In Paris he didn’t have to struggle with his people’s history every time he spoke the name Jacobo aloud. He was just a man, not a Jew but an artist. This sense of being an outsider was not an issue for his parents, who were now accepted by people of their faith and had no wish to know any Europeans outside the community. Within the family there was no discussion of the rift his parents’ marriage had once caused. The shame of having children born before they were officially wed was never spoken of, although this was still a topic discussed in other households, behind closed doors. Most people didn’t even remember why the congregation had been so enraged and why the Pizzarro children had gone to the Moravian School. All the years of bad blood had evaporated, and his brothers and sisters seemed to have forgotten those times.
“That was so long ago,” said his sister Hannah, now a mother herself. Her wedding was said to have been the turning point, but perhaps it was the dinner at Madame Halevy’s. When that night was ending, and his parents had thanked their hostess and walked into the courtyard, Madame had come into the kitchen where Camille had been waiting with Mrs. James. “Now your grandmother and I are even,” she told him, insisting he take a piece of pastry with him, though he would only toss it out for the birds when he reached the road. “Always pay back what you owe. Remember that,” Madame Halevy told him, patting him on the arm.
Frédéric Pizzarro now went to synagogue every day for the morning prayers. At first Camille accompanied his father and brothers on Friday nights, but unlike them he could not forget how these same people they prayed with had disrespected his mother, treating her if she were a ghost. He supposed he held a grudge. He stopped going. Instead, he found himself drawn to the Lutheran church run by the Moravian brothers, his teachers, who had begun the school for slaves. Those Bible stories he had been told as a child had stayed with him, and he thought of Jesus as a great teacher, a rebel who refused to see the poor and disenfranchised mistreated. He went to the church sometimes and sat with his eyes closed listening to the hymns, songs in Danish and German.
He owed his father his loyalty; therefore he did not mention his visits to the church, nor did he outwardly complain about how miserable he was since his return from Paris. His older brothers were happy in the family business, and the problems with the Petits in France had been dealt with. A new business had been formed, with his sister’s in-laws, one more profitable than the old business. The future was the family’s interest. So who was he to think of the past? For him this island was a mist of all that had once been, a past that enveloped him every day. Certainly he felt this each time he visited Madame Halevy’s grave and left a stone behind, for remembrance. He had done as he’d been told. He had not forgotten her. Whenever he left the cemetery the leaves shook down into his hair and he felt Madame nearby, reminding him to see to his duties, and pay back every favor.
He often brought bags of groceries to Madame Halevy’s maid, who had gone to live with one of her daughters on the outskirts of the city. Mrs. James was very old now, and her family took care of her. Camille made sure to include bananas and mangoes so she could make her desserts. “I’ll have my daughter bring a cake to your house,” she always told him.
“Please, no. Thank you but please, make something for your grandchildren.” He still did not favor sweets.
“People think they knew Madame, but they didn’t,” Helena James said one day. She’d made a guava berry custard, which she insisted he try. “She wasn’t mean the way they said.”
Camille grinned. He had spooned much of the custard into the hedges when she turned away, and now bees hovered around. “She loved your desserts.”
Mrs. James nodded as if this was a given, then went on. “I suppose she told you the story about Jestine because she also had a daughter that she lost.”
“The one in Charleston?” Camille spooned up the last of the pudding, thanked his hostess, and returned the china bowl to her. It was one of Madame Halevy’s. Everything in her kitchen had been given to Helena.
“When you work in someone’s house you know things about them they don’t know about themselves. Whatever they try to hide, you see, even when you don’t want to find it out. You open a drawer, there it is. Once you know, there’s nothing you can do about it but pity them. Here’s the truth about Madame.” Mrs. James glanced around to make certain no one was near before going on. “The pain was not that her daughter went to Charleston but that she had to go away.”
“And why was that?” Camille asked, although he was not as interested as he might have been. He had taken up his sketch pad, and was doing his best to record Mrs. James’s hands, her beautiful, long fingers, adorned with the two gold rings Madame Halevy had always worn. She’d given them to Mrs. James, rather than to her own daughter.