Feast of All Saints (37 page)

“Christophe, listen to me,” Marcel interjected. “I can find a nurse. My aunts will know, the Lermontants will know…”

“No!” Christophe shuddered. “Don’t go near those people.” For a second, Marcel did not understand. It was superstition, the mention of the Lermontants, of course. But behind them, the Englishman let out a moan. His thin body looked so slight under the covers, and his cheeks flushed with the fever made him appear all the more wasted and white.

“Michael, the doctor is coming, a nurse will be here soon,” Christophe said to him in a barely controlled voice. “This is some tropical fever, Michael, you’ve seen this before, you’ll shake it off.”

The Englishman grimaced, and his lips formed the whisper, “Yellow jack.”

A soft indefinable sound came from Juliet. She left the room.

Christophe was after her in an instant, catching her in the hall. “Maman, help me!” he pleaded.

“Get your hands off me,” she groaned, but her eyes were on fire. “You dare to bring that man here, here to me?” her voice broke. “In my house.”

“No, no, don’t look away from me, please, Maman, I’ve told you over and over what happened in Paris, Maman, I’m begging you…”

She jerked away from him, pulling her shawl up over her shoulders, hair falling down in her face. “There isn’t anything I can do!” She shook her head. “It’s yellow fever, your friend knows it, they all know it!” she threw up her hand. “He is going to die!”

Christophe gasped. He let her go. He backed away from her. And turning, her head down, she padded softly away from him into the darkness of her room.

One half hour later the doctor, weary, overworked, and plagued with a wracking cough himself, confirmed Marcel’s advice. A nurse would work no miracles, but it was the best anyone could do.

“But I saw him at noon today,” Christophe whispered. “He complained of a headache from walking in the sun, that was all, a headache.” Bubbles and Marcel stared at him. It was clear he could not accept the situation. The Englishman had begun to have violent chills.

A terrified Tante Louisa opened the door for Marcel at midnight, greatly relieved it was only that Englishman friend of Christophe’s who was ill. Of course she knew nurses, but all of them had their hands full, ah, this heat, this rain. Nevertheless, Marcel took the names from her and began going door to door.

It was near dawn when tired and discouraged he rang Rudolphe Lermontant’s bell. Rudolphe in his nightshirt wiped the shaving soap from his face as he stood in the door, a stub of candle in one hand, a peculiar expression passing over his features, his eyes almost dreamy as he looked at the deserted street. “I told that man,” he said wearily and without pride, “to get out of the city, to go out to the lake for a while until the end of summer. Every day he walked past the shop with his head uncovered in the heat of the afternoon. He uttered some poetry to me, some mad English foolishness about the Hounds of Hell! All the nurses are employed by now, even the old women who ought to be retired.” Marcel, studying his wide musing eyes, was suddenly struck by a faint shudder. Rudolphe knew the Englishman was a dead man, he knew that he would be bathing that body, dressing it perhaps before this day had passed.

“You must know some names, just anyone…” Marcel murmured. “Christophe’s caring for that man by himself.”

Rudolphe shook his head. “There is one young lady I can think of, but your chances of getting Madame Elsie to let her go up there are as good as mine,” he said.

“Ah, Anna Bella.”

“You remember ’37, Madame Elsie’s was almost a hospital, and every time I came to pick up a body, that poor little girl was there. She knows as much about nursing fever victims as anyone around. But Madame Elsie, well, now that’s another affair.”

“She’ll do it for me,” Marcel said, and turning he ran, forgetting to offer Rudolphe his thanks.

The sun was just rising over the river and the sky resembled perfectly a sunset as Marcel entered Madame Elsie’s yard. A mist hung over the flagstoned garden, and beyond through the gray branches of the crepe myrtles a light already burned in Madame Elsie’s windows, and against the backdrop of that light Marcel could see the outline of a figure on the porch, a lone woman in a chair. The creak of the rocker
sounded clearly in the stillness. He stopped at the edge of the path. A pain throbbed inside him like a heart. But then a faint voice reached him, a voice singing low, a voice that did not know it could be heard. It was not Madame Elsie in the rocker, it was Anna Bella.

She rose as he pounded up the steps. She wore an airy dress, replete with her usual lace, a thin crocheted shawl over her shoulders, her heavy hair undone. And as she turned to him, he saw that she had been crying.

“Why Marcel!” she whispered.

“Anna Bella,” he said as he took both her hands. “You’ve got to forgive me, but I need you now, Anna Bella,” and without guile or craft or stammered apologies he told her at once all about the Englishman in Christophe’s house.

“Just you wait right here, Marcel, while I get my bag,” she said.

He was so relieved that he squeezed her hands before he let her go, and then, forgetting everything, he clasped her tight, kissing her quickly, innocently, on both cheeks.

“But what about Madame Elsie?” he whispered.

“To hell with Madame Elsie,” she whispered back.

As they hurried up the block, she asked a few rapid questions about when the Englishman had been stricken and how.

“The man’s been all over the world, he wasn’t the least afraid of yellow fever, he’s been in the tropics before,” Marcel explained.

But when they reached the gate, Anna Bella hesitated, looking up at the shuttered windows, the dark outline of the chimneys against the pale but brightening sky.

“I’m here with you,” he said.

She turned to him, her eyes large and soulful and just for an instant there was her silent reproach. Then she went in.

She had the sickroom in order at once, told Christophe to shutter the windows but to let in the air. The sheets had to be changed, they were damp, and there ought to be more blankets and drinking water, and water for compresses for the man’s head. “Quinine won’t do this man any good,” she said when Christophe suggested it, “leeches neither, you just got to keep him really warm.” She sent Bubbles on to the pharmacy to get a glass feeder for the drinking water, and told Christophe he was no longer acclimated after all this time, he ought to get out of the room.

“I’m not leaving here!” he said with mild astonishment. “The fever never affects us, besides.”

“’Course it does…sometimes. But I knew you’d say that. If you’re going to stay here go to sleep, you’ll have to spell me for a while later on.”

Just before noon, Marcel was awakened abruptly. He had been
slumped up against the wall in the corner of the room. Now Bubbles told him that Lisette was downstairs with Madame Elsie’s girl, Zurlina. They wanted Anna Bella to come home. The Englishman was shuddering violently and did not know where he was. He murmured names that no one knew.

The day looked unreal to Marcel when he went outside. His head ached violently, and the sun seemed to cut brutally through an uncommonly clear sky. Zurlina was haranguing him, demanding that Anna Bella come out, and without realizing it he was leading her back toward his own gate. His mother stood in the shade of the banana grove. “What is all this?” she asked. And when he told her, stammering, speaking in fragments, he saw a resolution forming in her face. “That old crow,” she said, as she gazed with narrow eyes toward Madame Elsie’s door.

“She’s coming down here herself to get that girl, if you don’t bring her out,” said Zurlina.

“The hell she is,” hissed Cecile and barely lifting her majestic skirts she marched toward the boardinghouse at the end of the block.

When Marcel returned, cradling a pot of hot coffee between two towels, the Englishman was vomiting black blood. And Christophe was trembling so violently that at first Marcel thought he was ill. The Englishman’s face was gleaming, his eyes rolled up into his head. Chest heaving beneath the blankets, his hands twisted the covers, the knuckles white.

It was late afternoon when Marcel stumbled out again, too tired to protest when Christophe told him to take some supper before he came back, that they would send for him if there was a change. He had the best of intentions of returning with soup and bread for all of them, but once at home he fell across his bed. Lisette had promised to wake him in an hour. He went into a deep sleep.

It was dark when he awoke, the cicadas were singing in the trees. He jumped up, almost cried out. The evening star hung in the sky and the night seemed strangely empty around him. He was certain the Englishman was dead. An awful anguish overcame him, that falling to sleep, he had let the man die.

Rushing up the dark stairs and along the empty hall, he found Anna Bella sitting quietly in the bedroom, her rosary beads in her hand. Dim candles flickered on a small makeshift altar, with a prayer book propped open to a picture of the Virgin, the whole set on a linen napkin on Christophe’s desk. The corpse lay neatly against a snow-white pillow. Marcel let out a low moan.

“Marcel,” she whispered drowsily, rolling her head to one side as if it were heavy on her neck.

He walked softly toward her as if somehow the dead man would be upset by the sound of his steps. Her hand burned against his, and feeling the weight of her forehead against him, he clasped her shoulders and held her, trying not to give way to tears.

“Where is Christophe?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “It was terrible, Marcel, it was the worst!”

She rose, leading him to the doorway, but just outside she stopped. She was looking back at the man on the bed, and obviously did not wish to leave the body all alone.

“Oh, Marcel it was the worst ever that I’ve seen,” she said, her voice very low. “I tell you when that man died, I thought Michie Christophe was going to lose his mind. He just stood there staring at that man as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. And then she came in, that crazy woman.” Anna Bella shook her head. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “She just walked in here real slowly as if she didn’t have anything in particular on her mind. And there was Michie Christophe just holding onto his own head and staring down at that man. And then, shrugging her shoulders, just like this, she says to him, ‘I told you, didn’t I, that he was going to die.’ I tell you, Marcel, she might as well have been saying the weather was hot, or come to dinner or shut that door. And I thought that man would kill her, Marcel, he started screaming at her, he called her names I never heard a man call a woman, and his own mother, Marcel, why, he called her words I wouldn’t say to you right here. He ran at her, trying to get a hold of her and she went down on the floor, sliding right down the wall, to get away of him, Marcel, it’s a wonder they didn’t knock that poor dead man right off the bed. Well, I got my arms around his waist, I held onto him with both hands, I said, ‘I’m not going to let you go, Michie Christophe,’ and he just slammed me back against the door. I tell you my head’s still spinning from that.”

Marcel murmured a negation, his head shaking.

“Oh, the language that that man was using to that woman. Well, she got up fast enough on her hands and knees and then she ran out. I don’t know where she went. And Michie Christophe just stood there staring again at the bed. It was like he didn’t even know I was there. ‘Michael,’ he said to that Englishman, not moaning for him, Marcel, talking to him. ‘Michael,’ he kept saying, and then he jerked him up by the shoulders, shaking him like he could wake him up. This is a mistake,’ he said, ‘Michael, we’ve got to get out of here, this is a mistake!’ Then he was turning to me and saying it, like he could convince me that it was all a mistake. ‘That man’s not coming back, Michie Christophe,’ I said. ‘Let him go. That man’s dead.’ And oh, when I said that to him, Marcel, why he broke down just like a child.
He was crying, crying, like a little boy. He kept looking at me, I swear he looked just like a little boy. I put my arms around him and held onto him, he was just rocking back and forth. One minute I’d been scared to death of him, and then I was just holding him like a child. I don’t know how long that went on. It was a long time before he got quiet. He just wandered out here by the stairs. He had his hands on his head again. I told that worthless Bubbles to get on over to Michie Rudolphe’s and get you on the way. And when I turned around Michie Christophe was gone.”

“Gone?” Marcel made a soft, weary moan. “But where?”

“I looked all through this house, they were both of them gone. I came back here to wash and lay out the body. Michie Rudolphe’s gone up to the hotel to see if he can find some papers in the man’s room. And that Bubbles, I don’t know where he is!”

“Forgive me,” he shook his head. “Forgive me. For asking this of you, for leaving you here alone…”

“No!” she said emphatically. “I’m the last one to worry about, Marcel. You put that out of your mind.” Her eyes were clear, honest. And it was so like her, and so unlike anyone else that he knew, that as he looked down at her he felt a peculiar catch in his throat. He wanted to kiss her, just gently, innocently, and he resented all the voices now which told him he must not. But hesitating only for a moment, he found that his hands were on her arms, her small plump arms, and his lips had brushed the rounded firm deliciousness of her small cheek. Everything about her was roundness, ripeness, and he was overcome suddenly with all the bold and bewildering physical awareness of her that he had so long denied. Only now did he realize how he had held himself back, how his eyes had resisted her, how his imagination had refused to weave this voluptuous flesh into the fantasies in which Juliet had become his queen. He had clenched his teeth now, his hands still holding her, and he was wrestling with some violent ugly anger against the whole world: against Madame Elsie, against Richard, but above all against himself, the young boy who couldn’t have her, and wouldn’t have her for all his dreams of Paris instead. A shameless sound escaped his lips, he could feel her cheek against his chin, feel the roughness of his own neglected beard against that ripe fruit. But even now he might have won this battle had she not drawn up on tiptoe and kissed his lips.