"The same could be said of a white brutalized by slavery, monsieur."
"What an absurd argument!" The other smiled disdainfully. "Blacks require a firm hand. And you may be sure that I am referring to firmness, not brutality."
"In that matter there is no median. Once you accept the notion of slavery, how you treat them makes little difference," the physician rebutted.
"I do not agree. Slavery is a necessary evil, the only way to manage a plantation, but it can be done in a humanitarian way."
"It can never be humanitarian to own and exploit another human," Parmentier rejoined.
"And have you never had a slave, Doctor?"
"No. And neither shall I in the future."
"I congratulate you. You have the good fortune not to be a planter. I do not like slavery, I assure you, and I like less living here, but someone must manage the colonies if you are to put sugar in your coffee and smoke a cigar. In France they avail themselves of our products, but no one wants to know how they are obtained. I prefer the honesty of the English and Americans, who approach slavery from a practical point of view," Valmorain concluded.
"In England and the United States there are also those who seriously question slavery, and who refuse to indulge in the products of the islands, especially sugar," Parmentier reminded him.
"They are an insignificant number, Doctor. And I have just read in a scientific journal that Negroes belong to a specimen different from ours."
"How does the author explain how the two different species can have offspring?" the physician asked.
"When you cross a horse with a donkey you get a mule, which is neither one nor the other. Mulattoes are born from the combination of white and black," said Valmorain.
"Mules cannot reproduce, monsieur, mulattoes can. Tell me, if you had a child with a slave woman, would it be human? Would it have an immortal soul?"
Irritated, Toulouse Valmorain turned his back and went to the house, and they did not see each other again till that night. Parmentier dressed for dinner and appeared in the dining hall experiencing the tenacious headache that had tormented him since his arrival at the plantation thirteen days before. He suffered migraines and fainting spells; he said his organism could not endure the island's climate, yet he had never contracted any of the illnesses that decimated other whites. The atmosphere of Saint-Lazare depressed him, and the discussion with Valmorain had left him in a foul humor. He wanted to return to Le Cap, where other patients were waiting for him, as well as the discreet consolation of his sweet Adele, but he had promised to attend Eugenia and he intended to keep his word. He had examined her that morning and calculated that the birth would occur very soon. His host was waiting for him and welcomed him with a smile, as if the unpleasant disagreement at midday had never happened. During the meal they talked about books and European politics, every day more incomprehensible, and they were in agreement that the American Revolution of 1776 had had enormous influence in France, where some groups attacked the monarchy in terms as devastating as the Americans had used in declaring their independence. Parmentier did not hide his admiration for the United States, and Valmorain shared it, though he also wagered that England would regain control of her American colony with blood and gunpowder, as any empire with plans to survive would do. And if Saint-Domingue should declare independence from France, the way the Americans had broken away from England? Valmorain speculated, immediately clarifying that his was a rhetorical question and in no way a call to sedition. The subject of the accident at the mill also came up, and the physician suggested that perhaps there would be fewer if the shifts were shorter, because the brutal work of the shredders and the heat from the boiling cauldrons clouded reason. He reported that Seraphine's hemorrhage had been stopped and that it was too early to detect signs of infection, but that she had lost a lot of blood, was in shock, and so weak that she did not respond, though he refrained from adding that he was sure Tante Rose was keeping her asleep with her potions. He did not mean to return to the theme of slavery that had so annoyed his host, but after dinner, when they were settled in the gallery, enjoying the cool night air, the cognac and cigars, it was Valmorain himself who mentioned it.
"Forgive my abruptness this morning, Doctor. I am afraid that in these solitudes I have lost the good habit of intellectual conversation. I did not mean to offend."
"You did not offend me, monsieur."
"You will not believe me, Doctor, but before coming here I admired Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau," Valmorain told him.
"And not now?"
"Now I must doubt the speculations of the humanists. Life on this island has hardened me, or let's say that it has made me more realistic. I cannot accept that Negroes are as human as we, even though they have intelligence and soul. The white race has created our civilization. Africa is a dark and primitive continent."
"Have you been there, mon ami?"
"No."
"I have. I spent two years in Africa, traveling from one side to the other," the physician said. "In Europe very little is known of that enormous and diverse territory. In Africa a complex civilization already existed when we Europeans were wearing skins and living in caves. I concede that the white race is superior in one aspect: we are more aggressive and greedy. That explains our power and the extent of our empires."
"Long before the Europeans arrived in Africa, the blacks were enslaving each other. They still do," said Valmorain.
"Just as whites are enslaving each other, monsieur," the physician countered. "Not all Negroes are slaves, nor all slaves black. Africa is a continent of free people. Millions of Africans are subjected to slavery but many more are free. Slavery is not their destiny, just as is also the case with thousands of whites who are slaves."
"I understand the repugnance you feel for slavery, Doctor," said Valmorain. "I, too, am attracted by the idea of replacing it with a different labor system, but I am afraid that in certain cases, like that of the plantations, there is no other. The world economy rests upon it, it cannot be abolished."
"Perhaps not overnight, but it could be done in some gradual form. In Saint-Domingue the opposite occurs, the number of slaves goes up every year. Can you imagine what will happen when they rebel?" asked Parmentier.
"You are a pessimist," his dinner companion commented, draining the dregs of his glass.
"How could I not be? I have been in Saint-Domingue a long time, monsieur, and to be frank, I have had enough of it. I have seen horrors. To go no further, only a short time ago I was at the Habitation Lacroix, where in the last two months several slaves have killed themselves. Two leaped into a cauldron of boiling molasses--how desperate they must have been."
"There is nothing keeping you here, Doctor. With your royal license you can practice your science wherever you please."
"I suppose I will go someday," the physician replied, thinking that he could not mention his one reason for staying on the island: Adele and the children.
"I would like to take my family to Paris myself," Valmorain added, but he knew that was a remote possibility.
France was in crisis. That year the director general of finances had called an assemblee des notables to force the nobility and the clergy to pay taxes and share the economic burden, but their initiative had fallen on deaf ears. From afar, Valmorain could see how the empire was crumbling. It was not the moment to go back to France, and neither could he leave the plantation in the hands of Prosper Cambray. He did not trust him, but neither could he dismiss him; Cambray had been in his service for many years, and changing him would be worse than putting up with him. The truth of the matter, something he would never have admitted, was that he was afraid of him.
The doctor drank the last of his cognac, savoring the tingle on his palate and the illusion of well-being that invaded him for brief instants. His temples were throbbing, and the pain had concentrated in his eye sockets. He thought of Seraphine's words, which he had barely overheard in the mill, asking Tante Rose to help her and her unborn c
hild to go to the place of Les Morts et Les Mysteres, back to Guinea. "I can't, p'tite." He asked himself what the woman would have done had he not been present. Perhaps she would have helped the girl, even at the risk of being caught and having to pay dearly. There are discreet ways to accomplish it, the doctor concluded, feeling very weary.
"Forgive me for pursuing the conversation of the morning, monsieur. Your wife believes she is the victim of voodoo; she says that the slaves have bewitched her. I think we can use that obsession to her benefit."
"I don't understand," said Valmorain.
"We could convince her that Tante Rose can countermand the black magic. We will lose nothing by trying."
"I will think about it, Doctor. After Eugenia gives birth, we will occupy ourselves with her nerves," Valmorain answered with a sigh.
At that moment the silhouette of Tete passed across the patio, illuminated by the moonlight and the torches that were kept lighted at night as a safeguard. The men's eyes followed her. Valmorain called her with a whistle, and an instant later she appeared in the gallery, as silent and light-footed as a cat. She was wearing a skirt discarded by her mistress, faded and mended but nicely made, and an ingenious turban knotted several times that added a hand's width to her height. She was a slim young woman with prominent cheekbones and elongated eyes with sleepy eyelids and golden irises; she had a natural grace, and precise and fluid movements. She radiated a powerful energy, which the doctor felt on his skin. He divined that beneath her austere appearance was hidden the contained energy of a feline at rest. Valmorain pointed to the glass, and she went to the sideboard in the dining hall, returned with a bottle of cognac, and poured some for both.
"How is madame?" Valmorain asked.
"Tranquil, maitre," she replied, and stepped back to leave.
"Wait, Tete. Let's see if you can help us resolve a doubt. Dr. Parmentier maintains that blacks are as human as whites, and I say the contrary. What do you believe?" Valmorain asked in a tone that to the doctor sounded more paternal than sarcastic.
She said nothing, her eyes on the floor and her hands clasped.
"Come, Tete, answer, don't be afraid. I'm waiting..."
"The maitre is always right," she murmured finally.
"Or, that is, you believe that Negroes are not completely human."
"A being who is not human has no opinions, maitre."
Dr. Parmentier could not contain a spontaneous guffaw, and Toulouse Valmorain, after a moment's hesitation, laughed too. With a wave he dismissed the slave, who faded into the shadow.
Zarite
The next day in the middle of the afternoon Dona Eugenia gave birth. It was quick, although she did nothing to help up to the last moment. The doctor was at her side, watching from a chair, because catching babies is not a thing for a man to do, as he himself told us. Maitre Valmorain believed that a doctor's license with a royal seal was worth more than experience, and he did not want to call Tante Rose, the best midwife in the north part of the island; even white women called on her when their time came. I held my maitresse, I kept her cool, I prayed with her in Spanish, and I gave her the miraculous water she'd been sent from Cuba. The doctor could clearly hear the baby's heartbeats, it was ready to be born, but Dona Eugenia refused to help. I explained that my maitresse was going to give birth to a zombie and that Baron Samedi had come to take it away with him, and the doctor burst out laughing with such gusto that tears ran down his cheeks. That white man had been studying voodoo for years. He knew that Baron Samedi is the servant and associate of Ghede, loa of the world of the dead. I don't know what he found so amusing. "What a grotesque idea! I do not see any baron!" The baron does not show himself to those who do not respect him. Soon he understood that the matter was not amusing, because Dona Eugenia was so agitated. He sent me to look for Tante Rose. I found my master in a chair in the drawing room, fallen asleep after several glasses of cognac; he authorized me to call my godmother, and I flew out to look for her. She was waiting for me, all ready, wearing her white ceremonial gown and her necklaces, and carrying her pouch and the asson. She went to the big house without a question, up to the gallery, and entered through the door for the slaves. To reach Dona Eugenia's room she had to pass through the drawing room, and the thudding of her walking stick on the floorboards woke the master. "Be careful what you do to madame," he warned her in a hoarse voice, but she paid no attention and continued onward, feeling her way down the corridor till she came to the room where she had often come to attend Dona Eugenia. This time she had not come as a healer, but as a mambo; she had come to confront the associate of Death.
From the doorway Tante Rose saw Baron Samedi, and a shudder ran down her spine, but she did not retreat. She greeted him with a bow, shaking the asson with its clinking of little bones, and asked permission to go to the bed. The loa of cemeteries and crossroads, with his white skull face and black hat, moved aside, inviting her to approach Dona Eugenia, who was gasping like a fish, wet with sweat, her eyes red with terror, fighting against her body, which was struggling to cast out the baby while she was using all her strength to hold it in. Tante Rose placed one of her seed and shell necklaces around my mistress's neck and spoke a few words of consolation to her, which I repeated in Spanish. Then she turned toward the baron.
Dr. Parmentier was watching with fascination, although he saw only Tante Rose's part, while I saw everything. My godmother lighted a cigar and waved it around, filling the air with a smoke that made it difficult to breathe because the window was always closed to prevent mosquitoes from coming in. Then she drew a chalk circle around the bed and whirled in a few dance steps, pointing to the four corners of the room with the asson. Once her greeting to the spirits was concluded, she made an altar out of several sacred objects she took from her pouch and then placed offerings of rum and little stones on it. Lastly she sat at the foot of the bed, ready to negotiate with the baron. The two of them became immersed in a long exchange in Creole so fast and incomprehensible that I understood little of it, though several times I heard Seraphine's name. They argued, they grew angry, they laughed, she smoked the cigar and blew out smoke that he swallowed in big mouthfuls. That continued for quite a while, and Dr. Parmentier began to lose patience. He tried to open the window, but it had been shut for so long it was stuck. Coughing and teary from the smoke, he took Dona Eugenia's pulse as if he didn't know that babies emerge far below the pulse in the wrist.
Finally Tante Rose and the baron reached an agreement. She went to the door and with a profound bow showed the loa out, who left making his little froglike hops. Then Tante Rose explained the situation to my mistress: what she had in her womb was not cemetery meat but a normal baby that Baron Samedi would not take away. Dona Eugenia stopped arguing and concentrated on pushing with all her might, and soon a gush of yellow liquid and blood stained the sheets. When the head of the baby appeared, my godmother took it gently and helped the body out. She handed me the newborn child and announced that it was a little boy, but the mother did not even want to look at it; she turned her face to the wall and closed her eyes, exhausted. I pressed the baby to my chest, holding it tight because it was covered with something lardy and slippery. I was absolutely sure that it would be up to me to love this child as if it were my own, and now, after all these years and all that love, I know that I was not mistaken. I wept.
Tante Rose waited until my mistress expelled what was left inside her and cleaned her up; then with one swallow she drank the rum offering on the altar, put her belongings back into her pouch, and left the room, clutching her walking stick as all the while the doctor was rapidly writing in his notebook. I kept weeping as I washed the baby, who was as light as a kitten. I wrapped him in the little blanket I had knitted during my afternoons in the gallery and carried him to his father so he would know him, but my master had so much cognac in his body I couldn't wake him. In the corridor a slave with swollen breasts was waiting, recently bathed, her head shaved for lice; she would give her milk to the son of the m
asters in the big house, while her baby was given rice water in the Negro quarters. No white woman nursed her children; that's what I thought then. The woman sat down on the floor, legs crossed, opened her blouse, and took the little one, who fastened himself to her breast. I felt that my skin was burning and my nipples hardened; my body was ready for that baby boy.
At that same hour, in Tante Rose's cabin, Seraphine died alone, unaware because she was sleeping. This is how it was.
The Concubine
They named the boy Maurice. His father was shaken to his boots by that unexpected gift from heaven, which had come to combat his loneliness and stir his ambition. That child was going to carry on the Valmorain dynasty. The master declared a feast day; no one on the plantation worked. He had a number of animals roasted, and assigned three helpers to Tante Mathilde so there would be no shortage of spicy corn dishes and vegetables and cakes for everyone. He gave permission to have a kalenda in the main patio in front of the big house, which soon filled with a noisy crowd. The slaves adorned themselves with what little they had--a colored rag, a necklace of shells, a flower. They brought their drums and other improvised instruments, and after a bit there was music and people were dancing under the mocking gaze of Cambray. The master had two barrels of taffia distributed, and every slave received a generous dose in his gourd for a toast. Tete appeared in the gallery with the baby wrapped in a mantilla, and the father took him and lifted him over his head to show to the slaves. "This is my heir! He will be called Maurice Valmorain, that is my father's name!" he exclaimed, hoarse with emotion and still hungover from his drunkenness the night before. A silence like the depths of the sea greeted his words. Even Cambray was startled. This ignorant white man had committed the incredible blunder of giving his son the name of a deceased grandfather, who on being summoned could rise from his grave and kidnap his grandson and take him back with him to the world of the dead. Valmorain believed that the silence was respect, and ordered a second round of taffia and a continuation of the rejoicing. Tete took back the newborn and rushed away with him, sprinkling his face with a rain of saliva to protect him from the disgrace invoked by his father's rashness.