Long Distance Life Part 22

"You're jealous of her," Colette said again, "you've been jealous of her since the day she was born."

Cecile rose, upsetting the coffee cups. "You dare say this to me, in my own house!"

"You're unnatural," Colette said, and turning went out the door.

Cecile, in a paroxysm of rage turned her back as Louisa followed, and Marcel took his mother gently in his arms.

"Maman," he said, "sit down, this is just an argument, sit down."

She was trembling, and struggling to get out her handkerchief pressed it to her nose. As she settled again in the chair, she reached out for his lapels and pulled him down opposite her.

"I'm going to make things right with Monsieur Philippe," she said in a low, choking voice, "I'll explain to him I was distraught when I wrote the note, that I missed him. He'll understand. There's so much that pa.s.ses between that man and myself, you don't know," she forced a strange glittering smile, her hand stroking his lapel. "No one knows, only the woman knows who is alone with the man. It will be all right." Her voice became rapid, a little feverish, and with both hands now she held the lapels of his coat. "You know, once Monsieur Philippe told me that he'd write letters for you, letters to gentlemen in Paris that he knew, why letters of introduction so you could be received. You know when I saw you in the crib, when they first brought you to me, I made a vow, I told Monsieur Philippe that vow, he promised me, I swear to you, no one is going to break that promise..."

"Maman," he took her hands and clasping them tightly laid them on the table. "You mustn't worry," he said. "I'm not in Marie's shadow."

She let out a sharp sigh, and running her hand up through the tight hair over her temple seemed to be scratching at a deep pain.

"Maman, I never even think of her, I'm ashamed to say it," he went on. "Why, I neglect her. We all neglect her. Why, I've never even thought of boys wanting to call on Marie, until Richard...Why, it's only Tante Louisa and Tante Colette who make a fuss over her, and even then it's not so much, not really. Why, when I think of Ma'ame Celestina with that lovely idiot, Gabriella," he uttered a low laugh. "And Dolly Rose, the way her mother used to parade her, never the same dress twice..."

Cecile drew him close, her hand clasped to the back of his neck. She smoothed his cheek, his hair. "It's vanity, all of it," she said. "They've never had children, either of them, and now they want to pretend she's their daughter, that gives them pleasure to show her off in that box..." She kissed him.

"Well, why not, Maman, is it such a bad thing? I feel sorry for Marie, sometimes. I have the strangest feeling that none of this makes Marie happy, I have an awful feeling at times, that Marie has never been happy at all."

This had stopped her. She was looking into his eyes as if straining to find something there, and then with a little shake of her head, she drew back. But then she took his hands in hers and held them together. That strange glittering smile came back to her, her mouth twisting down at the ends and when she spoke, her voice was low and acidic and very unlike her.

"Don't you understand that your sister is beautiful!" she whispered. Her lips went back into a grimace, and her face appeared malignant, losing all semblance to that of the woman he knew. "Your sister turns every head when she pa.s.ses, can't you see that?" she hissed. "Your sister is the kind of woman who drives men mad." She was frightening him. There was venom in her eyes and in her voice. "Your sister has always...and everywhere...and at all times...pa.s.sed for white!"

He was conscious of lowering his eyes, and of a peculiar blurring of his vision, her words reverberating in his ears, as if he had been daydreaming and had only heard her when the words at last penetrated his dreams. Yet he had not been daydreaming at all. "Well," he murmured softly. He was looking at his hand. Her nails were cutting into his hand but she didn't know it, and he was feeling a slight sharp pain. "That's the way it turned out, Maman," he said. He meant to shrug his shoulders. "It just turned out that way."

"Feel sorry for her, do you?" she whispered, lips drawn back from her teeth, her eyes monstrously large. "Your sister will have anything in this world that she wants!"

Lisette stood in the kitchen, one hand on the flat iron which she had just lifted from the fire. She ran it along the rumpled width of a white sheet. The warm air engulfed him as he pushed the door wide. "Don't let the cold in!" Lisette scowled at him, "now fix that back, Michie, the way it was."

"Is Marie here?" he asked.

Lisette studied him for a moment so that he almost became impatient, and then he saw Marie, in the small cell off the kitchen where Zazu and Lisette slept. Marie was sitting on Lisette's narrow bed. Candles spluttered beyond her, throwing ghastly light over the wall where Lisette pinned her holy pictures, and a small cheaply painted statue of the Virgin stood on a stand of two worn books.

Marie wore a winter dress of blue wool, the neck high and adorned only by a small cameo. There were no rings or bracelets on her long white hands. She had taken down her hair and it flowed over her shoulders, becoming part of the shadows around her, so that the face with its slight blush to the cheeks appeared almost luminous like that of a marble virgin in the church. Or rather the downcast face of the Mater Dolorosa beneath her dim veil, among lilies, weeping for the dead Christ. She turned slowly, shyly, and looked up to see her brother standing in the door. Her lips never touched by paint were the color of a deep pink rose. And as he stood there, not speaking, his brows knit, his blue eyes wide as if with wonder, she became frightened of him, and said, "What is it?" so that he shook his head.

"I won't go if you don't go!" she whispered. "I won't go."

"I'm going," he said, sitting down beside her. "We'll go together, with Tante Louisa and Tante Colette." He spoke slowly, seriously. "I'll tell you about the singers, the story of it all, so that you'll enjoy it, it's going to be something special that night, you're going to enjoy it, you're going to have a splendid time."

II.

IT WAS NOT VERY LONG until the opening of the opera, and the aunts soon soothed Cecile's ruffled feelings by a series of ritual gestures, so that the cottage buzzed with talk of dresses, the perfect fabric and the perfect color, the choice of jewels. And Marie, raw and wary since the recent quarrel, found herself again and again turning to discover her brother's attentive blue eyes. until the opening of the opera, and the aunts soon soothed Cecile's ruffled feelings by a series of ritual gestures, so that the cottage buzzed with talk of dresses, the perfect fabric and the perfect color, the choice of jewels. And Marie, raw and wary since the recent quarrel, found herself again and again turning to discover her brother's attentive blue eyes.

It surprised her mildly that he came often to kiss her, to sit by her in the evenings by the fire. And more than once in the weeks that followed he coaxed her up the stairs to the garconniere garconniere to do her sewing in that smaller, warmer room. It was more than his old protectiveness, something quite unknown or not fully understood by her had brought them closer, and during one of these long evenings, when she sat with the rise and the fall of her needle, and he with the turning of the pages of his book, she almost, almost confided to him her love for Richard Lermontant. But it was the unspoken bond that she treasured. Words had never satisfied her, and something deeper, finer, satisfied her now. And that Marcel would be with her on that frightening opera night when she was to be displayed like a doll in a shop window gave her a new peace of mind. to do her sewing in that smaller, warmer room. It was more than his old protectiveness, something quite unknown or not fully understood by her had brought them closer, and during one of these long evenings, when she sat with the rise and the fall of her needle, and he with the turning of the pages of his book, she almost, almost confided to him her love for Richard Lermontant. But it was the unspoken bond that she treasured. Words had never satisfied her, and something deeper, finer, satisfied her now. And that Marcel would be with her on that frightening opera night when she was to be displayed like a doll in a shop window gave her a new peace of mind.

But as the very day of the opera drew near, events had conspired to separate them, the opera was far from Marcel's thoughts, and all of this had to do with the slave, Bubbles, whom Christophe Mercier had hired outright in September from the disreputable Dolly Rose.

It was not clear in Marcel's mind whether Christophe had really wanted Bubbles, or any slave, in his service, as even his chance remarks on the subject smacked of abolition or disgust. But Dolly had given Bubbles such a beating one Sunday that he had come to Christophe with weals on his face and blood showing through his ragged s.h.i.+rt. She had locked up his tuning wrenches on the argument that he held back his earnings. And in a rage, Christophe had written her a caustic letter with some dollars enclosed for the slave's hire. No one, of course, had ever seen Christophe and Dolly exchange a civil word since the affair after the Englishman's death, and Bubbles just came to be Christophe's devoted servant after that, and devoted to Christophe he was, beyond doubt. If anyone ever heard the slave moan for anything, it was for the tuning wrenches which Dolly kept locked in her flat.

And soon such a transformation was worked in Bubbles that people who had taken no notice of the slave before came to stare at him in the streets. He had always been a striking figure, wiry and so black that his skin had glints of blue, and his small somewhat yellowish eyes under brooding ridges gave him a wise somber look unbroken by the slightest expression in his thin wide mouth. He resembled, in truth, a monkey.

But this requires some explaining.

As there was nothing comical or grotesque about him at all. He looked as monkeys really look when they are not clowning for organ grinders or doing tricks in ink cartoons.

They have wise faces, seem unusually meditative when they examine things carefully with their long-fingered black hands, and often frown under heavy brows as if in profound thought.

Bubbles had this manner, and as is the case in human beings often, this did in fact signify a depth of mind whereas in monkeys obviously, it may not.

But he was exactly that kind of young black man whose extraordinary grace and beauty was so alien to the Caucasian mode that brutal slave traders would have called him "a black ape" and uncorrupted children, not having been told yet what to think, would see him as exquisitely feline and dignified. He had skin like fine old kid gloves, a tight cap of woolly hair on his perfectly round head, and he glided like a dancer through streets and rooms with hands so limp that they appeared too heavy for his narrow wrists.

But under Christophe's wing, he had acquired a further distinction, that of Parisian coats and waistcoats, and linen s.h.i.+rts and new boots. And no one knew except Marcel that most of these came from the Englishman's old trunk. Those personal effects of Michael Larson-Roberts had never been claimed by his family in England. And so Bubbles, small of frame as the Englishman had been, and also tall, was seen following Juliet to market in black broadcloth and Irish linen with the elan of a valet par excellence par excellence.

Everyone admired Christophe for this, just as they abhorred Dolly for her cruelty and for not giving up the tuning wrenches. That is, everyone admired Christophe until the Monday before the opera when Bubbles appeared seated in the back row of Christophe's cla.s.sroom with notebook and pencil in his spider hands.

Then no one admired Christophe at all!

Fantin Roget was the first to drop, not even finis.h.i.+ng the day's cla.s.s, but leaving abruptly at noon. And when his mother's letter came the next day to give some vague excuse for her son's change of plans, three other letters of withdrawal accompanied it in the same mail. By Wednesday, all of the poorer students were gone, and Augustin Dumanoir, seeing Bubbles again seated and ready with pencil in hand, asked to talk privately with Christophe in the hall. "This is all nonsense," Christophe's voice was barely audible in the cla.s.sroom. "What harm can he do anyone sitting in the back of the room?"

"It's going to be all right," Marcel had at once whispered to Richard. "People will get used to it, it will be all right!" But the alien expression on Richard's face gave him a shock. Dumanoir left the cla.s.s at midday, and that night, Rudolphe learning of all this from other parents lit into Richard in a rage, insisting that he remain at home.

At last on Friday the day before the opera, Christophe was stunned to discover himself at eight o'clock standing before an empty room. Marcel, after a night of exhausting argument with his mother and his aunts sat grimly beside the fire in the reading room not even bothering to go to his desk. Bubbles was at the round table, face narrow and heavily carved with sorrow like that of a medieval saint. He was the first to rise, to walk silently into the cla.s.sroom and take his place in the last row.

Marcel could see Christophe clearly from where he sat. He saw Christophe looking at his watch; then at the clock on the wall. And then at the small stack of hand-delivered letters on his desk. Christophe's face then became as mobile and agitated as that of a fiercely humiliated child. He slumped into his armchair and stared at the empty desks as if he could not quite believe his eyes. Finally Marcel rose and came through the double doors walking softly down the center aisle.

"d.a.m.n!" Christophe whispered. "d.a.m.ned insufferable bourgeoisie!" He ran his hands back through his hair.

Marcel leaned his shoulders against the wall and with folded arms waited.

"I'll take new students!" Christophe said. "They won't come," Marcel answered.

"And when the others see this room is filled again, they'll come back."

"They will never come back." Christophe glared at him.

"That is," Marcel said, "unless you put Bubbles out of the cla.s.s."

"But this is madness! What harm is he doing!" Christophe demanded, but before giving Marcel a chance to answer he glanced at the dark brooding figure of the young slave in the remote corner of the room and told him gently to go upstairs.

"I am his master," Christophe said as soon as the steps had died on the stairs. "If possession is nine-tenths of the law I am his master, and if I decide he may be educated that is enough to satisfy the law."

"It will satisfy the law, Christophe, but it will never satisfy the parents of the other boys."

"And why are you still here, Marcel!"

"Ah, Christophe!" Marcel said in disgust.

But the hurt in Christophe's eyes was more than he could bear.

It seemed a half hour pa.s.sed that they remained there, Christophe muttering from time to time under his breath and then pacing the room.

Finally Marcel said quietly, "Christophe, do you remember the day that you showed us the rug?" This was a little Kerman rug, a treasure, which Christophe had brought down from his room. All the cla.s.s had been dazzled by the medallion and the flowers, their intricacy and violent colors, and Christophe had astonished them by telling them this thing had been made for the dirt floor of a tent. "You told us the key to understanding this world was to realize it was made of a thousand varying cultures, many so alien to the others, that no one code of brotherhood or standard of art would ever be accepted by all men," Marcel said. "You remember? Well, this is our culture, Christophe, and if you ignore it, or try to go blindly against it, you'll accomplish nothing but the ruination of the school."

"Marcel, there is not one of us," Christophe burst out, "not one of us who is not descended from a slave! To my knowledge no coterie of African aristocrats ever settled willingly on these sh.o.r.es!"

"Chris, don't make me the spokesman for people I don't admire! If you don't send Bubbles out of the cla.s.s, then there will be no cla.s.s."

At that point, Christophe shot Marcel such a venomous look that Marcel backed off and rested his forehead against the frame of the front door.

"Go to Monsieur Rudolphe," Marcel said. "Tell him you'll take Bubbles out. If he sends Richard back, then others will follow. Go to Celestina. If she sends Fantin back, then the other quadroons will follow, too."

Five minutes later, walking at great speed, Christophe and Marcel had reached the Lermontant shop.

Rudolphe, who had just finished showing a series of veils and bombazine yardage to an elderly white woman, took his time as he let her out the door. The winter sun was bright through the front windows and seemed irreverent as it fell on so much folded crepe and items of mourning on display.

"What can I do for you, Christophe?" Rudolphe asked stiffly as if nothing had happened. He gestured for the teacher to take a chair and ignored Marcel as if he were not there.

"You know d.a.m.ned good and well why I'm here, Rudolphe, my cla.s.sroom is empty! My students have withdrawn!"

"You should have known better Christophe." Rudolphe dropped his pose at once.

"You're a leader in this community," Christophe said coldly, "if you hadn't withdrawn Richard, the exodus would not have occurred."

"Oh, no, Christophe, there are some barriers no one will cross regardless of what I should do, I a.s.sure you. But I don't want to mislead you. There are barriers I have no intention of crossing myself. You brought a slave into your cla.s.s, you sat him down with my son and my son's friends..."

"Because he wanted to learn! He wanted to make something of himself..."

"Christophe, that might draw a tear in a Paris drawing room but not here."

"You mean to tell me you don't believe the boy should learn? Suppose a white man named Lermontant had taken that att.i.tude towards a certain famous slave of his by the name of Jean Baptiste!"

"Don't twist my meaning," Rudolphe said. "I've taught my black apprentices to read and write myself at this very desk, I've trained them in accounting, business management, so that when they finally got their freedom they could make a living on their own. I've given two of my slaves their freedom in my time and each has paid me back by his own labors with the knowledge he took from this shop. Teach that boy in private and everyone will respect you for it. Give him a fine education if you like, but do not sit him down in a cla.s.sroom with our boys. Don't you understand what's at stake here, don't you understand these times?"

"I understand that you're a bigot and a hypocrite!" Christophe said.

"Monsieur, you try my patience more than any man I've ever met!" Rudolphe rose suddenly and stalked to the door. Marcel was frightened. He was on a verge of going after him, thinking that Rudolphe was storming out of his own shop in his confusion, when Rudolphe merely gestured through the gla.s.s.

"Do you see those men in the street, the men patching the banquette, there!"

"Of course I can see them, I'm not blind."

"Then you can see they're Irish immigrants, and you can see that everywhere you go, there are Irish immigrants, patching the bricks, digging the ca.n.a.ls, waiting the tables in the big restaurants, and in the hotels. Irish or Yanqui or some other Anglo-Saxon, and do you remember who used to wait the tables and drive the hacks here when you left? Our people used to do that, gens de couleur gens de couleur, the honest laboring gens de couleur gens de couleur from whom these people in a never-ending tide have taken the jobs! They'd take my job, too, if they could. Had they the capital and the wits, they'd set up an undertaking store right beside this one and take my white customers away from me and my colored ones too. And do you know what we look like to those Yanquis, Christophe, do you know what they say about us to the foremen on the construction gangs and the bell captains in the big hotels, 'why, they're n.i.g.g.e.rs, free or not, and we're white, they're no better than slaves, give those jobs to us.' We're an offense to them, Christophe, and they'd take any opportunity they could get to push us right back into the mora.s.s of poverty and misery from which a lot of us came." from whom these people in a never-ending tide have taken the jobs! They'd take my job, too, if they could. Had they the capital and the wits, they'd set up an undertaking store right beside this one and take my white customers away from me and my colored ones too. And do you know what we look like to those Yanquis, Christophe, do you know what they say about us to the foremen on the construction gangs and the bell captains in the big hotels, 'why, they're n.i.g.g.e.rs, free or not, and we're white, they're no better than slaves, give those jobs to us.' We're an offense to them, Christophe, and they'd take any opportunity they could get to push us right back into the mora.s.s of poverty and misery from which a lot of us came."

"Rudolphe, what has that to do with a handful of wealthy young men who've been born with silver spoons in their mouths, we're talking about an elite de couleur! elite de couleur! The The cordon bleu." cordon bleu."

"No," Rudolphe shook his head. "We're talking about a caste, Christophe, that has won its precarious place in this corrupt quagmire by a.s.serting over and over that it is composed of men who are better than and different from the slaves! We get respect in one way, Christophe, and that is by insisting ourselves on what we are. Men of property, men of breeding, men of education, and men of family. But if we drink with slaves, marry slaves, sit down in our parlors with slaves or in our dining rooms or in our cla.s.srooms, then men will treat us as if we were no better! And all that we've gained since the days when New Orleans was a fort on the river, all that, will be lost."

"It's wrong what you're saying, it's logical, practical, and wrong," Christophe averred. "That boy's part of us."

"No," Rudolphe shook his head. "He's a slave."

Christophe sighed.

"You've defeated me, Rudolphe," he said. "I expected pomposity, talk of inherent superiority, of white blood. But you're no such fool. You're a Machiavelli in a shopkeeper's guise; you do what works best."

Rudolphe raised his eyebrows thoughtfully.

Christophe rose and jerked open the door without a word.

"I have a paternal feeling for you, Christophe." Rudolphe put a hand on his shoulder. "Send that boy out of the cla.s.s, teach him on your own time, and I'll let it be known you made a simple error in judgment. I'll call on the LeMonds and the LeComptes, myself."

As soon as Christophe reached the cla.s.sroom, he wrote out a simple notice stating that school would be resumed with a special Sat.u.r.day session the following day, and posted it on the outside door. Then he wrote a brief letter which he folded and gave to Marcel. "You do too many favors for me, but here's another," he said. "Take this to your good friend, Rudolphe Lermontant."

"All right," Marcel said. "But will you be here when I get back?"

Christophe shook his head. "I've got to call on Celestina," he said with a bitter smile. "And old Brisson, the grocer, and a few other good parents, And after that I want to spend a little time with Bubbles and explain this to him."

"He understands," Marcel said.

"No," Christophe shook his head. "He can't imagine anyone taking so much notice of him, or caring so much whether he's alive or dead, or sitting in a room or not sitting in it. And after that, I want to be alone. I'm not good company for anyone." He looked up at Marcel. "Don't worry," he said. "I've made up my mind to compromise myself and I won't waver. I've done it before. Now, go on."

Marcel had not seen such an expression on Christophe's face since the Englishman had died, and three times that evening he knocked on the townhouse doors without result.

But the morning before the opening night of the opera, the cla.s.sroom, without Bubbles, was filled as before. The first lectures were cold, brilliant, and without a flicker of pa.s.sion, and only toward the afternoon did some of Christophe's usual spirit return. As the day wore on, Marcel became more and more anxious that Christophe would climax with some bitter denouncement, but at four o'clock they were dismissed without any extraordinary words. The students cl.u.s.tered for an hour afterward, talking warmly and affectionately of all manner of unessential things as if they wanted to a.s.sure their teacher of their devotion (now that he had given in) and Marcel could see that Christophe got through it with obvious strain.

As soon as the school was empty Christophe stalked into the back reading room, making no acknowledgment of Marcel by the fire, and got his bottle of whiskey out of the press. He set it down on the round table, shoving the papers and journals aside angrily and filled a gla.s.s.

"Don't do this, Chris," Marcel said after Christophe had drunk two gla.s.ses as if they were water.

"I am in the privacy of my own home right now, I can preach sedition and abolition to the rafters here if I like, and I can also get drunk!"

"Tonight's the opera, Christophe. You told me once you were counting on the opera to keep you sane..."

"Only a Creole could think of the opera at a time like this," Christophe said, draining another gla.s.s. He sat back, obviously calmed for the moment by some six to eight ounces of pure whiskey. "Well, I shall be at the opera!" he said. "My soul may be in h.e.l.l but I shall be at the opera."

"Drunk?" Marcel asked. "Christophe, people will be watching you, they'll be looking for some gesture from you because of all this, and they'll be looking for the opportunity to make some gesture themselves..."

"Go home," Christophe said drearily. "I told you I'd be there," and without theatricality, he removed a crumpled note from his pocket, rolled it into a ball in one hand and shot it to Marcel. It read in large childish print: MICHIE, I AM ONLY TROUBLE TO YOU I HAVE GONE BACK TO M. ROSE.AFFECTIONATELY, B.

Marcel studied it. Yesterday morning in this very room, he had spelt out the word, "affectionately" for Bubbles never dreaming for what. "He'll come back," he said. "He's run away before and he'll run away again. Besides, Dolly Rose has never been able to keep a male slave. Tougher blacks than Bubbles would rather clean the ditches than stay with her."