Feast of All Saints (44 page)

“Rudolphe, what has that to do with a handful of wealthy young men who’ve been born with silver spoons in their mouths, we’re talking about an
élite de couleur!
The
cordon bleu.”

“No,” Rudolphe shook his head. “We’re talking about a caste, Christophe, that has won its precarious place in this corrupt quagmire by asserting over and over that it is composed of men who are better than and different from the slaves! We get respect in one way, Christophe, and that is by insisting ourselves on what we are. Men of property, men of breeding, men of education, and men of family. But if we drink with slaves, marry slaves, sit down in our parlors with slaves or in our dining rooms or in our classrooms, then men will treat us as if we were no better! And all that we’ve gained since the days when New Orleans was a fort on the river, all that, will be lost.”

“It’s wrong what you’re saying, it’s logical, practical, and wrong,” Christophe averred. “That boy’s part of us.”

“No,” Rudolphe shook his head. “He’s a slave.”

Christophe sighed.

“You’ve defeated me, Rudolphe,” he said. “I expected pomposity, talk of inherent superiority, of white blood. But you’re no such fool. You’re a Machiavelli in a shopkeeper’s guise; you do what works best.”

Rudolphe raised his eyebrows thoughtfully.

Christophe rose and jerked open the door without a word.

“I have a paternal feeling for you, Christophe.” Rudolphe put a hand on his shoulder. “Send that boy out of the class, teach him on your own time, and I’ll let it be known you made a simple error in judgment. I’ll call on the LeMonds and the LeComptes, myself.”

As soon as Christophe reached the classroom, he wrote out a simple notice stating that school would be resumed with a special Saturday session the following day, and posted it on the outside door. Then he wrote a brief letter which he folded and gave to Marcel. “You do too many favors for me, but here’s another,” he said. “Take this to your good friend, Rudolphe Lermontant.”

“All right,” Marcel said. “But will you be here when I get back?”

Christophe shook his head. “I’ve got to call on Celestina,” he said with a bitter smile. “And old Brisson, the grocer, and a few other good parents, And after that I want to spend a little time with Bubbles and explain this to him.”

“He understands,” Marcel said.

“No,” Christophe shook his head. “He can’t imagine anyone taking so much notice of him, or caring so much whether he’s alive or dead, or sitting in a room or not sitting in it. And after that, I want to be alone. I’m not good company for anyone.” He looked up at Marcel. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve made up my mind to compromise myself and I won’t waver. I’ve done it before. Now, go on.”

Marcel had not seen such an expression on Christophe’s face since the Englishman had died, and three times that evening he knocked on the townhouse doors without result.

But the morning before the opening night of the opera, the classroom, without Bubbles, was filled as before. The first lectures were cold, brilliant, and without a flicker of passion, and only toward the afternoon did some of Christophe’s usual spirit return. As the day wore on, Marcel became more and more anxious that Christophe would climax with some bitter denouncement, but at four o’clock they were dismissed without any extraordinary words. The students clustered for an hour afterward, talking warmly and affectionately of all manner of unessential things as if they wanted to assure their teacher of their devotion (now that he had given in) and Marcel could see that Christophe got through it with obvious strain.

As soon as the school was empty Christophe stalked into the back reading room, making no acknowledgment of Marcel by the fire, and
got his bottle of whiskey out of the press. He set it down on the round table, shoving the papers and journals aside angrily and filled a glass.

“Don’t do this, Chris,” Marcel said after Christophe had drunk two glasses as if they were water.

“I am in the privacy of my own home right now, I can preach sedition and abolition to the rafters here if I like, and I can also get drunk!”

“Tonight’s the opera, Christophe. You told me once you were counting on the opera to keep you sane…”

“Only a Creole could think of the opera at a time like this,” Christophe said, draining another glass. He sat back, obviously calmed for the moment by some six to eight ounces of pure whiskey. “Well, I shall be at the opera!” he said. “My soul may be in hell but I shall be at the opera.”

“Drunk?” Marcel asked. “Christophe, people will be watching you, they’ll be looking for some gesture from you because of all this, and they’ll be looking for the opportunity to make some gesture themselves…”

“Go home,” Christophe said drearily. “I told you I’d be there,” and without theatricality, he removed a crumpled note from his pocket, rolled it into a ball in one hand and shot it to Marcel. It read in large childish print:

Marcel studied it. Yesterday morning in this very room, he had spelt out the word, “affectionately” for Bubbles never dreaming for what. “He’ll come back,” he said. “He’s run away before and he’ll run away again. Besides, Dolly Rose has never been able to keep a male slave. Tougher blacks than Bubbles would rather clean the ditches than stay with her.”

But Christophe merely sat there, drinking the whiskey and suddenly both of them were roused by a loud knock on the door. It was followed immediately by the impatient tapping of something metallic on the glass. And then the door opened with a click and through the long vista of the deserted classroom Marcel saw the figure of Dolly Rose.

She wore a dress of lilac taffeta and a loose black cape over her shoulders, head bare, and her cheeks ruddy from the cold. Christophe, too, saw her, but he did not move, slouched back in his chair behind the table, watching her through the double doors.

“Chrisssstophe!” she sang out softly, moving lightly through the
wilderness of desks. She did not appear to know that she was being watched, and seemed to enjoy being alone in the vast room. With a series of little pirouettes, she moved behind the lectern and suddenly with a gesture so genuine of feeling that it was startling, brought her clasped hands up to her bowed head. As she raised her eyes, her voice rang out dramatically as if before an immense audience.

“Randolphe, Randolphe, kill me then, for if I cannot go with Antonio, I do not wish to live!” she cried. “Kill your beloved Charlotte! For death alone shall possess her if Antonio can not possess her.” And then grabbing herself about the throat she proceeded to struggle as if being strangled by her own hands. But a deep false masculine voice boomed from her at the same time, “Yes, die, Charlotte, die! Not because you want to go with Antonio! But because you are the heroine of a bad novel!” And strangling, she fell over “dead” on the lectern.

Marcel could hardly restrain his laughter.

“All right, Dolly!” Christophe said, and even on his lips there was the slight twist of a smile.

She slowly lifted her head, staring at him from the corner of her eye. Then she marched back the center aisle, eyes appraising the walls with their engravings and maps, and the great world globe in its corner, and entered the reading room as Marcel, resentfully, rose to his feet.

“Bonjour
Blue Eyes,” she said winking at him. Her face was radiant, the old shadows gone, the lips faintly rouged enticingly. But then she became serious and said to Christophe who had not risen, “Peace?”

“Go to hell,” he said.

“You want your little bootblack, don’t you?” she said. The tender flesh beneath her eyes quivered. She was lovely enough to make Marcel forget what she’d done. All the gossip about her “waning beauty” was spite. Warily, he looked down.

“Yes,” Christophe sighed.

“Then take me to the opera tonight,” she said.

Christophe studied her, his own eyes flinty, suspicious.

“I am accompanying my mother, but thank you, Madame, you flatter me,” he said.

“Your mother. How tender!” she said with a mock dramatic tilt of her head. “Why, I thought you might have planned to take Bubbles!” she laughed. “You’re so fond of him, after all.”

Christophe’s face darkened with anger. The swelling of a vein showed against his temple. “Get out of my house, Dolly.” he said.

She approached the table and just as he reached for it, snatched the glass of whiskey and took a drink.

“Hmmmm…you must be one very rich schoolteacher,” she
said, running her tongue over her glistening lip. Again Marcel looked away, only to look quickly back at her. “Or did your English friend leave that?” she asked.

Her eyes glistened without a scintilla of deeper feeling. And she was so fresh, her
café au lait
skin so clear and creamy that she seemed the embodiment of seduction, something inherently dangerous and irresponsible which could never be held to account. Marcel disliked these thoughts and tried to think on
who she was
. There were soirees at her house nightly now, with white men trooping up the steps. “Take me to the opera,” she said gravely.

Christophe frowned. “Madame, you’re mad.”

“I do as I like these days,” she said quite seriously. Then uncertain, she drifted about the room, her fingers playing with the back of the wing chair. She flashed a sudden brilliant smile at Marcel. But then she was to the point again. “No one owns me anymore, Christophe, no one tells me with whom I can be seen. I am mistress of my own house.
I do as I please.”

“Not with me,” Christophe shook his head.

“Not even for Bubbles?” she asked.

Marcel turned his face toward the windows. She was a Circe. If Christophe were to appear with her, it would be the finish. The white men on the parquet might not give a damn about it anymore, but all the colored community would see this. Dolly Rose’s house might as well have had a shingle over its door.

“What do you want, Dolly,” Christophe sighed. “What do you really want!”

At these words her façade appeared to crack. Marcel saw the sudden involuntary pout of her lip, the flicker in her eyes. She pulled back the chair across from Christophe, and seated at the table drew a sheet of paper out of her muff. She handed it to him. One glance over Christophe’s shoulder told Marcel it was the title to the slave.

“Sold to Christophe Mercier for the sum of one dollar,” she said. “One slave Bubbles, Senegalese. Hmmmm? Go on, take it.”

Warily, Christophe studied the paper. Then he folded it, and slowly he removed a silver dollar from his pocket and reaching across the table put it in her open hand.

A wicked smile brightened her face.

“Christophe is a slave owner!” she sang suddenly. And jumping up, “Christophe is a slave owner!”

“I intend to set him free!” Christophe growled.

“You can’t set him free, he’s fourteen years old and unskilled, and been in the Parish prison seven times, they’d never grant your petition even if you had the money to post bond for him, no, my
cher
Christophe, you’re his master!” She let out a husky laugh and backed out the door.

“Lord, God,” Christophe sighed.

“Christophe is a slave owner, Christophe is a slave owner,” she sang as she twirled through the classroom. But she stopped suddenly, only halfway to the front door.

“Don’t take me to the opera, then, if you don’t want to,” she said coldly. And then in a small voice, marked by mock sincerity, “All your little secrets are safe with me.”

“Get out of my house,” Christophe flashed. His hand clutching the paper almost crumpled it. “And I want those tuning wrenches,” he said contemptuously, “I want them now.”

“They’re under my bed,” she said. Her voice was dry as if burnt by feeling. “You know what you have to do to get them? Can you figure that out? Have you read about it in books!”

“Get out of here!” He rose, all but upsetting the table.

She took a step backward, almost afraid. She was shaking her head. She was on the verge of tears, and Christophe didn’t move as if he didn’t trust himself to move.

“I wish Captain Hamilton had killed you!” her voice rang out over the classroom.

“So do I!” Christophe said. “So do I!”

But she had already turned, and banging the front door behind her, she was gone.

Christophe slumped in the chair. He tilted the bottle to the glass.

“Christophe…” Marcel came forward. He put his hand around the neck of the bottle…“don’t do this. Don’t let her…she’s nothing but a…”

“Don’t you dare purport to tell me what she is!” Christophe hissed. He jerked the bottle from Marcel and rose, glowering into Marcel’s eyes. “Don’t you say one word about her. You and your miserable bourgeois friends, don’t give me any more of your bourgeois estimations of anything, slavery, manners, morals, women! She’s worth more than the lot of you, indolent planters’ brats and shopkeepers all!” He stopped, his mouth open.

Marcel was so stricken that the tears came at once. He backed away from the table, his fists clenched, and trembling turned and went through the door.

“Marcel, don’t go!” Christophe said. “Don’t go. Please, don’t go.”

Marcel turned to see him standing beside the table, his face as defenseless as that of a child. His voice was simple, without pride. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why I said that to you, to you above all. I didn’t mean it, Marcel.”

Marcel wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He couldn’t have refused Christophe anything at this moment. Yet he was bruised. “But why did you defend her, Christophe!” he asked.

“You don’t know the whole story,” Christophe said softly. He
paused, his level brown eyes merely holding Marcel, and Marcel felt the most unexpected sense of foreboding. It was as if Christophe were trying to make him understand something here, beyond the words, and Marcel was filled with fear.

But Christophe had looked away, and when he spoke again it was as if he were speaking to himself. “I wounded Dolly,” he said. “She expected something of me, something I just couldn’t give.” He stopped, and then in a low voice added, “I
disappointed
her.”