Isabel Allende - Island Beneath the Sea

"I have waited thirty years for this moment, and when it comes, instead of dancing with joy I weep," I told him, embarrassed.

"You have time to dance now, Zarite. We will go out and celebrate this very evening," he offered.

"I don't have anything to wear!"

"I will buy you a dress, it is the least you deserve on this day, the most important one in your life."

"Are you rich, Zacharie?"

"I am poor but I live like a rich man. That is wiser than being rich and living like a poor man." He burst out laughing. "When I die, my friends will have to take up a collection to bury me, but my epitaph will say in gold letters: 'Here lies Zacharie, the wealthiest black man along the Mississippi.' I already ordered the inscription on the stone, and I keep it under my bed."

"That's the same thing Madame Violette Boisier wants: an impressive tomb."

"It is the only thing that stays on, Zarite. In a hundred years visitors to the cemetery will be able to admire the tombs of Violette and Zacharie and imagine that we had a good life."

He went to the house with me. Halfway there we met two white men, almost as well dressed as Zacharie, who looked him up and down with a sardonic expression. One of them spit very close to Zacharie's feet, but he didn't notice, or preferred to ignore it.

He didn't have to buy me a dress; Madame Violette wanted to get me ready for the first evening out of my life. Loula and she bathed me, massaged me with almond cream, polished my nails, and did the best they could with my feet, though of course they couldn't hide the calluses from so many years of going without shoes. Madame painted my face, and in the mirror I didn't see a gaudily colored me but an almost pretty Zarite Sedella. I put on a muslin dress of Violette's with an empire cut and cape of the same peach color, and she knotted on a silk tignon in her style. She lent me her taffeta shoes and her large golden earrings, her one jewel aside from the ring with the broken opal that she never removed from her finger. I did not have to leave in clogs and carry the slippers in a bag in order not to dirty them in the street, the usual way, because Zacharie came for me in a rented coach. I supposed that Violette, Loula, and several neighbors who came to look out of curiosity wondered why a gentleman like Zacharie would waste his time with someone as insignificant as me.

Zacharie brought me two gardenias, which Loula pinned onto my decolletage, and we went to the theater at the Opera. That night they were presenting a work by the composer Joseph Bologne, the chevalier de Saint-Georges, the son of a planter from Guadalupe and his African slave. King Louis XVI named him director of the Paris Opera, but he didn't last long because the divas and tenors refused to perform under his baton. That is what Zacharie told me. Perhaps none of the whites in the audience that applauded so loudly knew that the music had been composed by a mulatto. We had the best seats in the part reserved for people of color, second floor center. The heavy air in the theater smelled of alcohol, sweat, and tobacco, but I smelled only my gardenias. In the galleries were a number of Kaintucks, who interrupted with jeering shouts, until finally they were pulled out and the music could continue. After that we went to the Salon Orleans, where they were playing waltzes, polkas, and quadrilles, the same dances Maurice and Rosette had learned under their tutor's rod. Zacharie led me without stepping on my feet or running into other couples; we had to cut figures on the floor without flapping our arms or sticking out our rears. There were some white men but no white woman, and Zacharie was the blackest Negro aside from the musicians and waiters, and also the handsomest. He surpassed everyone in height and danced as if he were floating, his smile showing his perfect teeth.

We stayed to dance a half hour, but Zacharie realized that I did not fit in there, and we left. The first thing I did when I got into the coach was take off my shoes. We ended up near the river on a discreet little street far from most of the city's residences. I noticed that there were several coaches with their drivers dozing on the seats, as if they had been waiting quite some time. We stopped before an ivy covered wall with a narrow door, the overhanging lantern shedding a pale light. This entry was guarded by a white man armed with two pistols, who saluted Zacharie respectfully. We walked into a courtyard where a dozen saddled horses stood, and heard the chords of an orchestra. The house, which could not be seen from the street, was a good size, unpretentious, and I couldn't see the inside because heavy drapes were pulled across all the windows. "Welcome to Chez Fleur, the most famous place in New Orleans to come for gaming," Zacharie announced with a broad gesture that took in the entire surroundings. Soon we found ourselves in a large room. Through the cigar smoke I saw white men and men of color, some crowded around gaming tables, others drinking, and some dancing with women in deeply cut dresses. Someone put goblets of champagne in our hands. We could not move forward because someone stopped Zacharie at every step to say hello.

Suddenly an argument broke out among several players and Zacharie made a move to intervene, but faster than he was an enormous person with a mat of hair like wire, a cigar clamped between the teeth, and a wood cutter's boots, who delivered a few ringing slaps that dissolved the argument. Two minutes later the men were sitting with cards in their hands, joking, as if they'd never been cuffed. Zacharie introduced me to the person who had restored order. I thought it was a man with breasts, but it turned out to be a woman with hair on her face. She had the name of a delicate flower and bird that did not go with her looks: Fleur Hirondelle.

Zacharie explained to me that with the money he'd saved for years to buy his freedom, which he'd brought with him when he left Saint-Domingue, plus a bank loan obtained by his partner, Fleur Hirondelle, they were able to buy the house, which had been in bad shape, but they repaired it and put in all the necessary comforts, and even touches of opulence. They had no interference from the authorities, since a part of the take was designated for the inevitable bribes. They sold liquor and food, there was merry music from two orchestras, and they offered the most luscious ladies of the night in Louisiana. These were not employed by the house but were independent artists, as the Chez Fleur was not a brothel; there were many of those in the city and there was no need for another. At the tables fortunes were lost and sometimes won, but the largest part stayed with the house. The Chez Fleur was a good business, though they were still paying off the loan and had a lot of expenses.

"My dream is to have several of these gaming houses, Zarite. Of course it would take white partners, like Fleur Hirondelle, to get the money."

"She's white? She looks like an Indian."

"She is pure blooded French, just burned from the sun."

"You had luck to find her, Zacharie. Partners are not easy; it's better to pay someone to lend you a name. That's what Madame Violette does to get around the law. Don Sancho is a front, but she doesn't let him nose into her business."

At Zacharie's gaming house we danced in my style, and the night went flying by. When he took me back to the house it was nearly dawn, and he had to hold me by one arm because my head was spinning from contentment and champagne, which I'd never had before. Erzulie, loa of love, do not allow me to fall in love with this man because I will suffer, I prayed that night, thinking how the women in the Salon Orleans had looked at him, and how the ones at the Chez Fleur had offered themselves to him.

From the window of the carriage we saw Pere Antoine returning to the church, his feet dragging after a night of good works. He was exhausted and we stopped to pick him up, though I was ashamed that my breath smelled of alcohol and my dress was cut low. "I see you have celebrated your first day of freedom in grand style, my daughter. Nothing more deserved in your case than a little dissipation," was all he said before he gave me his blessing.