Feast of All Saints (16 page)

He could not, would not presume, to ask Philippe if he might make the voyage early. These things had been agreed to the year before he was born. A gentleman’s tour when he was eighteen, the Sorbonne if he should so desire, an income naturally, letters of introduction might even be arranged…Tante Colette had seen to that, she would say with Cecile’s approving nod. But God, if it could only be now!

S
O A YEAR
had passed since Jean Jacques’ death, a year since life had been unalterably changed for Marcel.

And now in one day, all the bleak and terrifying confusion of that year had come to its mystifying climax. Marcel had been expelled once and for all from Monsieur De Latte’s class, he had ravaged the exquisite and helpless Juliet Mercier, and he had lost her famous son, Christophe, forever. He had lost Christophe just as he had lost Jean Jacques. And as he stood in the shadowy bedroom of the
garçonnière
, peering down through the blinds at the courtyard below, it was grief that Marcel felt, and it was harrowing.

The clock in the cottage chimed eleven times, and the lamps went out. A small hand pushed the shutters back from Cecile’s window and the breeze stirred the lace curtains of her darkened room.

Marcel waited for the faint flicker of her night lamp, and then silently he opened his door.

A splendid and terrible vision was taking hold of him, and for the moment his agony was finding a direction in a perverse and beautiful plan. In all this time, he had never approached Jean Jacques’ narrow raised crypt in the St. Louis, never ventured down that weed-choked walkway to actually touch the engraved letters he knew to be there.

And in all this time he had never crept out at night from this room. Well, he was to do both now. He would slip out down the steps
through the alleyway and along the deserted Rue Ste. Anne across the Rue Rampart all the way to the St. Louis Cemetery, and there scale the short thick wall, find Jean Jacques’ tomb and pour out his soul. Alone in the dark he would tell Jean Jacques what had happened to him today, how he had lost Christophe, and how he had loved Christophe as he had loved Jean Jacques, and that he had lost them both. His pain was already soothed by the boldness of this vision, the obvious tortures ahead of him, the dark near-moonless night, and his own natural fears.

And who knows what he would do afterwards, ruined as he was with his mother and his friends, and slated for an hour of reckoning with the famous man? Perhaps he would find one of his favorite filthy little cabarets. So delicious on his truant afternoons, what would they be at night, those haunts full of Irish cutthroats and runaway slaves? He had two dollars in his pocket. He would get drunk. He would smoke cigars.

Quickly, he padded down the wooden steps, bracing himself for the inevitable creaking, and moved gracefully, his shoulders bent forward, into the courtyard. A twig crackled beneath his boot and he froze, eyes fixed on his mother’s windows. But all was still. However, just as he darted toward the mouth of the alley, the great ancient fig that hung above the side fence stirred, its leaves rustling all at once so that he spun round.

For an instant it seemed a shape loomed from the dark, some concealed figure that moved among the immense limbs only a pace from where he stood. But by the dim quarter moon, Marcel could see merely a thousand menacing configurations, and drawing up, he clenched his teeth. If you are so damned frightened in your own backyard, how in the name of God will you ever scale that cemetery wall! And turning, he ran.

He was sprinting when he hit the street and seeing ahead a broken and broadly spaced path of dimly lit windows, followed the old brick banquette that he knew so well by day that it would not fail him now in the dark.

Only when he had crossed the Rue Rampart, did he slow his pace. His throat was burning, but for the first time since he had left Juliet, he was not utterly miserable. And the fear subsided. Then he saw ahead the faint chalk white of the cemetery walls.

He stopped. A score of subtle sounds replaced the dull tromping of his own feet. The sidewalks were gunwales now, rotting here and there from the constant rain, and creaked even as he stood still, but he heard steps somewhere, and beyond, far off, the clanking of a bell. He turned around. But there was nothing in the dark behind him except the faintest gleam of the slanting roofs, the dim outline of a massive
oak. All right, coward! He spun round again and ran full speed, feet splashing through the open gutter until he could lay his hands right on the rough whitewashed wall.

He was panting and for the moment could only rest there. A cloud was over the moon and must surely move as all clouds do on the wind from the river, but he couldn’t wait for this, he had to go on, to remember how he had done such things as this when he was ten years old, or better yet, forget. Just do it, don’t try to think how. He backed up, utterly terrified suddenly of the dark and the graves and the night and the dead and of everything that had ever terrified him, and running at the wall, leapt up to catch an inside edge, his arms across the top of the soft moidering bricks. He shut his eyes, breathed heavily, and hung tight. Then with all his strength he brought himself up on his arms, swinging his legs up behind him so that he was lying out straight. And letting out an awful moan for what he was about to do, he crawled over the broad width of the vaults lining the wall and let himself drop into the cemetery below.

“Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu!”
he shivered, his hands trembling over his eyes, the sweat pouring down the sides of his face. His chest heaved, and his legs felt weak and light as if they might give way. But then a splendid exhilaration came over him. He was inside, he had done it, he was alone in this place, alone with Jean Jacques, and with himself. And turning slowly he opened his eyes. The shapes around him appeared gradually. But all of a sudden he heard sounds in the dark, a chorus of rustling, scuffling noises at once above him and beside him that caused his heart to rise in his throat. The dim white crypts gleamed dully before his eyes, and then he drew back, his breath a gasp. Some amorphous shape loomed above him, something rose and moved against the distant sky.

No conscious will need tell him to turn, no intelligence that he must escape. He pivoted, his boots sinking into the marsh of high weeds, and he ran. But with a thick crashing, the thing behind him hit the sloshing path; and with a cry, Marcel felt hands clutch his arm. “O God!” he whispered, his teeth biting down into his lower lip to draw blood.

“What in
hell,”
said the voice low behind him, all but a whisper, “what in
hell
are you doing?”

Marcel went weak, his breath a series of gasps. It was a wonderful sound, that sound, of some human adult voice at wits’ ends with him as usual, nothing else! And the voice, didn’t he know the voice? “Oooo God!” he whispered again as the tremor passed through his arms and his legs. His arms ached under the tight hands that held him, and slowly, lifting his boot out of the mire he turned round.

“Why did you run from me? And why in
hell
did you jump over this wall?” It was Christophe, of course.

“Run from you??” Marcel’s voice was a pant, a whisper. “Run?”

“You saw me in the tree!” The voice was exasperated. Marcel could see nothing of the face, except a tiny spark of light in the eyes.

“O
Mon Dieu
…” Marcel sighed. The pain in his chest was excruciating and every breath seemed to aggravate it, not alleviate it. “But you were in the tree?”

“I was waiting for your mother to retire. I wanted to talk to you! There was a light in your room,” he said.

“In the tree?” Marcel repeated weakly.

“Well, where else? Did you expect me to sit on the wet ground? I was sitting in the tree. You mean you didn’t see me? You looked right at me!”

“No,” Marcel shook his head. “Then why the hell did you run?”

Marcel put his hand up as if to ask for mercy. He groped in his pocket for his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face.

“My mother told me you were quite the burning cauldron of youthful passion but this is beyond belief. What are you planning to do here, for God sakes?” Christophe had let go of him, and was looking about. He looked up at the wall of crypts, and then around at the faint whiteness of the high peristyled tombs clustered about them like so many small houses. He reached out suddenly to the dull gleam of a stone door. Marcel, breathing heavily, watched the hand moving down the stone, touching the shadowy indentations of the carved script. He looked into Christophe’s eyes, but he could see nothing there, he could see only the outlines of the partially turned face, and oddly enough the sparkle of his eyelashes against the remote backdrop of gray clouds.

“Ah, Monsieur,” he sighed, his voice weakened still and very low, “I have nothing but the utmost respect for your mother, she is a great lady, I have only profound respect for her, for your house, this is the bitterest of misunderstandings, you mustn’t consider me a base intruder in your house, I swear on my honor, I have known your mother all of my life, grown up in her shadow and have always considered her a great lady, I would throw myself at your feet if that would cause you to believe me…”

“Oh, do!” Christophe said flatly. “Throw yourself at my feet.” He laughed shortly. And lifting his boot he brought it down with an ugly splash.

Marcel said quickly, “You have no compassion, Monsieur,” before he could stop himself. It was precisely the sort of thing he would have said to Richard if Richard had been making fun of him. “I am at your mercy, but I am not a buffoon.”

Christophe dissolved into soft laughter, but then he said in a cold inflectionless voice, “Don’t be so damned quick to come to the point.
Now, is there an easier way of getting out of this city of the dead? A gate somewhere without a guard at it? I’ve ripped my pants as it is.”

“There’s a guard, to be sure, and he might summon the police,” Marcel said.

“Well, if it’s all the same to you,
mon ami
, I am going to try to bribe him, and get out of here now. Would you care to come with me and continue this conversation, or do you prefer to go on with whatever madness prompted you to come here in the first place?” He waited.

“I’ll go with you,” Marcel said timidly.

“Ah, what a refreshing display of common sense,” Christophe answered. The gatekeeper’s lantern had already appeared at the end of the path.

It was midnight when they drew near the waterfront and the roaring cabarets stood open along the banquette, the crowds dense around the long bars, air thick with smoke. Pianos tinkled in the din, and the shades of the flickering oil lamps were black with soot. White men and black men stood jostling on the stoops, gesturing, shouting, or gathered on the damp bricks in the leaking light of the doorways, squatted on their haunches over games of dice or coins flipped in the air. An impromptu cockfight was in progress a pace from the markets, and suddenly the knot of men there let out a roar.

“I want a drink,” Christophe said at once. He had made the same remark on leaving the cemetery and had not spoken again until now. Marcel’s eyes were wide. He had seen these streets often enough by day when they were just as heavily thronged, but the night gave them a savage aspect which he instantly and absolutely loved.

He was powerfully excited by Christophe as well as by everything around him, and in the dingy light he saw Christophe’s face clearly for the first time. It appeared as hard as it had seemed in the shadows of Juliet’s room, but it was by no means a cruel or insensitive face, in fact, the neat even features had a somewhat agreeable aspect, there was nothing out of proportion, yet the eyes blazed as if they must make up in intensity for their rather common color and size. They were curious, however, though suspicious, wide though a little flinty, and something about the straight mouth with its faint bit of horizontal mustache suggested anger, though why Marcel could not have said.

He wasn’t so afraid of Christophe now; rather he was utterly absorbed. And studied everything about him. There was something defiant about his walk, the ramrod straightness of his back and the manner in which the compact chest was thrust forward. It reminded Marcel more of the Spaniards he had seen than any Frenchman. It was almost arrogant. Yet Christophe seemed little conscious of the
finely cut brown coat and lavish silk stock he wore, or the great streaks of whitewash and dirt on his dove-gray pants. His eyes lingered on no one and nothing with any particular judgment or challenge, and he had a somewhat selfless interest in all about him which attracted Marcel to him rather easily. He was darker than Juliet, could never have passed, rumor was wrong.

“There,” Marcel said suddenly, “Madame Lelaud’s.” He realized that he was burning with thirst. He could all but taste the beer already.

Christophe hesitated. The double doors were wide over the banquette, and the place was packed. They could hear the crack of the billiard balls over the low strumming of a banjo, and the vibrations of the piano within.

“This is not a place for white men?” Christophe asked in a low voice. An undefinable emotion flickered in his eye.

“There are men of color in there, too,” Marcel said and offered to lead the way.

Madame Lelaud herself was at the bar, a brilliant red
tignon
around her dark hair so that with the wide gold loops in her ears she looked somewhat the gypsy. Her black hair in tight waves fell to thin wisps over her shoulders and she had soft caramel skin finely wrinkled. “Aah,
mon petit,”
she waved to Marcel. The air about them was rife with foreign voices, Irish brogues, the guttural Dutch, the softer rapid Italian, and everywhere the Creole patois. Negroes in black broadcloth and top hats drank at the bar, foot upon the rail, and beyond in the open billiard parlor congregated about the luscious soft green felt were a handful of splendidly dressed dark men, their striped coats and vests of silk gleaming beneath the low-hung lamps. Dark faces everywhere mingled with the white, and might have been Greek, Hindu, Spanish.