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"I congratulate you. You have the good fortune not to be a planter. I do not like slavery, I assure you, and I like less living here, but someone must manage the colonies if you are to put sugar in your coffee and smoke a cigar. In France they avail themselves of our products, but no one wants to know how they are obtained. I prefer the honesty of the English and Americans, who approach slavery from a practical point of view," Valmorain concluded.
"In England and the United States there are also those who seriously question slavery, and who refuse to indulge in the products of the islands, especially sugar," Parmentier reminded him.
"They are an insignificant number, Doctor. And I have just read in a scientific journal that Negroes belong to a specimen different from ours."
"How does the author explain how the two different species can have offspring?" the physician asked.
"When you cross a horse with a donkey you get a mule, which is neither one nor the other. Mulattoes are born from the combination of white and black," said Valmorain.
"Mules ca
Irritated, Toulouse Valmorain turned his back and went to the house, and they did not see each other again till that night. Parmentier dressed for di
"Forgive my abruptness this morning, Doctor. I am afraid that in these solitudes I have lost the good habit of intellectual conversation. I did not mean to offend."
"You did not offend me, monsieur."
"You will not believe me, Doctor, but before coming here I admired Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau," Valmorain told him.
"And not now?"
"Now I must doubt the speculations of the humanists. Life on this island has hardened me, or let's say that it has made me more realistic. I ca
"Have you been there, mon ami?"
"No."
"I have. I spent two years in Africa, traveling from one side to the other," the physician said. "In Europe very little is known of that enormous and diverse territory. In Africa a complex civilization already existed when we Europeans were wearing skins and living in caves. I concede that the white race is superior in one aspect: we are more aggressive and greedy. That explains our power and the extent of our empires."
"Long before the Europeans arrived in Africa, the blacks were enslaving each other. They still do," said Valmorain.
"Just as whites are enslaving each other, monsieur," the physician countered. "Not all Negroes are slaves, nor all slaves black. Africa is a continent of free people. Millions of Africans are subjected to slavery but many more are free. Slavery is not their destiny, just as is also the case with thousands of whites who are slaves."
"I understand the repugnance you feel for slavery, Doctor," said Valmorain. "I, too, am attracted by the idea of replacing it with a different labor system, but I am afraid that in certain cases, like that of the plantations, there is no other. The world economy rests upon it, it ca
"Perhaps not overnight, but it could be done in some gradual form. In Saint-Domingue the opposite occurs, the number of slaves goes up every year. Can you imagine what will happen when they rebel?" asked Parmentier.
"You are a pessimist," his di
"How could I not be? I have been in Saint-Domingue a long time, monsieur, and to be frank, I have had enough of it. I have seen horrors. To go no further, only a short time ago I was at the Habitation Lacroix, where in the last two months several slaves have killed themselves. Two leaped into a cauldron of boiling molasses-how desperate they must have been."
"There is nothing keeping you here, Doctor. With your royal license you can practice your science wherever you please."
"I suppose I will go someday," the physician replied, thinking that he could not mention his one reason for staying on the island: Adele and the children.
"I would like to take my family to Paris myself," Valmorain added, but he knew that was a remote possibility.
France was in crisis. That year the director general of finances had called an assemblee des notables to force the nobility and the clergy to pay taxes and share the economic burden, but their initiative had fallen on deaf ears. From afar, Valmorain could see how the empire was crumbling. It was not the moment to go back to France, and neither could he leave the plantation in the hands of Prosper Cambray. He did not trust him, but neither could he dismiss him; Cambray had been in his service for many years, and changing him would be worse than putting up with him. The truth of the matter, something he would never have admitted, was that he was afraid of him.
The doctor drank the last of his cognac, savoring the tingle on his palate and the illusion of well-being that invaded him for brief instants. His temples were throbbing, and the pain had concentrated in his eye sockets. He thought of Seraphine's words, which he had barely overheard in the mill, asking Tante Rose to help her and her unborn child to go to the place of Les Morts et Les Mysteres, back to Guinea. "I can't, p'tite." He asked himself what the woman would have done had he not been present. Perhaps she would have helped the girl, even at the risk of being caught and having to pay dearly. There are discreet ways to accomplish it, the doctor concluded, feeling very weary.