One day Monsieur Valmorain came to my house. Two slaves took him from his coach and carried him to my door. He looked very old. "Please, Tete, I want to see the boy," he asked me in his rasping voice. I did not have the heart to leave him outside.
"I am very sorry about Rosette… I promise you I had nothing to do with that."
"I know, monsieur."
He stood looking at our grandson for a long while and then asked me his name.
"Justin Solar. His parents chose that name because it means justice. If he had been a girl, they would have called her Justine," I explained.
"Ay! I hope to live long enough for me to correct some of my errors," he said, and I thought he was going to cry.
"We all make mistakes, monsieur."
"This boy is a Valmorain by his father and his mother. He has blue eyes and can pass for being white. He should not be brought up among blacks. I want to help him, I want him to have a good education and bear my surname, as is right."
"You will have to speak with Maurice about that, monsieur, not me."
Maurice received in the same letter the news that his son had been born and that Rosette had died. He set sail immediately, although we were in midwinter. When he arrived the baby was three months old and was a tranquil little thing with delicate features and large eyes; he looked like his father and his grandmother, poor Dona Eugenia. I greeted Maurice with a long embrace, but it was as if he wasn't there, dried up inside, with no light in his eyes. "It will be up to you to take care of Justin for a while, Maman," he told me. He stayed less than a month and did not want to talk with Monsieur Valmorain, no matter how much his uncle Sancho, who was back from Spain, asked him. Pere Antoine, on the other hand, who was always trying to help, refused to act as intermediary between father and son. Maurice decided that the grandfather could see Justin from time to time, but only in my presence, and he forbade me to accept anything from him, not money, not help of any kind, and least of all his name for the boy. He asked me to tell Justin about Rosette so the boy would always be proud of her and of his mixed blood. He believed that his son, fruit of immeasurable love, had a special destiny and would do great things in his life, the ones he had wanted to do before Rosette's death had broken his will. Last, he ordered me to keep him far away from Hortense Guizot. He did not need to warn me.
Soon my Maurice left, but he did not go back to his friends in Boston; he abandoned his studies and became a tireless traveler, he has blown over more land than the wind. He often writes a few lines, and that way we know he is alive, but in these four years he has come only once to see his son. He arrived dressed in skins, bearded, and dark from the sun; he looked like a Kaintuck. At his age no one dies of a broken heart. Maurice merely needs time to grow weary. Walking and walking across the world he will gradually find consolation, and one day, when he is too fatigued to take another step, he will realize that he cannot escape sorrow, he will have to tame it, so it doesn't harass him. Then he will be able to feel Rosette by his side, accompanying him, as I feel her, and perhaps he will come get his son and again be interested in putting an end to slavery.
Zacharie and I have another child, Honore, who is just beginning to take his first steps holding onto the hand of Justin, his best friend and also his uncle. We want more children, although this house is getting small for us and we aren't young-my husband is fifty-six and I am forty-for we would like to grow old among many children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, all of them free.
My husband and Fleur Hirondelle still have the gaming house and continue to be associated with Captain Romeiro Toledano, who sails the Caribbean transporting contraband and runaway slaves. Credit has not been available to them because laws are very harsh for people of color, even for whites associated with blacks, which is the case for Fleur Hirondelle, so their dream of owning several places to gamble along the river has not worked out. As for me, I am very busy with the children, the house, and remedies for Dr. Parmentier that I now prepare in my own kitchen, but in the evenings I give myself time for a cafe au lait in Adele's patio of bougainvillea, where all the neighbor women come to chat. We see Madame Violette less, for now she is most often with the ladies of the Societe du Cordon Bleu, all very interested in cultivating her friendship since she presides over the balls and can determine the luck of their daughters in the placage. It took more than a year for her to reconcile with Don Sancho; she wanted to punish him for his flirtation with Adi Soupir. She knows the ways of men and doesn't expect them to be faithful, but she insists that her lover at least not humiliate her by strolling along the dike with her rival. Madame has not been able to marry Jean-Martin to a rich quadroon, as she planned, because the boy has stayed in Europe and does not plan to return. Loula, who can barely walk because of her age-she must be over eighty-told me that her prince left the military career and lives with that pervert Isidor Morisset, who was not a scientist but an agent for Napoleon or the Lafittes, a drawing room pirate, she swears among sighs. Madame Violette and I have never again spoken of the past, and having guarded the secret so long, we are convinced that she is Jean-Martin's mother. Only rarely do I think about that, but one day I would like to have all my descendants together: Jean-Martin, Maurice, Violette, Justin, and Honore, and all the other children and grandchildren I will have. On that day I am going to invite all my friends; I will cook the best Creole gumbo in New Orleans, and we will have music till dawn.
Zacharie and I now have a history; we can look to the past and count the days we've been together, add up our sorrows and joys, that's the way love grows, no hurry at all, day after day. I love him as I always have, but I feel more comfortable with him than I once did. When he was handsome, everyone admired him, especially the women, who boldly offered themselves to him, and I fought against the fear that vanity and temptations would take him away from me, though he never gave me any reason to be jealous. Now you have to know the man inside him, as I do, to realize what he is worth. I don't remember how he was; I like his strange, broken face, the patch over his dead eye, his scars. We have learned not to argue over trivial things, only those that are important, which are many. To save him from restlessness and irritation, I take advantage of his absences to entertain myself in my fashion, that's the advantage of having a hardworking husband. He doesn't like for me to walk barefoot through the street because I am not a slave, or for me to go with Pere Antoine to comfort sinners in Le Marais because it's dangerous, or for me to attend the bambousses in the place Congo, because they are vulgar. I tell him none of that, and he doesn't ask. Just yesterday I was dancing in the square to the magical drums of Sanite Dede. Dancing and dancing. From time to time Erzulie, loa of motherhood and love, comes and mounts Zarite. Then we go galloping together to visit my dead ones on the island beneath the sea. That is how it is.
About the Author
Born in Peru and raised in Chile, ISABEL ALLENDE is the author of nine novels, including Ines of My Soul, Daughter of Fortune, and Portrait in Sepia, all of which were New York Times bestsellers. She has also written a collection of stories, four memoirs, and a trilogy of children's novels. Her books have been translated into more than twenty-seven languages and have become bestsellers across four continents. In 2004 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Isabel Allende lives in California.
