Island Beneath the Sea (2010) by Isabel Allende Read Free Book Online Page B

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 Honore told me when he carved it for me. Honore 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. Honore 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 Honore? 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 Republique Negre d'Haiti 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 see the mountains in the distance, and everything was a question of walking in that direction. We slaves knew that there were Maroons in the mountains, but we did not know that beyond the first peaks were many more, so many they can't be counted. Night fell. I ate my bread but saved the mango. I hid in a stable under a pile of straw, although I was afraid of horses, with their hooves like hammers and steaming nostrils. The animals were very near, I could hear them breathing across the straw, a sweet, green breath like the herbs in Mademoiselle's bath. Clinging to my doll Erzulie, mother of Guinea, I slept the whole night without bad dreams, wrapped in the warmth of the horses. At dawn a slave came into the stable and found me snoring with my feet sticking through the straw ; he grabbed my ankles and pulled me out with one tug. I don't know what he expected to find, but it must not have been a scrawny little girl, because instead of hitting me, he lifted me up, carried me to the light, and looked me over with mouth agape. "Are you crazy? What made you hide here?" he asked me finally, not raising his voice. "I have to get to the mountains ," I explained, also whispering. The punishment for helping a fugitive slave was very well known, and the man hesitated. "Let me go, please, no one will know I was here ," I begged him. He thought it over a while, and finally ordered me to stay where I was and be quiet ; he made sure there was no one around, and left the stable. He soon returned with a hard biscuit and a gourd of heavily sugared coffee ; he waited for me to eat and then pointed to the way out of the city. If he had turned me in, he would have been given a reward, but he didn't. I hope that Papa