On warm evenings Jestine and I often walked along the river. It was nearly summer and Frédéric had been gone for several months. Still, he came to me in my dreams. He lay down beside me, entwined with me, and I could hear the sound of bees. Time was moving so quickly. Soon it would be July and the sky would be blue and heat would rise off the gravel paths in the Tuileries in radiant waves. I’d brought the roses in my garden with me to my new address and planted them in a courtyard. As the season went on they would grow pale, withering in the bright sunlight, and then, if they were carefully pruned and watered, they would have a second flowering in August. Jestine and I would sit in the wicker chairs and watch to see whether they bloomed red or white.
We liked the quiet of the river and often took the path along the Seine. Paris was never a disappointment, although often we talked about the weather back home, and how we could sit out all night long and never once be chilled, how when the rain came down I kept my window open. One evening as we were strolling the weather changed suddenly, surprising us, as it did on our island when the wind came from Africa. All at once there was a driving green rain, so cold we shivered. This was not the rain of our island. Here it fell like a curtain. We could barely see as we plunged into a tunnel and stood there laughing in the dark. We’d run so swiftly we were out of breath. I was wearing my feathered hat and Frédéric’s black coat. I was never without it. I wondered what I would do once the summer was upon us. Perhaps I would wear his shirt, the one I slept in now, beneath my clothes and close to my heart.
We couldn’t stay in the tunnel forever, so we darted into the rain, holding Frédéric’s coat above our heads as we’d once held up leaves to be our umbrellas. Now it was the leaves from the chestnut trees that were drifting down, sticking to the pavement, a slick, coppery carpet. Eventually the rain became a pale, cold drizzle. Everything was so green, the way it was when we hid in the tall grass, unnoticed by everyone but the yellow birds darting above us. We found a painted wooden bench for ourselves and swept off the rain with our hands.
The leaves on the shrubs turned silver as dusk crossed the sky, the grass was purple. We were so still none of the passersby noticed us as they hurried along the wet gravel, intent on being on their way. Jestine and I had practiced silence on the nights when we waited for the turtles. In the tall grass we could disappear if we wanted to. We could watch the hillsides turn red, one flower at a time. We had seen so much, but we had never seen the turtle-girl until now. She was there in the river, the woman who had spent a lifetime with the turtles but had arms and legs as we did and long, moss-black hair she had wound into mourning plaits. She had come across the sea from the place that was our home, alongside our ship. I’d seen her footsteps on the bow of the boat and in the hallways of our building. All over Paris lanterns were burning. It was the hour when the haint blue sky dissolved into darkness and the bats flew above us. We watched the woman between worlds climb out of the water and walk through the park. Our sister, who could not decide whether or not to be human, sat down with us at last.
Afterword
Rachel Pizzarro’s life in my imagined story mirrors the known facts about her as closely as possible.
Rachel Monsanto Pomié Petit Pizzarro was born in 1795 on St. Thomas, where her father, Moses Monsanto Pomié, was a prominent merchant, having fled in the 1790s from St. Domingue during the revolution there. They were Danish citizens whose families had come from Spain, Portugal, and France. In 1818 Rachel married Isaac Petit, a French Jew of Marrano heritage. He had previously been married and had eight children with his first wife, Esther. Three were surviving when Rachel became their stepmother. By the time Isaac died, in 1824 at the age of fifty, he and Rachel had three more children together and one born after his death. In 1825 Frédéric Pizzarro, then twenty-two, came to St. Thomas to run the family business. He and Rachel fell instantly in love despite the community disapproval and the synagogue’s refusal to marry them because of their family connection. Despite the scandal created by their relationship, which was considered highly improper, they eventually married and became the parents of four, including Jacob Abraham Camille Pizzarro (Pissarro), who was to become one of the fathers of Impressionism.
The stories of the Pizzarros’ West Indian employees, neighbors, and friends are invented, although Moses Pomié was said to have been carried to safety in a basket, much like his biblical namesake, by a slave who traveled with him when he fled to St. Thomas. Rachel Pizzarro is thought to have brought a maid who was a freed slave with her when she came to Paris at the age of sixty, never again returning to St. Thomas.