Isabel Allende - Island Beneath the Sea

The only reason Gambo stayed in Tante Mathilde's kitchen was that he was preparing to escape. He knew the risks. In Saint-Lazare there were slaves without a nose or ears or with shackles welded around their ankles that they could not take off; no one would ever run wearing those shackles. I think that he put off his flight for me, for the way we looked at each other, the messages of little stones in the henhouse, the treats he stole for me in the kitchen, the anticipation of embracing each other that was like the prickling of pepper over all our bodies, and for those rare moments when we were alone and could touch. "We will be free, Zarite, and we will be together forever. I love you more than anyone, more than my father and his five wives, who were my mothers, more than my brothers and my sisters, more than all of them together, but not more than my honor." A warrior does what he has to do, that is more important than love, I understand that. We women love more and for longer, too. I also know that. Gambo was prideful, and there is no greater danger for a slave than pride. I begged him to stay in the kitchen if he wanted to stay alive, to be invisible to avoid Cambray, but that was asking too much, it was asking him to live the life of a coward. "Life is written in our z'etoile, and we cannot change it. You will come with me, Zarite?" I could not go with him; I was very heavy, and together we would not have got far.

Several years earlier, Violette Boisier had given up Le Cap's night life, not because she had faded-she could still compete with any of her rivals-but for Etienne Relais. Their relationship had evolved into a loving friendship seasoned with his passion and her good humor. They had been together nearly a decade, which to them seemed a very short time. The first years they spent apart, able to see each other only during Relais's brief visits between military campaigns. For a while she had continued her trade, offering her magnificent services to only a handful of clients, the most generous. She became so selective that Loula had to take the most impetuous, the irremediably ugly, and those with bad breath off the list; she gave preference to older men because they were grateful. A few years after he met Violette, Relais was promoted to major in the army, charged with security in the north, and with that he traveled for shorter periods. As soon as he was established in Le Cap, he stopped sleeping in the barracks and married Violette. He did that defiantly, with pomp and ceremony in the church and an announcement in the newspaper, just like the weddings of the grands blancs, scandalizing his fellow military, who were unable to comprehend his reasons for marrying a woman of color and, further, one of questionable reputation, when he could have kept her as a lover. No one, however, asked questions to his face, and he offered no explanation. He was counting on the fact that no one would dare denigrate his wife. Violette notified her "friends" that she was no longer available and shared among other cocottes the party dresses she could not transform into more discreet gowns; she sold her apartment, and went to live in a house Relais bought in a barrio of petits blancs and affranchis. Their new friends were mulattoes, some rather well-to-do, owners of land and slaves, Catholics, although in secret they often reverted to voodoo. They had descended from the same whites who scorned them; they were their children and grandchildren, and they imitated them in all things and denied when they could the African blood of their mothers. Relais was not a friendly man-he felt comfortable only in the rude camaraderie of the barracks-but from time to time he accompanied his wife to social gatherings. "Smile, Etienne, so my friends will lose their fear of the mastiff of Saint-Domingue," she would ask of him. Violette commented to Loula that she missed the glitter of the parties and spectacles that had filled her nights. "You had money then and you had a good time, my angel, now you are poor and bored. What have you gained with your soldier?" They lived on the major's modest salary, but without his knowledge the two women had dealings with petty smugglers and lent money at interest, and were increasing the capital Violette had earned and Loula knew how to invest.

Etienne Relais had not forgotten his plans to return to France, especially now that the republic had given power to ordinary citizens like himself. He was fatigued with life in the colony, but he did not have enough money saved to retire from the army. He was not repelled by war-he was a centaur of many battles, accustomed to suffering and making others suffer, but he was tired of the uproar. He did not understand the situation in Saint-Domingue; alliances were made and broken in a matter of hours, the whites fought among themselves and against the affranchis, and no one gave much weight to the growing insurrection among the blacks, which he considered the most serious matter of all. Despite the anarchy and violence, the pair found a peaceful happiness they had never known. They avoided speaking of children, she could not conceive and he was not interested in them, but when one unforgettable evening Toulouse Valmorain had appeared at their house with a new baby wrapped in a mantilla, they welcomed it as a pet that would fill Violette and Loula's hours, never suspecting it would become the son they had not dared dream of. Valmorain had brought the infant to Violette because he could not think of another way to make it disappear before Eugenia's return from Cuba; he had to prevent her from learning that Tete's baby was his as well. It could not be anyone else's because he was the only white at Saint-Lazare. He hadn't known that Violette had married a military man. He didn't find her in the apartment on place Clugny, which now had a different occupant, but it was easy to trace her to the new address, and there he arrived with the baby and a wet nurse he had obtained at his neighbor Lacroix's. He put the matter to the couple as a temporary arrangement, having no idea how he was going to resolve it later, and was relieved when Violette and her husband accepted the infant without asking more than its name. "He has not been baptized, you can call him whatever you want," he told them at the time.

Etienne Relais was as fierce, vigorous, and healthy as he'd been in his youth, the same bundle of muscles and fiber, with a thatch of gray hair and the iron character that caused him to rise in the army and earned him several medals. First he had served the king, and now he would serve the republic with equal loyalty. He still, frequently, wanted to make love to Violette, and she happily accompanied him in the playful cavortings that according to Loula were inappropriate for a mature husband and wife. The contrast was marked between his reputation as a merciless soldier and the hidden softness he lavished on his wife and the baby, who rapidly won his heart, the organ that in the barracks it was maintained he did not have. "That little fellow could be my grandson," he often said, and in truth he doted on him like a grandfather. Violette and the boy were the only two people he had loved in his life, though if pushed slightly he admitted he also loved Loula, the bossy African woman who had given him such a battle at first, when she was trying to get Violette to choose a more suitable groom. Relais offered to emancipate her, and Loula's reaction was to throw herself to the floor, wailing that they meant to get rid of her, as happened to so many slaves that age or illness rendered useless and whose masters abandoned them in the street to keep from having to support them. She had spent her life caring for Violette, and now that they no longer needed her they were going to condemn her to begging or dying of hunger, and on and on at the top of her lungs. Finally Relais was able to get her to listen, and assured her she could be a slave to her last breath, if that is what she wanted. After that promise, the woman's attitude changed, and instead of putting dolls stuck with pins under his bed, she outdid herself to prepare him his favorite meals.