AN OLD CHILDHOOD INCIDENT was brought to mind after their discussion, one Rachel still wasn’t certain had been real. She seemed to recall a night when Madame Halevy came to the door of her parents’ house. She was wearing a black cape, for it was the rainy season and buckets were pouring down. Rachel was a small child, so perhaps she truly believed a witch had come to call. She went to her window, mesmerized. The black cape flared out around Madame so that she seemed to be floating. Rachel recited the only prayer she knew by heart. She wished her father was at home, but he was often gone in the evenings to business meetings or out with friends. It was a windy night, and the whole world shook and seemed topsy-turvy. Palm fronds swept onto the ground, fruit fell from the trees, the bats settled in the bushes, closed up like flowers that bloom only in the light. When Rachel leaned farther out her window, straining to see, she spied a bundle in their visitor’s hands. The gold rings on the witch’s finger shone a dull, pale light. Two rings, and one bundle. Inside the blanket, an infant slept. Rachel’s mother opened the door, and light spilled out from the hall. Rain splattered in through the window. Rachel held her breath.
“Le secret d’une autre,” the witch in the black coat said. She turned, and Rachel saw her face. It was Madame Halevy, her mother’s best friend, who scared her with her questions about whether or not she was a good girl.
Rachel’s mother had taken the baby in her arms. “This is a secret I’m happy to take on.”
The women had kissed each other, three times, then once more for luck. Apples fell from the tree in the courtyard, the bitter ones that Rachel was not allowed to eat. Not even the lizards braved the gusts driving across the courtyard. This strong wind came across the ocean to their shores from Africa in the rainy season. There were puddles in the courtyard, and the witch, if that was what she was, held her skirts up as she strode away empty-handed. In the morning, Rachel had a cousin who would now live with them. His name was Aaron, and the servants said he’d come to them on the wind. Rachel was near the kitchen house and overheard when Adelle followed Rachel’s mother into the courtyard to ask why this child was in their house. The puddles were drying up in the sun; the wind had disappeared. There were chickens in the yard, pecking at the grass.
“Don’t ask me how I come to have my children and I won’t ask how you come to have yours,” Rachel’s mother had said to Adelle.
The island was so small everyone believed they knew everyone else’s business, but in a place where nothing was equal, there were always secrets, even in her household, even in this room where she sat in a caned chair and watched over her son whom she finally allowed herself to love more, since he seemed fated and determined to live.
CAMILLE WAS WELL ONCE more and back at work in a matter of weeks. He did his best, and yet he seemed unable to control his true nature. He began to commit small acts of anarchy, charging the customers he knew could barely afford their provisions less than the usual price for beans and flour and bolts of cloth. When Roland’s wife, Shirley, came in, he arranged the ledgers so that it was possible to charge her nothing at all.
Mr. Enrique went to Rachel and asked if they might sit down to speak. They did so over cups chamomile tea, which was said to calm the spirit.
“Do you think this is the proper career for Jacobo?” Mr. Enrique asked, using Camille’s old, familiar name. He’d known the boy all his life after all. He’d known him before he was alive if it came to that. His own son, Carlo, now was old enough to come to the store to work every day after school. He was considered a mathematics wizard and could add long columns of figures in his head, then divide and multiply them at will without pen and paper.
“I take it you think it’s not his calling,” Rachel replied when the question of her son’s abilities were brought up.
Mr. Enrique shrugged. “We’re likely to see our children as we wish to, not as they are.”
“True,” Rachel agreed. She had been thinking more and more about the witch in the courtyard, and how her mother always sent her out to the kitchen house when Madame Halevy came to call. When Rachel complained about being cast out, her mother called her a spoiled, silly girl.
“Do you know any reason that would have caused my mother to hate me?”
Mr. Enrique pushed his teacup away, his brow furrowed. “Madame,” he said. “What a thing to ask.”
She looked into his face, and there it was. He knew something.
“Was it my character? Or my birth?”
“It was not you,” Mr. Enrique said formally. He could not have looked more uncomfortable. “And I could never speak ill of your father.”