It struck me that the “great city between two rivers” was none other than my dear New York!
“How long were you there?”
“It was spring when we came, and the leaves were golden when we left. A year?” he ventured.
“Wait. If it was spring when you got there, and fall when you left, then you must have been there half a year.”
“I think you are right,” he agreed dolefully, then brightened somewhat. “You are very smart. A genius!”
“No—”
“I am so lucky to have a genius for a new friend. I am very stupid, you know.”
I wasn’t entirely sure if he were speaking bitterly or just stating a fact, but irony did seem beyond him.
“You are an excellent locksmith,” I tried to bolster his spirits.
“My father was one,” he said.
“Do you remember anything else about him?”
“He used to bounce me on his knee, like a horsie.”
“Really? What else.”
“He loved me.”
“Yes. It is a good thing that our fathers love us,” I observed, “and that we love them.”
“Who is your father?” Lou-Lou asked avidly.
“My father is John Walker, a merchant, of Oyster Bay, Long Island.”
“Ah,” he nodded his head. “What is a merchant?”
“Well, uh, a merchant is someone who buys things that people need and sells them for more than he paid, thus earning a profit.”
“He must be a genius too.”
“He is no dunce,” I said, rather regretting my choice of words.
“Sammy, may I ask you a question?”
“Of course you may,” I told him, impatience drawing knots in my stomach.
“You say your father buys things that people need?”
“That’s right.”
“And sells them for more than he paid.”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t the people buy the things they need from the same man your father buys these things from?”
“That is a very good question, Lou-Lou. Very good indeed. See, you are not stupid after all. The reason my father buys all these things and sells them at a profit may be summed up in one word: commerce.”
“Ah ha!” Lou-Lou clapped his hands. “What is commerce?”
“Well,” I puzzled my brains further. “My father operates a store, you see?”
“What is a store?”
“A place where people may find the things they need.”
“Where does your father find these things to put in his store?”
“He goes to the wharves,” I said, “where the ships unload the things that people need, and that is where he buys the cloth, sugar, rum, what-have-you.”
“Why don’t the people go down to the ships too?”
“They come to Father’s store instead.”
“Then he must be a genius to get them to come there.”
“He … maybe you are right, Lou-Lou,” I gave up. The job of school-master was evidently not my métier. “Do you remember your mother?” I took a fresh tack.
“Yes. She was very beautiful.”
“Madame LeBoeuf is very beautiful too,” I said.
“Perhaps. But she is not fond of me like a mother,” Lou-Lou said with a sniffle. The subject seemed a source of deep unhappiness to him, so I abandoned it.
“What do you remember of France?” I asked instead.
“France…?” He looked bewildered and once again exhibited that nervous habit of nibbling his lower lip. “There were many big people. Not so many Indians. We lived in a big house, like this one, but upon dry land. Do you live in a big house, Sammy?”
“Not the size of Chateau Félicité,” I assured him.
“No?” Lou-Lou seemed scandalized. “My Uncle Fernand must be a greater genius than your father—oof, excuse me. That was a bad thing to say, no?”
“Don’t worry, I’m not offended. But I do agree that your Uncle Fernand is indeed some species of genius. He has carved a veritable dukedom from this howling wilderness. That in itself is an amazing accomplishment.”
“Your uncle must be a genius too.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because my Uncle Fernand loves him, and he does not love people unless they are very clever. Yago is very clever. I am very stupid.”
“Who is Yago?” I tried to probe beneath the surface of things.
“Yago is the Choctaw who sat at the summer table beside Uncle Fernand. Did you not see him? I could swear that he was there tonight.”
“I saw him,” said I.
“That is Yago,” Lou-Lou informed me.
“Ah yes,” said I and dropped that line of inquiry. My eyes burned with fatigue and I had no further appetite for circumlocution. “I must return to my apartment and sleep, Lou-Lou. Perhaps we shall visit again tomorrow, eh?”
“O, yes. I am so happy, my genius friend.”
He then did something that, though undoubtedly innocent, and a symptom of his loneliness as much as his idiocy, still appalled me. He sprang from his seat on the bed and flung himself at my feet, whimpering like a puppy.
“Lou-Lou, please, I implore you!”
“My friend, my friend …” he whined.
“Go back to your bed. To your bed, I say!” I virtually ordered him. He stood up and sheepishly returned to the place in question.
“Excuse me,” he said.
“It is already forgotten,” I assured him and rose to take my leave.
“Promise you won’t tell Uncle Fernand that you came here tonight.”
“Why shouldn’t you be allowed visitors?”
“I don’t know. But he told me not to bother you.”
“Did he?” I exclaimed. “Oughtn’t it be left for us to decide whether we shall be friends?”
“Perhaps,” he said without conviction.
“Come now, how old are you, Lou-Lou?”
He puzzled his brains a moment.
“I don’t know,” he finally said, crestfallen.
“Well, in any case, you are almost a man,” I said. “Do you know that a man is someone who can do as he pleases, without asking his uncle’s permission? I, for example, did not have to ask my Uncle William’s permission to come and visit you here, did I?”
“No …” Lou-Lou answered timidly, though I sensed he followed my logic.
“Did not your Uncle Fernand tell you at the supper table tonight to act like a man?”
“Yes …” Lou-Lou said, his puzzlement turning to cogitation and thence igniting in the flicker of understanding. “Yes!”
“There you have it,” I rested my case.
“O, you are such a genius,” he marveled at me, but his jubilance was short-lived. He bit his lips again. “Still,” he reiterated, “don’t tell.”
“I promise I won’t, Lou-Lou. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, my genius friend Sammy. I will see you tomorrow.”
“I look forward to it,” said I from the door and took my leave of the poor, solitary, overgrown booby.
I was more than halfway back down the long corridor to our apartment when, to my sudden fright, I heard a bolt thrown, the turning of a knob, and the telltale creak of a door hinge. Upon sheer instinct I ducked for cover behind the object nearest at hand: in this case a Pembroke table and its accompanying side chairs. Out into the corridor, still dressed in his linen shirt and smallclothes, strode Yago. An alabaster hand reached from the door and seized his arm, causing him to halt.
“You will come again tomorrow?” asked a woman’s voice in French, and I could have sworn it belonged to the beautiful Madame LeBoeuf, but her form remained concealed behind the jamb.
“Maybe,” the Indian replied flintily.
“It is an eternity till then,” said the woman.
Yago glanced over his shoulder and grunted.
“Go now,” she said, and the white arm withdrew into the doorway. I could barely believe the report of my s
enses.
Yago turned and commenced striding down the corridor toward me. I thought my heart would burst, so fast was it racing. The Indian marched past my hiding place as though I were but another stick of furniture. I did not draw another breath until he rounded the corner at the end of the hallway and vanished. And then I lost not an instant stealing back to our rooms.
Hours later, after staring into the pleats of my canopied bed and listening to the palace creak on its moorings, I slipped into a febrile dream of blood, monsters, and Indians, while the room swelled with yellow light.
9
I was wrenched from my dreams not by our accustomed song of the woodland morn, but by the screech of fiddles and cellos. The door to my bedchamber was thrown open. In marched a pair of savages. One drew the curtains, and sunshine sliced across the room like a golden blade. The other laid out a new suit of clothes—these less elegant than the embroidered silks of the night before, but spanking new: a white linen shirt, cream-colored breeches, and a summer-weight green cotton waistcoat. My head ached from a paucity of sleep, and a few monstrous lizards from my wild dreams yet lurched through my brain.
“Ugh,” I groaned. Just then, Uncle bounded into the room, fully dressed in an outfit similar to that laid out for me. He was smiling and as buoyant in spirits as ever I had seen him since our reunion at Owl’s Crossing.
“What a delightful day!” he declared. “Up, nephew! Up!”
“What is that awful racket?” I asked crabbily.
“Haydn?” he ventured. Actually, it was Mozart, but to me, under the circumstances, it was just an obnoxious din. “Come now, Sammy, up, I say! ’Tis a beautiful morning!”
“What time is it?”
“Hast thee an appointment? Up, clod! Our host awaits us at table.”
And so I hauled myself out of that sumptuous bed, my ears ringing and joints aching with fatigue. Hot water had been brought up for my ablutions. In our parlor, a quartet of turbaned Negroes sawed away expertly upon their stringed instruments. The Indians guided us through the corridors and down a wide stairway to a sunny courtyard within the very heart of the floating palace. Like the little rose garden we had passed inside the stockade walls, this too was formally planted in the old style. Altogether it was perhaps an hundred feet square. To one side, seated at a round table in the sunlight, was our host. Madame was conspicuously absent.
“Ah, messieurs, William and Sammy!” he called to us.
“Good morning, Fernand,” Uncle cried. “’Tis like waking in paradise, sir.”
“I am flattered that you think so,” he replied. The air did resound with the melody of birds. The garden too was impressive, though nothing at all like Uncle’s at Owl’s Crossing, nor on such a scale.
“A new hibiscus!” Uncle exclaimed, spotting the first of innumerable species previously unknown to him. His excitement grew with every step. “A spiderwort! A bear’s ear! A spotted purple columbine…!”
“Look what I have for you, young man,” LeBoeuf addressed me, pointing to the ground. Lying beside the table were two enormous curved tusks and an huge pelt of thick, matted, reddish fur. The tusks must have been over ten feet long. Etched into the yellowed ivory were the minute reticulations of age.
“These are ancient,” I remarked bluntly.
“A pachyderm lives a long life,” LeBoeuf countered deftly. “This one was—how you say?—long in the tooth. Ha ha!”
I laughed politely at his joke. Uncle, meanwhile, had wandered across the garden and was rummaging amid the plantings like a man who had spotted some valuable bauble in the weeds.
“A new lupin!” he cried with delight.
LeBoeuf waved at him fondly.
“Why didn’t you keep the pelt of this pachyderm as well as the tusks?” I inquired.
“It was enormous,” he replied, “and we were out on a small vessel.”
“I see that you managed to bring back the pelt of megatherium,” I rejoined.
“We shot it closer to the chateau,” LeBoeuf informed me. “And we were in a larger boat that day.”
“Why didn’t you return for the mastodon skin in a larger boat, monsieur?” I pressed LeBoeuf.
“We did, Sammy. The next day. It had been savaged by wolves and scavengers. What a loss to science,” he sighed. “Only the bones were left, and of these, only the tusks were of any value. Quel dommage.”
“Yes, what a pity, indeed,” I granted.
“What ho!” Uncle cried again. “A bastard lychnis! Thy garden is a treasure trove, Fernand!”
“I am so happy you are here to see it,” LeBoeuf called in return. “It is a dream come true, believe me, dear friend.”
I stooped now to examine the pelt. It had the feel of a buffalo robe but was quite a bit larger. The extremities were incomplete, the characteristic scimitar claws not in evidence. The skull had been removed and the beast’s face lacked form. The ears and nose were missing. What is more, the reddish, matted, wooly hair was suspiciously similar to that of Bison bison.
I thought I detected artful stitching on the underside, which was tinted a queer orange hue. Indeed, some of this color rubbed off on the pads of my thumb and forefinger, leading me to suspect that it had been dyed. I pored over the specimen pretending to admire it, keeping my suspicions to myself.
“Did you have a nice visit with Lou-Lou last night?” LeBoeuf suddenly asked out of the blue, curdling my spinal fluxes.
“I beg your pardon?” I said, pretending to be absorbed in the pelt.
“Did you enjoy your visit with Lou-Lou last night?” LeBoeuf reiterated, that enigmatic demismile on his face.
“May I be frank?” I stood up.
“Please.”
“He is rather tedious,” I said.
“Let me be equally frank,” LeBoeuf rejoined.
“By all means.”
“Lou-Lou is not the brightest light you will ever meet.”
“He is a trifle slow,” I agreed.
“Somewhat shallow.”
“Dull.”
“Subnormal.”
“Do you think so?” I asked.
“Without question,” LeBoeuf fluttered his eyelids and nodded his head.
“It was not a stimulating session,” I avouched.
“You found him absolutely uninteresting?”
“Quite.”
“Without any redeeming qualities?”
“Well, no,” I hedged. “He is polite to a fault.”
“By heaven!” Uncle cried from the farthest corner of the garden, “silver hollyhocks! Caper bush! Chinese pinks, double, single, and treble! Unceasing marvels!”
“I’m sorry that he disturbed you,” LeBoeuf resumed.
“It was nothing, I assure you.”
“You know, sometimes Lou-Lou imagines things.”
“Really?” I said. “In that little walnut brain?” I worried for a moment that I had carried my sarcasm a bit too far, but LeBoeuf merely smiled again. Throw a shawl ’round his shoulders and you would have had a very Mona Lisa.
“Louis is not right in the head, you see,” he said, tapping his own temple. “How you say? Crazy?”
“He seemed merely stupid to me.”
“Good,” LeBoeuf said, patting me on the shoulder, and I gathered that the subject was closed. “How do you like the pelt of Gargantua?”
“Impressive,” I said, still wondering how LeBoeuf had found out about my visit with Lou-Lou, and why he was so determined to keep the poor dullard in isolation. Just then, a procession of Indians filed into the courtyard bearing covered silver trays.
“Ah!” LeBoeuf exclaimed, “l’heure du déjeuner. A table, mon ami!” he called across the courtyard to Uncle, who grasped that he was being called to breakfast.
“It will take me days to catalogue thy trove of specimens, Fernand,” he said, taking his seat. A platter was held aside his elbow for inspection. Upon it was a circlet of little squablike fowls, roasted to a golden turn. Uncle closed his eyes and inhaled the fra
grant steam.
“Ortolans,” LeBoeuf explained. “In France we favored the yellow-throated bunting. These are bobolink.”
“Dolichonyx oryzivorus,” Uncle said, while a sort of headwaiter placed two of the little birds on his plate with tongs. There was a silver wire basket of buttery rolls and a selection of fresh fruits as well: oranges, cherries, and raspberries the size of lark eggs.
“I prefer a light breakfast,” our host explained.
“Fernand,” Uncle said, “Thee lives like a very king.”
Uncle did not see LeBoeuf’s eyebrows shoot up, so absorbed was he with the food.
“After last night’s feast, I barely have an appetite,” said I.
“Eat, young man,” LeBoeuf commanded me with mock severity, as though playing the stern papa. “This New World air saps the energies,” he added, and Uncle hooted with laughter. Thus our breakfast commenced with all the intimate jocosity of three old cronies at a club table. The Indians withdrew like wraiths.
I wished Uncle had shown half the interest in the object of our mission as he exhibited for LeBoeuf’s botanicals, for he gave the pelt no more than a cursory examination, stating only that it would be nice to obtain a more complete specimen.
“By the way, what happened to the claws?” I now made bold to ask.
“The Indians desired them,” our host deftly explained. “Such objects play a large role in their spiritual life. What do you think of my humble garden, William, mon ami?”
“Humble!” Uncle snorted. “Pish! ’Tis one of the finest collections in America. And to have made it upon this floating palace! Thee underplays thy achievement, my friend.”
“My head swims to hear you say that. This morning I woke with a start. Did I dream that the great William Walker was here? There is so much to show you, to talk about. Chateau Félicité is at your complete disposal.”
I could see that Uncle longed to remain here awhile, but his Quaker reserve prevented him from saying as much.
“In a week, or less, the century plant will set its seed,” LeBoeuf went on. “Stay till then, mon ami, and you can return to Philadelphia with enough Puya in embryo to supply all the gardens of this fine new nation.”
“But what might I offer in return, Fernand?” Uncle replied with typical modesty.
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