Zorro (40 page)

Even though he was a prisoner and Lafitte’s rival for Juliana, Diego could not help but admire the man. As a privateer he was unscrupulous and without mercy, but when he posed as a caballero no one could surpass him in good manners, culture, and charm. That double personality fascinated Diego; it echoed his own relationship with Zorro. And besides, Lafitte was one of the finest swordsmen he had ever known. Only Manuel Escalante was on the same level. Diego felt honored when his captor invited him to practice with him. In recent weeks the young man had seen democracy in action, something that until then had been only an abstract concept. In the United States, democracy was controlled by white men; on Barataria it worked for everyone except women, of course. Lafitte’s peculiar ideas seemed worthy of consideration. He maintained that the powerful invented laws to preserve their privileges and to control the poor and discontented; therefore it would be stupid to obey them. For example, taxes, which in the end the poor paid while the rich found ways to avoid it. He believed that no one, least of all the government, could claim a slice of what was his. Diego pointed out certain contradictions to him.

Lafitte punished theft among his men with a lashing, but his financial empire rested on piracy, a higher form of theft. The privateer replied that he never took from the poor, only the powerful. To strip the imperial ships of what they had stolen by blood and whip in the colonies was not a sin but a virtue. He had appropriated the weapons that Captain Santiago de Leon was carrying to royalist troops in Mexico in order to sell them at a reasonable price to the insurgents of the same country.

Lafitte took Diego to New Orleans, a city made to the privateer’s measure, proud of its decadent, adventurous, pleasure-loving, capricious, and tempestuous character. It had survived wars with the English and the Indians, hurricanes, floods, fires, and epidemics, but nothing could squelch its courtly arrogance. It was one of the principal ports of the United States, through which tobacco, indigo, and sugar were exported and every manner of merchandise imported. The cosmopolitan population coexisted with no concern for the heat, mosquitoes, swamps, or especially the law. Music, alcohol, brothels, gambling houses… there was a little of everything in those streets where life began with the setting sun. Diego found a bench in the Plaza de Armas where he could observe the crowd: blacks with baskets of oranges and bananas, women telling fortunes and selling voodoo fetishes, puppet shows, dancers, musicians. Candy vendors wearing turbans and blue aprons carried trays of ginger, honey, and nut sweets.

At food stands one could buy beer, fresh oysters, and plates of shrimp.

There was always some drunk raising a ruckus, side by side with well-dressed caballeros, plantation owners, merchants, and officials.

Nuns and priests crossed paths with prostitutes, soldiers, bandits, and slaves. The celebrated quadroons strolled about the plaza, receiving compliments from the caballeros and hostile glances from their rivals.

They did not wear jewels or hats those adornments had been forbidden to satisfy the white women who could not compete with them but they had no need of them. They had the reputation of being the most beautiful women in the world: golden skin, fine features, large liquid eyes, wavy hair. They were always accompanied by mothers or chaperones, who never took their eyes off them. Catherine Villars was one of these Creole beauties. Lafitte met her at one of the balls the mothers offered to present their daughters to wealthy men, another of the many ways to get around absurd laws, as the corsair explained to Diego. There were few white women and many women of color; it did not take a mathematician to see the solution to the dilemma. However, mixed marriages were forbidden by law. In that way the social order was preserved, the power of the whites guaranteed, and people of color kept subjugated, none of which prevented whites from having Creole concubines. The quadroons found a convenient solution for everyone. They trained their daughters in domestic skills and arts of seduction that no white woman even suspected existed, to create the rare combination of mistress of the house and courtesan. The mothers dressed their daughters opulently but also taught them to make their gowns. They were elegant and hardworking. The mothers used the balls, which only wealthy white men attended, to place their daughters with a man capable of providing well for them. To maintain one of those beautiful girls was considered a mark of distinction for a caballero; celibacy and abstinence were not virtues except among the Puritans, but there were few of those in New Orleans. The quadroons lived in modest houses, but in comfort and style; they had slaves, educated their children in the best schools, and dressed like queens in private, although they were discreet in public. Those arrangements were carried out in accord with unspoken rules, with decorum and etiquette.

“To sum it up, mothers offer their daughters to men,” Diego protested, scandalized.

“Is that not always so? Marriage is an arrangement by which a woman lends her services and gives sons to the man who supports her. Here a white woman has less freedom to choose than a Creole,” Lafitte replied.

“But the Creole loses her protection when her lover decides to marry or replace her with another concubine.”

“The man leaves her with a house and a pension, and also pays the expenses of his children. The woman sometimes forms another family with a Creole man. Many of those Creoles, children of other quadroons, are professionals educated in France.”

“And you, Captain Lafitte, would you have two families?” Diego asked, thinking of Juliana and Catherine.

“Life is complicated anything can happen,” the pirate rejoined.

Lafitte took Diego to the best restaurants, the theater, the opera, and introduced him among his acquaintances as his “friend from California.”

Most were people of color: artisans, merchants, artists, and professionals. He knew a few Americans, who lived apart from the Creole and French population, separated by an imaginary line that divided the city. Lafitte preferred not to cross that boundary, because on the other side there was a moralistic atmosphere that did not sit well with him. He took Diego to several gaming houses, as the latter had requested. It seemed suspicious to him that the youth had such certainty about winning, and he warned him to be careful; in New Orleans cheating was punished with a knife between the ribs.

Diego paid no attention to Lafitte’s counsel; the bad feeling he had had for several days had only grown worse. He needed money. He could not hear Bernardo with the usual clarity, but he felt his milk brother was calling him. He had to go back to California, not only to save Juliana from falling into Lafitte’s hands, but also because he was sure that something had happened there that required his presence. Using the medallion as his initial capital, he gambled in several different houses so as not to raise suspicions with his exceptional winnings. It was very easy for him, trained in tricks of illusion, to replace one card for another, or to make one disappear. In addition, he had a good memory and a talent for numbers; minutes into a game, he could guess his opponents’ cards. As a result, he did not lose the medallion but was filling his money pouch; at that rate he would soon have the eight thousand American dollars of the ransom. He knew how to pace his game.

He began to lose, to give the other players confidence, then set a time to end the game and began winning. He never went too far. As soon as other players got uneasy, he went on to the next place. One day, however, his luck was so good that he didn’t want to quit, and he continued betting. His fellow players had drunk a lot and could barely focus on the cards, but they were still sharp enough to realize that Diego had to be cheating. The game erupted into a squabble that ended in the street, after Diego was pushed and shoved outside with the justifiable intention of beating him up. Diego could barely make himself heard above the shouting, but he challenged his attackers with an original proposition. “One moment, senores! I am prepared to return his money, which I have won honestly, to the man who can split open that door by butting it with his head,” he announced, pointing to the thick wood, metal-studded door of the Presbytery, a colonial building that stood beside the cathedral.

That idea immediately captured the drunks’ attention. They were discussing the terms of the competition when a sergeant appeared and instead of breaking up the wrangle stood aside to watch the action.

Asked to act as judge, he happily accepted. Musicians came out of several locales and began playing lively tunes; in a few minutes the plaza was filled with curious onlookers. It was beginning to get dark, and the sergeant lighted several lamps. Other men who were just passing by and wanted to participate in this new sport gathered around the card players; the idea of splitting open a door with your cranium seemed highly entertaining. Diego decided that the hard heads should pay five dollars each to enter. The sergeant collected forty-five dollars from the contestants in a flash and then made them get in line.

The musicians improvised a drum roll, and the first subject rushed toward the door of the Presbytery with a sash wrapped around his head.

The impact cold-cocked him. A burst of applause, whistles, and laughter greeted his performance. Two beautiful Creoles ran up to comfort the fallen man with a glass of barley water, while the second seized his opportunity to crack his head open, with no better results than the first. Some participants repented at the last moment but did not get their five dollars back. In the end, no one was able to put even a crack in the door, and Diego was left with the money he had won at the gaming table, plus thirty-five dollars from the contest. The sergeant received ten for his trouble, and everyone was happy.

The slaves came to Lafitte’s property by night. The traders beached their boats silently and unloaded, then locked the Blacks in a woodshed: five young men and two older ones, as well as two young girls and a woman with a six-year-old child clinging to her legs and one in her arms. Isabel had gone outside to get a breath of air on the terrace, and in the light of torches saw silhouettes moving through the night. Unable to contain her curiosity, she walked toward the line of pathetic humans in rags. The girls were crying but the mother walked in silence, her eyes straight ahead, like a zombie; all of them dragged their feet, bone-weary and hungry. They were guarded by several pirates under the command of Pierre Lafitte, who left the “merchandise” in the shed and then went to report to his brother Jean, while Isabel ran to tell Diego, Juliana, and Nuria what she had seen. Diego had seen posters in the town, so he knew that a slave auction was scheduled at the Temple within a couple of days.

On Barataria the friends had more than enough time to learn about slavery. Bringing slaves from Africa was illegal, but nevertheless they were sold and “raised” in America. Diego’s first impulse was to try to set them free, but the girls pointed out that even if they could get into the shed, break the chains, and convince the Blacks to run, they had nowhere to go. They would be hunted down with dogs. Their one hope would be to get to Canada, but they could never do it alone.

Diego decided to at least see for himself the conditions in which the prisoners were held. Without saying what he meant to do, he told the girls he would be back, put on his Zorro disguise, and, taking advantage of the darkness, went out. The Lafitte brothers were on the terrace. Pierre had a drink in his hand and Jean was smoking, but Diego could not get close enough to hear them without running the risk of being discovered, so he continued on to the shed. A single torch illuminated a pirate standing guard with his musket over his shoulder.

Zorro approached with the idea of taking him by surprise, but he was the one surprised when another man suddenly spoke at his shoulder.

“Good evening, boss,” he said.

Diego half turned to face him, ready to fight, but the man was relaxed and friendly. He realized that in the shadow the man had taken him for Jean Lafitte, who always dressed in black. The first pirate came over, too.

“We fed them, and they’re resting, boss. Tomorrow we will clean them up and get them clothes. They’re in good shape, except for the baby. It has a fever, and I don’t think it will last long.”

“Open the door,” said Diego in French, imitating the corsair’s tone. “I want to see them.”

He kept his face in the shadow as they pulled back the bolt on the door, an unnecessary precaution because the pirates suspected nothing.

He ordered them to wait outside, and went in. A lantern hanging in one corner shed a faint light, just enough to allow him to see each of the faces staring at him with terror. Everyone except the child and the baby wore iron rings around the neck attached to chains that fastened to posts. Diego went toward them making calming gestures, but when the slaves saw his mask they believed he was a demon, and shrank back as far as their chains permitted. It was futile to try to communicate with them. He realized they had just arrived from Africa; this was “fresh merchandise,” as the traders called them, and they had not had time to learn their captors’ language. Possibly they had been taken to Cuba, where the Lafitte brothers had bought them to resell in New Orleans. They had survived the sea voyage in horrible conditions and suffered mistreatment ashore. Were they from the same village? the same family? In the sale they would be separated and never see one another again. Their suffering had broken their spirit; they seemed on the verge of madness. Diego left them with unbearable sorrow in his heart. Once before, in California, he had felt that same crushing weight in his chest, when he and Bernardo witnessed soldiers attacking an Indian village. He recalled the feeling of impotence he had felt then, identical to what was oppressing him at this moment.

He returned to Lafitte’s house, changed clothes, and went to the de Romeu girls and Nuria to tell them what he had seen. He was desperate.

“How much do slaves cost, Diego?” Juliana asked.

“I don’t know exactly, but I have seen the lists of sales in New Orleans, and as an estimate, I would say that the Lafittes will get a thousand dollars for each young man, eight hundred for the other two, six hundred for each of the girls, and a thousand, more or less, for the mother and her children. I don’t know if they can sell the children separately, since they are less than seven years old.”