They were close to Le Cap and several hours later rode into the city without suffering new mishaps. During that time Rosette had awakened from the stupor of the laudanum, Maurice was sleeping exhausted in the arms of a soldier, and Toulouse Valmorain had recovered his composure. The images of those three days began to fade and the story to change in his mind. When he had a chance to explain what had happened, his version did not resemble what Relais had heard from Tete: Gambo had disappeared from the scene, it was Valmorain who had foreseen the rebels' attack and, given the impossibility of defending his plantation, fled to protect his son, bringing along the slave who had raised Maurice and her little girl. It was he, only he, who had saved them all. Relais made no comment.
The Paris of the Antilles
Le Cap was filled with refugees who had abandoned their plantations. The smoke from the fires, carried by the wind, floated in the air for weeks. The Paris of the Antilles reeked of garbage and excrement, the corpses of the executed rotting on the gallows, and the mass graves of victims of epidemics and the war. The distribution of supplies was very irregular, and the population depended on ships and fishing boats for food, but the grands blancs continued to live in their former luxury, though now it cost them more. Nothing was lacking at their tables, rationing was for others. Parties continued with armed guards at the gates, the theaters didn't close, or bars, and dazzling cocottes still enlivened the night. There was not a single place left in which to take lodging, but Valmorain was counting on the house he'd bought from the Portuguese man before the uprising, and there he installed himself to recover from his fright and tend his physical and moral wounds. Six hired slaves served him, directed by Tete it did not suit him to buy them just when he planned to change his life. He acquired only a cook trained in France, whom he could later sell without losing money, the price of a good cook was one of the few things that had remained stable. He was sure that he would recover his property; it was not the first insurgency of slaves in the Antilles and they had all been crushed. France was not going to allow black bandits to ruin the colony. At any rate, even if the situation was restored to what it had been in the past, he would leave Saint-Lazare, he had already decided that. He knew about the death of Prosper Cambray because the militia had found his body amid the rubble of the plantation. I could not have rid myself of him any other way, he thought. His property was pure ash but the land was there, no one could take that away. He would get a manager, someone who had experience and was habituated to the climate; it was not a time for managers brought from France, as he explained to his friend Parmentier, who was treating Valmorain's feet with healing herbs he had seen Tante Rose use.
"Will you return to Paris, mon ami?" the doctor asked.
"I don't think so. My interests lie in the Caribbean, not in France. I am associated with Sancho Garcia del Solar, the brother of Eugenia, may she rest in peace, and we have acquired some lands in Louisiana. And you, what are your plans, Doctor?"
"If the situation does not improve here, I plan to go to Cuba."
"Do you have family there?"
"Yes," the doctor admitted, blushing.
"Peace in the colony depends on the French government. Those republicans bear all the guilt for what has happened here. The king would never have allowed things to reach these extremes."
"I believe that the French Revolution is irreversible," the doctor replied.
"The republic has no idea how to run this colony, Doctor. The commission called back half of the Regiment Le Cap and replaced it with mulattoes. That is a provocation-no white soldier will agree to follow orders from an officer of color."
"Perhaps it is the moment for whites and affranchis to learn to live together, since the common enemy are the Negroes."
"I wonder what those savages are after," said Valmorain.
"Freedom, mon ami," Parmentier replied. "One of the chiefs, Toussaint, I think he's called, maintains that the plantations can function with free laborers."
"Even if paid, the blacks would not work!" Valmorain exclaimed.
"That no one can be sure of, for it has not been tested. Toussaint says that Africans are peasants, they know the earth, growing things is what they know and want to do," Parmentier insisted.
"What they know and want to do is kill and destroy, Doctor! Besides, that Toussaint has gone over to the Spanish side."
"He takes refuge under the Spanish flag because the French colonists refused to deal with the rebels," the doctor reminded him.
"I was there, Doctor. I tried in vain to convince the other planters to accept the terms of peace proposed by the blacks; all they asked was freedom for the chiefs and their secondary officers, some two hundred in all," Valmorain told him.
"Then blame for the war rests not on the incompetence of the government in France but on the pride of the colonists in Saint-Domingue," Parmentier argued.
"I concede that we must be more reasonable, but we cannot negotiate on equal terms with the slaves-that would be a bad precedent."
"You would have to make a deal with Toussaint, who seems to be the most reasonable of the rebel leaders."
Tete paid attention when the subject was Toussaint. She guarded in the depths of her soul her love for Gambo, resigned to the idea she would not see him for a long time, perhaps never, but he was embedded in her heart, and she supposed he could be among the ranks of that Toussaint. She heard Valmorain say that no revolt of slaves in history had triumphed, but she dared dream the opposite, and wonder what life would be like without slavery. She organized the house as she had always done, but Valmorain explained that things could not be as they were in Saint-Lazare, where all that mattered was comfort and it was irrelevant whether meals were served with gloves or without them. In Le Cap he had to live in style. However much the revolt blazed at the gates of the city, he must return the attentions of the families who often invited him and had taken on the mission of finding him a wife.
The master made some inquiries and found a mentor for Tete: the majordomo at the Intendance. It was the same African Adonis who had served in the mansion when Valmorain brought the ill Eugenia to ask for hospitality in 1780, except that he was even more attractive, having matured with extraordinary grace. His name was Zacharie, and he had been born and raised among those walls. His parents had been slaves to previous Intendants, who sold them to his successor when they returned to France; that is how they became part of the inventory. Zacharie's father, as handsome as he, trained him from an early age for the prestigious position of majordomo, seeing that his son had the essential virtues for that post: intelligence, cleverness, dignity, and prudence. Zacharie was careful not to be seduced by white women; he knew the risks, and thus had avoided many problems. Valmorain offered to pay the Intendant for the services of his majordomo, but he did not want to hear anything on the subject. "Give him a tip, that will be enough. Zacharie is saving to buy his freedom, though I don't understand why he wants it. His present situation could not be more advantageous." They agreed that Tete would go every day to the Intendance to be refined.
Zacharie received her coolly, establishing a certain distance from the beginning; after all, he held the most prestigious post among all domestics in Saint-Domingue, and she was a slave with no standing. But soon his eagerness to impart information betrayed him, and he ended by imparting to her the secrets of the office with a generosity that greatly surpassed Valmorain's tip. He was surprised that this young woman did not seem to be impressed by him, he was accustomed to female admiration. He usually had to be very tactful in evading compliments and rejecting women's advances, but with Tete he could relax into a relationship without secondary intentions. They addressed each other formally, Monsieur Zacharie and Mademoiselle Zarite.