Isabel Allende - Island Beneath the Sea

The masters showered the slave with recriminations that she did not hear because merry bells were jingling in her head. "Ingrate! If all you want is to go, then go immediately. Even your clothing belongs to us, but you can take it so you do not leave naked. I will give you half an hour to get out of this house, and I forbid you ever to enter again. We shall see what becomes of you when you are out in the street! Offer yourself to the sailors like any strumpet, that's the only thing you'll be able to do!" roared Hortense, striking the legs of her chair with her whip.

Tete left the room, closed the door carefully, and went to the kitchen, where the rest of the slaves already knew what was happening. At the risk of attracting her mistress's wrath, Denise offered to let Tete sleep with her and leave at dawn so she would not be in the street at night without a safe conduct. Tete wasn't free yet, and if picked up by the guard would end up in prison, but she was impatient to leave. She embraced each of them with the promise to see them at mass, on the place Congo, or in the market; she did not plan to go far. New Orleans was the perfect city for her, she said. "You won't have a master to protect you, Tete, anything can happen to you, it's very dangerous out there. How are you going to make a living?" Celestine asked her. "The way I always have, working."

She did not stop in her room to collect her meager possessions; she took only her document of freedom and a small basket of food, crossed the square almost floating, turned toward the Cathedral, and knocked on the saint's door. Sister Lucie opened it, holding a candle in her hand, and without a question led her down the hall joining the dwelling with the church to a badly lighted room where a dozen indigents were sitting at a table with plates of soup and bread. Pere Antoine was eating with them. "Have a chair, daughter, we've been expecting you. For now, Sister Lucie will provide you a corner to sleep in," he told her.

The next day the saint accompanied her to the court. At the exact hour Valmorain, Parmentier, and Sancho appeared to make legal the emancipation of "the woman Zarite, who is called Tete, a thirty-year-old mulatta of good behavior and loyal service. By way of this document her daughter Rosette, a quadroon of eleven, belongs as a slave to the aforementioned Zarite." The judge ordered a public notice hung so that "any person who has a legal objection should present himself before this Court in the maximum period of forty days from this date." When the ceremony, which lasted barely nine minutes, was ended, they all left in good spirits, including Valmorain. During the night, once Hortense slept, weary from rage and lamentation, he had time to think things through and realized that Sancho was right; he should let Tete go. At the door of the building he touched her arm.

"Although you have inflicted a great injury on me, I hold no rancor against you, woman," he said in a paternal tone, satisfied with his own generosity. "I suppose you will end up begging, but at least I shall save Rosette. She will continue with the Ursulines until she completes her education."

"Your daughter will thank you for it, monsieur," she replied, and danced off down the street.

The first two weeks Tete earned her food and a straw mat to sleep on by helping Pere Antoine in his many charitable tasks. She got up before dawn, when he had already been praying a good while, and accompanied him to the prison, the hospital, the asylum for the mad, the orphanage, and a few private houses to give communion to the old and the sick abed. The whole day, under sun or rain, the frail figure of the priest with his dark brown robe and tangled beard moved around the city; he was seen in the mansions of the wealthy and in miserable huts, in convents and brothels, seeking charity in the market and cafes, offering bread to mutilated beggars and water to slaves in the auctions at the Maspero Echange, always followed by a pack of starving dogs. He never forgot to console the punished in the stocks installed behind the Cabildo, the most unfortunate of his flock, whose wounds he cleaned with such awkwardness, being as nearsighted as he was, that Tete had to take over.

"What angel hands you have, Tete! The Lord has pointed you out to be a nurse. You will have to stay and work with me," the saint suggested.

"I am not a nun, mon pere. I cannot work for nothing forever, I must look after my daughter."

"Do not give in to greed, daughter; service to one's neighbor has its payment in heaven, as Jesus promised."

"Tell him to pay me better right here, even if only a little."

"I will tell him, daughter, but Jesus has a lot of expenses," the priest replied with a sly laugh.

At dusk they would return to the little stone house, where Sister Lucie would be waiting with soap and water to clean up before eating with the indigents. Tete would soak her feet in a basin of water and cut strips to make bandages while the priest heard confessions, acted as arbiter, resolved quarrels, and dispelled animosities. He did not give advice, which according to his experience was a waste of time; each person commits his own errors and learns from them.

At night the saint covered himself with a moth-eaten mantle and went out with Tete to rub elbows with the most dangerous rabble, equipped with a lantern since none of the eighty lamp posts in the city was placed where it would help him. The lawless troublemakers tolerated him because he responded to their curses with sarcastic blessings, and no one could intimidate him. He did not come with an attitude of condemnation, or a determination to save souls, but to bandage knife wounds, separate the violent, prevent suicides, succor women, collect corpses, and lead children to the nuns' orphanage. If out of ignorance one of the Kaintucks dared touch him, a hundred fists were raised to teach the foreigner who Pere Antoine was. He went into Le Marais, the most depraved place along the Mississippi, protected by his inalterable innocence and his indistinct aureole. There oarsmen, pirates, pimps, whores, army deserters, bingeing sailors, thieves, and murderers gathered in gaming dens and whorehouses. Tete, terrified, inched forward through clay, vomit, shit, and rats, clinging to the Capuchin's habit and invoking Erzulie in a loud voice while the priest savored the thrill of danger. "Jesus watches over us, Tete," he assured her happily. "And if his attention wanders, mon pere?"

By the end of the second week, Tete had battered feet, an aching back, a heart depressed by human misery, and the suspicion that it would be easier to cut cane than distribute charity among the ungrateful. One Tuesday in the place d'Armes she ran into Sancho Garcia del Solar, dressed in black and so perfumed that not even flies approached him, very happy because he had just won a game of ecarte from an overly confident American. He greeted her with a flowery bow and kiss on the hand before several astonished gazes, then invited her to have a cup of coffee.

"It will have to be quick, Don Sancho, because I am waiting for mon pere, who is off healing the sores of a sinner, and I don't believe he will be long."

"Aren't you helping him, Tete?"

"Yes, but this sinner suffers from the Spanish illness, and mon pere does not let me see the man's private parts. As if that were a novelty for me."

"The saint is completely right, Tete. If I were attacked by that-may God forbid!-I would not want a beautiful woman to offend my modesty."

"Don't make fun, Don Sancho; that misfortune can happen to anyone. Except Pere Antoine, of course."

They sat down at a table facing the square. The owner of the cafe, a free mulatto acquaintance of Sancho's, did not hide his surprise at the contrast presented by the Spaniard and his companion, one with the air of royalty and the other that of a beggar. Sancho also noticed Tete's pathetic appearance, and when she told him what her life had been during those two weeks he burst out laughing.