Feast of All Saints (56 page)

The faces of the
gens de couleur
were impassive, Rudolphe’s expression as if it had been carved in stone. Bridgeman’s lawyer finally succeeded in getting him to be quiet, and in rapid French he commenced to state the real elements of the case.

A man of color had here verbally insulted a white man which was of itself against the law. In addition there had been a violent physical assault in the presence of witnesses from which Bridgeman was fortunate to escape with his life. His client meantime had merely attempted polite conversation with the daughter of the defendant thereby opening himself to this shameful abuse. In simple, untheatrical language, the lawyer reminded the judge that the city’s vast free Negro population was increasing daily in numbers and constituted a perpetual nuisance, if not a threat to the white race.

Monsieur Remarque, Rudolphe’s lawyer, was equally restrained in his presentation, his nasal French droning through the court. He had a sworn statement from Giselle Lermontant that this man Bridgeman had followed her from the front of the St. Louis Hotel insulting her, annoying her, frightening her until she reached her very door. He refused to believe the house in the Rue St. Louis was her home, and at the appearance of her father heaped him with abuse. By the man’s own admission he had never seen “nigger women got up like southern belles” and wanted to know “what manner of house is this?” Witnesses would be produced both white and colored to state that Bridgeman had refused to leave the Lermontant doorstep, that he had laid hands on Rudolphe Lermontant’s daughter, and all those who could attest to the substance and character of the entire Lermontant family were
too numerous to appear in this court. Jacques Le Blanc, a white neighbor, was to be the first of these witnesses, as he had seen the whole affair.

But the proceedings had only been underway for some three-quarters of an hour, commencing with Rudolphe’s own calm and rehearsed statement, and witnesses following one another and lawyer countered lawyer, when the judge at last raised a weary hand. All the while he had been listening as if half asleep, his soft wrinkled cheek resting on his knuckles, fingers occasionally stroking his white beard. And now he awoke from this sublime stupor and held forth in droning English marked by such a heavy French accent that all strained to hear.

That free men of color were bound under the law to show respect for white persons, indeed, never to deem themselves equal to white persons, of course, this was plain enough. But the law extended protection to free men of color also, respecting their property and their families, their persons, their lives. It was never the intent of the State of Louisiana that such persons, though inferior, should become the victims of wanton violence at a white man’s whim. Rudolphe Lermontant had been protecting his household and his daughter. Case dismissed. He banged his gavel, gathered his papers, and shuffled through the rear door.

A soft roar rose from the assembled crowd and it seemed all were on their feet at once. Bridgeman stood flabbergasted, his face engorged with blood, though his lawyer obviously was not, and urged him to keep his mouth shut.

But the man forged through the thickening crowd in the aisle, turning theatrically to the white onlookers and declared in a booming voice, “A negra standing up to me in a court of law. A negra laying hands on me in a public street!”

Marcel was almost to the door when this commenced, but both he and Christophe turned to look back. The man, his eyes red and brimming with tears, stood staring at all around him in disbelief. “And what am I, then,” he demanded, the fleshy mouth quivering with self-pity, “if a negra can stand up to me in a court of law?”

Marcel was struck silent watching him. The face so full of outrage, the voice sincere beyond doubt. “A negra, a negra!” Bridgeman nodded as he insisted again. The man was actually hurt.

But then Marcel saw that Rudolphe, too, was staring at the man with the same awful fascination that Marcel himself felt. Rudolphe’s face was blank, solemn, and then without a word he walked out of the court. Marcel forced himself to look away from the white man, and only in passing now did he see Christophe’s face.

And Christophe’s face was unlike the face of anyone else at hand. Because Christophe was about to laugh. Only some weariness prevented him from doing so, something akin to boredom, and suppressing
a smile, he merely shook his head. It was so frankly disdainful that for a moment Marcel clung to it, and attempted to work his own mouth into a smile that he could not feel.

It seemed everyone was happy then as they spilled into the Rue Chartres. Madame Suzette came quickly from the back pew in the Cathedral where she had been waiting, and people pressed to shake Rudolphe’s hand.

“I want to stay with Richard for a while,” Marcel said, and Christophe, shrugging as if he found the role of disciplinarian unpleasant, said, “Of course.”

But Rudolphe did not appear to share the common relief, and as soon as he could, he took his leave for the shop, telling Richard to accompany his mother home. Marcel watched him walk off alone down the Rue Chartres, and the vision of the man, though there was nothing remarkable about it, filled Marcel with gloom.

A celebration was called for. As soon as they reached the house, Richard got a bottle of good wine from the back and brought it up to his room. Marcel had already built the fire and the two of them toasted the victory right off, settling back in their chairs. The Lermontant house had about it an almost antiseptic cleanliness which Marcel had always found appealing, softened as it was by the sheen of fine furniture and waxed floors. But this room he loved above all others because its high lace-curtained windows looked over the Rue St. Louis; and Richard’s immense desk, packed as it was with bills and other business of the undertaker’s shop, was the picture of order even to the small brass cylinder which held a cluster of quill pens. The coverlet of the bed was green satin and in winter, drifts of velvet hung in deep folds from the canopy above.

But Marcel was quite surprised to note, as he surveyed all this with the usual pleasure, that the sharp clear Daguerreotype of Marie had been added to the room’s few ornaments. She peered at him from the center of the small ornate case which stood open on the marble top table beside the bed.

So the exchange had been made in spite of everything, Marcel thought, and as always he admired Duval’s work, the man’s sense, not only of how long to expose the plate itself, but of every element of the picture, every detail of the background which provided a shadow, a line. Of course what Marcel had never bothered to tell Richard about that little session at the picture studio was that Duval and Picard had thought Marie was white, and there had been an inevitable shock when it became clear that she was Marcel’s sister, a shock which both men had taken pains to disguise. And though Marcel smiled faintly now at the perfection of the portrait, that memory lent its particular darkness to the gray cloud that was fast settling over him, a cloud which was settling over Richard as well.

“To victory!” he said again, attempting to dispel that cloud, and Richard did not answer, nor did he lift his glass.

“Mon Dieu
, we ought to be celebrating!” Marcel tried again in a moment. And to this Richard merely nodded as he stared off.

But it was coming clear to Marcel, as he sat there, what was wrong. They had never been brought close to the law before, any of them, not Marcel, not anyone that he knew, certainly not the mighty Lermontants. And it had reminded him that they were people of color living in a white man’s world. Their own world was magnificently constructed for forgetting that, the Lermontant house itself a veritable citadel, but all of them were fortified in a thousand ways. And today, those fortifications had been besieged. And it was not only Bridgeman who had penetrated the battlements, it was the judge with that weary and heartless recitation of their “inferior status,” as much as it was the white man in his heartfelt declarations, who had brought the realities of the situation crashing home.

Marcel was scowling now into the dregs of his wine. And had no spirit to reach for the bottle on his own. Any white Creole father might have killed Bridgeman for his insult to Giselle, not even waiting perhaps for a formal appointment at the dueling oaks. But there was to be no satisfaction for the Lermontants. And what would it have been for a poor man of color, for any one of the thousands of hardworking free Negroes who were hauled into the recorder’s office daily for squabbles on streetcorners or arguments in bars? A crime to verbally insult a white man, Marcel grimaced in disgust. And found himself again envisioning that bored and distant expression on Christophe’s face in the court.

Well, it was all well and good for Christophe to find it amusing. Christophe seemed forever “above it” because Christophe was here by choice. Marcel reached for the bottle without thinking, without realizing he had let out a sharp little sound of anger, despair.

Richard hastened to pour the wine for him like a good host.

“It’s at times like this that I think of one thing,” Marcel murmured. “And that is setting foot on that boat for France.” Why pretend anymore this was a celebration? Why pretend the “victory” had been enough?

Richard only nodded at this, as if he were quite unconscious of Marcel’s probing stare.

“And you know,” Marcel murmured, the voice devoid of feeling, “you don’t talk much about that anymore, our going to Paris. In fact, it’s been months since you spoke of it at all. In a way, that’s what we were getting to the afternoon all of this started when Oncle Rudolphe got into the fight.”

“Paris, Paris, Paris,” Richard said softly to indicate that he remembered. “Marcel, it’s far from my thoughts.”

“Is that why you haven’t been coming to class regularly? Is that why you’re spending more and more time in the shop?” Marcel’s tone was mildly accusatory.

Richard’s eyes shifted dreamily to him and attempted to fix on him, as if to fix on the subject at hand. “I’m not going, Marcel,” he said. “I’m not going with you to the Sorbonne, and I’m not going with you on the Grand Tour, and we’ve both known that for a long time…”

“But Richard, you’re not even needed in the shop!”

“No,” Richard took a swallow of wine. “But I am needed here. In this house. I don’t know,” he shrugged, looking away again. “Perhaps I’ve known this all along and it was just fun to plan with you, and dream with you, it made school so much easier, and so I did it, knowing I would never go.”

Marcel’s face appeared almost angry. But a languor lay over both boys, a sense of defeat. “I couldn’t live here,” Marcel whispered, “not one more day if I didn’t know I was going to France. If I didn’t know that at least there would be those years when I could live and breathe as a free man.”

Richard’s expression was serene and detached. He put his elbow on the arm of the chair and stared at the subtle movement of the curtains against the glass. Cold air seeped in at the windowsills, and he could feel it despite the fire. He was startled suddenly to see Marcel’s expression underscored with something bitter, something bordering on rage.

Marcel rose silently and moved across the room, lifting the Daguerreotype of Marie from beside the table.

“And I thought you felt the same way I did. Until you became enamored of my sister.” He glared at the fine white image in the frame, and then he put it down abruptly as if distracted, exacerbated in this vein. “Richard, you know this is the time of temptation, this is the time when young men forget all about the vows they made in childhood, not just the vows they made to each other, but the vows they made to themselves. The world has a way of closing in on us now, inundating us with the practical, and the enticing, and sometimes even the small.”

Richard listened to this patiently. He was struck by the conviction of Marcel’s tone as well as by the uncommon maturity of the words. Marcel who so often eluded and discouraged Richard with a scintillating passion, seemed to have struck something undeniable and just a little too complex. But there was quiet resignation in Richard’s tone when he answered.

“I know what you’re saying,” he said. “But believe me, Marie has little to do with this, Marcel. I always knew I wouldn’t be going with you to Paris, I knew it as soon as I was old enough to understand what my brothers had done.”

“Richard, I’m not saying go for the rest of your life! I’m not saying
you should leave your family as your brothers did. I’m only saying that while we’re young still we can do things that in later years will be impossible…” He stopped, and again there was that distraction in his expression as if he had touched on an inner pain, a secret stress. “Now I’ll be saying good-bye to you, too…”

“I’ve taken on more and more responsibility in the shop because I want it,” Richard said calmly. “I’m not the scholar you are, Marcel, and not the dreamer besides. I never was, and even if my mother and father insisted that I go abroad for a while, I’m not sure that I would accept. It isn’t merely that I’m their only son now or that I wouldn’t recognize those brothers of mine—wherever they are—were I to meet them in the street. It’s that I have a feeling for my father’s profession, it’s become my profession, too. My life’s settled, Marcel. It’s like a puzzle, and all the pieces are fitted into place. Except one. Marriage, that’s the remaining piece. And if Marie, if she will actually consent, if I can bring her home as my bride…well, that will be my Paris. Don’t you see?”

“So it’s come to that, has it?” Marcel said.

“I love her,” Richard whispered. “Didn’t you know that? Could you forgive me were I to tell you that she loves me?”

“Forgive you!” Marcel’s smile was bitter. But then it became light. He settled easily into the chair and watched Richard fill his glass for him, feeling now there was something a little felonious about drinking at midday. “You and Marie.” He was absorbing it, of course he’d seen it, yet to hear it stated in such a great perspective, it gave him a feeling of solemnity and somehow a feeling of peace. If he could leave his sister, his beautiful and strangely sad little sister married to Richard…why, the future was becoming too inevitable, too articulated, as childhood melted away all around him and dreams became a matter of certain steps.