Feast of All Saints Page 4

He forced his gaze on the sky and felt his eyes water. He couldn’t see the dark arcade of the market at all in his blindness, only knew there were bales there, men at work, that wobbling carts creaked under their heavy loads, and on the air came the strong, sour smell of boiling cabbage.

  Jealousy of Marcel! A fine thing, Richard! Drink another glass.

  But it was true. It was jealousy of that flair with which Marcel could hiss, “Je suis un criminel!” and set off, glaze-eyed after mad Juliet. Richard envied him, bitterly envied him whatever wild adventure he was courting now at midday. And worse yet, he envied the strength that would lead Marcel to break Juliet’s silence. Marcel would succeed. Richard hated himself. Marcel had to succeed. Marcel always did, always—somehow—got what he wanted.

  Richard shoved the bottle away suddenly and was rising to go. But at that moment, the white man who had been watching him from the bar became real again, a visible thing lurching forward and slumping down in the chair beside him. An Irishman with reddened blistered face and blasted hair. For the first time since Richard had entered the bar he felt wary.

  He’d been using this luxurious danger. He didn’t think it could touch him. And now this man had a hand on his arm. The fact that Richard couldn’t see him clearly made it worse.

  The man, drunk, drunker than Richard, displayed a few coins in his other hand. Richard hesitated, fearing any move might provoke a fight.

  “Not enough even for a stinkin’ glass,” the man breathed. “And in such a town as this, where a man can’t make enough for a bed at night even if he works all day for it.” He glanced over his shoulder as though an enemy lurked at the bar.

  Richard pushed the glass toward him and tried to edge away. “Please…” he said, gesturing to the bottle.

  “Oh, you’re a gentleman, sir, to be sure…” said the Irishman. He poured a drink, but clung to Richard at the same time, patting him now, then clutching him. He wasn’t old but he looked old, his eyes shot with veins, his reddish hair greasy and thinning. He wore the rough, shapeless clothes of a workman and his nails were black with dirt. He was mumbling something now about the work in the streets, the laying of stones and mortar.

  “Damn niggers!” he cried in a burst of coherence. “Damn free niggers getting five dollars a day as waiters in the hotels when a man’s working in the heat of day in the streets…!”

  Richard’s face flamed. A profound instinct told him not to play into this man’s hand, that he would be the loser for it. But he was cold with rage, his arm trembling under the man’s fingers, that this man would say such things expecting him, a Negro, to listen. He slid back against the wall. But then the man said innocently:

  “How do you stand it, man, living with them niggers as free as you please?”

  Richard’s mouth went slack. Something began to dawn on him, but he could not yet believe it.

  “And then the quadroon wenches, whatever they call themselves, up there in them ballrooms in silks and satins, not letting a man in lest he’s a fancy gentlemen, as if I’d want to dance with the filthy nigger wenches…’cause that’s what they are, nigger wenches. But how do you people stand it, not to have them whipped and sold off, or better yet sent back…”

  “Excuse me, Monsieur,” Richard was on his feet at once, steadying the bottle. “Help yourself to the whiskey, please.” He rushed out the door and into the breeze from the river, blind for an instant, but unable to repress a smile, and then a sudden burst of laughter. Hurrying up the Rue de la Levee he forgot for a moment all his trouble. Never before had he had such an experience. The bastard thought he was white.

  III

  FROM A NEGRO BARBER in the Rue Bourbon, Richard got a basin of water with a towel for his face, a splash of cologne and a cold drink. And when the man wasn’t looking he put the cologne in the drink and washed out his mouth. He was already thoroughly contrite, and sick.

  Monsieur De Latte did not condescend to even take notice of him as he slipped to the back of the class. But rather went on with the lesson in a foul temper, and somehow, somehow the afternoon passed.

  “You are going to take this bill to Marcel’s mother for me, immediately,” he said to Richard as the others filed out. And scribbling it quickly he then removed his spectacles and rubbed the sore red imprint on his pale flesh. “I don’t have to tolerate this!” he muttered to no one. “I don’t have to put up with it for a minute! Tell her she is to make other arrangements for her son!”

  Richard was already on the hot sidewalk walking doggedly for home before any rebellion could take form in him, any voice could protest in vain now, “I will not, I will not be the one to tell her.”

  But Marcel could do this himself. He had to be home by the time Richard got there, Richard was convinced. And he vowed to slip behind the cottage quickly before Cecile Ste. Marie might see him, and go up to Marcel’s room over the kitchen in the garçonnière. It had been six months since Marcel had moved out of the cottage proper to these private quarters in the rear—a fabulous luxury in Richard’s eyes—yet never had Richard skirted the proper entrance to the house to seek him there. But the thought of giving this bill to Cecile, of explaining the expulsion…all that was intolerable.

  However, as soon as he reached the garden gate in the Rue Ste. Anne, he was foiled. Cecile stood at her door, head cocked to one side, her black eyes wild with distress, as he approached by the gravel path.

  She was startling in her lemon muslin, two tiny pearls pressed into the tender flesh of her earlobes, and the heat of the day had not touched her. He had never known a woman more delicate, more fragile, and he felt in her presence now a familiar awe that often rendered him awkward and speechless. With some shame he knew it was all bound up with her being the kept woman of a white man, the dark “wife” of a wealthy planter, but that could not fully explain it. A faint cologne emanated from her like breath as she brought her handkerchief to her lips and whispered faintly in French, “Where is Marcel?”

  He fumbled for the bill, and had it half extended when he saw her turn, tears starting in her eyes, and heard the door crack back against the wall. This was going to be unbearable.

  She moved awkwardly into the small parlor, and let out a gasp when she reached the china closet and heard the vast contents chatter. She put out a hand to steady it on its tiny legs and then looked, imploring, into Richard’s eyes.

  “What is this?” she said. “What are you giving me?” She sank down on the settee in a perfect circle of crumpling muslin, her prim breasts heaving as though she were going to faint. “What has he done now?” She looked up. “Just tell me, Richard, what has he done?”

  Richard stared stupidly at the small curling hand in her lap, the tight bands of gold. It was perfectly useless to glance about for Marcel, to beg time to look for him, “Madame,” he whispered. “Madame…” He cursed Monsieur De Latte! He cursed himself that he had undertaken this duty. But it was too late for all that. She snatched the bill from him suddenly and seeing the sum written out, slammed it down on the side table.

  “I pay this always, what does this mean!” she demanded. All the crystal in the room tinkled, and the dimming sun flashed in the shivering glassed portraits on the wall.

  “He’s been…well, he’s been asked…I mean I am to tell you…” Richard stammered. But something intervened. There was the glimmer of salvation. For in the shadows beyond the arch that divided this small parlor from the dining room, Marcel’s sister, Marie, had silently appeared. She held an open book against her breast as though she’d been reading. And her hair was loose, as though she’d just taken it down. Richard stared helplessly at her, but Cecile, rising, took his wrist. “What is it, Richard, what are you telling me!” she demanded angrily. “For the love of heaven, what has he done!”

  “He’s been expelled, Madame,” Richard whispered. “Monsieur De Latte has asked that he make arrangements at some other…”

  She shrieked. So sudden and so loud that he jumped backwards, all but upsetting a small ta
ble. Clumsily he reached for a teetering lamp, and turning, caught his foot on the leg of a chair. She was crying in choking sobs. His heart was in his mouth.

  But Marie had come forward and stood beside her mother. Face burning, Richard stared blindly through the open door.

  “Get out!” Cecile shouted suddenly, her voice hoarse and cold. “Get out!”

  He glanced at her, at her bowed head, her clenched fist which pounded soundlessly against the carved roses of the settee, her foot stomping dully against the floor. “Get out!” she roared again, the voice coarse with anger. And he felt his temper rise. Marie was drawing back, and suddenly turned her face away. Not for the best of friends am I going to endure this a moment longer, Richard thought. Get out, indeed! With a muttered, “Bonjour, Madame,” he marched down the front step and down the path.

  It was only very late that night as he lay in bed that a thought came to him. It was long after the lengthy agonizing dinner when the family had railed against Marcel, and Rudolphe had dragged in the cook, who trembled to admit that Richard’s mother, Suzette, might have “ruined the shrimp” with her own “special touches” and Antoine had glowered across the table at Richard, saying with his eyes, this all has to do with Christophe, doesn’t it, this getting expelled, you romantic imbeciles, all of you. And Richard, sick, had begged to go upstairs just when his mother, throwing up her hands to scream, “It’s the way I have made it for ten years!” overturned her wine.

  Nothing much out of the ordinary, really. And they hadn’t guessed Richard’s waterfront debauchery—and he had not expected to feel so little guilt for it—and Grandpère said finally that Marcel was a good boy, better perhaps than one might expect, what he needed was a father.

  And then as Richard lay awake, the windows up despite the familiar noises of the street, this thought had come to him. It was something about the way Marie had backed away from her mother, the way that Marie had bowed her head at the moment when Cecile’s words had stung him so, when Cecile had said, “Get out!” It was something to do with the very tone of Cecile’s voice, a ferocious intimacy.

  She wasn’t talking to me at all, he realized, she was talking to Marie.

  He was certain. And opening his eyes wide, he looked at the pale ceiling. The light of a lantern below threw the shadow of a lace curtain shivering across the plaster. And the shadow slid down the wall and away as the lantern passed at the pace of a weary horse. The sting of the words went away. But this was yet another mystery. Because why would Cecile speak that way to her own daughter? And uncomfortable suddenly, Richard wished that he had not heard it. He felt all the more the intruder, and the sting came back. But it was worse.

  What had Marie felt, and with him there? No, he must be wrong, he thought suddenly, but he was not wrong. And there was some powerful resonance to those stinging words, “Get out,” that he felt now with all he had ever known of Cecile and her daughter. He was most definitely uncomfortable, he wished he had not ever had such thoughts.

  He loved the Ste. Marie family, all of them, not just Marcel who was his closest friend, his only real brother, but the lovely Cecile, such a lady, and the beautiful quiet young girl that Marie had become. She’d been the story-book child of his life in years past, the vision of sashes and ribbons and shining slippers that one seldom sees except on painted pages bordered with roses, the companion of verses and songs. And now she was as tall as her mother, swan-necked and round-armed, with eyes like the marble angels at the church doors that hold the holy water out to you in deep shells.

  It took his breath away suddenly, thinking of her. Marie. The sheer simplicity of the name seemed perfect. He’d written poems to her and torn them up at once as though the room were full of spies.

  He couldn’t bear it suddenly, the thought that she’d been scourged by a cross word. But they were a close family, he knew them too well to think…? But then.…His thoughts were making circles. He shut his eyes, but could not sleep. He was coming back and back to the same place. So that he turned over, shifting the pillow to feel something fresh and cool beneath his face, and he let himself slip into some fragment of fantasy. He was sitting with Marie on the back steps of the garçonnière as they had done years before one day when he had buttoned the little strap of her slipper. Only now they were not children, and they were speaking together intimately so that he reached out and.…No. He saw the angels again at the church doors. Marcel was in trouble, she was in trouble, Cecile had been crying, crying when he left. He sighed, and carrying now only one of the thousands of burdens to which he had grown daily accustomed, he sank slowly through his care, into a thin, restless sleep.

  IV

  IT WAS a long time after Richard left him at the market before Marcel actually accosted Juliet. Marcel had memorized the newspaper clipping, and there was no doubt in his feverish mind that he had the momentum needed to carry him across the barrier that separated her from all the world. But he waited for his moment, letting her see him from time to time, as she had, again, just before Richard bolted, and watching expressionless, as her gaze drifted and she went on her way. With the infinite misery and patience of a lover, he followed her, thinking let it take a day, or a year.

  He had nothing but disgust for the profligate he had so recently become, but at the same time he understood what was happening to him, and was curiously without regret. His childhood had become a wasteland; or rather he had finally become aware of just how barren and desolate it had always been, and following Juliet, he felt as if he moved toward life itself, the drudgery of his day-to-day disobedience left behind.

  She bought clucking hens and ripe tomatoes, oysters in the shell and writhing shrimps, her cat darting in and out of the market stalls, arching its back against her dragging skirts. And for all this, she took money from the tight silk over her breasts under which Marcel could see the tiny raisins of her nipples so that he grew dizzy from the heat and lounged against the hogsheads like a roustabout, never taking his eyes from her straight back or from the men who leered at her, or stopped in their hacking or sweeping to watch her pass.

  Of course the market men stared at him also, carters stared at him, black men with bushel baskets on their shoulders stared at him, this stiff-starched little gentleman getting hay all over his fine coat, with such wide and wild blue eyes fixed to the figure in front of him.

  But Marcel did not see this. He saw only that Juliet had at last filled her basket, heaped it with yams and carrots and bunches of greens, tethering two hens to the handle by their feet so that they squawked and fluttered as she swung the whole enterprise up high onto the top of her head, and then dropping her hands idly at her sides, managed to walk swiftly through the bustling crowd, the basket perfectly balanced, her back straight, her steps rhythmic as those of a common African vendeuse.

  “Mon Dieu,” Marcel whispered. “She can do that!” Better than those slaves who came to market day after day from the outlying farms.

  Of course it was positively shocking.

  He was delighted by it! And mesmerized by her grace, he went after her out of the shocks and smells of the market, the gap closing between them, so that he was all but hovering in her wake with an air of protective menace. Let some sneering shopkeeper utter one word as he stopped to lean on his broom in an open door. Marcel would kill him.

  But soon he was sick to see that they had all but reached the Rue Dauphine, and her gate lay only a few paces ahead of them. He drew up behind her so that he could almost touch the fringe of her shawl.

  She stopped. Her arm went up, graceful, the wrist bent, and steadying the load on the top of her head, she turned as if on an axis.

  “You’re following me!” she said. He was stunned.

  Shoppers pushed past them, but she didn’t move. She was looking down at him, seemed in fact to tower over him, though they were almost the same height. She adjusted the teetering basket and he saw that her face was not cross at all, merely inquisitive.

  “Come now, why?” she asked,
and as she studied him her lips drew back in a cunning smile. He felt his heart slowing gradually to its regular pace. Her voice was lilting, rich with some suppressed laughter. “You are going to tell me?” she asked with a gentle lift to her eyebrows. There was something in her speech which made him think of his aunts, even his mother, something that he connected with the wilds of Saint-Domingue where all of these women had been born.

  And suddenly he felt the thrust he had awaited all the long day.

  “Madame Mercier,” he said. “It’s a matter of what I’ve read in the Paris papers! Today! I have to speak to you about it, please, please forgive me for approaching you this way, but I have to…”

  She was regarding him with mild astonishment, but seemed at once bored, as though she could not understand what he was saying. She gestured to something at his feet.

  It was the black cat. It had been following them all the while, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, and now it rubbed its back on Marcel’s boot. He gathered it at once and lifted it to her outstretched hand. Clasping it to her bosom, she turned away and stepped off the curb.

  “But it’s about Christophe!” Marcel said desperately.

  “Christophe,” she whispered. She turned her head majestically to look at him over her shoulder. Something vicious showed itself in her eyes, and the change of expression was altogether so violent that he was frightened.

  But with an indefinable sense of what must work, he went on, “The papers…they say he is coming home.” That was it.

  “No!” she gasped, turning full round again. “They say this, Paris papers?” Behind her a cart had come to a halt, and a red-faced white man was shouting at her.

  “But tell me, cher—” she started. The horse shied, and whinnied. “Where is this Paris paper, what does it say?” She looked Marcel up and down, on the verge of frenzy, as if she might see the paper bulging from his pockets and attack him in an instant to lay hands on it. He felt a ruthless regret suddenly for ever having surrendered the clipping to Richard.