Isabel Allende - Island Beneath the Sea

"Sainthood certainly is a burden, Tete. You have to escape from Pere Antoine or you will end up as decrepit as Sister Lucie," he said.

"I cannot abuse Pere Antoine's kindness too much longer, Don Sancho. I will leave when the forty days of the notice in the court ends and I have my freedom. Then I will see what I am going to do; I have to find work."

"And Rosette?"

"She is still with the Ursulines. I know you visit her and take gifts in my name. How can I repay you for your goodness to us, Don Sancho?"

"You owe me nothing, Tete."

"I need to save something to support Rosette when she gets out of the school."

"What does Pere Antoine say of all this?" Sancho asked, stirring five spoonfuls of sugar and a dash of cognac into his cup of coffee.

"That God will provide."

"I hope that is the case, but perhaps it would be a good idea if you had an alternate plan. I need a housekeeper-my house is a disaster-but if I hire you the Valmorains will never forgive me."

"I understand, monsieur. Someone will hire me, I'm sure."

"The slaves do all the hard work, from tending the fields to raising the children. Did you know there are three thousand slaves in New Orleans?"

"And how many free persons, monsieur?"

"Some five thousand whites and two thousand of color is what they say."

"That is, there are twice as many free persons as slaves," she calculated. "How can I help but find someone who needs me? An abolitionist, for example."

"An abolitionist in Louisiana? If there are any, they are well hidden," Sancho laughed.

"I don't know how to read, write, or cook, monsieur, but I know how to do things in the house, bring babies into the world, sew up wounds, and heal the sick," she insisted.

"It will not be easy, woman, but I am going to try and help you," Sancho told her. "A friend of mine claims that slaves are more expensive than employees. It takes several slaves to grudgingly do the work one free person does with good will. You understand?"

"More or less," she admitted, memorizing every word to repeat to Pere Antoine.

"A slave lacks incentives; for him it is better to work slowly and badly, since his effort benefits only the master, but free people work hard to save and get ahead, that is their incentive."

"At Saint-Lazare, Monsieur Cambray's whip was the incentive," she commented.

"And you've seen how that colony ended, Tete. You cannot impose terror indefinitely."

"You must be a disguised abolitionist, Don Sancho; you talk like Monsieur Zacharie and that tutor in Le Cap, Gaspard Severin."

"Don't repeat that in public, you will cause me problems. Tomorrow I want to see you right here, clean and well dressed. We are going to call on my friend."

The next day Pere Antoine left alone to do his tasks, while Tete, wearing her one dress, recently washed, and her starched tignon, went with Sancho to apply for her first job. They did not go far, only a few blocks along picturesque Chartres with its shops of hats, laces, buttons, cloth, and everything that exists to nourish female coquetry, and stopped before a small two story house painted yellow, with green iron railing on the balconies.

Sancho rapped at the door with a small knocker in the shape of a toad, and a fat black woman opened. When she saw Sancho, her expression of bad humor was replaced with an enormous smile. Tete thought she had traveled twenty years in circles, to end at the same place she was when she left Madame Delphine's house. It was Loula. The woman did not recognize her-that would have been impossible-but since she was with Sancho she greeted her and led them to the drawing room. "Madame will be right here, Don Sancho. She is expecting you," she said, and disappeared, making the boards of the floor resound with her elephantine tread.

Minutes later Tete, with her heart leaping, saw the same Violette Boisier of Le Cap at the door, as beautiful as then and with the assurance years and memories bestow. Sancho was transformed in the instant. His Spanish male pomposity disappeared, and it was a timid boy who bent to kiss the beauty's hand, as the tip of his sword caught and turned over a little table. Tete managed to catch on the fly and clutch to her chest a porcelain medieval troubadour as she stared at Violette with awe. "I suppose this is the woman you were telling me about, Sancho," Violette said. Tete noticed the familiarity of her tone and Sancho's shyness; she remembered the gossip and understood that Violette was the Cuban who, according to Celestine, had replaced Adi Soupir in the Spanish lover's heart.

"Madame…we met a long time ago. You bought me from Madame Delphine when I was a girl," Tete managed to get out.

"I did? I d-don't remember," Violette stammered.

"In Le Cap. You bought me for Monsieur Valmorain. I am Zarite."

"Of course! Come to the window so I can see you better. How could I recognize you! You were a skinny little girl then, obsessed with running away."

"I am free now. Well, almost free."

"My God, this is the strangest coincidence. Loula! Come see who's here!" Violette shouted.

Loula came, dragging her huge body, and when she realized who it was, grabbed Tete in a gorilla embrace. Two sentimental tears rose in the woman's eyes when she remembered Honore, associated in her memory with the little child Tete had been. Loula told Tete that before Madame Delphine went back to France, she had tried to sell him, but he wasn't worth anything, he was just a sick old man, and she had to let him go; he would take care of himself begging.

"He went with the rebels before the revolution. He came to tell me good-bye-we were friends. That Honore was a true gentleman. I don't know if he managed to reach the mountains; the road was steep, and he had twisted bones. If he got there, who knows whether they accepted him. He was in no condition to fight in any war," Loula sighed.

"I am sure they accepted him-he knew how to drum and to cook. That is more important than carrying a weapon," Tete said to console her.

She told the priest and the ancient Sister Lucie good-bye, promising to help them tend the sick whenever she could, and moved in with Violette and Loula, as she had longed to do when she was nine. To satisfy a leftover curiosity from two decades back, she asked how much Violette had paid Madame Delphine for her and learned it was the cost of a pair of goats, even though her price went up 15 percent when she was turned over to Valmorain. "That was more than you were worth, Tete. You were an ugly, ill mannered kid," Loula assured her with all seriousness.

They gave Tete the only room for slaves in the house, a room without ventilation but clean, and Violette dug among her clothes and found something adequate for her to wear. Her tasks were so many she couldn't list them, but basically consisted of carrying out the orders of Loula, who no longer had the age or breath for domestic chores and spent the day in the kitchen preparing salves for beauty and syrups for sensuality. No sign on the street announced what was offered inside those walls; word of mouth was enough to attract an endless line of women of all ages, most of them of color, though some whites also came wearing heavy veils.

Violette appeared only in the afternoons; she had not lost the habit of devoting the morning hours to her personal care and to leisure. Her skin, rarely touched by direct sunlight, was as delicate as creme caramel, and the fine lines around her eyes gave her character; her hands, which had never washed clothing or cooked, were young, and she had added several pounds that softened her without making her appear matronly. Mysterious lotions had preserved the jet black of her hair, which she combed as she always had in a complicated bun, with a few curls hanging loose to delight the imagination. She still provoked desire in men and jealousy in women and that certainty added a swing to her walk and a purr to her laughter. Her clients confided their cares to her, asked her advice in whispers, and bought her potions without haggling, all with the most absolute discretion. Tete went with Violette to buy the ingredients, from pearls to clear the skin, which she obtained from pirates, to painted glass vials a captain brought her from Italy. "The container is worth more than the content. What matters is the look," Violette told Tete. "Pere Antoine maintains the opposite," Tete countered, laughing in return.