Feast of All Saints (5 page)

Compulsively he swallowed more whiskey. He had an irresistible urge to smile again, though his thoughts had hit the point of pain, and he saw it clearly. All right, Paris no. But the great man’s coming back. And anxious mothers will crowd his sitting room eager to place their little ones in the warmth of his light. He shut his eyes and then narrowing them stared at the glaring sky. But would he, Richard, ever go to that school? Would his parents ever allow it? With Antoine’s constant stream of florid anecdotes: hashish, white women, Christophe in battered velvet veritably living from café to café, sometimes never finding a bed for days at a time? The others might forgive, talk to the great man about Victor Hugo, ply him with questions about his famed travels, but the Lermontants? It was not what they wanted for Richard, or what they would tolerate. That was the whole truth of it. He’d known it even running to class this morning with the news.

And what he felt now, and had felt when he left Marcel wandering at the Place d’Armes was simply this: jealousy. This was the repulsive tangle of pain and confusion he’d been bound to unravel: jealousy.

He forced his gaze on the sky and felt his eyes water. He couldn’t see the dark arcade of the market at all in his blindness, only knew there were bales there, men at work, that wobbling carts creaked under their heavy loads, and on the air came the strong, sour smell of boiling cabbage.

Jealousy of Marcel! A fine thing, Richard! Drink another glass.

But it was true. It was jealousy of that flair with which Marcel could hiss,
“Je suis un criminel!”
and set off, glaze-eyed after mad Juliet. Richard envied him, bitterly envied him whatever wild adventure he was courting now at midday. And worse yet, he envied the strength that would lead Marcel to break Juliet’s silence. Marcel would succeed. Richard hated himself. Marcel had to succeed. Marcel always did, always—somehow—got what he wanted.

Richard shoved the bottle away suddenly and was rising to go. But at that moment, the white man who had been watching him from the bar became real again, a visible thing lurching forward and slumping down in the chair beside him. An Irishman with reddened blistered
face and blasted hair. For the first time since Richard had entered the bar he felt wary.

He’d been using this luxurious danger. He didn’t think it could touch him. And now this man had a hand on his arm. The fact that Richard couldn’t see him clearly made it worse.

The man, drunk, drunker than Richard, displayed a few coins in his other hand. Richard hesitated, fearing any move might provoke a fight.

“Not enough even for a stinkin’ glass,” the man breathed. “And in such a town as this, where a man can’t make enough for a bed at night even if he works all day for it.” He glanced over his shoulder as though an enemy lurked at the bar.

Richard pushed the glass toward him and tried to edge away. “Please…” he said, gesturing to the bottle.

“Oh, you’re a gentleman, sir, to be sure…” said the Irishman. He poured a drink, but clung to Richard at the same time, patting him now, then clutching him. He wasn’t old but he looked old, his eyes shot with veins, his reddish hair greasy and thinning. He wore the rough, shapeless clothes of a workman and his nails were black with dirt. He was mumbling something now about the work in the streets, the laying of stones and mortar.

“Damn niggers!” he cried in a burst of coherence. “Damn free niggers getting five dollars a day as waiters in the hotels when a man’s working in the heat of day in the streets…!”

Richard’s face flamed. A profound instinct told him not to play into this man’s hand, that he would be the loser for it. But he was cold with rage, his arm trembling under the man’s fingers, that this man would say such things expecting him, a Negro, to listen. He slid back against the wall. But then the man said innocently:

“How do you stand it, man, living with them niggers as free as you please?”

Richard’s mouth went slack. Something began to dawn on him, but he could not yet believe it.

“And then the quadroon wenches, whatever they call themselves, up there in them ballrooms in silks and satins, not letting a man in lest he’s a fancy gentlemen, as if I’d want to dance with the filthy nigger wenches…’cause that’s what they are, nigger wenches. But how do you people stand it, not to have them whipped and sold off, or better yet sent back…”

“Excuse me, Monsieur,” Richard was on his feet at once, steadying the bottle. “Help yourself to the whiskey, please.” He rushed out the door and into the breeze from the river, blind for an instant, but unable to repress a smile, and then a sudden burst of laughter. Hurrying up the Rue de la Levee he forgot for a moment all his trouble.
Never before had he had such an experience. The bastard thought he was white.

F
ROM A
N
EGRO BARBER
in the Rue Bourbon, Richard got a basin of water with a towel for his face, a splash of cologne and a cold drink. And when the man wasn’t looking he put the cologne in the drink and washed out his mouth. He was already thoroughly contrite, and sick.

Monsieur De Latte did not condescend to even take notice of him as he slipped to the back of the class. But rather went on with the lesson in a foul temper, and somehow, somehow the afternoon passed.

“You are going to take this bill to Marcel’s mother for me, immediately,” he said to Richard as the others filed out. And scribbling it quickly he then removed his spectacles and rubbed the sore red imprint on his pale flesh. “I don’t have to tolerate this!” he muttered to no one. “I don’t have to put up with it for a minute! Tell her she is to make other arrangements for her son!”

Richard was already on the hot sidewalk walking doggedly for home before any rebellion could take form in him, any voice could protest in vain now, “I will not, I will not be the one to tell her.”

But Marcel could do this himself. He had to be home by the time Richard got there, Richard was convinced. And he vowed to slip behind the cottage quickly before Cecile Ste. Marie might see him, and go up to Marcel’s room over the kitchen in the
garçonnière
. It had been six months since Marcel had moved out of the cottage proper to these private quarters in the rear—a fabulous luxury in Richard’s eyes—yet never had Richard skirted the proper entrance to the house to seek him there. But the thought of giving this bill to Cecile, of explaining the expulsion…all that was intolerable.

However, as soon as he reached the garden gate in the Rue Ste. Anne, he was foiled. Cecile stood at her door, head cocked to one side, her black eyes wild with distress, as he approached by the gravel path.

She was startling in her lemon muslin, two tiny pearls pressed into the tender flesh of her earlobes, and the heat of the day had not touched her. He had never known a woman more delicate, more fragile, and he felt in her presence now a familiar awe that often rendered him awkward and speechless. With some shame he knew it was all bound up with her being the kept woman of a white man, the dark “wife” of a wealthy planter, but that could not fully explain it. A faint cologne emanated from her like breath as she brought her handkerchief to her lips and whispered faintly in French, “Where is Marcel?”

He fumbled for the bill, and had it half extended when he saw her turn, tears starting in her eyes, and heard the door crack back against the wall. This was going to be unbearable.

She moved awkwardly into the small parlor, and let out a gasp when she reached the china closet and heard the vast contents chatter. She put out a hand to steady it on its tiny legs and then looked, imploring, into Richard’s eyes.

“What is this?” she said. “What are you giving me?” She sank down on the settee in a perfect circle of crumpling muslin, her prim breasts heaving as though she were going to faint. “What has he done now?” She looked up. “Just tell me, Richard, what has he done?”

Richard stared stupidly at the small curling hand in her lap, the tight bands of gold. It was perfectly useless to glance about for Marcel, to beg time to look for him, “Madame,” he whispered. “Madame…” He cursed Monsieur De Latte! He cursed himself that he had undertaken this duty. But it was too late for all that. She snatched the bill from him suddenly and seeing the sum written out, slammed it down on the side table.

“I pay this always, what does this mean!” she demanded. All the crystal in the room tinkled, and the dimming sun flashed in the shivering glassed portraits on the wall.

“He’s been…well, he’s been asked…I mean I am to tell you…” Richard stammered. But something intervened. There was the glimmer of salvation. For in the shadows beyond the arch that divided this small parlor from the dining room, Marcel’s sister, Marie, had silently appeared. She held an open book against her breast as though she’d been reading. And her hair was loose, as though she’d just taken it down. Richard stared helplessly at her, but Cecile, rising, took his wrist. “What is it, Richard, what are you telling me!” she demanded angrily. “For the love of heaven, what has he done!”

“He’s been expelled, Madame,” Richard whispered. “Monsieur De Latte has asked that he make arrangements at some other…”

She shrieked. So sudden and so loud that he jumped backwards, all but upsetting a small table. Clumsily he reached for a teetering lamp, and turning, caught his foot on the leg of a chair. She was crying in choking sobs. His heart was in his mouth.

But Marie had come forward and stood beside her mother. Face burning, Richard stared blindly through the open door.

“Get out!” Cecile shouted suddenly, her voice hoarse and cold. “Get out!”

He glanced at her, at her bowed head, her clenched fist which pounded soundlessly against the carved roses of the settee, her foot stomping dully against the floor. “Get out!” she roared again, the voice coarse with anger. And he felt his temper rise. Marie was drawing
back, and suddenly turned her face away. Not for the best of friends am I going to endure this a moment longer, Richard thought. Get out, indeed! With a muttered,
“Bonjour, Madame,”
he marched down the front step and down the path.

It was only very late that night as he lay in bed that a thought came to him. It was long after the lengthy agonizing dinner when the family had railed against Marcel, and Rudolphe had dragged in the cook, who trembled to admit that Richard’s mother, Suzette, might have “ruined the shrimp” with her own “special touches” and Antoine had glowered across the table at Richard, saying with his eyes, this all has to do with Christophe, doesn’t it, this getting expelled, you romantic imbeciles, all of you. And Richard, sick, had begged to go upstairs just when his mother, throwing up her hands to scream, “It’s the way I have made it for ten years!” overturned her wine.

Nothing much out of the ordinary, really. And they hadn’t guessed Richard’s waterfront debauchery—and he had not expected to feel so little guilt for it—and Grandpère said finally that Marcel was a good boy, better perhaps than one might expect, what he needed was a father.

And then as Richard lay awake, the windows up despite the familiar noises of the street, this thought had come to him. It was something about the way Marie had backed away from her mother, the way that Marie had bowed her head at the moment when Cecile’s words had stung him so, when Cecile had said, “Get out!” It was something to do with the very tone of Cecile’s voice, a ferocious intimacy.

She wasn’t talking to me at all, he realized, she was talking to Marie.

He was certain. And opening his eyes wide, he looked at the pale ceiling. The light of a lantern below threw the shadow of a lace curtain shivering across the plaster. And the shadow slid down the wall and away as the lantern passed at the pace of a weary horse. The sting of the words went away. But this was yet another mystery. Because why would Cecile speak that way to her own daughter? And uncomfortable suddenly, Richard wished that he had not heard it. He felt all the more the intruder, and the sting came back. But it was worse.

What had Marie felt, and with him there? No, he must be wrong, he thought suddenly, but he was not wrong. And there was some powerful resonance to those stinging words, “Get out,” that he felt now with all he had ever known of Cecile and her daughter. He was most definitely uncomfortable, he wished he had not ever had such thoughts.

He loved the Ste. Marie family, all of them, not just Marcel who was his closest friend, his only real brother, but the lovely Cecile, such
a lady, and the beautiful quiet young girl that Marie had become. She’d been the story-book child of his life in years past, the vision of sashes and ribbons and shining slippers that one seldom sees except on painted pages bordered with roses, the companion of verses and songs. And now she was as tall as her mother, swan-necked and round-armed, with eyes like the marble angels at the church doors that hold the holy water out to you in deep shells.

It took his breath away suddenly, thinking of her. Marie. The sheer simplicity of the name seemed perfect. He’d written poems to her and torn them up at once as though the room were full of spies.

He couldn’t bear it suddenly, the thought that she’d been scourged by a cross word. But they were a close family, he knew them too well to think…? But then.…His thoughts were making circles. He shut his eyes, but could not sleep. He was coming back and back to the same place. So that he turned over, shifting the pillow to feel something fresh and cool beneath his face, and he let himself slip into some fragment of fantasy. He was sitting with Marie on the back steps of the
garçonnière
as they had done years before one day when he had buttoned the little strap of her slipper. Only now they were not children, and they were speaking together intimately so that he reached out and.…No. He saw the angels again at the church doors. Marcel was in trouble, she was in trouble, Cecile had been crying, crying when he left. He sighed, and carrying now only one of the thousands of burdens to which he had grown daily accustomed, he sank slowly through his care, into a thin, restless sleep.

I
T WAS
a long time after Richard left him at the market before Marcel actually accosted Juliet. Marcel had memorized the newspaper clipping, and there was no doubt in his feverish mind that he had the momentum needed to carry him across the barrier that separated her from all the world. But he waited for his moment, letting her see him from time to time, as she had, again, just before Richard bolted, and watching expressionless, as her gaze drifted and she went on her way. With the infinite misery and patience of a lover, he followed her, thinking let it take a day, or a year.