Feast of All Saints (55 page)

“I overexposed it,” Marcel sighed. “I should have asked Duval before I started counting, I should have stopped when he said.”

Richard laughed lightly. He could not understand the intensity
with which Marcel invested the slightest task or experience, and sometimes he felt a vague relief to live devoid of those peaks and valleys himself.

“When you see the picture of Marie which Duval took, then you’ll understand.” Marcel shut the cover for the seventh time and handed it wearily to Richard. “If you want to know the frank truth it would take Marie these days to get you to notice anything.”

“Oh, don’t be so foolish,” Richard said softly. “If
you
want to know the frank truth, you are simply too young to understand.”

Marcel gave him such an acidic smile then he was startled by it, even a little wounded. “Richard,” he said, “what you know about women could be placed in a thimble, and I’ve just taken you to witness one of the finest inventions in the history of the world and you paid not the slightest…”

“You exaggerate,” Richard said, as they turned into the Rue St. Louis. The house was just ahead. “You have always exaggerated, and you think anything which comes from Paris has to be wonderful, Paris, Paris, Paris!”

“Marie, Marie, Marie,” Marcel muttered. But then he clasped Richard’s hand and said sharply, “Look.”

Both boys came to a halt. There was a small crowd ahead on the banquette before the Lermontant house, there were shouts. And then, clearly, Richard could see two men scuffling, others attempting to stop them and one of them was Rudolphe, to be sure. Richard bolted, easily outrunning Marcel with long strides, so that he reached the scene first.

There was a white man lying on the banquette, his yellowish face twisted with a snarl, his top hat floating in the gutter, as Le Blanc, a white neighbor held Rudolphe around the waist. “Stop him, Richard, stop him,” Le Blanc was shouting, “Get him into the house.”

“You filthy nigger,” the white man was shouting as he struggled to his feet. “You damned nigger, call the police!”

Doors were opening everywhere, people rushing out on the galleries, as Richard quickly lifted his father back into the front hall. Marcel could see Grandpère standing there, and behind him Giselle’s husband, Raimond, looking positively stupefied, as Richard and his white neighbor, Le Blanc, forced Rudolphe into the front room. Marcel slammed the door.

Giselle was hysterical. She was sitting by the fire, her bonnet half off, tears streaming down her swollen face, while at the table, her smallest son, Charles, had begun to howl.

“He wouldn’t leave me alone, he followed me, he wouldn’t leave me alone,” Giselle choked. “I just tried to make him stop following me, to leave alone, I told him I was going home. I know enough English to know what he was saying to me, to know what he thought
I was!” She shuddered, screaming, her eyes closed, and stomped both her feet.

Rudolphe’s chest heaved, blood streamed from a cut on his temple, and furiously he pushed Richard and Le Blanc away. “Damned Yanqui trash!” he roared. “Damned Yanqui trash!” But then he turned on Giselle. “And you, you flighty stupid little baggage, no, you can’t wait for your mother to go out with you, you can’t wait for your husband to go out with you, you’ve got a brother six-and-a-half feet tall but you can’t wait for him to go out with you, you have to go tearing around the streets, shaking those flounces…”

“Rudolphe!” Madame Suzette was aghast. “For the love of God!”

But Rudolphe suddenly grabbed Giselle by the shoulder and was shaking her, “Don’t you tell me you didn’t do anything to give that man ideas!” Giselle put her hands over her ears and screamed.

Marcel was mortified, and Raimond stared helplessly. But all at once and quite without warning, Richard reached for his father and tore him away from Giselle. Richard was furious as he took his father by the lapels. Everyone went quiet at the sight of it.

“Don’t you do that to her!” came the low voice which might as well have been a bell in the silent room. He was trembling with rage. “Don’t you do that to her! She’s not to blame for that common trash, don’t you know that! Leave her alone!”

For a long moment Rudolphe merely stared dully at his son. And then Giselle, letting out one miserable wail, ran from the room. Rudolphe jerked his coat loose with a resentful gesture and turning his head slowly, almost stupidly, he settled down at the head of the dining table in his chair. The white neighbor excused himself at once to Madame Suzette, assuring her that he would be “right next door.” And Raimond gathering little Charles’ hand led him after Giselle, up the stairs.

Richard had gone to the front windows. His huge shoulders were hunched as he stood with his back to the room. And Marcel was thoroughly miserable, loving the family but not being part of it, and quite unable to help.

“What sort of a man was he?” Grandpère’s voice broke the silence. He moved slowly and somewhat painfully back to his usual chair at the table, his shoulders bent beneath the coat he always wore in winter, his neck protected by a wool scarf.

Rudolphe made only a weary gesture of disgust.

“A ruffian or what?”

“Ah, top hat, frock coat,” Marcel murmured. “Well dressed at least.”

But at those words Madame Suzette glanced sharply at her husband and then at his father. And Grandpère pressed his glasses,
thoughtfully, to the bridge of his nose. It was precisely what he had wanted to know. And within twenty minutes the police had rung the bell.

By nine o’clock, they had obtained Rudolphe’s release. Marcel had gone with Richard to find Remarque, the family lawyer, a white man of considerable influence, and bail had been set and paid. The Yanqui was in fact from Virginia, and well-to-do, it seemed, since he was staying at the St. Louis Hotel. Rudolphe was charged with verbally insulting a white man, a crime in itself, and physical assault with intent to murder, and trial was set for the following week. But he said nothing to the boys as he walked home from jail, he gave no hint as to whether or not he had been imprisoned with slaves, runaways, or the lower sort of criminals, and he said nothing of his handling by the police. He entered the parlor long enough to tell Madame Suzette that he wished to be alone now, to rest, and he advised Marcel to go on home.

Nevertheless, Madame Suzette followed him upstairs. And when she came down she found the house dark, and Richard sitting alone by the fire.

“How is Giselle now?” he asked her.

“Asleep, finally.” She stood for a moment at the small table by the windows, opening the cover of the Daguerreotype which Marcel had salvaged from the front banquette, and when she saw there the image of her son, very lifelike and extremely pleasing to her, she made a wan and evanescent smile. Then she closed the picture and came silently over to settle in the chair opposite Richard, her feet on the edge of the hearth. “The man…actually laid his hands on her,” she said with determined simplicity and calm. “He tore the lace of her sleeve.
Mon Dieu
, I feel so very very tired!” She pressed her forehead with the fingers of her left hand. Richard thrust the poker beneath the soft layer of gray coals and a latent flame brightened so that his mother could see the expression on his brooding face.

“And
mon Père?”
he asked.

Her eybrows knit, her forehead creasing with the long heavy lines that always indicated intense distress. She shook her head.

And after a moment, she said,

“I want to tell you something about your father. Your father didn’t really mean what he said to Giselle.”

“Maman, I’m so worried about him now that I can’t possibly be angry with him for what he said. I’m angry with myself that I laid hands on him, raised my voice to him…”

“No,
mon fils,”
she said almost crossly. “You did the right thing. Your father should never have taken out his anger on Giselle. But you see, your father felt helpless. If that had been a man of color you know very well what he would have done…”

“I know that, Maman,” Richard said.

“But he was helpless. He knew the minute he struck the man that he’d be arrested. And don’t you see, that helplessness was more than he could bear. If he could blame Giselle, if he could somehow say that it was all her doing, then the burden of defending her passed from him. And he couldn’t defend her. He couldn’t call the man out as any white man would have done.”

Richard was thinking. In his own wordless way he knew that this was true. But he relived the moment; he saw his father shaking his sister, he heard those words, vulgar, insolent, spoken in the presence of the entire family, in front of that floundering and stupid Raimond, in front of Marcel, in front of old Le Blanc. He tried to erase this from his mind. Wasn’t it enough to picture his father’s somber face when he had emerged from the jail, wasn’t it enough to realize what this hearing in court could mean? But he was angry with his father, and it seemed that Rudolphe always had some splendid excuse for his outbursts, that in his rages and his injustices he was always somehow on the right hand of God. It confused Richard hopelessly.

“I have to tell him somehow that I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I have to let him know…”

“No,
mon fils
, you do not!” Madame Suzette said. “Leave it. And your father will respect you for leaving it.”

“You really believe that, Maman?”

“Richard, there’s something you must come to understand. I had hoped that by this time you would have already perceived it and that the perception of it would have given you some inner peace. But I see now you are not going to understand without my help. Your father in many respects is simply not the man that you are.”

Richard was amazed. Scanning his mother skeptically though respectfully, he inclined his head to one side.

“Maman,” he almost laughed, “what I have perceived a thousand times is that I am not the man my father is, and never will be! I lack his vigor, his force. And tonight, when only for an instant I evinced that force, it left me shaken and in doubt. Do you think
mon Père
would ever doubt himself for such an action? Do you think he doubts himself for what he said to Giselle?”

“Yes, I do think that he doubts himself for it. I think he doubted himself at once. But he’ll never say so to you and he will never say so to Giselle. And that,
mon fils
, is not always the mark of strength.”

Richard’s brow was furrowed. He was watching the fire.

“You have your own brand of strength, Richard,” she went on, “and has it never occurred to you that it is finer, and more honorable than that of your father? Has that never crossed your mind? You do not realize the gulf that separates you from your father.
Mon fils
, to build a house such as this by the sweat of one’s brow is a great accomplishment,
but to be born in a house such as this and to all the advantages that surround it, that is another world. Your father is a gentleman and a man of honor because he has worked to become a gentleman and a man of honor. But you were born to it, Richard, it’s bred into you without a flaw. You are of a different ilk.”

Madame Suzette could see that she had stirred deep waters, and she was not surprised to see that Richard was displeased.

“It’s a strange thing we do to our children. We work tirelessly to make them better than we are. And if I ever thought that you would come to look down on your father, I wouldn’t dream of speaking to you as I do now. But you’re too much the gentleman even for that. You’re too wise already, that would be too base for your soul. But something else is happening, something I’ve watched with frustration for years. Your father’s force, as you call it, intimidates you. You do not value yourself for the wiser, surer person that you already are.

“Believe me when I tell you that your father is not angry with you for standing up to him as you did tonight. And you must remember, Richard, you must remember in the future, that when you stood up to your father, your father backed down without a word. Again, if I had less faith in you I would never speak to you in this way. But my faith in you, I know, will never be betrayed.”

She waited for a long moment, but it was clear to her that Richard could think of no answer. It would take time for her words to penetrate which was of course as she had hoped. It occurred to her that in all these years, she had never once felt that her counsel was lost on her son.

“I have one more bit of advice for you,” she said, rising, and placing her hand on Richard’s shoulder when he started to get up. “Don’t talk to your father of the court hearing unless he wants to talk of it. And for the time being, don’t say much to him with regard to Marie Ste. Marie. But remember, you are his only son, and his cherished son. And though he berates you night and day, though sometimes I see nothing but blind anger in your eyes when you are looking at him, remember, he lives for you, Richard. You and Giselle…you give your father’s life its real meaning. And I know you’ll never abuse the power of that position. But for God’s sake, use it when you must. Now I must go to your father. And you should go to bed.”

“Maman,” he stopped her at the door. “What if they…what if the judge rules against him?”

“That won’t happen!” she said. But her voice lacked conviction, and her shoulders were bent as she went silently up the stairs.

She was right.

On the morning of the hearing the courtroom was packed. All of
Rudolphe’s white neighbors had turned out, together with a dozen white customers, and a large body of the rich and respectable gens
de couleur
. A score of character witnesses could be called, and to spare Giselle an appearance in court, a sworn statement from her was in Monsieur Le Blanc’s hands.

And the American from Virginia, a prosperous but uneducated man by the name of Bridgeman, appeared with an expensive lawyer of a fine old law firm much patronized by the white Creole gentry, a man who knew the courts of the First Municipality and spoke fluent French. But before he could state the case clearly, the white man, Bridgeman, spoke for himself.

He had been attacked by a “negra,” he declared, in a public street. And before witnesses and in the plain light of day that “negra” had tried to kill him and that “negra” was still walking around free. In his own state, they would have strung that “negra” from the nearest tree branch and lit a fire beneath him to send him on his way. What was this place, New Orleans, what with the abolitionists in the north and “negras” attacking white men on the street?