Slave to Every Need

The mental illness of his wife gave Valmorain a good excuse to avoid social life, which he abhorred, and by three years after the birth of his son he had turned into a recluse. His business obliged him to go to Le Cap, and from time to time to Cuba, but it was dangerous to move about because of the bands of Negroes who descended from the mountains to lay siege to the roads. The ceremonial burning of the Maroons in 1780, and others after that, had not discouraged slaves from running away or the Maroons from attacking plantations and travelers. He preferred to stay at Saint-Lazare. I need nothing, he told himself with the cunning pride of those with a calling for solitude. As the years passed he became less fond of people; everyone, except Dr. Parmentier, seemed stupid or venial. He had only commercial relations, like his Jewish manager in Le Cap or his banker in Cuba. The other exception, aside from Parmentier, was his brother-in-law, Sancho Garcia del Solar; though Valmorain seldom saw him they had a rather regular correspondence. Sancho amused him, and the businesses they undertook together had turned out to be beneficial for both. Sancho often good-humoredly confessed that that was a true miracle, because he had never done well before he met Valmorain. "Prepare yourself, brother-in-law, because any day now I will sink you," he would joke, but he continued to ask for loans that after a while were returned many times over.

Tete managed the domestic slaves with geniality and firmness, minimizing problems in order to prevent the master's intervention. Her slim figure, in a dark skirt and percale blouse, a starched tignon on her head, keys clinking at her waist and Maurice riding her hip or clinging to her skirts as he learned to walk, seemed to be everywhere at once. Nothing escaped her attention, neither instructions for the kitchen or bleaching the clothing, not the stitches of the seamstresses or the urgent needs of the master or child. She knew how to delegate and was able to train a female slave who no longer worked in the cane fields to help her with Eugenia and free her from sleeping in the ill woman's room. The slave stayed with Eugenia, but Tete administered the remedies and washed her mistress, because Eugenia would not let herself be touched by anyone else. The one thing Tete did not delegate was Maurice's care. She adored with a mother's jealousy that capricious, delicate, and emotional child. By then the wet nurse had returned to the alley of the slaves and Tete shared a room with the boy. She slept on a light mattress in the corner, and Maurice, who refused to stay in his cradle, curled up beside her, pressed against her warm body and generous breasts. Sometimes, waked by the boy's snores she would caress him in the dark, moved to tears by the smell of him, his unruly curls, his limp little hands, his body sprawled in sleep, thinking of her own son and wondering if another woman somewhere was lavishing the same affection on him. She gave Maurice everything Eugenia could not: stories, songs, laughs, kisses, and from time to time a swat to make him obey. On the rare occasions when she scolded him, the boy would throw himself on the ground, kicking and threatening to complain to his father, but he never did, somehow sensing that the consequences would be grave for the woman who was his universe.

Prosper Cambray had not managed to impose his law of terror among the household servants; a tacit frontier had been established between Tete's small territory and the rest of the plantation. Her domain was run like a school, and his like a prison. In the house, precise chores were assigned to each slave, who carried them out smoothly and calmly. In the fields people marched in rows under the always ready whips of the commandeurs; they obeyed without a word and lived in a state of alert, for any carelessness was paid for with blood. Cambray charged himself personally with discipline. Valmorain did not lift a hand against the slaves, he considered it degrading, but he attended punishments to establish his authority and to make sure that the overseer did not over-step himself. He never reproached Cambray in public, but his presence at the place of torture imposed a certain restraint. The house and fields were worlds apart, but nonetheless Tete and the overseer did occasionally meet, and then the air was charged with the threatening energy of a storm. Cambray looked for her, excited by the young woman's obvious scorn, and she avoided him, made uneasy by his brazen lust. "If Cambray goes too far with you I want to know it immediately, do you understand me?" Valmorain warned her more than once, but she never went to him; it was not good to provoke the overseer's wrath.

By order of her maitre, who did not tolerate hearing Maurice parler neg, speak like the blacks, Tete always spoke French in the house. She spoke Creole with all the others on the plantation, and with Eugenia the Spanish that was becoming reduced to a few indispensable words. The ill woman had sunk into a melancholy so persistent, and an emotional indifference so complete, that if Tete hadn't fed and washed her she would have died of hunger, filthy as a pig, and if she hadn't moved her and changed her position, her bones would have frozen in place, and if she hadn't urged her to speak, she would have been mute. She no longer suffered panic attacks but spent her days half awake, half asleep in a large chair, eyes staring ahead, like a huge doll. She still recited the rosary, which she always wore in a small leather bag she hung around her neck, even though she could no longer say the words. "When I die you will have my rosary-do not let anyone take it from you, because it is blessed by the pope," she had told Tete. In rare moments of lucidity she prayed for God to take her away. According to Tante Rose, her ti-bon-ange was stuck in this world and needed a special service to liberate it, nothing painful or complicated, but Tete had not decided to take such an irrevocable step. She wanted to help her hapless mistress, but responsibility for her death would be a crushing burden, even shared with Tante Rose. Perhaps Dona Eugenia's ti-bon-ange still needed to do something in her body; they would have to give it time to get free by itself.

Toulouse Valmorain imposed his embraces on Tete frequently, more out of habit than affection or desire, without the urgency of the period when she entered puberty and he was overcome by a sudden passion. Only Eugenia's dementia explained why she had not realized what was happening right before her eyes. "The maitresse suspects, but what is she going to do? She can't stop him," was the opinion of Tante Rose, the one person Tete dared confide in when she became pregnant. She had feared the reaction of her mistress when she began to notice, but before that happened, Valmorain took his wife to Cuba, where he would gladly have left her forever if the convent nuns had agreed to take care of her. When he brought her back to the plantation, Tete's baby had disappeared, and Eugenia never asked why her slave's tears were falling like little pebbles. Valmorain's sensuality was gluttonous and hurried. In bed as at the table he did not like to waste time in preliminaries-just as he was bored by the ritual of long tablecloth and silver candelabra that Eugenia had always used at dinner he found the amorous game equally useless. For Tete it was one further chore, which was fulfilled in a few minutes except on those occasions when the devil possessed her master; that did not often happen, though she always anticipated it with fear. She was grateful for her luck; Lacroix, the owner of the plantation neighboring Saint-Lazare, kept a seraglio of girls chained in a barracks to satisfy his fantasies, in which guests and a few blacks he called "my studs" participated. Valmorain had attended those cruel evenings only once, and was so profoundly affected that he never returned. He was not excessively scrupulous but he believed that sooner or later a man paid for fundamental crimes, and he did not want to be near Lacroix when it was time for him to pay his. He was Lacroix's friend, they had shared interests, from breeding animals to hiring slaves for the cane harvest; he attended his parties, his cattle roundups and cockfights, but he did not want to set foot in that barracks again. Lacroix trusted him completely, with no guarantee but with a simple signed receipt handed Valmorain his savings to deposit in Cuba in a secret account far from the greedy claws of his wife and other relatives. Valmorain had to use great tact to reject Lacroix's repeated invitations to his orgies.