The Marriage of Opposites

  “You look lost,” the older man said. He spoke Spanish, the language that had always been spoken in Frédéric’s home. “Are you in the right country?”

  Frédéric laughed. He gave the street name he wanted, and the fruit men pointed out the way. He spied some reddish fruit in one of their baskets, the only thing he recognized. The fruit sellers said it was very rare in their country and that an old man from Saint-Domingue had planted a tree in his courtyard and it had grown so tall the fruit fell over the wall and a few people had planted seeds from this one fruit and now it grew in several gardens. They gave him one to eat, an apple, not crisp, but warm from the sunlight, the pulp dissolving in his mouth. It reminded him of home, and it was, by far, the most delicious thing he’d eaten since he’d begun his travels.

  “Are you looking for a woman?” the other African man asked him, switching to French. “Or just a place to stay?”

  “A place to stay,” Frédéric was quick to respond. “I’m not ready to be involved with a woman.”

  “Who is?” the older man countered. They all laughed. Frédéric was young and handsome. His Parisian French was so precise it was nearly a different language than the Creole spoken on this island. The men probably thought he was experienced with women, but he was not. His cousins went to whorehouses, and had often insisted he go with them. On those occasions he sat on a divan in the hallway and talked with the madam about her life and gave her business advice. He had ideas about everything, and helped her to figure out ways to raise her profits.

  “You prefer men?” she said to him once.

  “I prefer love,” he replied.

  “You are young.” She’d shrugged at his naïveté. “Come back in two years.”

  Now two years had passed and he was in St. Thomas, where he knew not a single soul but, if anything, was grateful for his aloneness. The world around him was an amazement, more than enough to satisfy him without the intrusion of anyone close to him. In a dream, it doesn’t matter with whom you are acquainted; all that counts is what you do and see. Here every color was vibrant, a completely different palette than in Paris. The pale sky that had burned white with heat only hours ago, when he’d stepped onto the wharf, was now washed with pink and gold. A miracle, he thought, with more to come.

  Frédéric knew the widow had been sent a message concerning his arrival by the family, and that she had responded negatively. He had then been asked to write a letter, which he’d done, though there had been no reply. Perhaps she was expecting him, but he was filthy, in no condition to have a formal introduction. The fruit men led him up to what they called Synagogue Hill. They said his people mostly lived here and wished him luck. They told him to be careful; some people thought the old Danish families that kept slaves could turn themselves into werewolves. They ate Africans and Jews for supper. They could run faster than any man. That was why some of the streets were made of ninety-nine steps, so that the werewolf would stop to search for the hundredth step, and while he did, his victim would get away.

  The streets were indeed steep, and Frédéric’s long legs were tired. He noticed an address he’d seen in his legal papers, one of the houses the family owned, empty now that the matriarch had died. It looked like the ghost of a house in the falling dark. He spied a spiral of smoke circling up behind the house and pushed open an iron gate so that he might see what was there. There was a skittering that unnerved him, the flash of some creature’s tail. He thought of monsters and fierce animals, of scales and teeth and claws. The air was perfumed, and there was fruit everywhere, growing wild, untended. No one had lived here for some time. He went through the courtyard and opened another gate, painted green, which led into a rear street. There was a cottage before him, and a well-dressed black man was eating his dinner at a wooden table set out on a small stone patio. Or at least he had been having his meal until Frédéric came through the gate. The fellow looked up, ignoring his food. Frédéric saw the other man’s hand move. There was a gun on his lap.

  “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” Frédéric said in Spanish. He refused to believe it was his fate to be shot when he had just entered what he considered to be paradise.

  “I’d prefer if you speak French,” the other man said. “Then if I have to shoot you, at least I’ll understand your last words.”

  More had happened to Frédéric in the hours since he’d landed at the dock in Charlotte Amalie than had occurred in all the years he’d spent in France.

  “You don’t have any reason to shoot me.”

  “Tell me why and we’ll see if I believe you.”

  In elegant French, Frédéric quickly explained that he had only just arrived and was looking for a place to spend the night before he went to meet the widow whose business he’d been sent to oversee.

  “So while you prepare to swindle the widow out of her business you wish to stay here?”

  “I’ve been sent to run the business, not steal it. I would go there directly, but I can’t present myself like this to a widow with six children.”

  “Seven,” Mr. Enrique said. “You’re behind the times.”

  “You know the family?”

  “You clearly don’t. And now you want to spend the night in the house of a stranger you’ve never met before?” He gazed at the intruder, and then shook his head. “Do you think you’re clever enough to run a business?”

  Frédéric considered himself a good judge of character. At that moment, he didn’t fear for his life. If anything, he felt more alive than ever before. “Do you always have dinner with a gun over your knees?”

  “I’m the watchman here, among other things. The big house is empty. There are always thieves. You can stay there for the night. In the morning I’ll take you where you want to go. I think you’ll need help on this island. This isn’t France, you know. We have bugs that can kill you, let alone men.”

  Frédéric gratefully accepted the dinner he was now offered. It was a stew called callaloo, made with taro, spinach, okra, and forbidden salted meat, a dish so savory, with a flavor spiced with cloves and pods of cardamom, that it loosened his tongue. He balanced his plate on his lap and swore he’d never had as good a dinner in France. He drank something sweet, a dizzying concoction called guava berry rum, and soon found himself speaking of intensely personal matters, of his life in Paris and his family there, and of their expectations that he would return. He knew some men from the outside world hated this island—the weather, the informality of the people, the mixing of race and religion and station. But some men dissolved into it and became a part of it; they took the embrace they were offered. Frédéric already knew he was of the mind of the latter group, those who felt they’d finally come home.

  He made his way to the empty house in the dark along the overgrown path that led through the garden. It was a stucco mansion with a stone foundation, with moss growing up along the stones. The scent of the flowers was dizzying. Pink blooms on vines snaked along the verandas and wound up the walls. In the hedges were nesting bananaquits, yellow birds that glowed in the dim shadows as if bands of sunlight had been painted across their chests. The front door had been left unlocked. The hinges groaned as Frédéric pushed open the door and went into the spacious, cool hallway. A bottle of rum and dusty glasses were perched on a high mahogany table. He drank directly from the bottle. A lizard peeked inside the door, then ran into the hall, hiding under a rug. Frédéric drank far too much. At home, he rarely had wine or alcohol and often had tea before bed. Here, he seemed unnaturally thirsty.

  It was late when he found his way upstairs and let himself into the first bedchamber he came upon. He pushed open the shutters, disturbing the bats in the courtyard so that they all rose in a dark vortex, like smoke lifting from the trees. Drunk, he fell deeply asleep. The pillows smelled like lavender. They were almost too soft, filled with the feathers of local birds, a thousand colors inside the cotton pillow sham. That night he dreamed of Paris, and of the rain. His dreams were gray and green, filled with shadows. W
hen he awoke the sun was blinding and his head was pounding from all the rum he’d consumed. There were pink petals on the stone floor, and the lizard was on the windowsill, a pale green thing with wide eyes, kingly, as if the house belonged to him. Frédéric rejoiced to think that this was his waking life. He offered his gratitude to his family for sending him here. On the ship he’d worried that he would fail them, that he would be better off at home, in the job he was used to, in the world that he knew. But now he understood. They had chosen correctly.

  HE FOUND CLEAN CLOTHES that were nearly his size in a cupboard. They were made of lighter cloth, linen and cotton. Pale gray and white. He poured a pitcher of cold water over his head, and shaved as best he could. His hair was longer than acceptable in Paris, but here he’d seen men simply tie it back, and he did likewise. He looked through his bag for a silk scarf he wore on formal occasions.

  “All set to rob the widow,” Mr. Enrique said when they met up in the courtyard.

  There were black birds with green throats that were no bigger than moths darting through the air, lighting on trembling branches.

  “I’m here to help her. If I were a thief, there was plenty to rob in France and I would have avoided the pains of traveling here.”

  “Well, I don’t think she’ll see it that way.”

  They walked down the hill to the commercial district, boots clattering. The streets were filled with the din of working people and with trills of birdsong. A fellow in the market sold tamed birds, bits of yellow and pistachio-green fluttered, contained in bamboo cages. Frédéric wished he had the time to visit all the stalls and try everything before him, food of all sorts that he’d never seen before. The drinks offered had names that delighted him: pumpkin punch, peanut punch, coconut water, lemon tea. There was fruit on the trees, and in the distance the mountains looked red rather than green. It was May, and the first flowering of the flamboyant trees had begun. The air was thick with salt and the scent of limes. They passed a café where fishermen, already back from the sea, were bolting down their breakfasts.

  “Let’s stop and get ourselves a meal,” Frédéric suggested. The fish soup looked especially delicious, and the scent of curry drifted toward them.

  Mr. Enrique threw his companion a look. “There are some things you should know about this place.” He realized now how young and naïve his companion was. “Your people were granted full rights on this island, other than the fact that they cannot marry out of their race, but mine don’t have that benefit. There is no selling of human life since the first part of the century; the Danish government saw to that when they took the island. But those who came here as slaves, remain so. True, many people of color here are free, but that doesn’t mean you can publicly sit down for a meal with me.”

  Frédéric shrugged. “We could take it with us.”

  “I wouldn’t be served at this establishment. We’d have to go down the street, and there isn’t time.”

  Frédéric laughed. “Because the widow is waiting. Snoring in a chair?”

  He clearly had a vision of her, and Mr. Enrique gave him a hard look.

  “You should know the widow isn’t old. She’s not what you expect. She understands the business and is bright.”

  “And you know this because?”

  “I was her father’s clerk, and then your uncle’s clerk, and now it appears I’ll be yours as well. That is, if she allows you into the office.”

  “I am the heir to my uncle’s estate, which includes her father’s properties. I’m afraid she has no choice,” Frédéric informed his companion, his more serious side emerging.

  “That may be, but she’d probably do better running the business than anyone, if it was not against the law for a woman to do so.”

  They had reached the store, which was already bustling at this hour. Frédéric admired the stone and stucco façade. Enrique explained that above the commercial area were the rooms where the widow and her children lived. This was just as well. The estate wished to sell the house where his uncle Isaac had lived, and the house of his uncle’s mother-in-law, where Frédéric had spent the night. He thought of his dreams of rain and felt a chill. He had just turned twenty-two, and all at once he felt his youth, how little he knew about the lives of others: widows, children, dying men. He was about to enter into the daily life of people he didn’t know. He hesitated at the door. There was a hedge of those same pink flowers he’d seen in the stucco house, and the bees seemed to have followed him. He closed his eyes for a moment and listened to their buzzing, then suddenly felt he was being watched. He gazed upward, squinting, but all he saw were some lace curtains, made in France.

  Once they were inside the main hall, Enrique directed him to the widow’s lodgings, before continuing on to the office at the rear of the store. Frédéric went through a side door and took the stairs to the modest living quarters. In France, this would have been considered the home of a person with little means. He had the key to the place and was legally the owner of everything, but felt too uncomfortable to use the key unannounced, so he knocked at the door. Frédéric heard people talking inside, the rise and fall of voices speaking French. He rapped on the wood again, and again there was no answer. He waited in the corridor for some time, long enough for him to realize no one would likely respond, and so he used one of the keys that had been sent to him.

  There was a click, and then the door opened into the world he’d been sent to manage and guide. He hadn’t expected the scene before him, two boys who were nearly men gathering some books, so many children at the table he could not count them all, an African woman seeing to their breakfasts, admonishing them for being greedy and late, a little boy and some even younger girls, barefoot, their hair braided and pinned up. They were Emma and Delphine, so close in age they seemed to be twins. It barely mattered how many there were; he could not see any of them clearly as his attention was riveted on the woman who came out of a bedchamber, wearing a white shift, her masses of dark hair loose, a baby at her hip. He thought of a white rose, for there were some in his parents’ garden outside Paris, blooms which grew on thin, wavering branches covered by thorns. The woman appeared to have just come from her bed. Her clothes were loose and light enough for him to see her form. He found himself immobilized, there on the threshold of a home to which he hadn’t been invited or, it seemed, expected.

  A little girl saw him first and pointed. “Qui est cet homme?” she asked in a singsong. It would take weeks before he could tell which one was Delphine and which was Emma. The rest of the children, who had been as noisy as birds, quieted, staring with suspicion. The black woman said, “What do you think you’re doing here?” in accented English. They were all speaking to him at once, except the dark-haired woman dressed in white, who merely raised her eyes to his. She gazed at him coldly, not wanting him to realize how handsome she found him. There was a soulful cast to his features, as if he revealed his innermost self. She saw that he was wearing gray leather boots and she knew he was from Paris, and at that instant Rachel Pomié Petit, who had the sharpest tongue on St. Thomas, found she could not speak.

  Frédéric ignored the others and managed to walk up to the lady of the house and introduce himself. He could imagine what a fool he must have seemed to Mr. Enrique when he spoke of her as if she were an old woman. He’d been warned that she was not what he expected. He managed to introduce himself and to say surely she must have received the letter stating he would be arriving from France.

  “My goal is to help you in any way I can,” he assured her. “S’il vous plaît, permettez-moi de vous aider.”

  The widow stared at him. His accent was perfect; careless and elegant. She laughed and said, “Before I’m dressed or after?”

  He realized she wore a chemise and a petticoat, not a white dress. He could not quite remember her name, but then the African woman called her Rachel—a familiarity that never would have occurred in France between mistress and servant. He recalled what he’d read in the files he carried with
him. Rachel Pomié Petit, born in St. Thomas, daughter of a well-respected shop owner named Moses Pomié, married to his uncle Isaac when she was not much more than a girl.

  The children had gone back to the business of getting ready for the day. The older boys continued to stare at Frédéric, uneasy, perhaps because he was not that much older than they, but the younger ones paid him no mind. He felt surrounded by mayhem, the children finishing their food, the maid, who was called Rosalie, clearing up as best she could, shouting out instructions that the children more or less ignored. Frédéric could see only the woman before him. The rest faded away, sinking out of his line of vision. He would always think of the scent of molasses from the store downstairs when he thought of this day, the morning when he fell in love with a woman who had seven children.

  “I had Rosalie go down to the boat to meet you yesterday, but you weren’t there,” Rachel told him. His posture was so straight, not like that of the men in St. Thomas, who slouched in the heat. He stood the way she imagined all men in Paris did, with a natural grace. “I thought you’d changed your mind and stayed in Paris, which made me think all the more of you.”

  “You’ve been there?” he said to engage her in a conversation that might make them less uncomfortable with their situation, more social, if that was possible.