One morning in the Marche Francais she saw a drummer beating a pair of tin drums with his only hand. He was also missing a foot. She thought that perhaps his master had let him loose to earn his bread however he could, since as a slave he was useless to him. He was still young, with all his teeth and a mischievous expression that contrasted with his miserable condition. He had rhythm in his soul, his skin, his blood. He played and sang with such joy and enthusiasm that a group had gathered around him. The women's hips moved on their own to the beat of those irresistible drums, and children of color chorused words that apparently they'd heard many times as they battled one another with wooden swords. At first Tete found the words incomprehensible, but soon she realized that the song was in the obscure Creole of the Saint-Domingue plantations, and she could mentally translate the refrain into French: Capitaine La Liberte / protege de Macandal / s'est battu avec son sabre / pour sauver son general. Her knees gave way, and she had to sit on a fruit crate, with difficulty balancing her enormous belly, where she waited till the music ended and the hat was passed. It had been a long time since she'd used the Creole she learned in Saint-Lazare, but she was able to communicate with the drummer. The man came from Haiti, which he still called Saint-Domingue, and he told her he had lost his hand in a cane crusher and the foot under the executioner's ax because he had tried to run away. She asked him to repeat the words of the song slowly so she could hear them well, and thus she learned that Gambo was already a legend. According to the song, he had defended Toussaint Louverture like a lion, fighting against Napoleon's soldiers until he finally fell with wounds from so many balls and swords that they couldn't be counted. But the capitaine, like Macandal, did not die: he rose up transformed into a wolf, ready to keep fighting forever for freedom. "Many have seen him, madame. They say that the wolf roams around Dessalines and other generals because they have betrayed the revolution and are selling people as slaves."
For a long time Tete had accepted the possibility that Gambo had died, and the beggar's song confirmed it. That night she went to Adele's house to see Dr. Parmentier, the only person with whom she could share her sorrow, and told him what she had heard in the market.
"I know that song, Tete the Bonapartists sing it when they get drunk in the Cafe des Emigres, but they add another verse."
"What is that?"
"Something about a common grave where Negroes and freedom rot while France and Napoleon live on."
"That's horrible, Doctor!"
"Gambo was a hero in life, and will continue to be in death, Tete. As long as that song circulates he will be a model for courage."
Zacharie did not learn of the sorrow his wife was living because she was careful to hide it. Tete kept that first love, the strongest in her life, a secret. She mentioned it only rarely because she could not offer Zacharie a passion of the same intensity; the relationship they shared was gentle and free of urgency. Unaware of any such differences, Zacharie proclaimed his coming fatherhood to the four winds. He was accustomed to standing out and to commanding, including in Le Cap where he'd been a slave, and the beating that nearly killed him and had left his face badly pasted together could not squelch him: he continued to be extravagant and exuberant. He distributed free liquor to the clients of Chez Fleur so they could toast the baby his Tete was expecting, and his partner, Fleur Hirondelle, had to restrain him; these were not times to squander money or provoke envy. Nothing was so annoying to the Americans as a black man who swaggered.
Rosette kept them up to date with news from Maurice, which arrived with a delay of two or three months. After hearing the details of Maurice's story, Professor Harrison Cobb offered him hospitality in his house, where he was living with a widowed sister and his mother, a dotty old woman who ate flowers. Months later, when he learned that Rosette was pregnant and would give birth in November, Cobb asked him not to look for another lodging but to bring his family to live with them. Agatha, his sister, was more enthusiastic than anyone; Rosette could help her look after her mother, and the presence of the baby would cheer them all. That enormous, drafty house, with empty rooms no one had stepped into for many years and ancestors keeping guard from their portraits on the walls, needed a loving couple and a baby, she announced.
Maurice realized that Rosette would not be able to travel in summer either, and resigned himself to a separation that was going to last more than a year, until she had recovered from the birth and the baby could safely make the journey. In the meantime, he nourished love with a river of letters, as he had always done, and concentrated on studying in every free minute. Harrison Cobb hired him as his secretary, paying much more than was fitting to file his papers and help him prepare his classes, a light load that left Maurice time to study law and the only thing Cobb considered important: the abolitionist movement. Together they attended public meetings, edited pamphlets, visited newspapers, businesses, and offices, and spoke in churches, clubs, theaters, and universities. Harrison Cobb found in Maurice the son he had never had and the companion he had dreamed of to join in the struggle. With that youth at his side, the triumph of his ideals seemed within reach. His sister, Agatha, also an abolitionist, like all the Cobbs, even the lady who ate flowers, counted the days until they would go to the port to welcome Rosette and the baby. A family of mixed blood was the best thing that could happen to them; it was the incarnation of the equality they preached, the most convincing proof that races can and must be mixed and live together in peace. What an impact Maurice would have when he appeared in public with his wife of color and his child to defend emancipation! That would be more eloquent than a million pamphlets. To Maurice the fiery speeches of his benefactors seemed a little absurd since he had never thought of Rosette as any different from him.
The summer of 1806 became very long and brought a cholera epidemic and several fires to New Orleans. Toulouse Valmorain, along with the nun who was looking after him, was moved to the plantation, where the family always went to survive the worst heat of the season. Parmentier diagnosed his patient's health as stable and believed that moving him to the country would surely improve it. His medicines, which Hortense dissolved in his soup because he refused to take them, had not improved his nature. He had become quarrelsome, antagonistic, so much so that he could not stand himself. Everything irritated him, from the scratchiness of the diapers to the innocent laughter of his daughters in the garden, but more than anything, Maurice. He had fresh in his memory every stage of his son's life. He remembered every word they'd spoken at the end and had gone over them a thousand times, looking for the explanation of that so painful and definitive rupture. He believed that Maurice had inherited the madness of his maternal family. Through his veins ran the weak blood of Eugenia Garcia del Solar, not the strong blood of the Valmorains. He did not recognize anything of himself in that son. Maurice was like his mother-the same green eyes, the same sick inclination toward fantasy, the same impulse to destroy himself.