Страница 22 из 102
"What can I do, Tete?" asked Parmentier.
"Please, Doctor, can you ask Monsieur Valmorain? I have to know whether my son is alive, whether he sold him, to whom…"
"It isn't appropriate for me to do that, it would be discourteous. If I were you, I would not think about the baby any more."
"Yes, Doctor," she replied, her voice nearly inaudible.
"Don't worry, I am sure that he is in good hands," Parmentier added, pained.
Tete left the room, noiselessly closing the door.
With the birth of Maurice the household routines changed. If Eugenia was calm when she woke, Tete dressed her, took her out for a few steps around the patio, and then installed her in the gallery, with Maurice in his cradle. At a distance, Eugenia seemed a normal mother watching over her baby's sleep-except for the mosquito netting that covered them both-but that illusion faded on closer view, when the woman's absent expression became visible. A few weeks after the birth, Eugenia suffered another of her crises and did not want to go outside, convinced that the slaves were watching and waiting to kill her. She spent the day in her room, slipping between the befuddlement of laudanum and delirium of her dementia, so lost that she remembered very little of her son. She never asked how he was being fed, and no one told her that Maurice's nourishment came from the bosom of an African, or she would have concluded that he was suckling poison milk. Valmorain hoped that the unwavering instinct of maternity would make his wife sane again, like a gust of wind blowing over her bones and heart, leaving her clean inside, but one day when he saw her shake Maurice like a stuffed doll to quiet him, with the risk of breaking his neck, he realized that the most serious threat to the baby was its own mother. He grabbed Maurice from her and, unable to contain himself, slapped her so hard that she toppled backward to the floor. He had never struck Eugenia, and he himself was surprised at his violence. Tete helped up her mistress, who was crying without understanding what had happened, tucked her into bed, and went to prepare an infusion for her nerves. Toulouse stopped her on the way and put the child in her arms.
"From this minute on you are in charge of my son. You will pay dearly for anything that happens to him. Do not allow Eugenia to touch him ever again!" he bawled.
"And what do I do when my maitresse asks for her son?" Tete asked, clutching the tiny Maurice to her breast.
"I don't care what you do! Maurice is my only son, and I will not allow that imbecile to harm him."
Tete partially carried out his instructions. She took the infant to Eugenia for brief moments, and let her hold him while she was watching. The mother would sit motionless with the little bundle on her knees, looking at him with an expression of amazement that soon gave way to impatience. After a few minutes she would hand him back to Tete as her attention wandered off in another direction. Tante Rose had the idea of wrapping a rag doll in Maurice's blanket and they found that the mother did not notice the difference; in that way they could space the visits until eventually they were no longer necessary. They moved Maurice to another room, where he slept with his wet nurse, and during the day Tete carried him on her back, tied in a cloth the way African women carried theirs. If Valmorain was in the house, she put the baby in his cradle in the drawing room or in the gallery, so he could see his son. Tete's smell was the only one Maurice identified during the first months of his life; the wet nurse had to put on one of her blouses before the baby accepted her breast.
The second week of July, Eugenia went outside before dawn, barefoot and in her night shift, and tottered off in the direction of the river along the lane of coconut palms that was the entrance to the big house. Tete sounded the alarm, and crews formed and immediately joined with the plantation guards to look for her. The hounds led them to the river, where they discovered her in water up to her neck, her feet stuck in the thick mud of the bottom. No one could understand how she had come so far since she was afraid of the dark. At night her fiendish howls often reached as far as the slaves' huts, giving them gooseflesh. Valmorain believed that Tete was not giving his wife enough drops from the blue vial, since had she been sufficiently sedated, she could not have escaped, and for the first time he threatened to have Tete flogged. She spent several terrifying days anticipating the punishment, but her master never gave the order.
Soon Eugenia was completely disco