Feast of All Saints (2 page)

And what would she think now if she saw her son following this woman, the infamous Juliet Mercier? Should he come too close Juliet might just strike him with her market basket, or scratch his face. She was mad.

And any speculation on her made Marcel at once the paragon. He was, after all, just a boy, and a good one at that. He’d straighten up. He was high in the small private academy of Monsieur De Latte, which cost a fortune, and would undoubtedly come to his senses.

But Juliet was shameful, she had “no excuse,” people shunned her, he ought to shun her, certainly shouldn’t be following her, she had become the object of absolute scorn. How dare she retreat in her listing mansion on the corner of Ste. Anne and Dauphine and nail boards over the windows that fronted the street, vanishing so totally from life that neighbors thought her dead and beat down the gate? And then to come racing toward them with an ax, her hair streaming like an Ophelia, a gaggle of hens in a swirl of feathers screeching at her wake? So let her be shut up with chickens and flies. Let the cats roam the top of her sagging courtyard walls. One and all banged their shutters shut on her as if she hadn’t already bolted her own.

She was not old by any means, had the slender figure of a girl at forty, hair of gleaming black with skin so light she might have passed to the untutored eye, and rings on her fingers when she chose. It was outrageous, this waste of prime and property…but worst of all, worst of all…it was the matter of her son, Christophe.

He was the one whose name was on everyone’s lips these days, a star in this constellation where he had not been for a decade. Because gone to Paris years before, he was now a famous man. For three years his essays and stories had appeared in the Paris press, along with colorful accounts of his Eastern travels, reviews of the theater, art, music. And his novel,
Nuits de Charlotte
, had taken the city by storm. He was a dandy in dress, veritably lived in the cafes of the Rue Saint Jacques, surrounded eternally by exotic and scribbling friends. Children abroad sent home his articles, his stories in the
Revue des Deux Mondes
, copies of his novel and the reviews which sang his praises as a “master of the language,” or a “new and unbridled imagination, Shakespearean in power, Byronic in tone.” And even those who understood not a particle of the ravings of his bizarre characters nodded with respect at the mention of him and among many he was no longer Christophe Mercier, but merely Christophe, as if he had become familiar and a friend to all those who admired him.

Even the white planters’ sons carried his novel in their pockets when they got off the boat and told stories of having seen him emerge from a cabriolet before the Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre, a white actress on his sleeve. And slaves overhearing these stories at table brought them to town.

But among the colored community there was more than a special pride. Many could remember the boy he had been when the dreary house in the Rue Dauphine had blazed with lights, and handsome men were forever at the gate to take the hand of his mother. And most concurred he might have buried his past had he chosen, there was light skin enough and money, and the warm embrace of fame. But he did not. Over and over in this or that notice or bit of article, there
appeared the fact that he was a native of this city, that he was a man of color, and that he had a mother residing here still.

Of course, he was in Paris. When you die…you go to Paris.

He drank champagne with Victor Hugo, dined with Louis Philippe in the Hall of Mirrors, and danced at the Tuileries. White women were seen occasionally to draw back the curtains from his high windows on the Ile St. Louis and look over the quay toward Notre Dame. He sent home trunks brought in cabs from the customhouse to vanish through his mother’s gate. And she, the wretch, unkempt, distracted, wandered to market with her black cat, in the rich and ragged costume of a beggar at the opera.

Marcel was familiar with these tales. He had been at his front gate the day she swung the ax in the dirt corner where their streets met. And knew the letters for “Christophe” that his friends put through the gate were beaten white of ink on the garden path by the falling rain.

What he really didn’t know was how things had been before. Though one evening at home, Monsieur Philippe in his blue robe, lounging at table the way Marcel would never have thought to do in his own house even if no one were there, said idly through his aura of cigar smoke, “Perhaps that boy, Christophe, was destined for great things.”

“How so?” asked Cecile politely. It was that hour when she sat across from him, her face softened and serene in the light of the candles, enthralled as Philippe unwound his lustrous chatter, and Marcel pretended to read at the open
secrétaire
.

What had the boy, Christophe, been like?

The picture dazzled.

Of how the little one was forever falling asleep in his mother’s box at the opera when his legs weren’t long enough yet to reach the floor, or at midnight suppers was left to doze on a settee against the folded coat of a gentleman caller, or a visiting ship’s captain who had brought with him a parrot in a cage. Men of all hues and shades took their turns at the late night soirees while restaurants of any reputation sooner or later sent steaming trays up the wooden stairs.

And it was the waiters often enough who, having gathered the stained linen and the silver dollars, put the child to bed, removing his shoes.

They said he drew on the walls, collected the feathers of birds, and played in his mother’s dresses, acting Henry IV on the dining-room table.

What a figure Marcel had let his book close. He shut his eyes, thought of those times when this heroic presence had reigned at the very corner of the block. What friends they might have been! And what was there now in his world but well-behaved children! If only he
could have spoken directly to Monsieur Philippe, the questions he might have asked.

But the subject made Cecile nervous, it was clear, Marcel could tell. She didn’t remember those times, no, she shook her head, as if the world ended at her front gate.

But the story took its turn. Monsieur Philippe loved the sound of his own voice.

And when Christophe was thirteen, a final guest arrived who stayed, though forever shrouded in mystery, a black veteran of the Haitian wars.

“You remember him, that old man.” Monsieur Philippe bit off the tip of his cigar and spat it in the grate. Marcel knew those subtle sounds by heart. Like the chink of the neck of the bottle hitting the rim of the glass, and that soft breath of satisfaction after each drink. “Of course we were suspicious of him, who needs these rebel slaves from Haiti…Haiti! It was Saint-Domingue when my great-uncle owned the biggest plantation on the Plaine du Nord. Ah, but the point is, the man was abroad so long, money in Paris, New York, Charleston…banks here, uptown. Hardly the one to set fire to every sugar plantation on the coast and lead a band of ragged blacks to cut our throats.”

In the mirror, Marcel saw his mother shudder; she rubbed the backs of her arms, her head to one side, eyes on the lace tablecloth. Ragged army of blacks to cut our throats, the words struck some sudden excitement in Marcel, what was Monsieur Philippe talking about? But it was Christophe that interested him, not that mysterious history of Haiti of which Marcel got bits and pieces at odd moments, never enough to make a picture of anything except rebel slaves and blood.

And he was old besides, this black Haitian, and crippled. And soon sick of seeing Christophe feast on chocolates and white wine, accustomed to sleep in his mother’s bed when he chose, and permitted to lie on the sloped roof at night, three stories above the street to study the stars, he sent the boy abroad.

Christophe was fourteen when he left, and people argued about the rest. It was uncertain, some saying he boarded in England for a while, others that no, he went to Paris, having
in loco parentis
the white family of a hotelkeeper who kept him in a veritable closet under the stairs, without even a candle let alone heat on winter nights. He was beaten there some insisted, others that, spoiled as always, he had had his own way, lashing out at these poor bourgeoisie any time they tried to restrain him.

But one thing was sure, that at sixteen he had run away to Egypt, wandered through Greece and returned to Paris in the company of a wealthy Englishman, white of course, to become an artist. He’d written of these exotic lands, Monsieur Philippe had an article somewhere
sent home by his young brother-in-law, Vincent, where was it (what Marcel wouldn’t have given to lay hands on it). But back to those times when he was wandering, and slaves over the back fence said the old Haitian, now bedridden, had disowned him. What claim had he over that beautiful Juliet, who could imagine? She with that pale golden skin and delicate face…but Philippe merely touched on that lightly, she had died on the vine. Cecile nodded.

And they said she drank sherry and fell to merely watching the rain.

And that she was mean to the old Haitian in the last year of his life, yes, Cecile had heard that too, when paralyzed he had to lie there to be fed softboiled egg with a spoon. The blinds were shut forever. Children of five and six thought the house haunted and loved to run past it squealing. Ah, look at it now, a jungle behind those cracked brick walls, and a peeling hulk on the busy corner.

But at just this time, across the sea, Christophe’s star rose.

Marcel could remember the rest.

And long after Monsieur Philippe had let the tale drop, he traced the thread in his own memory—how people had gathered to watch the old man’s casket come out because of the son’s fame. And only when it was all over, and a ghastly, worn Juliet walked back from the cemetery in the scorching sun, did people begin to whisper the truth. It was on the tombstone. The old Haitian had been her father!

So didn’t he have some rights over the boy, his own grandson?

But what would she do now, take lovers? Get new servants for those sold off or dead, patch the walls, bring the drapers and painters up the steps? No one doubted she could do it. She was so-o-o-o lovely still, Marcel at twelve was mad to get a glimpse of her. He didn’t really understand about Christophe then. He was “in love” with something or someone else. It did not come to him as having meaning yet that a famous man had lived there, walked there, breathed there.

And she did nothing. Her windows crusted with dirt, her garden wall became a menace. The vines that pushed it out miraculously held it up. She did not answer notes or knocks, and soon the hatred commenced. It was unfair! Christophe’s
Nuits de Charlotte
stood open in the windows of the booksellers. Stupid, silly…but most of all unfair.

How wonderful it would have been, after all, to “receive” her and hear about the young man firsthand, be her friend. But she became a witch in time, her lone-ness not only absurd but unfathomable. How, after all, could she endure it? The last of her slaves was put to rest in the Old St. Louis. The house was empty save for the cats.

Pity went fast, however, for she was too vicious if you spoke to her on the street, turning away at once, her head bowed, her cat in the basket on her arm. And with her son’s fame, increased the hatred.

But the boys Marcel’s age were now on fire for Christophe. They
worshiped him, and sternly forbidden to go near his mother they nevertheless lingered at her gate, hoping to put but one question, and always in vain. If she came out at all, they scattered. She looked too dreadful with her diamond rings in the noonday sun, an inch of petticoat beneath her hem. The mailman brought her letters from France, they got that out of him, but did she even pick them up from the gravel path? Straining to see through a chink in the wood, they had the worst fears.

But she was Christophe’s mother after all. They couldn’t despise her out of loyalty, and they had other things on their minds. Like writing stories in his “style,” making scrapbooks of clippings sent home by older brothers, uncles, cousins. And lounging about in each others’ parlors on afternoons when adults were out, they dreamed aloud with pilfered brandy of the day they would make the fabled pilgrimage to Paris, might knock on his black lacquered door on the Ile Saint-Louis and reverently, politely, gently, unimposingly, hand him their sheaf of manuscript pages.

Occasionally there was an uncle or a brother home who had, in fact, drunk with him in some crowded café, and then the rumors went wild.

He smoked hashish, talked in riddles, could be seen quarreling in the street, and staying drunk for twenty-four hours at a stretch, he talked to himself, and sometimes fell into a stupor at a café table. And there would appear that Englishman, “white of course,” who would pick him up, slap his face gently with a few drops of water, and slinging Christophe’s arm over his shoulder, carry him home.

But he was kind to his countrymen always. He never read stories shoved at him across tables, but gave gentle general advice, and when a tactful introduction here or there could be effected, did that with grace. He showed no shame of race, clasped dark hands, asked about New Orleans, and certainly seemed to listen. But he was quick to be bored, to grow silent and then be gone. You clanged his bell in vain after that. He knew when he had done all he could and you had nothing to offer.

Ah, admire him if you will, but imitate him never, said the parents to the enamored children. Marcel worshiped him, and those who watched his recent wanderings wondered if it were some mad emulating of the famous man that sent Marcel off the track.

For Christophe set the other boys on the straight and narrow when they thought of him. They wanted the tools to be like him, and in the scattered private schools around the town, here under a white teacher, there under a colored, they strove tensely, the lessons expensive, the classes select. They must be educated when they stepped off that boat, they had to be men.

And that Marcel would make the journey to Paris, that he would
have his chance—all that was certain. A promise made by Monsieur Philippe at his birth was the guarantee. And sooner or later, at least once a year, that promise was reiterated. Cecile saw to that. She had no concern for her daughter Marie, she said, Marie would “do well.” Lips pressed tight, she dismissed that subject abruptly. But in the warmest and best moments would broach the matter of her son. Marcel, lying awake on smothering summer nights when the mosquito netting, gleaming gold in the faint spluttering nightlight, became the only walls dividing them, would hear Monsieur Philippe murmur on the pillow, “I’ll send the boy in style…” It was a vintage promise, a part of life. So why not work toward it?