by Rice, Anne
“Great Nananne was washing his face and giving him his Scotch, that’s what he drank all the time, he wouldn’t have any other kind of drink, and he was choking and choking, and we just sat by him till sometime about dawn, the choking stopped, and his breathing got very steady, so steady you could have set a clock by it, just up and down, up and down.
“It was a real relief that he wasn’t choking. But Great Nananne shook her head to mean no good. Then his breathing got so low you couldn’t see or hear it. His chest stopped moving. And Great Nananne told me he was dead.”
She paused long enough to drink the rest of her coffee, then she stood up, pushing the chair back carelessly, and took the pot from the stove and gave us all some more of the heavy brew to drink.
She sat down again and ran her tongue along her lip, a habit with her. She seemed a child in all these gestures, perhaps because of the convent-school way in which she sat up straight in her chair and folded her arms.
“You know, it’s nice having you listen to this,” she said looking from me to Aaron. “I never told anyone all about it. Just the little things. He left Cold Sandra plenty of money.
“She came home around noon the next day and demanded to know where they’d taken him, and started screaming and throwing things and saying we never should have called for the morgue to take him away.
“ ‘And what did you think we were going to do with him?’ Great Nananne asked. ‘You don’t think they have a law in this town about dead bodies? You think we can just take him out and bury him in the backyard?’ Turned out his people in Boston came and got him, and soon as Cold Sandra saw that check, you know, the money he’d left her, she was out of this house and gone.
“Of course I didn’t know it was going to be the last time I ever saw her. All I knew was that she had packed up some of her clothes in a new red leather suitcase, and she was dressed like a model from a magazine, in a white silk suit. Her hair was pulled back to a bun on the back of her head. She was so beautiful she didn’t need any makeup, but she had put some dark-violet eye shadow above her eyelashes and a dark color, like violet, too, I think, on her lips. I knew that dark violet meant trouble. She looked so beautiful.
“She kissed me and she gave me a bottle of Chanel No. 22 perfume. She said that was for me. She told me she’d be coming back for me. She told me she was going out to buy a car, she was driving out of here. She said, ‘If I can just get across that spillway without drowning, I can get out of this town.’ ”
Merrick broke off for a moment, her eyebrows knitted, her mouth slightly open. Then she began again.
“ ‘The hell you’ll come back for her.’ That’s what Great Nananne told her. ‘You’ve never done anything except run wild and let that child run wild, well, she’s staying here with me, and you go to Hell.’ ”
Once again, she stopped. Her girlish face grew quiet. I was afraid she was going to cry. I think that she swallowed the tears very deliberately. Then she spoke again, clearing her throat a little. I could hardly make out the words.
“Think she went to Chicago,” she said.
Aaron waited respectfully while the silence filled the old kitchen. I picked up my coffee and drank deeply again, savoring the taste of it, as much out of respect for her as for the pleasure.
“You’re ours, darling,” I said.
“Oh, I know, Mr. Talbot,” she answered in a small voice, and, without moving the focus of her eyes from some distant point, she lifted her right hand and laid it on mine. I never forgot the gesture. It was as if she was comforting me.
Then she spoke. “Well, Great Nananne knows now. She knows whether my mother is alive or dead.”
“Yes, she knows,” I answered, avowing my belief before I could think the better of it. “And whatever she knows, she’s at peace.”
There was a quiet interval in which I became painfully conscious of Merrick’s suffering, and of the noises of the Talamasca acolytes who were moving every object in the place. I heard the grinding noise of the large statues being dragged or pushed. I heard the sound of packing tape being stretched and torn.
“I loved that man, Matthew,” said Merrick softly. “I really loved him. He taught me how to read the Book of Magic. He taught me how to read all the books that Oncle Vervain had left. He liked to look at the pictures I showed you. He was an interesting man.”
There was another long pause. Something in the atmosphere of the house disturbed me. I was confused by what I was feeling. It had nothing to do with normal noises or activity. And it seemed imperative suddenly that I conceal this disturbance from Merrick, that such a thing, whatever it was, not trouble her at this time.
It was as if someone altogether new and different had entered the house, and one could hear that person’s stealthy movements. It was the sense of a coherent presence. I wiped it from my mind, never for a moment fearing it, and keeping my eyes on Merrick, when, in a daze of sorts, she began to speak rather rapidly and tonelessly again.
“Up in Boston, Matthew had studied history and science. He knew all about Mexico and the jungles. He told me the story of the Olmec. When we were in Mexico City he took me to the museum. He was going to see to it that I went to school. He wasn’t afraid in those jungles. He thought those shots protected us. He wouldn’t let us drink the water, you know, all of that. And he was rich, like I told you, and he would have never tried to steal these things from Cold Sandra or me.”
Her eyes remained steady.
I could still feel this distinct entity within the house, and I realized that she did not feel it. Aaron did not know it was there, either. But it was there. And it was not far from where we sat. With all my soul I listened to Merrick.
“Oncle Vervain left lots of things. I’ll show you. Oncle Vervain said we had our roots in the jungle land down there, and in Haiti before our people ever came up here. He said we weren’t like American black people, though he never said the word ‘black,’ he always said colored. He thought it was polite to say colored. Cold Sandra used to laugh at him. Oncle Vervain was a powerful magician, and before him there had been his grandfather, and Oncle Vervain told tales of what the Old Man could do.”
I realized her soft speech was becoming more rapid. The history was pouring out from her.
“The Old Man, that’s all I ever called him. He was a Voodoo man in the Civil War. He went back to Haiti to learn things and when he came back to this town they said he took it by storm. Of course, they talk about Marie Laveau, but they talk of the Old Man too. Sometimes I can feel them near me, Oncle Vervain and the Old Man, as well as Lucy Nancy Marie Mayfair, who’s in the photograph, and another one, a Voodoo queen whom they called Pretty Justine. They said everybody was afraid of Pretty Justine.”
“What do you want for yourself, Merrick,” I asked her suddenly, desperate to stop the ever increasing speed of her words.
She looked at me sharply, and then she smiled. “I want to be educated, Mr. Talbot. I want to go to school.”
“Ah, how marvelous,” I whispered.
“I told Mr. Lightner,” she continued, “and he said you could do it. I want to be in a high-quality school where they teach me Greek and Latin and which fork to use for my salad or my fish. I want to know all about magic, the way Matthew did, telling me things out of the Bible, and reading over those old books and saying what was tried and true. Matthew never had to make a living. I expect I will have to make a living. But I want to be educated, and I think you know what I mean.”
She fixed her gaze on me. Her eyes were dry and clear, and it was then perhaps more than at any other time that I noticed their beautiful coloration of which I’ve spoken before. She went on talking, her voice a little slower now, and calmer and almost sweet.
“Mr. Lightner says all your members are educated people. That’s what he told me right before you came. I can see those manners in the people at the Motherhouse and I hear the way they talk. Mr. Lightner says it’s the tradition of the Talamasca. You educate your members, because it’
s a lifelong thing to be a member, and you all live under the same roof.”
I smiled. It was true. Very true. “Yes,” I said, “we do this with all who come to us, insofar as they are willing and able to absorb it, and we’ll give it to you.”
Merrick leant forward and kissed me on the cheek.
I was quite startled by this affection, and at a loss as to the proper thing to do. I spoke from the heart.
“Darling, we’ll give you everything. We have so much to share, it would be our duty if it weren’t … if it weren’t such a pleasure for us to do.”
Something invisible was suddenly gone from the house. I felt it as if a being had snapped its fingers and simply disappeared. Merrick showed no consciousness of this.
“And what will I do for you in exchange?” she asked in a calm sure voice. “You can’t give me everything for nothing, Mr. Talbot. Tell me what you want from me.”
“Teach us what you know about magic,” I answered, “and grow up to be happy, to be strong, and never to be afraid.”
9
It was growing dark when we left the house.
Before leaving New Orleans, we dined together at Galatoire’s, a venerable old New Orleans restaurant where I found the food to be delicious, but Merrick was by this time so exhausted that she turned quite pale and fell sound asleep in her chair.
The transformation in her was remarkable. She murmured that Aaron and I must care for the Olmec treasures. “Look at them but be careful,” she said, as a matter of fact. And then came the sudden slumber which left her pliant but unconscious, as far as I could see.
Aaron and I all but carried her to the car—she could walk in her sleep if propelled—and much as I wanted to talk with Aaron I didn’t dare risk it, though Merrick slept between us, quite soundly, during the entire ride home.
When we reached the Motherhouse, that good female member of the Order whom I’ve mentioned before, and will now for the sake of this account call Mary, helped us to carry Merrick up to her room and lay her on the bed.
Now, I remarked a little while ago that I wanted the Talamasca to envelop her in fantasy, to give her everything that she should desire.
Let me explain that we had already begun this process by creating an upstairs corner bedroom for her, which we believed to be a young woman’s dream. The fruit-wood bed, its posts and canopy decorated with carved flowers and trimmed in fancy lace, the dressing table with its little satin bench and huge round mirror, its small fancy twin lamps and myriad bottles, all of this was part of the fantasy, along with a pair of frilly boudoir dolls, as they are called, which had to be moved aside to lay down the poor darling on her pillow for the night.
And lest you believe we were misogynist imbeciles, allow me to explain that one wall of the room, the wall that was not punctuated by floor-length windows to the porch, was filled with a fine general assortment of books. There was also a corner table and chairs for reading, many other pretty lamps here and there, and a bathroom filled with perfumed soaps, varicolored shampoos, and countless bottles of scented cologne and oil. In fact, Merrick herself had bought any number of products scented with Chanel No. 22, a particularly wonderful scent.
By now, as we left her fast asleep and in the gentle care of Mary, I believe that Aaron and I both had fallen in love with her, completely in a parental sense, and I meant to allow nothing in the Talamasca to distract me from her case.
Of course Aaron, not being the Superior General of the Order, would have the luxury of remaining here with her long after I had been forced back to my desk in London. And I envied him that he would have the pleasure of watching this child meet her first tutors and pick out her own school.
As for the Olmec treasures, we took them now to the small Louisiana vault for safekeeping, and once inside, after some debate, opened the suitcase and examined what was there.
The cache was quite remarkable. There were close to forty idols, at least twelve of the perforator knives, numerous axe blades, and many smaller blade-shaped objects which we commonly call celts. Every single item was exquisite in its own right. There was also a handwritten inventory, apparently the work of the mysterious and doomed Matthew, listing each item and its size. The note was appended:
There are many more treasures within this tunnel, but they must wait for later excavation. I am already sick and must return home as soon as possible. Honey and Sandra are highly argumentative on this point. They want to take everything out of the cave. But I am getting weaker even as I write. As for Merrick, my illness is scaring her. I need to take her home. It is worth noting while I have the strength in my right hand that nothing else scares any of my ladies, not the jungles, not the villages, not the Indians. I have to go back.
It was more than poignant, these words of the dead man, and my curiosity about “Honey” was all the more strong.
We were in the process of wrapping everything and restoring it to its old order, when there came a knock on the outside door of the room in which the vault is situated.
“Come quickly,” Mary said through the door. “She’s become hysterical. I don’t know what to do.”
Up the stairs we headed, and before we’d reached the second floor we could hear her desperate sobs.
She sat on the bed, still in her navy blue dress from the funeral, her feet bare again, and her hair in tangles, sobbing over and over again that Great Nananne was dead.
It was all entirely understandable, but Aaron had a near magical effect upon people in such states, and he soon quieted her with his words, while Mary assisted when she could.
Merrick then asked through her tears if she could please have a glass of rum.
Of course no one was in favor of this remedy, but on the other hand, as Aaron judiciously pointed out, the liquor would quiet her, and she would go to sleep.
Several bottles were found in the bar downstairs, and Merrick was given a glass of the rum, but asked for more.
“This is a sip,” she said through her tears, “I need a glassful.” She looked so perfectly unhappy and distraught that we couldn’t deny her. At last, after imbibing, her sobs became softer.
“What am I going to do, where will I go?” she asked piteously, and once again we made our assurances, though her grief was something which I felt she had to express with tears.
As for doubts about her future, that was a different matter. I sent Mary out of the room. I sat down on the bed beside Merrick.
“My dear, listen to me,” I said to her. “You’re rich in your own right. Those books of Oncle Vervain’s. They’re worth enormous amounts of money. Universities and museums would bid on them at auction. As for the Olmec treasures, I cannot calculate their worth. Of course you don’t want to part with these things, and we don’t want you to do it, but rest assured you are secure, even without us.”
This seemed to quiet her somewhat.
Finally, after she had cried softly against my chest for the better part of an hour, she put her arms around Aaron, laid her head on his shoulder, and said that if she knew we were in the house, that we would not leave it, then she could go to sleep.
“We’ll be waiting for you downstairs in the morning,” I told her. “We want you to make that coffee for us. We’ve been fools, drinking the wrong coffee. We refuse to have breakfast without you. Now you must sleep.”
She gave me a grateful and kindly smile, even though the tears were still spilling onto her cheeks. Then, asking no one’s permission, she went to the frilly dressing table, where the bottle of rum stood quite incongruously among the other fancy little bottles, and took a good slug of the drink.
As we rose to go, Mary answered my call with a nightgown ready for Merrick, and I took the bottle of rum, nodded to Merrick to make certain that she had seen me do it, so there would be some civil pretense of her permission, and Aaron and I retired to the library below.
I don’t remember how long we talked.
Possibly it was an hour. We discussed tutors, schools, programs of education
, what Merrick should do.
“Of course there can be no question of asking her to display her psychic powers to us,” Aaron said firmly, as though I was going to overrule him. “But they’re considerable. I’ve sensed it all day and yesterday as well.”
“Ah, but there’s another matter,” I said, and I was about to broach the subject of the weird “disturbance” which I had felt in Great Nananne’s house while we had sat in the kitchen. But something stopped me from speaking.
I realized that I sensed the same presence now, under our Motherhouse roof.
“What’s the matter, man?” asked Aaron, who knew my every facial expression and who could probably read my mind if he really chose to do it.
“Nothing,” I said, and then, instinctively, and perhaps selfishly, with some desire to be heroic, I added, “I want you to stay where you are.”
I rose and went through the open doors of the library out into the hallway.
From above, from the upstairs rear of the house, there came a sardonic and ringing laugh. It was a woman’s laugh, there was no doubt about it, only I could not attach it to Mary or to the female members of the Order who were then living in the house. Indeed Mary was the only one in the main building. The others had gone to sleep some time ago in the “slave quarters” and cottages which made up part of the outbuildings some distance from the rear doors of the house.
Once again, I heard the laugh. It seemed an answer to my very query.
Aaron appeared at my shoulder. “That’s Merrick,” he said warily.
This time, I didn’t tell him to remain behind. He followed me as I went up the stairs.
The door to Merrick’s room was open, and the lights were on, causing a brilliant glow to spill into the long broad center hallway.
“Well, come on in,” said a womanish voice as I hesitated, and when I did, I was quite alarmed by what I saw.