No effort to dissuade her from these nocturnal visits was successful. If her mother locked the door, she went out the window. If left undisturbed, she stood at her dead lover’s grave until the first rays of sunlight filtered through the leafy canopy of the graveyard corner. The concern of her neighbors turned to consternation, and at length her mother decided to leave Villedeau and all the suffering her family had endured there. She sold the house in which Odile had been born and moved to New Orleans, where her sister had found for her a comfortable, light-filled cottage in the Faubourg Marigny, only steps from her own, larger residence.
“Odile is in the city,” I said, in some amazement. I had so long associated her with Villedeau—as one of its prime attractions, in fact—that the thought of her shopping among the stalls at the great market near the levee or popping open a parasol for a stroll across the Place d’Armes unnerved me.
“She is,” my uncle averred, nodding his head at my wonder. “I arranged the sale of Madame Chopin’s house. I have the address here somewhere. You should pay her a visit when you go back to the city.”
I never visited Odile, first from some irrational timidity, or perhaps it was because I preferred to preserve a particular memory I had of her as I had once seen her, dancing under the stars in the arms of a callow admirer to the lilting strains of an Acadian waltz, untouched by sorrow and loss. Later I didn’t visit her because I had completed my clerkship with Judge Dubonnet, passed the bar, and moved to the state capital at Baton Rouge, where I have practiced law now for a decade, largely occupying myself with trusts and real estate transfers.
In that time the principal characters of my story have left this life. About six years ago, Octave Favrot drowned in a storm that came out of the Gulf of Mexico with such fury that much of the fishing fleet and two entire towns were washed away from the shores of Barataria Bay. Odile survived her husband by two years, living quietly with her mother in the Faubourg and reportedly taking a lively interest in her cousin’s two young children. She succumbed, as did many of her neighbors, including one of the children she had cared for, to an epidemic of yellow fever, that plague of our climate that has sent so many to an early grave.
A few days ago I received a letter from my uncle, which contains a most curious postscript to this unhappy tale. I offer it here as proof, if proof be needed, that the fathomless sea conceals no mystery more recondite than that which may flicker beneath the surface of a neighbor’s distracted greeting on a summer’s day.
“I must tell you,” my uncle wrote, “of a remarkable circumstance lately developed in the case of Octave Favrot, which I know has been of longstanding interest to you. M. Charles Charpentier, the owner of Madame Chopin’s former residence, recently decided to expand his front veranda around the side of the house. His plans necessitated the removal of several overgrown azaleas and a venerable crape myrtle that I, for one, thought it a shame to destroy, but no, it stood between the Charpentiers and their pressing need for space, so down it came. In the process of their excavations, the workers’ shovel blades struck something hard, and, with a little effort, they exhumed a pine box. It was about the size of a small orange crate, wrapped round with hemp cord, much decayed, and fastened by a metal latch with a rust-encrusted lock. At the request of M. Charpentier, a shovel blow broke the lock and the lid was easily removed. The contents, which I think you will find both strange and wonderful, were the following: a canvas drawstring bag containing one thousand dollars in gold pieces, a sealskin blanket, made of what must have been a dozen skins sewed together so skillfully that, I’m told, one cannot find the seams, a baby’s hat, knitted of pale blue wool, and finally, a folded square of paper upon which, in a florid script, are written two words: Forgive me.”
ET IN ACADIANA EGO
In memory of Lyle Saxon
NIKOS
When Father Desmond excommunicated Mathilde Benoit, denying her the benefit of the sacraments, he wrote an account of his complaint against her. He described her as haughty, headstrong, known for her quick temper and her indifference to decorum. Was she beautiful? He didn’t say. But she was young, she was an heiress, and she was an impressive horsewoman who kept a stable of horses as high-strung and temperamental as their mistress. She lived on a rice plantation near Hauteville, a small bayou town west of New Orleans. Hauteville was five miles long, one house deep on both sides of the water, laced together by a fantastical web of crossings: flat boats pulled across by ropes, wooden footbridges, bridges wide enough for carts, bridges made of bamboo, iron bridges with decorative trim, but not one stone bridge, because there is no natural deposit of stone in a hundred miles.
One of the finest bridges, of iron decorated with a filigree of fleur-de-lis, stretched across the water from the road that served the cane farmers to the door of the bank owned by Mathilde’s father, Pascal Benoit. If you kept your money in the bank, you crossed the bridge for free; otherwise, you paid a toll.
When Mathilde was six, her mother, Marie Beauclair Benoit, died trying to bring a son into the world. The son died too. An aunt was brought in to supervise the girl’s education, but she passed away in a fever epidemic the following year. Pascal did what he could to care for his daughter, which was largely a matter of giving in to her whimsical decrees: that she should have a pony, that she should wear white gowns and diadems woven from clover, that she should be allowed onto the levee at dawn to collect crayfish on their daily march from one side of the footpath to the other. At ten she was sent to the Ursuline nuns in the city to prepare for her debut into society. She was an apt student and she loved music. She learned to play the piano, to sing charming ballads, and, of course, she learned to dance. As a child she had stomped with the locals to the wild Acadian bands, but now she waltzed, her back straight, her feet barely touching the floor, whirling in the arms of her partner, a girl her own age in a room full of girls, all moving gracefully in interlocking circles, while the nuns sat on straight-backed chairs along the walls, tapping out the time with their high-laced boots. Twice a month her father came to visit her. He took her to the two entertainments for which she lived and breathed: the opera and the racetrack. In the summers, when all who could afford to escape the heat of the city did, she returned to her bayou town. She spent her days on her pony and her nights by candlelight, turning the pages of fantastic tales, imagining herself a princess on a mountain of glass or dancing in an undersea ballroom with sea horses peering in the windows.
When she was sixteen, her father died. She returned to the nuns for a year and then came home to another imported aunt who lived not long, and then, because the Napoleonic Code allowed it, her money was her own.
There were suitors, there were rumors, there was resistance to the very idea of a young woman of means doing as she pleased, but not even the priest could force Mathilde to marry, so she did not. She set up a charity school for orphans and turned over the management of the bank to her father’s partner, thereby satisfying the nuns who had educated her and the investors who relied upon her. She occupied herself with her horses in the country and with music in the city. She was free.
One broiling summer afternoon in her eighteenth year, as the sun was dissolving redly into the bayou, Mathilde was riding home on her favorite filly, Chou-fleur, along the gentle curve of the levee. In Acadiana, nature runs riot and even a split-rail fence becomes an impenetrable wall of green. Along such a wall Mathilde was passing, drowsy from the clop-clop of her horse’s hooves against the damp earth, when she observed, approaching from the opposite direction on the other side of the greenery, a fellow rider, so screened that his head and chest seemed to float disembodied toward her.
He was dark, handsome; his hair flowed from his temples like waves drawn by the moon from the shore, and his eyes were as limpid as the shallow pools at the water’s edge. He was dressed in a loose linen shirt, such as the farmers in the area wore, but he had none of the red-boned rudeness of the local swains. His smile was sudden as a lightning bolt, the light springin
g disturbingly from his sizable white teeth. Mathilde found herself smiling back, which was not her habit upon encountering strangers. His attention was not arrested by her smile; he was admiring her horse, and his first words were, disappointingly, “What a powerful filly.”
“She is, she is,” Mathilde agreed. “She’s the fastest in the parish. She has twice the spirit of the best stallion and three times the sense.”
“Why three times the sense?” he asked.
Mathilde laughed. “Why do you think?” she said.
“My name is Nikos,” he said. “I’m new to these parts.”
“I am Mathilde,” she said, flashing her whip at the hand he extended over the wall. She touched her boot to Chou-fleur’s right side and left him there. He brought the rejected hand to his temple, smoothing back his hair, his eyes wide with admiration. What a rider she was! And what a rump on that filly!
There were sightings: A groom reported finding a stranger peering through the window of Chou-fleur’s stall, a farm worker spied a man plucking quinces in the bushes near the meadow; a rider was seen galloping through the rice field, destroying a swath of new shoots just topping the water. A bag of oats went missing from the storeroom. A horse blanket disappeared, and then, two days later, was discovered neatly folded on the wrong shelf in the tack room.
Mathilde was more curious than angry. She was certain it was the man she had met over the fence and she persuaded herself that he was teasing her with these mysterious doings because she had been so impulsively rude to him. She revisited the green fence on her evening rides, but she didn’t see Nikos there again.
A MOONLIT NIGHT
Mathilde had a clear conscience and she slept soundly, but one hot and humid night in September she woke with the conviction that something was amiss in her house. She lay still, listening in the darkness to the myriad creaks, buzzes, and squawks of the night, picking out the ghostly whoo-whoo of an owl, the rustle of mice in the woodpile near the veranda. No, there was no sound she couldn’t identify. She turned onto her side and hugged her pillow close. She’d had a miserable ride in the afternoon. Chou-fleur was agitated and downright hostile, refusing the bit, dancing away to avoid the saddle, and when Mathilde turned away to lead her out of the barn, the horse nipped at her owner’s well-padded backside. Mathilde chose a familiar path, but the filly stamped and started as if she’d been thrust into a dangerous and alien territory. On the return she bolted, reined in only with utmost difficulty by her perplexed and exasperated rider. The groom opined that the horse was doubtless coming into her season, and Mathilde agreed that this must be the case.
Now, in her dark bedroom, Mathilde felt as restless as her horse. She twisted and turned beneath the sheet, unable to find a comfortable position. At length she sat up and lit the lamp on her bedside table. She was thirsty and hot, too hot even for the cotton chemise she was wearing, but the nuns had instilled in her the importance of sleeping with clothes on. “If you can’t stand the heat,” Sister Marie de la Croix had told her, “do what I do and pour the water pitcher over your gown.”
Mathilde didn’t avail herself of this radical solution, but she did pour a glass of lukewarm water from the pitcher and drank it, standing at the window and fanning herself with her painted silk fan. The moon was full, casting a milky sheen upon the open lawn and the worn track that led to the barn. The air was dazzlingly still, curiously quiet. Too quiet, she thought. A grating sound she recognized tore the air—the barn door sliding on its iron track. Without hesitation, Mathilde dropped the fan and ran through the house to the veranda. Lamplight flickered in the windows of the barn. “He’s in the tack room,” she whispered.
Out into the night she flew, her bare feet scarcely touching the grass, through the wisteria arbor, along the path to the barn door, which was, as she had known it would be, open just wide enough for a man on a horse to pass through. She glanced over her shoulder at her house gleaming like a white marble temple, then stepped from the yard into pandemonium.
A clatter of hooves, a clamor of snorts, a chorus of outraged neighing. She moved from stall to stall, dispensing calming solicitude, but the disturbance was universal, and even Baron, a normally placid gelding, startled her with a double-barreled kick at the wall of his stall. Chou-fleur was just ahead. As Mathilde approached, the filly thrust her dark head over the gate, her neck fully extended, nostrils flaring, teeth bared, eyes bulging with fury. “Chou-chou,” Mathilde cried out. The filly responded with a high-pitched squeal that set her barn mates on a new round of stamping and snorting.
The moon was neatly framed in the window over the stall, shedding a pure white light upon the chaotic scene inside. Mathilde could see another horse, and that man, that Nikos, in the narrow space. The alien horse’s rear legs were jammed into the corner, his forelegs raised, his hooves curled over Chou-fleur’s trembling shoulders. Mathilde was an experienced horsewoman; she knew what she was seeing, but what vexed her eyes was the position of the man. Nikos had somehow gotten between the struggling animals. He clung to the filly’s neck, his eyes wide and his lips curled back, grunting and wheezing like a pig stuck in the throat. Was he sitting on Chou-fleur’s back?
“What are you doing?” Mathilde exclaimed, hastening to unlatch the gate.
“Get back,” Nikos shouted. “Don’t open that gate.” But Mathilde ignored him, and as the wooden dowel slipped free, the door drifted open on its hinges, giving her a full view of the impossible coupling, which came apart as she staggered backward. Chou-fleur bolted madly past her, down the aisle and out the open door.
Nikos stepped into the aisle, gazing longingly after the departing filly, and Mathilde took him in, from his disheveled hair, his flushed face, his bare chest wet with sweat, his long torso ending in a V where the tan flesh gave way to a chestnut hide, down to his long forelegs, his knobby knees, his fringed fetlocks and dusty black hooves. As her legs buckled and a fog closed over her consciousness, he turned his light eyes upon her and she heard him say ruefully, “Now look what you’ve done.”
When she opened her eyes she was resting on a pile of blankets on the tack room floor, the lamp was lit, and Nikos was bending over her, his brow furrowed with concern. “How do you feel?” he asked.
“So it’s not a dream,” she said.
He straightened to his full height, shifting his weight to his hind legs. His right front hoof rolled slightly under in an attitude Mathilde would come to recognize as thoughtful. “It’s possible,” he observed, “that everything is a dream.”
Mathilde sat up, smoothing the front of her chemise, which was wet and streaked with dirt. “I’ve read about creatures like you,” she said, “But I thought they were fantastical.”
“Meaning?” he said.
“Made up. Long ago.”
“It’s true there aren’t many of my kind left,” he said. “I was trying to do something about that when you opened the gate.”
“Chou-fleur,” Mathilde said.
“She’s outside,” he said. “She won’t come in while I’m here. She’s not very bright.”
Mathilde got to her feet. “Where did you come from?” she demanded. “How did you get here?”
He flattened the hoof, laid his exceedingly long fingers against his cheek. “It’s a long story,” he said. “But the short answer is from an island, on a boat.”
Mathilde pictured him trying to keep his balance on a pitching shrimp boat. He’d go over the side at the first squall. “Don’t tell me you can sail,” she said.
“It was a big boat. I was in the hold. In the dark. A long time.”
“You were a stowaway?”
He frowned. “You ask too many questions,” he said.
A whinny at the window announced the impatience of Chou-fleur to be back in her stall. “You stay here,” Mathilde said. “I’ll close the door and bring her in.”
Nikos went to the window and looked out cautiously. “She’s a beauty,” he said. “And you were right, she’s spirited. She tr
ied to bite me.”
“How could you do such a thing?” Mathilde scolded him. “You should be arrested.”
He snorted, lifting his head as if to elude a bridle. Mathilde stood her ground, glowering at him. The top of her head came midway up his muscular breast. He rolled his eyes down at her. “I’m bad,” he said seriously, and then he grinned.
It was an infectious grin. Mathilde lowered her eyes, nodding her head, hiding her smile.
His eyes softened. He took a step closer, reached out, and touched her cheek with his fingertips. “You’re a beauty,” he said.
“You said that about my horse.”
“She is too, in her way, you in yours.”
“And which do you prefer?”
His brow furrowed again and the front hoof rolled out slightly. “Which do I prefer?” he repeated.
Mathilde blew air between compressed lips. “Well, if it’s a difficult question…”
Nikos turned to the window, then back to Mathilde. “What can I say?” he replied. “I’m divided.”
For a moment neither spoke. Mathilde gazed up at him; his tail swished lightly at a horsefly hovering over his flank.
“You’re divided,” she agreed, and they both smiled.
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