“I thought all of this was behind us.”
“M. Rossignol will fix it,” I said.
Madame sighed, shaking her head at the trees. “You were right—you said there would be trouble.”
It was kind of her to say, even if it was the sort of thing I could feel no satisfaction in being right about. More than anything else, I was simply glad she was once again looking to me for advice.
Together we got up, and in silence I walked her back to the manor house.
Throughout the rest of the day, despite her claims of optimism, the strain of smiling began to seem as if it were more than Madame could bear—as if the fragile scaffolding holding up the corners of her mouth might at any moment collapse.
At dinner, a guest who had stayed with us several times—a writer traveling with a male companion—stopped me as I was on my way to the storeroom to ask if what he had heard about the assassination of an opposition leader was true.
“Certainly not,” I said. It was the first I had heard about there even being an opposition. “The reports are always exaggerated. There’s really nothing to worry about.”
That night, the gunfire unfurled in one tremendous, interminable explosion. For twenty minutes it rumbled without cease. Closing my eyes, I focused my ears not on the battle but on the sounds of doors and shutters opening and closing down below and voices in English asking each other what was going on.
In the morning, the writer and his companion were gone.
Chapter Sixteen
They appeared first in the register as thin black pen strokes discreetly paralleling the rule on the page. The lines were so subtle, it was as if we were not supposed to see them there, our eyes drawn instead to the prominent names beneath. If you looked quickly, you might think nothing had changed. So too in the restaurant, where unless you stopped to count you might not notice there were fewer tables than before.
In their individual stations, the staff must have noticed other differences. The dishwashers went through their work more quickly than before. The laundresses needed fewer lines to hang the sheets.
The villas surrounding Madame’s were the first to be taken out of use. They were the most out of the way, the least likely to have their vacancies noticed.
A few weeks later, we closed up four more.
There were one or two maids who got sick or pregnant. That still left us with far too many. We had no choice but to start letting them go. So too the gardeners and chauffeurs and houseboys and waiters.
It was not long before the lines in the register were replaced with blanks. By late October, six months after Mlle Miller’s visit, we had more empty villas than full. In light of what had happened since, even M. Gadds had to recognize that the part I had played in that incident no longer mattered.
I was on my way out of the manor house when I saw the taxi arrive. I do not know what it was that made me stop. Taxis were not an unusual sight, although it is true that by this point it had become rare to see one bringing passengers to us, instead of simply taking them away. We were down to a half dozen guests. I suppose a part of me had begun to wonder if there would be any more.
I was standing on the bottom step as the car came to a stop. The driver got out first and removed a suitcase from the trunk. Then he opened the rear door, and out stepped M. Swallows. Gone were the shorts and the toucan shirt, gone the safari gear, gone the white linen. This time he wore a dark, heavy suit. Somehow he was not sweating. There was a new fierceness about him, a look that suggested he would not allow something as banal as heat to distract him from whatever purpose had brought him here.
As he climbed the steps to the manor house, he did not once turn around to look at the grounds. He made not even a cursory glance toward his investment.
“What are you waiting for?” he growled as he passed me.
Upon reaching the lobby, he immediately ascended the stairs to the second floor, and I could only assume he knew Madame would be awaiting him in her office.
M. Gadds had let the last of the porters go. In their place, I picked up M. Swallows’s suitcase and brought it inside.
That evening, despite our vacancies, M. Swallows declined his former accommodations in the guesthouse, preferring to stay at the Hotel Erdrich. I later heard he remained in his room all night, not even venturing downstairs for dinner. He checked out early the next morning, mumbling to the porter, the desk clerk, the doorman—to anyone who would listen—that this was a godforsaken country and that he would never again return.
The day of M. Swallows’s departure, Madame called me to her office. Even as she gestured for me to sit, she was turning her back to look out the open shutters. The view appeared to do nothing to settle her nerves.
“I’m leaving,” she said.
She turned to look at me then, and just as quickly she glanced away. “Tomorrow. I have no choice.”
“I understand.”
“I have urgent business at home.” She was frazzled, turning around and around, unable to decide what to look at, what to do. “I’ve put it off for too long. I have to go now.”
“I understand,” I said again.
She walked over to her desk and idly picked up a pen. Then she put it back down. “Don’t worry,” she said without conviction.
It was hard to feel reassured when she could not bring herself to look me in the eye.
“We’ll get through this.”
“Of course,” I said, daring the faintest of smiles.
Something came across her face, something that I thought looked a little like hope.
By now, our only remaining guests were an American couple on their honeymoon, who for the last three days had crept about the otherwise empty estate as if afraid of being seen. They had arrived warily too, and I could not help wondering if their presence on the island was some sort of accident, as if they had climbed aboard the wrong plane and had no idea where they had landed.
M. Gadds had dismissed all but a few members of the staff. The chef had obtained a visa and fled to the States. With the gunfire in Cité Verd getting worse each night and the bodies more plentiful in the streets each morning, I believe the only thing keeping the American couple here was fear that what they might find outside the hotel would be even worse.
Finally, on the day after Madame flew back home, it came time for the American couple’s departure. That morning, the last remaining gardener carried their bags up from their villa. M. Gadds, who at this point was serving as desk clerk, settled their bill. I do not know why it was that so many of us happened to be in the lobby just then—one of the chambermaids paused on her way out to the laundry room; Georges and the sous-chef who had taken over the cooking stood watching in the entryway to the restaurant.
The American couple were clearly uncomfortable with all the attention. The woman was small and skinny; there was almost nothing to her. Even her hair was thin and light, as if she were wasting away before our eyes. Her husband, a tall, lanky blond, spoke to M. Gadds in barely above a whisper.
Judging by the contortions of the woman’s lower lip, she seemed to find the presence of the staff almost menacing, but M. Gadds made no move to dismiss them. Nor did things improve when the couple went outside to get into the idling car. Everyone followed, gathering at the top of the steps as the gardener loaded their bags into the trunk. The other remaining chambermaid appeared just then on the lawn by the tennis courts, as if summoned.
As the gardener came around to the side of the car where the American couple was standing, the poor woman seemed to tremble. The gardener opened the back door, and when he did so, the woman let go of her husband only long enough to sweep up the back of her dress and duck inside.
The gardener let himself into the front seat. In the absence of anyone else to do the job, he was chauffeur as well. We watched as the car made its way up the winding drive, but it was not the grand exit I believe many of us were expecting. At the top, the gardener had to stop, for there was no longer a guard to open the gate. An
d once they reached the street, I imagine the American couple were disappointed to discover they still were not free. After pulling the car forward a few meters, the gardener had to stop the car again and go back to close the gate behind him.
And then the car was gone, and when I looked again, the rest of the staff had already dispersed. M. Gadds was back inside, rummaging around behind the front desk. I watched him lift the guest registry, which had been lying open atop the counter, and close it, sliding it onto a shelf beneath the counter. Without a word to anyone he went upstairs to his office.
As I made my way across the lobby, the sous-chef called out to say that my lunch would be ready in a moment. In the restaurant, one of the regular tables had been set.
“Here you are, monsieur,” Georges said, placing a small vase of lavender orchids in the center.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It comes compliments of M. Gadds.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“We prepared a special lunch for you.”
“I’m perfectly content to have lunch in my office, as usual.”
“I understand, monsieur,” he said, gesturing at the table he had set so carefully, “but since it was M. Gadds’s idea . . .”
“Why would M. Gadds suggest such a thing?”
“You would have to ask M. Gadds,” Georges said as he headed off to the kitchen.
A moment later he was back, carrying a silver tray loaded with dishes.
“This can’t all be for me?” I said.
“It was M. Gadds’s request.”
“I cannot eat all of this,” I said. “Take some of it to the others.”
One by one, Georges removed the dishes from the tray, setting them before me.
“But there are no others, monsieur.”
“I meant the staff, Georges,” I said, beginning to lose my patience. “I realize there are no more guests. There’s no reason I should be the only one eating.”
“I understand,” Georges said, “but of course they’re gone too.”
“They haven’t gone anywhere,” I said. “M. Gadds is upstairs. I saw the others outside not five minutes ago. Call them in. We’ll eat together.”
“I don’t mean to contradict you, monsieur,” Georges said. “I too saw them just a few minutes ago, but they’ve left. M. Gadds went upstairs to gather his belongings. The others did the same. Madame gave the orders. She was kind enough to provide a month’s wages.”
“That can’t be,” I said. “She would have told me.”
Georges was untying his apron. “Will there be anything else before I go?”
“Won’t you eat first? There’s so much food.”
Taking off his apron, he folded it once, draping it over the back of the chair beside me. Empty-handed, he walked toward the lobby.
It occurred to me then that this was just a joke, that everybody was somewhere outside, waiting to spring upon me and have a laugh at my expense. If Madame had made such a decision, I would have been the first to know. I was her confidant, her friend, her adviser.
I reached the drive just in time to see Georges close the gate behind him and pass out of sight beyond the wall, heading toward Cité Verd.
The casino and the pavilion were empty. Up and down the paths and staircases connecting the villas I saw no one. Only a little more than four years had passed since the hotel had opened. Petals and leaves had already begun to collect in the pools.
Chapter Seventeen
That night the rain caught me by surprise. I was sitting at my desk, staring past the open jalousies, when suddenly the sky opened up. In an instant it was as though I were staring into a waterfall. I got up to close the shutters, and just then the wind sent one of the stone pots crashing off the balustrade to the tiled floor of the balcony.
I secured the shutters of the manor house first. Then I rushed from villa to villa, but there was no way for me to get to all of them in time. Rain raced down the cobblestone paths as if along a riverbed, the stairs like so many rapids. By the time I reached Madame’s villa, the rain still had not let up. Soaked and muddy, I sought shelter inside.
* * *
Madame had always claimed privacy as her reason for choosing to live in the villa. In truth, however, it was clear she would have found just as much privacy—and far more space—at the guesthouse. Even after the estate’s expansion—the addition of forty-three more villas—Madame continued to stay, despite the loss of her private pool and garden. Nor did the newness and amenities of the other villas lure her away.
What I think drew Madame to this particular villa—what overshadowed its numerable disadvantages—was its history, which M. Guinee had told me only after I had begun to work here.
M. Guinee did not himself know who originally built Habitation Louvois. One can only assume that in the early days of the colonial settlement it was the home of a wealthy plantation owner. Given the distance of the estate from the cane fields, it is also possible the property served as a mountain retreat, rather than as a year-long residence. What M. Guinee did know for certain was that—more than a century and a half before—the estate had come into the hands of General Louvois, who arrived on the island as commander of a forty-thousand-man colonial army. General Louvois had been sent here to quell an uprising of slaves, the human chattel imported from a distant, savage continent for the purpose of harvesting the empire’s sugar fortune. Their sudden rebellion threatened to destroy everything the general’s countrymen had spent decades building.
Perhaps the general was expecting an easy engagement, for he brought along his young wife and newborn son, as if the trip were a day’s outing to the countryside.
M. Guinee knew few of the facts concerning the general’s life at the estate. What had been passed on to him were merely stories. It was the very gruesomeness of the stories that made them so hard to believe. Was it true that General Louvois once ordered a servant accused of having stolen a gourd of cornmeal to be buried alive in the doorway to the storeroom? The truth is difficult to know. During construction of the hotel, the old storeroom was torn down and a new one put up. The excavation produced no remains.
The war slogged on for more than twelve years, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. The general’s army, despite its muskets and cannons, was decimated, worn down by disease and the fierce resistance of a people fighting for their freedom.
In the end, this small piece of the empire was lost, never to be regained. But it was not just the general and his countrymen who found themselves defeated. So too was the loss felt by the island’s mixed-blood offspring, born from the unsanctioned unions of settler and slave. Despite their lower caste, they had by virtue of their lighter shade sided with those whose divine right it was to rule, whose ranks they would have done anything to join.
Shortly before General Louvois and the remnants of his forces fled—along with whatever white settlers they could fit on their warships—the general was said to have held a party in honor of the wives and sisters of the collaborating mulatto officers, a fête to show his gratitude, even in the face of defeat, for their efforts in undermining the black cause. The evening was full of fine food and dancing, and at the end of the night the women were invited out to the garden, where they were greeted with a sight none of them at first understood. Along the paths, lit by oil lamps, a group of figures cloaked in black robes were leading a procession of coffins. When the women were invited to come closer, they saw inside the coffins the freshly slaughtered remains of their husbands and brothers.
Thus it was said that if ever there had been uncertainty about the distinction the empire made between the various shades of black and brown, there could be no longer. No matter how diluted, the taint of color was absolute. Only to us did the differences between light and dark matter, and with time this preoccupation would only continue to grow, until finally its shadow hung over all our daily pursuits.
Were I to accept the story, I would never have been able to set foot in the mano
r house; I would have been unable to cross the threshold of the gate. But in following the fate of Senator Marcus, I had seen how easily truth could be manipulated, how a man could be made into something other than what he was. To the extent that it was within my power, I would not allow legends to trap us forever in the past. Of everyone who worked at the estate, only Madame and I knew of its origins, and we never spoke of them. Nor did we ever discuss intentionally keeping these stories from the rest of the staff. But I think we both realized we were saving them from something they would not have wanted to hear.
If any place on the estate was free of the bloody legacy of General Louvois, it was Mme Freeman’s villa, which had originally been built for the general’s wife. Unlike her husband, the career soldier, Mme Louvois was said to have been a spirited young woman, active in the arts. She had made the long journey here against her will, loathing politics and all things military and dreading the unremittingly sticky climate. Upon arriving she had immediately set out to distance herself from the entire undertaking.
It was said that Mme Louvois chose to have her villa built in that particular location both for the view it commanded of the bay above the tree line as well as for its distance from her husband and the comings and goings of his advisers and underlings. The general’s wife was an artist—a painter, though she dabbled in music as well. The bay provided the inspiration for many of her landscapes, and the seclusion assured privacy for painting portraits. As subjects, she was said to have favored her husband’s male slaves.
Whenever I try to imagine such a scene, I cannot help thinking it likely that the general was aware of what was happening in his wife’s villa. Mme Louvois reputedly made no effort to hide her work. And one cannot help but wonder about those men as they sat for portraits in an airy poolside villa with the general’s wife. What sense could they have made of it? They had to know her husband would mutilate them if he ever caught them together. Perhaps they feared she would have them killed if they refused. Then again, maybe an opportunity to sit for an afternoon in relative leisure was worth the risk.
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