Isabel Allende - Island Beneath the Sea

Halfway through the year, the students had progressed so well that Don Sancho made a large bet with his friends at the Cafe des Emigres that every one of the girls would be well placed. I watched the classes discreetly, to learn if any of it could help me in pleasing Zacharie. Beside him I look like a servant; I don't have Madame Violette's charm or the intelligence of Adele, I'm not a coquette, as Don Sancho counseled me to be, nor as entertaining as Dr. Parmentier would wish.

During the day my daughter went around pressed into a bustier, and at night she slept slathered with creme to lighten her skin, with a headband to press back her ears and a girth constricting her waist. Beauty is illusion, madame said; at fifteen all girls are pretty, but to keep being that way requires discipline. Rosette had to read aloud the manifest of the cargo on the ships in port, in that way training herself to bear with a happy expression a boring man; she scarcely ate, she straightened her curls with hot irons, removed hair with caramel, rubbed herself with oats and lemon, spent hours practicing curtsies, dances, and drawing room games. What would it benefit her being free if she had to behave that way? No man deserves that much, I said, but Madame Violette convinced me that it was the only way to ensure her future. My daughter, who had never been docile, submitted without complaint. Something in her had changed; she no longer took pains to please anyone, she had gone silent. Once she had spent her time looking at herself in the mirror, but now she used it only when madame demanded in classes.

Madame taught the way to flatter without servility, to hold back reproaches, to hide jealousy and overcome the temptation to try other kisses. Most important, according to her, was to take advantage of the fire we women have in our belly. That is what men most fear and desire. She advised the girls to know their bodies and to pleasure themselves with their fingers, because without pleasure there is neither health nor beauty. Tante Rose had tried to teach me the same thing when Master Valmorain began to rape me, but I paid no attention, I was just a child and was afraid of everything. Tante Rose bathed me in herbs and spread a clay dough on my belly and thighs, which at first felt cold and heavy but then got warm and seemed to bubble, as if it were alive. Earth and water heal the body and the soul. I suppose that with Gambo I felt for the first time what madame was talking about, but we were pulled apart too soon. Then for years I felt nothing, until Zacharie came along to waken my body. He loves me, and he is patient. Aside from Tante Rose, he is the only person who has counted the scars in the secret places where sometimes my master put out his cigar. Madame Violette is the only woman I've ever heard use that word: pleasure. "How are you going to give it to a man if you don't know what it is?" she asked her students. Pleasure of love, of nursing a baby, of dancing. Pleasure is also waiting for Zacharie, knowing he will come.

That year I was very busy with my responsibilities in the house besides tending the students, running messages to Madame Adele, and preparing remedies for Dr. Parmentier. In December, just before the Cordon Bleu ball, I counted and realized it had been three months since I bled. The only surprise was that I hadn't got pregnant before, because I had been with Zacharie for some time without taking the precautions Tante Rose had taught me. He wanted to marry me as soon as I told him, but first I had to place my Rosette.

During the vacation time of the fourth year of school, Maurice waited for Jules Beluche as he always did. By then he didn't want to meet his family, and the only reason to go back to New Orleans was Rosette, although the possibility of seeing her would be remote. The Ursulines did not allow spontaneous visits from anyone, much less a boy unable to prove a close relationship. He knew that his father would never give him the necessary authorization, but he never lost hope of going with his uncle Sancho, whom the nuns knew because he had never stopped visiting Rosette. Through his letters Maurice learned that Tete had been relegated to the plantation after the incident with Hortense, and he could only blame himself; he imagined her cutting cane from sunup to sundown and felt a fist in the pit of his stomach. Not only he and Tete had paid dearly for that one crack of the whip, apparently Rosette had fallen into disgrace too. The girl had written several times to Valmorain, asking him to come see her, but she got no answer. "What have I done to lose your father's esteem? Once I was like his daughter, why has he forgotten me?" she repeated in her letters to Maurice, but he could not give her an honest answer. "He hasn't forgotten you, Rosette-Papa loves you the way he always has and he wants you to be doing well, but the plantation and his businesses keep him busy. I haven't seen him myself for more than three years." Why tell her that Valmorain had never thought of her as a daughter? Before he'd been sent to Boston, he had asked his father to take him to visit his sister at the school, and with great anger Valmorain replied that Maurice's only sister was Marie-Hortense.

That summer Jules Beluche did not show up in Boston, instead Sancho Garcia del Solar, in his wide-brimmed hat, thundered up at full gallop with another horse in tow. He jumped down and brushed off the dust with his hat before embracing his nephew. Jules Beluche had been knifed over some gambling debts, and the Guizots intervened to squelch gossip; however distant the relationship that united them, sharp tongues would associate Beluche with the honorable branch of the family. They did what any Creoles of their class did in similar circumstances: they paid his debts, took him in until his wound healed and he could look after himself, gave him pocket money, and put him on a boat with instructions not to get off until he reached Texas, and never to return to New Orleans. Sancho told Maurice all that, doubled over with laughter.

"That could have been me, Maurice. Up till now I've been lucky, but any day they will bring you the news that your favorite uncle has been stitched like a quilt in some hole of a gaming house," he added.

"May God not let that happen, Uncle. Have you come to take me home?" Maurice asked in a voice that shifted from baritone to soprano in the same sentence.

"What makes you think that, boy! Do you want to be buried all summer on the plantation? You and I are going on a trip," Sancho announced.

"That's what I did with Beluche."

"Don't compare me to him, Maurice. I do not intend to contribute to your civic formation by showing you monuments, I mean to pervert you, what do you think of that?"

"How, Uncle?"

"In Cuba, my nephew. No better place for a couple of truants like us. How old are you?"

"Fifteen."

"And your voice hasn't changed yet?"

"It changed, Uncle, but I have a c-cold," the boy stammered.

"By your age I was a hell raiser. You're a little behind, Maurice. Pack your things, because we leave tomorrow," Sancho ordered.

Sancho still had many friends and no few lovers in Cuba, who proposed to shower him with attention during that vacation and put up with his companion, that strange boy who spent his time writing letters and suggested absurd subjects of conversation like slavery and democracy, something none of them had formed an opinion about. It amused them to see Sancho in the role of nursemaid, which he performed with unsuspected dedication. He turned down the best sprees in order not to leave his nephew alone, and stopped going to animal fights-bulls with bears, snakes with weasels, cocks with cocks, dogs with dogs-because they disturbed Maurice. Sancho decided to teach the boy to drink and, halfway through the night ended by cleaning up his vomit. He taught him all his card tricks, but Maurice lacked malice and instead had to pay up after others less principled fleeced him. Soon Sancho had also abandoned the idea of initiating him into the free-for-alls of love, for when he tried it Maurice nearly died of fright. He had arranged the details with a good-hearted woman friend, not young but still attractive, who was willing to act as teacher to the nephew for the pure pleasure of doing the uncle a favor. "This kid is still green behind the ears," Sancho muttered, mortified, when Maurice ran away upon seeing the woman in a provocative negligee reclining on a divan. "No one has ever rebuffed me like that, Sancho." She laughed. "Close the door and come console me." Despite those stumbles, Maurice had an unforgettable summer and returned to school taller, stronger, tanned, and with a definite tenor voice. "Don't study too hard, because it will ruin your sight and your character, get ready for next summer. I'm going to take you to Mexico," Sancho told his nephew as he left. He did as he promised, and from then on Maurice eagerly looked forward to summer.