Feast of All Saints (30 page)

“But if you let my mother lure you up those steps, I won’t be able to survive that little scandal, the prim and respectable gens
de couleur
will pull their children away from this house like that! Be patient, Marcel. The world is really filled with beautiful women, and something tells me you’ll never have to want for them, never at all. Be gentle with my mother, be the gentleman with her, but don’t let her seduce you! Not again!”

Marcel shook his head. “Never, Christophe,” he whispered. “Never again.” But he was barely conscious of the words he uttered because the immensity of his feeling could not be expressed in words. He loved Christophe, loved him as surely as he had ever loved Jean
Jacques and it seemed to him that nothing must separate him from this man. He felt quickened and alive in Christophe’s presence, and Christophe’s words were utterly unlike the speech of those around him, they were like water in the desert, light piercing the inescapable darkness of a dungeon cell. That only a moment ago, Marcel had been the prey of some bleak and terrifying suspicion about Christophe seemed unreal to him, the Englishman’s bizarre possessiveness meant nothing, and neither did Antoine’s vague gossip, nor even the violent power of perceptions which were Marcel’s own. It was all swept away before it could come to flower in the light of an intensifying spiritual desire: Marcel must know Christophe, learn from him, love him, all the rest be damned.

“Then you won’t go back to Paris, you’ll stay?”

Christophe was surprised. “Did you think I’d go back?”

“To adapt
Nuits de Charlotte
with Frederick LerMarque for the Paris stage? Yes, I thought you’d go back…when you thought it over.”

“Never,” Christophe said with a faint smile. “Revive those characters, lock myself up again in a Paris flat with those characters, live day in and day out with those dreary half-realized souls. Ah!” he shuddered. “Let someone else adapt it, I am through with that book, I couldn’t do it, I’d lose my mind.”

The doorknob turned. Juliet came in silently, a large heavy iron pot in her hands. She lowered it to the table and began to stir the steaming food.

“Now, let’s toast to the school,” Christophe said. All about him had a wholesome ring now, his eyes were youthful and chinked with laughter. “Sit down, Maman!” he burst out suddenly, and rising he caught Juliet by the waist, kissing her on both cheeks while she made to hit him with her spoon.

“Where were you that you kept us waiting?” she demanded. It had a nice everyday ring to it.

“An errand,” he shrugged. He pushed her down into her chair. Then taking Marcel’s plate he served it now with the rice and chicken bubbling in the pot. It had a voluptuous and spicy aroma, familiar enough with its blending of garlic, herbs, red pepper.

She filled their glasses for them, and commenced to butter their bread. It was only then that Marcel realized she had set no place for herself. She brought the candles from the mantel, and settling in the shadows seemed content to watch them dine.

And just as she leaned her face to one side, the soft skin of her cheek wrinkling against the knuckles of her right hand, there came a hard knock at the side door, across the hallway from them, and they heard it creak on its hinges.

Christophe stiffened.

But it was only a black slave who came into the dim light. Tall, very young, his clothes were miserably ill fitted, his shoes worn.

“Michie Christophe,” he drawled in a voice so soft it was like a lump of chalk crumbling as one tries to write with it on a brick wall.

“Yes?”

“Here, Michie Christophe,” he produced a brass key ring complete with a heavy set of household keys. “Madame Dolly says you left this just now, Michie Christophe, she said that you will pay me to bring this to you here. Just five cents, please, Michie Christophe, so I can buy a little something to eat.”

Juliet let out a shriek.

Marcel turned his face away, attempting to keep it straight. But he felt weak with laughter and suddenly very light-headed, elated as he glanced slyly at Christophe.

Christophe, embarrassed, stuffed the key ring back into his pants pocket, and paying the slave turned, flustered, to his plate. Attempting to appear casual he picked up his spoon.

“An errand, was it?” Juliet murmured, leaning forward, “and with that vain stupid woman, no less, that china doll!”

Marcel was gazing at Christophe with undisguised admiration.

Juliet hissed, “I ought to cook you in the pot.”

“And why, may I ask?” Christophe said. “When I left this city ten years ago, I may have been a little boy, Maman, but in the event that you haven’t noticed, I have come back a man.”

M
ADAME
E
LSIE
C
LAVIÈRE
walked with a cane all the time now, dragging her left foot slowly as the consequence of a recent stroke. She was bent, her hair a fluffy white from the temples, and beneath a black veil, she struggled along Père Antoine’s Alley, her right hand tightly clasped to Anna Bella’s arm.

She had been born in the days of the French colony, remembered the old Indian attacks, and those times under the Spanish when Governor Miro, driven to it by the white ladies, had passed the famous
“tignon
law” restricting the quadroons to a simple scarf for a headdress as if that might stifle their charms. She laughed even now at that old tale. But New Orleans had grown around her into a vast city, brilliant perhaps as the Paris and London of travelers’ talk. There were eighteen thousand gens
de couleur
in it today, only a part of its ever-shifting and motley population, and despising the Americans, she lamented those olden times, when Spanish officers had brought her Madeira and jeweled bracelets, and her daughters had been fair and spectacular, their
meager offspring disappearing north into the white race. She was lonely in her old age. She often said this with a sneer. And with a firm grip on life and on Anna Bella’s arm, she averred now that she was weary of this world, she wanted to be taken home.

“I don’t see why you don’t go visit Madame Colette,” Anna Bella was saying in her slow but easy French. “Madame Colette is always asking for you, and Madame Louisa too.”

As they struggled along the Rue St. Louis toward the Rue Royale, Anna Bella continued her campaign.

“Why, every time I see them at Mass, they ask about you, Madame Louisa says she means to come see you and with this and that, and the opera season, well they’ll be busy all summer long.”

“All right, then,” Madame Elsie said finally. “I want to get off my feet.”

The dress shop was thronged as usual, and Colette at the rear was making notes in an immense ledger, when seeing Madame Elsie and Anna Bella, she rose at once and brought them in. Of course she was glad to see Madame Elsie, and oh, what lovely white lace on Anna Bella’s pretty dress, my, but she did make the most beautiful lace, please come on now into the back room.

“Now you just sit down here, Madame Elsie,” Anna Bella eased the old woman into the chair. “Why, maybe you ought to be looking at a few of those bonnets while you’re here. And I’ll just go down the street now to get that sachet.”

“Won’t you have some coffee, Madame Elsie?” Colette asked. But Madame Elsie was glaring at Anna Bella from behind her veil.

“What sachet?”

“Don’t you remember now, I told you. I wanted some sachet for the armoire, and some camphor, too. Don’t you remember, and you said to get some blessed candles, why I’ve made a list.” Anna Bella drew back toward the door, bowing to Colette. “You just rest yourself, Madame Elsie, you know, Madame Colette, she just has to get off her feet.”

“You leave her to me,
chère
, you go on.” Colette was clearing a heap of lace, and ribbons from the small table by Madame Elsie’s chair.

“You come right back,” said Madame Elsie.

“Yes, Madame Elsie, I sure will,” Anna Bella answered, and quickly she rushed through the bustle and press of the little store.

Behind her she could hear Colette’s voice, “My, but that girl’s turned out to be a little lady.”

“Eh, and whose doing was that!” rumbled Madame Elsie, “I tell you she doesn’t know how to behave. However…well the face is not pretty, but you know, well, the figure is, something else…”

Anna Bella shut the door behind her and started back toward the
Rue Ste. Anne. “The face is not pretty,” she said to herself in a whisper, “but you know, well, the figure is something else!” She glanced to heaven for justice and shook her head. Passing the open doors of a restaurant with its black doorman, she heard him say as he pretended to tip his hat,

“Well, ain’t that a pretty nigger gal, I say, ain’t that a fancy nigger gal.”

She dropped her eyes, her head tilted to one side, and walked fast as if she hadn’t heard.

“I say that’s one fine nigger gal,” he said louder, mocking her, “bet that’s a Creole lady for sure!”

It seemed the faster she walked, the slower she moved, his voice still in her ears, and when she saw her reflection in the darkened windows of the undertaker’s shop she lifted her head a little haughtily, lips quivering between sudden tears and a smile, as she held the deep folds of her light blue dress.

The Ste. Marie cottage looked deserted in the glaring sun, the long blinds loosely latched over the front door; and she didn’t stop because she would have lost heart if she had, but went right up the path and tapped by the window, head down, eyes averted as if when she was discovered there someone would deal her a hard blow.

But there was no sound from within. She rocked for an instant on the balls of her feet, and then shaking her head, eyes still down, withdrew from the stone stoop and went back the alley along the windows toward the rear courtyard, “God help me,” she whispered, “I’ve got to do it, I’ve got to…” but as she turned into the bright square of sun that fell on the flags, she stopped with a short cry.

Two figures moved quickly, awkwardly in the thick grove of banana trees behind the cistern, both of them startled by her as she had been startled by them. Richard Lermontant emerged, flustered, rubbing his hand nervously and senselessly against the side of his leg.

“Bonjour
, Anna Bella,” he murmured in that low languid voice of his. And then, utterly at a loss, he made a quick bow to the figure in the grove behind him and hurried out of the yard.

“O, my lord,” Anna Bella whispered. There was a young woman in the grove, her broad skirts flickering amid the slender bright green trunks, a broken veil of ivy obscuring her face as she lifted it now and stepped out, her arms bare in her fluttering short sleeves except for a very thin white woven shawl.

Anna Bella, glancing desperately in the direction of Marcel’s windows, turned to go. She was certain Richard was well ahead of her, they would not collide again. But the woman said, “Anna Bella?”

And turning Anna Bella was astonished to see that this was Marie
Ste. Marie. She put her hand to her lips, unable to suppress a gentle laugh. “Why, it’s you!” she said, glancing shyly at the lovely ruffled afternoon dress, the pale arms.

Marie was pressing the palm of her hand to her cheek. She looked steadily at Anna Bella, her eyes as they had always been, black, almond in shape, and cold.

“I’m sorry to be here like this,” Anna Bella said. “I’m just so sorry. I knocked at the door and when there wasn’t any answer, why, I thought I’d leave a note up there on the door for Marcel.” This was a lie.

Marie moved toward her. With her hair combed back severely from her perfect face she looked so much older, older perhaps than any of the girls they both knew.

“I don’t want to disturb Madame Cecile,” Anna Bella said, knowing full well that Madame Cecile was not there.

“Come inside,” Marie said.

It was more a command than an invitation, but Anna Bella could sense that the tone was not intentional. She followed her through the darkened bedrooms with their gleaming white coverlets, a faint clean smell of wax rising from the little altar of the Virgin, and into the front rooms. Anna Bella had always loved this little house, its sweet scents, its spotlessness, the exquisite touches of luxury everywhere, and she felt with pain how long it had been since she had seen it, how long since she had sat in this chair. This last year had been the longest of her life, and she was bitter all at once that she had not caught Marcel alone here as she hoped, it had taken her weeks to get Madame Elsie to the dress shop, her plan was ruined, she ought to go. And she was annoyed at the same time by the sight of those two together, that handsome and polished Richard Lermontant and this beautiful cold-eyed girl. It struck her to the heart, actually. But she had cried so often in the last few weeks that she would not allow herself to feel it. She started to rise. “I should go home.”

“No,” Marie said. “Please. I’m glad that you’ve come.” She was standing by the window blinds as if to catch a little fresh air, that hand still pressed to her cheek. And what she said was true.

Richard had just kissed Marie, and she had never felt a physical sensation akin to what she’d experienced when he was holding her lightly, gently, as if he might break her, in his arms. His hands had spread out firmly against her back, pressing her to his chest so that the buttons of his frock coat had touched her breasts. And when that had happened a shock had passed through her, so keenly pleasurable that she had let her head fall back, her lips part, and felt that shock’s consummation in one shuddering instant as his lips pressed against hers. His arms had closed around her. He had lifted her off her feet.
And she had been obliterated in that instant, everything she’d ever been taught had been obliterated, all that she was before was simply gone away. She might have fallen if he had not held her, because the shock had weakened her legs. They had no strength at all and seemed in fact to be closed tightly together, in the blessed secrecy of her skirts, of their own accord. She remembered breaking loose from him, however, and leaning against the trunks of the trees, shuddering, her lips tingling and then numb. His hands were on her waist. He had kissed her shoulders, her neck.