Sancho, if only to be seen, attended theater and opera just as he went to mass on Sundays. His simple black suit, hair pulled into a ponytail, and waxed mustache contrasted with the brocade and lace attire of the French, giving him a slightly dangerous air that attracted the women. His manners were impeccable, an essential requirement in the upper class, where the proper use of the fork was more important than moral tenets. Such splendid virtues would have served that somewhat eccentric Spaniard for nothing without his relationship to Valmorain, a Frenchman of wealth and good family name, but once he was introduced in those salons, no one thought of dismissing him. Valmorain was a widower, only forty-five years old, not bad looking, though several kilos too heavy, and naturally enterprising patriarchs tried to trap him for a daughter or niece. The brother-in-law with the unpronounceable name was also a candidate; even a Spanish son-in-law was preferable to the embarrassment of an unwed daughter.
There were comments, but no one offered any opposition when that pair of strangers rented one of the mansions in the quartier, or later when the owner sold it to them. It had two floors and a mansard, but lacked a cellar because New Orleans floated on water, and digging only a palm's width was enough to get wet. The mausoleums of the cemetery were raised so that the dead would not sail away with every storm. Like many others, Valmorain's house was wood and brick, Spanish in style, with a wide entry for the coach, a patio cobbled with paving stone, a tile fountain, and cool balconies with iron railings covered with fragrant climbing vines. Valmorain avoided any ostentation in decorating the house, for that was a sign of being nouveau riche. He could not carry a tune, but he invested in musical instruments because at every social event the mademoiselles showed their skill at the piano, the harp, or the clavichord, and the young gentlemen shone on their guitars.
Maurice and Rosette had to take music and dance lessons with private instructors, like any other wealthy children. A refugee from Saint-Domingue gave them music classes, using his corrective rod, and a plump, affected man taught them the dances in vogue, also with a rod. In the future those lessons would be as useful to Maurice as fencing for fighting a duel and salon games, and for Rosette they would serve for entertaining visitors, though never competing with white girls. She had grace and a good voice, whereas Maurice had inherited his father's tin ear and attended the classes with the resigned attitude of a galley slave. He preferred books, which were not going to do anything for him in New Orleans, where intellect was considered suspicious; much more appreciated was a talent for light conversation, gallantry, and living the good life.
To Valmorain, accustomed to a hermit's life at Saint-Lazare, the hours of banal chatter in the cafes and bars Sancho dragged him to seemed a waste. He had to make an effort to participate in the games and betting; he detested the cockfights that left the attendees spattered with blood as well as the horse and greyhound racing at which he always lost. Every day of the week there was a gathering in a different drawing room, presided over by a matron who kept track of who attended and what gossip they brought. Bachelors went from house to house, always with some gift, usually a monstrous sugar and nut dessert heavy as a cow's head. According to Sancho, these reunions des amis were obligatory in that closed society. Dances, soirees, picnics, always the same faces with nothing new to say. Valmorain preferred the plantation, but he realized that in Louisiana his taste for seclusion would be interpreted as arrogance or miserliness.
The dining and drawing rooms of the city house were on the first floor, the bedchambers on the second, and the kitchen and slave quarters off the back patio, in separate buildings. The windows gave access to a small but well tended garden. The most spacious room was the dining hall, as it was in all Creole houses, in which life turned around the dining table and the pride of hospitality. A respectable family owned china for at least twenty-four guests. One of the rooms on the first floor had a separate entrance intended for the bachelor sons; in that way they could come and go without offending the ladies of the family. On the plantations their garconnieres were octagonal quarters near the road and separated from the main house. Maurice was twelve years short of qualifying for that privilege; for the moment he slept alone, for the first time, in a room between those of his father and his uncle Sancho.
Tete and Rosette did not have quarters with the other seven slaves-cook, washerwoman, coachman, seamstress, two personal servants, and an errand boy-but slept together in the mansard among the family's trunks. As she always had, Tete managed the house. A little bell on a cord that ran through the rooms allowed Valmorain to summon her at night.
The minute Sancho saw Rosette, he knew his brother-in-law's relationship with the slave, and anticipated the problem. "What are you going to do with Tete when you marry?" was his point blank question to Valmorain, who had never mentioned the subject to anyone and, caught by surprise, mumbled that he was not planning to marry. "If we are to live under the same roof, one of us will have to marry or people will think we're perverts," Sancho concluded.
In the confusion of escaping from Le Cap that fateful night, Valmorain had lost his cook, who had stayed hidden as he fled with Tete and the children, but he did not lament that because in New Orleans he needed someone experienced in cuisine creole. His new friends warned him that it was not safe to buy the first cook who turned up in the Maspero Echange, no matter that it was the best slave market in America, nor in the establishments along Chartres, where they disguised the slaves in elegant clothing to impress their customers but offered no guarantee of quality. The best slaves were obtained in private among families or friends. That was how he acquired Celestine, who was about forty, had magical hands for stews and pastries, and had been trained by one of the marquis de Marigny's eminent French cooks and sold because no one could put up with her fits of temper. She had thrown a plate of shrimp gumbo at the feet of the imprudent marquis because he dared ask for more salt. Valmorain was not frightened by that anecdote; doing battle with her would be Tete's task. Celestine was thin, dry, and jealous by nature. She did not allow anyone to step into her kitchen or her larder; she herself chose the wines and liquors and did not accept suggestions regarding menus. Tete explained that she would have to be moderate with spices because her master had stomach troubles. "He'll have to put up with it. If he wants a sick man's broth, you fix it," had been her answer, but ever since she reigned among the cookpots Valmorain had been healthy. Celestine smelled of cinnamon, and in secret, so no one would suspect her weakness, she prepared beignets light as sighs for the children, tarte tatin with carameled apples, mandarin crepes with cream, mousse au chocolat with little honey biscuits, and other treats, which proved the theory that humankind would never tire of consuming sugar. Maurice and Rosette were the only ones in the house who did not fear the cook.