by Steve Cash
“Yes,” I said.
On the ground, Isabelle groaned and rolled over onto her back, leaving her mouth open and slack. There was saliva running out of the corner of her mouth and the angle of her head made her look as if she was snarling. Everyone looked down at her and for some reason Ray said, “She ain’t no Queen of Hearts, is she?”
Usoa knelt down and gently rolled Isabelle back on her side and replaced a small silk pillow under her head.
“What will he do with her?” I asked.
“If he lets her live, he could do many things. He has in the past,” Usoa said, rising. “But I think this may be personal and, therefore, he may take his time. He is unpredictable, but this is his favorite game of all.”
“What? What is?”
“The corruption of innocence. And pulling your heart out by the roots.”
Unai stepped up beside Usoa and put his arm around her waist. “Our watch is over, Zianno,” he said. “This information only proves it. We have made mistakes before, but none this egregious and untimely. We regret it and pledge on your mama and papa’s memory to help you any way we can. If I could change the way events have transpired, I would. Tout de même, we owe you, Zianno. We owe you.”
“You owe me nothing,” I said. “The Fleur-du-Mal owes me the return of a little girl who has nothing to do with this. And in return for her, I will take his life.”
“What can we do?” Usoa asked.
“We begin tomorrow. Ray and I will need your insight and knowledge, your memories and maps of his haunts and habits. We are no longer watching. We are after him like dogs.”
Unai clutched the Stone beneath his tunic. I looked down at Isabelle sleeping, dreaming there on the ground. She smacked her lips once and made me think of a doll, a dreaming doll being kept by two children older than any place her dreams could ever go.
Ray said, “Dogs?”
We checked in to a hotel that same night. It was an old hotel well past its prime, but centrally located and still run with discretion and an emphasis on privacy. There was cast-iron grillwork all around with thick vines weaving in and out. Ray and I liked the old place and the fact it was called the St. Louis made it a good fit.
I gave them my real name at the desk but registered under Owen Bramley’s and told the management he was the executor of my grandfather’s estate. There was no problem and the date of our departure was left open.
The next day, at about noon, Ray and I began a ritual that was to last much longer than either of us had anticipated. I awoke before him to the overpowering smell of fresh-baked bread and pastries coming from a bakery below our windows and not half a block away. Our rooms in the suite were separated by a sitting room, but each opened through louvered shutters onto a balcony that ran the length of the suite. I dressed and made my way downstairs and to the bakery, where I picked up a dozen assorted croissants and rolls with fresh butter and jam. When I returned, Ray was awake and waiting for me on the balcony, drinking chicory coffee that he’d ordered from room service. That in itself, a twelve-year-old kid ordering coffee, would have been out of the ordinary anywhere but in New Orleans, where the unusual becomes the ordinary. We sat on the balcony sharing the rolls and coffee, speaking little and watching the street life of New Orleans pass around and below us. Eventually, we planned our strategy for the day. We were searching for the Fleur-du-Mal, who was referred to by several names in countless countries, but whatever name was used, he was actually known to only a few. Ray, in his manner, decided to start in the French Quarter, then make his way to the far side of the Quarter and Storyville, the red-light district. My plans were slightly less practical and a lot more vague. Ray said, “Where you goin’, Z?”
I said, “Everywhere. Nowhere.”
Ray found out more that first day, on his own, than he ever did following any name or place that Unai and Usoa gave him later. It was not their fault, really. Ray had known the underworld, especially the kind of vice, deceit, and shifty deals that was New Orleans, most of his life. Unai and Usoa’s life, until they had been watching the Fleur-du-Mal, had been quite different. That evening, I found out some of it.
We met at Isabelle’s, as we would many, many nights thereafter. I only saw Isabelle herself infrequently. As usual, she was in her boudoir preparing for a grand ball that didn’t exist, and when I did see her, she was in a panic and yelling to Usoa that they would be too late, she would have to cancel. She was quite mad and Usoa always told her they had more than enough time and not to worry, she looked lovely. I asked Unai how long she had been this way and he said it had been a gradual but increasing decline, probably due to her love of absinthe. He said he had seen it before, the Giza destroying themselves from the inside out, as had most Meq. At the mention of the Meq, I thought of Sailor and Geaxi and asked if he had heard from them. He said no, but that was normal, he had once gone a century without hearing from Sailor. Impulsively, I asked him when and how he had met Usoa. He laughed out loud and sat down in a beautiful wicker chair with broad armrests and a wide, fanned back. He looked so tiny in the chair. A child in high leather boots and yet, when he spoke, when I looked in his eyes, I knew he spoke from twenty lifetimes before the chair was even made.
“I owe it to Charlemagne, de bonne grâce,” he said. “And his ignorance of the Basque. But I also owe Adelric, the great Basque chieftain, and his ignorance of love.”
“Was it sudden?”
“Was what sudden?”
“Your realization of it, your . . . connection.”
“Ah, I see,” he said. “No, no, Zianno. Our realization and our connection were à tort et à travers, or rather wrong and crosswise.”
I sat down in a wicker chair opposite him and leaned forward. I caught a glimpse of Ray moving in the shadows, finding a place on the ledge of the fountain, and I thought of Opari, appearing out of the shadows and into my life, changing everything in an instant. “Tell me the story, Unai. Please.”
He looked at me strangely and asked, “Where should I begin?”
“At the moment you knew she was your Ameq.”
He turned his head and stared into the darkness of the courtyard and then looked up, focusing his black eyes on the night sky above us. “You want to know of the Isilikutu, the silent touch, the Whisper, only our hearts can hear.”
“Yes,” I said.
“All right,” he said. “I shall begin there, but first, I must tell you where ‘there’ was.
“I was staring at the sky as I am now. I was in the Pyrenees, hiding among the boulders above a narrow pass called Roncesvalles. The year was AD 778. It was the first time I had been back to the Pyrenees in over two hundred years. I was summoned, or more properly, Sailor was summoned in North Africa by his Aita and I was traveling with Sailor at the time, so we decided to return together, more out of curiosity than anything else. Charlemagne was in retreat across the Pyrenees, making his way to the safety of his Frankish kingdom. He had discovered that the Basque, even most of the Christian Basque, did not want his presence in their homeland, and he was about to suffer the worst defeat and humiliating military campaign of his entire career. He would be ambushed in the narrow pass and cut off from his rearguard and supplies, all of whom would be killed and the supplies scattered in ravines by the time his massive army and entourage were able to turn and bring relief. He had underestimated the Basque and their ability to join separate, fiercely independent tribes into a cohesive fighting force. And in the Pyrenees, with their heavy weapons and armor, Charlemagne and his men would be no match for the Basque. In the mountains, the Basque could become ghosts.
“Sailor’s Aita, Bidun, had summoned him to witness the occasion and very possibly, in case something went wrong, use the Stones, though he must have also known Sailor would never do such a thing.
“The point is, we did witness it, and in the midst of the carnage, while the air was filled with Basque arrows and the screams of men and horses being pierced and blinded, I stared up at the sky and suddenly felt
the presence of something else, something unknown and yet as familiar as my own heartbeat. I heard her breathing. I heard her breathing rapidly. I was six hundred and forty-four years old and had been in the Itxaron for six hundred and thirty-two of them and I knew instantly I was in the presence of my Ameq. I looked down fifty feet below and at the head of the baggage train was a caged caravan breaking away from the others and making a run for freedom along the narrow ledge. Behind the bars of the caravan were several men, women, and children, all Christian Basque who had resisted Charlemagne. And there was one other among them who resembled a child, but of course was not. The caravan struggled, passing and pushing oxcarts and packhorses into a three-thousand-foot drop. Then, just as the caravan broke free and moved away, she grasped the bars and looked up among the boulders, searching for me. Amid the screams and chaos, she had heard my heartbeat and felt my presence. I stood up from my hiding place and looked for the first time into the eyes of Usoa. She whispered one word which I heard with all my being. She said, ‘Beloved.’ In another instant, she was gone and the caravan disappeared around the rock cliff. I stood staring, sans souci and oblivious to the battle raging below.
“Later, Sailor had to tell me what had happened, that I had experienced the silent touch, the Whisper, what the Meq call the Isilikutu.”
Unai stopped talking and rose from the wicker chair in silence. He took Usoa’s hand and held it to his mouth, kissing her palm. I had not heard her approach. She sat down in the chair and, except for the blue diamond in her ear, could have been his twin.
“Do you know the story of Pyramus, Zianno?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“It is the story of a legendary youth in Babylon who dies for love of Thisbe, his beloved. The details are unimportant, but for the next twelve years, Unai nearly became my Pyramus. Using passion instead of reason, he endangered himself constantly, finally cajoling and manipulating Bidun into convincing Adelric to take him along in his entourage to Worms, where Adelric had been summoned. Charlemagne wanted an explanation for the abduction of Count Chorzo of Toulouse and Unai wanted to find me at any cost, though he told Adelric he was acting as a spy at court, where, everyone knew, children were ignored. But once there, he was no child. He stalked the grounds of the assembly and foolishly used the Stones almost at random on guards and emissaries until he found me.
“Ironically, it was Unai’s entrance that secured our safety and eventually gained us favor. Originally, I had been captured along with some Basque families from Navarra as punishment, but after Roncesvalles I was put into service as a handmaiden to one of Charlemagne’s own daughters, Berta. She thought of me as a charmed being and a good luck omen for her. When she heard the commotion of the falling soldiers, who had been ‘charmed’ themselves by Unai, she burst out of her chambers and saw the two of us embracing. I told her it was Unai who had saved me from an assassin and thereby saved her. With that act and Berta’s natural belief in fortune of all kinds, we were both made a part of her permanent entourage. Adelric returned to the Pyrenees thinking he had planted the perfect spy and Charlemagne welcomed us as magical angels of good luck and fortune. In fact, we were merely two Meq in love. But the ruse worked and we stayed in the courts of Charlemagne for many years, traveling through Aquitaine and the rest of his empire at will. We even became elephant handlers, taking care of Abul Abbas, Charlemagne’s pet elephant, until it died in Saxony in the year 811. I could tell you story after story about Unai and that elephant. Later, of course, we had to leave that world and move on, as the Meq always do, but that is when and how we met and soon our long journey and Wait will end. The Zeharkatu awaits us like a gate to a place we have only named in whispers.”
From deep in the shadows by the fountain, I heard Ray say, “Damn.”
I never said what I felt that night. Not that night or the next or the next. I let it burn up inside me and drift away on its own like smoke. I was honored to have heard Unai and Usoa’s story, but inside I felt only melancholy and confusion. What had happened in China was real, I knew that now. It was common to us, it even had a name. Isilikutu. But what had happened in St. Louis and what it meant was more confounding than ever. If I was going to find Star, I had to let it go.
In the days and weeks that followed, Ray and I stuck to our routine: “breakfast” at noon on the balcony and then off to follow our separate trails and sources of rumors, clues, and bits of information about the Fleur-du-Mal, then a brief meeting with Unai and Usoa at Isabelle’s, dinner somewhere, and then back to the French Quarter or Storyville for our nightly tour of hotels, clubs, whorehouses, saloons, pool halls, poker rooms, docks, markets, and the streets themselves.
Physically, it seemed to rain more and the temperature dropped a bit, often dramatically, at night. But I noticed no change in the seasons to speak of. New Orleans is a season unto itself, especially at night. Storyville never closed, and it was there that we concentrated most of our attention. The Fleur-du-Mal was an assassin, but as Unai and Usoa told us, for centuries he had also trafficked in young girls and women in a complex network between the Muslim East and the Christian West. White slavery had become his stock-in-trade. New Orleans, with the only legal red-light district in America, was a natural hub of that wheel.
Ray and I made acquaintances with most of the “players” in the district; the gamblers, bartenders, pimps, and some of the madams. Even though we were “just kids” in their eyes, we were streetwise and it was New Orleans, a place where life didn’t always need distinction between such things. We moved freely and easily and Ray knew the game well. With just the right amount of laughter and bluff, he could steer a conversation into a gentle interrogation. “Countess” Willie Piazza, the colorful madam who spoke seven languages and wore a monocle, made the first actual reference to the Fleur-du-Mal, and even that was an alias we’d not heard before. Ray had simply asked her if she knew any characters that looked like us. She laughed out loud and took a drag from a cigarette lodged in a holder as long as her arm. “Oh, yes, honey, I certainly do,” she said. “The Genie, that’s what I call him, always poppin’ up out of nowhere with teeth as white as milk and eyes as green as pine trees. But I don’t like what he’s sellin’.”
“What’s that?” Ray asked.
“Girls, honey. Girls younger than he is, younger than you. Girls that should still have a real mama.”
“Well, when was the last time the Genie popped up?”
“It was at the opera,” she said and took another elaborate drag on her cigarette. “Somethin’ by Mozart, I believe. Anyhow, between acts one and two, he came up to me with that cagey smile and asked me about Jelly Roll Morton, of all things, and if he was still playin’ at my place. He was in a custom-tailored little black tuxedo with that black hair slicked back and tied in that green ribbon. But like I said, I don’t like what he’s sellin’ and I politely took my leave. That was just after Mardi Gras, honey, last March or April.”
Through the end of the year, that was as close as we got to the Fleur-du-Mal. It was a frustrating, empty time. A chase without a starting place. A game that he was playing and probably enjoying, but a game that Star never asked to play. He was using her life without permission.
I wrote to Carolina and Nicholas every other day, trying to sound positive and sometimes making up leads when I had none. I knew Carolina would read between the lines, but I did it anyway. Ray even wrote to Eder, and Nova especially, something I never thought I’d see. I heard from Owen Bramley occasionally, as did the hotel management. He helped legitimize our stay and keep curiosity to a minimum. He also said he was moving to St. Louis from San Francisco. Nova had insisted and would not allow any other decision, some doom and gloom prospect in the city’s future, she had said. And he mentioned he had contacted the French photographer and was in the process of obtaining the prints and negatives I had requested. They were old, but they were there, they existed. No one heard a word from Sailor or Geaxi, not Owen Bramley, Eder, or Unai and
Usoa, who were already preparing to leave for Spain and an end and a beginning that was unlike any other. We entered the year 1906 frustrated, separated, and in some ways helpless. Unai’s toast on New Year’s Eve was apropos: “Aide-toi, le ciel t’aidera,” he said. It meant, “Help yourself and heaven will help you.”
Ray was a good friend, companion, and the closest thing to a brother I’d ever had. We laughed a lot, enjoyed the same food, and shared a love for music, particularly what was going on in New Orleans. On our rounds, we always caught “Stalebread” Lacoume’s Razzie Dazzie Spasm Band wherever they were playing. Jelly Roll Morton was a regular at Willie’s and he was doing things very similar to what Scott Joplin and Tom Turpin were doing in St. Louis, only his music was looser, more danceable. And at the Economy, a tiny club that seemed never to close, we stood outside and listened to a form of music that affected us deeply. Players from all over the South came through the club and they were all playing the “blues.” I was hypnotized. Each player took a common theme and structure and made it their own, made it unique. And when they played together, the music became timeless in a way Ray and I understood instinctively. Complex in its very simplicity, it was an enigma. Through the music, the players themselves shared a joy and camaraderie, almost a secret, acknowledged with a grin or a common nickname. You could feel this music, almost touch it and taste it, or as Ray said, “This is gonna last, Z.”
It was a guilty pleasure for us, but it did yield information about the Fleur-du-Mal, even if it was always in the past tense. Several people said they’d seen “the kid with the smile,” or “the quiet kid with the green ribbon,” but few could remember when and none had a clue where he lived.
We both loved the music, but Ray also loved the crowds, the noise, the late nights, and the constant ebb and flow of strangers in New Orleans. When the crush of Mardi Gras came, I stayed at Isabelle’s for two weeks. I needed a break and I needed to know anything they might have forgotten to tell me about the Fleur-du-Mal, anything I might have missed. Ray stayed put in the St. Louis Hotel and immersed himself in the smothering chaos of Mardi Gras.