Feast of All Saints (41 page)

“Well, I had to mourn that way for Michael,” he said. “I had to cry out, I had to let out the pain. Well, it’s done. I don’t even know what day this is. I don’t know how long I was with Dolly, but it’s over now, it’s done.”

Marcel was relieved but wary. He didn’t understand that this exhilaration in Christophe came from so many days of drunkenness that Christophe was in an unnatural state in which all things leapt out at him, beautiful or tragic, and seemed somehow sublime. But he could see some fear in Christophe’s eyes, and he sensed that Christophe’s pain had only just begun.

“How will I ever repay you,
mon ami?”
Christophe asked. “Pray the world never gives me the chance.”

“Just come back to us,” Marcel said. “Just be all right again. That’s more than enough.”

He felt the embarrassing urge to cry again. But Christophe was on his feet now and taking the empty coffee cup from him said, “You’ve got to get on home. Your mother…you must go on.”

“But Christophe, you won’t go out, will you? I mean you’ll stay here…for a few days until this man…this Captain Hamilton…”

Christophe nodded with touch of resentful resignation. “Don’t worry about that,” he said, his voice a little raw. “The illustrious Captain Hamilton has taught me a couple of lessons. One, that I don’t
invest enough in whiskey…his is incomparably better. And secondly, that I don’t really wish to die.”

Marcel rose. He looked Christophe straight in the eyes. “It was not your fault that Englishman died,” he said.

“I know that,” Christophe surprised him. “Believe me, that’s quite far from my mind. I have a heavier burden to bear: and it is simply that, regardless of who or what is to blame, Michael is really dead.”

Marcel shuddered. Christophe clasped his arm and led him to the stairs. And Marcel was already deep into some thought of what he was going to say to Cecile, when opening the front door, he found himself face to face with a tall white man in the street.

His body underwent a powerful shock. For an instant he was aware of only two sensations: fear that this was Captain Hamilton and the very unpleasant feeling that he had, somewhere, sometime or other, seen this white man before. But this white man was in no rage. He was standing quite still and composed as though he had been about to ring the bell. He had black hair and was remarkably fair-skinned with deepset and disturbing black eyes. Marcel felt positively weakened, almost unable to speak.

“It’s all right,” Christophe’s voice came from the stairway along with the dull thud of his steps on the carpet. “Come in, Vincent,” he said.

The white man stepped into the hall.

Marcel didn’t trust this situation. Christophe was unsteady, his bloodshot eyes were all but maniacal in the harsh sunlight, and that he was volatile and could be rash seemed more than likely. He invited the man to step into the back parlor behind the school.

The white man said nothing for the moment, and when he did speak, his tone was decorous, his words dramatic for their pace.

“I cannot stay, Christophe,” he said.

Christophe’s face evinced no surprise at this and no change of the veiled expression.

“I wish to speak with you about a Captain Hamilton, are you familiar with the Captain Hamilton to whom I refer?”

He waited, but Christophe did not answer. Christophe’s face had become fixed and somewhat cold. He folded his arms across his chest and adopted an attitude of chilled patience, offering nothing to what the man was obviously struggling to convey.

The man appeared to take a deep breath. He was finely dressed in a green frock coat and cream-colored trousers and he carried a silver walking stick which he touched lightly now to the parquet floor. If he was conscious of Marcel behind him, he was equally conscious that Christophe had not told Marcel to go.

“Captain Hamilton is not a man with good sense,” he remarked
now in the same measured manner. “But then Dolly Rose is a woman quite given to causing a man to lose his good sense.”

These last words were strongly emphasized, however, there was not the slightest change in Christophe’s face.

“Captain Hamilton has been informed,” the man went on, “by a number of his more pleasure-loving companions that Dolly Rose has played him for the fool. Your name was mentioned in this affair, and Captain Hamilton and I have discussed it at length.”

There was a pause.

“I have explained to Captain Hamilton,” the slow steady voice continued, “that you and I are acquainted, that certainly his quarrel must be entirely with Dolly Rose. I have explained to Captain Hamilton that he will come to understand this more clearly when he has been longer in these parts. I have explained that a man…” he hesitated, “a man of color cannot defend himself upon the field of honor, that, in fact, a man of color cannot defend himself against a white man at all. I have explained that in some circles it is judged an act of cowardice to quarrel with a man who cannot defend himself. That is, if allowances can be made at all.”

Christophe’s eyebrows rose. “And he believed that, Vincent?”

“He accepted it,” answered the white man. “As I said, he hasn’t been long in these parts.” But then, dropping his voice, he added gravely, “However, you have.”

And turning, he said under his breath and without conviction, “Don’t make the same mistake again.”

Christophe’s eyes narrowed, his mouth tensed. He glared at the back of the man’s head and then suddenly he spoke, “Do you want a receipt from me, Vincent?”

The white man, reaching for the doorknob, stopped. Marcel saw the shock in his face, saw the sudden rise in his color as he looked back. He glared at Christophe.

“What did you say?” he whispered.

“I asked if you wanted a receipt. After all, you’re paying me off, are you not?”

The man was stunned. He face flushed, and he stared at Christophe in disbelief.

“For all those suppers in Paris,” Christophe’s voice came low, inflectionless, “all those long walks by the river, those conversations at sea? What did you think I would do, Vincent, come to call on you at your plantation, set myself down at your table, ask your sisters to dance? What was it you said to me that night at Dolly’s, ah, yes, ‘I wish you well.’ You should have known better, Vincent. I was born here the same as you were. You don’t have to pay me off!”

The man was trembling. His eyes were moist and large with anger.
“You take advantage of me, Christophe!” he declared, the voice vibrant with a suppressed rage. “If you were born here the same as I, you know then you take advantage of me! Because you have insulted me!” His lip quivered. “You have insulted me under your roof. And you know that I can’t demand satisfaction for it, and that if I could, I would!” He spit these last words. And turning, wrenched the door back, letting it crack into the plaster of the wall.

Christophe’s face was contorted, and he too was trembling as he squinted into the sunlight. “You go to hell!” he said between clenched teeth. “You and your fucking Captain Hamilton, you go to hell!”

The man froze. He turned, more outraged than angry, wildly frustrated and amazed. But something happened in his face. The struggle there gave way to some desperate consternation. “Why in the name of God did you come back here!” he said. His eyes widened as if he must somehow understand. “Why did you ever come back!”

“Because this is
my home
, you bastard!” Christophe’s eyes were blinded by tears. “This is
my home
, the same as it is yours!”

The man was speechless and somehow defeated. He stared for a moment more. They stood staring at one another, Christophe’s face working violently with his inner torment. And then the white man turned abruptly and withdrew, his crisp steps quickly dying away.

By the end of the week, Dolly Rose had broken with Captain Hamilton, pitching out of the windows of her flat in the Rue Dumaine a good deal of the furniture he’d bought for her before the shopkeepers could come to take it away. Celestina Roget had spoken harsh words to Dolly at Marie’s birthday fête and would no longer receive Dolly in her home. No one would receive Dolly.

But two quadroon girls, newly from the country, were invited to share her flat and soon men were entertained there in the evenings, and Dolly commenced to refurnish the house on her own.

T
HE AUTUMN CAME ON
, chilly as always at first, with falling leaves. But then one morning ice appeared on the surfaces of the open ditches while the tender fronds of the banana trees were scarred brown with frost.

It was the kind of winter that no one really talks about who visits New Orleans, as if the steaming heat of summer obliterates all memory and all anticipation of it from the mind. But it was bleak and damp as always and only a little more cold. Yellow fever had gone with the first brisk winds, never having reached the point of epidemic, and the city had about it now the air of new cleanliness, and those who had moved sluggishly through the shimmering August streets darted about with frozen hands in fists in their pockets and women rushing into the warmth of crowded shops were radiant with rosy cheeks.

Even the Yanquis suffered, saying this cold penetrated, it was worse than New England, and huddling about their small coal grates, looked with despair at the tendrils of damp working their way beneath the flowered paper on the walls. The breath of horses steamed in the streets, and the rain seemed to freeze in the air.

Yet everywhere still were the full green-leafed oaks, often trailing with ivy, while in the corners of courtyards roses clung shuddering to the vine. And there were the lush sheltered ferns. Honeysuckle still struggled in the dense grove beneath Marcel’s window. And the sky was often brilliantly blue with clean white clouds blowing fast from the river, letting through the weak sun to warm the spirit if not the frosty air.

Marcel loved these days, and buying himself a gentleman’s greatcoat, walked for hours after school along the shining wet banquettes excited by the spectacle of gaslight and plate glass windows, the smell
of chimneys and the bustle of commerce in the early dark. At home coal burned in all the small grates, and approaching with his books under his arm, he saw in the windows the inviting glimmer of blue flames. He drank too much cocoa, slept soundly after hours of study, and only now and then with a start would think of that inevitable meeting with Monsieur Philippe.

It seemed it hung over him as it did over Cecile, and then again it did not. Monsieur Philippe had always come at times of his own choosing and six months might pass before he was seen again. But the harvest was over at
Bontemps
, thousands of hogsheads of sugar had already come down the river to crowd the levee, and soon all the grinding and refining would be done. Cecile’s drumming fingers reminded everyone that it might be anytime now, and all the cottage around her seemed to wait, mirrors reflecting empty mirrors, silence taut as the string of a violin.

Christophe’s class, meanwhile, had swelled to twenty-five students against his better judgment, and the reading room in back was always full. He had not returned to teaching for two weeks after the Englishman was buried, but when he again appeared at the head of the classroom it was with a new fervor, and just a little impatience which his students appeared to understand. He shook Marcel once, violently, for daydreaming and Marcel could not meet his glance for two days.

He was still suffering, however, everyone knew it. And made no remark on it when they chanced to see him sometimes after hours weaving alone through the streets, drunk.

Meanwhile he had called on the ferocious Madame Elsie and soothed her burnt pride with a thousand thanks for Anna Bella’s kindness in nursing his English friend. And having heard of Anna Bella’s passion for reading offered her the newest novel of the famed Mr. Charles Dickens, begging her gently to accept. Madame Elsie pondered the propriety of this but clearly confused by his exquisite manners and remarkable confidence, murmured finally, “Eh
bien
, she may read it.” The whole affair was the fault of that miserable Marcel Ste. Marie, she was to tell her maid, Zurlina, afterward, never was that boy to be allowed in this house. How was she to know “a gentleman” was lodged with the schoolteacher at the end of the block? And as for Christophe, well at least these men of color who had been to Paris conducted themselves as if they were men.

At the same time Rudolphe Lermontant brought old newspapers for Christophe’s reading room, stopping now and then to read there himself with the older boys, and Augustin Dumanoir’s father visited whenever he was in town, perusing the Paris journals as he smoked his pipe. Christophe had two published poems in a recently received issue, full of obscure imagery and veiled references to demons which he absolutely refused to explain. No one understood a word of it, but it
was greatly admired. Other men began to drop in, fathers of the students, friends. So that it was soon a regular sight to see them moving quietly back the hallway past the classroom doors, or later ranged about the round table or in the leather wing chairs beside the little fire.