Feast of All Saints (25 page)

As they passed the Ste. Marie cottage it was completely dark, as Richard had expected, but he realized now that Philippe Ferronaire was not stopping there, and it was for this reason no doubt that he had not taken Dazincourt to the boardinghouse himself. He had not wished to be seen passing, naturally. At least Marcel might have some time.

I
T HAD BEEN A LONG
while since Richard had seen Anna Bella, except at Sunday Mass, and he was rather surprised when it was she who answered the front door. He was glad. He wanted a chance to talk with her alone.

In the normal course of his life, Anna Bella was a person Richard would never have known and never have noticed. But Richard did not fully realize this. It was Marcel who had made them close, they were his best friends, and Richard had grown fond of her in the last few years, trusted her certainly, and was eager in his concern for Marcel to speak with her now.

Anna Bella was to him, however, an American Negro having been born and brought up in the north of Louisiana in a small country town. Her father, the only free colored barber there and a very prosperous one, had been shot down one day in the street by a man who owed him money; and her mother having died some time before, Anna Bella fell into the hands of a kindly white man whom she always called Old Captain who brought her down to New Orleans to board with an elderly quadroon, Madame Elsie Clavière.

In times gone by, Madame Elsie had been more than a landlady to Old Captain, but that was all past. He had white whiskers and a bald head, could speak eloquently of the days when Indians still attacked the walls of Nouvelle Orléans, and Madame Elsie, crippled in the damp mornings with arthritis, walked with a cane. But she had been a wise woman when young, saved her money, and turned her townhouse into a fine boarding establishment for white gentlemen, from which she herself retired to a parlor and several bedrooms beyond the courtyard in back.

It was there that Anna Bella grew up, played with the neighborhood children, and had lessons in French and in the making of Alençon lace. She made her First Communion with the Carmelites, studied
for a while with a Bostonian Protestant who couldn’t pay his rent, and drew from her father’s estate at a downtown bank all that she required.

She was ladylike in dress and manner, wearing her raven hair in a thick chignon, and though she spoke French now fluently, English was still her native tongue, and to Richard she was most definitely as foreign as the Americans who settled the
faubourg
uptown.

Of course, technically, he was as American as she was, but though born in the United States, Richard was a Creole
homme de couleur
, spoke French almost exclusively, and had lived all his life in the “old city” bounded on the one side by the Boulevard Esplanade and on the other by the Rue Canal.

But there were more profound reasons why Anna Bella would never have gotten more than a glance from him had it not been for Marcel.

For though she had skin the color of wax candles, a perpetual bloom in her cheeks that was a rose, and large liquid brown eyes heavily fringed with a sweep of soft lashes, she had an African nose, broad and somewhat flat, and a full African mouth. In addition there was about her stance, her long neck and the easy sway of her hips, something that reminded him all too much of the black
vendeuses
who carried their wares to market in baskets atop their heads. All things African frightened him and put him off.

But this was not really known to him. If anyone had accused him of looking down on Anna Bella he would have been mortified, steadfastly denying it, and perhaps have gone so far as to insist that no such superficial judgment on the basis of appearance could cause him to dismiss a feeling, thinking human being, or even run the risk of hurting feelings as tender as hers. Was he not a man of color, he might have asked, did he not understand prejudice all too well, feeling its sting day after day?

But the truth is he did not understand it. He did not understand that its nature is that it is insidious, a vast collection of vague feelings that can wind their way into notions that are seemingly practical in nature, all too human, and have sometimes the deceptive aura of being common sense.

And in his heart of hearts, without ever voicing it to himself, Richard was repelled by Anna Bella’s Africanness because of what it represented to him, the degraded state of slavery that was all round, and he would never have considered for an instant infusing by marriage into his own line those strong indications of Negro blood which had proved so obvious and profound a disadvantage for three generations and had now all but passed from the Lermontants.

These feelings, unknown, unexamined, led all too easily to a sense on his part that they were different, could have little in common, must
move in different worlds. But the sum of it was that he did not consider Anna Bella his equal and the measure of it was the courtly manner in which he invariably treated her, the near fussy politeness that governed his actions in her regard.

Of course had he fallen in love with her, he might well have thrown all this to the winds. But he couldn’t have fallen in love with her. And in fact pitied her slightly.

But again, of all these things, he was unaware. And when Marcel once remarked in one of those dreamy and disturbing conversations that Anna Bella came nearest in his estimation to being “the perfect person,” Richard had been baffled in the extreme.

“What do you mean, ‘perfect person’?” Richard had asked. Thereby opening the door to one of Marcel’s longest, most abstract and rambling speeches which seemed to culminate in this: she was honest in a selfless way, and would tell Marcel the truth when he needed it, even if it made him mad.

“Well, it’s sometimes very hard to tell you the truth, I’ll admit that,” Richard had murmured with a smile. But the rest he didn’t understand. Anna Bella was a sweet girl, he’d break the neck of anybody that hurt her; she’d make some hardworking man a good wife.

But he’d been a little surprised to hear Monsieur Philippe call her a pretty girl. And even now, watching her climb the steps ahead of Monsieur Dazincourt, throwing the light of her oil lamp before her, he found in the elastic movement of her hips, and the long low slope of her shoulders, something animalian and disconcerting. It was as if despite her carefully clustered curls and the pressed folds of her blue cotton skirt flaring so neatly from her whalebone waist, she was the black woman in the fields, the black woman swaying to the Sunday African Drums in the Place Congo. Very pretty? Well, actually…yes. He was not aware that Dazincourt who was plodding upward and down the long hallway after her had on the same matter decidedly more robust thoughts.

“Richard,” she hissed at him from the top of the stairs when she was alone. He turned in the dim light from the fan window and saw her coming down in a hurry, like a little girl, her boots making not the slightest sound, the lamp held miraculously still at arm’s length.

“You’ll spill that!” he said, taking it and setting it down.

“Oh, I’m so glad to see you. I wanted to talk to you Sunday but I just couldn’t get the chance. Come in here Richard, Madame Elsie’s gone to bed; she’s all crippled with this damp weather, she can barely walk.”

She drew him into the parlor which was for the boarders and told him to sit down. He disliked being here. He had never visited her in these rooms.

“You’ve got to take a message for me to Marcel.” she said.

“Then you haven’t seen him…I mean today.” There had always been the chance. In times past, when hurt, Marcel always went to Anna Bella. But that was before he had started to deliberately lose his mind.

“Oh, I haven’t seen him in months!” she said, her head inclining to one side, her hands clasped in her lap.

He murmured awkwardly that it was one of Marcel’s moods. It was a shame to treat her shabbily when before Marcel had visited her almost every afternoon.

“It’s got nothing to do with moods,” she shook her head. “It’s Madame Elsie, she drove him off.”

“But why?” he whispered.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said disgustedly. “She says we’re too old now just to be friends, me and Marcel. Imagine that, me and Marcel, you know how it is with me and Marcel. Oh, I don’t pay her any mind, not really, not when it comes to something like this. But I can’t get to see him long enough to tell him that. I can’t just go down there to his house anymore, she doesn’t need to tell me that, we’re not children.”

He nodded at once. He was embarrassed. He was not at all sure that Madame Elsie might not appear at the slightest moment and here they sat in this shadowy parlor with the light behind Anna Bella’s rounded shoulder, and he was wildly distracted by her breasts. It seemed that she sat with them deliberately thrust forward and her head back so that a sloping line ran from the tip of her chin to the tip of what was almost brushing his arm. He did not like it, did not approve of it. And if anyone had pointed out to him that his own sister Giselle carried herself in much the same manner he would have been amazed. All he saw when he looked at Giselle was Giselle.

“Of course I’ll take a message to him for you,” he said at once, feeling guilty for these thoughts. She seemed trusting, simple, and her eyes were like those of a doe.

“Just tell him that I have to see him, Richard…” she began.

The door handle turned in the hallway. Several white men entered with the heavy tread of boots. Richard was on his feet at once and Anna Bella, taking the lamp showed the men up the stairs, leaving Richard in darkness. As soon as she returned, he headed for the door.

“I’ll tell him as soon as I see him, but that might be a little while.”

“Oh, but you’ll tell him for sure?” she asked. And again she dropped her head to one side. A long loose lock made a perfect curl against her pale neck. “Seems like I can’t go to market or to church anymore without Madame Elsie has to go with me, I can’t even get out the door. And then when he comes, she’s right there with him in the
parlor and wants to know why he’s there. You never saw such nonsense…” she dropped her voice. “And then she leaves me here late to let the gentlemen in!”

He did not answer her. He was staring at her, and then stammering, “I’ll tell him,” as he glanced at the floor. Above he heard the creak of the floorboards, the click of a lock. The house seemed vast, dark, and treacherous to him then as he slowly raised his eyes, and he felt an anger rising in him slowly and somewhat coldly so that he could not quite understand her words.

“…that he should come at supper time, Richard,” she was saying, “Madame Elsie’s always busy then, sitting in the pantry, watching everything, she wouldn’t even know. Marcel and I could talk in the back…”

“Surely there are the maids about,” he murmured now, his voice thick. “You’re not here at night all alone.”

“Zurlina’s sleeping in the back,” Anna Bella waved that away. “Don’t you worry about that. But tell Marcel, Richard, tell him I have to talk to him now.”

He did not relax until he heard the door close behind him and he was alone in the empty street.

Turning he saw through the fanlight her lamp moving upward and then the glass went dark. He stood motionless for a moment, anger gripping him, thinking of nothing but the words that she had said. So Marcel wasn’t to call on her anymore, was he, so they were too old for that, were they, so Marcel mustn’t come around. And yet she was alone in that house, “to let the gentlemen in.” No, Marcel wasn’t good enough, what young man of color
would
be good enough, even for that simple country girl, the daughter of a freed slave? No, but she had to stay up late to let the “gentlemen” in. “There’s a young girl there, a pretty girl,” Philippe Ferronaire had said, pretty girl, pretty girl, pretty girl.

Richard turned on his heel toward the Rue Burgundy, his head down, his hands hanging heavily at his sides. He would speak to Marcel at once. But by the time he had reached the corner it was his father’s image that was speaking to him, Rudolphe in the close heat of the shop this morning speaking so cynically, so earnestly of Marie Ste. Marie and the world. That sudden warm admonition that had shocked Richard to the core, “Son, don’t break your heart.”

Well, perhaps Rudolphe did know the world, the world of Dolly Rose and old Madame Rose, and Madame Elsie with her thumping cane. But he did not know Marie. He did not know Marie! The world was one thing, but all people are not of it. Some are better than it, apart from it, more splendid, untouchable and pure.

And as he finally mounted the steps of his home, he was dogged
by a rasping fragment of all the long day’s exhaustions and frustrations: Dolly, glazed-eyed as she lay against her pillow, saying so crudely to Christophe, “Only white men,” only white men, only white men. Well, Christophe, welcome home.

A
WEEK PASSED
before Marcel saw Christophe again. All the while he had been afraid to knock at the gate, afraid that Christophe would not want to see him and that he would be sent away. At times it occurred to him that Christophe had been drunk the night of their clandestine meeting in the St. Louis Cemetery and might have forgotten the later conference at Madame Lelaud’s. Marcel believed this because he himself had been so drunk, yet he did remember every marvelous detail even to the morning sun falling on his eyelids when he had at last thrown himself across his bed.