Parrot and Olivier in America (52 page)

"Now you are American," he cried into my ear.

There was no air in America, only this great suffocating mass which would wash me clear away. I pressed my mouth against the rock behind me, and so could almost breathe. But still there reigned, in this dark heart, a terrifying and foreign obscurity. I cannot describe the awfulness of the murk or the horror of the sharp steely ray of light that then appeared, giving no comfort but rather an idea of the vast chaos which surrounded me.

So great a fear. No explanation. This terror accompanied me beyond the darkness of the falls. Godefroy escorted me safely across the little bridge, but even then, inhabiting an ink-black cloud of melancholy, I could not speak. So it would continue all through dinner and all that night when I was tangled in my bedclothes with the Albany parade. The mass of America would suffocate me.

Then again: My poor Bebe was dead.

Then again: I was certain a civil war was about to start in France, bringing with it many perils for the very ones who were dearest to me. Was it their deaths I suffered beneath the falls of Kaaterskill?

And at the same time, through all this horror, I loved Amelia and in the inky night, like one cast out and damned, I sought her generous breast while her white gown wrapped itself around my neck.

III

UNLESS WE HAD PLANNED to fish for trout in every stream from Kaaterskill to Wethersfield, I doubt we could have devised a less sensible way to get back home. There were hills so steep we had to walk behind one another, narrow roads where two coaches could not pass, pinches so tight it might take an hour's maneuvering to get the muddy carriage around a corner.

I had not been well since the awful parade. Since my public crisis under Kaaterskill Falls I had become much worse. I wished I could sleep but as I could not talk and sleep then sleep was not permitted. I did what I could to hide the full horror from the father of my future bride. We agreed that I had suffered a "strange fit" at Kaaterskill, although it was not really strange to me. The rising of the temperature of my thin-walled vessels, the pressure in my heart, the great giddy circular confusions, the rasping of the bronchia--these were my old companions.

The roads were filled with choking dust. The carriage was hot and airless. But still I must not fail the test for son-in-law. Vigorously I admired the rivers, the mountains, the new pastures of Great Barrington, the civility of the inn at New Marlborough, each of which I tried to love.

Perhaps it would have been enough to love Amelia, and then her father, and then the land itself, and so on. Yet I felt myself honor-bound to take all this wilderness and ignorance into my heart and embrace it, trusting that it would show, in time, not the coarseness and vulgarity of the Glorious Fourth but something new and fine and worthy of the Declaration. For had not these same woods given birth to the intense spirituality of the Puritans and was that not, already, more noble than the
enrichissez-vous
of the July Monarchy?

But how many parades could I truly bear to witness without being sick?

And how could I live without my France?

How would I learn to breathe in this awful heat?

I had inherited those wandering choirs of blood which rose singing from my neck and cheeks, congregations of heat that I had seen destroy my mother's cream and silk complexion and send the servants clattering up and down the stairs.

I wondered out loud whether I might not be in need of bleeding.

And this is the thing with Americans, for it was no sooner said than Godefroy had his stockings and his shoes off, the coach was stopped, and he was wading into the bulrushes beside a pond. There he stood, laughing, his splendid white scarf trailing in the water, pointing out a viper fleeing, as if from Good itself.

Then he was returning to the coach with some six leeches latched onto his sturdy calves and these, with great skill--for he had studied the science of medicine at Yale--he removed without tearing his flesh, and--with the leeches still alive and happy--placed two on each side of my nose, and the last two on my forehead.

Thus the dear, dear fellow brought me peace, and as we traveled the last half day to Wethersfield I dreamily recalled Odile with that curious scoop she had made to catch the leeches. How she had loved to cast the engorged creatures into the fire. "Go, demons. Burn in hell!"

As we came out of Wethersfield, along the long river road by Old Farm, Godefroy gently removed the
vieilles amies
and threw them out into the summer air, and I felt myself safe, in loving company, quite equal to the challenges ahead.

The coach made its final climb to Chapel Hill where we found the great gift of America lay spread before us. We paused while Godefroy climbed out the window and stood on the box beside the coachman where he took the reins himself and cried a great halloo, and then we descended, galloping at a fearful pace. I did not attempt to convince myself that I loved that tree, that gate, that arm of river. I no longer placed these new affections on the scales, comparing them to those I might once have felt in approaching the Chateau de Barfleur.

The hydraulics of my system had been adjusted. I could now believe that my affection for this place would not lead to the dismantlement of the Chateau de Barfleur as the Marquis de Tilbot had lost his family seat which vanished from the earth like a carcass set upon by ants.

We raced toward the Godefroy home and left behind us a great orange plume of dust like a feather in the cap of a chevalier. In the summer dusk I spied a figure in a long white dress walking through the fields from the direction of the river.

"Amelia," I cried.

The coach halted. My future father was already there to help me down. He steadied me, a hand on each shoulder.

"Hold on," he demanded. Then, wetting his kerchief like a nurse, he removed some flecks of blood the leeches had left upon my cheeks.

"Go to, sir!" he cried. And I could not keep from laughing as I set off through the garden, into the orchard, beside the onion maidens who laid down their hoes. The wide grass meadow was like a racetrack and I sprinted toward my beloved, who, without abandoning her flowers, and while holding her skirts from the unclean pasture, called my name. How sweet it sounded in her voice, her lovely lilting American intonation.

And thus we met--in the middle of a great arena--with the onion maidens all applauding and laughing and my family of Godefroys hooraying from beside the carriage.

And here she was, her hand in mine, this astonishing bright-eyed Viking beauty with her arms filled with those snowy-white hydrangeas which grew wild beside the river.

Her eyes filled with love for me, her mouth was ready to receive my kisses--and then I saw her expression change completely.

I thought, God, she has seen the confusion of my treacherous French heart.

"Olivier," she cried, and her mouth was red with blood.

I was Olivier-Jean-Baptiste de Clarel de Garmont, and my nose was bleeding, my heart was burst, a great red stain of crisis presented itself, as public as my shirt.

IV

THERE WAS SOMETHING awful about the blood which had soaked my linen shirt, spread across the flowers, smeared my beloved's mouth. There was no way to make light of it or do anything other than endure the profound embarrassment throughout the Godefroys' wineless evening meal.

Of the matter of the betrothal, not a word was said and I did not judge their reticence improper. Instead I observed how the very definite passions of Amelia's family were diverted, transmuted into a great blooming excitement about matters completely unrelated. The topic was not material. It might have been corn huskers or grasshoppers, but what was closest at hand, what was forever churning over in every room in all the land, was President Jackson's threat to remove the government's deposits from the First Bank of the United States and distribute them among a number of smaller banks. He wanted to do this, he claimed, because the money was the people's and the First Bank of the United States used its wealth to act against the people's government.

On this issue a very angry Mrs. Godefroy and her daughter opposed each other with a violence I had not previously witnessed at their table. Godefroy attempted to tell his stories of the road, but the women's dispute was so intense that all he could do was cut the boiled beef very fine and chew it slowly.

When this field of battle--that is, the very pure and proper table, eight feet by four--had been cleared and scrubbed by the two sisters, my beloved and I were permitted to retire, first to the porch and then along the gravel paths that began as a formal grid at the poplars before twisting themselves among the strangely artless topiary and thence stretching into the wilderness and along the Connecticut River which held its dark and bleeding shadows to itself.

My arm lay across her light and level shoulder. My ribs knew the aching softness of her breast. There was nothing except our feet upon the path to break the warm and luscious quiet.

"How exactly have I offended your mother?"

"Well of course you know."

"My nose."

"Your lips, you silly."

We could now hear the distinct sound of a smaller rill or stream entering the large. "Then here, I repeat my crime."

"No, my sweetest, this is private. It was the public aspect that was criminal."

"I will be her son-in-law. She knows that. She had your father's letter?"

I turned her chin to me and this time it was she who kissed me, her mouth so soft and labial, so engulfing.

She smiled and laid her nose against my own. "Perhaps your kiss was too Catholic for her taste."

"Catholic?"

"She is in a fret I will become a Catholic. For her it is much worse than turning French."

"But a Catholic is a Christian," I argued, more than a little disingenuously. "Can that be so terrible to her?"

"Nay sir, worse. Besides, she knows only the Irish who are beyond salvation."

"No, really. Tell me. It was the nose."

"I don't suppose it helped your case, poor nose."

Here, just at the river's bend, there was an oak log which Godefroy had ordered adzed to make a self-improving bench. We sat.

"In Catholic countries," I said, "we are far more proper than Mrs. Godefroy knows. My own mother would look at the habits of American women and find them scandalous. This walking out, for instance."

"Oh"--she sighed--"we are so provincial. I wish it were not so."

"I wish it only as it is."

There followed a long and private moment, very lovely, only interrupted by the antic stuff of nature, a leaping fish or diving bird, either one would sound the same to me.

"In truth, I would prefer to be Catholic," she said.

She said this so lightly, I could not help but snort, an ugly noise I now suppose.

"Why do you laugh?" Her generous smile did not disguise the hurt and I rushed like a fireman to undo the damage, explaining that it was always shocking for a Frenchman to see Americans treat the questions of doctrine, which we in Europe had disputed so bloodily, as so light a matter. I proclaimed myself no longer a Catholic, although I carried with me, like old moss, Catholic tastes, sensibilities, and certain of our ancient prejudices.

"But it will be essential, will it not?" she asked. "If we are to marry I must become a Catholic."

This was a matter I would rather not discuss on the banks of the Connecticut River, and instead I persuaded my beloved onto the fresh-scythed grass where I spread out her hair and kissed her clear blue Viking eyes.

Said she, "I cannot wait to see your home."

I covered her eyes and felt the lashes tremble like moths' wings in my mouth.

"We could not stroll like this in French society," I said.

"But we will be a married pair. You forget the difference."

"Yes," I said, and laid my hand against
that place
. She brought her own warm hand to rest upon mine awhile until, languidly, she lifted it to meet her lips.

"In that little chapel," she said, nuzzling what Blacqueville always called
la snuff box
, that small well between the thumb and forefinger. Naturally I was slow to understand she meant we would be married at the Chateau de Barfleur.

"Which chapel?"

"Where your poor Bebe prayed," she said, and ran her lips along my thumb.

I did not answer. There was nothing I could say.

"You are thinking about Bebe?"

I was thinking like a lawyer with an argument to win. "But should an American marry in France?"

She looked at me sharply, drawing her hands to hold her arms. "Why should I not? I will be a Catholic."

"No darling, I mean myself. I will be American. I pledge myself to you entire."

She laughed. "Dear Olivier, what did my daddy do to you? Did he bathe you in the waters of Natchez?"

"He compelled me to drink the awful wine of Thomas Jefferson."

"No my sweet dear beautiful man. Look at your lovely nose and those perfect lips. Look at your eyes. I can see the moon in them."

"I am not a woman. You must not admire me like one."

"No, you are a de Garmont."

I did not correct her or admit, even to myself, the jarring note. She should not, of course, have used the
de
.

"You are a noble count, my darling, and you are a huge curiosity to all the onion maidens, who are astonished you do not have two heads and beat your servants."

"There are no nobles in America." I said this meaning: I shall be one no longer; it is impossible.

Clearly she was not attending to the argument. "Yes," she said, "I cannot wait to see my mother's face when she thinks it through."

"What
through
my pet?"

"That I will be a Frenchwoman. What will she do when this dawns upon her?"

"You will be a Frenchwoman because you are my wife, as I will be an American because I am your husband. When your mother sees me by your side in Wethersfield she will not think you French."

"But we will not be married in Wethersfield."