8

AFTER LIVING WITH THE TROUPE for a few months I had learned that there was no such thing as a perfect performance. As those who work in theaters and circuses, and even street-performers, well know, it doesn’t matter how many times the troupe rehearses an opera or a play or a symphony or an acrobatic act, mistakes always occur. Of course, most mistakes go unnoticed by the audience—an entrance a bit late, or early, a forgotten line, a note slightly off key, an unplanned movement, an accidental stumble, and so on. In reality, only those who know the work inside and out ever take note of these imperfections. This is why, on that Saturday, the night of our debut in Kassel, I was probably the only spectator who noticed the secret struggle the Pinelli brothers were waging with their act.

“My back’s hurting a bit,” Rocco Pinelli had said to me that morning in passing, not making much of it, and clearly assuming he’d be fine in no time.

“Take care of yourself, Rocco. Without your back, the Tower of Pisa would come down,” I’d replied, alluding to a number in which the stalwart Italian held up his three brothers, each one standing on the shoulders of the other, forming first an upright tower, then leaning, inch by inch, in a gravity-defying imitation of the famous monument. It was a very popular number that, after eight years of work, generally came off cleanly and elegantly. But that night there was a pinch of pain in Rocco’s smile and his legs trembled more than usual. Having held the lean for a few seconds, the brothers jumped down one by one and, instead of moving on to the next number, in which they reconstructed the tower with acrobatic leaps off the trampoline, they began to perform somersaults around the stage while Rocco, his face waxen, disappeared into the wings, the audience unaware that anything was amiss.

“Poor Rocco,” I said to Robledo, applauding as the jugglers took the stage, “I doubt he’ll be able to work tomorrow.” I told him how much pain Rocco must have endured.

“I carry a truly extraordinary Chinese unguent with me everywhere I go,” said Robledo, patting the pockets of his black frock coat. “It takes away any type of pain, from headaches to muscle cramps. You’ll see how quickly he’ll be good as new.”

The jugglers’ act and Kosti and Pythagoras’ mathematical number went off beautifully. The out-of-tune blare of French horns announced “The Pursuit of the Unicorn,” and I watched with satisfaction as Andrea and Vincenzo—Robledo had been correct, his cross-eyes had found me and didn’t stop staring at me, in their unique way—shone as never before; Columbine, not to be outdone, exaggerated her comical leaps and facial expressions, and was immediately imitated by Pantalone and Punchinello. I looked up at the royal box and saw that King Jérôme and his august wife, Catalina de Württemberg, were both at great pains not to burst out laughing. I was pleased to see that they were enjoying themselves; as Maryse had said, a recommendation from Jérôme Bonaparte would open the doors to the theaters of France and—who knew?—maybe even to a circus on the Rue de Templar. What would they be like, Notre Dame, Les Tuileries, the Louvre, Les Invalides, the University, the Seine, all of those buildings, plazas, gardens, and streets that Maryse had told me about with such genuine nostalgia? I imagined Uncle Charles’ surprise upon receiving my note, inviting him to our first performance. Where would it be, in what circus, in what theater? Would we have our equestrians by then? And now the rotund Frau Müller and her dogs were taking the stage, the latter decked out in tiny knickers, jackets, tutus, and wigs, and the orchestra, the grand Kassel orchestra that had joined forces with our own musicians for the performance, had begun to play the customary minuet while Frau Müller raised and lowered her ridiculous little boxwood baton, giving terse instructions to her disciples, when all of a sudden I realized that the act was going to end badly: Tom, the English Terrier who was the lead dog, could barely stand upright on his hind legs and kept falling down on all fours, creating great confusion among the rest of the dancing canines and setting off a murmur of disapproval from the audience. The act’s finale was catastrophic: Tom’s leap through the ring of fire fell short and, when his head clipped the bottom of the ring, it knocked it off its stand and sent it rolling toward the curtain at the same moment that the dog dropped like a stone, one of its hind legs jerking spasmodically. Suddenly, a terrible scream issued from the front rows. A burst of flame leapt up from the bottom of the curtain, began to climb, and threatened to catch the entire theater on fire. Fortunately, Andrea, who had been watching the act from the wings, pulled off his Harlequin cloak and managed to stifle the flames with passes of his cape, matador-like, with no consequence other than a blackish cloud of smoke and the stench of burned cloth. Everything happened so quickly that no one even had time to leave their seats. King Jérôme got to his feet and began to applaud Andrea’s efforts, a gesture instantly imitated by everyone present. Frau Müller took advantage of the moment to scoop Tom’s lifeless body from the floor and, cradling him tenderly in her arms, she ran offstage, between the charred curtains, sobbing. We learned later that the loyal animal must have died mid-leap.

Suddenly, the musicians launched into a tarantella, and the five French tightrope walkers popped up merrily from the box seats on either side of the stage. Tied to the boxes were two parallel wires, like subtle bridges, suspended about fifteen feet above the orchestra pit. The accident happened almost immediately, when Michou, after successfully undressing atop one of the wires, tossed her corset to Nicole, who was standing on one foot on the other wire with a parasol in her hand.

“The stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” Michou would say half an hour later, still in her underclothes in the ladies’ dressing room, while Robledo smeared her swollen ankle with his Chinese pomade. “I was a bit nervous what with the fire and Tom’s death,” she added.

“It’s probably just bad luck,” Maryse said, putting on her make-up in front of the mirror. “Every time I play the part of Eurydice something bad happens. I’m cutting Orpheus out of our repertoire.”

And the truth is, it had been the most unlikely of accidents. If anyone had been in danger of losing her balance and falling off the wire it had been Nicole, who had to catch in one hand, and even with toe of her shoe, the articles of clothing that Michou was tossing at her.

“It’s not for nothing that the first thing one learns in our profession is how to fall like a cat, always on our feet,” said Nicole. In any case, the only irreparable loss was sustained by the Kassel orchestra’s first chair violinist, upon whose instrument Michou had fallen, smashing it against the musician’s shoulder. As for the rest of the show, order appeared to have been restored in the theater and we soon heard the applause and standing ovations that always crowned Piet, Andrea, and Claudette’s act.

After Maryse shooed us out of the dressing room, Robledo and I took advantage of the intermission to drink a glass of champagne. I was curious to know if he would be willing to let go of his plantation and I didn’t beat about the bush.

“If you hope to marry Maryse, you should know that she will never consent to live off the fruits of slave labor,” I said point-blank.

“Yes, that does appear to be the case,” he said, not paying much attention to my words, trying to distance himself from them as though he were tired of shuffling them around in his mind. I watched him take a silver owl from his pocket, unscrew its head, and pour a generous part of its golden contents into his cup. The sweet and stimulating aroma of rum wafted to my nose.

“I’ve christened this mixture Ron Elegante. I recommend it quite highly,” he said, extending his arm. “Two parts rum, one part champagne. The bubbles complement the rum rather well; they lend it a certain elegance, a certain distinction. On the other hand, the rum gives the champagne a bit of vigor; it gives it weight and a slight edge; it transforms it from a fencing foil to a cavalry saber. Wouldn’t you like to try it?”

His remarks reminded me of the way the Hussars had of talking and, for a moment, I felt as though I were back in Munich with Robert and his friends. But no, the Criollo was not bewitched by death. Quite the contrary. His charm emanated from a terrestrial, equatorial energy, linked to the lush forests and enormous waterfalls depicted in artistic renderings of the New World.

“No, thank you,” I replied, rejecting his offer. “It’s not that I don’t like rum, but I prefer to drink it straight, like cognac. I never would have thought that sugarcane could render a liqueur of such high quality.”

“It can also be mixed with tea or coffee, although in Cuba almost no one drinks tea. Oh, if you only knew how much I miss Cuban coffee! Thick and strong . . . rum complements it quite well. Not a lot, let’s say half and half, although for you I’d recommend one part rum and two parts coffee. Give it a try tomorrow, before breakfast.”

“Very well, I shall,” I smiled. “Do you make rum on your plantation?”

“Some. Rum that’s been aged only a year—we call it aguardiente. You wouldn’t like it. It’s too strong and harsh on the palate. The rum you’ve tried, the same as I have here, has been aged six years. It’s not Cuban rum, it’s from the British Antilles and was made in the English way. But soon we’ll be producing a similar rum ourselves. It’s the wood, and time to age, that gives it its flavor. White cedar, not found in Cuba. We’ll have to import it from England or the United States.”

“I’ve heard that there are many plantations on the outskirts of Havana,” I said, trying to steer the conversation back to the topic of slavery.

“Yes, when the wind comes out of the south, which is where most of the sugar mills have been built, some people say that the air smells like molasses. And it will be getting more fragrant by the day,” said Robledo, enthusiastically. “The mills are multiplying like chickens. If you could only see it! The valleys are full of plantations and smoking chimneys. It’s a sight to behold, I assure you. Thanks to sugar, my island will grow to be as rich as England; it will be the Albion of the Americas, as my friend Arango likes to say. We already have different varieties of cane from Tahiti and China that are quite productive, and soon the milling machinery will be powered in a new way, by steam. That’s why I’m going to England. We’ll double our sugar production in no time.”

“I suppose you’ll need more slaves then. Poor Maryse, it seems she’s destined to remain single,” I said, feigning a little smile, and immediately, I regretted having spoken in such poor taste.

“Not necessarily,” said Robledo, turning serious. “I think that, in the future, there will be no more importing of Africans. We’ll bring in white workers. Catholics, Irish, Sicilians, Canarians. Slavery will gradually disappear.”

“How far in the future?” I asked him in Spanish, so that my words would carry more weight.

“Well, in the future. . . . I didn’t know that you spoke my language,” he said, surprised.

“How many years, ten, twenty, thirty?” I continued in Spanish.

“For the love of God, Henriette, stop nagging me!” he exclaimed, waving his hand as though surrounded by wasps. “I love Maryse, if that’s what you want to know. I’ve loved her since I first saw her that night in the game room in Baden-Baden. I’d give up the last hair on my head to have her always by my side. But the price she puts on her love is very high. Very high, Henriette,” he repeated, soberly. “Without slaves there is no sugar, and without sugar there is no Cuba. At least that is the current situation. You must believe me when I say this.”

“I do believe you, Robledo. I understand.” And, remembering his words in Baden-Baden, I added: “What is meant to be, will be.”

As Robledo led me through the crowd to our box, I thought it was very unlikely that a man of his age would throw not only his fortune at a woman’s feet, but also the powerful conviction he held about sugar, a conviction that had the flavor of religious zeal to it, a Word that he was compelled to follow.

The curtain went up and Harlequin, Pierrot, and Columbine appeared on stage, each engaged in a different activity: Harlequin pretended to fly a kite while Columbine picnicked upon a blanket and Pierrot, seated on a basket, read the newspaper at high-speed, keeping his painted white face still and moving the paper comically from right to left. It was an excellent pantomime, quite elaborate, in which a pretend storm would blow up and Pierrot, after losing his newspaper to the wind, would find Harlequin foisting the string to his kite upon him. He’d be hoisted into the air by the kite, while down below, Harlequin and Columbine would be rolling amorously about in the blanket. I don’t know if it was because I was already on the alert, but from the very beginning of the act it seemed to me that Vincenzo’s white face was fixated on me rather than on the newspaper. I truly began to worry when the clown, while moving the paper from one side to the other, also began, little by little, to stick out his tongue, an incredibly long and red-tinted tongue, something he’d never done before and which, despite my disgust, the audience appeared to accept in good humor. The orchestra began the song that accompanied the imaginary storm, the notes ascending in a long chromatic phrase, the kettle drums resounding like thunder while Punchinello, hidden in the wings, pulled the line attached to the newspaper, yanking out it of Pierrot’s hands. Andrea, swerving about the stage as though pulled along by the kite, at last reached Vincenzo and tried to hand him the kite string. Except that Vincenzo, instead of taking it, reached into the picnic basket and pulled out a parcel that appeared to contain a sausage; it was the phallus, the same thick and knobby phallus that he’d displayed for me in the guesthouse in Fulda. Holding it between his legs, Vincenzo showed it proudly to the audience and began to thrust his pelvis with vulgar abandon. Andrea, furious, lunged toward him, but it was too late: the stagehand had already given Punchinello the signal and Vincenzo, suspended by the harness he wore underneath his white smock, began to ascend, swinging back and forth in the air, all the while staring at me with the phallus clamped between his thighs and his tongue darting in and out of his mouth like a lascivious angel. I covered my face with both hands, feeling them tremble against my cheeks.

“I’m going to set that indecent scoundrel straight once and for all,” I heard Robledo say, between cries of outrage and the sound of chairs being knocked to the floor. The din seemed to go on forever. I don’t know if I was crying from rage or shame, for myself or for Maryse, her hopes shattered like a trampled mirror. When I finally decided to look around, all of the boxes were deserted and, below, in the main auditorium, amid toppled chairs and dozens of irate patrons, a squadron of gendarmes was leading Vincenzo away, his nose and mouth bloodied and his wayward eyes turned to me, a victorious smile on his parted lips. The stage was deserted except for Maryse and Robledo, motionless as statues, Maryse still wrapped in Eurydice’s funeral shroud, and Robledo holding her in a protective embrace.

Upon hearing the news of Leclerc’s landing in l’Acul and seeing for himself the multiple Ships-of-the-Line jockeying for position to enter the bay at Cap-Français, Christophe decided to evacuate its residents and set the city ablaze. At dawn, while his soldiers coursed through the streets, banging on doors with their rifle butts and shouting the order to evacuate, he felt certain that the city would soon be deserted. The men were led in an orderly fashion to the Plaine du Nord, where they were to set up camp in the hopes of obstructing Leclerc’s enclosing march and, in doing so, buy a few additional hours for Christophe’s troops to make their retreat over the mountains. The women, escorted by a select detachment of mounted Dragoons, were herded to the nearest mountaintop, the place where Christophe had deemed they would be in the least danger. By nine in the morning, he was perplexed to see the streets still teeming with carriages and people fleeing on horseback and on foot despite his carefully laid out plan. The stragglers were mainly affluent whites and mulattos who had found it difficult to decide which of their belongings should be saved from the flames. Like lines of ants transporting precious grains of sugar, they carried with them all manner of trunks, baskets, and bundles, and even the odd piece of furniture invested with practical or sentimental value. Perhaps with the aim of speeding along the evacuation—he wanted desperately to find Louverture so they could begin to organize their resistance campaign—Christophe gave the order to set Cap-Français ablaze, and he himself set a torch to his own house. A strong breeze caused the flames to jump from rooftop to rooftop, and from yard to yard, spreading the fire with devastating speed, escalating the terror of those who had not yet escaped.

Maryse and Justine, their arms locked together, found themselves suddenly separated from their servants and belongings, and there was nothing they could do but allow themselves to be swept along by the terrified tide of women, pushed toward the hills that served as the city’s natural rampart. Here and there, amid the sounds of barking dogs and whinnying horses, came the cries of mothers, daughters, sisters and friends calling out to one another in desperation. Almost without realizing it, Maryse left the Place Montarcher behind and, as in a murky dream, crossed the Rue Espagnole and the cemetery. She would, nevertheless, remember with perfect clarity the brilliance of the sun reflecting off the golden epaulets of three Dragoons—one of whom was her worst acting student—who, like dark angels signaling some biblical expulsion, pointed, with military rigidity and flashing swords, in the direction of the mountain top. She would remember the difficult climb through the bushes and scrub brush and, most especially, the court clerk Monsieur Dinard’s daughter’s hopeless wave as they passed alongside each other, the clerk using his straw hat to fan his wife’s purple, bloated face. She would remember stopping to rest against an acacia, and leaning, short of breath, against its slanting trunk as Justine kept climbing, telling her mother as she passed: “Let’s go higher, mama. We’ll be able to see the fire better from the top.” She would remember staying there, leaning against the acacia, with Justine’s green muslin dress disappearing into the foliage, and turning her gaze toward the city, now a pyre, dense smoke rising from the rooftops, from the Quay all the way to La Fosette, and looking at the women all around her, some crouched in the tenuous shade of a bush, others standing on the mountainside; dozens and dozens of women watching in silence as Cap-Français burned. Finally, she would remember asking herself how it was possible that the city in which she’d enjoyed and suffered so much, the city that had been enthusiastically reconstructed, street by street, Portelance’s city, Justine’s city, her city, could be disappearing into embers and ashes before her very eyes. And that would be her last memory of that sad day, for she wouldn’t recall the thunderous blast of gun powder, nor the avalanche of rocks unleashed by the explosion, nor Justine’s scream as she tumbled down the mountain to her death.

In the early morning, from my window in the hotel in Kassel, I saw Robledo bid farewell to Maryse. I assumed that the real goodbye had occurred in the room they had shared, since now Robledo merely kissed her hand and gestured affectionately with his hat before stepping into his coach. There were still two hours before the troupe meeting that Maryse and I, as directors of the Théâtre Nomade, had called in the hotel dining room. King Jérôme wanted nothing more to do with us and we needed to head toward Mannheim as quickly as possible so as not to lose the only job we still had for certain. Naturally, the most important topic of the meeting would be the reorganization of the company. Without Tom, Frau Müller’s act would be discarded; without Michou, whose dislocated ankle would prevent her from working for several weeks, the tightrope act had little to offer. And, of course, there was the matter of finding replacements for Vincenzo and Rocco; the former had been jailed and the latter had thrown out a vertebra and planned to return home to his village until he’d recovered. But these were only the problems that Maryse and I were aware of, and there were sure to be others. To start with, something strange had happened among the troupe since Saturday night’s disastrous performance, something that not even Maryse could explain. It was as though some spell had bewitched every one of the performers, turning them reserved and taciturn. Even Andrea and Piet, who’d always been so flirtatious, avoided my attentions, withdrawing into some dark corner of their personalities to which I was not granted access. Someone knocked at my door. It was Kosti. It was enough to see him in the long gray frock coat and yellowing wig that he always wore during his act for me to understand that he had something very important to tell me.

“I have come, Madame Renaud, to smooth some rough edges,” he said in a cryptic whisper, without even bidding me good morning, and before I had even finished asking him in.

“Sit down, Herr Kraft, sit down,” I said, indicating a chair.

“Thank you, madame. Ehem . . . well . . . as I was saying . . . to smooth some rough edges.”

“What rough edges would those be, Herr Kraft? You and I have always understood one another. I can’t think of anything that has tested our friendship,” I said, surprised.

“I mean to say, future rough edges. Things that I’ll say at the meeting that might upset you. You and Madame Polidor. I’ll speak with her as well, of course,” he said, taking out his watch and bringing it near to his glasses. His pale eyes seemed larger than ever. “The truth is that I went to her room first, but she was still asleep. When I’ve finished speaking to you, I’ll try her again. I wish to remain in her good graces. Madame Polidor is an admirable woman . . . and generous. What a fine spirit she has! An exceptional woman. And you as well. This is why I have come. In truth, you and I have never spoken much.”

“What is it, Herr Kraft?” I said, in order to put an end to his detours. “Allow me to remind you that we don’t have all morning to talk.”

“Yes, yes. You are quite right. I understand. And in any case, we should have breakfast before the meeting. Isn’t that so? Well then, I’ve come to tell you that I’m leaving the company. There. That’s it,” he said abruptly. “I’m leaving the company,” he repeated, looking down at his shoes.

I didn’t know what to say. I felt betrayed and Kosti, whose loyalty to Maryse and the company had never been in doubt, was the last person I’d have expected to be the cause.

“But you know that your act is a pillar of our show,” I protested. “And what’s more, you’d be leaving us at the very moment we need you most. I don’t know if you’re aware that Rocco is also leaving us, although, in his case, involuntarily,” I hastened to add. “And that Michou. . . .”

“Yes, I know, madame,” he interrupted. “I’m aware of all the problems. That’s why I’m sorry to tell you that the mimes are also leaving the company. They plan to remain in Kassel. You see,” he added, upon seeing my surprise, “theirs is a very unusual situation. Perhaps you don’t know this, but Vincenzo is their father and they’ve decided to stay here until he’s completed his three-month sentence.”

“You’re telling me that Vincenzo is the Venetians’ father? Impossible! If that were true, Madame Polidor would have known.”

“It is true.”

“But what reason could they possibly have had for hiding something of so little consequence?” The truth was, I was asking myself why Andrea had not confided in me something that others already knew.

“You are not familiar with the customs of saltimbanquis. For example, acrobats and jugglers must always pretend that they are members of the same family. But in the case of mimes and clowns, at least those who follow in the tradition of the commedia dell’arte, it’s just the opposite. Even if they are family they must appear in the program with different last names. I know this little trick must seem childish, but what can one do? It’s what the public expects. The Pinelli Brothers, for example, are not really brothers. One of them is Greek and the rest of them weren’t even born in the same part of Italy.”

“Who else is leaving us?” I asked, exasperated.

“I think my great rival, Doctor Faustus Nefastus, is also considering desertion.”

“Piet Vaalser? But what are you saying, Herr Kraft! Who told you that?”

“It came straight from his own mouth, madame. He might not leave today, but he will soon enough. He has other plans. He wants to start his own circus. A new kind of circus that he saw in Rotterdam. Not a grand circus like those in Paris and London, that have their own buildings, but a more modest and portable circus that the spectators watch standing up. The idea seems to have come from a group of sailors. It has to do with a system of poles, ropes, and canvas that can be easily taken on the road. The pieces of canvas are cut and sewn together so that they form a giant round piece with a hole in the center that allows it to be raised around a ship’s mast. I think it’s an ingenious and economical system, since you wouldn’t have to pay for the use of theaters.”

“Madame Polidor would never approve of such a thing,” I said, thinking aloud. “She’d never abandon the stage or the great amphitheater of a true circus.”

“I agree. Madame Polidor comes out of the grand tradition of French opera, certainly admirable. But Doctor Faustus Nefastus, just like the Pinelli Brothers and the Venetian Mimes, comes from the street.”

“But you, Herr Kraft, you’re also abandoning us!” I exclaimed, both angry and hurt. His defection seemed unforgivable to me, though less so than Andrea and Piet’s secretiveness. “Tell me your reasons. Are you planning to join up with Piet Vaalser and his miserable canvas? Now I understand! The ship’s sinking and you don’t want to go down with it. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that why you’re leaving?” I said brusquely.

“No, madame. In my case it’s the law of numbers, the law of probabilities.”

“Oh, so you’re leaving us to go back to the roulette tables in Baden-Baden,” I reproached him. “What disloyalty! You should have just stayed there.”

“No, no. I’m not going back to Baden-Baden, at least not right away. The truth is, seeing as we’re so close to Prussia, I’m thinking of going to Berlin, to my city. You’ll see. I’ll explain myself,” he said, standing up. “Allow me to stay like this. I express myself better standing up. I’m going to ask you a few questions and you’ll answer them.”

“Thank you for putting me on equal footing with your horse,” I said sarcastically. “But go right ahead, don’t mind me.”

“Very well.” Kosti cleared his throat. “Would you agree with me that, until last Saturday, the company had been enjoying a long string of successes?” he asked.

“Agreed.”

“Quite so, madame.” He removed a carefully folded piece of paper from his pocket, opened it, and showed me some lines sketched in ink. “Look here. It’s a graph of our earnings. Look at the ascending line. You see it? All right then,” he said, putting the paper away. “Now I’ll ask you another question. Can you think of anyone who got sick or had an accident before coming to Kassel, including Frau Müller’s dogs, Pythagoras and the pack animals?”

“No . . . no one.”

“No one. Isn’t that right, madame? We have all enjoyed excellent health until last Saturday. And what happened on that night? Tom dies mid-leap, Michou falls inexplicably and Rocco throws out his back. All true, correct? And now, the final question. You’ll forgive my impertinence, but it’s necessary to the demonstration of my theorem. My question has to do with love and I’ll begin by telling you that Frau Müller and I, ehem. . . . How shall I put it? We’ve been romantically involved for several weeks.”

I couldn’t help but smile, despite my irritation. Kosti and Frau Müller, in love!

“Congratulations. But if this has something to do with your plan to leave us, I’ll tell you that neither Madame Polidor nor I had any intention of asking Frau Müller to go. It’s true that Tom’s death creates a problem, but we have full confidence that Frau Müller could train a substitute.”

“No, no, madame, the situation with Frau Müller has nothing to do with it,” Kosti said briskly. “I’ve already told you. It’s the law of probabilities. Love.”

“Love? What does love have to do with the law of probabilities?” I asked, annoyed that our conversation seemed to be going nowhere. “Herr Kraft, we’ve been talking for quite a while and I must remind you that you still need to see Madame Polidor before the meeting.”

“I’m almost finished, madame. I’ll answer my own questions. You will concur that Eros has visited us recently. Am I right? Frau Müller and me. Don Julián Robledo and . . . ehem. . . . And then, Harlequin . . . Doctor Faustus Nefastus . . . You, if you’ll permit me. Even the unfortunate Pierrot, come to think of it.”

“None of that concerns you,” I said, insulted. What right did that charlatan have to meddle in my private life, and in Maryse’s? “Please leave my room. Get out, I said!”

“I’m going, madame, this very minute. But first, listen to what I have to say: one cannot have success, money, health, and love for all one’s life. Happiness is also subject to the law of probabilities. The good times are balanced out by the bad. What happened on Saturday was nothing more than the beginning of an unlucky streak for anyone and anything related to the Théâtre Nomade. Success and health, which we had taken for granted, have already begun to fail; soon we’ll find ourselves without money and, what is perhaps worse, without love. Notice that the gentleman from Havana has just left. It’s a sign. Oh, how I wish this weren’t the case!” he sighed. “But think about what I’ve told you. Mathematics is never wrong. It’s true that the saltimbanquis know nothing of numbers but, given that their very lives depend on chance, they know instinctively when the winds of fortune have stopped blowing and the winds of woe have begun. If they are constantly moving from one place to another, it’s to escape bad luck. And now, that time has come,” he concluded resolutely and, bowing his head in a gesture of farewell, he opened the door and left me, my mouth hanging open in bewilderment. Bewilderment? No, it would be more accurate to say disillusionment. But even disillusionment seems too weak a word. Two metaphors come to mind: A little girl goes out to play on the beach and spends hours constructing a tall monastery out of damp sand, complete with spiral staircase, cloisters, stairways, vaulted arches, bell-tower and steeple; or maybe she takes a deck of cards and begins to build a walled city, something like a majestic network of hollowed stones, with moats, rampart, bulwark, towers and drawbridge; a giant and unexpected wave comes and submerges the monastery, leaving nothing but a bubbling mound of sand in its wake; grandmother opens the kitchen window and lets in a gust of wind, really nothing more than an evening breeze or gentle zephyr that, though it but curls subtly about the kitchen, bursts into the dining room with devastating force, leaving a heap of motley rubble on the table.

It may be said that my metaphors are ridiculous, if not in outright poor literary taste, but after Kosti’s visit I felt like both of those little girls.

By noon, after the meeting, all that remained of the Théâtre Nomade were the ruins left behind by the waves and winds of chance in the ill-fated city of Kassel.

In the days that followed the destruction of Cap-Français, multitudes of grief-stricken survivors could be seen wandering among the blackened ruins. Only the stone houses had survived the fire, although their roofs, floors, and furniture had burned like coals in a furnace. All of the important buildings—the Government House, the cathedral, the hospitals, the arsenal, the courthouse, the warehouses along the harbor—had been rendered useless, and the military engineers had to construct a provisional palace for the Leclerc family, as the general was traveling with his wife Pauline and their son Dermide. With nowhere else to go, the evacuated residents had returned to what remained of their homes. At night, they slept beneath the meager shelter of strung-up rags; during the day, or at least during the part of the day when the heat wasn’t too oppressive, they combed the streets looking for vanished relatives, or labored to remove the charred remains of their homes, looking for anything of value. Everything was scarce in Cap-Français: water, food, sheets, clothing, medicine. The only things in abundance were misery and pain.

Refusing to accept that Justine was dead until she actually saw the girl’s body, Maryse had given all of the gold she had to a sapper corporal and four of his men to use their tools to remove the mounds of earth, rocks, and vegetation that the avalanche had deposited at the foot of the mountain. When they found her remains, Maryse had the men carry Justine’s body to the highest spot in the cemetery, where she buried her. She spent the night by her daughter’s grave, crying and reflecting. At daybreak, seeing the sun rise to her right like a radiant eye impervious to any and all calamity, she felt terribly alone, like the victim of a shipwreck whose raft drifts aimlessly between empty horizons with nothing to offer. She missed Portelance more than ever. She ached to have him by her side, to hear his voice, his words of solace. Portelance would know what to do, how to go on living without Justine. But, above all, Portelance would share in that indescribable rending of the spirit she felt in the face of her loss. Was it really worthwhile to go on living, to drag her life along those streets of solitude and heartbreak?

When she arrived at the smoking walls of her house, she found Claudette in what had been the garden, sitting on a bundle of clothing and clutching a heavy silver ladle in her hand.

“I’ve come to beg your charity, madame,” said the girl, standing up and handing Maryse the ladle as though it were a flower. “My father has fled. The house has fallen down and I don’t have anyone I can trust,” she added, so ashamed of her helplessness that she scarcely raised her head.

“Your house is here,” replied Maryse, moved. “Or, I should say, what’s left of it.” And she was surprised to learn that she was still capable of smiling.

After just a few days, spurred by the necessity of supporting one another amid such profound scarcity, Maryse and Claudette’s destinies had already become irrevocably intertwined.

Though Maryse had known Claudette for more than two years, they had never been particularly close. It wasn’t that Maryse hadn’t tried to gain her friendship, but Claudette, despite what one might think upon seeing her dance so provocatively, her undulating body scantily wrapped in tulle, was extremely shy and reserved off-stage. The other members of Maryse’s artists’ group, generally an extroverted lot, were always surprised that Claudette never joined their dinners, teas, parties, or any social gathering for that matter, nor would she accept flowers or sweets from her many admirers. If one of these dared to come to call at her house, the mute maidservant who always accompanied her would open the door and show them a piece of cardboard that read: “Mademoiselle Despaigne is busy.” On one occasion, during those moments of rest that break up the monotony of rehearsals, Maryse had surprised her at the window in the back of the theater, leaning her elbows on the windowsill and intently watching the brood of hens that the doorman kept in a pen in the yard. “Do you like chickens?” Maryse had asked her, simply to initiate a conversation. “I hate them, madame,” she’d replied, and had immediately withdrawn from the window, excusing herself to go drink a glass of fresh lemonade. This brief encounter set Maryse to thinking. The harsh frankness with which Claudette had responded to her question seemed strange to her, since her timidity usually prevented her from making definitive statements on any topic, even the most trivial. Maryse decided that Claudette was more complicated than she had originally suspected but, as always, she had “a million things to do,” a phrase she repeated often, and she stopped thinking about the dancer in order to attend to other matters.

The truth was Claudette had good reasons to behave the way she did, reasons that Maryse would only learn after taking her in after the fire: The girl had been raped by her own father since she was six years old. The only son of a colonel from the Northern Province, Achille Despaigne had had the good fortune to inherit La Gloire, a magnificent sugar plantation near Morne Rouge that he had happily spent the better part of his life running. In the days before the Revolution, when coffee, sugar, and slavery had turned Saint-Domingue into the jewel in the Crown, he would only be seen in Cap-Français on the days slave auctions were held, since he never entrusted the purchase of this particular merchandise to any of his employees. On these occasions it was common for some planter from Limbé or Limonade to ask his advice; it was widely accepted that, when it came to newly arrived slaves, no one knew more than Achille Despaigne. And in truth, this was not an unfounded assumption in the least. Since the afternoon on which his father had locked him in the coal-shed with two Fula slave-women, what had been mere adolescent curiosity toward the Africans became a true obsession. From that day forward, Despaigne would observe his slaves’ lives with the passion of the most dedicated naturalist. So much so, that his decision to live at La Gloire and take direct charge of the thousands of tasks required on a plantation of that size, was, in large part, dictated by the opportunity it would provide him to follow, up close, the lives of his three hundred and twenty slaves—men and women, old folks and children. In possession of a grade-school education, courtesy of the private tutor and vast technical library his father had brought over from Paris, Despaigne had continued his education on his own. Methodical by nature, he set about reading, one after the other in order of publication, all the books that had anything to do with sugar and slavery, from the entertaining volumes of the Nouveau voyage aux isles de l’Amérique, to the Marquis de Cassaux’s brief study in which he describes his conversation with the inventor of a steam engine capable of powering sugar mills. But La Gloire’s remarkable productivity, its incredible yield per hectare, was not due entirely to Despaigne’s expertise, but rather to that of a certain Lacouture whom Despaigne had employed for many years to put his innovative ideas into practice. With everything on the technical side taken care of, Despaigne moved into a more advanced stage in his study of the slave. The first thing he did was begin a journal for each and every one of them in which he noted, as a sort of title, each slave’s name, purchase price, African country of origin, sex, probable birth date, shade of skin color, height and weight, and any unusual detail found on their body. These headings were followed by daily entries that made note of the quantity and quality of work completed, errors committed, punishments, sexual conduct, superstitious practices, moods, illnesses, remedies administered, death, if it came to that, and any other interesting pieces of information that he and his surveillants might observe. At the end of the year his accountant would aggregate the entries and transfer them to master books that Despaigne would then painstakingly analyze. His mania reached the point that he considered constructing a circular tower, something like a lighthouse, from which he would be able to keep watch over the movements of his slaves with the aid of a maritime telescope. Five years after the start of his research, Despaigne could tell at a glance if a new arrival was Ibo, Mandinga, Zape, Fula, Congolese, Mina or Angolan and so on, as well as each one’s age, aptitudes and defects, filling in any gaps in the lists the slave traders typically kept. He was not always correct, of course, but his opinion carried far and away the most weight of all of the planters. Two years later, at which point he could call by name every one of the children whose job it was to collect the cane that fell from the wagons, he initiated a general redistribution of La Gloire’s entire workforce, moving each person into the post to which he or she was best suited. In this way, washerwomen and cooks who were given to talk too much were moved into the fields to cut cane, or field hands who demonstrated a capacity for concentration were sent to work in the sugar mills or at the sugar kettles. Around this time he also fired the chaplain, who’d always been an annoyance, and turned the little chapel into a bodega stocked with handkerchiefs, beads, trinkets, jerked beef, salted cod, bacon, paper cones of muscovado sugar, and other trifles that his slaves could purchase with little wooden tokens carved with Despaigne’s initials, tiny prizes he used to encourage those who had worked hardest during the week. At the same time, he eliminated punishment. He simply sold any slave who didn’t obey. Let others whip his back to shreds without taking into account that after dragging him half-dead to the infirmary, he’d spend entire weeks there, unable to work. Also, by way of incentive, he brought in materials for drum making—mostly wood and goat hides—since he’d confirmed that a slave was more productive when allowed to dance from time to time. If some grand blanc from the Northern Province had happened to visit La Gloire on the magical date of solstice or equinox, he would have thought that Despaigne had gone mad: they would have found him with a cane and a bicorn hat worn at a rakish angle, proudly presiding over a ritual performance of an ancestral Yambala dance accompanied by Rada drums. On a holiday, such as Despaigne’s or the King’s birthday, he could be found distributing half a liter of rum per head and applauding the dancers as they performed the “handkerchief calenda” or pounded out the daring drumbeats of the mandoucouman. Very secretly, with no explanation whatsoever to the foreman, he began a campaign to better the bloodline of “his people.” He selected the tallest and most strapping of the men, whom he called his grenadiers, to impregnate the women with the broadest hips. He gave preferential treatment to the resulting progeny, from better diets to obligatory attendance at a type of gymnasium where, while they developed their muscles, they were also taught to speak correct basic French, without irregular verbs or the past perfect or the subjunctive, and how to carry themselves with respect, decency, and an economy of movement. He called them his “children,” although he didn’t give them his name. And so, by the time he turned fifty, the world of La Gloire was ordered precisely to his liking, and Despaigne decided that it was time to settle down and live with only one woman. It never crossed his mind to marry the daughter or sister of another planter, as had been the custom of the first clans to dominate Saint-Domingue. In the first place, Despaigne had never been interested in white women, whom he dismissed as lazy, vain, and meddlesome. On top of this, he’d never had confidence in the institution of marriage—French law had not yet established the practice of divorce—and in any event, he had no need for a dowry, given that his income from La Gloire was more than he would ever need. “Has the Creator ever made a better Paradise or Heaven?’ he would ask himself. After pouring over the journals and master books he decided to take home a dignified, well-groomed mulatta named Mercedes, an excellent cook he’d acquired from the Spanish part of the island. Very soon she would give birth to a honey-colored little girl whom he would name Claudette and inscribe as his legitimate daughter in the civil registry of Morne Rouge. It should be said that this type of union, while not approved of in Cap-Français, was quite common among the grand blancs of the interior. A less frequent, though not exceptional arrangement was when a planter, or “colonist,” as they were called in old Saint-Domingue, would sleep with both his favorite slave woman as well as any daughters he had with her. This was the custom Despaigne adopted as soon as Claudette grew taller than his hip. Of course, La Gloire had always been closed to any type of visitor, from the curious traveler, to the owner of the neighboring plantation. Suspecting that the unique form of governance that he employed in “his village” would be met with disapproval from the bishop or Captain General, he had ordered anyone caught trespassing the boundary lines of his realm to be escorted out with musket-shot. As might be imagined, he was fiercely criticized in Cap-Français: for most, he was an insufferable eccentric, while for others he was an anti-social element or a Voltairian philosophe or a disciple of Cagliostro or a vicious recluse. The truth was, no one knew for certain what went on in the mysterious limbo world of La Gloire. The surveillants who got loose-tongued in the taverns would tell such far-fetched tales of the goings-on there that almost no one took them seriously, thinking that Despaigne must surely be feeding them their lines, purely for the pleasure of shocking them. Around the time of the beginning of the Revolution, Mercedes’ body—though certainly not Claudette’s, which he’d began to abuse around this time—ceased to interest him. The same thing happened with respect to his responsibilities on the plantation. Perhaps because he couldn’t fathom how he could elevate La Gloire to a status higher than perfection, he began to feel bored by the monotony of his day-to-day obligations. His world became tedious, empty of purpose. It was not that he regretted the years of effort he’d put into studying the chaotic nature of the black race. Lying awake at night, he felt great pride in the fact that his patient watchfulness had turned his slaves into “a people,” with modest aspirations, to be sure, but who were nevertheless disciplined and hard-working and who, while preserving some of their primitive customs, were capable of keeping La Gloire functioning like a stopwatch perfectly synchronized with the sugar production calendar: harvest time, machinery repair time, cultivation time. And he had done this alone, without the help of ferocious dogs, pillories, or whips, or even priests with their promises of eternal happiness in the divine hereafter. Without a doubt, his had been a categorical triumph. Nevertheless, he felt his triumphs were behind him, like the celebrated labors of Hercules, and he had no further victories to look forward to. He very much wanted a son to carry on his lineage, but Mercedes had only given him Claudette. Had he been a different man he’d have brought half a dozen slave women into his bed, and surely one of them would have borne him a son. But he wasn’t a different man; he was Achille Despaigne, and such behavior would have violated the order that he had established with such high hopes in La Gloire, an order that began and ended with him. Of course, there was Claudette. After all, according to his reading of Genesis, humanity had been born of primogenial incest. Except that Claudette was still an unripe fruit. But wasn’t it better for her, and, in the final analysis, for everyone, to initiate her early into incest, for her to find it natural to be alongside her father, naked and erect? He tried, without success, to convince Mercedes of the logic behind his arguments. Saddened by having to take extreme measures, he went to see her in the kitchen and told her: “Either comply with me or I’ll sell you. Choose! I’ll have my way in either case.” Although it didn’t prove necessary to dispatch with Mercedes, the new situation wasn’t enough to alleviate his boredom. He scarcely paged through the journals and master books anymore, and ceased to supervise the work of his surveillantes. Since production did not decline, he assumed that the manager, accountant, sugar technician, and the rest of the salaried workers were continuing to run things in good order. This brought him a great sense of peace: he had given La Gloire an autonomous existence, his hand had set the gears and other mechanisms in motion and, like a grandfather clock, it now ran of its own accord. And so, it didn’t surprise him that, when the time came, only four of his slaves left to join Bouckman’s rebellion. One afternoon, bored, he tried to kill some time in his father’s technical library, which he hadn’t visited since he’d contracted the services of the masterful Lacouture who, incidentally, had become a famous author of treatises. Though he discovered that the humidity, mold, dust, and worms had finished off the books, he also found, jumbled and covered in a thick patina inside a mahogany chest, the silver spoons that his mother had once collected. As wonderstruck as a child by his discovery, his obsessive character drove him to pursue the spoon-collecting enterprise further. Now rescued from the chest and polished to a resplendent shine, he lined the spoons up on the shelves where the books had rotted away. It was not uncommon to find him there, past midnight, handling the spoons, classifying them by size, noting the names of their previous owners on little labels which he then tied with thin string about their slight waists. Soon he would come to own seven thousand spoons, almost all of them acquired from his agent in Brest. Many of the most recently arrived batch had belonged to émigré nobility, beheaded or simply impoverished; others had belonged to the bourgeoisie of the Third Estate who, gathered on that Tennis Court had set off, without realizing it, their bloody match with the monarchy; and still others had belonged to lawyers and doctors whose radical ideas had cost them their lives—as was the case, for example, with a heavy soup ladle that had once graced Marat’s table. It would not be an exaggeration to note that some of the caresses that Despaigne lavished upon his spoons were charged with sexual significance. Claudette had seen him nest together two charming teaspoons that had belonged to Marie Antoinette and Madame de Lamballe, respectively, and then force himself relentlessly upon her child’s body. In any case, thanks to the weekly sale of some of his spoons, Despaigne would have the means to survive when La Gloire was destroyed in a single night by his own slaves, among them a raging and vengeful Mercedes, before they went to join forces with Louverture. If Despaigne wasn’t hacked to death by a machete it was because, upon seeing unfamiliar signs of feathers and bloodied fetters hanging from certain trees at La Gloire, he suspected that something exceptional was about to occur. Without awaiting further confirmation, he took Claudette and left for Cap-Français with the intention of depositing all of his spoons in the fort and asking the garrison chief for a detachment of soldiers. Once there, however, despite his repeated pleas and threats, he was met only with the indifference of military bureaucracy. The following morning, when the news arrived in the city in the form of a dead surveillante who’d been lashed to a horse, Despaigne didn’t even try to go back to survey the damage. That very same day he rented a house in the city and contracted the services of a mute servant. And it was this very same land, those razed acres of La Gloire, that the lawyer Delacour would try to persuade Maryse to buy. This purchase, of course, would never come to pass, since, upon learning that the burning of Cap-Français was imminent, Despaigne filled four haversacks with the remainder of his prized collection, threw them into a wheelbarrow and headed for the docks where he intended to board the first ship bound for the United States—a journey he’d planned to undertake sooner or later, in any event. Untroubled at the thought of abandoning his daughter, whose apparent lack of fertility had proved greatly disappointing, he bought a lavishly expensive ticket aboard the schooner Charleston Belle that, already brimming with terrified passengers, was just about to weigh anchor. In the months before Maryse and Claudette would leave Cap-Français forever, no one heard a single word from or about Achille Despaigne, and no one showed the slightest interest in buying the land that had once been La Gloire.

One afternoon, when Maryse was trying to transform a nightshirt into a dress for Claudette, the girl suddenly revealed the reason behind her on-stage exhibitionism: if she had danced lasciviously on the sets of Salomé or The Caliph of Bagdad, or waggled her behind more than was strictly necessary while dancing the meringue or the calenda, it was because her father, who’d always been aroused at the sight of others desiring her, had required her to do so. “Although after doing it like that so often,” the girl added innocently, “at some point my body began to enjoy its own sensuality.” When Maryse asked why, even after she’d offered to help her, she had hidden Despaigne’s perversity from her, Claudette didn’t know how to explain herself clearly. She spoke of fear, of guilt, of weakness of character, of the poor opinion she held of herself, of the powerful force of habit. Finally, after a long hesitation, she replied shyly: “I think it’s because he was my father.”