Isabel Allende - Island Beneath the Sea

One evening several militiamen came to the plantation; they were moving through the north in an attempt to control the anarchy, and among them was Parmentier. The doctor seldom traveled outside Le Cap because of the dangers on the road and his duties with the French soldiers dying in his hospital. There was an outbreak of yellow fever in one of the barracks that he had controlled before it became an epidemic, but malaria, cholera, and dengue fever caused considerable havoc. Parmentier joined the militiamen's party, the one way to travel with some security, not so much to visit Valmorain, whom he saw from time to time in Le Cap, as to consult Tante Rose. He was disappointed when he learned of his teacher's disappearance. Valmorain offered hospitality to his friend and to the militiamen, who were covered with dust, thirsty, and exhausted. For a couple of days the big house was filled with activity, with male voices, and even with music, because several of the men played string instruments. Finally they could use the ones Violette Boisier had bought when she decorated the house thirteen years before; they were out of tune but playable. Valmorain sent for several slaves who had special talent on the drums, and a fiesta was organized. Tante Mathilde emptied the larder of the best it contained and prepared fruit tarts and complicated greasy and spicy creole stews she hadn't made for a long time. Prosper Cambray took charge of roasting a lamb, one of the few remaining, for they mysteriously disappeared. The hogs also vanished, and as it was impossible for the Maroons to steal those heavy animals without the complicity of the slaves on the plantation, when one went missing Cambray chose ten blacks at random and had them lashed; someone had to pay for the loss. In those months the overseer, enjoying more power than ever, was behaving as if he were the true owner of Saint-Lazare, and his insolence with Tete, more and more brazen, was his way of defying his employer, who had drawn into himself since the rebellion broke out. The unexpected visit of the militiamen, all mulattoes like him, fed his arrogance: he distributed Valmorain's liquor without consulting him, gave peremptory orders to the domestic slaves in his presence, and made jokes at his expense. Dr. Parmentier noticed all these things, just as he noticed that Tete and the children trembled when the overseer was around, and he was at the point of commenting on this to his host, but experience made him hold his tongue. Every plantation was a world apart, with its own system of relationships, its secrets and vices. For example, Rosette, the little girl with skin so light she could only be Valmorain's daughter. And what had become of Tete's other child? He would have liked to know, but he never dared asked Valmorain; the relationships of the whites with their female slaves was a forbidden subject in good society.

"I suppose that you have seen the damage caused by the rebellion, Doctor," Valmorain commented. "These bands have devastated the region."

"That is so. As we were coming here, we saw smoke from a fire at the Lacroix plantation," Parmentier told him. "When we got closer, we could see that the cane fields were still burning. There wasn't a soul around. The silence was terrifying."

"I know, Doctor, because I was among the first to reach the Habitation Lacroix after the assault," Valmorain explained. "The entire Lacroix family and their overseers and domestics were massacred; the rest of the slaves disappeared. We dug a grave and buried the bodies temporarily, until the authorities could investigate what had happened. We could not leave them strewn around like carrion. The blacks treated themselves to an orgy of blood."

"Aren't you afraid something like that will happen here?' Parmentier asked.

"We are armed and on guard, and I trust Cambray's ability," Valmorain replied. "But I confess that I am very worried. The blacks vented their rage on Lacroix and his family."

"Your friend Lacroix had a reputation for being cruel," the physician interrupted. "That inflamed the attackers even more, but in this war no one has any consideration for anyone, mon ami. You must be prepared for the worst."

"Did you know that for a banner the rebels carry a white infant impaled on a lance, Doctor?"

"Everyone knows it. In France there is a reaction of horror to these events. The slaves can no longer count on any sympathizer in the Assemblee-even the Societe des Amis des Noirs is quiet-but these atrocities are the logical response to what we have done to them."

"Do not include us, Doctor!" exclaimed Valmorain. "You and I have never committed such excesses!"

"I am not referring to anyone in particular, only to the norm we have imposed. The Negroes' revenge was inevitable. I am ashamed of being French," Parmentier said sadly.

"If it is a matter of revenge, we have reached the point that it is either them or us. We planters will defend our lands and our investments. We are going to restore the colony as it was. We will not sit here with our arms crossed!"

Their arms were not crossed. The colonists, the marechaussee, and the army went on the hunt, and any black rebel they caught, they flayed alive. They imported fifteen hundred dogs from Jamaica and twice that number of mules from Martinique trained to climb mountains, dragging cannons.

One after another, the plantations in the north began to blaze. The fires lasted months, the splendor of the flames could be seen at night in Cuba, and the dense smoke choked Le Cap and, according to the slaves, reached as far as Guinea. Major Etienne Relais, who was in charge of informing the Gouverneur of losses, had by the end of December counted more than two thousand among the whites, and if his calculations were correct, there were ten thousand more among the blacks. In France, opinion changed after people learned of the colonists' suffering in Saint-Domingue, and the Assemblee Nationale annulled the recent decree that granted political rights to the affranchis. Just as Relais had told Violette, that decision was completely lacking in logic, since the mulattoes had nothing to do with the uprising; they were the Negroes' worst enemies and the natural allies of the grands blancs, with whom they had everything in common except color. Gouverneur Blanchelande, whose sympathy did not lie with the republicans, had to use the army to quash the revolt of the slaves, which was taking on the proportions of catastrophe, and to intervene in the barbarous conflict between whites and mulattoes that had begun in Port-au-Prince. The petits blancs carried out a massacre against the affranchis, and they answered by committing worse savagery than the blacks and whites combined. No one was safe. The entire island shook from the clash of an age-old hatred that had awaited an excuse to burst into flames. In Le Cap the white rabble, fired up by what had happened in Port-au-Prince, attacked people of color in the streets, broke into and wrecked their houses, ravished their women, slit their children's throats, and hanged the men from their own balconies. The stench of corpses could be smelled on the ships anchored outside the port. In a note Parmentier sent Valmorain, he commented on news of the city: "There is nothing as dangerous as impunity, mon ami, that is when people go mad and commit the most hideous bestial acts; it doesn't matter the color of the skin, everyone is the same. If you had seen what I have seen, you would have to question the superiority of the white race, a topic we have so often discussed."

Terrified by the turbulence, the doctor asked for an appointment and presented himself at the spartan office of Etienne Relais, whom he knew from his work in the military hospital. He knew that Relais had married a woman of color and that he went out with her on his arm with no concern for malicious tongues, something he himself had never dared do with Adele. He calculated that the man would understand his situation better than anyone, and was ready to tell him his secret. The officer offered him a seat in the only available chair.