The Marriage of Opposites

by Alice Hoffman

  CAMILLE WAS VISITING JESTINE, as he did nearly every day, when he saw the painter at the harbor, a standing easel set up before him on the sand. He stood upon Jestine’s porch with a spyglass. The waves were rough that day, and the trade winds blew across the island. Palm trees rattled, and fronds that were shaken fell into the roads. The painter paid no attention to the weather and worked feverishly, glancing up now and then to watch the light on the crashing waves. Jestine came out with two cups of hot coffee.

  “Everyone says he’s a madman,” she said of the painter on the beach.

  “Do they? Why is that?”

  “Just look at him! He stands out there in the wind! If he doesn’t watch out a wave will carry him away. Maybe he needs to be tied to the wharf with rope.”

  Camille was instantly interested. A few days later, when he spied the painter in the same spot, he left his office on the dock, curious to see what this gentleman was up to. The painter was only a few years older than he, Danish, with sharp features, already balding but with a boyish appearance. He was quite approachable and not in the least disturbed at having been interrupted.

  “I know no one here, so to meet a fellow artist, well, I couldn’t be more grateful.”

  They shook hands, and the young man introduced himself as Fritz Melbye, an artist from Copenhagen, who had been born in Elsinore in 1826. He specialized in seascapes, and though he was only four years older, he had vast experience compared to Camille, and had been to art school in Denmark. He was from a family of marine painters, the youngest of three brothers, and had set off to the West Indies to make his fortune and his name. He was fearless and friendly in a way Camille would never be, willing to go anywhere and do anything for a view of a watery vision that resonated inside his soul. They went to a tavern and Camille introduced Melbye to guava berry rum, which he declared a delight. Melbye, for his part, introduced Camille to cigars, which sent him into a coughing fit. He felt embarrassed, inexperienced, a boy living with his family, doing their bidding when this fellow Melbye, at the age of twenty-four, was on his own entirely, a grown man living on his instincts and desires.

  “You make your living with your art?” Camille asked, intrigued. Melbye could hold his rum well, and the painting he was working on, a view of the harbor at St. Thomas, was impressive.

  “I live as well as I can, and paint as well as God allows.”

  His older brothers were better known, he confided; Vilhelm had been the first to approach seascapes, and Anton was a respected teacher and painter in Paris. Fritz himself was lighthearted, a ladies’ man, interested in seeing the world and experiencing all that he could.

  “Death stalks us.” He shrugged and called for another rum. “So why not live as we wish? I’d like to paint every ocean and every major sea before I’m thirty. If I do that, then afterward I can drop into hell for all I care, for I’ll have completed my goal.”

  Camille laughed. He had never enjoyed another man’s company so thoroughly. “So that’s that? The devil can have you?”

  “I’d prefer to be showing in Paris, but if I go to the devil, so be it.”

  They began to meet nearly every day, and took to working side by side. Camille showed his companion the Sky Tower, from which they could view nearly every bit of the shoreline. He brought him to the synagogue, made of stone and molasses and sand, then on to the inlet where vegetables were unloaded from sailboats and African laborers took carts and baskets into the marketplace. Melbye sketched at all of these places, images that he would later use in his paintings. What was familiar to Camille was exotic to the Dane, and intriguing beyond belief. Fritz wore a white suit and a white linen shirt, but he wished to leave his more refined ways behind. He’d grown a beard and he liked to go barefoot, even though Camille warned him about burrs and the local stinging bees, which nested not in trees but in the ground. Fritz spoke French and English with a clipped Danish accent. As it turned out he, too, had come from a bourgeois family; in his case, they were involved in finance. But his older brothers had fought the battle of art versus commerce with their father, and by the time Fritz was twenty his father had already accepted the fact that none of his sons would carry on the family business. “When it came to me, he gave up.” Fritz grinned.

  It was a pleasure to be in Fritz’s company and to hear about the art world of Paris, and his brothers’ experiences, and Fritz’s own plans. He was wildly cheerful, so friendly local people took to calling him l’Ami Rouge, the red friend, for although his blond hair was balding, his beard was a pale red. He clearly had a desire to do as the locals did and be considered a friend among them—washing his laundry himself, learning to make maubie and drinking it with every meal. For breakfast he had sea moss, a concoction made of boiled seaweed mixed with milk and spices. He dined on plain salt fish even on Sunday, something no person with any pride would do. He meant to go to South America and back to Europe and then on to New York. While in St. Thomas he had rented a shed from a farmer in the Savan, the living area newly created for freed slaves. There were a few Jewish families there as well, but Melbye was the only Christian European to reside in the Savan, and his neighbors thought him a bit mad, for he stayed up till all hours, painting in the alleyway outside his shack, asking women and children to pose for him in exchange for a sketch of themselves or a bit of what little money he had. Once a robber broke in, thinking he was a rich man, but there was nothing to steal but paint and unwashed laundry. When Melbye protested, he was felled by a blow. The two men fought, but somehow Fritz won the thief over, and he wound up helping his victim off the floor. The robber was Maurice, son of his neighbor, Mr. Alek, and he and his neighbors soon enough had mugs of rum together, forgetting the episode entirely.

  “Nobody likes that man you’re friends with,” Jestine told Camille when he next came to visit after stopping at the post office for her. There had been three letters on that day.

  “Fritz?” he said, surprised. “He just has a big heart.”

  “Well, he looks like he’ll bring bad luck.” Jestine hated to think that Rachel’s boy might be led astray. She’d heard the two friends were staying out all night, drinking at the harbor, and that there were some women involved, including a St. Thomas girl Camille used to know back when they called him Jacobo. People said this girl was married to a man who knew nothing about what was going on.

  But the girl’s mother, the woman who had told Jacobo Camille Pizzarro to stay away from her daughter when they were ten years old, had figured it out. In her opinion he was trouble then, and trouble once again. This lady came around to the Pizzarros’ store to speak her mind, and nothing was going to stop her from doing so. Rachel was in the back room going over the ledgers. Since the time her father had first brought her to the store it had been her habit to do so once a week. It was late on Friday and Mr. Enrique had gone home to be with Rosalie. Frédéric and the boys had already set off for the synagogue, Jacobo Camille was out as he usually was, and so Rachel was alone in the shop. She looked up and there was a woman in the doorway. A local woman of her own age who looked quite upset.

  “You’ll need to speak with the clerk in the morning if you want to place an order,” Rachel said.

  “I don’t need to place an order,” the woman responded. She was tall, attractive, but clearly agitated.

  Rachel sat back in her chair and appraised her guest. She had seen her in the market but didn’t know her by name. “Did you want something?”

  “Your son is the one who wants something and he’s not having it,” her visitor said.

  Rachel rose so that she might pull over a chair. She was not surprised that her son had offended someone in some way. “Please,” she said, suggesting her guest join her at her desk and continue. When the woman sat beside her, Rachel recognized her. She worked as a laundress and had sent her children to the Moravian School. “I’ve forgotten your name,” Rachel admitted.

  “Why should you remember? I’m nothing to you, as you are nothing to me.”


  Rachel found this woman interesting. Certainly she spoke her mind. She closed the ledger book and gave her guest her full attention.

  “It’s my daughter’s name you should know. Marianna. Why don’t you ask your son about her? And in the meantime, hope her husband doesn’t find out.”

  Rachel remembered Marianna. She’d been one of the reasons Rachel had sent Jacobo away in the first place. She still thought of him with his old name and refused to call him Camille. She certainly wasn’t about to let her hard work setting him on the right path be disrupted by this same pretty girl. She went to Jestine’s the next morning and told her about her visitor. They drank coffee and sat at the old table where Adelle used to give them their lunch.

  “He’s not having a love affair with that girl,” Jestine said. “You don’t have to worry about that. But you have something else to worry about. He’s painting her.”

  Jestine had some sketches Camille had made of Marianna carrying some laundry. He’d left them behind, and she now brought them out and set them on the table. Rachel held one up. She took note of the curve of the woman’s shoulder and breast, her thin waist, the angles of her face as she looked toward the sea.

  “He may not be having an affair, but clearly he’s enamored,” Rachel said. “How long have you known about this?”

  Jestine looked stung. “Shall I not be your friend and an aunt to him? Do you feel I have stolen him?”

  “Of course not,” Rachel said. “You are an aunt to him and I’m grateful that you are. What I have, I gladly share with you. It’s only that he tells you everything and I’m the last to know.”

  “Would you have told your mother anything?”

  “But I’m nothing like my mother.” She looked hard at Jestine. “Am I?”

  “Rachel, if you were, I would not be your friend,” Jestine assured her.

  Still Rachel worried that she carried the seed of her mother’s bitterness. The one feature that had caused her to be vain was her beautiful dark hair. But one night she dreamed of her mother, and when she awoke her hair was streaked white, as if she’d been cursed. Her mother’s hair had turned white when she was a young woman, when Rachel’s father began to leave in the evenings and not come home. Rachel would listen to her mother weep, but she never went to her. Perhaps there was a punishment for this, and she would always be the last to know her son.

  THE PIZZARROS INVITED FRITZ Melbye to dinner, an invitation he gratefully accepted, even though Camille had warned him that it was a trap. “They’ve heard rumors about you. Now they want to see you for themselves.”

  “Fine,” Melbye said agreeably.

  “They’ll study you as they would examine a sloth or a snake.”

  Melbye laughed. He had a great, strong laugh, which suited his good humor. He often had a hangover and found it difficult to leave his sleeping pallet before noon. “They’ll find I’m more sloth than snake.”

  Camille was sure his friend had no idea of who his parents were, how fierce they could be, even his mild father when the situation called for ferocity, and how dedicated they were to keeping him tied to a fate he was more and more convinced simply wasn’t his. He dreamed of Paris, often so deeply he didn’t know where he was when he awoke. Until Melbye, he’d been an early riser, but not anymore. In the late morning he often lay staring at the ceiling. The crack in the shape of a lion, the mulberry-colored drapes to keep out the heat of the sun, the mahogany dresser—it all seemed so unreal. He often thought he was dreaming that he’d come back to St. Thomas, and when he truly awoke he would be in Passy, at his aunt and uncle’s house, and that when he leapt from his bed and looked out the window, snow would be falling, covering the garden and the lawn, and all the birds that were singing in the trees would be doves and wrens instead of the parrots that woke him with their piercing cries.

  AT THE APPOINTED DINNER, his brothers and sisters crowded around the table as Frédéric interrogated Melbye. Though Melbye was already balding, and seemed far older than their son, he was a good-looking, charming man who was used to dominating a room with his fluid conversation. Why St. Thomas, Frédéric wanted to know, and what was next? Fritz had already confided in Camille that his plan was to go to Venezuela, and he had invited Camille to go with him. Fritz had no concerns that Venezuela was politically unstable; there, the races and religions were intermixed and he could live as a local person might. Also, he’d been told the sea views were extraordinary, visions he wouldn’t see elsewhere. Unfortunately, Melbye did not think to be guarded, and he slipped into his conversation his intention to head to Caracas, mentioning his hope that his friend would go with him. That was Camille’s parents’ greatest fear and all they needed to know about l’Ami Rouge. He was a dangerous man, at least when it came to their family. Camille saw them exchange a look and knew that the pleasant dinner, and his chances of fleeing were, at least temporarily, dashed.

  Rachel stood and left the table. “This has been a long evening,” she said as she excused herself, clearly dismissing their guest.

  “Did I offend her?” Melbye asked when she’d left the room and closed herself into the kitchen.

  “I’m afraid you have,” Frédéric told the young man. The candles on the table were burning down into puddles of wax.

  “I apologize,” Melbye said. He hadn’t known many Jews, and thought perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps the solution was merely to get to know them better. “I don’t know your traditions. Perhaps I was supposed to say a prayer?”

  Camille shook his head, trying to warn his friend, but Melbye blundered on.

  “I haven’t had a Jewish friend before, you see.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Frédéric replied. “Jews are too busy working to engage in the nonsense you propose. I’m afraid you have no purpose and, in our opinion, no real future.” He had heard the rumors after all. Everyone in their community had. The madman on the beach, the fellow who lived in the Savan when everyone else wanted to move out of that vile place.

  “Is art nonsense?” Camille said, his hackles up.

  “Not for other people perhaps. Just for reasonable men.”

  “Are we reasonable men, Father, and have you always acted so when there was something you wanted?” Camille said, a not so veiled reference to his father’s past and the decisions he’d made when he first came to the island.

  “I was always reasonable,” Frédéric replied. “I reasoned your mother was meant to be my wife.”

  In the kitchen, Rachel had boxed up the molasses cake Hannah had brought for dessert. Rosalie had had her baby, Carlo, and her presence was greatly missed in the household. There was only a day woman to help with the laundry and cooking. Rachel would go see Rosalie in the morning and tell her about the foolishness that had happened at dinner and bring back what was left of the cake with her. She busied herself with chores Rosalie would have helped her with in the past. It was a bother, but tonight she was grateful to have cause to remove herself from the table. She did not wish to see that so-called painter and was waiting for him to leave when he suddenly appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  Rachel eyed him, annoyed. “Excuse me,” she said. “You’re in the wrong place.”

  “That’s what your son says about himself. He doesn’t belong here. Although it’s a beautiful island.”

  Melbye towered over her. With his long, uneven, red-blond hair and loping gait, he brought to mind the monsters people said lived in the hills, one of the things that turned into a werewolf at midnight and ran through the streets. Only this fellow lived right in the center of town, in the Savan, where he didn’t belong.

  “Did you ever wish to have another life?” Melbye said.

  Rachel stiffened. She knew when she was being courted, for whatever purpose, and had no intention of discussing the intimate details of her life. “Sir, please do not address me. I have the kitchen to see to.”

  Melbye came to lean against the stove. He wore his white suit, which he’d had pressed by a laundress for this even
ing’s dinner. Rachel shuddered when she realized he was not wearing shoes. This barefoot Dane had his nerve to come into her house in this manner, and he didn’t even know how rude he was. She was relieved to think he’d be gone soon enough. Still he leaned back as if this kitchen was his home. As if they’d wanted him here.

  “Take my advice,” he suggested. “Let him go.”

  Rachel laughed. He really was the most preposterous man. She would have a lot to talk to Rosalie about in the morning. Rosalie would surely be jealous that she had not seen this character for herself and hadn’t been there to give him a dressing-down, something she was quite good at.

  “Sir,” Rachel said. “I will have to ask you to leave.”

  “You know what it’s like to want more than you have. I can see it in you.” When she gave something away in her expression, Melbye nodded, pleased with himself. He theorized that an artist knew more about people in an instant than most people learned in a lifetime. “It’s true. And yet you tie him here, as you were tied here when you were young.”

  Rachel turned to him then. He was a canny fellow, smarter than his friendly demeanor would have caused one to think. He thought he knew her, but he knew nothing. Could he imagine that she had stood on the Reverend’s doorstep in the pouring rain and screamed for him to open the door until her lungs nearly burst? She removed her apron and folded it neatly.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “Your father pays your expenses.”

  “My expenses are small.” He looked embarrassed all the same now that the topic had arisen, so they couldn’t have been as small as all that.

  “I won’t do it,” Rachel said. “It will ruin him.”

  Melbye disagreed. “It will save him.”

  “You were a guest in my house. Now I am asking you to leave. Go to Venezuela. I think you should. Go tonight. You’ll be much better off if you do. I’ve heard you’re called the Red Friend. Well, if you’re any friend at all to my son, you’ll leave him be.”