Feast of All Saints (49 page)

Again Marcel shook his head. “He may say it’s all right now because he’s wooing you. If I were wooing you, I’d kneel at your feet. But he won’t say that a month from now, he won’t want to come in from the country to find me in his house.”

He saw her brows knit, saw the tears welling again.

“Besides,” he whispered, “you can’t ask that of me.”

“No, I guess not,” she answered softly, almost dreamily. “Good-bye, Marcel,” she whispered.

And as he stood, seemingly unable to move, she withdrew, silently closing the door. It seemed a full minute passed that he stood there, and then suddenly, he cried out, “Anna Bella, wait!”

He came after her, but stopped in his tracks.

She had already reached the foot of the steps, and Monsieur Philippe stood at the back door of the cottage, his blue satin robe tied carelessly in front, as he leaned on the frame, cigar in hand. He was staring at her as she cut across the courtyard in front of him, her hands working fast to pull on her gloves. Never once did she look at him, her small head bowed. A little rain was falling, so light it couldn’t be heard. But she stopped boldly to open her umbrella and as the droplets began to speckle the black silk, she went on.

Monsieur Philippe raised his eyes to the gallery above. He regarded Marcel coldly before turning back into the cottage and shutting the door.

M
ONSIEUR
P
HILIPPE
had a late breakfast. He scattered the newspapers over the table, and downing three and four glasses of beer, sat smoking until the afternoon. Marie, home from Mass, put on her opera gown again at his request so that he might have another look at it, and showering her with kisses, he presented her with the little portable
secrétaire
. It was a gem of a thing with lacquer and gilt, come down several generations, he explained to her, she must treat it with love. She might set it on a table to write a letter, or even use it on her lap when sitting in bed. It had a crystal inkwell, a packet of parchment paper for notes, and several new feather pens. He was delighted with the changes in her, asked if she needed more money for the hairdresser. The aunts, he said, were to spare nothing for her new dresses, and should just send the bill on to old Jacquemine.

Cecile, aloof and weary, sat nestled into the settee observing all this, saying not a word. And when they were alone in the parlor, the three of them, Marcel, Philippe, and herself, she quietly mentioned that Marcel had had some difficulties with the old teacher which is why she had put him in the new school.

“Ah…I knew there was something,” Philippe snapped his fingers. He turned the large page of the newspaper, carefully flattening it. “And it’s all straightened out? You’re behaving yourself?” he glanced at Marcel.

“Studying very hard, Monsieur,” Marcel said dully. He dreaded the moment when he might have to explain about Anna Bella. He hadn’t the faintest idea what he was going to say.

“Hmm…” his father said. He made some notes in a leather-bound book, murmuring aloud. “Repair the gutters, hmmmm, dresses for Marie, and you, I suppose you’re growing an inch a day, you didn’t buy that horse, hmmmm? What’s the matter with you? Well,
ma chérie, ma petite
, I have to go.”

Cecile sighed as she put her arms around him. Marcel made to vanish but Philippe called over his shoulder,
“Mon fils
, wait for me in the yard.” He had already sent Felix to fetch his carriage from the stables.

“Monsieur,” Cecile asked gently. “When do you think that he should go? When he’s eighteen? Is that when they want them to enter the universities?”

“Eighteen is plenty of time,” he said. “And here,” he drew out that wad of bills again in the gold clip. “Let him go to the theater if he
likes, that Booth will be coming through with Shakespeare, let him learn English, too. Is that man teaching him English, we all have to give way to it, learn it sooner or later, does this Christophe teach him anything practical at all?”

Well, it’s coming now, Marcel was thinking when they finally met on the front path. The rain had stopped. The banana trees were glistening and clean. And the air with the brightening afternoon sun was not so cold.

“That little girl,” Monsieur Philippe said, looking warily up and down the narrow street. He stepped back into the gate. “What was she doing in your room this morning, would you tell me, please?”

His blue eyes, shot with red from the night’s drinking, were strikingly cold. He had seldom taken such a tone with Marcel and Marcel felt a curious humiliation.

“Monsieur, she and I are like brother and sister, we played together when we were children, why, she lives just up the street…”

“I know where she lives,” said Monsieur Philippe, his voice flat, and somehow filled with meaning. “You’re spoilt,” he said, his lips moving in a loose smile. It was a smile of the mouth only. “That’s your trouble, spoilt from the day you were born. Have you ever wanted for anything?” he asked with a haughty lift of his head.

“No, Monsieur,” Marcel muttered.

“You’re just a boy, you don’t know anything about this world, do you?” And doubling his large white hand into a fist, he tapped Marcel’s shoulder playfully. Marcel felt a peculiar chill. “That little girl’s too old for you now, she’s a young woman!” he said. “Now I don’t want to hear of her being back there again.”

The carriage had appeared at the corner, turning from the Rue Burgundy into the Rue Ste. Anne. It stopped before the boardinghouse four doors away.

“No, Monsieur, never again,” Marcel murmured mechanically.

A slender young man with jet black hair came down the boardinghouse steps, bounding easily to the granite carriage block over the water that still ran in the street.

So they’re going back to
Bontemps
together, or to their family in the St. Louis Hotel. And they’ve conferred in this little matter of Anna Bella, Monsieur Philippe had known of it when he saw her in the yard. An unpleasant shock went through Marcel. He did not immediately understand why he was so astonished when the carriage lumbered to the gate, or why his lips drew back in an irresistibly bitter smile. Felix had jumped down to open the door. Marcel looked away.

“You remember what I said to you,” Monsieur Philippe said with a warning finger. “You study your lessons, and be good to your mother. And don’t forget Lisette’s birthday this week, that girl will be twenty-three
if you can believe it, buy her something nice.” He fetched that money clip for the third time. Marcel stuffed the bills into his pocket murmuring that he would take care of it, of course.

“And you watch out for your sister!” Monsieur Philippe said lastly. “You see she doesn’t go out without Lisette or Zazu, or you go with her yourself.” Sister, sister, the word emerged with clarity in the swirl of Marcel’s thoughts. His wife’s brother, that was who this Dazincourt was, the brother of Philippe’s white wife. And he brings the man here to the gate of his mistress’s house. Marcel regarded him as if Monsieur Philippe were not still murmuring some vague admonition, as if he were not squeezing Marcel’s arm a little too hard as he mounted the carriage step.

It disgusted him suddenly, these two fine gentlemen, this brother, who must surely sit at his sister’s table to eat her food, to drink her wine, and here he comes to town with her unfaithful husband and takes a mistress only a few doors from his brother-in-law’s mistress. The door of the carriage had shut. The whip cracked, and the great wheels ground into the deep ruts as it moved slowly forward and gaining speed with the trotting hooves passed from his sight.

Oh, what did he care about these white people, their entanglements, their lies? Didn’t he know that they had shaped his very world with their domestic treachery, built the cottage in which he lived, hung the very pictures on the walls? Yet he stood still at the gate, gazing toward Madame Elsie’s boardinghouse, Anna Bella’s words running like a thread through his mind. “He’s a gentleman just like your father, a fine gentleman just like your father.” Gentleman, indeed. Would he kiss his sister when he saw her next, having just passed the gate where he had seen her husband’s bastard child? Mistress, bastard, he abhorred these words, what had they to do with him? I
love you, Anna Bella
.

Go inside, put on your Sunday best, the table will be prepared for dinner, white lace, silver, Tante Louisa will be along shortly with pastries for dessert. Look at that gilt-framed picture of
Sans Souci
in the country, white columns, he ought to write Tante Josette a letter, they would all be talking about the opera, he had one hundred dollars in his pocket for the theater, so he’d ruined his new suit, there were half a dozen frock coats in his armoire and shirts with collars stiff as a board.
I love you, Anna Bella
. “He’s a fine gentleman just like your father,” that’s the point!
Don’t do it
.

He saw those hawk eyes peering through the shadows of Christophe’s hallway, that white skin, the hand clutching the silver walking stick…
“that a man of color cannot defend himself upon the field of honor…that a man of color cannot defend himself against a white man at all.” I love you, Anna Bella, don’t!

Down the Rue Ste. Anne came a cluster of
gens de couleur
wandering home from twelve o’clock Mass, pink and blue dresses lifted carefully over the mud, black frock coats, umbrellas picking at the wet brick banquette like walking sticks.
“Bonjour
, Marcel, and how is your Maman?”
Don’t, Anna Bella, don’t
. He stood nodding, arms folded, as if in a dream.
Bonjour
, Madame,
Bonjour
, Monsieur!
I won’t ever see you again, will I? Not like this
. Sunday dinner, white linen, red wine.

He turned suddenly, leaving the cottage yard behind him and walked steadily toward the Rue Dauphine.

He wasn’t thinking anymore. It did not matter if Christophe cursed him, or what he would have to sweat on his knees. He found the latch of the gate broken just as he had left it the night before. The side door was open still where he had broken the lock, too. But he turned just before he entered. He looked down the narrow alley with its ivy spilling over the brick wall. Above hung those slatted blinds bolted over the windows as they had always been, and as he had seen them the first time he had ever passed into this yard. And the tall banana trees, wet and flapping in the chill breeze, still hid all of the world outside except for the gray sky. The slime had been washed from the tiny window in the gate, and he could see only a blur of color there of the street beyond. Only he was not frightened this time as he had been on that first afternoon. He felt nothing of that instinctual wariness. Rather, turning to the door, he could not wait to push it back and enter the long hall.

It seemed they both saw him as soon as he appeared in the reading room door. Christophe at the round table ate his breakfast, the folded newspaper in his hand. And Juliet, her shawl drawn over her shoulders, huddled in the great wing chair by the fire. Coffee steamed on the fender. The air was warm here. Frost covered the panes.

“Cher!”
she said. “Come in.”

Christophe lifted his cup, eyes fixed on Marcel.

“Cher!”
she said again with that same vague amazement. “Sit down.” She came round to him as he settled at the table, she lifted his face, inspecting the cut on his chin. “Not so bad,” she whispered, “why, it’s hardly there at all.”

“Did you read the reviews of the opera?” Christophe asked in a low voice.

She had set a cup before Marcel and was filling it with coffee and cream. “Here,
cher,”
she said.

“What did I tell you, the baritone stole the show.” Christophe said. “Get him something to eat.” She lifted a piece of cake from the plate with a knife.

“You ought to read it,” Christophe sighed, laying the paper aside.
He sat musing. His brown eyes appeared tired. He pushed his cup forward and his mother filled it. Then she moved slowly back to the fire. Her hair was loose over her shoulders, the light glinting on her face, and she wore that same peacock shawl threaded with silver that she had worn on the day Marcel first met her in the street.

“Go on,” Christophe said softly, “have a little coffee, you look as if you’re still asleep.”

Marcel parted his lips. He wanted to say something. But suddenly there were no words. He started to speak, but it was as if his voice had left him, words had left him, he could only sit there, staring forward, his lips working silently, and then, his brows knit, he was still.

Christophe rose, stretching, and said that he would go out.

“But it’s raining again,” Juliet said.

“Hmmm, it’s always raining,” Christophe answered, buttoning his coat. He looked down at Marcel.

“You stay here with my mother,” he said in a low voice. “Keep her company for a while. I don’t know when I’ll be back. And I haven’t fixed those locks yet. I don’t like to leave her alone.”

Their eyes met as Christophe took his wool scarf from the back of the chair. He put his hand on Marcel’s shoulder, “Just keep her company for a little while.”

Marcel looked at Juliet as Christophe left the room. He could hear Christophe’s step in the hallway, and then the closing of the front door.

“Come on upstairs with me,
cher,”
she breathed as she came toward him. “We’ll build a little fire in my room and make it warm.”