An Embarrassment of Riches (18 page)

“How delightful. Then perhaps I might bargain for a drawing lesson or two as well.”

“It would be my pleasure,” I replied, a chill running down my spine. The words
bargain
and
pleasure
suggested motifs that I dared not explore. “Are you going riding, madame?” I inquired to change the subject.

“Evidently so,” she said, as though the question were foolish.

“Here? On the floating palace?”

“Don't be absurd. On the mainland.”

“Is it not dangerous there?”

“I am in good hands, monsieur,” she said, indicating with her whip the several stoical Choctaws standing behind her.

“But what of the wild animals?”

“What of them?”

“Gargantua.”

“Gargantua…?”

“The giant sloth,
le bête formidable
.”

“Monsieur, I don't know what you are talking about. Hercule! Apollon! Prométhée!
En avant!
I look forward to our interview later, Monsieur Sammy. For now, adieu.”

She smiled alluringly and brushed past me, the three strapping savages in her wake.

For most of that day, Uncle and I were separated. He remained at the chateau with his new friend and fellow botanist LeBoeuf, the two of them comparing notes and cataloguing the vast trove of heretofore undescribed species that the Frenchman had assembled in his garden. I, on the other hand, was discharged out upon the river to hunt for our quarry.

I was placed in the charge of that enigmatic officer Yago, along with ten of his loyal tribesmen. The craft we set out upon was a sort of snub-nosed scow, perhaps twenty-five feet from bow to stern, with an eight-foot beam. There was no cabin, but merely a kind of platform toward the bow, upon which were placed two ornately carved mahogany armchairs with royal blue damask upholstered seats. Yago gestured to the one at left and handed me a rifle.

It was a paragon of the gunsmith's art, with gray scrollwork and double-wire gold inlays on the barrel top, hammer, flashpan, and trigger guard; a gold bead front sight; a gold engraved figure of a rampant lion upon the breech; and a lustrously polished walnut burl stock. The thing must have been worth as much as a blooded Arabian stallion.

“Monsieur's own piece,” Yago informed me. He sat down in the right-hand armchair. Though attired once again in his native breechcloth, Yago acted very much the part of a commissioned gentleman. He did not bark or shout his orders at his subordinates, but rather spoke gently, like one accustomed to command. Toward me, however, he evinced a new and rather keen air of antipathy, and I wondered if he had, in fact, seen me crouching in the corridor the night before, after all.

“Where exactly are we going?” I asked as we hove away from the palace wharf.

“To the hunting ground,” Yago replied coolly, as though it were none of my business.

“Not the happy hunting ground, I hope,” countered I in jest, but he ignored the remark.

The lake was as smooth as a mirror this morning, the vast plantation fields a dull green strip in the distance. The five braves at each side of the hunting barge paddled us around the rear of the floating palace. A mile beyond it, the lake narrowed and became a river once again, perhaps a quarter mile wide. On either side, the hemp fields continued as far as the eye could see. Here and there gangs of Negroes were visible toiling between the rows. Always, there were mounted Indian gang-drivers in supervision.

“Your master's holdings are immense,” I remarked. “How many of the blacks does he employ?”

“Many, many slaves,” Yago said.

“Where do they live, all these slaves?”

“On shore. In quarters.”

“What keeps them from running away?”

“We keep them from running away,” Yago said.

“Does he pay you well?”

“Monsieur rewards us.”

“With money?”

Yago spit in the water.

“You Americans are a funny tribe,” he said. “All you understand is money.”

For a moment he gazed at me with all the cold hatred of a mortal enemy. There was a sort of eloquence to his malice that was impossible to rebut, however, and so I did not try. Our conversation came to an end for the time being. We glided upstream on the lazy current. Soon, one of Yago's supernumeraries took up a position on the prow and began blowing a curled brass horn. It produced a surprisingly undulant, melancholy baritone note.

“What is he doing?” I inquired.

“Blowing the horn,” Yago answered, as though my question were idiotic.

“I can see very well that he is blowing a horn,” I retorted. “
Why
is he blowing a horn?”

“This is how we hunt Gargantua, monsieur,” Yago replied, his icy smile a contrast to the moist summer heat.

“Is it supposed to be the mating cry or some such?”

He grunted in the affirmative.

“Have you killed many of these beasts yourself?”

He nodded gravely.

“What do you do with the antlers?” I next inquired, knowing full well that the animal in question possessed no antlers.

“We make tools,” he said without a second thought, and I began to suspect he had never laid eyes on an example of the species, let alone slain any.

We glided further upstream in near silence, interrupted only by those mournful blasts of the horn and the splash of the paddles. The afternoon sun bore down upon us with full force. The temperature must have climbed above one hundred degrees. I took off my waistcoat and, lacking a hat, draped it over my head in the manner of a Muhammadan. Even our gondoliers began to show signs of prostration, and eventually one dropped at his very station. The others knelt to bring the poor devil to, Yago ministering to him as tenderly as a nurse. It was yet another revealing facet of his multiplex character. Water was splashed on the fallen henchman's brow and his temples massaged. Soon he revived and we continued on. The very birds of the air now shrank from the fierce heat, and not a twitter did I hear between those lowing, lugubrious trumpet blasts. The hemp fields gave way to a mixed terrain of forest and beargrass meadow. We had come perhaps five or six miles in all. Suddenly, several of the crew began to shout in their savage tongue.

“Wah-tash! Wah-tash!”
they cried, pointing to an expanse of prairie on the left-hand bank. Yago commanded the hornsman to cease his trumpetings. An herd of several dozen bison came into view, grazing peacefully on the lush grass near the river.
“Wah-tash! Wah-tash!”

“The first shot is yours, monsieur,” Yago said.

“These are buffalo,” I protested, “not Gargantua.”

He shrugged like a regular Frenchman. “We shoot for the table,” he said. “Show us what a marksman is the flower-hunter's nephew,” he added with unconcealed sarcasm, and even a few of his subalterns sniggered behind my back.

I rose to the challenge. The range to target was several hundred yards, but the targets were large, and there were quite a number of them. Yago left his seat and stole around amidships with his brethren to watch. I shouldered the exquisite rifle, took aim at the choicest bull in the herd, and squeezed the trigger. There was a flash in the pan, but no report. My heart sank to my bowels.

“Quel Malheur!”
I heard Yago remark as the gun exploded in my hands.

The concussion knocked me to the deck unconscious. I revived sometime later, laid out upon the forward platform like a corpse upon a funeral barge, my arms crossed over my breast. Overhead, the grim figure of the Indian loomed against the blinding sun.

“What happened?” I croaked, my lips blistered and swollen.

“An accident,” Yago said. “The day's hunt is at an end, monsieur.”

It all came back to me now: the buffalo, the flash.

“You ought to have a word or two with the fellow who charged that weapon,” I said.

“Depend upon it, monsieur,” Yago replied and did not utter another sentence until we landed at the quay outside the floating palace more than an hour later. I limped inside under my own power. Both LeBoeuf and Uncle were horrified at the sight of me.

“Yago! What is the meaning of this?” his liege lord asked in a state of much agitation.

“Bad gun,” the Indian said bluntly.

“Bad gun? That was a Charleville! My best piece!
Merde!
”

Yago shrugged.

“All right, all right, return to your duties,” the Frenchman told him. The implacable savage spun on his heels and exited the courtyard. “Please, accept my apology, Sammy. But do not despair. You shall get your specimen tomorrow or the next day, I assure you.”

I was taken upstairs to Madame, who saw to my injuries. They proved to be largely superficial. My eyebrows were burnt off, my lower face tattooed with powder, and my palms scorched. Madame dabbed the blisters with unguent and swaddled my hands in gauze. The while she worked, I felt the very heat of her body close to mine, smelled the perfume rising off her clefted bosom, till I was ready to swoon again, this time with shameful promptings of desire.

“Take off your shirt, young man,” she said in a businesslike tone of voice.

“But—”

“We must make sure there are no minor injuries lurking about your person.”

She helped pull the blouse over my head.

“What a nice slender physique you have, my little
voyageur
,” she remarked, running her long-nailed fingers along the region of my
pectoralis major
. Her nostrils flared.

“Do you see any wounds?” I asked.

“Not yet. Turn around.”

I showed her my back.

She examined it closely, then began to knead the muscles of my neck and shoulder.

“How do you like that?”

“Is this a treatment, Madame LeBoeuf?”

“O, yes. Required in cases of traumatic apoplexy. Your brain has suffered a terrible jolt from the force of the explosion. Relaxation will hasten your recovery. There. Do you feel better?”

“Like a new man,” said I, almost wishing my injuries had been worse, that I might have enjoyed more extensive treatments.

“Well then, run along, monsieur.”

As I put on my shirt, the idea of Madame in the arms of that skulking cad, Yago, returned to my brain and roused me from this state of languid complacency. Was the exploding gun an accident, an attempt on my life, or merely a warning? I trembled to imagine.

Supper was another sumptuous epicurean adventure of wilderness gourmandizing: bullhead mousse in watercress cream, stuffed saddle of venison, baby carrots glazed with butter and honey, boiled new potatoes, pepper jelly, pickled gherkins, and a dessert of pear tartlets. On account of my injuries, Madame assisted me in cutting my meat, her heady jasmine perfume mingling with the steam from the enticing comestibles.

“What a treat is in store for you tonight, Sammy,” LeBoeuf addressed me as the fish course made its entrance. “You say that you enjoy the theater?”

“I do, very much, monsieur,” said I.

“Tonight it is my pleasure to present
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice
, by William Shakespeare.”

“Which part shall I read?” I asked, thinking we would all retire to the library for a recitation.

“No, Sammy, I am taking you to the theater tonight,” LeBoeuf insisted. Uncle William smiled, and I sensed that he knew something I didn't.

“Shall we float down to New Orleans for the evening, then, to take in a performance?” I rejoined jokingly.

“Not at all,” our host said with a wink, and I could not for the life of me imagine what he had in mind. Had a troop of itinerant players,
à la Hamlet
, wandered up the Tennessee River today, and if so, where are they now?

“I admit, I am puzzled, monsieur,” said I.

LeBoeuf clearly relished my bewilderment, as did Madame and even Uncle, who was in on the secret. Yago, as usual, looked on with stoical indifference, while Lou-Lou squirmed in his seat.

“May I tell him, Uncle Fernand?”

“No, Lou-Lou. Let him enjoy the suspense.”

With that, the subject was laid aside till the end of the meal.

“Fernand, my friend,” Uncle took the supper conversation on a fresh tack, “how did thee come to this wilderness garden spot from faraway France?”

“The revolution,” he answered gravely, holding his wine to the light of the chandelier. “You cannot conceive the corruption, the venality, the
idiocy
in that twilight of the
ancient régime
—”

Lou-Lou gagged on his mousse. His coughing spell lasted a minute. LeBoeuf patted him on the back and inquired after his well-being. Shortly the young man resumed eating.

“It all had to come crashing down!” LeBoeuf pounded his fist upon the table for emphasis, rattling the china. “Our king, sixteenth of that line, was an imbecile with the powers of a god on earth! Surrounded by a veritable army of mewling sycophants, fornicating idlers, blooded doxies, useless dregs of humanity who happened to be born of the noble line. But, as any simple farmer will tell you, too much interbreeding over the years produces a monstrous stock. And O, what a hogpen of degraded aristocracy was Versailles!