Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende Read Free Book Online Page B

the old man Honoré when he made his timid visits. She installed him in the drawing room in the best chair, she served him quality rum, and she listened, entranced, as he talked about drums and arthritis. “That Honoré is a true monsieur. How we would like it if one of your friends were as nice as he is!” she later commented to Violette.

Zarité
    F or a while, two or three weeks, I didn’t think about escaping. Mademoiselle was entertaining and pretty, she had dresses of many colors, she smelled of flowers and went out at night with her friends, who then came to the house and had their way with her while I covered my ears in Loula’s room, although I heard them anyway. When Mademoiselle woke up about midday, I took her light meal to the balcony, as I’d been ordered, and then she told me about her parties and showed me gifts from her admirers. I polished her fingernails with a piece of chamois and made them shine like shells ; I brushed her wavy hair and rubbed it with coconut oil. She had skin like crème caramel, that milk and egg yolk dessert Honoré made me a few times behind Madame Delphine’s back. I learned quickly. Mademoiselle told me I am clever, and she never beat me. Maybe I wouldn’t have run away if she’d been my mistress, but I was being trained to serve a Spanish woman on a plantation far away from Le Cap. Her being Spanish wasn’t anything good, according to Loula, who knew everything and was a seer ; she saw in my eyes that I was going to flee even before I had decided to do it, and she told Mademoiselle, but she paid no attention. “We lost all that money! What do we do now?” Loula had shouted when I disappeared. “We wait ,” Mademoiselle replied, and continued calmly to drink her coffee. Instead of hiring a Negro tracker, which is what was always done, she asked for help from her sweetheart, Capitaine Relais, who ordered his guards to find me without any fuss and not to hurt me. That’s what they told me. It was very easy to leave that house. I wrapped up a mango and end of a bread loaf in a kerchief, walked out the main door, and left, not running so I wouldn’t draw attention. I also took my doll, which was sacred to me, like Madame Delphine’s saints but more powerful, which is what Honoré told me when he carved it for me. Honoré always talked to me about Guinea, about the loas, about voodoo, and he warned me that I should never go to the gods of the blancs because they are our enemies. He explained that in the tongue of his parents , voodoo means divine spirit. My doll represented Erzulie, the loa of love and maternity. Madame Delphine made me pray to the Virgin Mary, a goddess who doesn’t dance, just weeps, because they killed her son and she never knew the pleasure of being with a man. Honoré looked after me in my early years, until his bones were knotted like dry branches, and then it was my turn to look after him. What could have happened to Honoré? He must be with his ancestors on the island beneath the sea, because it has been thirty years since the last time I saw him, sitting in Mademoiselle’s drawing room on the place Clugny, drinking rum-laced coffee and savoring Loula’s little pastries. I hope he survived the revolution with all its atrocities, and that he obtained his freedom in the République Nègre d’Haïti before tranquilly dying of old age. He dreamed of owning a piece of land, of raising a pair of animals and planting his vegetables as his family did in Dahomey. I called him Grandfather, because according to him you do not have to be of the same blood or same tribe to be a member of the same family, but in truth I should have called him Maman. He was the only mother I ever knew.
    No one stopped me in the streets when I left Mademoiselle’s apartment ; I walked several hours and thought I had crossed the whole city. I got lost in the barrio near the port, but I could