"I have waited thirty years for this moment, and when it comes, instead of dancing with joy I weep," I told him, embarrassed.
"You have time to dance now, Zarite. We will go out and celebrate this very evening," he offered.
"I don't have anything to wear!"
"I will buy you a dress, it is the least you deserve on this day, the most important one in your life."
"Are you rich, Zacharie?"
"I am poor but I live like a rich man. That is wiser than being rich and living like a poor man." He burst out laughing. "When I die, my friends will have to take up a collection to bury me, but my epitaph will say in gold letters: 'Here lies Zacharie, the wealthiest black man along the Mississippi.' I already ordered the inscription on the stone, and I keep it under my bed."
"That's the same thing Madame Violette Boisier wants: an impressive tomb."
"It is the only thing that stays on, Zarite. In a hundred years visitors to the cemetery will be able to admire the tombs of Violette and Zacharie and imagine that we had a good life."
He went to the house with me. Halfway there we met two white men, almost as well dressed as Zacharie, who looked him up and down with a sardonic expression. One of them spit very close to Zacharie's feet, but he didn't notice, or preferred to ignore it.
He didn't have to buy me a dress; Madame Violette wanted to get me ready for the first evening out of my life. Loula and she bathed me, massaged me with almond cream, polished my nails, and did the best they could with my feet, though of course they couldn't hide the calluses from so many years of going without shoes. Madame painted my face, and in the mirror I didn't see a gaudily colored me but an almost pretty Zarite Sedella. I put on a muslin dress of Violette's with an empire cut and cape of the same peach color, and she knotted on a silk tignon in her style. She lent me her taffeta shoes and her large golden earrings, her one jewel aside from the ring with the broken opal that she never removed from her finger. I did not have to leave in clogs and carry the slippers in a bag in order not to dirty them in the street, the usual way, because Zacharie came for me in a rented coach. I supposed that Violette, Loula, and several neighbors who came to look out of curiosity wondered why a gentleman like Zacharie would waste his time with someone as insignificant as me.
Zacharie brought me two gardenias, which Loula pinned onto my decolletage, and we went to the theater at the Opera. That night they were presenting a work by the composer Joseph Bologne, the chevalier de Saint-Georges, the son of a planter from Guadalupe and his African slave. King Louis XVI named him director of the Paris Opera, but he didn't last long because the divas and tenors refused to perform under his baton. That is what Zacharie told me. Perhaps none of the whites in the audience that applauded so loudly knew that the music had been composed by a mulatto. We had the best seats in the part reserved for people of color, second floor center. The heavy air in the theater smelled of alcohol, sweat, and tobacco, but I smelled only my gardenias. In the galleries were a number of Kaintucks, who interrupted with jeering shouts, until finally they were pulled out and the music could continue. After that we went to the Salon Orleans, where they were playing waltzes, polkas, and quadrilles, the same dances Maurice and Rosette had learned under their tutor's rod. Zacharie led me without stepping on my feet or running into other couples; we had to cut figures on the floor without flapping our arms or sticking out our rears. There were some white men but no white woman, and Zacharie was the blackest Negro aside from the musicians and waiters, and also the handsomest. He surpassed everyone in height and danced as if he were floating, his smile showing his perfect teeth.
We stayed to dance a half hour, but Zacharie realized that I did not fit in there, and we left. The first thing I did when I got into the coach was take off my shoes. We ended up near the river on a discreet little street far from most of the city's residences. I noticed that there were several coaches with their drivers dozing on the seats, as if they had been waiting quite some time. We stopped before an ivy covered wall with a narrow door, the overhanging lantern shedding a pale light. This entry was guarded by a white man armed with two pistols, who saluted Zacharie respectfully. We walked into a courtyard where a dozen saddled horses stood, and heard the chords of an orchestra. The house, which could not be seen from the street, was a good size, unpretentious, and I couldn't see the inside because heavy drapes were pulled across all the windows. "Welcome to Chez Fleur, the most famous place in New Orleans to come for gaming," Zacharie announced with a broad gesture that took in the entire surroundings. Soon we found ourselves in a large room. Through the cigar smoke I saw white men and men of color, some crowded around gaming tables, others drinking, and some dancing with women in deeply cut dresses. Someone put goblets of champagne in our hands. We could not move forward because someone stopped Zacharie at every step to say hello.
Suddenly an argument broke out among several players and Zacharie made a move to intervene, but faster than he was an enormous person with a mat of hair like wire, a cigar clamped between the teeth, and a wood cutter's boots, who delivered a few ringing slaps that dissolved the argument. Two minutes later the men were sitting with cards in their hands, joking, as if they'd never been cuffed. Zacharie introduced me to the person who had restored order. I thought it was a man with breasts, but it turned out to be a woman with hair on her face. She had the name of a delicate flower and bird that did not go with her looks: Fleur Hirondelle.
Zacharie explained to me that with the money he'd saved for years to buy his freedom, which he'd brought with him when he left Saint-Domingue, plus a bank loan obtained by his partner, Fleur Hirondelle, they were able to buy the house, which had been in bad shape, but they repaired it and put in all the necessary comforts, and even touches of opulence. They had no interference from the authorities, since a part of the take was designated for the inevitable bribes. They sold liquor and food, there was merry music from two orchestras, and they offered the most luscious ladies of the night in Louisiana. These were not employed by the house but were independent artists, as the Chez Fleur was not a brothel; there were many of those in the city and there was no need for another. At the tables fortunes were lost and sometimes won, but the largest part stayed with the house. The Chez Fleur was a good business, though they were still paying off the loan and had a lot of expenses.
"My dream is to have several of these gaming houses, Zarite. Of course it would take white partners, like Fleur Hirondelle, to get the money."
"She's white? She looks like an Indian."
"She is pure blooded French, just burned from the sun."
"You had luck to find her, Zacharie. Partners are not easy; it's better to pay someone to lend you a name. That's what Madame Violette does to get around the law. Don Sancho is a front, but she doesn't let him nose into her business."
At Zacharie's gaming house we danced in my style, and the night went flying by. When he took me back to the house it was nearly dawn, and he had to hold me by one arm because my head was spinning from contentment and champagne, which I'd never had before. Erzulie, loa of love, do not allow me to fall in love with this man because I will suffer, I prayed that night, thinking how the women in the Salon Orleans had looked at him, and how the ones at the Chez Fleur had offered themselves to him.
From the window of the carriage we saw Pere Antoine returning to the church, his feet dragging after a night of good works. He was exhausted and we stopped to pick him up, though I was ashamed that my breath smelled of alcohol and my dress was cut low. "I see you have celebrated your first day of freedom in grand style, my daughter. Nothing more deserved in your case than a little dissipation," was all he said before he gave me his blessing.
Just as Zacharie had promised, that was a happy day. This is how I remember it.
The Politics of the Day
In Saint-Domingue, Toussaint Louverture maintained precarious control under a military dictatorship, but the seven years of violence had devastated the colony and impoverished France. Napoleon was n
ot going to allow that bow-legged black, as he called him, to impose conditions. Toussaint had proclaimed himself Gouverneur a Vie, for life, inspired by Napoleon's title of Premier Consul a Vie, and treated him as an equal. Bonaparte planned to crush him like a cockroach, put the blacks to work on the plantations, and return the colony to dominion by the whites. In the Cafe des Emigres in New Orleans, the clients followed the confused events of the following months with fervent attention; they had not lost hope of going back to the island. Napoleon sent a large expedition under the command of his brother-in-law, General Leclerc, who brought with him his beautiful wife Pauline Bonaparte. Napoleon's sister traveled with courtesans, musicians, acrobats, artists, furniture, and decorative objects, everything desirable to establish in the colony a court as splendid as the one she had left behind in Paris.
They left Brest at the end of 1801, and two months later Le Cap was bombarded by Leclerc's ships and reduced to ashes for the second time in ten years. Toussaint Louverture did not blink an eye. Unmoved, he awaited at every instant the precise moment to attack or to fall back, and when that happened his troops left the land leveled, not a tree standing. The whites who were unable to find refuge under Leclerc's protection were massacred. In April, yellow fever fell like another curse upon the French troops, so little accustomed to the climate and defenseless against the epidemic. Of the seventeen thousand men Leclerc had at the beginning of the expedition, seven thousand were left in lamentable condition; of the remainder, five thousand were dying and another five thousand were in the ground. Again Toussaint was grateful for the timely aid of Macandal's winged armies.
Napoleon sent reinforcements, and in June another three thousand soldiers and officers died of the same fever; there was not enough lime to cover the bodies in the mass graves, where vultures and dogs tore the bodies apart. However, that same month, Toussaint's z'etoile burned out in the firmament. The general fell into a trap set by the French under the pretext of a parley; he was arrested and deported to France with his family. Napoleon had conquered the "greatest Negro general of history," as he was defined. Leclerc announced that the only way to restore peace would be to kill every black in the mountains and half those in the plains, men and women, and to leave alive only children under twelve, but he was not able to execute his plan because he fell ill.
The white emigres in New Orleans, including the monarchists, toasted Napoleon, the invincible, as Toussaint Louverture was slowly dying in an icy cell in a fort in the Alps, at two thousand nine hundred meters near the Swiss border. In Saint-Domingue the war continued, inexorable, through 1802, and very few realized that in that brief campaign Leclerc lost nearly thirty thousand men before he himself perished of the same yellow fever in November. The Premier Consul promised to send another thirty thousand soldiers to the island.
One winter afternoon in 1803, Dr. Parmentier and Tete were talking on Adele's patio, where they often met. Three years before, when the doctor saw Tete in the Valmorains' house, shortly after he'd arrived from Cuba, he had given her Gambo's message. He told her of the circumstances under which they'd met, his horrible wounds, and the long convalescence that had allowed them to get acquainted. He also told her about how the brave capitaine had helped him get away from Saint-Domingue when that was nearly impossible. "He said for you not to wait for him, Tete, because he had forgotten you, but if he sent you that message it is because he hadn't," the doctor had commented on that occasion. He supposed that Tete had freed herself from the ghost of that love. He had met Zacharie, and anyone could discern his feelings for Tete, though the doctor had never glimpsed between them those possessive gestures that signal intimacy. Perhaps the habit of caution and pretense that had served them in slavery had roots too deep. The Chez Fleur kept Zacharie very busy, and from time to time he also made trips to Cuba and other islands to stock up on liquors, cigars, and other necessities for his business. Tete was never prepared when he appeared at the house on the rue Chartres. Parmentier had met him several times when Violette invited him to dinner. He was friendly and formal, and always came with the classic almond tart to end the meal. With Parmentier, Zacharie talked politics, about which he was obsessive; with Sancho, bets, horses, and his fanciful businesses; and with the women, anything that delighted them. From time to time when Zacharie's partner, Fleur Hirondelle, came with him she seemed to have a curious affinity with Violette. She put her weapons down at the front door, sat to have tea in the little drawing room, and then disappeared inside the house, following Violette. The doctor could swear that she emerged without hair on her face, and once had seen her drop a vial into her powder pouch, surely perfume; he had heard Violette say that all women have a smattering of coquetry in their soul, and a few fragrant drops are enough to awaken it. Zacharie pretended to ignore his partner's weaknesses while he was waiting for Tete to get dressed to go out with him.
Once they took the doctor to the Chez Fleur, where he could appreciate Zacharie and Fleur Hirondelle in their normal surroundings and appreciate Tete's happiness dancing barefoot on the small circular floor in the bar. Just as he had imagined when he met her at the Habitation Saint-Lazare, when she was very young, Tete possessed a great reserve of sensuality, though at that time it had been hidden beneath her severe expression. Watching her dance, the physician concluded that being emancipated had changed not just her legal status but also liberated that aspect of her character.
In New Orleans, Parmentier's relationship with Adele was not unusual; several of his friends and patients kept families of color. For the first time the doctor did not have to resort to unworthy strategies to visit his wife--none of that sneaking around at dawn, taking a criminal's precautions not to be seen. He had dinner nearly every night with her, slept in her bed, and the next morning tranquilly returned to his consulting office at ten in the morning, deaf to any commentary he might arouse. He had acknowledged his children, who now bore his surname; the two boys were studying in France and the girl was with the Ursulines. Adele worked on her sewing and, as she always had, saved as much as she could. Two women helped her with Violette Boisier's corsets, armor reinforced with whalebone, which gave curves to the flattest woman and could not be seen, so dresses seemed to float over a naked body. The whites wondered how a style inspired by ancient Greece could look better on Africans than on them. Tete came and went between houses with patterns, measurements, cloth, corsets, and finished dresses, which Violette was then responsible for selling among her clients.
One evening Parmentier sat talking with Tete and Adele on the patio of the bougainvillea, at that time of year pale bare sticks without flowers or leaves.
"Toussaint Louverture died seven months ago. Another of Napoleon's crimes. They killed him with hunger, cold, and loneliness in the prison, but he will not be forgotten; the general made his way into history," said the doctor.
They were drinking sherry after a meal of catfish and vegetables, since among her many virtues Adele was a fine cook. The patio was the most agreeable place in the house, even on cool nights like that one. A faint light shone from a brazier that Adele had lit to make charcoal for ironing and for keeping the small circle of friends warm.
"Toussaint's death did not mean the end of the revolution. Now General Dessaline is in command. They say he is unflinching," the physician continued.
"What must have happened to Gambo? He didn't trust anyone, even Toussaint," Tete commented.
"He later changed his opinion of Toussaint. More than once he risked his life to save him; he was the general's homme de confiance."
"Then he was with the general when he was arrested," said Tete.
"Toussaint went to a rendezvous with the French to negotiate a political settlement for the war, but he was betrayed. While he was waiting inside the house, they assassinated his guards and the soldiers who accompanied him. I'm afraid that Capitaine La Liberte fell that day defending his general," Parmentier explained sadly.
"Before, Doctor, Gambo used to be with me."
"How was
that?"
"In dreams," said Tete vaguely.
She didn't clarify that she used to call to him every night in her thoughts, like a prayer, and sometimes was able to summon him so successfully that she waked beside his heavy, warm, languid body, with the happiness of having slept in her lover's arms. She felt the warmth and smell of Gambo on her skin, and when that happened she didn't wash, to prolong the illusion of having been with him. Those encounters in her dreams were the only solace in the loneliness of her bed, but that had been a long time ago, and now she had accepted Gambo's death; if he were alive he would somehow have communicated with her. Now she had Zacharie. On the nights they shared, when he was available, she rested satisfied and grateful after making love, with Zacharie's large hand on her. Ever since he had been in her life she had not returned to her secret habit of caressing herself as she called to Gambo, because to want another man's kisses, even a ghost's, would have been a betrayal Zacharie did not deserve. The secure and calm affection they shared filled her life; she did not need more.
"No one came out alive from the ambush they set up for Toussaint. There were no prisoners other than the general, and later his family, whom they also arrested," Parmentier added.