Isabel Allende - Island Beneath the Sea

"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.