What can I say about Aurore Louise Marie Duval? Words are inadequate. Even with time and distance between us, she is not to be described. I could state that she had abundant dark hair, a honey-gold skin, high cheekbones, and eyes that were the color of the sea on a gray day. But that would hardly evoke the essence of Aurore—the femininity, the enchantment. It would not convey the ambiguous smile, the look of shadowed mystery lurking behind the smooth facade of aristocratic propriety.
I remember taking her hand, murmuring a polite, “So pleased, Mademoiselle,” and those gray eyes holding mine for an infinitesimal moment, approving, attracted, challenging. I felt my own leaping response, unaware that I was still holding her hand until the buttler suddenly announced pompously, “Le President! Le honorable Louis-Félicité Lysius Salomon and Madame La Presidente!”
A black giant with a head of cottony white hair, glossy jet skin, and a huge nose appeared in the doorway. Beside him, his wife, a white Parisienne, seemed dwarfed. Flanking and directly behind the presidential couple were aides and members of the Garde. I could not understand why Duval wished to break bread with Salomon, the man who had been responsible for the death of so many of his mulâtre friends.
“Politics,” Aurore whispered with a faint, ironic smile, reading the surprise on my face and divining its cause.
Introductions having been made, Salomon’s retinue retired to one corner of the huge drawing room. I seated myself next to Aurore on a white damask sofa.
She smiled at me. “You are still wondering about Salomon? Enemies are polite to one another, out of expediency.” She had a low, throaty voice, its seductiveness enhanced by a lilting accent. “You mustn’t think for one moment that because Salomon is a noir he isn’t an educated man. He spent many years abroad in exile and has returned smooth, urbane, and knowledgeable. He knows his noirs as no one else does. For us mulâtres, however, he has no mercy.”
“And yet . . . ?”
She shrugged, a movement that accentuated the lovely smoothness of her bared shoulders. “He has reasons for hating us. In the last seventeen years his two brothers, two uncles, adopted son, and brother-in-law have all been shot by mulâtres. Ah!” she cried suddenly as waiters appeared carrying trays of crystal glasses filled with a dark liquid.
“Rossignol! You must try it, Monsieur Morse.”
“What is it?”
“A rhum concoction. But beware! It is more lethal than it looks or tastes. You may find yourself saying things you shouldn’t.”
“I could do that without the rum,” I said, looking directly into her gray eyes.
She leaned over and tapped me on the knee with her fan. I got a glimpse of shadowed breasts. “Now, Monsieur Morse, we hardly know each other.”
I sat next to Aurore at dinner. I cannot recall what was served, except that it was delicious, nor what was discussed. I had the vague impression that Madame Presidente had charm and wit, because people at her end of the table laughed a good deal. But my attention was focused on Aurore. We said very little to one another, but every word spoken was freighted with double meaning. I caught myself once or twice wondering what she would look like unsheathed from those yards of rustling periwinkle-blue taffeta, how her hair would look falling in wild abandon over those tawny shoulders. Then I would suddenly remember Sabrina and, calling myself lecher, tear my gaze away. But before long, my eyes, as if attached to an invisible thread, would wander back.
“You mustn’t stare so,” she whispered at one point. “Papa will wonder.”
It was only meant to tease. Papa was too absorbed in conversation with Salomon. I caught words like Affaire des Mandats, La Tortue, and perfide Albion, as Salomon and Duval hammered away in stacatto French. Because I did not speak the language, my lack of interest in their discussion was hardly noticed, much less taken amiss.
I continued to admire Aurore.
Dinner over (far too soon for me), the entire company adjourned to the drawing room for coffee. Apparently the custom of leaving the dining room to the men and their port and cigars was not observed in the Duval household.
The arrangement met with my approval, since it would give me more time with Aurore. She went on ahead while I complimented Madame Duval on the fine dinner. Her chef, she assured me, had been imported from a widely known restaurant in Provence. M. Duval joined us, apologizing for allowing his guests to converse in French during the entire meal.
“Then I must learn how to speak the language,” I said.
“You won’t regret it, young man.” Putting his hand on my shoulder, he led me to a table where Madame Duval had seated herself and was pouring coffee from a silver pot into paper-thin demitasse cups. “Now,” he said, “you must have some of this.”
“Delicious,” I pronounced as M. Duval watched me drink. “I don’t believe I’ve ever tasted coffee like this.”
“Haitian coffee is unsurpassed,” he said with pride. “Tell me, Monsieur Morse, what do you know about this proposed canal across the Panamanian Isthmus? Do the Americans intend to take over from De Lesseps? He is not making a success of it, you know.”
De Lesseps was the French engineer who was hacking his way across the fever-ridden jungle of Central America in an attempt to link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
“Perhaps he needs more time,” I said.
“Perhaps . . . Ah! The Salomons are leaving. Excuse me, Monsieur Morse.”
When I looked around, Aurore was gone. I felt cheated, if not a little angry. Had she become bored and retired for the night? Had she left with someone? Perhaps she had a suitor, was engaged. I had to see her again. I couldn’t leave until I asked if I might.
I had another cup of coffee, taking care not to swallow it in one gulp, as I had done previously. Cup in hand, I made a leisurely tour of the room, studying various objets d’ art as if I were an intrigued connoisseur, meanwhile keeping an eye cocked for Aurore’s return. As I passed one of the open French doors I caught a glimpse of blue taffeta. I glanced back at the guests, then slipped out of an adjoining door as unobtrusively as I could manage.
She was alone, leaning on the stone balustrade, looking out at the harbor below.
“Mademoiselle!”
Her back stiffened before she turned.
“I hope I did not startle you.”
“Only a little. I was just watching the lights, catching a breath of fresh air.”
“It is a lovely night.” The air was soft, the sky starry with a quarter moon like an ivory scimitar poised directly overhead.
“You are lucky to have come to Haiti in the dry season,” she said. “It is the best time of year. Our rains are torrential, our summers steamy, intolerable in the lowlands.”
“I’m lucky to have come at all,” I said, drawing closer.
She did not look at me but stared seaward. A pinprick of light glided slowly across the smooth, glassy harbor. Zigzagging in and out, it was like a fairy light touched with moonbeam magic. Far, far away I could just make out the black hulk of Gonave Island.
“Luck is such a haphazard concept,” she observed.
“Fate, then. Do you believe in fate?”
“Yes,” she said.
The vines clinging to the terrace wall gave off the sweet, almost cloying, odor of jasmine. Then suddenly from the shrubbery we heard a peculiar noise—tshik-tshak, tshik-tshak, as if someone was bestowing hearty kisses.
“Lizards,” Aurore said. “Tiny green lizards. You would think such small creatures would be incapable of loud, voluptuous sounds.”
“Yes. There is so much I don’t know about Haiti. I am hoping you will be kind enough to enlighten me.”
She turned. Her eyes were the color of clear glass. “Monsieur Morse, sometimes it is better to remain in ignorance.”
“I disagree.”
“Safer, then.”
I smiled. “That reason is the least of them. I’m not afraid. Are you?”
Her look held mine for a long moment. “I have never been afraid of anything
in my life.”
I took her hand and, turning the palm up, pressed my lips to it. Her skin smelled faintly of sandalwood. “When can I see you again?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Papa is not strict, but he prefers that I not be alone with a man who isn’t a relative.”
“Could we include your younger brother or sister?” I asked, and suddenly thought of Sabrina again. How could I tell myself that I still loved her when I was so zealously pursuing another woman? But like Ulysses I had heard the siren call and was loath to turn back.
“I suppose,” she said, a faint dimple appearing at the corner of her lovely mouth.
“Tomorrow?”
“No, I have a music lesson, and . . . another engagement. I shan’t be free until the end of the week.”
“Not before? I am planning to leave for the interior day after tomorrow and I should like to see you before then.”
“Oh, well, I’m sorry. I couldn’t possibly—’’ She bit her lip. “We might compromise.’’ She gave me a wide smile.
“We might.’’
“If you could postpone your trip for a day, I might cancel my engagements. Friday?’’
I had never in my entire life met a woman who could put so much meaning into the word Friday.
“Yes, I’m sure I can arrange it.’’
“Why don’t you come early and we’ll see something of the port before it gets too hot. It’s market day too—quite a sight.’’
I presented myself at ten o’clock in the morning, hoping it was neither too late nor too early.
The same little black boy—or his brother—took my horse. When I knocked on the door, the butler invited me in.
Ma’mselle Aurore was not quite ready, I was informed. Would I care to wait?
I waited an hour, fanning myself with my straw hat as I sat in the lavish drawing room, for the day had already become warm. I was just beginning to call myself a fool for postponing my trip with Harry—he had been more cheerful about it than I had a right to expect—-when Aurore entered the room. It had passed through my mind that perhaps daylight would reveal her to be far less exotic than I had imagined. Candlelight and moonbeams always cast a softening, romantic glow. But Aurore was just as ravishing at eleven o’clock on a hot morning as she’d been at eleven o’clock on a cool night.
Dressed in flowered muslin, her slim waist tied with a blue ribboned sash, she looked like an elusive wood nymph, but one with a wicked tilt to her eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Monsieur Morse. I did not realize you were an early riser.’’
“I awakened you?’’
“No. I was still in my bath when I was told you were here.’’
A vision of that slender body lolling in a perfumed froth of soap bubbles rose before me.
“Shall we go?’’ she asked, linking her arm through mine. “I believe Maurice has ordered the gig.”
There was no sign of a brother or sister, and I did not inquire about them.
As I took the reins of the gig, she unfurled a fringed parasol, pink like the roses on the wide-brimmed straw hat that shadowed her lovely face.
“Out the gate and straight ahead,” she directed. “We’ll take the Rue Lalue to the bottom of the hill.”
We shared the road with stragglers late for market, straight-spined young women who resembled biblical Rachels going to the well, twitching their bottoms as they walked, baskets of mangos and cassavas riding their proud heads. Naked children ran in and out among them, laughing and shouting, kicking up clouds of dust. Interspersed with the pedestrians, runty-looking mules laden with bulky sacks plodded along, their owners perched atop, enthroned like mahouts, urging their diminutive beasts of burden on with raffia twigs.
At the sound of our approaching rig, people looked over their shoulders, then suddenly became silent and stepped aside. I thought it might be a mark of respect, the noir for the mulâtre, but there was something in their dark eyes that was closer to fear than respect.
Again Aurore read the question in my mind and answered it. “They knew my grandfather.” But she gave no further explanation.
The same withdrawal and silence occurred as we rode by a row of primitive huts. A bevy of women, squatting over the flowing gutter, washing clothes, chattering volubly suddenly stilled, like a flock of treetop birds at the sight of a cat. They watched us with white eyeballs, following our progress, and when we had gone some distance I heard their chatter start up again.
The market was set up in a vast square bounded by the cathedral and an assortment of colonnaded buildings, many of them with cracked and peeling walls. Above the milling marketeers rose the clamor of thousands of voices, bickering, cursing, chatting, and laughing, all in Creole, Aurore said, a language that very few mulâtres, aside from herself, took the trouble to understand.
We stopped at the edge of the crowd. “Would you like to inspect the wares?” Aurore asked. “Some of them you might find interesting.”
“And you?”
“I’ve seen what they have to offer dozens of times. I’ll wait here.”
“I don’t think I should leave you alone.”
She laughed. “I’m as safe here as in my own home. Go on. Don’t worry about me.”
“I’ll only be a few minutes.”
I thought to buy Aurore a little gift, some token object, but except for the mahogany figures in a woodcarver’s stall where I purchased a six-inch wooden owl, I found nothing suitable. The market abounded in fresh vegetables and fruits, guavas, wild oranges, grapefruit, breadfruit, and mangos. But other items of merchandise set out on upturned crates, chairs, and chests were of dubious quality. Nevertheless, the rusty nails, worn leather straps, twists of black tobacco, straw brooms, baskets, and battered pots were haggled over with an emotional intensity that one would expect from dealers in Araby rugs and Chinese porcelains.
On my way back to the gig I nearly collided with a small girl balancing a huge water tin on her head. “Kola, kola!” she cried plaintively, clapping her hands in rhythm. I watched her for a few moments, marveling at the perfect sense of balance in a child so young. When I turned to go on, a sudden parting of the crowd gave me a clear view of Aurore, who was speaking to a powerfully built black man in a white shirt and trousers. I wondered who he was: a passerby, a servant? As I got closer I saw Aurore put her white-gloved hand over his black one. Perhaps the man was a friend of the family. Perhaps I had met him at the Duvals’ dinner party, though he did not look familiar. I had come within a few paces of the gig when the black man looked up and saw me. He turned abruptly and melted into the crowd.
Aurore said nothing about him.
“Shall we go back?” she asked prettily. “It’s getting on to nap time. Siesta, the Spanish call it.”
I gave her the owl.
“Why, thank you, Monsieur! How sweet. The owl for wisdom—or is it curiosity?”
“For remembrance,” I said.
As we clattered through the narrow bystreets to the Rue Lalue, I wondered about the black man. It passed through my mind that she might have used the excuse of going to the marketplace to meet him, perhaps to arrange an assignation.
I stole a look at her. A faint smile played on her full red lips. Was he her lover? A noir?
“Do you mind if I ask you an impertinent question, Mademoiselle?”
“That depends on the question.”
“Tell me how is it that such a lovely girl as yourself is not betrothed?”
“You flatter me, Monsieur Morse. I have had”—she hesitated— “suitors. But no one that Papa and I agree on.”
“You’ve never been in love?”
“Ah, but love is an entirely different matter.”
Again that secret smile upon her lips. She had given herself to the noir. He was her lover, I was sure of it.
A surge of hot jealousy rose in my chest, catching me entirely by surprise. I hardly knew this girl, this mulâtre. Why, then, should I feel so outraged, as if she had broken a compact betw
een us?
But I did. I did.
Chapter 22
Madame Duval was kind enough to invite me for luncheon.
“No one stirs in this climate from noon until four,” she said.
M. Duval, home from business for the midday meal, was also pleased to see me.
“Has Aurore been showing you the sights?”
“Yes. We visited the marketplace this morning.”
He made a wry face. “Not much, cela. Couldn’t you do better, Aurore?”
“Why, Papa, you know how most visitors are intrigued with market day.”
M. Duval turned to me. “Were you—ah—intrigued, Monsieur Morse?”
“Hardly,” I answered, and he laughed.
Later, he said, “I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to see you about the distillery. I have some papers your father must sign. Why don’t you ask him to stop by the plant around eight this evening.”
“I’ll do that. Has he been making a nuisance of himself?”
“Not exactly.”
“You mustn’t mind his—ah—er—attitude. He can’t help it.”
“Oh, I understand. And you. Monsieur Morse, I imagine you sometimes have a few feelings yourself?”
I flushed. “I hope that I am losing them, sir.”
“That’s why I like you, Monsieur Morse. Losing them. But I would be a hypocrite if I tried to tell you that I myself am without prejudice. You will find racial differences in this country as strong as anywhere in your own South. It is just a matter of kind.”
When I told Harry that the papers for the distillery were ready to be signed, he chortled with glee. “Everythin’s goin’ just right. We’ll be millionaires, boy! First thing, I’m goin’ to pay you back with twenty percent interest. That’s just from the distillery.”
“Harry,” I interrupted. “Your share is very small.”
“But you say this Duval is rich.”
“He appears to have money. But I’m almost certain that Rhum Internationale is not his only holding.”
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