Long Distance Life Part 28

"I will if you come upstairs now with me," Marcel answered. "Richard..." he bent his head to one side, elongating the name. "Richaaard, suppose I told you that I brought Marie here last week, and that she had a beautiful picture made, of course she's not going to be the one to suggest an exchange..." he raised his eyebrows with a slight shake of the head, a smile. "Come on!" he started up the hollow wooden stairway at a run, and Richard sighing, went after him. A picture of Marie, she hadn't even mentioned it, but surely, no, absolutely not, she would never have given it to anyone else.

"But what maddens me," Marcel was saying over his shoulder as he turned on the landing, "is that you don't care about this, and it's utterly remarkable, Richard, that you have no curiosity, that you don't even want to see the camera and how it works for yourself." Richard didn't bother to answer, and it seemed they had had this very same conversation two years ago, only then it had been furniture, stairways, aren't you even curious about how these things are made, how wood is joined together, lacquered to bring out the beauty of the grain? No!-he had shrugged his shoulders then and NO!-he was shrugging them now. Suddenly, on the second staircase, he drew up, catching his breath.

"Mon Dieu!"

"Oh, those are just the chemicals, come on," Marcel said impatiently, and he rushed up and into the waiting room, a foul blast of warm air hitting Richard as he followed. He drew out his handkerchief quickly and placed it over his nose. It was an ugly room, the carpet looking somewhat ridiculous on the poorly painted floor, the few fine chairs obvious remnants from some more harmoniously decorated past. And here again on the walls were the Daguerreotypes, dead people, except for one very remarkable picture of a church, beautifully detailed, that did startle him and draw him to it, just as Marcel was reaching to take it right off the wall.

"Marcel," Richard whispered. "Don't do that!"

But the Daguerreotypist had already poked his head through the velvet curtain, a white-haired Frenchman with very pink skin and octagonal spectacles, "Ah, it's you," he said to Marcel. "I should have known."

"Half plate for my friend, Monsieur, please, if you want to start preparing it," Marcel answered, but he was staring at the picture so that his lips slurred the last few words.

It was the St. Louis Cathedral taken obviously from the center of the Place d'Armes, and looking over Marcel's shoulder, Richard could not help but be impressed. It was extraordinary the clarity of it, the details down to the cobblestoned street, the blades of gra.s.s in the square and the leaves, the individual leaves on the trees. "Did you do this, Monsieur?" Marcel called after the man.

"No!" came the deep disgusted reply from behind the curtain. "It was Duval, and he took twenty plates to do it, at least!"

"I'll buy it!" Marcel followed him, and Richard tightening the handkerchief entered the studio cautiously, the stench of the chemicals positively sickening him so that he felt weak. The light from the undraped windows was garish, and showed a bare floor at the far end of which was a small stage as if set for a play, with a chair, table, wallpapered board propped behind it, and just enough drapery to suggest a window where there was none.

"...And what should we charge for it!" Picard, the Daguerreotypist, was grumbling as he wiped frost from the panes, "With all the chemicals he wasted, it's priceless!" Heat from the roaring stove brought out the moisture on the top of his balding head.

"And Monsieur Duval, is he here, will he sell it?" Marcel asked. He was carrying the picture about with him as he made a nervous circle on the floor. "Sit there, Richard," he said offhandedly pointing to the carved chair. And then a voice came from beneath a small tent of black muslin saying, "Yes, I am here, Marcel, I won't sell it."

"You know, it's one in a thousand that captures this quality," Marcel said to Richard revealing the picture again as Richard moved to sit down. If it wasn't the chemicals, it was heat, he was going to be ill. "I mean most of them are merely pictures, but this is more than a picture..." Marcel went on.

"And twenty plates to do it," said Picard again. But Marcel, as if jerked by a string, had put the picture down on a work table against the wall and advanced suddenly on the small muslin enclosure from which the voice had only just come.

"Monsieur," he spoke to the black cloth, "let me in?" A laugh echoed from inside, "Come in."

"Your friend is mad for the Daguerreotype," the old man said. He reached over Richard's shoulder to make some small adjustment of the velvet drape. The chair was short for Richard, naturally, and he had to stretch his legs to the limit of the stage. "I tell you he brings us a new customer every few days."

"Monsieur, you don't think you could open a window, do you, just a little, perhaps?"

"I'm sorry, my boy, the dampness, it's impossible. But you'll get used to it, just take a deep breath, and put your head back against the brace, you won't be here very long."

"Five minutes?" Richard grimaced, removing the handkerchief. He felt his stomach was rising to his throat.

"That was last year, my boy, forty seconds at the most," Picard said. "A small price to pay for a work of art."

"Ah, so you believe it's art, then," Marcel's voice rang out from the tent of black muslin. And there came a low laugh from this invisible person, Duval.

"I said to you sometimes sometimes it's an art!" Picard pointed a didactic finger at the tent. "I said to you sometimes, when a man has nothing better to do than destroy any plate which doesn't meet with his personal approval or stand for two hours in the Place d'Armes making a spectacle of himself to get a picture of the St. Louis Cathedral in the proper light. But not when a man has to keep clothes on his back and food on the table, it's not an art then." He stalked toward the camera, and for the first time Richard observed it, a wooden box on an ornate pedestal with three legs. it's an art!" Picard pointed a didactic finger at the tent. "I said to you sometimes, when a man has nothing better to do than destroy any plate which doesn't meet with his personal approval or stand for two hours in the Place d'Armes making a spectacle of himself to get a picture of the St. Louis Cathedral in the proper light. But not when a man has to keep clothes on his back and food on the table, it's not an art then." He stalked toward the camera, and for the first time Richard observed it, a wooden box on an ornate pedestal with three legs.

"Art, art," murmured Picard, "with people complaining every day about the fact that it renders them precisely as they look. 'Go to a painter, then' I say, 'if you've got the money!'" The camera was large and in the front of it was a rimmed aperture with the glint of gla.s.s. The man adjusted this now, cranking the stand to get the camera higher and then, staring with a bit of visible irritation at the tall boy in the chair, picked up the entire apparatus to move it back.

What if it were halfway decent, what if he could give it to her, Richard was thinking, what if it didn't look like a corpse? He felt the most profound humiliation on that point, he would never, never entrust it to her if it had the slightest hint of his profession, he clamped the handkerchief over his mouth again and convulsively held his breath.

Beneath the muslin of the little enclosure, Duval, a lean white Creole in a threadbare coat, was whispering confidentially to Marcel, "But don't tell the proportions, I feel strongly this influences everything, and I do not want it known..."

"Of course not," Marcel whispered, his eyes intent on the plate which had just been lifted from the first of the coating boxes to be placed into the next. "I would not tell anyone," he said. Light leaked upon them from the seams of the tent, it sparkled in the loose weave of the fabric.

"And I'll tell you another little secret," Duval whispered, his eyes as wide, as intense as Marcel's, "just a bit of grease when I buff the plate, suet, nothing more than suet from the butcher's, it has a decided effect."

"Have you ever thought of opening your own..."

"Shhhhhh!" the white man grimaced at Marcel, bent suddenly with the effort not to laugh as his eyes rolled quickly to indicate Monsieur Picard beyond the cloth. "In time," he made the words silently with his lips. "In time."

Marcel was gazing at him with an acute case of admiration, the way he often gazed at Christophe.

"Let me take the picture," he said suddenly. "Just this once."

"No!" came Picard's loud voice from outside. "Young man, you go too far."

"But Monsieur," Duval emerged, throwing back the flap. He slipped the plate quickly into the camera as Marcel stepped out. "Why don't you let him take it?" Duval's face was young, appealing with something of the charm that softens others, and good breeding which provided a certain lubrication to his words. "It's the preparation, really, and what happens after, that matters, and well, he brings us so many new customers..."

Picard threw up his hands.

Triumphant, Marcel stepped up to the camera and suddenly squinted at Richard in such a manner that Richard was frankly exasperated, Marcel looked as if he were mad. Richard could not possibly know that Marcel was deliberately forcing his eyes out of focus so that he could see the scene before him entirely in terms of light and dark shapes. And Richard was further confounded when Marcel bounded toward him, ripping the heavy velvet drape away. This rendered the outline of Richard's black coat perfectly distinct against the wallpaper, and his face of deep olive complexion, partially framed by raven hair, was now equally clear. "No, don't sit so rigidly," Marcel said now, the voice gentle, slower than usual, "let everything about you soften, even go limp, your eyes, your lids. And think, think of something that is more beautiful to you than anything else," the grave voice went on, the face utterly intense, "do you have it? Good, then don't see me at all, see that beautiful thing that calms you and lulls you while I count. One, two, three..."

All the way home to the Lermontant house, Marcel continued to stop to look at the results. He would pull up short as Richard pressed his lips together in exasperation, and pulling open the pressed paper cover stare at the small plate. "Dreadful, dreadful," he would mutter with perfect sincerity at this image which had positively amazed Richard, flattered him, in fact, and had him burning to give it, in spite of his inveterate modesty, to Marie. He would put her picture by his bed, no, under his pillow where no one would see it, no, in the drawer of his chest.

"She'll think it's quite fine," Richard shrugged. His feet were getting numb from the December cold. He was hungry besides. And to be late for supper in the Lermontant house was a mortal sin.

"I overexposed it," Marcel sighed. "I should have asked Duval before I started counting, I should have stopped when he said."

Richard laughed lightly. He could not understand the intensity with which Marcel invested the slightest task or experience, and sometimes he felt a vague relief to live devoid of those peaks and valleys himself.

"When you see the picture of Marie which Duval took, then you'll understand." Marcel shut the cover for the seventh time and handed it wearily to Richard. "If you want to know the frank truth it would take Marie these days to get you to notice anything."

"Oh, don't be so foolish," Richard said softly. "If you you want to know the frank truth, you are simply too young to understand." want to know the frank truth, you are simply too young to understand."

Marcel gave him such an acidic smile then he was startled by it, even a little wounded. "Richard," he said, "what you know about women could be placed in a thimble, and I've just taken you to witness one of the finest inventions in the history of the world and you paid not the slightest..."

"You exaggerate," Richard said, as they turned into the Rue St. Louis. The house was just ahead. "You have always exaggerated, and you think anything which comes from Paris has to be wonderful, Paris, Paris, Paris!"

"Marie, Marie, Marie," Marcel muttered. But then he clasped Richard's hand and said sharply, "Look."

Both boys came to a halt. There was a small crowd ahead on the banquette before the Lermontant house, there were shouts. And then, clearly, Richard could see two men scuffling, others attempting to stop them and one of them was Rudolphe, to be sure. Richard bolted, easily outrunning Marcel with long strides, so that he reached the scene first.

There was a white man lying on the banquette, his yellowish face twisted with a snarl, his top hat floating in the gutter, as Le Blanc, a white neighbor held Rudolphe around the waist. "Stop him, Richard, stop him," Le Blanc was shouting, "Get him into the house."

"You filthy n.i.g.g.e.r," the white man was shouting as he struggled to his feet. "You d.a.m.ned n.i.g.g.e.r, call the police!"

Doors were opening everywhere, people rus.h.i.+ng out on the galleries, as Richard quickly lifted his father back into the front hall. Marcel could see Grandpere standing there, and behind him Giselle's husband, Raimond, looking positively stupefied, as Richard and his white neighbor, Le Blanc, forced Rudolphe into the front room. Marcel slammed the door.

Giselle was hysterical. She was sitting by the fire, her bonnet half off, tears streaming down her swollen face, while at the table, her smallest son, Charles, had begun to howl.

"He wouldn't leave me alone, he followed me, he wouldn't leave me alone," Giselle choked. "I just tried to make him stop following me, to leave alone, I told him I was going home. I know enough English to know what he was saying to me, to know what he thought I was!" She shuddered, screaming, her eyes closed, and stomped both her feet.

Rudolphe's chest heaved, blood streamed from a cut on his temple, and furiously he pushed Richard and Le Blanc away. "d.a.m.ned Yanqui tras.h.!.+" he roared. "d.a.m.ned Yanqui tras.h.!.+" But then he turned on Giselle. "And you, you flighty stupid little baggage, no, you can't wait for your mother to go out with you, you can't wait for your husband to go out with you, you've got a brother six-and-a-half feet tall but you can't wait for him to go out with you, you have to go tearing around the streets, shaking those flounces..."

"Rudolphe!" Madame Suzette was aghast. "For the love of G.o.d!"

But Rudolphe suddenly grabbed Giselle by the shoulder and was shaking her, "Don't you tell me you didn't do anything to give that man ideas!" Giselle put her hands over her ears and screamed.

Marcel was mortified, and Raimond stared helplessly. But all at once and quite without warning, Richard reached for his father and tore him away from Giselle. Richard was furious as he took his father by the lapels. Everyone went quiet at the sight of it.

"Don't you do that to her!" came the low voice which might as well have been a bell in the silent room. He was trembling with rage. "Don't you do that to her! She's not to blame for that common trash, don't you know that! Leave her alone!"

For a long moment Rudolphe merely stared dully at his son. And then Giselle, letting out one miserable wail, ran from the room. Rudolphe jerked his coat loose with a resentful gesture and turning his head slowly, almost stupidly, he settled down at the head of the dining table in his chair. The white neighbor excused himself at once to Madame Suzette, a.s.suring her that he would be "right next door." And Raimond gathering little Charles' hand led him after Giselle, up the stairs.

Richard had gone to the front windows. His huge shoulders were hunched as he stood with his back to the room. And Marcel was thoroughly miserable, loving the family but not being part of it, and quite unable to help.

"What sort of a man was he?" Grandpere's voice broke the silence. He moved slowly and somewhat painfully back to his usual chair at the table, his shoulders bent beneath the coat he always wore in winter, his neck protected by a wool scarf.

Rudolphe made only a weary gesture of disgust.

"A ruffian or what?"

"Ah, top hat, frock coat," Marcel murmured. "Well dressed at least."

But at those words Madame Suzette glanced sharply at her husband and then at his father. And Grandpere pressed his gla.s.ses, thoughtfully, to the bridge of his nose. It was precisely what he had wanted to know. And within twenty minutes the police had rung the bell.

By nine o'clock, they had obtained Rudolphe's release. Marcel had gone with Richard to find Remarque, the family lawyer, a white man of considerable influence, and bail had been set and paid. The Yanqui was in fact from Virginia, and well-to-do, it seemed, since he was staying at the St. Louis Hotel. Rudolphe was charged with verbally insulting a white man, a crime in itself, and physical a.s.sault with intent to murder, and trial was set for the following week. But he said nothing to the boys as he walked home from jail, he gave no hint as to whether or not he had been imprisoned with slaves, runaways, or the lower sort of criminals, and he said nothing of his handling by the police. He entered the parlor long enough to tell Madame Suzette that he wished to be alone now, to rest, and he advised Marcel to go on home.

Nevertheless, Madame Suzette followed him upstairs. And when she came down she found the house dark, and Richard sitting alone by the fire.

"How is Giselle now?" he asked her.

"Asleep, finally." She stood for a moment at the small table by the windows, opening the cover of the Daguerreotype which Marcel had salvaged from the front banquette, and when she saw there the image of her son, very lifelike and extremely pleasing to her, she made a wan and evanescent smile. Then she closed the picture and came silently over to settle in the chair opposite Richard, her feet on the edge of the hearth. "The man...actually laid his hands on her," she said with determined simplicity and calm. "He tore the lace of her sleeve. Mon Dieu Mon Dieu, I feel so very very tired!" She pressed her forehead with the fingers of her left hand. Richard thrust the poker beneath the soft layer of gray coals and a latent flame brightened so that his mother could see the expression on his brooding face.

"And mon Pere?" mon Pere?" he asked. he asked.

Her eybrows knit, her forehead creasing with the long heavy lines that always indicated intense distress. She shook her head.

And after a moment, she said, "I want to tell you something about your father. Your father didn't really mean what he said to Giselle."

"Maman, I'm so worried about him now that I can't possibly be angry with him for what he said. I'm angry with myself that I laid hands on him, raised my voice to him..."

"No, mon fils," mon fils," she said almost crossly. "You did the right thing. Your father should never have taken out his anger on Giselle. But you see, your father felt helpless. If that had been a man of color you know very well what he would have done..." she said almost crossly. "You did the right thing. Your father should never have taken out his anger on Giselle. But you see, your father felt helpless. If that had been a man of color you know very well what he would have done..."

"I know that, Maman," Richard said.

"But he was helpless. He knew the minute he struck the man that he'd be arrested. And don't you see, that helplessness was more than he could bear. If he could blame Giselle, if he could somehow say that it was all her doing, then the burden of defending her pa.s.sed from him. And he couldn't defend her. He couldn't call the man out as any white man would have done."

Richard was thinking. In his own wordless way he knew that this was true. But he relived the moment; he saw his father shaking his sister, he heard those words, vulgar, insolent, spoken in the presence of the entire family, in front of that floundering and stupid Raimond, in front of Marcel, in front of old Le Blanc. He tried to erase this from his mind. Wasn't it enough to picture his father's somber face when he had emerged from the jail, wasn't it enough to realize what this hearing in court could mean? But he was angry with his father, and it seemed that Rudolphe always had some splendid excuse for his outbursts, that in his rages and his injustices he was always somehow on the right hand of G.o.d. It confused Richard hopelessly.

"I have to tell him somehow that I'm sorry," he said softly. "I have to let him know..."

"No, mon fils mon fils, you do not!" Madame Suzette said. "Leave it. And your father will respect you for leaving it."

"You really believe that, Maman?"

"Richard, there's something you must come to understand. I had hoped that by this time you would have already perceived it and that the perception of it would have given you some inner peace. But I see now you are not going to understand without my help. Your father in many respects is simply not the man that you are."

Richard was amazed. Scanning his mother skeptically though respectfully, he inclined his head to one side.

"Maman," he almost laughed, "what I have perceived a thousand times is that I am not the man my father is, and never will be! I lack his vigor, his force. And tonight, when only for an instant I evinced that force, it left me shaken and in doubt. Do you think mon Pere mon Pere would ever doubt himself for such an action? Do you think he doubts himself for what he said to Giselle?" would ever doubt himself for such an action? Do you think he doubts himself for what he said to Giselle?"

"Yes, I do think that he doubts himself for it. I think he doubted himself at once. But he'll never say so to you and he will never say so to Giselle. And that, mon fils mon fils, is not always the mark of strength."

Richard's brow was furrowed. He was watching the fire.

"You have your own brand of strength, Richard," she went on, "and has it never occurred to you that it is finer, and more honorable than that of your father? Has that never crossed your mind? You do not realize the gulf that separates you from your father. Mon fils Mon fils, to build a house such as this by the sweat of one's brow is a great accomplishment, but to be born in a house such as this and to all the advantages that surround it, that is another world. Your father is a gentleman and a man of honor because he has worked to become a gentleman and a man of honor. But you were born to it, Richard, it's bred into you without a flaw. You are of a different ilk."

Madame Suzette could see that she had stirred deep waters, and she was not surprised to see that Richard was displeased.

"It's a strange thing we do to our children. We work tirelessly to make them better than we are. And if I ever thought that you would come to look down on your father, I wouldn't dream of speaking to you as I do now. But you're too much the gentleman even for that. You're too wise already, that would be too base for your soul. But something else is happening, something I've watched with frustration for years. Your father's force, as you call it, intimidates you. You do not value yourself for the wiser, surer person that you already are.

"Believe me when I tell you that your father is not angry with you for standing up to him as you did tonight. And you must remember, Richard, you must remember in the future, that when you stood up to your father, your father backed down without a word. Again, if I had less faith in you I would never speak to you in this way. But my faith in you, I know, will never be betrayed."

She waited for a long moment, but it was clear to her that Richard could think of no answer. It would take time for her words to penetrate which was of course as she had hoped. It occurred to her that in all these years, she had never once felt that her counsel was lost on her son.

"I have one more bit of advice for you," she said, rising, and placing her hand on Richard's shoulder when he started to get up. "Don't talk to your father of the court hearing unless he wants to talk of it. And for the time being, don't say much to him with regard to Marie Ste. Marie. But remember, you are his only son, and his cherished son. And though he berates you night and day, though sometimes I see nothing but blind anger in your eyes when you are looking at him, remember, he lives for you, Richard. You and Giselle...you give your father's life its real meaning. And I know you'll never abuse the power of that position. But for G.o.d's sake, use it when you must. Now I must go to your father. And you should go to bed."

"Maman," he stopped her at the door. "What if they...what if the judge rules against him?"

"That won't happen!" she said. But her voice lacked conviction, and her shoulders were bent as she went silently up the stairs.

She was right.

On the morning of the hearing the courtroom was packed. All of Rudolphe's white neighbors had turned out, together with a dozen white customers, and a large body of the rich and respectable gens de couleur de couleur. A score of character witnesses could be called, and to spare Giselle an appearance in court, a sworn statement from her was in Monsieur Le Blanc's hands.

And the American from Virginia, a prosperous but uneducated man by the name of Bridgeman, appeared with an expensive lawyer of a fine old law firm much patronized by the white Creole gentry, a man who knew the courts of the First Munic.i.p.ality and spoke fluent French. But before he could state the case clearly, the white man, Bridgeman, spoke for himself.

He had been attacked by a "negra," he declared, in a public street. And before witnesses and in the plain light of day that "negra" had tried to kill him and that "negra" was still walking around free. In his own state, they would have strung that "negra" from the nearest tree branch and lit a fire beneath him to send him on his way. What was this place, New Orleans, what with the abolitionists in the north and "negras" attacking white men on the street?

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

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

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

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

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

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