Isabel Allende - Island Beneath the Sea

The militiamen and the commandeurs took turns during the night guarding the campsite and the fires, which held animals at bay and calmed humans. No one felt easy in the darkness. The masters slept in hammocks inside a large waxed canvas tent that also contained their trunks and a few pieces of furniture. Eugenia, once greedy, now had the appetite of a canary, but she sat with ceremony at the table because she still followed the rules of etiquette. That night she sat in a blue upholstered chair, dressed in satin, with her filthy hair caught in a bun, sipping lemonade and rum. Her husband-no waistcoat, shirt open, a growth of beard, his eyes red-rimmed-drank his rum directly from a bottle. The woman could scarcely contain her nausea from the food: lamb cooked with chilies and spices to mask the bad smell of the second day of travel, beans, rice, salted maize cakes, and fruit preserved in syrup. Tete fanned her mistress, unable to avoid the compassion she felt for her. She had grown fond of Dona Eugenia, as she preferred to be called. Her mistress did not beat her, and she confided her worries to her, though in the beginning Tete hadn't understood Dona Eugenia because she was speaking Spanish. She told Tete how her husband had courted her in Cuba with gallantries and gifts, but afterward in Saint-Domingue he had shown his true character; he was corrupted by the bad climate and the Negroes' magic, like all the colonists in the Antilles. She, in contrast, came from the best society of Madrid, from a noble Catholic family. Tete could not imagine what her mistress was like in Spain or Cuba, but she could see that she was deteriorating before her eyes. When she met Eugenia, she'd been a robust young woman ready to adapt to her life as a newlywed, but within a few months she was sick at heart. She was frightened of everything, and wept over nothing.

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

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

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

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

"Yes, maitre."

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

"No, maitre."

"Better that way. How old are you?"