Read an excerpt of Isabel Allende's beautiful new novel Island Beneath the Sea
Zarité
In my forty years I, Zarité
Sedella, have had better luck than other slaves.
I am going to have a long life and my old age will be a time of contentment because
my star—mi z’étoile—also shines when the night is cloudy. I know
the pleasure of being with the man my heart has chosen. His large hands awaken
my skin. I have had four children and a grandson, and those who are living
are free. My first memory of happiness, when I was just a bony, runnynosed, tangle-haired
little girl, is moving to the sound of the drums, and that is
also my most recent happiness, because last night I was in the place Congo dancing
and dancing, without a thought in my head, and today my body is warm
and weary. Music is a wind that blows away the years, memories, and fear,
that crouching animal I carry inside me. With the drums the everyday Zarité
disappears, and I am again the little girl who danced when she barely knew
how to walk. I strike the ground with the soles of my feet and life rises up
my legs, spreads up my skeleton, takes possession of me, drives
away distress and
sweetens my memory. The world trembles. Rhythm is born on the island
beneath the sea; it shakes the earth, it cuts through me like a
lightning bolt
and rises toward the sky, carrying with it my sorrows so that Papa
Bondye can
chew them, swallow them, and leave me clean and happy. The drums
conquer fear.
The drums are the heritage of my mother, the strength of Guinea that
is in my blood. No one can harm me when I am with the drums, I become as
overpowering as Erzulie, loa of love, and swifter than the
bullwhip. The shells
on my wrists and ankles click in time, the gourds ask questions, the djembe
drums answer in the voice of the jungle and the timbales, with their tin
tones. The djun djuns that know how to speak make the invitation, and the
big maman roars when they beat her to summon the loas. The drums
are sacred,
the loas speak through them.
In the house where I spent my earliest years, the
drums were silent in the
room we shared with Honoré, the other slave, but they were often
taken
out.
Madame Delphine, my mistress then, did not want to hear the
blacks’ noise,
only the melancholy laments of her clavichord. Mondays and Tuesdays she
gave classes to girls of color, and the rest of the week she taught in the
mansions of the grands blancs, where the mademoiselles had their own instruments
because they could not use the ones the mulatta girls touched. I learned
to clean the keys with lemon juice, but I could not make music because Madame
Delphine forbade us to go near her clavichord. We didn’t need it. Honoré
could draw music from a cookpot; anything in his hands had beat, melody,
rhythm, and voice. He carried sounds inside his body; he had
brought them
from Dahomey.
My toy was a hollowed gourd we made to rattle; later he taught
me to caress his drums, slowly. And from the beginning, when he
was still
carrying me around in his arms, he took me to dances and voodoo services, where
he marked the rhythm with his drum, the principal drum, for
others to follow.
This is how I remember it. Honoré seemed very old to me because his bones
had frozen stiff, even though at the time he was no older than I am now. He
drank taffia in order to endure the pain of moving, but more than
that harsh
rum, music was the best remedy. His moans turned to laughter with the sound
of the drums. Honoré barely could peel sweet potatoes for the mistress’s meal,
his hands were so deformed, but playing the drum he never got tired, and
when it came to dancing no one lifted his knees higher, or swung his
head with
more force, or shook his behind with more pleasure. Before I knew how to walk,
he had me dance sitting down, and when I could just balance myself on two
legs he invited me to lose myself in the music, the way you do in a
dream.“Dance, dance, Zarité, the slave who dances is free . . . while he is
dancing,” he told me. I have always danced.
Excerpted from Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende. Copyright 2010 by Isabel Allended. all rights reserved. Excerpted by permission of the publisher. No part of the excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
In the house where I spent my earliest years, the
drums were silent in
Excerpted from Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende. Copyright 2010 by Isabel Allended. all rights reserved. Excerpted by permission of the publisher. No part of the excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. 
