Isabel Allende - Island Beneath the Sea

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 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.