6

AFTER OUR SHOW CLOSED IN the city of Karlsruhe, our traveling theater headed south. It felt rather odd to find myself, once again, in Aunt Margot’s sturdy carriage, dressed in mourning, with Pierre in the coach-box while Françoise, seated to my left, read a volume of plays by Beaumarchais, moving her lips and tracing the printed lines with her finger. Had it not been for Maryse and Claudette, who were also traveling with us, one would have thought that time had spun in reverse back to the sweltering days of that long journey from Boulogne to the Danube, a journey that held such meaning for me, one that I now mythologized, imagining, for some mysterious reason, that it was destined to repeat itself over and over again, like variations on a theme, each one initiating a new cycle or phase of my life. What would the journey bring me this time around?

“Don’t you find that certain moments seem to repeat themselves?” I asked Maryse.

“Yes, especially the bad ones,” she replied, still in a foul mood. The previous night, as we slept in a roadside inn, the gypsies had stolen Maryse’s excellent carriage horses from the stable, hitched them to their wagon, and disappeared, leaving an old mule and a sick bear by way of compensation. I had never seen my friend so irate; she swore like a soldier and unfairly accused the innkeeper of having been an accomplice to the theft. Nothing would calm her down, not even my offer of money to buy new horses.

“What bothers me the most, goddammit, is that I’ve always defended the gypsies!” she shouted, furiously kicking hay about the stable. Finally, realizing that it was growing late, she informed the innkeeper that he’d pay dearly were anything to happen to her carriage, and then she’d climbed into mine, followed by Claudette.

At last we arrived at Baden-Baden, where we’d been invited for a few days’ work in the municipal theater. In those days, the city was nothing like what it is today—to judge from what I read in the newspapers. Not only was it a gathering place for European aristocracy, it was where the French nobility, fleeing the Revolution, had emigrated. Sitting in a box seat with Françoise, I watched as the theater filled up with those pathetic courtiers who, in order to demonstrate their allegiance with the Monarchist cause, dressed in the old style, delicately taking their snuff and behaving with the same affectation as if they were attending a palace soirée. I would later find out that their numbers were dwindling. Feeling themselves at risk under the new Confederation of the Rhine—Baden had become a grand duchy under French protection—many sought refuge in Austria, Russia, England, and even America. But traveling was expensive, and while there were those bankers and dandies who had managed to escape with their fortunes intact and who could permit themselves the luxury of settling wherever they saw fit, others, less fortunate, had resorted to gambling in the hope of, one day, imitating them. The result was that Baden-Baden, best known for the virtues of its thermal springs, had, in a very few years, become a city full of gamblers, and was now attracting people from all over, including Italy, Switzerland, and the Rhineland.

After the show, we went out into the hallway that led to the staircase. The crowd was so dense we could hardly move. Fanning myself was useless; I could feel the sweat dripping down my body. It seemed like no one was leaving the building and, when I complained of this out loud, a woman with a tall coiffure turned around and informed me that the majority of the people were headed to the game rooms. At last we made it to the first floor, where Maryse, Claudette, and a few of the Italians were waiting for us at the entrance to the restaurant. After waiting more than half an hour we finally managed to secure a table. The food was well prepared despite the huge number of diners, but I couldn’t help but notice how high the prices were. Andrea Morini, who played the role of Harlequin, suggested that we visit one of the game rooms. But at the thought of being suffocated once again by the crowd, I declined.

“Perhaps tomorrow,” said Maryse, agreeing with me. “My head hurts and I need to rest. Those damned gypsies have ruined my whole day.”

When I awoke and saw the sun lighting up the room, I decided I was finished with dressing in mourning. The unusual heat of that June cried out for cool, white clothes, and further, I realized that black was no longer an accurate reflection of my state of mind.

I began to regret the decision the moment I went down to breakfast. Andrea and Piet stared at me with such insistence that I flushed bright red. It was clear that, to them, I had ceased to be a bereaved widow. As I ate breakfast, surrounded by their flirtatious attentions, I realized that I needed to come up with a defensive strategy before any unpleasantness arose. My feet were already being sought under the table, and I did not wish to allow things to go any further. But what might be the most effective way to discourage my two sudden admirers? And it wasn’t that I was entirely indifferent to them. They were both intelligent and attractive, each in his own way. It was just that, after Robert’s death, no man seemed to warrant my affections. My desire still belonged to him, to the point that I sometimes awoke with the pillow pressed between my legs and an urgent need to feel him inside me. When this happened, I would close my eyes and, straddling the pillow, evoke his body, his voice, his kisses, his caresses, trying to recover one of our nights in Vienna or Munich or Berlin.

After the show that evening, I went with Maryse and Professor Kosti to the theater manager’s office to collect our money. Professor Kosti, whose real name was Erich Kraft, had volunteered as the troupe’s bookkeeper. He was from Berlin, tall, and middle-aged, with pale eyes which, magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses, intimidated anyone who didn’t know him well. In his youth he had been fruitlessly obsessed with demonstrating some geometric property or another of parallel lines. Frustrated in his aspirations, he had instead succeeded in training a horse in such a way that it appeared to know arithmetic. His most popular act had two parts to it: in the first, he would ask the audience for two numbers of up to six digits each, which he would then multiply and divide by each other on the spot, without the aid of paper and pencil, coming up with the answers minutes before anyone in the audience could calculate them; in the second, one of the tightrope walkers would appear on stage dressed as an Amazon, leading Pythagoras by the bridle. The horse would then be asked to solve any mathematical problem—including square and cubic roots—so long as the answer was not longer than a single digit. Once he had arrived at the number, Kosti would move to the horse’s ear, translate into horse language the operation to be carried out, and Pythagoras would give the answer by elegantly raising and lowering his right hoof.

After she’d received the money owed us for the two nights of performances and distributed it among the members of the company, Maryse collected five francs from each of us so that Kosti could play roulette—after studying the game, the mathematician believed he had hit upon a winning system. Roulette was still a novel game in those days, having been brought to Baden-Baden by exiled aristocrats. The advantage it held over rouge et noir, a card game that had also been introduced by the French, was that, in addition to being faster, more players could participate at once, making it more like a raffle or a lottery. The roulette room was so packed with players that we had a difficult time even getting through the door. Since the Germany of those days included dozens of states, and the largest of them minted their own money, the game room cashier used the new franc as the base currency of exchange. So as to avoid confusion, one didn’t play with real money but with tokens made of bone, with a different color corresponding to each player.

Aside from the rounds of faro that I had played with Robert, the only purpose of which had been to prove that I could beat him, I had never been interested in gambling. Raised in accordance with Aunt Margot’s customs, I had always preferred outdoor pastimes. Nevertheless, I tingled with impatience and excitement in anticipation of watching my friends play. Would Kosti’s system work? Could studying the diagram on the roulette wheel for a few hours really be sufficient to uncover the secret to the game? Could it be true that the probability that the marble would fall on a given number was predetermined by a law of mathematics? If that were so, I thought, the future would be predictable and those who understood numbers would take the place of astrologers and fortunetellers. Suddenly, my memory took a kind of leap and I remembered a forgotten episode: as a child, in Toulouse, a Spanish gypsy had read in my palm that I would marry three times, none of them in France. “Les jeux sont faits, rien ne va plus,” she’d said in a mechanical voice. I looked over Maryse’s shoulder toward the roulette table: the ball jumped from one number to the next until at last coming to rest. “Nine, red,” announced the croupier. Maryse could not repress a cry of joy: she had won seven hundred francs.

Standing behind my friends—only those playing were permitted to sit—I watched them play for a while. Kosti’s system did not appear to be such a miraculous thing. Though he did win more than he lost, his winnings did not amount to more than a hundred francs. As for Maryse, who played independently from the mathematician, she had not managed to hit upon a winning number again. Tired of losing, she dropped the few tokens she had left in her bag and turned to me. “I feel like something sweet. Care to join me?” she asked.

In the restaurant, we joked a bit about how seriously Kosti took his mathematical system, and moved on quickly to the subject of my life. Maryse had noticed Piet and Andrea’s flirtations and she was curious which one of the two I preferred.

“Neither,” I replied. “Robert is still very present for me.”

“Yes, it takes time,” she said thoughtfully, and took a long sip of champagne.

“I feel useless in your theater, Maryse,” I said to change the subject, although, in truth, it was something that had begun to worry me. “Pierre is in charge of transportation, Françoise handles the costumes. Even the animals do their part.”

“But my dear, you accompany us and share everything with us. But, if you’d like to be on stage, well, let’s see. . . . You have a lovely voice. I could give you a few lessons, and in no time you could be a mezzo-soprano in a quartet.”

“You only say that because you’ve never heard me sing. Although I like music, I’m the least musical person in the world. The only thing I do well is ride horses.”

“I’m not so sure of that, my dear. I’ve heard tell that any horse you ride ends up dead,” she said, teasing me. “A toast to the soul of the good Jeudi,” she added, raising her glass.

“A toast,” I said, raising mine.

“We should get back. Kosti must be on the verge of breaking the bank by now.”

When we entered the roulette room, very few players were left, and even Kosti had retired for the evening. “He must have lost all of the troupe’s money,” commented Maryse. But when we asked the croupier if the gentleman in the glasses had lost a great deal, he replied: “Quite to the contrary, Madame Polidor. Professor Kosti won over a thousand francs.”

Maryse and I looked at each other and started to giggle like a pair of idiots. “In that case,” said Maryse, emptying her bag onto the table, “I’ll put everything on number nine.”

“Pardon me, madame, but the nine came up twice in a row not ten minutes ago.” The speaker was not one of the players we’d left at the game table when we’d gone to the restaurant; of this I was certain. He was a man in his late forties, tall and good-looking, possibly Spanish, to judge by his accent. He was dressed in black, and a majestic pear-shaped gray pearl hung from his left earlobe. His salt-and-pepper hair, tied back with a red silk ribbon, was nearly as long as mine.

Maryse, without apparent surprise, held the gaze of her exotic interlocutor. Then, turning back to the croupier, she said: “Everything on the nine.”

“In that case, allow me to join you,” said the man in black, nodding his head slightly, and, addressing the croupier, he indicated the nine square on the roulette table and said: “A thousand francs on madame’s number.” I noticed that, like Uncle Charles, he wore no rings on his fingers.

“Monsieur?” asked the croupier, obviously thinking he’d heard him wrong. Then the man in black removed his pearl earring and rolled it across the table.

After hesitating a moment, the croupier gestured to a man who appeared to be the manager of the game room. The man approached, examined the pearl and, without a word, placed it on the number nine. Then he took the marble from the croupier’s fingers and, with a practiced motion, spun the roulette wheel in one direction with one hand and sent the ball rolling in the opposite direction with the other. For a moment I thought the ball was going to stay on the nine, but the wheel was still spinning and it jumped onto other numbers.

“Twelve, black,” announced the croupier.

“Well, madame, it could be worse,” said my friend’s admirer from the other side of the table.

“So it could, monsieur,” said Maryse. “But I think you should not have played your beautiful pearl on my number. I don’t tend to have good luck.”

“Luck does not exist, madame. What is meant to be, will be.”

“Who knows? Something to consider.” She took her bag from the table and said to me: “It’s late. We should go.”

“Good night, madame,” he said, looking at her intensely and ignoring me entirely. “Perhaps we shall see each other again.”

“If it’s meant to be, so it shall be.”

Arm in arm with Portelance, Maryse stepped onto the dock in Jacmel and stood there, amazed. Everything she saw seemed so unreal that she felt as though it were one of those monumental stage sets that one used to see years before in the Palais Royal Theater, which, in an effort to capture the ambiance of the Southern Islands, included everything from giant fanciful figureheads to thatched-roofed huts. All along the narrow road that passed in front of the dock moved ox carts and teams of picturesquely adorned donkeys, people on horseback wearing huge straw hats, soldiers and national guardsmen. Vigorous-looking black men came and went, some bare-chested, carrying large baskets, bundles of goat skins, cages filled with chickens and demijohns of rum. Black women, dressed in lightweight cotton and colorful turbans, could be glimpsed among the crowds, balancing baskets of fruit or vegetables on their heads, one hand on their hips, which they swung back and forth as they walked in a careless manner that Maryse determined to imitate as soon as she could find a mirror. Further ahead, at the top of a road paved with rounded stones, the plaza opened out, a fountain with bronze griffins at its center, encircled by rows of little stands in which old women rested on their haunches, selling their wares laid out on tables: fruit, flowers, herbs, pottery, brilliantly colored swaths of cloth, red and yellow silk handkerchiefs, fish, seafood, barrels of salted fish; there were mountains of oranges, pineapples, watermelons, coconuts, great plumed cabbages, white cheeses, bunches of bananas, onions and limes scattered among stalks of sugarcane and hairy-looking tubers that she’d never seen before. Everyone was bartering, gesticulating, laughing and gossiping loudly in the harmonious créole of the colonies.

Maryse looked at her daughter, already almost ten years old, walking wonder-struck between her and Portelance. “Do you like it?” she asked her. Justine, who was rendered speechless, nodded happily.

“And you?” Portelance asked her. Maryse breathed in the dense tropical air, raised her hand to her heart, and said: “It’s the same as it was with you: love at first sight.”

From Jacmel they traveled on a small schooner to Cap-Français. There, they settled in to the grand, Norman-style stone house that Portelance’s father had built. The city, sacked and burned a few years back, was being reconstructed with astonishing speed. Here a new tile roof was going in, over there a façade was being restored or a wall torn down. An army of carpenters and bricklayers worked from sun up to sun down, their Creole songs carrying through the streets on the morning breezes. To Maryse, all that activity seemed like a good omen. At sunset, leaning her elbows on the balcony railing, taking in all the colors of twilight, she liked to think that she, Justine, and Portelance were a kind of prophetic family, in an Old Testament kind of way; a family that, founded on the diversity of races, answered the call of a new era. It was as though the world had become young again in order to welcome them in a sort of celebration.

Inspired by this moment of epiphany, Maryse decided to offer voice and acting lessons with the objective of reinstating the arts in the city. The house soon filled up with students and, after many months of work, she managed to organize a miniscule theater company that performed selected scenes from Racine, Molière, and Beaumarchais. Dazzled by the abundance of talented musicians, she succeeded, with Portelance’s help, in convincing the Government to provide modest funding for an extraordinary musical group that could play, with equal skill, a Rameau overture or a syncopated Creole quadrille. And so, while Portelance assisted the Louverture government in any way he could, while the planters returned from exile and production and commerce improved from day to day, Maryse found herself ever happier in Cap-Français, thanking God for the good health they all enjoyed, and watching Justine grow into a beautiful and vivacious young woman with the slender curves of an amphora and the toasted-almond eyes that she’d inherited from her father.

One morning, sitting before the remains of a glorious breakfast of tropical fruit, Maryse noticed that Portelance was staring fixedly out to sea.

“Your coffee’s going to get cold, my love.”

“Yes, you’re right,” he said, and downed it in one gulp.

“You’re preoccupied. Has something happened?”

“Something that had to happen,” sighed Portelance and, laying his finger atop the broken red seal on a letter lying next to his plate, he added: “From my brother Claude, with news from France. The Directorate no longer exists. A general has taken over control, General Bonaparte. A coup d’état. He has proclaimed himself First Consul.”

“Consul? A Roman title? How ridiculous . . . so nouveau riche!” exclaimed Maryse, as Portelance lit a cigar. “But wait! Bonaparte is married to a Creole from Martinique. This is good, my love. Surely he’ll take an interest in Saint-Domingue.”

“That’s precisely what worries me.”

“But everything’s going well here. There’s peace and order and greater prosperity by the day. I don’t see what harm Bonaparte can do to us. To the contrary, I think he’ll take Louverture’s Government as an example of how to reform colonial politics, don’t you agree? At least that’s what logic would suggest.”

“Politics is not logic, Maryse. Politics is politics,” said Portelance, tapping an inch of ash onto his plate.

“I know what politics is. It’s here that I’ve come to understand it. Politics is nothing; it’s like the smoke from your cigar. What matters are the men behind the politics. Louverture is a good man, a virtuous man, therefore his politics must necessarily be good and just.”

“You say that because you’re on his side. But just ask the enemies he’s defeated; ask Rigaud, for example. Even more, ask those who conspire from within his own ranks. I’ve seen him order the execution of a hundred men who had won many battles for him. And I don’t criticize him for it either; it’s how politics works.”

“But, my dear, doesn’t God punish the wicked with damnation? Why must you complicate matters when everything may be reduced to a conflict between good and evil? There are heroes and there are villains, just like in the great operas and tragedies, and that is that.”

“My love, the world is not a stage and life is not an opera. Yes, there are heroes and villains, but consider that there are villains who become heroes and heroes who end up as villains. And this occurs because all of us have both a hero and a villain within us, and we ourselves don’t know when we might behave as one or the other.”

“You’ll never convince me that a villain hides inside you, my love. But, very well, I think I understand you. You think that Bonaparte, the hero of Italy, has revealed dangerous ambitions in staging a coup d’état. In other words, he may have switched from the category of hero to that of villain. Am I right?”

“It’s what I fear. But the truth is, what worries me the most is that Louverture has asked me to work on a constitution. I must warn you that this is a secret project, and it must stay that way, between you and me.”

“Say no more, Portelance,” Maryse said, her brow furrowed. “You know that I’ve never told anyone the things you tell me. Go on. . . .”

“A few months ago, when the government of France was weak, such a constitution would have enjoyed much better prospects than it does now, with Bonaparte in power. Further, I know very well what kind of constitution Louverture wants; I myself have contributed greatly to his ideas. You know them well: they’re in my book.”

“But, my dear, those are your principles. It’s a fact that what you were able to see before anyone else has indeed occurred. That should fill you with satisfaction.”

“Except that the autonomy that Louverture wants for Saint-Domingue is more radical than I think prudent: practically speaking, it’s independence. Furthermore, Louverture intends to remain in power as Commander in Chief and Governor for Life. No matter how hard I think about it, I still cannot see which is the best political path to follow. It is, of course, easy to say that dictatorships are abhorrent, that they set a bad precedent, but, what chance does Saint-Domingue have to move forward under any government other than Louverture’s? And so, what course am I to recommend? And finally, of course, is the question of how Bonaparte, a general with autocratic ambitions, would respond to an ex-slave, a black man who, ten years ago, didn’t know how to read or write and who believed in voodoo spirits, proposing himself as the constitutional dictator of France’s wealthiest colony. Do you suppose he’d tolerate him? I seriously doubt it. What’s more, Bonaparte has the support of all those who’ve gotten rich off the war industry, hundreds of contractors and businessmen who also harbor visions of grandeur. It wouldn’t surprise me if he were to revoke the abolition of slavery and attempt a return to how things were before.”

“But, my love, even if he did revoke it, who could force so many people who’ve tasted liberty back into servitude?”

“He could try, Maryse, he could try. Didn’t he invade Egypt with thirty thousand men?”

Maryse remained quiet for several minutes. She knew that Portelance had confided all of this to her because he needed to be able to discuss the situation with someone he could trust. And yet she couldn’t find the words to continue the conversation. But there he sat, the love of her life, waiting for her, pretending to study the way the breeze dissipated the column of smoke from his cigar.

“Portelance,” she said at last, “do not take on Louverture’s burden, much less Bonaparte’s. May each of them act in accordance with his own conscience and interests. It will be as God wills it. You are only an advisor and, as such, your duty does not extend beyond suggesting to Louverture the constitutional project you deem most viable for Saint-Domingue. That is, open your heart to him, and tell him of your concerns. He knows better than anyone that anything you say is guided by the best of intentions.”

“We shall see, we shall see,” repeated Portelance, dropping the cigar in his coffee cup. “Now let’s speak of another matter, something that affects you and me, and even Justine,” he said gravely.

“My goodness, Portelance!” exclaimed Maryse, alarmed.

“The letter I received was not written by Claude, but rather by his wife, Sophie; Claude has suffered an embolism that has left him paralyzed on the right side of his body.

“Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry!”

“He is very weak and has asked me to travel to Philadelphia. We have never divided up our inheritance. Fearing the worst, he’s decided that it is time to do so. He wants to prepare his will and the situation is complicated. First, there are his wife and children; we also have two older sisters who emigrated to Cuba, and, of course, Madame Portelance and my son Jean-Charles. And then there are you, Justine, and me. In addition to the lands, houses and plantations that we have here, Claude has invested a great deal of money in various North American companies, and my sisters, both widows with children, have bought sugar mills in Cuba. In any case, it’s not an easy matter to sort out; we need to decide how to divide everything up among ourselves and our beneficiaries. My sisters will travel to Philadelphia with their account books and their lawyers, and I should go as well.”

“And if you should have difficulty returning?” protested Maryse. “How vexing this is, Portelance, when you and I are so happy! How could you think that your absence wouldn’t affect me? Don’t you know that every day I spend without you causes me to suffer? And Justine, who adores you as though you were her guardian angel, have you even considered her?”

“I’d assumed that you and Justine would go with me,” said Portelance, surprised.

“Go with you? But what would Justine and I do there, with your wife and son? Claude knows about me, but what about your sisters in Cuba, and their children, Justine’s cousins? We would not be welcome, Portelance. We’d be undesirable presences, illegitimate. No, no,” Maryse said emphatically. “This is something that concerns you alone. As for me, I do not need you to include me in your will. I was poor when I met you and so I shall be again, if I survive you. By God’s grace, I can make a living from my profession. Honestly, I don’t see any reason for the trip,” she reproached him. “What are you going to say there that you couldn’t put in a letter?”

“Maryse, listen to me. I have a son there, I have a brother whom I love and who could die at any moment. It’s been years since I’ve seen them. And anyway, even if you want nothing from me, there is Justine to consider. Don’t you see that, by law, she should have every right as my son Jean-Charles?”

“Do what you think best, Portelance. Let’s not speak of this further. Justine and I will stay here.”

“Maryse, please,” he said, hurt. “Don’t you see that I’m doing all of this for your well-being, and hers?”

“Enough, Portelance. It’s fine. End of discussion. I am aware of your reasons,” and, softening her voice, she added: “Don’t worry. I’ll be happy here. I have my theater, my lessons and recitals, my new friends. I have things to do here. And I’ll be well entertained. Ma Kumina, an ex-slave, is teaching me the basics of voodoo. I have a million things to do, my love.”

That night they talked at length. Portelance realized, for the first time, how important marriage was to Maryse—something that, to him, was a mere juridical formality—and he promised to speak with Madame Portelance about the possibility of a divorce under French law. As for the issue of the constitutional project, he would let Louverture know that this trip was imperative. In three or four months, he’d be back.

After putting his papers in order and contracting with an agent of a North American enterprise for the sale of his coffee harvest, Portelance left for Philadelphia on the same boat that had brought the letter from his brother. He did not fear for Maryse and Justine’s safety. Not a corner of the island was outside of Louverture’s firm control. In addition, France was at war and Bonaparte would find himself, at least for the time being, too busy to think about Saint-Domingue.

As the ship disappeared into the horizon, Maryse felt a sudden chill. A bolt of lightning, silent and blinding, caused her to close her eyes and a gust of humid air struck her in the face. Once she’d recovered, she opened her eyes and looked around: the palm trees along the quay were still and the people who’d gone to say goodbye to the travelers were leaving the dock, talking easily amongst themselves. Then she suspected that the vision had been meant for her alone, and she had a premonition that she would never see Portelance again. Biting her lips so that Justine would not see them trembling, she began walking hurriedly in the direction of the church.

Eight days later, the ship carrying Portelance would sink, with all hands and passengers, in the middle of a furious winter storm.