Island Beneath the Sea

  Napoleon suspected that the visitor was another of his sister's lovers, and received him in bad humor, but he was immediately interested when Pauline told him that the ship in which Morisset had sailed across the Caribbean had been attacked by pirates, and that he had been the prisoner of Jean Lafitte for several months, until he could pay his ransom and return to France. During his captivity he had developed a certain friendship with Lafitte based on chess matches. Napoleon interrogated the man about Lafitte's noteworthy organization, which controlled the Caribbean with its ships; no boat was safe except those of the United States, which, because of the pirate's capricious loyalty to the Americans, were never attacked.

  The emperor led Morisset into a little room where they spent two hours in private. Perhaps Lafitte was the solution to a dilemma that had tormented him since the disaster at Trafalgar: how to prevent the English from controlling maritime commerce. As he did not have the naval capacity to stop them, he had thought of allying himself with the Americans, who had been in a dispute with Great Britain since the War of Independence in 1775, but President Jefferson wanted to consolidate his territory and was not thinking of intervening in European conflicts. With a spark of inspiration, like so many that had taken him from a modest rank in the army to the peak of power, Napoleon charged Isidor Morisset with recruiting pirates to harass English ships in the Atlantic. Morisset understood that this was a delicate mission, since the emperor could not appear to be allied with buccaneers, and conjectured that, with his cover as a scientist, he could travel without attracting too much attention. The brothers Jean and Pierre Lafitte had grown untouchably rich over the years from piratical booty and every kind of contraband, but American authorities did not tolerate evasion of taxes, and despite Lafitte's manifest sympathy for the United States' democracy, he was declared an outlaw.

  Jean-Martin Relais did not know the man he was going to accompany across the Atlantic. One Monday morning the director of the military academy had called him to his office, handed him money, and ordered him to buy civilian clothing and a trunk; he was going to sail in two days. "Do not say a word of this, Relais, it is a confidential mission," the director instructed. Faithful to his military education, the young man obeyed without asking questions. Later he learned that he'd been selected for being the sharpest in the English course, and because the director thought that since he came from the colonies he would not drop dead at the first bite of a tropical mosquito.

  The youth rode at full gallop to Marseille, where Isidor Morisset was waiting with tickets in hand. Jean-Martin silently gave thanks that the man scarcely looked at him; he'd been nervous, thinking they would share a narrow stateroom during the voyage. Nothing injured his monumental pride as much as intimations from other men.

  "Don't you want to know where we're going?" Morisset asked when they'd been several days on the high seas without any conversation other than a few words of courtesy.

  "I am going wherever France commands me," Relais replied, snapping to attention, on the defensive.

  "No military moves, boy. We're civilians, understood?"

  "Yes, sir!"

  "Speak like normal people do, man, for God's sake!"

  "At your orders, sir."

  Jean-Martin soon discovered that Morisset, so somber and unpleasant in company, could be fascinating in private. Alcohol loosened his tongue and relaxed him to the point he seemed a different man, amiable, sarcastic, smiling. He played a good game of cards and had a thousand stories that he told without elaboration, in a few sentences. Between glasses of cognac they were coming to know each other, and between them grew the natural intimacy of good comrades.

  "Once Pauline Bonaparte invited me to her boudoir," Morisset told him. "An Antillean black, covered only by a loincloth, carried her in and bathed her in front of me. La Bonaparte took pride in being able to seduce anyone, but it didn't work with me."

  "Why not?"

  "I am annoyed by female stupidity."

  "Do you prefer male stupidity?" the youth joked with a touch of a tease; he too had had a few glasses and felt at ease.

  "I prefer horses."

  But Jean-Martin was more interested in the pirates than in equine virtues or the beautiful Pauline's bath, and again turned the conversation to the subject of the adventure his new friend had lived among them when he was held on Barataria Island. As Morisset knew that not even imperial warships dared approach the Lafitte brothers' island, he had flatly discarded the idea of going there without being invited; their throats would be slit before they stepped onto the beach, not giving them any opportunity to lay out their daring proposition. In addition, he wasn't sure that Napoleon's name would open the Lafittes' door--it might be just the opposite--and that is why he had decided to approach them in New Orleans, a neutral territory.

  "The Lafittes are outlaws. I don't know how we're going to find them," he told Jean-Martin.

  "It will be very easy, they don't hide," the youth assured him.

  "How do you know that?"

  "From my mother's letters."

  Until that instant it hadn't occurred to Relais to mention that his mother lived in that city; it seemed an insignificant detail, given the magnitude of the mission the emperor had charged them with.

  "Your mother knows the Lafittes?"

  "Everyone knows them, they are the kings of the Mississippi," Jean-Martin answered.

  At six o'clock in the evening, Violette Boisier was resting naked and damp with pleasure in the bed of Sancho Garcia del Solar. Ever since Rosette and Tete had been living with her and her house was invaded by students for the placage, she had preferred her lover's apartment for making love, or just to have her siesta if the spirit did not move them to more. At first Violette tried to clean and beautify the place, but she hadn't the least inclination to play at being a maid, and it was absurd to lose precious hours of intimacy trying to sort out Sancho's monumental clutter. Sancho's only servant did nothing but brew coffee. Valmorain had lent him to Sancho because it was impossible to sell him; no one would have bought him. He'd fallen from a roof and done something to his brain that caused him to wander around alone, laughing. With good reason, Hortense Guizot could not stand to have him around. Sancho tolerated him and even had a liking for him, for the quality of his coffee and because he didn't steal change when he went shopping in the Marche Francais. The man disturbed Violette; she thought that he spied on them when they made love. "That's just your idea, woman. He is so dim-witted he doesn't have the sense to do that," her lover said soothingly.

  At that same moment Loula and Tete were sitting in wicker chairs on the street in front of the yellow house, as neighbors did at dusk. The notes of a piano exercise hammered the peace of the autumn evening. Loula was smoking her black cigar with half-closed eyes, savoring the rest her bones demanded, and Tete was sewing a baby's gown. The curve of her belly was not yet noticeable but she had already told her small circle of friends about her pregnancy, and the only one who'd been surprised was Rosette, who went around so self-absorbed that she hadn't noticed the love between her mother and Zacharie. That was where Jean-Martin Relais found them. He hadn't written to announce his voyage because his orders were to keep it secret, and in addition the letter would have arrived after he did.

  Loula wasn't expecting him, and as it had been several years since she had seen him she didn't recognize him. When he stopped before her, all she did was take another puff on her cigar. "It's me, Jean-Martin," the boy exclaimed emotionally. It took the huge woman seconds to make him out through the smoke and to be aware it was in fact her boy, her prince, the light of her old eyes. Her shrieks of pleasure shattered the street. She hugged him around the waist, lifted him off the ground, and covered him with kisses and tears while he stood on tiptoe, trying to defend his dignity. "Where is Maman?" Jean-Martin asked as soon as he could free himself and pick up his hat from under their feet. "At church, son, praying for the soul of your departed father. Let's go inside; I'm going to make some coffee while my fri
end Tete goes to look for her," Loula replied without an instant's hesitation. Tete went running off in the direction of Sancho's apartment.

  In the drawing room of the house, Jean-Martin saw a girl dressed in blue playing the piano with a cup on her head. "Rosette! Look who's here! My boy, my Jean-Martin!" Loula screeched in introduction. Rosette interrupted her musical exercises and slowly turned. They greeted each other, he with a stiff nod and click of his heels and she with a fluttering of her giraffe eyelashes. "Welcome, monsieur. Not a day goes by that madame and Loula do not speak of you," said Rosette with the forced courtesy learned from the Ursulines. Nothing could be more true. The memory of the young man floated through the house like a ghost, and from hearing about him so often Rosette already knew him.

  Loula took Rosette's cup and went to tend to the coffee, and her exclamations of joy blasted in from the patio. Rosette and Jean-Martin, sitting in silence on the edge of their chairs, cast furtive glances at each other with the feeling they had met before. Twenty minutes later, when Jean-Martin was on his third piece of pastry, Violette came panting in, with Tete close behind. Jean-Martin thought his mother looked more beautiful than he remembered, and did not wonder why she was coming from mass with her hair in a tangle and dress badly buttoned.

  From the doorway Tete watched the uncomfortable youth with amusement as Loula pinched his cheeks and his mother kissed and kissed him without letting go of his hand. The salt winds of the crossing had darkened Jean-Martin's skin several tones, and the years of military formation had reinforced the stiffness inspired by the man he thought was his father. He remembered Etienne Relais as strong, stoic, and severe, and for that treasured even more the tenderness he had showered on him in the strict intimacy of the home. His mother and Loula, on the other hand, had always treated him like a baby, and apparently would continue to do so. To compensate for his pretty face, he always kept an exaggerated distance, an icy posture, and that stony expression military men tend to have. In his childhood he'd had to put up with being mistaken for a girl, and in adolescence his schoolmates taunted him or fell in love with him. Those family caresses in front of Rosette and the mulatta, whose name he hadn't caught, embarrassed him, but he did not dare reject them. Tete did not notice that Jean-Martin had the same features as Rosette, she had always thought her daughter resembled Violette Boisier, and that seemed to have been accentuated in the months of training for the placage, during which the girl imitated her teacher's mannerisms.

  In the meantime, Morisset had gone to the blacksmith shop on Saint Philip Street, which he had found out was a screen for illegal transactions; he did not, however, find the person he was looking for. He was tempted to leave a note for Jean Lafitte asking for a meeting and reminding him of the relationship they had developed over a chessboard, but realized that would be a major mistake. He had been spying for three months, posing as a scientist, and still was not used to the caution his mission demanded; at every turn he surprised himself on the verge of being imprudent. Later that same day, when Jean-Martin introduced him to his mother, his precautions seemed ridiculous, she offered quite casually to introduce him to the pirates. They were in the drawing room of the yellow house, which had become a little crowded with the family and those who had come to meet Jean-Martin: Dr. Parmentier, Adele, Sancho, and some neighbor women.

  "I understand that they've put a price on the Lafittes' heads," said the spy.

  "That's something the Americans are doing, Monsieur Moriste!" Violette laughed.

  "Morisset. Isidor Morisset, madame."

  "The Lafittes are highly esteemed because they sell at a good price. It would never occur to any of us to turn them in for the five hundred dollars offered for their heads," intervened Sancho Garcia del Solar.

  He added that Pierre had a reputation for being crude, but Jean was a gentleman from head to toe, gallant with the women and courteous with men; he spoke five languages, wrote with impeccable style, and entertained with the most generous hospitality. He was of often tested courage, and his men, who numbered nearly three thousand, would die for him.

  "Tomorrow is Saturday, and there will be an auction. Would you like to go to the Temple?" Violette asked.

  "The Temple, you say?"

  "That is where they have the auctions," Parmentier clarified.

  "If everyone knows where they are, why haven't they been arrested?" Jean-Martin put in.

  "No one dares. Claiborne has asked for reinforcement because those men are something to be feared; their law is violence, and they are better equipped than the army."

  The next day Violette, Morisset, and Jean-Martin went on an outing, provided with a basket containing a lunch and two bottles of wine. Violette arranged to leave Rosette behind using the pretext of piano exercises; she had noticed that Jean-Martin was looking at her rather too frequently, and her duty as mother was to prevent any inconvenient fantasy. Rosette was her best student, perfect for the placage, but absolutely inadequate for her son, who needed to enter the Societe du Cordon Bleu by way of a good marriage. She intended to choose her daughter-in-law with an unswerving sense of reality, without giving Jean-Martin the opportunity to commit sentimental errors. As they left, Tete was added to the party. She climbed into the boat at the last minute with some misgivings because she was suffering the usual nausea of the first months of pregnancy, and she was also afraid of the caimans and snakes that infested the water, and others that sometimes fell from overhead branches of the mangroves. The fragile boat was steered by an oarsman who knew his way with his eyes closed in that labyrinth of canals, islands, and swamps eternally enshrouded in pestilent vapors and clouds of mosquitoes--ideal for illegal traffic and imaginative felons.

  The Bastard

  The Temple turned out to be an island in the swamps of the delta, a compact mound of shells ground by time, with a forest of oaks that once had been a sacred site of the Indians and still held the remains of one of their altars; the name derived from that. The brothers Lafitte had been there since early morning, as they were every Saturday of the year, unless it fell on Christmas or the Virgin's Ascension. Along the shore were lined up flat bottom skiffs, fishing boats, pirogues, canoes, small private boats with awnings for the ladies and rough barges for transporting products.

  The pirates had set up several canvas tents, in which they exhibited their treasures and distributed free lemonade for the ladies, Kentucky whiskey for the men, and sweets for the children. The air smelled of stagnant water and the spicy fried crawfish served on corn husks. There was a spirit of carnival, with musicians, jugglers, and a show with trained dogs. A few slaves were on display on a platform, four adults and a naked little boy about two or three years old. Interested parties were examining their teeth to calculate age, the whites of their eyes to check health, and their anuses to be sure they were not stuffed with tow, the most common trick for hiding diarrhea. A mature woman with a lace parasol was weighing with gloved hand the genitals of one of the males.

  Pierre Lafitte had already begun the auction of merchandise, which at first view lacked any logic, as if it had been selected with the single purpose of confusing the shoppers, a mixture of crystal lamps, bags of coffee, women's clothing, weapons, boots, bronze statues, jam, pipes and razors, silver teapots, sacks of pepper and cinnamon, furniture, paintings, vanilla, church goblets and candelabra, crates of wine, a tame monkey, and two parrots. No one left without buying; the Lafittes also acted as bankers and lenders. Every object was exclusive, as Pierre shouted at the top of his lungs, and should be, since it all came from boarding merchant ships on the high seas. "Look what we have here, mesdames and messieurs, see this porcelain vase worthy of a royal palace! And what will you give for this brocade cape bordered in ermine! You won't have a chance like this again!" The public responded with clowning and whistling, but the bids kept rising with an entertaining rivalry, which Pierre knew how to exploit.

  In the meantime, Jean, dressed in black, with white lace cuffs and collar and pistols at his waist, wa
s strolling through the crowd, seducing the incautious with his easy smile and the dark, beguiling gaze of a snake charmer. He greeted Violette Boisier with a theatrical bow, and she responded with kisses on both cheeks, like the old friends they'd come to be after several years of deals and mutual favors.

  "May I ask what might interest the only woman capable of stealing my heart?" Jean asked.

  "Don't waste your gallantries on me, mon cher ami, because today I am not here to buy." Violette laughed. She gestured to Morisset, four steps behind her.