Long Distance Life Part 33

No one knew it. If Lisette knew it, and if other slaves knew it, as Christophe had once indicated they might, they had never said a word. Not to anyone that mattered, that is, not to anyone who might care.

And all winter long he had gone to Juliet, slipping out of his room when it was quiet to admit himself to the Mercier house with his own key. Over and over he had climbed anxiously into the smoky warmth of that second floor to find her barefoot by the glowing grate, an angel in white flannel with high neck and long sleeves contrived to drive him mad. He would lose himself in caressing her, feeling those small angular limbs through the soft cloth as if he'd never seen them naked before.

And sometimes miserable and restless he had come to her just before dawn, already dressed for the day's demands, wandering in the dark trickling garden under her window, singing her name. "Come up," she would whisper to him, a ghost above, and he would find her carelessly dressed in one of Christophe's cast-off s.h.i.+rts, its flared hem stroking her pubic down. She made coffee for him on the hissing stove, laughed when he reached for her legs. They would breakfast on fruits and bits of cheese in bed, and coming up after school, he would find her sleeping still in the perfumed room.

And Christophe all the while came and went, finding Marcel at home with no more comment than if they were one family, and Marcel had always been there. They studied together, argued philosophy over supper, went through old trunks and old books, played chess and would end on the floor of Christophe's room before the fire with their wine.

Juliet was always near, bringing supper to them, mending some cuff or collar for Christophe as they talked, or sewing a b.u.t.ton to Marcel's coat. She brought cake to them when they were gla.s.sy-eyed and frenzied in their arguments and had forgotten that they must eat. And fluffing the pillows of Christophe's bed, lay there at times to listen to them, her eyes on the ceiling, her hands beneath her hair. She would crook her legs under her flared skirts exactly as if she were a boy. And at table she was ever the servant with Bubbles' silent a.s.sistance, antic.i.p.ating their slightest need.

Collecting Christophe's bruised books she scolded him for slopping the pages when he drank, saying, "Look at what you've done to this," as she set it near the stove to dry. She urged heavy coats on him when he went out, or sent Bubbles rus.h.i.+ng after with his wool cravat. And had the slave not cleaned his master's boots she would have done that with her own hands.

All this Christophe took, meantime, as if it came to him on the open air. He was the magician who merely wishes for a full gla.s.s to find it in his hand. And Marcel had long come to realize and accept that Christophe was her first love when he was there. "Anyone coming into this house right now would think they were the lovers," he mused, "her eyes never leave him for an instant." And he felt both jealous and content.

From time to time, he remembered that letter Christophe had written to her from Paris to tell her he was coming back. He wished now that he could see it again, just by chance perhaps lying open on a table or a desk. For in all Christophe's long diatribes about his return home, he had never mentioned his mother with all the warmth, the feeling that had been written there. And here he was slumped in study by the fire letting her ma.s.sage the muscles of his neck, stir the sugar into his coffee, even touch the cheroot with the match.

Yes, it was enough to make a lover jealous, but after all, when they were alone together in that bedroom, Juliet belonged to Marcel.

She was his completely between the sheets, showing him all manner of secrets with her lips and her hands. He thought some of it perverse at first and lay awake afterward uneasy and afraid. But gradually he became accustomed to her wild variations and saw them as the piquant delicacies known only to mature lovers, even as was her pa.s.sion. He had not known before that women could so relish the act of love, in fact, Richard had told him quite simply once that they did not. And there she was, this woman who had had her pick of men, her head thrown back, her lids fluttering, dying over and over in his arms. He glanced in the mirror proudly, put a slender cigar to his lips, drank his wine with l.u.s.ty despairing swallows, and laughed.

The waning season had found them a regular trio at the opera, Juliet in red silk and laced to make her waist a mere handful which he could not gather for himself save in the dark.

He had never dreamed that life could be this way.

It astonished him the contentment he knew when he was in that now familiar house, its nooks and crannies comfortable as his own. And time after time he would leave her fragrant bed and wandering down the hall, find Christophe writing by the dingy light of his smoking lamp. They would talk. The clock would tick, the wind made a mournful sound in the chimneys, Christophe scratched at the verses in front of him, then might crumple the paper into a ball and toss it into the fire. Once on the frostiest night, Christophe had all but dragged Marcel up on the sloping roof to look at the stars. He was afraid of falling, but the wilderness of glistening roofs spread out before him magically; and he would have liked to run from one to another, peering down through alleys at yellow windows, listening for mingled voices rising unevenly up the airwells, to find the river from this height and watch the steamboats, a spectacle of vague and dazzling lights in winter mists. Christophe knew the constellations, discovering each easily, and told him how much he would love the absolute clarity of the heavens when he first saw them over the open sea.

"But let's not talk of that now," Marcel had whispered, "of going, parting." And realizing later that never had he said such a thing to anyone, he pondered the wordless feeling he had for Christophe which was love as surely as his pa.s.sion for Juliet, and in some ways just as volatile, sweet, with the ebb and flow of each new encounter be it argument, laughter, hours alone together reading in a silent room. They had seen pain together after all, even death, the excesses of temper and drink, and had fallen into some simple and utterly explicit language as do the more trusting members of a family who cannot conceive of life without each other and think nothing of it as time goes on.

And yet daily there was the relentless and demanding teacher at the podium who with a sharp accusing finger would catch Marcel as he lapsed into his habitual dreams. And once begging off an a.s.signment late at night, Marcel was lacerated by such a venomous glance that he went at once to beg Christophe's forgiveness and home to do the appointed work.

Yet there were times when a darkness came over Marcel, and waking up in Juliet's bed, he saw the world through her shuttered windows, slits of green leaf and sun seemingly beyond him, and feeling stifled suddenly he sought the open air.

It was spring, the damp winter was dying in warmer though brisk winds. He found himself wandering back of town, out beyond the Place Congo to the Bayou Cemetery and sometimes back again through the Rue St. Louis past the cottage he knew to be Anna Bella's home. His steps would quicken then, his eyes averted, and he would embroil himself in other thoughts, wondering after, why he had chosen that path. Everyone said she was happy. Some said now she was expecting a child. He would roam the markets and wharves as he used to do before, thinking vaguely, ah, well she will be indoors after this and I won't see her, but there came some recurrent sensation of being with her in some sunny place, of white china, and some wholesome rippling talk. And dropping in at the Lermontants for dinner-he was always welcome and he knew it-he would immerse himself in their interminable and interesting conversations, occasionally looking around the orderly table-Richard's mother beckoning with whispers to Placide, Rudolphe in the midst of some adamant point on the economy, and Richard musing with his gla.s.s-and thinking of Juliet, he would wonder: what would they do if they knew? What would they think? Rudolphe came so often to the back reading room of Christophe's house, Giselle's oldest boy, Frederick, had been allowed to sit in on cla.s.s when in town. What would they think? It almost brought a smile to his lips, but then again it did not. Who could understand this madness, a woman past forty, a boy of fifteen? And then he felt disloyal to his love, and later would take Juliet flowers which he dropped one by one along the length of her bed.

Once wakening by himself near the very stroke of midnight he had been possessed by a disembodied thought: Anna Bella was no longer innocent; Anna Bella was a woman; Anna Bella was carrying a child.

But his mistress in the half-light stretched her long brown limbs and s.h.i.+fted like a feline against his chest. She didn't question the urgency with which he awakened her, nor the exhaustion with which he finally fell to sleep.

"If only I could speak of it to one living soul," he thought once dismally seeing Juliet in the street. Alphonse LeMond the tailor had come with her to the door of his shop, entrusting a parcel to Bubbles' hands. It was sweet to watch her unnoticed, her sprightly figure in s.h.i.+mmering taffeta and the lean graceful black servant at her side. "If only I could speak of it to a living soul.

"But I can't. If I could I would speak of it to Chris, but I can't, and I never will."

Because in all those months Christophe had never acknowledged the affair with a single word. There were three subjects one did not speak of in this house which had become Marcel's home: the first was the Englishman, the second was Juliet's father, the black Haitian, the third was this day-to-day affair.

And remembering that awful fight between mother and son when Juliet had taunted Christophe, "Tell him the real reason you don't want us together!" Marcel would not dare to break this silence on any of the three scores. That she had been taunting Christophe with a son's natural jealousy of his mother, Marcel had no doubt.

But sometime in the early summer, Marcel could not precisely recall, he had wandered up the stairs in the small hours and found Christophe in her bed. Dressed, of course, and rumpled, with the wine bottle beside him on the floor. He'd fallen asleep there obviously, and she, seeing no earthly reason to move him, lay curled against him under his arm. A shocking impropriety anywhere else, but why not under this roof? It seemed similar to so much that happened here, a matter the world would misunderstand. Juliet had risen, gestured for silence, and covering her son's shoulders, led Marcel down the hall. In Christophe's bed they'd made love and this being new and different it excited Marcel wildly. He couldn't hold her tight enough, wanted to make her cry out. It happened again. And again.

And even once he had awakened to find the three of them nestled in the same bed, Christophe in s.h.i.+rtsleeves beside his mother who between them had slipped into the modesty of her gown. It was Christophe who rose before anyone and, as if shocked to find himself there, left at once.

But what pleasure had Christophe in his life right now other than this simple affection? What would his rigid discipline allow? Aside from the occasional excess of the bottle, his was a monk's life, and his room with its books, narrow bed, and crowded desk had become a cell. Rarely if ever did the evenings find him gone, he was writing, studying, shuffling his students' pages on the dining table or roaming about the house as if it had become a cloister, his lips moving silently with his thoughts. And then some physical task would obsess him, he must change every picture on the wall of the cla.s.sroom, or wrestle trunks about the damp and leaking attic rooms. Bubbles must not be allowed to scrub the grates without help, it was too much for him; and Christophe, much to Bubbles' misery, took the rake from him time after time to pull the weeds from the flags. A shocking thing this, a gentleman with callouses on his hands. And Bubbles said so whenever he could.

But Christophe was in the grip of a magnificent asceticism, Marcel sensed this, extreme perhaps as the excesses he had described abroad. In fact, he was forever shuffling through volumes of Augustine and Marcus Aurelius with his spy gla.s.s for some lost quotation that would give him no peace.

And once in a while Marcel, surprising him with a light step, would find him with a ma.n.u.script on his desk. A large sheaf of papers one time, a smaller at another, but always unmistakably a work over which Christophe was murmuring with a poised pen. But Christophe locking it away at once commenced some forceful discussion, cutting Marcel coldly though politely should he ask the slightest question on what he had just seen.

If there was loneliness Marcel did not see it; if there was an empty place Christophe kept that knowledge within.

But as the months stretched to the half year, the nature of Marcel's secret life weighed upon him more and more heavily until it was, in fact, a persistent pain. If only he could talk to Chris, just put it into words! And it seemed the need was greatest, not when he was with them both in the Mercier house, but when he had to be at home.

Death permeated the atmosphere of the cottage as July came on, and Marcel could not and would not attempt to escape it as Zazu grew worse. But a gla.s.s divided him from those he loved. He saw his sister suffering sometimes beyond that gla.s.s, and Richard struggling with a boy's restraints and a man's work. And Lisette, in the shadows of the sickroom, head averted, staring in horror at her mother's wracked and heaving frame. Cecile visiting the sickroom left it hurriedly, wringing her hands with short breaths under the night sky.

And Marcel, hearing those vibrating coughs through the walls, stared at the familiar objects of his own room. But why did it weigh on him, his secret love, he would ask himself pacing later, picking up his pen only to set it down and find the windowsill in back with its moist breeze. He loved her; she loved him, and what harm could this possibly bring? He ached to be with them both now where it would not matter, and wondered at the fear that gripped him when he thought of it here alone.

Something was coming back to him, fainter than memory as he considered this, some picture conjured by Christophe of a man sitting in a Paris room. "It's a decision the world would not understand," the man had said. "I've come to it, the struggle is over...a decision the world would not understand." And it was that word, decision, which loomed large, obscuring the picture as it grew more and more familiar, the Englishman Michael Larson-Roberts in that phantom hotel in Paris the night he'd vowed to take Christophe away.

"If I could only make that decision," Marcel had murmured over and over, and finally, reckless and willing to jeopardize all the splendor of his clandestine world, he left the garconniere garconniere the night before Lisette ran away, and found Christophe alone in the yard behind the Mercier house. the night before Lisette ran away, and found Christophe alone in the yard behind the Mercier house.

A lantern burned in the shed beyond the trees and there Bubbles sat playing the old piano which he had now restrung, and an eerie music, soft, tinkling, filled the yard. Christophe himself lay on a cot under the sky, his hands behind his head, one knee crooked, the arc of a lighted cheroot descending to his lips as Marcel approached.

"And how is she?" Christophe asked, the voice tender. Then, his eyes accustomed to the partial light, he could see that Marcel had not heard.

"Zazu," Christophe whispered.

Marcel said, "The same." Then finding a wooden stool by the shed he brought it near, sitting so that he might rest his back against the bark of a slender leafy tree. The night was alive with the sound of insects, but the mosquitoes for reasons unbeknownst to man, if known to G.o.d, were not their worst.

"We never speak of it," Marcel said softly. "Your mother and me."

Christophe said nothing. The lantern in the shed made a moon in his eye. Marcel heard the soft explosion of the smoke from his lips and breathed the sweet aroma of tobacco. He wanted to reach into his own pocket for a smoke, but somehow or other he could not move.

"Is silence consent?" he asked now, looking up at the dark windows of Juliet's room.

Again Christophe did not answer. Marcel rose to pace the flags.

"It isn't that I believe it's wrong," Marcel declared. "It isn't that I have the slightest qualm about it! It isn't that it does me harm. You would say if you thought it did me harm...or Juliet harm...or you harm, you would say..."

Again silence.

Then Christophe asked in a low monotone, "So what is it, then?"

"That it seems somehow impossible, impossible that it should be so easy and so forbidden, so good and yet supposedly wrong. That I flourish doing what others would think patently evil, and it goes on under their noses and they don't suspect. That's what it is. It goes against the order of things!"

Christophe took another long draw on the cheroot and then sent it arching slowly across the yard. In the shed Bubbles' music became lower and melancholy. As always it sounded disturbingly familiar as if made of fragments from a recent opera or theatrical that were altered and interwoven in undefinable ways.

"Is it that way, really? There is no real order to things!" Marcel asked. "There's nothing, is there? You knew that when you conceded on the matter of bringing Bubbles into the cla.s.sroom, didn't you? You knew there was no undying principle, nothing for which you would go to the barricades like the mobs in the Paris streets..."

"You are very clever, my star pupil," Christophe said softly. "But you may not thrust this responsibility into my hands. I refuse to accept it and you may interpret my silence as you please..."

"Christophe, help me!"

"Marcel," Christophe laughed, "that is like the ocean asking for help." He turned over on the cot, raising himself on his elbows and stared into the dark clump of leaf and tree that obscured the shape of the rising cistern. There was the rustling of paper, a hand in the pocket, and then the bright explosion of a match: his profile visible for an instant in casual concentration and then gone.

"I'm afraid," Marcel said.

"Why?"

"Because if it's really true that there's no order, then anything can happen to us. Anything at all. There's no real natural law, no right and wrong that's immutable, and the world is suddenly a savage place where any number of things can go wrong."

He walked slowly back and forth pondering this, and then continued quickly, "Juliet told me a story once of something she witnessed in Saint-Domingue. It wasn't actually a story, it was one of those strange little details she lets slip sometimes in an airy way as if it's been floating for years in her mind. It was an account of an execution, of three black men burned alive before a crowd. She told me..."

"I've heard," Christophe stopped him.

"But the point is I couldn't get it out of my mind for days after she'd told me, the vision she conjured, it was unspeakable to me that men could die like that, that people would watch...and if there is no real right and wrong, if there is no natural law that is immutable, then things like that can happen all over this world...dreadful things, worse things if there are worse things, and somehow it would never ever be made all right. There wouldn't be any justice, and suffering ultimately would have no meaning, no meaning at all."

"And suppose it's the opposite," Christophe said. "That there is a natural law, a real right and wrong?"

"Then I should not be sleeping with her because she is a woman of forty and I'm a boy of fifteen, and she's your mother and you are my teacher and pupils come to this house every day, and those who might discover it would abhor her and abhor me. And yet it seems sweet and harmless, and I...I don't want to give it up! I won't give it up, not unless you force me to give it up or she sends me away."

"But don't you see?" Christophe said calmly. "It doesn't really come to that day-to-day." He sat up on the cot and faced Marcel. The light from the shed threw the s.h.i.+fting shadows of the leaves across his face distorting his expression, rendering it impossible to read. "When you find out that there is no ultimate good and evil in which you can place your faith, the world does not fall apart at the seams. It simply means that every decision is more difficult, more critical, because you are creating the good and evil yourself and they are very real."

"Decision..." Marcel murmured, "the Englishman's word."

Christophe did not answer.

"In Paris, the night he took you with him," Marcel said tentatively, "'it's a decision the world will not understand.'"

It seemed to him Christophe nodded but he couldn't be sure. He was very sorry he'd mentioned the Englishman. Bubbles' music had died in the interval and Christophe appeared almost unnaturally still.

"Did you say?" Marcel murmured, "a moment before, did you say that the good and evil were very real?"

"I said it," Christophe whispered.

"It's never going to be easy, is it?"

"No," Christophe answered.

"Not even when it's only love."

"...and when you really come to understand that," Christophe said, "then whether it's love or not love, you are really alone."

Alone. The night had been restless, Zazu's hoa.r.s.e breaths, Monsieur Philippe's tread on the porch, and the steaming heat that rendered the slowest gesture heavy and exhausting, until finally the morning had come with its wilting sun and Marcel had commenced his search for Lisette.

III.

BY MIDMORNING he had been all through the market and past a dozen or more of the little grog shops in which he'd caught her before. He had stopped at the neighborhood kitchens, conferred with Bubbles, but Lisette had not been seen. And finally, after putting it off to the very last, he walked steadily and anxiously toward Anna Bella's gate. However, the sight of the neat little cottage with its whitewashed walls and green shutters, the crepe myrtles sheltering its front path, stopped him in his tracks. He could not imagine himself slipping past those windows to find Zurlina in the back kitchen, and yet he could not bring himself even to knock on the door. It seemed the pendulum in his mind swung back and forth: he must ask, Zazu was receiving the Last Sacraments, and yet would Anna Bella want him here on this errand, unable even to remain for a moment's talk? And then again the pendulum swung: he wanted to see her, to see her! And beneath that fragile conviction lay some sense of her now as settled in her new life and of himself so content in his own. Whether he would have gone up or not he was never to know for, within minutes, Zurlina had opened the front blinds and come down the path. he had been all through the market and past a dozen or more of the little grog shops in which he'd caught her before. He had stopped at the neighborhood kitchens, conferred with Bubbles, but Lisette had not been seen. And finally, after putting it off to the very last, he walked steadily and anxiously toward Anna Bella's gate. However, the sight of the neat little cottage with its whitewashed walls and green shutters, the crepe myrtles sheltering its front path, stopped him in his tracks. He could not imagine himself slipping past those windows to find Zurlina in the back kitchen, and yet he could not bring himself even to knock on the door. It seemed the pendulum in his mind swung back and forth: he must ask, Zazu was receiving the Last Sacraments, and yet would Anna Bella want him here on this errand, unable even to remain for a moment's talk? And then again the pendulum swung: he wanted to see her, to see her! And beneath that fragile conviction lay some sense of her now as settled in her new life and of himself so content in his own. Whether he would have gone up or not he was never to know for, within minutes, Zurlina had opened the front blinds and come down the path.

She wore her snow-white tignon tignon like a turban and her face against that stark linen was very much the pale wax of some gnarled tree trunk, lined, yellow, and seemingly hard. like a turban and her face against that stark linen was very much the pale wax of some gnarled tree trunk, lined, yellow, and seemingly hard.

"Et Zazu?" she rubbed her hands on her white ap.r.o.n. she rubbed her hands on her white ap.r.o.n.

"Where is Lisette, is she here?" he asked, and without realizing it, he ripped his eyes from the front shutters behind her, and turned to go. Anna Bella might be there, Anna Bella might see him at the gate.

A mean laugh escaped Zurlina's thin lips, the skin above them wrinkled in vertical lines. Marcel despised this woman, she had been haughty to him always, some proud and blistering extension of her old mistress, and he turned his back on her now.

"Lola Dede," she said in a low scornful voice. "Go to Lola Dede if you want Lisette."

Marcel nodded but he did not look back. "Lola Dede!" he muttered contemptuously. He had heard the name. So that was the voodooienne to whom Lisette returned again and again for powders and charms; he had often pa.s.sed her dilapidated gray house sagging upon its long lot near the Rue Rampart and it disgusted him as did all of the voodoo about him, the whispers among the servants, those random nighttime drums. But he knew he must go there. "Tell your mistress," he turned now to the departing Zurlina, "tell her I give her my best."

The thin lips drew back in an ugly grimace and the low nasal voice, caricature of the dead Madame Elsie, snorted a vague a.s.sent.

Marcel took his time about it but at last he came to the sh.e.l.l yard outside Lola Dede's door and approaching with a bowed head, he knocked hard on the weathered wood.

Only an eye showed itself in the crack, and a rank smell, soiled bodies, soiled clothes, seeped out into the fresher air. "She's not here," said the voice.

"You tell her for me her mother's dying," he said placing a hand against the door.

"She's not here!" the voice averred again, and it seemed a rumbling commenced within, soft laughter. Marcel told himself this was fancy.

"You tell her to come home!" he said, as the door slammed shut in his face. He looked up in despair at the gray rain-washed shutters, the sagging roof, and then with a sudden sense of relief turned fast for home.

As soon as he reached the garconniere garconniere he knew it was the end. he knew it was the end.

Marie and Cecile stood quietly on the porch and Monsieur Philippe was at the bedside alone.

"Go in now, if you want to take your leave of her," Cecile whispered anxiously. She had twisted her handkerchief into a piece of ragged string. There was panic in her eyes, and her skin was moist.

"And Lisette, did she come back?" Marcel asked.

"No," Marie shook her head. "Go in, Marcel," she said gently.

He hesitated at the door. He had gotten off easy with Jean Jacques, he realized that now, and he had gotten off easy with the Englishman, but he wasn't to get off now. For a moment he was absolutely incapable of moving into the room. Then Monsieur Philippe, looking up, motioned for him.

Zazu lay with her mouth open, the white of her lower teeth showing against her dark lip, her breath coming in labored gasps. And when his father pressed him against the bed, she opened her eyes. She knew him at once, she had come round, and feebly she took his hand.

It seemed his voice left him, and only when Monsieur Philippe said that he ought to go on out now, did he kneel down and say to her softly how much he'd loved her, how well she'd cared for him all these years. The sudden thought came to him that this would alarm her, but again she smiled. Her heavy black lids closed, but not all the way. And he whispered quickly, "Monsieur!"

Philippe bent over her. Then she opened her eyes again. "Look out for my girl, Michie, look out for my Lisette." she said, her voice so faint it was barely clear.

"I will, my poor dear," he said to her. It seemed her eyes rolled up in her head. Marcel was shaken.

"Look out for her, Michie," she whispered again as if she would not give in. The voice was dry and seemed to scratch inside her throat. "Michie!" her eyes widened. "Michie, she's your girl, too!"

"Yes, yes, my poor dear," Monsieur Philippe said.

She was dead.