The Marriage Of Opposites

Jacobo comes back to St. Thomas and immediately wants to leave, thinking, “The major reason he had wanted to stay in France was evident as soon as he returned to his small bedchamber. There he found his mother unpacking his luggage, rooting around in the large trunk that had been battered from his voyage” (255). She finds the letters from Lydia, but he tells her they’re none of her business. He also says that he’s now going by Camille, but she insists on calling him Jacobo. 

Camille gives the letters to Jestine and tells her all about Lydia. Jestine feels a righteous anger, “as if there was a bubble rising up through her chest. It was clawing at her, everything she didn’t want to feel but felt anyway. A desire for revenge for all she’d lost. Not only a daughter had been stolen but an entire family” (258). He leaves and she reads the letters alone.

Jacobo goes back to working in his father’s store. However, he still doesn’t take it seriously and he messes up everything he attempts. He feels bitter, “unable to lead an artist’s life, a victim of the bourgeois fate he’d been born into” (262). He doesn’t think it’s fair to charge people for goods they can’t afford, and he ends up giving things away. In the evenings he goes back to the late herb man’s shack, painting and thinking. He finds the herb man’s bones, lays beside them, closes his “eyes and dreamed he was the herbalist holding a baby, staring into its wide eyes, seeing his own death” (265). He sees Marianna in town and feels imprisoned by his inability to be with her. 

Camille often brings groceries to Helena James, Madame Halevy’s former maid. On one occasion, Mrs. James is worried because she’s heard that Madame Halevy’s estranged daughter, Rebecca, is back in town, and the only reason she would ever come back is to try to claim her mother’s belongings. However, since Rebecca hadn’t talked to her mother in a long time and hadn’t even attended her funeral, Madame Halevy had left most of her things to the much more loyal Mrs. James. Sure enough, Rebecca shows up at Mrs. James’s door, demanding that her mother’s former things be given to her. However, Camille and Frédéric are there, and they stand up for Mrs. James. When Rebecca is still adamant, Mrs. James says that she knows the truth about her. This ultimately makes Rebecca leave, as it’s clear she doesn’t want her secret getting out. 

Once everyone leaves, Mrs. James tells Camille that Rebecca had given birth to a boy when she was only seventeen. She abandoned him next to a cemetery, perhaps thinking “somebody would find him and maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe he would be drowned by the rain pouring down or maybe he would swim like a fish. She didn’t know and didn’t care. She ran away like a shadow or a demon, so fast you’d never know she was there” (279). The father was a dark-skinned sailor. Mrs. James knows all these things because she often kept secret watch over her. After Rebecca abandoned the baby, Mrs. James took him to Madame Halevy and told her what had happened. Madame Halevy gave her grandson to Rachel’s mother, who essentially adopted him and told everyone she was raising an orphaned relative. This little abandoned baby was Aaron, Rachel’s supposed cousin and Lydia’s father. 

Camille continues to fail in his family’s store. Meanwhile, Jestine is making a special dress for her daughter; the two talk twice a week through letters. One day while Camille is visiting Jestine, he sees a painter near the water. He introduces himself to the man who turns out to be 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” (285). The two become instant friends, staying up late, drinking, and sleeping in each morning.

Camille’s parents invite Fritz to dinner, but when he says that he wants Camille to travel the world with him and paint, Rachel asks him to leave. Camille and Fritz make a pact to leave the island together, but one night Rachel pays the authorities to go after Fritz. They come in the middle of the night, when he’s sleeping next to his neighbor, Jenny Alek. He runs away, and when Camille finds out what happened, he leaves the island, too. Rachel is so upset that she wanders around the woods and eventually stumbles upon Camille’s painting shack, the walls of which are covered in his paintings. For the first time, she sees the scope of his talent: “The sheer beauty of her son’s artistry made her dizzy. There were their two worlds, the place where they’d been raised and the city they dreamed of” (298).

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, 1855, Camille Pizzarro

Camille finally returns to St. Thomas after having been gone for two years because his older brother Joseph Félix has passed away from yellow fever. He feels guilty for his absence and for not having been closer to his siblings, especially because he didn’t come back for the funeral of his youngest brother, Aaron, who had died of the fever as. Back on the island, Camille feels like a stranger. “He was broke and unkempt, looking like one of the scruffy Americans who arrived on the island with nothing, desperate for a change of fate. He was no longer a boy with dreams of Paris, but a man of twenty-five who knew something of the world” (300). 

He goes straight to the cemetery and hugs his father, but his mother only acknowledges him with a nod. He notices she looks “older, smaller somehow. She made him think of a blackbird in a tree. […] He noticed that she failed to cry. But of course she had never been one to show her feelings in a public place; she saw it as a sign of weakness” (301). After the funeral, there is a family gathering, but his sister Delphine isn’t there; she’s living in France with relatives because she’s ill and seeking medical care. He wishes he were with her, living apart from the “bondage of his bourgeois background, allowing him to be among real people with real concerns. Now here he was, in the thick of his family. Already he felt a noose around his throat” (302). He talks briefly with his mother who comments on how she thought he would never be back, especially considering he didn’t come back after Aaron’s death. 

The next day, he goes to retrieve his luggage from the wharf, and he’s greeted by his mother. She asks him to open his luggage so she can see what he’s been painting. He complies, and she picks up a “study of a harbor, filled with ships. There was a cloudiness to it, as if the seascape had been viewed through a mist. On the day Camille had begun it, he’d worked so feverishly he’d fallen ill and still he could not stop” (306). She tells him that she’ll take it, and he gives it to her, surprised that she likes his work. She hangs it in the parlor for all to see. 

He ends up working back at the shop with his father. Although his “life on St. Thomas was a burden he wished he could cast off, but couldn’t. Now, with his brothers gone, it was back to the store for him. There was no other option. This time he was quiet and did his work as best he could” (309). At night he takes long walks, and one night he meets Mrs. James’s grandson Roland who tells him that Mrs. James died only six months ago. Roland and Camille quickly become friends. Camille admits to feeling trapped, but Roland says, “Run away. I know you’re going to do it. So do it sooner rather than later. One day we won’t see you around and then someone will say, Oh, he’s gone and he’s not coming back. Sure, I’ll miss you, but I’ll be happy for you as well. You should do it before something happens and you wind up married with a pack of children” (311). He then reveals that Mrs. James left Camille a gold ring that used to belong to Madame Halevy. He says that she left it for him because “the three of you shared something” (312). She was of course thinking about the story of abandoned baby Aaron, because only the three of them know about it. 

Somehow, the ring inspires Camille to paint again. He goes back to his shack in the woods and paints through the night “in a frenzy, painting until morning. Then he hurried home in the dew and chill, and arrived with a cough. He went to bed, and when he woke his mother was there” (313). He has a high fever, and Rachel stays by his side until it breaks. Spending time with Camille in his fevered state reminds Rachel of a hazy memory from her childhood; she remembers seeing Madame Halevy at their door, giving her mother a baby wrapped in a blanket. Madame had said to keep it a secret, and her mother said she would be happy to. 

Camille again begins giving away groceries from the family store to people in need. Mr. Enrique realizes this and tells Rachel. Afterwards, Rachel takes Camille out for coffee. He says that he can’t justify overcharging people in need, and she says that it’s a business that’s meant to make money for the family. Then she gives him an envelope with a ticket to France. She says that he can go after he helps his father get the store back on its feet. She and Jestine are going to France immediately.

Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas/Paris France, 1855, Rachel Pomié Petit Pizzarro

Rachel opens the chapter with news about the coming US Civil War: “There was trouble brewing in America, a lawlessness that sometimes portends war. Our business was failing due to the unreliable shipping trade, particularly along the coast of South Carolina, where piracy was not only indulged but, it seemed, encouraged” (323). Before leaving, Rachel says goodbye to Rosalie, who alludes to the fact that Rachel’s father was likely having an affair with Adelle, Jestine’s mother. Rachel also puts flamboyant tree branches on Isaac’s first wife’s grave one more time. 

At the age of sixty, Rachel finally makes it to France after dreaming about it her whole life. She has come to be with her sick daughter, Delphine, while Frédéric and Camille stay behind to get their business in order. Jestine accompanies Rachel in order to finally meet her daughter. Jestine stays with Lyddie and her family, while Rachel lives with Delphine in a large apartment, awaiting Frédéric’s arrival. Despite having a constant nurse, Delphine grows sicker and is coughing up blood. Rachel feels lonely, so she hires servants who fill the apartment with commotion. Julie, a young servant girl from a country farm, is a wonderful cook. 

Frédéric and Camille arrive just in time to say bye to Delphine, who dies shortly after. After Delphine’s death, Rachel prepares the room for Camille, who stays with his parents begrudgingly. He ends up falling in love with Julie, but Rachel tries to break them up, thinking that an uneducated servant girl isn’t good enough for her son; plus, she’s not Jewish, so it would be against their religion for them to marry. In response, Camille says, “You’re not serious. Do you dare tell me about the rules of marriage? Was I not the one who went to the Moravian School? Who had no bar mitzvah? Who was an outcast from my own people? All because of you. You did as you pleased” (341). 

Camille has grown into “an anarchist and a leader of his fellow painters, all outsiders who were not wed to the old-fashioned forms of realism, all of whom looked up to him” (343). Despite not being married, he and Julie have a baby. Rachel refuses to visit or bless their union. In 1865, Lydia’s daughter Leah marries Dr. Hady, a doctor from Senegal. Dr. Hady has been treating Frédéric, who has “fallen ill with a sort of wasting disease. For several months, my husband had difficulty eating, and the doctor often came to our apartment” (345). Frédéric doesn’t complain about pain, but it’s clear that he’s in excruciating agony. 

One morning, Frédéric has a high fever and is hallucinating. Dr. Hady gives him a tea that he says may help, but Rachel soon realizes it’s not a cure, but a narcotic meant to help with the pain before death. After three days, Rachel sends for Camille. The two bond, and Camille finally tells Rachel the story about Aaron. He gives the ring to Rachel and tells her to give it to Jestine and say, “Aaron Rodrigues wanted her to have it. He just never had the chance to give it to her” (352). 

When Frédéric dies, Rachel does her best to “tear down the curtain between death and the living world, to ensure that light and breath would enter into my husband once more. I breathed into his mouth and pounded on his chest. I called to him, but he didn’t return. He was gone from me” (353). She doesn’t leave her room for many weeks and sustains herself on laudanum. She suddenly longs for her home island because that’s where she made all the memories with Frédéric; France now feels only like the land of his death. Eventually, Camille and Jestine are able to pull Rachel from her mourning. 

Camille has a daughter and names her Jeanne-Rachel, after his and Julie’s mothers. Rachel decides that this is a sign and goes to finally see her grandchildren. After all, she is still supporting Camille financially, so he can’t say no to her visit. She immediately falls in love with the baby and decides to call her Rachel and dote on her. Camille and his mother finally grow closer, and she often babysits for her grandchildren, although she still doesn’t like Julie. One evening, Rachel and Jestine walk along the river and sit on a bench, where they finally see the turtle-girl. “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. […] Our sister, who could not decide whether or not to be human, sat down with us at last” (362).