BY INDERJEET MANI
Copyright is held by the author.
THE WAVES roll back to reveal an oyster-shaped land of green and gold, its turquoise lagoons lapped by palm-studded strips of sand that vanish into a dense jungle with hidden waterfalls and quiet pools nestling among groves of tacamahac and bamboo and latania. The jungle climbs and then falls away onto the slopes of a mountain range whose black cliffs are draped with vast curtains of creepers. On the far side of the mountains lie fields of waving sugarcane. A teenage girl in a white dress makes her way through the fields, balancing a pair of buckets lightly on a beam. Sweat drips down from under her bonnet.
She pauses, gazing east towards the sea, where the new arrivals are treading the long path from the harbor to the Cressonville plantation. Some of the men are bent double with the weight of their rice sacks. Trudging behind are the women, several no older than her and bearing babies at their breasts.
She reaches the doorstep of the old house just in time to meet Madame Emmeline. Her mistress is in her late thirties, with dark circles under her eyes and thick black curls descending over a long and slender neck.
“Zabelle — what took you so long? Go and prepare Edouard’s room!”
She already knows Madame’s moods, and rushes to obey. Stowing the water in an old Chinese pitcher, she hurries to the room, which smells musty from being shut up during the weeks Edouard has been away. She hangs up the mosquito net and then arranges the items on his desk, consisting of four bound volumes, a quill pen and a notebook filled with mysterious characters. She draws aside the curtain, allowing the afternoon sun to illuminate a portrait of the young master. At 16, Edouard is barely a year older than her, dressed in riding gear with a smart waistcoat and a watch chain. Opening the windows, she dusts out the sheets. A medley of birdsong floats in along with the scent of molasses. The cane is ripening fast, and soon there will be field work.
Beyond the plain, the sea slants away, its rolling waves reminding her of her mother Dorothée and their home on Bourbon Island, where her aunt Marie still lives. Her maman had dark eyes like hers, and she remembers her as gentle and slim, with soft hands. She can see her squatting barefoot in their hut, wearing a torn pink dress and stirring a cauldron.
Edouard arrives that evening from the capital, accompanied by a surprise visitor, his tutor Father Laval. There is more work for Isabelle in the kitchen, and the cook Delphine requests her help in gutting the tuna, but she recoils at the sight of the purple entrails coiled inside the pink flesh. Delphine gently takes the knife away, reminding her to show a little more gratitude for being employed. Delphine is friendly, and has told her about how she grew up an orphan after her slave parents escaped from their plantation. Abandoning her to a relative, they became fugitives, hiding on Le Morne Brabant, a black rock which towers over the south of the island.
Isabelle lays out the dinner table properly with the glasses, silverware and china in their correct positions. When everyone is seated, she has a minute to catch her breath and admire Edouard, fair with long dark curls like his mother. He is seated beside his sister Antoinette, who at thirteen is a year younger than her and isn’t in the habit of speaking to servants. Madame Emmeline is seated at one end of the table in a Parisian dress that shows off her slim shoulders.
At the head of the table sits Monsieur Autard. The proprietor of the Cressonville plantation is a big man with a short, pointed beard and thick spectacles. His room is the most difficult to clean, with books and papers scattered everywhere along with specimens of insects and birds with little notes pinned to their chests.
Father Laval, who sits opposite Monsieur Autard, appears emaciated and sips water instead of wine. He speaks in a deep voice, telling his host about the plight of former slaves on some of the estates. As a physician, he does what he can, but the only true medicine, he says, is the word of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Monsieur Autard nods, helping himself to chicken soup from a steaming tureen.
“One day, Father Laval, the predictions of Charles Fourier will come true. Our great sugar estates will become cooperatives. The descendants of slaves will finally share the wealth of our island.”
Father Laval’s eyes have a fiery look. He reminds his host that he has yet to come visit the school for slave children that they founded together in Plaines Wilhems.
“What are you staring at?” Madame Emmeline is not happy with Isabelle’s continued presence.
Isabelle hurries away to the scullery, where several greasy saucepans have already piled up. Later that evening, her fingers raw from scrubbing dishes, she peeps out from the kitchen window watching Father Laval climb slowly into Monsieur Autard’s black Phaeton carriage. The horses are impatient, stamping in the red dust, but Father Laval turns, as if he has forgotten something, and then summons her.
“Where have you come from, my child? Your Creole is not the same as ours.”
She is scared of this prematurely old man who looks as if he’s ready for the grave.
“Bourbon Island, Father.”
“Your country lags far behind us in basic rights. Was your mother a freedwoman?”
Isabelle lowers her head in silence. Her maman, who died before the Abolition, never talked about the terrible work she had to do to release her aunt, then twelve, from her owner Monsieur Lacaussade. When Aunt Marie finally disclosed what had happened, Isabelle was almost the same age, and already old enough to understand that the world could quickly become a terrible place. All the more reason, Aunt Marie said, to seek her fortune elsewhere.
“And your father?”
Isabelle hesitates. She has never seen him, and wonders whether they will ever meet.
“My poor child. Your mother had you baptized, I hope?”
She shakes her head. Her Maman prayed to a god from India, Lord Murugan. Her brass brooch with an engraving of the young six-headed god is still in her possession. And now Father Laval wants her to join his flock. Does it matter that much whom one worships? Her Maman was a believer who was forced into the worst kind of work, and her own lot will never change.
That night, as Monsieur Autard sits alone at the dining table, finishing off the last of the claret, he asks Isabelle about her conversation with Father Laval.
“He enquired about my religion.”
“Father Laval is a saintly doctor who offers the gift of education to the converted. Perhaps he guessed correctly that your father was French?”
“Monsieur, I never met my father. I was told he was a poet.”
Monsieur Autard sighs. “Zabelle, poets tend to be dissolute characters. You need to forget about your father and attend to practical matters. Madame is no longer in good health, and you should be helping her much more.”
Isabelle bows her head in silence.
Staying up late for work after Monsieur Autard has retired, she wants to smash each of the plates instead of placing it carefully in the cabinet. If only she could lead a revolt, or die and be reborn in a country without masters and servants!
Once in bed, she tries to sleep but the night breeze is absent and she tosses and turns in the heat. In the distance she can hear the villagers singing and banging on their goatskin drums, along with a fainter jingling and rattling of tambourines. The singers’ voices are harsh, and their songs are about lost wages and short-lived love affairs, and the arrack that keeps them alive. As the drumbeats rise to a frenzy, she knows that the rhythms that pulse through their blood are also hers. If she had her way, she would set out into the night and join them. But this house among strangers is where she must stay.
She consoles herself instead with thoughts of her father. According to her Maman, he was the strangest Frenchman she had known, a cleanshaven man with a high forehead and thick black hair who once recited in a quivering voice a poem comparing her bare and rather dirty foot to that of a marble goddess. The other girls at work, who were sitting around smoking and combing their hair, burst out laughing. The poet, her maman said, had a thin and half-starved look but swiftly polished off the spicy crab curry that she prepared for him on their final night together. Isabelle can imagine her father boarding his ship, wearing a purple cravat and a smart waistcoat and watch chain like Edouard, and then turning to bid adieu to her weeping and already pregnant Maman.
She knows in her heart that after all these years her father must still care about her, and it must be his present circumstances that do not permit him to come all the way for a visit.
She rises late the next morning and rushes to the henhouse. It is time for Madame Emmeline’s omelet, and a delay would have serious consequences. The hens are already bustling about, their warm eggs reminding her that each day marks a new beginning. Then she has to gather chou chou fruits for Delphine to use for the lunchtime stew, taking care to quickly separate each green gourd from its cluster of creamy flowers buzzing with yellow-black bees. An hour later, she finds herself exhausted by her chores, and hasn’t yet had time to savor her Sunday treat of coffee. She still has to clean out the chamber pots in Edouard’s room, before they stink up a storm!
She finds the young man lounging on the sofa, reading a book. He is dressed for church, and his soft brown eyes seem dreamy.
“Forgive me, I will come back later.”
“Please stay,” Edouard says, touching her hand. Her heart beats faster, but she draws away instinctively. He returns to his book, his finger tracing each line as he reads in a soft and beguiling voice:
She’s pale, and warm, and duskily beguiling
Nobility is molded in her neck
Slender and tall she holds herself in check
A huntress born, sure-eyed, and quiet-smiling[1].
She can’t help smiling herself. What a wonder it must be to read, to forget all one’s worries and chores, marveling at beautiful words!
Edouard’s lips are soft and sensuous. “Did you know that this poem was written for Maman when she was a young woman?”
“To Madame Emmeline? Truly, what an honor it must be!”
“It is, I suppose. The author is now a celebrated Parisian poet who espouses decadence over progress.”
Fortune, as her aunt told her, favors the bold. “Edouard, I wonder if you will be so kind as to do me a favor. I would like to send a letter to this famous poet.”
Edouard bursts out laughing. “Don’t you think you should learn to read and appreciate poetry first?”
“I am sorry I never learned.” She should leave now, as there are chamber pots elsewhere awaiting her attention.
Edouard studies her carefully. “If you really want me to write to Charles Baudelaire at his publisher’s, I will gladly do it! But what on earth will you say?” He tears out a sheet from his notebook, and dips the quill pen in ink.
“Please write that I am the child of a French poet who visited Bourbon Island in ’41. I would request him to search for my father, whose name, alas, I do not know. But since Monsieur Baudelaire is a celebrated author, he must know many poets.”
Edouard writes quietly. Then he reads it back to her, before adding. “Zabelle, don’t you think one favor deserves another?”
She knows well what he is after, as he bids her come closer. She approaches, tentatively at first, and then, like a moth to a flame, she no longer wants to resist. It is her first kiss, and her heart bangs around wildly in her chest, making her head spin. This is what she has dreamed about, to touch and be touched for the very first time. But Edouard insists on more, and she knows that will not lead to anything good. As he places his red palm on her breast, all she can hope for is a reply to her letter, with news of her father.
A week later she is resting in Edouard’s bed. It is a Sunday morning, with the young man having slipped quietly out of church to return home to her. The window is open, the air heavy with honey-scented frangipani. Edouard’s warm body still seems unfamiliar beside hers, his skin soft and pink like the inside of an animal, but even stranger are her own desires.
Edouard reads idly from another poem in his Baudelaire volume, while she listens, her limbs vibrating to an eerie music.
This is the house, the sacred box,
Where, always draped in languorous frocks,
And always at home if someone knocks,
One elbow into the pillow pressed,
She lies, and lazily fans her breast,
While fountains weep their soulfullest:
This is the chamber of Dorothée.
— Fountain and breeze for her alone
Sob in that soothing undertone.
Was ever so spoiled a harlot known?[2]
The famous Parisian poet doesn’t seem respectful towards women, and the mention of her mother’s name makes her wonder whether the gentleman ever visited Bourbon Island. Edouard has no idea. He doesn’t think it wise to ask his father, given his views on poetry, about Baudelaire’s doings.
The months pass quickly, with Edouard busy with studies in the capital. Isabelle settles into her household routines and chores, while feeling a dread that grows steadily with the belly that she conceals under a cloak, the first signs of life having found expression in copious morning vomit. When the truth can no longer be concealed, she knows that for people like her there can be no escape from disaster.
Finally, Madame Emmeline summons her to her dressing room. She is livid, and even frailer than before. “What have you done, you hussy! Waylaying our boy with your devilish Cafrine tricks!”
Isabelle hangs her head in shame.
“Leave immediately! And don’t dare show your face anywhere on our island!”
She gathers her things silently, her mother’s brooch, a long skirt handed down by her aunt, and a tortoiseshell comb. Delphine shakes her head, before handing her a loaf of bread. And so she slips away, bidding farewell to the house that was never a real home. If a letter arrives revealing the mystery of her father, Madame Emmeline will likely intercept it.
She walks slowly through the cane fields, the stalks like sharp spears on either side. She thinks of her lover, and the sincere words that he whispered as he nuzzled her hair. He remains for now safely ensconced in the capital. Her most sensible choice is to follow his advice and arrive there, convert, and seek shelter with Father Laval. For Edouard too is a victim of circumstance and must follow his own father’s bidding.
But is that the right path? Instead of heading due west to the capital, she turns south, crisscrossing the cane fields and traversing the districts of Moka and Plaines Wilhems. In the villages, children are playing hopscotch in the dust, and a little girl smiles at her. They may smile, but this is not the world for which her child is destined. As she travels into the highlands, the afternoon sunlight falls on the faces of people working on their vegetable patches. They seem humble, and content. She stops by a little stream at dusk, hearing the birds calling to each other as they return home. The water tastes sweet, as if she is already in Paradise with her mother.
She continues on, into the pale moonlight, scrambling up steep rocks, taking care to protect the child within. Her feet are cut and the bread is gone, and weeping has dried out her eyes. She rests for a few hours in a small cave, as bats flit by, and then at dawn traverses the ridge till she comes to the enormous black cliff of Le Morne Brabant. There is nowhere further to walk, and now the nausea builds up again from the living root inside, and she has to retch.
Wiping her face with her torn dress, she gazes down at the sand far below, bordered by a glittering sea. The coast is wild here, the waves crashing over gigantic rocks. It was on this monstrous precipice that Delphine’s parents, along with other Maroons, were finally cornered by a police party telling them that slavery had been abolished. The slaves, Delphine said, did what they felt was honourable, refusing to believe that they were finally free. She steps closer to the edge, and hesitates, as the wind ruffles her dress.
[1]Charles Baudelaire, To a Colonial Lady (À une Dame créole). In Campbell, Roy (trans.), Poems of Baudelaire. New York: Pantheon Books, 1952.
[2]Charles Baudelaire, Ever So Far from Here (Bien loin d’ici). In St. Vincent Millay, Edna and Dillon, George (trans.), Flowers of Evil. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1936.
***
Inderjeet Mani lives in Thailand, the setting for his thriller Toxic Spirits (now in its second edition). “Isabelle of the Islands” is based on his sojourn on the island of Mauritius and his encounters with a well-known poet.