Maurice

During the vacation time of the fourth year of school, Maurice waited for Jules Beluche as he always did. By then he didn't want to meet his family, and the only reason to go back to New Orleans was Rosette, although the possibility of seeing her would be remote. The Ursulines did not allow spontaneous visits from anyone, much less a boy unable to prove a close relationship. He knew that his father would never give him the necessary authorization, but he never lost hope of going with his uncle Sancho, whom the nuns knew because he had never stopped visiting Rosette. Through his letters Maurice learned that Tete had been relegated to the plantation after the incident with Hortense, and he could only blame himself; he imagined her cutting cane from sunup to sundown and felt a fist in the pit of his stomach. Not only he and Tete had paid dearly for that one crack of the whip, apparently Rosette had fallen into disgrace too. The girl had written several times to Valmorain, asking him to come see her, but she got no answer. "What have I done to lose your father's esteem? Once I was like his daughter, why has he forgotten me?" she repeated in her letters to Maurice, but he could not give her an honest answer. "He hasn't forgotten you, Rosette-Papa loves you the way he always has and he wants you to be doing well, but the plantation and his businesses keep him busy. I haven't seen him myself for more than three years." Why tell her that Valmorain had never thought of her as a daughter? Before he'd been sent to Boston, he had asked his father to take him to visit his sister at the school, and with great anger Valmorain replied that Maurice's only sister was Marie-Hortense.

That summer Jules Beluche did not show up in Boston, instead Sancho Garcia del Solar, in his wide-brimmed hat, thundered up at full gallop with another horse in tow. He jumped down and brushed off the dust with his hat before embracing his nephew. Jules Beluche had been knifed over some gambling debts, and the Guizots intervened to squelch gossip; however distant the relationship that united them, sharp tongues would associate Beluche with the honorable branch of the family. They did what any Creoles of their class did in similar circumstances: they paid his debts, took him in until his wound healed and he could look after himself, gave him pocket money, and put him on a boat with instructions not to get off until he reached Texas, and never to return to New Orleans. Sancho told Maurice all that, doubled over with laughter.

"That could have been me, Maurice. Up till now I've been lucky, but any day they will bring you the news that your favorite uncle has been stitched like a quilt in some hole of a gaming house," he added.

"May God not let that happen, Uncle. Have you come to take me home?" Maurice asked in a voice that shifted from baritone to soprano in the same sentence.

"What makes you think that, boy! Do you want to be buried all summer on the plantation? You and I are going on a trip," Sancho announced.

"That's what I did with Beluche."

"Don't compare me to him, Maurice. I do not intend to contribute to your civic formation by showing you monuments, I mean to pervert you, what do you think of that?"

"How, Uncle?"

"In Cuba, my nephew. No better place for a couple of truants like us. How old are you?"

"Fifteen."

"And your voice hasn't changed yet?"

"It changed, Uncle, but I have a c-cold," the boy stammered.

"By your age I was a hell raiser. You're a little behind, Maurice. Pack your things, because we leave tomorrow," Sancho ordered.

Sancho still had many friends and no few lovers in Cuba, who proposed to shower him with attention during that vacation and put up with his companion, that strange boy who spent his time writing letters and suggested absurd subjects of conversation like slavery and democracy, something none of them had formed an opinion about. It amused them to see Sancho in the role of nursemaid, which he performed with unsuspected dedication. He turned down the best sprees in order not to leave his nephew alone, and stopped going to animal fights-bulls with bears, snakes with weasels, cocks with cocks, dogs with dogs-because they disturbed Maurice. Sancho decided to teach the boy to drink and, halfway through the night ended by cleaning up his vomit. He taught him all his card tricks, but Maurice lacked malice and instead had to pay up after others less principled fleeced him. Soon Sancho had also abandoned the idea of initiating him into the free-for-alls of love, for when he tried it Maurice nearly died of fright. He had arranged the details with a good-hearted woman friend, not young but still attractive, who was willing to act as teacher to the nephew for the pure pleasure of doing the uncle a favor. "This kid is still green behind the ears," Sancho muttered, mortified, when Maurice ran away upon seeing the woman in a provocative negligee reclining on a divan. "No one has ever rebuffed me like that, Sancho." She laughed. "Close the door and come console me." Despite those stumbles, Maurice had an unforgettable summer and returned to school taller, stronger, tanned, and with a definite tenor voice. "Don't study too hard, because it will ruin your sight and your character, get ready for next summer. I'm going to take you to Mexico," Sancho told his nephew as he left. He did as he promised, and from then on Maurice eagerly looked forward to summer.

In 1805, Maurice's last year of school, it was not Sancho who came for him, as he had before, but his father. Maurice deduced that he was there to announce some bad news and was afraid for Tete or Rosette, but it wasn't anything like that, it seemed. Valmorain had organized a trip to France to visit a grandmother and two hypothetical aunts his son had never heard mentioned. "And then we will go home, monsieur?" Maurice had asked, thinking of Rosette, whose letters lined the bottom of his trunk. He had written her one hundred ninety-three letters without a thought for the inevitable changes she had experienced in those nine years they'd been apart; he remembered her as the little girl dressed in ribbons and laces that he'd seen for the last time shortly before his father's marriage to Hortense Guizot. He couldn't imagine her at fifteen, just as she couldn't think of him as eighteen. "Of course we'll go home, son, your mother and sisters are waiting to see you," Valmorain lied.

The journey on a ship that had to skirt summer storms and with difficulty escape an attack by the English, and then a coach to Paris, did not bring the father and son together. Valmorain had conceived the trip in order to postpone for a few months more his wife's displeasure at seeing Maurice again, but he couldn't put it off indefinitely; soon he would have to confront a situation that had not been eased by the years. Hortense never lost a chance to spew venom upon that stepson whom each year she tried vainly to replace with her own son without producing anything but girls. For her, Valmorain had exiled Maurice from the family, and now he repented. A decade had gone by without a serious concern for his son; he was always occupied with his own affairs, first in Saint-Domingue, then in Louisiana, and last with Hortense and the births of the girls. The boy was a stranger who answered his sparse letters in a couple of formal sentences regarding the progress of his studies but he never asked about any member of the family; it was as if he wanted to leave it settled that he had no connection to them. He didn't even react when his father wrote him in a single line that Tete and Rosette had been emancipated and were no longer connected to the Valmorains.

Valmorain was afraid he'd lost his son at some point during those hectic years. This introverted young man, tall and handsome, with his mother's features, did not in any way resemble the rosy-cheeked boy he'd cradled in his arms, praying heaven to protect him from all harm. He loved him as much as he ever had, maybe more, because his emotion was stained with guilt. He tried to convince himself that his fatherly affection was returned by Maurice, even though they were temporarily distanced, but he had his doubts. He had laid out ambitious plans for his son without ever having asked him what he wanted to do with his life. In truth, he knew nothing about his interests or experiences; it was centuries since they had spoken. He wanted to win him back, and had imagined that those months alone together in France would act to establish an adult relationship. He had to prove to him his affection and to make clear that Hortense and her daughters would not change Maurice's situation as his only heir, but every time he tried to broach the subject there was no response. "The tradition of primogeniture is very wise, Maurice; wealth must not be divided among sons because with each division the family's fortune is lessened. Being the firstborn, you will receive my entire estate, and you will have to look after your sisters. When I'm no longer here, you will be the head of the Valmorains. It's time to start preparing you; you will learn to invest money, manage the plantation, and make your way in society," he told him. Silence. Conversations died before they began. Valmorain navigated from one monologue to another.