Feast of All Saints (28 page)

“I’m not here to educate slaves, Michael.” Christophe’s voice was dull. He stood still with his back to the man, his shoulders slightly slumped, while Marcel watched, afire himself with rage. He felt the Englishman’s eyes on him now, on the disordered bookshelves behind his head. The pale, sharp-featured face showed some indignation, some thin and righteous disgust, and everything around the man appeared shabby suddenly, to have nothing of his own vibrant and gilded person. It infuriated Marcel, the sight of Christophe’s bent shoulders infuriated him, and above all it infuriated him that the room once so fabulous in its jumble of treasures was now dusty and smelled of mold.

With a thumb hooked in his pants pocket and a hand curled on his chin, Christophe was thinking. He drew himself up and said calmly,

“Go back to Paris, Michael. It’s a bad thing, your coming here. I should have written you, and I would have written in time. Now you must forgive me for that, and you must leave here. You can’t accomplish anything here. You had best get right on the boat for France
now, this isn’t the place for you, any other place in the world, perhaps, but not here…”

“It’s the place for you, Christophe?” the man asked. He strode about the room glaring at the shelves, at the sawdust that overlay the windowsills, and kicked a heap of curled maps with his foot. “It’s a marvelous measure of character the debris a man collects about him. We went through Greece with a knapsack if I remember, and in Cairo we had a small leather valise.”

Marcel had to rip his eyes off this man with an effort. It was as if the hatred he felt for him and the fear he felt of him kept him riveted. “I’ll come back, Monsieur,” he said striding toward the door.

“No!” Christophe pivoted. “I need you today! That is, I want you…I would prefer if you stay…” he was all but stammering, his eyes watery and gleaming. “There’s a knife somewhere,” he snapped his fingers…“those parcels, Marcel, the school’s to start on Monday, I’m not even close to prepared, the knife’s…the knife,” he snapped his fingers again, the voice barely under control.

“And who’s to come to this school, then, you’re teaching white students?” came the indignant voice. “Tell me what you are doing here, Chris!”

Marcel quickly drew out his keychain and the small silver knife attached to it, and cut through the twine of a loose bundle of books. He removed them from the crumpled paper, his hands awkward and fumbling under the Englishman’s hard gaze. He had to defy the man. He had to look at him. And as he ripped the twine of the next bundle, he looked up.

But the Englishman wasn’t looking at him at all. He was staring almost stupidly forward, the color still dark in his face. And he was suffering.

And Christophe, as if he couldn’t risk a moment’s hesitation, was snatching the books from the table and stuffing them into the shelves. His hands smoothed the rows, brought the spines out deftly to sit even with the edge. All his gestures said this man isn’t here, he’s not even here. But his face was stricken, and there was something hunted and miserable in his eyes. When a book slipped from his grasp, he snatched it angrily from the floor.

“Stop that!” the man said. He slapped the book out of Christophe’s hand. And then lowering his head as he bore down on Christophe, his voice went soft. “You did this to spite me, Chris? But why!”

“It has nothing to do with you, Michael!” Christophe was all but groaning. “Don’t you see! It’s what I want to do! It has nothing to do with you! I told you I was going home, I told you I was leaving Paris, I tried to talk with you before I left, you wouldn’t listen to me, I was in a glass box shouting at the top of my lungs, for God’s sakes, Michael, get out of here, go back to Paris, and let me alone!”

At that moment Juliet appeared at the door, and for an instant Marcel did not know who she was. A corseted lady stood there, immaculate in new muslin and all that lovely hair was drawn up in a wreath of braids on the back of her head. But there was no time for savoring this. She was looking intently at the Englishman.

And the Englishman was brutally stunned.

He had stepped back and moved by himself, in his thoughts, about the room. He took slow shuffling steps. Christophe was beside himself. He was struggling for control, and running a hand back through his hair now he turned toward the man, quite oblivious to Juliet or to Marcel.

“Look, I…I wasn’t prepared for this,” he said gently, “Michael, I didn’t expect you to come. I thought you’d write, yes, but…you’ve got to give me a little time to talk to you calmly, not now, later…when we can sit down…I’ve done nothing to spite you, I left without telling you, that was bad.”

“You’ve tried over and over to spite me, Christophe,” the man said calmly. “But when you ruin yourself to spite me, when you give up your life in Paris, when you leave your future there…you have found the perfect way.” And then looking up with an entreaty to reason, he said, “You can’t stay in this place.” He shrugged. “It’s out of the question, you can’t remain here.”

“No,” Juliet said suddenly. She lowered her heavy market basket to the floor and moved quickly toward her son. “Who is this man?” she said.

“Not now, Maman, not now,” Christophe shook her off.

“Do you know what they are doing in the rotunda of my hotel?” the Englishman asked softly.

“I know, I know,” Christophe nodded wearily, shutting his eyes.

The Englishman sighed. He shook his head. “They’re auctioning slaves, Christophe. Do you know when we last saw that? It was in the hellholes of Egypt where all that remains of civilization lies in ruin, and this is America, Christophe, America!”

“Christophe,” Juliet whispered, “who is this man!”

“That has nothing to do with it,” Christophe said. “It’s got nothing to do with my being here or not being here, because it was the same before I was born and it will be the same after I’m dead…that’s not…”

“That you would come here, to live in this place,” said the Englishman softly, “to spite me—that has everything to do with it, Chris. I’m going back to the hotel now, a hotel where it is illegal for you to be lodged. And I am going to take my dinner in a room where it is illegal for you to share my table. And I am going to wait for you to come to me. Up the backstairs, no doubt, the human chattels who staff the place will show you the way. And then you can explain to me what this
exile is all about. Now, do I have your word you will come!” His green eyes gleamed with a sense of power.

And Christophe nodded, running that hand through his hair again. “Yes…later…tonight.”

The Englishman started towards the door. But then he stopped. He drew something out of his coat, a packet of papers. “Oh, yes, your publishers want to talk to you, about adapting
Nuits de Charlotte
for the stage…”

Christophe grimaced with disgust.

“…Frederich LerMarque wants to play Randolphe. Frederich LerMarque! And he’s willing to help you to adapt it, there’s a guarantee naturally, do you know what this means?”

“Nothing,” Christophe shook his head, “I cannot do it.”

The Englishman’s face showed a momentary flicker of rage. He glanced at Marcel coldly and Marcel at once looked away. Juliet was studying the man as if he were not a human creature at all.

“This is an author’s dream, Christophe,” the Englishman said with renewed patience. “LerMarque could pack the Porte-Saint-Martin, he could pack the Théâtre Français. Thousands would see your work, thousands who’ve never read a book in their lives…”

Christophe did not move. Then he turned to face the Englishman, and with an effort he made his face very calm and said gently, “No.”

“The flat in Paris is as you left it” the Englishman said, “the rooms are as you left them…your desk, your pens, it’s all still there. And I have infinite patience, Christophe, though at times I lose my temper. I am here to wait this out.” Leaving the packet on the table, he left.

A heavy silence lay over them.

Marcel was miserable. He found himself studying the small silver knife on his chain and realized he had deliberately cut the tip of his finger with it, and it was bleeding. He felt listless staring at it as though all the enthusiasm had been drained from him, drained from the room. Christophe’s eyes were leaden as he slumped into the chair.

“Egypt?” Juliet whispered. “You were with that man in Egypt?” Her brows knit like those of a child. Gently she placed her hands on Christophe’s neck and commenced to massage the muscles. “Christophe, you were in Egypt with that man?” She reached suddenly for the packet of papers. But Christophe jerked around and caught her wrist with careless violence.

“No, Maman, stop it, don’t be crazy for once!” He got the packet back and threw it down.

She stared at him. “Answer me, Christophe,” she said. Her voice was low and guttural, “Who is that man?”

“No, Maman, not now.”

“Who?”

“Maman, it doesn’t matter who is he. I’m not going back to Paris, I’m not going back!,” he looked up at her, removing her hand from his neck. “Now, get me something to eat, get Marcel something…leave it alone.”

She was not satisfied. Her eyes followed Christophe as he turned to Marcel, and began to murmur now, almost incoherently about the work at hand. Marcel was thinking dully of all the old stories he’d heard of the “tall Englishman” who lived with Christophe in Paris, the “the white Englishman” who carried him home from those glamorous
rive gauche
cafés. They should just clear this table, Christophe was saying, get this place in order, he had to have some twenty sets of texts by Monday morning and was sure to have to go back to the store at least twice. Juliet, her head cocked to one side, watched him and then, her lips moving silently with some angry speech, she lifted her skirts prettily and went out of the room.

Christophe was staring forward.

“Let me put these together by subject,” Marcel said, turning to the volumes on the shelf. “Then we can examine them, Monsieur, I mean…Christophe.”

Christophe looked up. He smiled. “Yes, Christophe, right,” he said. “Yes…alphabetical order for now, it doesn’t matter…” Some of the old vitality was struggling to return. There were trunks upstairs to be brought down, he said, and maps to be unrolled, pictures yet to be hung, it was so fortunate that Marcel was willing to help him, that Marcel had come by.

And it seemed by dusk that they had almost restored it, the excitement that Christophe had exuded when they had first entered this room. They drank coffee as the sun set, the windows open and that great twining Queen’s Wreath, much cut back, but still luxurious, framed the windows, and the fresh boards of a new cistern rose abruptly to the far left as if to the very sky.

Inside the room was clean. Books filled all the shelves, and in the hall, out of sight, lay the empty trunks. In a newly upholstered wing chair, Christophe sat beside the grate, looking about with a pleasant and relaxed air. He beamed at Marcel. And Marcel, having never done such work…the lugging of crates downstairs, the back-straining unpacking and sorting…was exhilarated and exhausted at the same time. They had had a fun time with the trunks, coming across random discoveries that sometimes made them laugh: a woman’s slipper, scarves, a fan Christophe had bought in Spain, playing cards, mantillas, and ladies’ buttons fixed to a card which in their tiny intricate carvings told a story of love won and love lost. Juliet had been delighted
with these unexpected finds, having thought she had cleaned these trunks long ago of all their real treasures, and indifferent to the ancient names of Horace, Pliny, Homer that they dug from the depths, had held the mantilla to the window, smiling, to see the sun through black lace.

Marcel, at the window with his coffee, savored the aroma, let the steam sting his eyes for no good reason, except perhaps that he was ashamed of watching Juliet in the open kitchen across the yard as she stirred the pot in the dim light of the fire; and pretending not to watch her, his eyes moved now and then to the fluttering hens that scampered across the purple flags. It was cool now. Getting darker, and the evening star shone in the deepening blue of the sky.

“What are you thinking, Marcel?” Christophe asked.

“Ah…that I like this time of day.” Marcel laughed. He’d been thinking that if he must live in torment this near to Juliet, he must watch his step. Now there was a whaleboned waist to clasp, as enticing as the flesh he knew to be inside of it. She drew down a black iron pan from the ghastly flickers at the kitchen ceiling, her back to him, her silhouette quite flat and utterly fetching.

“But what are you thinking, Christophe?” he asked.

“That you are my friend,” Christophe said. “And that your shirt is torn, and your coat is soiled and your mother will be angry with you.”

Marcel laughed, “My mother doesn’t tend to those things, Monsieur,” he said forgetting the old admonition. “She won’t know. And if she did, she’d be relieved to hear I wasn’t brawling in the streets, she’s been at her wits’ ends with me lately, though all of that is changed now.”

“You’ve grown up,” Christophe teased. There was a gleam in his eye. He tapped the ash from his cheroot into the grate. His shirt was open at the throat, and he sat with legs comfortably apart, one foot on the fender.

“I have, Monsieur.”

“You must like calling me Monsieur more than you like me,” Christophe said.

“I’m sorry. I forgot.”

He could hear that pan sizzling on the fire, smell the peppers, the onions, all mingled with the delicious aroma of the frying bacon. He filled his cup again and brought the pot to Christophe.

Christophe sat back, sipping his coffee, the room so dusky now that Marcel could not clearly make out his face. But he saw the gleam of his pocket watch as Christophe flicked it open.

“I have to go out for a while,” he said.

“And I should be getting home,” Marcel said.

“I want you to come back for supper, do you think your mother
will let you do that?” Christophe rose. He stretched, groaning with the obvious fatigue of his muscles. He reminded Marcel of Jean Jacques. In fact the atmosphere of Jean Jacques’ shop had been very much with Marcel this afternoon, coming and going, distant, sometimes violently clear. He had thought of all those times that he had sat on that stool watching Jean Jacques as if he were a mannequin on a shelf. He had worked today, actually worked, the way that Jean Jacques worked, and he had loved it.