work it out," Maurice added. "But we need your blessing, Maman. We don't want to run away like bandits."

"You have my blessings, children, but that isn't enough. We will go and ask Pere Antoine's advice; he knows things about this world and the other," Tete concluded.

They went hurrying through the February breeze to the priest's little house. He had just finished his first round of charity and was resting a bit. He welcomed them with no hint of surprise; he had been waiting for them ever since the gossip had reached his ears that the heir to the Valmorain fortune was going to marry a quadroon. As he was always au courant with everything that happened in the city, his faithful believed the Holy Spirit whispered information to him. He offered them his mass wine, harsh as varnish.

"We want to marry, mon pere," Maurice announced.

"But the small detail of race is there, is that not it?" The priest smiled.

"We know that the law…" Maurice continued.

"Have you committed the sin of the flesh?" Pere Antoine again interrupted.

"How could you believe that, mon pere? I give you my word as a gentleman that Rosette's virtue and my honor are intact," Maurice proclaimed, startled.

"What a shame, my children! If Rosette had lost her virginity, and you wanted to repair the harm you perpetrated, I would be obliged to marry you to save your souls," the saint explained.

Then Rosette spoke for the first time since the Cordon Bleu ball.

"That can be arranged this very night, mon pere. Pretend that it has already happened. And now, please, save our souls," she said, flushed and sounding determined.

The saint possessed an admirable flexibility in getting around rules he considered inconvenient. With the same childish imprudence with which he defied the church, he often chopped a little off the body of the law, and until that moment no religious or civil authority had dared call attention to him. He took a barber's razor out of a box, wet the blade in his glass of wine, and ordered the lovers to roll up their sleeves and hold out an arm. Without hesitation he cut a slit on Maurice's wrist with the dexterity of someone who has performed the operation several times. Maurice grunted and sucked the cut while Rosette pressed her lips together and closed her eyes with her hand still outstretched. The priest joined their arms, rubbing Rosette's blood into Maurice's small wound.

"Blood is always red, as you see, but if anyone asks, now you can say that you have black blood, Maurice. So the wedding will be legal," the priest explained, wiping the knife on his sleeve as Tete tore her kerchief to bandage their wrists.

"Let us go into the church. I will ask Sister Lucie to be witness to this impromptu marriage," said Pere Antoine.

"Just a minute, mon pere." Tete held him back. "We have not resolved the fact that these children are half siblings."

"But what are you saying, daughter?" the saint exclaimed.

"You know Rosette's story, mon pere; I told you that Monsieur Toulouse Valmorain was the father, and you know he is also the father of Maurice."

"I didn't remember, my memory is bad." Pere Antoine dropped into a chair, defeated. "I cannot marry these young ones, Tete. It is one thing to mock human law, which can be absurd, but something different to mock the law of God…"

With lowered heads they left Pere Antoine's little house. Rosette was trying to contain her tears, and Maurice, upset, was supporting her, his arm around her waist. "How I wanted to help you, my children! But it is not in my power to do so. No one can marry you in this land," was the saint's sorrowful farewell. As the lovers dragged along, disconsolate, Tete walked two steps behind, thinking of the emphasis Pere Antoine had placed on that last word. Perhaps it wasn't emphasis but something she confused with the strong accent of the Spanish priest's French, but to her the sentence didn't seem natural, and she heard it again and again like an echo of her bare feet slapping on the tiles of the square, until from being repeated so often in silence she thought she understood a coded meaning. She changed direction to head toward the Chez Fleur.

They walked almost an hour, and when they came to the modest door of the gaming house they saw a line of porters with boxes of liquors and provisions, overseen by Fleur Hirondelle, who noted down each bundle in her account book. The woman greeted them with affection, as always, but could not pay attention to them and gestured toward the salon. Maurice was aware that this was a place of questionable reputation, and it seemed amusing to him that his maman, always so concerned about decency, would behave here as if in her own house. At that hour, in the cruel light of day, with the tables empty, bare of customers, cocottes, and musicians, without the smoke, noise, and smell of perfume and liquor, the salon resembled a tawdry theater.

"What are we doing here?" Maurice asked in a funereal tone.

"Waiting for our luck to change, son," said Tete.

Moments later Zacharie appeared in his work clothes, his hands filthy, surprised by the visit. He was no longer the handsome man he had been; his face was like a Carnival mask. That was how he'd looked since being attacked. It had been night, and he was beaten unmercifully; he had not seen the men who came at him with clubs, but as they did not steal his money or the walking stick with the ivory handle, he knew they were not bandits from Le Marais. Tete had warned him more than once that his overly elegant figure and generosity were offensive to some whites. He was found in time, tossed into a drain, hammered to a pulp, his face destroyed. Doctor Parmentier had treated him with such care that he had been able to set his bones in place and save one eye, and Tete had fed him through a tube until he could chew. The assault had not changed his triumphant attitude, but it had made him more prudent, and now he was always armed.

"What can I do for you? Rum? Fruit juice for the little girl?" Zacharie smiled his new twisted smile.

"A captain is like a king-he can do what he wants on his boat, even hang someone. Isn't that true?" Tete asked.

"Only when on the high seas," Zacharie clarified, cleaning himself with a rag.

"Do you know someone like that?"

"Several. Without going too far, Fleur Hirondelle and I are associated with a man named Romeiro Toledano, a Portugese who owns a small schooner."

"Associated to do what, Zacharie?"

"Let's say importing and transporting…"

"You never mentioned any Toledano to me. Can he be trusted?"

"That depends: for some things yes, for others, no."

"Where can I speak with him?"

"At this moment the schooner is in the port. Surely he will come tonight to have some drinks and play a few hands. What is it you want, woman?"

"I need a captain to marry Maurice and Rosette," Tete announced, to the amazement of the two listening.

"How can you ask that of me, Zarite!"

"Because no one else will do it, Zacharie. And it has to be right now, because Maurice is going to Boston on a ship that leaves the day after tomorrow."

"The schooner is in port. The land authorities are in command here."

"Can you ask your Toledano to lift anchor, move his ship a few miles out to sea, and marry them? Fleur Hirondelle and I will be witnesses."

And so, four hours later, aboard a deplorable schooner flying a Cuban flag, Captain Romeiro Toledano, a small man only a little over a meter and a half tall, who compensated for the indignity of his stature with a black beard that barely left his eyes in view, married Rosette Sedella and Maurice Solar, as the young man had called himself since he broke with his father. Witnesses to the wedding were Zacharie in his gala trappings, but still with dirty fingernails, and Fleur Hirondelle, who for the occasion had put on a long bearskin coat and a necklace of the teeth of the same animal. While Zarite dried her tears, Maurice took off his mother's gold medal he always wore and put it around Rosette's neck. Fleur Hirondelle handed out goblets of champagne, and Zacharie made a toast: "To this symbolic couple of the future, when races will be mixed and all human beings will be free and equal under the law." Maurice, who had often heard the same words from his teacher Cobb, and who had become very sentimental during his typhus attack, let out a long, deep sob.

Two Nights of Love

For lack of a more conventional place, the newlyweds spent their one day and two nights of love in the tight little cabin of Romeiro Toledano's schooner, never suspecting that in a secret compartment below the floor there was a crouched slave who could hear them. This ship was the first step in that fugitive's journey to freedom. Toledano, Zacharie, and Fleur Hirondelle believed that slavery was going to end soon, and in the meantime they helped the most desperate, who could not wait until that time.

That night, Maurice and Rosette made love on a narrow bunk of planks, rocked by the sea in light filtered through the worn red felt that covered the little porthole. At first they touched tentatively, timidly, even though they had grown up exploring one another, and not a single nook of their souls was closed to the other. They had changed, and now they had to learn to know each other again. Before the marvel of having Rosette in his arms, Maurice forgot the little he had learned in his prancing with Giselle, the lying seductress of Savannah. He trembled. "It's from the typhus," he said by way of apology. Moved by that sweet clumsiness, Rosette took the initiative and began slowly to take off her clothes, as Violette Boisier had taught her privately. Thinking about that sent her into such a fit of laughing that Maurice thought she was making fun of him.

"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

Valmorain 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

Rosette 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.

One morning in the Marche Francais she saw a drummer beating a pair of tin drums with his only hand. He was also missing a foot. She thought that perhaps his master had let him loose to earn his bread however he could, since as a slave he was useless to him. He was still young, with all his teeth and a mischievous expression that contrasted with his miserable condition. He had rhythm in his soul, his skin, his blood. He played and sang with such joy and enthusiasm that a group had gathered around him. The women's hips moved on their own to the beat of those irresistible drums, and children of color chorused words that apparently they'd heard many times as they battled one another with wooden swords. At first Tete found the words incomprehensible, but soon she realized that the song was in the obscure Creole of the Saint-Domingue plantations, and she could mentally translate the refrain into French: Capitaine La Liberte / protege de Macandal / s'est battu avec son sabre / pour sauver son general. Her knees gave way, and she had to sit on a fruit crate, with difficulty balancing her enormous belly, where she waited till the music ended and the hat was passed. It had been a long time since she'd used the Creole she learned in Saint-Lazare, but she was able to communicate with the drummer. The man came from Haiti, which he still called Saint-Domingue, and he told her he had lost his hand in a cane crusher and the foot under the executioner's ax because he had tried to run away. She asked him to repeat the words of the song slowly so she could hear them well, and thus she learned that Gambo was already a legend. According to the song, he had defended Toussaint Louverture like a lion, fighting against Napoleon's soldiers until he finally fell with wounds from so many balls and swords that they couldn't be counted. But the capitaine, like Macandal, did not die: he rose up transformed into a wolf, ready to keep fighting forever for freedom. "Many have seen him, madame. They say that the wolf roams around Dessalines and other generals because they have betrayed the revolution and are selling people as slaves."

For a long time Tete had accepted the possibility that Gambo had died, and the beggar's song confirmed it. That night she went to Adele's house to see Dr. Parmentier, the only person with whom she could share her sorrow, and told him what she had heard in the market.

"I know that song, Tete the Bonapartists sing it when they get drunk in the Cafe des Emigres, but they add another verse."

"What is that?"

"Something about a common grave where Negroes and freedom rot while France and Napoleon live on."

"That's horrible, Doctor!"

"Gambo was a hero in life, and will continue to be in death, Tete. As long as that song circulates he will be a model for courage."

Zacharie did not learn of the sorrow his wife was living because she was careful to hide it. Tete kept that first love, the strongest in her life, a secret. She mentioned it only rarely because she could not offer Zacharie a passion of the same intensity; the relationship they shared was gentle and free of urgency. Unaware of any such differences, Zacharie proclaimed his coming fatherhood to the four winds. He was accustomed to standing out and to commanding, including in Le Cap where he'd been a slave, and the beating that nearly killed him and had left his face badly pasted together could not squelch him: he continued to be extravagant and exuberant. He distributed free liquor to the clients of Chez Fleur so they could toast the baby his Tete was expecting, and his partner, Fleur Hirondelle, had to restrain him; these were not times to squander money or provoke envy. Nothing was so annoying to the Americans as a black man who swaggered.

Rosette kept them up to date with news from Maurice, which arrived with a delay of two or three months. After hearing the details of Maurice's story, Professor Harrison Cobb offered him hospitality in his house, where he was living with a widowed sister and his mother, a dotty old woman who ate flowers. Months later, when he learned that Rosette was pregnant and would give birth in November, Cobb asked him not to look for another lodging but to bring his family to live with them. Agatha, his sister, was more enthusiastic than anyone; Rosette could help her look after her mother, and the presence of the baby would cheer them all. That enormous, drafty house, with empty rooms no one had stepped into for many years and ancestors keeping guard from their portraits on the walls, needed a loving couple and a baby, she announced.

Maurice realized that Rosette would not be able to travel in summer either, and resigned himself to a separation that was going to last more than a year, until she had recovered from the birth and the baby could safely make the journey. In the meantime, he nourished love with a river of letters, as he had always done, and concentrated on studying in every free minute. Harrison Cobb hired him as his secretary, paying much more than was fitting to file his papers and help him prepare his classes, a light load that left Maurice time to study law and the only thing Cobb considered important: the abolitionist movement. Together they attended public meetings, edited pamphlets, visited newspapers, businesses, and offices, and spoke in churches, clubs, theaters, and universities. Harrison Cobb found in Maurice the son he had never had and the companion he had dreamed of to join in the struggle. With that youth at his side, the triumph of his ideals seemed within reach. His sister, Agatha, also an abolitionist, like all the Cobbs, even the lady who ate flowers, counted the days until they would go to the port to welcome Rosette and the baby. A family of mixed blood was the best thing that could happen to them; it was the incarnation of the equality they preached, the most convincing proof that races can and must be mixed and live together in peace. What an impact Maurice would have when he appeared in public with his wife of color and his child to defend emancipation! That would be more eloquent than a million pamphlets. To Maurice the fiery speeches of his benefactors seemed a little absurd since he had never thought of Rosette as any different from him.

The summer of 1806 became very long and brought a cholera epidemic and several fires to New Orleans. Toulouse Valmorain, along with the nun who was looking after him, was moved to the plantation, where the family always went to survive the worst heat of the season. Parmentier diagnosed his patient's health as stable and believed that moving him to the country would surely improve it. His medicines, which Hortense dissolved in his soup because he refused to take them, had not improved his nature. He had become quarrelsome, antagonistic, so much so that he could not stand himself. Everything irritated him, from the scratchiness of the diapers to the innocent laughter of his daughters in the garden, but more than anything, Maurice. He had fresh in his memory every stage of his son's life. He remembered every word they'd spoken at the end and had gone over them a thousand times, looking for the explanation of that so painful and definitive rupture. He believed that Maurice had inherited the madness of his maternal family. Through his veins ran the weak blood of Eugenia Garcia del Solar, not the strong blood of the Valmorains. He did not recognize anything of himself in that son. Maurice was like his mother-the same green eyes, the same sick inclination toward fantasy, the same impulse to destroy himself.

Contrary to what Dr. Parmentier believed, his patient did not find rest at the plantation but only further worries, since he could plainly watch the deterioration Sancho had anticipated. Owen Murphy had gone off to the north with all his family to occupy the land they had so laboriously acquired after working thirty years as beasts of burden. In his place was a young manager recommended by Hortense's father. The day after he arrived, Valmorain decided to look for a different man; this one lacked experience in running a plantation of that size. Production had decreased notably and the slaves seemed defiant. The logical thing would have been for Sancho to take charge of those problems, but it became obvious to Valmorain that his partner played only a decorative role. That forced him to lean on Hortense, even knowing that the more power she had the deeper he sank into his invalid's chair.

Sancho had discreetly proposed to reconcile Valmorain and Maurice. He had to do it without raising the suspicions of Hortense Guizot, for whom things were working out better than she had planned now that she had control over her husband and all his wealth. Sancho kept in contact with his nephew through letters, brief, he said, because he did not write well in French; in Spanish he wrote better than Gongora, he told everyone, though no one around him knew who Gongora was. Maurice answered with details of his life in Boston and profuse thanks for the help he was giving his wife. Rosette had told him she often received money from his uncle, though Sancho never mentioned it. Maurice also commented on the ant-size steps the abolitionist movement was taking and the other subject he was obsessed with: the Lewis and Clark expedition sent by President Jefferson to explore the Missouri river. The mission consisted of studying indigenous tribes, the flora and fauna of that region nearly unknown to whites, and, if possible, reaching the Pacific coast. The American ambition to occupy more and more land left Sancho cold. "He who has a lot holds nothing closely," he believed, but the mission inflamed Maurice's imagination, and if it hadn't been for Rosette, the baby, and abolitionism, he would have followed the explorers.

In Jail

Tete had her baby girl in the sultry month of June, attended by Adele and Rosette, who wanted to see at first hand what awaited her in a few months, while Loula and Violette walked up and down the street, as nervous as Zacharie. When she held the baby in her arms, Tete wept with happiness: she could love her daughter without fear she would be taken from her. This baby girl was hers. She would have to protect her against illness, accidents, and other natural misfortunes, as one did with all children, but not from a master with the right to do with her as he wished.

The father's joy was colossal, and the festivities he organized were so generous that it frightened Tete: it could attract bad luck. As a precaution, she took the newborn to the priestess Sanite Dede, who charged her fifteen dollars to protect her daughter with a ritual involving her own spit and the blood of a rooster. After the voodoo ceremony they all went to the church for Pere Antoine to baptize her with her godmother's name: Violette.

The rest of that humid, blazing summer seemed eternal to Rosette. The larger her belly grew, the more she missed Maurice. She lived with her mother in the small house Zacharie had bought, surrounded by women who never left her alone, but she felt vulnerable. She had always been strong-she had thought herself fortunate in that-but now she had become timid, she had nightmares, and was assaulted with ominous presentiments. Why didn't I go with Maurice in February? What if something happens to him? What if we never see each other again? We should never have separated! She cried and cried. "Don't think bad things, Rosette, because thinking makes them happen," Tete told her.

In September, some families who had escaped to the country were already back, among them Hortense Guizot and her daughters. Valmorain stayed at the plantation; he still had not succeeded in replacing the head overseer and he had also had his fill of his wife, and she of him. He could no longer count on Sancho to keep him company for he had gone to Spain. He'd been informed that he could reclaim lands of some value, though abandoned, that belonged to the Garcia del Solar family. For Sancho, that unsuspected inheritance was simply a headache, but he did want to go back and see his country, he hadn't been there for thirty-two years, so he undertook a voyage that was going to last several months.

Valmorain was slowly recovering from the stroke owing to the good care of the nun, a severe German woman who was completely immune to her patient's rages and regularly forced him to take a few steps or to exercise his sick hand by squeezing a ball of wool. In addition, she was curing his incontinence by humiliating him over the matter of diapers. In the meantime, Hortense took her train of nursemaids and other slaves back to the house in the city and prepared to enjoy the social season free of the husband who had hung around her neck like an albatross. Perhaps she could manage to keep him alive, as she needed to do, but nowhere near her.

Scarcely a week after the family returned to New Orleans, Hortense Guizot ran into Rosette on Chartres Street, where Hortense often went with her sister Olivie to buy ribbons and plumes; she had kept her custom of transforming her hats. In recent years she had once or twice seen Rosette from a distance, and she had no difficulty recognizing her. This time Rosette was wearing dark wool, with a woven shawl around her shoulders and her hair caught up in a bun, but the modesty of her attire took nothing away from the haughtiness of her bearing. To Hortense the beauty of that girl had always been a provocation, and more than ever now that she herself was choking in her own fat. She knew that Rosette had not gone to Boston with Maurice, but no one had told her she was pregnant. She immediately heard a little alarm bell: that child, especially if it were male, could threaten the equilibrium of her life. Her husband, so very weak, would use the child to reconcile with Maurice and forgive him for everything.

Rosette did not notice the two women until they were very close. She stepped to the side to let them pass, greeting them with a courteous "Bonjour," but with none of the humility whites expected from people of color. Hortense stopped in front of her, challenging her. "Just look, Olivie, how brazen this one is," she said to her sister, who was as startled as Rosette. "And just look what she's wearing. It's gold! Blacks are not allowed to wear gold in public. She deserves some lashes, don't you think?" she added. Her sister, not understanding what was happening, took her arm to move her along, but Hortense jerked away and with one tug pulled off the medal Maurice had given Rosette. The girl stepped back, protecting her neck, and then Hortense slapped her, very hard.

Rosette had lived her life with all the privileges of a girl who was free, first in the Valmorain's house and later in the Ursulines' school. She had never felt she was a slave, and her beauty gave her a remarkable assurance. Until that moment she had never been abused by a white, and she had no idea of the power they had over her. Instinctively, without realizing what she was doing or imagining its consequences, she returned the slap of the stranger who had attacked her. Hortense Guizot, dumb with surprise, stumbled; she broke a heel and nearly fell. She began to scream as if possessed, and in an instant they were enclosed in a circle of curious onlookers. Rosette saw she was surrounded and tried to slip away, but she was seized from behind, and moments later the guards had arrested her.

Tete learned of all this half an hour later. Many people had witnessed the incident; the news flew from mouth to mouth and reached the ears of Loula and Violette, who lived on the same street, but Tete was not able to see her daughter until that night, when Pere Antoine accompanied her. The saint, who knew the jail like his own house, pushed aside the guards and led Tete along a narrow passageway lighted by a pair of lamps. Through the bars she glimpsed the men's cells, and at the end was the single cell where all the women were crowded together. Only one girl with blond hair, possibly a servant, was not a woman of color, and there were two little black children in rags, asleep and pressed tight against one of the prisoners. Another had an infant in her arms. The ground was covered with a thin layer of straw; there were a few filthy blankets, a pail in which to relieve themselves, and a large jug with filthy water for drinking. Added to the overall stench was the unmistakable odor of decomposing flesh. In the pale light filtering in from the passageway, Tete saw Rosette in a corner between two women, wrapped in her shawl, with her hands on her belly and her face swollen from crying. She ran to put her arms around her, terrified, and tripped over the heavy chains around her daughter's ankles.

Pere Antoine had come prepared; he knew all too well the conditions the prisoners were kept in. In his basket he brought bread and small lumps of sugar to share among the women, and another blanket for Rosette. "Tomorrow morning we will get you out of here, Rosette, isn't that right, mon pere?" said Tete, sobbing. The priest said nothing.

The only explanation Tete could imagine for what had happened was that Hortense Guizot wanted to avenge herself for the offense Tete had done the family when she refused to take care of Valmorain. She did not know that her and Rosette's mere existence was an injury to the woman. Bereft, Tete went to the very house she had sworn never to enter again and threw herself on the floor before her former mistress to beg her to free Rosette; in exchange she would look after her husband, do as she asked, everything, have pity, madame. The other woman, poisoned with bitterness, gave herself the pleasure of telling Tete everything that came to her mind and then had her thrown out of her house.

Tete did everything possible with her limited resources to make Rosette comfortable. She left baby Violette with Adele or with Loula and every day took food to the jail for all the women; she was sure that Rosette would share anything she received, and she could not bear the idea that her daughter would be hungry. She had to leave the provisions with the guards; they only rarely let her go in, and she didn't know how much they gave to the prisoners and how much they appropriated. Violette and Zacharie provided the money, and Tete spent half the night cooking. Since she was also working and taking care of her baby, she was always exhausted. She remembered that Tante Rose prevented contagious illnesses with boiled water and begged the women not to drink from the water in the jug, even if they were dying of thirst, only the tea she brought them. In previous months several women had died of cholera. As it was already cold at night, she got wraps and more blankets for all of them-her daughter could not be the only one with warm clothing-but the damp straw on the ground and the water that seeped through the walls gave Rosette a pain in her chest and a persistent cough. She was not the only one sick; another was much worse from a gangrened wound caused by the shackles. At Tete's insistence, Pere Antoine got permission to take the woman to the nuns' hospital. The others did not see her again, but a week later learned her leg had been amputated.

Rosette did not want them to notify Maurice of what had happened; she was sure that she was going to be free before the letter could reach him, but justice lagged along. Six weeks went by before the judge reviewed her case, and he acted with relative speed only because she was a free woman and because of Pere Antoine's insistence. The other women could wait years before they even knew why they had been arrested. Hortense Guizot's lawyer brothers had presented the charges against her as "having physically attacked a white woman." The sentence consisted of lashes and two additional years of jail time, but the judge ceded to the saint's insistence and suppressed the lashes in view of the fact that Rosette was pregnant and that Olivie Guizot herself described events as they had happened, and refused to back her sister. The judge was also moved by the dignity of the accused, who appeared in a clean dress and answered the charges without haughtiness but without weakening, despite her difficulty in speaking because of her cough and legs so weak she could barely stand.

When she heard the sentence, a hurricane was unleashed in Tete. Rosette would not survive two years in a filthy cell, even less her baby. Erzulie, mother loa, give me strength. She was going to free her daughter whatever it took, even if it meant tearing down the walls of the jail with her bare hands. Crazed, she announced to everyone she came across that she was going to kill Hortense and the whole accursed family. At that point Pere Antoine decided to intervene before she too landed in jail. Without telling anyone, he went to the plantation to speak with Valmorain. The decision was costly to him, first because he could not abandon the people he helped for several days, and next because he was not accustomed to riding a horse, and crossing the river against the current was expensive and difficult, but he managed to get there.

The saint found Valmorain better than he had expected, though still an invalid and speaking in a tangled tongue. Before he threatened him with hell, he realized that the man had no idea of what his wife had done in New Orleans. When he heard what had happened, Valmorain was more indignant that Hortense had succeeded in hiding the episode from him, just as she hid so many other things, than concerned about Rosette, whom he called "the tramp." However, his attitude changed when the priest informed him that the girl was pregnant. He realized he had no hope of reconciling with Maurice if anything bad happened to Rosette or the baby. With his good hand he rang the cow bell to call the nun, and ordered her to ready the boat for a trip to the city, immediately. Two days later the Guizot lawyers withdrew all charges against Rosette Sedella.

Zarite

F our years have gone by, and we are in 1810. I have lost my fear of being free, although I will never lose my fear of whites. I no longer cry over Rosette, I am almost always happy.

Rosette came out of jail infested with lice, wasted away, sick, and with ulcers on her legs from immobility and chains. I kept her in bed, looking after her day and night, I built up her strength with beef bone marrow soups and the nourishing stews neighbor women brought us, but none of that prevented her from giving birth before the time. The baby was not ready to be born; he was tiny and had skin as translucent as wet paper. The birth was quick but Rosette was weak, and she lost a lot of blood. On the second day the fever started, and on the third she was delirious, calling for Maurice. I understood then, desperate, that she was leaving me. I went through all the treatments Tante Rose had handed down to me, the wisdom of Dr. Parmentier, the prayers of Pere Antoine, and invocations to my loas. I put the new baby on Rosette's chest so that her obligation as a mother would force her to fight for her own life, but I don't think she felt it. I clung to my daughter, trying to keep her with me, begging her to take a sip of water, to open her eyes, to answer me, Rosette, Rosette. At three in the morning, as I held her, rocking her with African ballads, I noticed she was murmuring, and I bent down to her dry lips. I love you, Maman, she told me, and immediately after she sighed and her light went out. I felt her frail body in my arms and saw her spirit gently detach itself like a thread of mist and slip outside through the open window.

The ripping pain I felt cannot be told, but I don't have to do that: mothers know it, for only a few, the most fortunate, have all their children alive. Adele came in the early morning to bring us soup, and it was she who took Rosette from my stiff arms and laid her on her bed. For a while I let myself moan, doubled up in grief on the floor, and then Adele put a large cup of soup in my hands and reminded me of the children. My poor grandson was curled up beside my daughter Violette in the same cradle, so small and abandoned that at any moment he could follow right behind Rosette. So I took off his clothes, placed him on the long cloth of my tignon, tying it like a bandolier across my naked breast, binding him next to my heart, skin against skin, so he would believe he was still inside his mother. That was how I carried him for several weeks. My milk, like my affection, was enough for my daughter and my grandson. When I took Justin from his wrapping he was ready to live in this world.

One day Monsieur Valmorain came to my house. Two slaves took him from his coach and carried him to my door. He looked very old. "Please, Tete, I want to see the boy," he asked me in his rasping voice. I did not have the heart to leave him outside.

"I am very sorry about Rosette… I promise you I had nothing to do with that."

"I know, monsieur."

He stood looking at our grandson for a long while and then asked me his name.

"Justin Solar. His parents chose that name because it means justice. If he had been a girl, they would have called her Justine," I explained.

"Ay! I hope to live long enough for me to correct some of my errors," he said, and I thought he was going to cry.

"We all make mistakes, monsieur."

"This boy is a Valmorain by his father and his mother. He has blue eyes and can pass for being white. He should not be brought up among blacks. I want to help him, I want him to have a good education and bear my surname, as is right."

"You will have to speak with Maurice about that, monsieur, not me."

Maurice received in the same letter the news that his son had been born and that Rosette had died. He set sail immediately, although we were in midwinter. When he arrived the baby was three months old and was a tranquil little thing with delicate features and large eyes; he looked like his father and his grandmother, poor Dona Eugenia. I greeted Maurice with a long embrace, but it was as if he wasn't there, dried up inside, with no light in his eyes. "It will be up to you to take care of Justin for a while, Maman," he told me. He stayed less than a month and did not want to talk with Monsieur Valmorain, no matter how much his uncle Sancho, who was back from Spain, asked him. Pere Antoine, on the other hand, who was always trying to help, refused to act as intermediary between father and son. Maurice decided that the grandfather could see Justin from time to time, but only in my presence, and he forbade me to accept anything from him, not money, not help of any kind, and least of all his name for the boy. He asked me to tell Justin about Rosette so the boy would always be proud of her and of his mixed blood. He believed that his son, fruit of immeasurable love, had a special destiny and would do great things in his life, the ones he had wanted to do before Rosette's death had broken his will. Last, he ordered me to keep him far away from Hortense Guizot. He did not need to warn me.

Soon my Maurice left, but he did not go back to his friends in Boston; he abandoned his studies and became a tireless traveler, he has blown over more land than the wind. He often writes a few lines, and that way we know he is alive, but in these four years he has come only once to see his son. He arrived dressed in skins, bearded, and dark from the sun; he looked like a Kaintuck. At his age no one dies of a broken heart. Maurice merely needs time to grow weary. Walking and walking across the world he will gradually find consolation, and one day, when he is too fatigued to take another step, he will realize that he cannot escape sorrow, he will have to tame it, so it doesn't harass him. Then he will be able to feel Rosette by his side, accompanying him, as I feel her, and perhaps he will come get his son and again be interested in putting an end to slavery.

Zacharie and I have another child, Honore, who is just beginning to take his first steps holding onto the hand of Justin, his best friend and also his uncle. We want more children, although this house is getting small for us and we aren't young-my husband is fifty-six and I am forty-for we would like to grow old among many children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, all of them free.

My husband and Fleur Hirondelle still have the gaming house and continue to be associated with Captain Romeiro Toledano, who sails the Caribbean transporting contraband and runaway slaves. Credit has not been available to them because laws are very harsh for people of color, even for whites associated with blacks, which is the case for Fleur Hirondelle, so their dream of owning several places to gamble along the river has not worked out. As for me, I am very busy with the children, the house, and remedies for Dr. Parmentier that I now prepare in my own kitchen, but in the evenings I give myself time for a cafe au lait in Adele's patio of bougainvillea, where all the neighbor women come to chat. We see Madame Violette less, for now she is most often with the ladies of the Societe du Cordon Bleu, all very interested in cultivating her friendship since she presides over the balls and can determine the luck of their daughters in the placage. It took more than a year for her to reconcile with Don Sancho; she wanted to punish him for his flirtation with Adi Soupir. She knows the ways of men and doesn't expect them to be faithful, but she insists that her lover at least not humiliate her by strolling along the dike with her rival. Madame has not been able to marry Jean-Martin to a rich quadroon, as she planned, because the boy has stayed in Europe and does not plan to return. Loula, who can barely walk because of her age-she must be over eighty-told me that her prince left the military career and lives with that pervert Isidor Morisset, who was not a scientist but an agent for Napoleon or the Lafittes, a drawing room pirate, she swears among sighs. Madame Violette and I have never again spoken of the past, and having guarded the secret so long, we are convinced that she is Jean-Martin's mother. Only rarely do I think about that, but one day I would like to have all my descendants together: Jean-Martin, Maurice, Violette, Justin, and Honore, and all the other children and grandchildren I will have. On that day I am going to invite all my friends; I will cook the best Creole gumbo in New Orleans, and we will have music till dawn.

Zacharie and I now have a history; we can look to the past and count the days we've been together, add up our sorrows and joys, that's the way love grows, no hurry at all, day after day. I love him as I always have, but I feel more comfortable with him than I once did. When he was handsome, everyone admired him, especially the women, who boldly offered themselves to him, and I fought against the fear that vanity and temptations would take him away from me, though he never gave me any reason to be jealous. Now you have to know the man inside him, as I do, to realize what he is worth. I don't remember how he was; I like his strange, broken face, the patch over his dead eye, his scars. We have learned not to argue over trivial things, only those that are important, which are many. To save him from restlessness and irritation, I take advantage of his absences to entertain myself in my fashion, that's the advantage of having a hardworking husband. He doesn't like for me to walk barefoot through the street because I am not a slave, or for me to go with Pere Antoine to comfort sinners in Le Marais because it's dangerous, or for me to attend the bambousses in the place Congo, because they are vulgar. I tell him none of that, and he doesn't ask. Just yesterday I was dancing in the square to the magical drums of Sanite Dede. Dancing and dancing. From time to time Erzulie, loa of motherhood and love, comes and mounts Zarite. Then we go galloping together to visit my dead ones on the island beneath the sea. That is how it is.