Long Distance Life Part 17

"Good lord, what next!" Marcel sighed.

"All right, let me be rude," Richard said. "If you don't go to see her, she will think that I didn't give you her message."

"She's given the same message to Marie. Believe me, she knows her messages have been relayed."

"I don't understand this!" Richard insisted. He was becoming heated and his voice was lower, softer than before. He stepped into the room. "When the rest of us were running from girls and making faces at them, you were fast friends with her, Marcel! You spent half the day at her house all summer long. Now that you're old enough to..."

"Old enough to what!" Marcel turned on him suddenly. The edge on his voice startled Richard.

Richard looked down. "She wants to talk to you..." he murmured.

Marcel's face was darkly flushed. He removed his foot from the frame of the window and stood. Richard studied him uneasily.

"Madame Elsie won't let me near Anna Bella. I can't see Anna Bella!" Marcel said. "And if I could...what would I say?"

"But there is a situation there, Marcel..."

"I know that, my fine gentlemanly friend," Marcel answered. "I know all about it. I know more about it than you know about it. But what can I do do about it!" He was astonished to realize that he was trembling, that a sweat had broken out all over him, and that he was glaring at Richard as if he meant to strike him. Richard was not the one to strike. about it!" He was astonished to realize that he was trembling, that a sweat had broken out all over him, and that he was glaring at Richard as if he meant to strike him. Richard was not the one to strike.

Richard was mystified. There was something here that he could not comprehend.

"But Marcel," he said uncertainly, "if you could just be a brother to her..."

"A brother! A brother..." Marcel was staring at him in disbelief. "If I were her brother, do you think she'd be in that situation? Up late at night...how did you put it...to let the gentlemen in?"

At this, a peculiar light came into Richard's eye. He was silent. Marcel seated himself on the windowsill again. He was looking out at the trees. "Madame Elsie can't force Anna Bella," he said in a low voice. "Anna Bella has a mind of her own."

"But who will help her to stand up to Madame Elsie, who will be on her side?" Richard asked. "That old woman is mean. She needs a brother, Marcel, you...you are like a brother to her!"

"d.a.m.n!" Marcel burst out. "Will you stop using that word!"

Richard was astonished. His brows knit. He was probing Marcel's agitated and darkened face. It seemed a latent emotion had overcome Marcel, something inimical to the round childlike face, the clear innocent blue eyes. Richard's lips moved as if something were just dawning on him, and then he stopped.

"We aren't brother and sister," Marcel whispered, the voice thick and slow. "We never were. If we had been, it would be simple, and I would do as you say. But we are not brother and sister! Anna Bella's a woman and I'm not yet...not yet a man." He stopped, as if so volatile that he could not continue, and then the voice even lower than before resumed. "She'll be spoken for while I'm still sitting in the schoolroom, she'll be spoken for before I set foot on that boat for France, she'll be spoken for and gone and we are not brother and sister, and there is nothing, nothing that I can do!" He turned his head and once again looked out into the trees.

Richard stared at him helplessly. Every muscle in Richard's being reflected his distress, his heavy frame sagging though he stood erect, and a subtle light in his dark eyes flickered as if detached from the older, sadder face around it.

"I didn't understand," he whispered. "I...didn't understand." He reached for his books.

For a long moment Marcel was silent.

"Now what was it you wanted to speak to me about?" Marcel asked. "This other matter that was on your mind?"

"Not now," Richard said.

"Why not now?" Marcel asked. The tone was bitter but he didn't mean it to be so. He was conscious of Richard standing in the doorway and suddenly, he resented Richard very much. There were times when Richard's life struck him as profoundly simple and this could irritate him almost beyond words. "What is it?" he asked again, and for vanity, or reasons he did not know, he attempted to regain his control.

"I'll come tomorrow, after school," Richard said.

But Marcel's face was calm. He wiped his forehead almost casually with his folded handkerchief, and then he made some semblance of a polite smile.

Richard hesitated. He set the books down again and clasping his hands behind him in that deferential manner he said, "It's about Marie."

Marcel's expression was utterly innocent. Uncomprehending. "Marie?"

"I want to call on her," said the deep voice, barely louder than an ordinary breath. "Your mother...I'm afraid..." He stopped. "I'm afraid," he went on, swallowing, "that she will think it unimportant, that we are too young...but if I could just call on her, with your blessing, when you were there! I mean, however you would want it...however you..." the large shoulders shrugged. And the face was mortified.

Marcel's eyes were wide. He had a.s.sumed that blank and obsessed expression that so often frightened people.

"Marie?" he whispered.

"Good lord, Marcel!" Richard stammered. "Good lord!"

"I'm sorry. It's my turn not to understand," Marcel was almost laughing. But Richard's face was so ominous that he didn't dare. Richard looked menacing. As if he might grab Marcel and shake him as he'd done so often in the past. "Of course you can see her, if she wants!" he smiled. A calming sensation was surprising him. Marie and Richard...But then he drew himself up. He left the window and stood firmly in the middle of the floor.

"She'll be fourteen soon. You should really wait until then," he said seriously. "There'll be a party for her naturally and of course you'll come. After that...anytime. Before that, well, if you wish, I'll see."

"But your mother..."

"Don't worry about my mother," Marcel smiled. "Just leave that to me."

Richard, miserably uncomfortable and relieved at the same time, now moved to go. He made a quick bow much like the bow he'd given Marcel at the gate and turned to the porch.

"Well," Marcel said.

Richard looked back.

"You see what a good brother I can be?"

For a long time after Richard had gone, Marcel sat at the window looking out on those moving drifts of ivy and the winding, knotted branches of the old figs. Then wiping his face again with his handkerchief, he b.u.t.toned his jacket and went out.

In the dappled shade of the overhanging magnolias two white men sat at the painted wrought-iron tables of Madame Elsie's courtyard, their tall gla.s.ses of bourbon a pale amber in the afternoon light. A row of airy crepe myrtle trees separated this small court from the path to the back outbuilding where Anna Bella lived. And its long porches were screened by these same light green branches though Marcel could see that the windows were open, the lace curtains drawn back. But when he noticed the white gentlemen with their drinks, and heard their low voices, he paused, quite invisible beyond the edge of the flagstones, and stood still looking up at that distant porch. He was barely conscious of their drawling French, the playful compulsive tapping of a key against the rim of a gla.s.s.

Then he went up the gravel path to the stair.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a dark figure in the kitchen door far across the yard, but he took no notice of it as he mounted the steps. The figure rushed forward with lifted skirts. But he was already on the porch before he heard her hiss for his attention, the snapping of her fingers, the whispered and urgent: "Marcel!"

He was staring through the low windows of Madame Elsie's sitting room as he moved toward the door. And he saw Anna Bella on the settee, her lap covered with a long thick ribbon of white lace. It had been months since he had laid eyes on her. He no longer went to Ma.s.s at all with his mother and sister and their paths did not cross. But at this moment when he saw her, the love he felt for her was so exquisite that it left him weak. And he felt the ugly sting of shame. How could she know what he was feeling? How could she know why he had never come? How could she know when Richard didn't know and Marie didn't know and he himself could only dimly understand? He did not plan what he would say now. He didn't rehea.r.s.e his words. He knew only that he must be with her, he must sit beside her in this room, close to her, and somehow make her understand. Mais, non, we are not children Mais, non, we are not children. And no longer children, what have we become? Oh, there were so many other moments, so many other times when they had opened their souls to one another, when in those long and mysterious tete-a-tetes they had come on truths together that neither, perhaps, would have ever known alone. So surely now they could take this step together. If any two people on earth could lay bare the adult travesties that had befallen them, entangling their lives, separating them, he and Anna Bella could. Just take her hand.

He moved forward, his fist already tight to knock, when suddenly inside the window just beside the door, a dark head distinguished itself from the familiar shapes of the room. A young white man, his black whiskers sleek and s.h.i.+ning, his thick hair parted in the middle and curling fastidiously above his collar gazed up with severe hawk eyes. Marcel drew back and, his legs weakening under him, quickly left the porch.

He was still trembling when he reached his own room. He sat at his desk, the notebook for the day's cla.s.s where he had left it, the Greek text, the case for his new pens. He moved to take a pen, to dip it in the ink. But then his arm tightened around his waist and putting his head down, he shut his eyes and dissolved into private tears.

IV.

IT WAS THE WITCHING HOUR, or so it seemed. Lights out, and only the far-off sounds: a woman laughing hysterically, the crack of a gun. It seemed for a while there had been the faint thudding of drums, those persistent voodoo drums, from a meeting lost within the maze of the neighborhood fences and walls. Marcel awoke. Lisette was standing over him, he was hot, covered with sweat, he stretched uneasily in his clothes.

He had fallen asleep, his books spread at the foot of the bed. He had been poring over his Greek, as he had done every night for three weeks since the school opened, striving to maintain his precarious lead at the top of the cla.s.s, and now with some measure of relief he realized this was Friday night again, he could rest though the work was unfinished, he wouldn't be on the rack again until Monday morn.

"All right," he said grumpily to Lisette, ready for her lecture. He struggled up, stiffened, and wanted to fall back again asleep.

"That teacher wants you," she said.

"What?" He had his face in the pillow again, a warm rumpled pillow. The heat was unbearable in the little room. "What?" he rose up.

"He sent that no 'count Bubbles down here, said for you to come on up to his place if you were awake, and if your Maman said it was all right. Well, your Maman's asleep. It's nine o'clock. You going or not?"

"Yes," he said, "of course I'm going. Get me a fresh s.h.i.+rt." He was truly asleep. But he hadn't really spoken alone to Christophe since school started. He'd been dreaming of men on horseback for no reason at all. "You scared me," he murmured.

"How did I scare you?" she stood in front of the open armoire. His clothes were peeling off, soiled by the summer heat and his own skin. At the end of the cla.s.s today that tall polished Augustin Dumanoir, the colored planter's son, had said with a sigh that the August heat was unbearable, perhaps the school should have opened in the fall. But then it was all worth it, really, heat or no heat. Marcel knew why Christophe had not waited. Christophe had had to prove to himself that the school could be done, and to prove it to the Englishman, who was still lodged at the St. Charles, as well. The Englishman was no longer coming to the townhouse. But Christophe, at the dinner hour, was seen more than once to meet him a block from the house and walk with him fast uptown.

"I thought Monsieur Philippe had come, that's how you scared me," Marcel sighed. He must still be asleep. His own words surprised him. He had thought Monsieur Philippe was far from his thoughts, but now something of the atmosphere of his dream returned to him, a man riding in country fields, but it was all mixed up with that Augustin Dumanoir, who lingered after cla.s.s each day to chat with Christophe as though they were both men. That boy had brought his hounds with him to New Orleans, and Marcel had seen him early last Sat.u.r.day riding out with a clatter over the cobblestoned street, his hunting gun in its holster, his lean bronze face squinting in the sun. The horse was magnificent. The hounds had been streaking alongside it, darting in and out of the spa.r.s.e crowds. But it was Monsieur Philippe's presence that lingered from the dream, and the old fear, had Monsieur Philippe been angered by Cecile's note? He had received the note for sure, the notary let Marcel know that, though how it was accomplished Marcel did not ask. The notary had been prying, where did Marcel study now, what was his teacher's name, and how old was his sister, my, she was lovely. "But I'm in the new school," Marcel thought, straining to open his eyes. He drank the hot coffee Lisette had just given him. "I'm at the top of my cla.s.s, and Monsieur Philippe knows of Christophe." He shut his eyes tight and opened them again. The coffee, sweet with sugar and cream, went down deliciously.

His work these three weeks had taxed him to the fullest: his old habits had given him a bad time. He dreamed too much, thought too much, slept too much, had to struggle desperately to complete his a.s.signments, his head ached. Yet in some quiet way he was happier than he had ever been. The day-to-day life in the cla.s.sroom had surpa.s.sed his most romantic dreams. Christophe was infinite in his patience with the basics, but it was when he spoke of vast systems of ideas that he came into his own. History wasn't date and name to him; rather he spoke of cultural cataclysm, revolutions that divided the world in art, architecture, all expressions of the human mind. Marcel was dazed. He should have liked to wander through the streets again, thinking luxuriously for hours of a mere sentence which Christophe had spoken, a mere phrase. His only pain was the same pain he had experienced that first day: Christophe was his teacher now, formal and demanding as with everyone, adding no particular warmth of inflection to his voice when he called on Marcel by name. There was no time to say even a word to him in the afternoons, and calling at the townhouse on Sundays, he had twice found Christophe gone, and Juliet, wild-eyed and worn, much resembling her former self, had worried him with her indifferent invitation to come in. And it was the Englishman himself who, meeting Marcel one late afternoon when the school let out, explained to him sarcastically that indeed, he was no longer even "permitted" to visit Christophe in his mother's house.

There was but one treasured consolation: Marcel led the cla.s.s. Each morning when their corrected a.s.signments were returned to them, and the grades announced, Marcel's was the highest. His translations were perfect, his geometry completely correct. He wished he could tell Christophe with a swelling heart how much the teacher's skill meant to him, his infinite patience with the most obtuse questions, his repeated inquiry, "Now is there anyone who does not understand, tell me if you do not understand." Monsieur De Latte had punished questions, berating the boy who asked them as lazy or dim-witted. The pretense of understanding when he did not understand was something that Marcel had to unlearn.

"What time is it?" he asked Lisette. The fresh s.h.i.+rt was cool but stiff.

"Nine o'clock, I told you," she said. "And Michie Philippe's not in town." He looked up at her as he b.u.t.toned his vest, saw her face sullen in the lamplight, the pecan skin with its rash of freckles glinting red like her copper hair.

"How do you know he's not in town?" he asked wearily. She pretended to know everything, where everyone was, what went on. Christophe's words came back to him, every slave on this block knew you were here that afternoon with my mother every slave on this block knew you were here that afternoon with my mother.

"Drink another cup." She handed him the coffee, and put his new boots beside the bed. "I haven't had time to get to those others, they're crusty. What with your sister's birthday coming I don't have time to breathe."

He nodded. His new boots. They hurt like h.e.l.l. "But why is the birthday party being held at Tante Colette's?" he asked wearily. He too didn't have time to breathe. Marie's birthday was the fifteenth of August, the Feast of the a.s.sumption of the Blessed Virgin, it was the birthday and name day that always brought the most elaborate celebrations, with a special cake, a reception, even presents for the slaves. And this year it was quite special because Marie was to be fourteen; she would become a young woman as if she weren't that already, as if Lisette didn't spend all day these days ironing her clothes, as if Richard hadn't come twice already to call. Lisette, who had loathed the simplest personal tasks for Cecile, went everywhere with Marie, was becoming, on her own, Marie's maid.

"You don't even know what goes on under your nose," Lisette said. "Your mother says the cottage is too small." There was contempt when she had said those words, "your mother." "Don't stay there too long," she whispered. It was a strange s.h.i.+ft, but she still spoke to him protectively as if he were a child.

"Don't be foolish," he said. "I'll do as I d.a.m.n well please." This affair of the cottage being too small, it didn't make sense.

"And if your mother wakes up, that's what I'm to tell her, he's off doing what he d.a.m.n well pleases?"

"If you want to be mean about it," he said. He pulled on his boots, combed his hair. "Is Maman angry with Marie?" He asked it over his shoulder, as if it were not important at all.

Lisette made a short sound, not quite a laugh. "Don't be long," she said again in that same whisper.

"Now, what the h.e.l.l is really on your mind?" he stopped as he put the comb in his pocket. It seemed the breeze had s.h.i.+fted, or some intervening sound had died away, so that faintly again he heard those voodoo drums. "You want to sneak away, don't you?" he whispered. "You want to go to that meeting, wherever it is..."

The drums were louder, or was it just that they had gotten a hold on his mind? They had a maddening monotonous rhythm.

"Don't you ever wonder what goes on there?" she asked. Her tone was insinuating.

He shot her an indignant glance. "Why should I care about that barbarous superst.i.tion?" he demanded. He could feel his eyes become hard. But she didn't budge.

There was something insolent and cunning in her face, something proud. "You'd be surprised, Michie, what fine company is dancing with those savages," she said with a slow smile, "even such fine gentlemen as yourself!"

He looked at her. At the smile on her face, the manner in which she stood against the door with her arms folded.

"You hate us, don't you, Lisette?" he whispered. "You hate all of us, even Marie...And if we were white we could beat you twice a day, and you'd lick our boots."

The smile died on her face. He was trembling. She stared at him almost blankly. And he felt a chill pa.s.s over him. Never had things gone so far between them before, never had he spoken these sentiments even to himself. But he was amazed to see the change in her. Her brows came together, it was as if he had struck her.

"I like you well enough, Michie," she said softly. "Haven't I always done right by you?" She was shaken, positively shaken. "You don't know my pain, Michie!" She looked away.

"I'm sorry, Lisette," he said. Fl.u.s.tered, his hands formed fists. He'd hurt her all right when he never dreamed he had the power to do so. She was playing with her earring, her head to one side, she would not look at him.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "And you've taken fine care of Marie these last few weeks..." he murmured.

A sullen smile showed gradually on her heavy features. "Well now," she whispered, "doesn't that just make your mother boil!"

The slave, Bubbles, admitted him through the side door, and with the eyes of a cat led him through complete darkness to the stairs. "You go there, Michie," he whispered, and appeared to drop off silently as if in a void.

In all the time he had worked with Christophe, Marcel had not returned to the second floor. A bare bit of moonlight showed him the paneled door to Juliet's room was closed, and turning, his hand on the newel post, he saw the swell of a lamp far down the hall. Christophe beckoned him, and when he reached the door, he realized he was entering Christophe's room.

The teacher sat at his desk against the far wall, the lamp on a shelf slightly above his head. And above that lamp, covering the wall as high as a man might reach, were pages fluttering from tacks, all covered with a purple script. This writing had the obvious form of verse, with words crossed out here and there, lines scribbled in the broad margins. And beneath them, the desk itself was hopelessly cluttered with opened books, heaps of paper, feather pens, a chaos utterly different from the s.h.i.+ning neatness of the cla.s.sroom on the floor below, and a chaos that seemed to emanate out from the desk enveloping this entire room. The bed itself was unmade, papers were weighted down in random piles over the humps of the thrown-back spread, and an ashtray had spilled there distributing burnt matches and cigar b.u.t.ts. But it was comfortable, marvelously comfortable, all of it, the mantel crowded with figurines, the walls hung with maps and engravings helter-skelter, and before the grate was a rumpled pillow, and an empty gla.s.s, as though disdaining the bed, Christophe sometimes slept on the cooler floor.

He himself was dressed, dressed as formally as if he might be conducting cla.s.s, and he sat with his back to the desk, one arm leaning on it, his hands clasped. He looked as poised and composed as he had in that small black and white Daguerreotype that Juliet had shown to Marcel the first afternoon in her room. Christophe had since presented the same picture to the cla.s.s, explaining what it was, and how, through light and chemicals, the image had been made. Everyone had been amazed, and this lecture was but one of several that week on the new inventions and developments in Paris, a part of their education that kept the boys enthralled.

But something was wrong with Christophe. He sat too still, was too perfectly dressed, stood out too clearly amid the room's disorder, face in shadow against the lamp.

"I've missed you at supper," Christophe said.

"I've missed you, too, Monsieur," Marcel said. "I didn't want to disturb you, and I've been studying till midnight every night."

"It's hard for you, too hard," Christophe said. "And one of these days I want to have a talk with you about all that staring out of the window you do in cla.s.s, but not now. You're my star, besides."

Marcel flushed.

"Right now, scolding you for daydreaming is the farthest thing from my mind. I wish I knew what was on my mind, then I wouldn't be rambling about things that don't matter to either of us. Sit down."

Marcel took the armchair near the grate. He couldn't keep his eyes from those fluttering poems. And when Christophe said nothing, he asked gently, "But what is it, Christophe?"

Christophe sighed. "Well, how has it been, Marcel? Have I been a good teacher, is the school worth a d.a.m.n?"

Marcel was astonished. A good teacher. Everyone was talking of Christophe. Rudolphe stopped at the cottage gate to sing his praises and even the high-strung and spoilt Fantin was actually attempting to learn to read. Augustin Dumanoir and his cronies had sent back to the plantations for their trunks.

Marcel c.o.c.ked his head to one side. "Are you playing with me, Christophe?" he asked.

Christophe uttered a dry laugh. "No," he shook his head. "Maybe the teacher needs a little a.s.surance from the pupil, maybe he needs to see a little admiration in those blue eyes." The voice was softer than usual, a little vibrant with emotion as it had been in argument with the Englishman often before.

"You have that admiration!" Marcel said. "You know you have it."

Christophe was thoughtful. "I'm to see my friend, Michael, tonight," he said. "And if I refuse again to go back with him, I think he may leave tomorrow morning, with the tide." His eyes moved across the walls and looked down. "Which means...I may never see him again."