4
The French Quarter
HOW DO YOU make yourself forget? The subject was on Peregrine’s mind as he walked back to the boardinghouse, exchanged his uniform for civilian clothes, and went out again. He had intended to report to the infirmary, but he made it no farther than the nearest saloon, where he spent most of the afternoon drinking alone. After making a luncheon of pigs’ feet washed down with beer, he decided to pay a visit to the public library to see what wisdom the world had to offer him on the science of forgetting.
Amid the stacks of books made musty by the humid air, Peregrine found no shortage of advice instructing the forgetful on how to remember. An absentminded person could carry a notepad to jot things down, always deposit the house key in the same drawer, and post written reminders in conspicuous places. Unfortunately, the wisdom on the question was entirely one-sided. The learned philosophers of the human intellect had much to say about remembering, but they remained perfectly mute on the subject of teaching oneself to forget.
Peregrine’s own humble experiments in the science had proven disappointing. As soon as he had recovered enough from his wounds to accept official responsibility, he made a conscious effort to bury himself alive in work. He restricted his waking attentions to the unending flow of reports and orders, the great tidal flood of paperwork that fuels an army, which is, away from the battlefield, little more than an elaborate bureaucracy. But this was distraction, not forgetting, and the pain would bite down on his heart the moment he dropped his guard.
He could not bear to look on the few tender mementos he had carried with him to war in a battered steamer trunk. After Antietam, he kept them locked away—the silver-framed photographs of his wife and children, the letters from his wife, the penknife she gave him on his last Christmas at home. Other reminders were harder to escape. A little girl’s laughter; a boy rolling a hoop along the street; even the smell of vanilla, which conjured up the mental picture of his wife in the kitchen—these things and a thousand others afflicted Peregrine like scaldings. There were times when it was all he could do to keep from tearing his hair and screaming.
Seamus O’Rourke had said time would lessen the sting of his loss, but that had not been Peregrine’s experience. The poison was too deep to be drawn out by degrees and discarded along with pages ripped from the calendar. Peregrine woke up every day to realize he remained trapped in a life he loathed, his family doomed to die again in his memories with each unwelcome sun. And worse were the nights. In his nightmares, his family screamed piteously for him to save them. But there was nothing he could do to help them—not then, not now.
Peregrine was covered in vomit when he awoke, unable to recollect much after leaving the library. The drug had made him sick. Laudanum did not agree with him unless he restricted himself to small doses. He peeled off the sticky shirt, struggling to keep from retching at the sour smell. He leaned over the washbasin. The water was cool and felt good against his face.
Maybe he had a fever.
The afternoon had slipped away into night. He found matches and lit a candle. His gold pocket watch was on the nightstand, between an empty flask and a corked bottle of milky liquid labeled (Laudanum; Contains Narcotics; for Medicinal Use Only) . He picked up his watch and had trouble opening it, as though he were wearing thick woolen mittens. It was six minutes to seven. Through the lace curtains, the street was a glistening ribbon in the light rain, a halo of mist around the lamp across the street.
Peregrine shuffled through the riotous disorder of his room—he kept it locked and refused to admit the housekeeper to make it up—until he found a gin bottle with something still in it. Three deep swallows steadied him enough to button a shirt without his fingers shaking. After he was dressed, he pulled a cape over his shoulders and went out, locking the door behind him. Laudanum be damned, a pipe of opium was what he needed.
Peregrine walked as if leaning into an invisible wind, traveling not quickly but deliberately through the French Quarter. Past the Ursuline convent to Royal Street, he turned right; two more blocks and he would turn again. Peregrine could have found his way to Yu’s in his sleep. He came around the last corner, saw the golden sparkle of light on brass buttons, and halted, cursing under his breath. There were two sentries stationed outside Yu’s door, bayonets fixed on their rifles. He had not really expected to find the dead man’s establishment still open for business, yet he felt a childish disappointment at having his irrational wish denied. His fallback had been to break in and search until he found a ball of the sticky black tar opium, perhaps scraping residue from the insides of Yu’s pipes to get enough to smoke. The sentries made that impossible, even though Peregrine knew that logically there was little chance that pipes or opium would still be found on the premises.
A woman in a hooded cape entered the street from the opposite end of the block, stopped as Peregrine had, and stared at the sentries. The soldiers noticed her immediately. The woman hesitated, twisting the long cords of her purse in her hands as she looked toward Yu’s house. She stepped backward and was gone so quickly that she seemed to simply disappear.
Peregrine spun on his heel and hurried back the way he had come, turning at the first cross street and breaking into a run. When he came around the corner of the house at the end of the street, he saw her ahead of him in the middle of the next block, a small woman in a long cape with a hem shiny from the wet street even though the rain had stopped.
Peregrine waited until she was a block ahead of him and fell into step behind her, careful to maintain a safe distance. With a little luck, she would lead him to another opium den. It had been a mistake to confine his patronage to Yu. He knew that now, his supplier dead, his joints aching, and nowhere to turn for relief but the wretched laudanum.
At first the woman headed back toward the center of the Quarter, but then she took a seemingly random course up and down the streets. Still, she kept moving swiftly along, as if she knew exactly where she was going, a destination in mind despite her wandering. Perhaps there was some reason to delay her arrival by taking an indirect route.
Or maybe, Peregrine thought, it was to avoid being followed.
No sooner had this idea occurred to Peregrine than the woman stopped and looked back over her shoulder at him.
Peregrine nearly flung himself through the open door of a working-class tavern before their eyes could meet. There were only two customers standing at the bar, a thick man with battered ears and a flattened nose, and a broad-shouldered character in a patched coat with a zigzag scar bisecting his head, the thick welt of white tissue standing out against the pink skin of his bald skull. The bartender was the most reputable-looking member of the low crew, even with one milky blind eye and thin, bony elbows sticking out at angles from his body, as if he were about to dance a jig.
The three of them stopped talking the moment Peregrine entered. They scrutinized him carefully, as if estimating the amount of money he might have upon his person. Peregrine turned and nearly collided with a woman who must have been sitting or standing beside the door when he came in.
“Good evening, monsieur,” she said, her words slurred. He took her in with a single glance—the teeth bad, the face painted garishly in a failed attempt to disguise the ravages of age.
“Would monsieur care to buy a lady a drink?”
But Peregrine was already past her. He expected the whore and the toughs to follow him onto the street, but they must have decided he was not worth the trouble it would take to rob him, at least not at that early hour of the night. Peregrine normally put a pistol in his pocket before going out on the street at night, for New Orleans was dangerous after dark, but when he patted the jacket beneath his cape, all he found was the outline of a glass bottle.
Peregrine’s woman was nearly two blocks away now, walking quickly into the crowd surging out of St. Louis Cathedral at the end of evening Mass. Peregrine tried to hurry, but his progress was blocked by exiting worshipers chattering happily to find the rain had ended.
; He stopped and raised himself up on his toes to see over the hats and bonnets, despairing to be denied a glimpse of his quarry’s receding figure. He pushed his way through the crowd as best he could, but it was no good. He had lost her.
Peregrine stood near the side of the great cathedral, chin on chest, arms slack, eyes staring at the wet ground a few feet ahead. He had been so intent upon following the woman in the hooded cape that he had failed to realize that he, too, was being followed.
5
Doubting Thomas
NATHANIEL PEREGRINE WANDERED into Jackson Square and sat heavily on a bench. St. Louis Cathedral loomed overhead, an overawing vertical presence against fast-moving gray clouds, like a judge looking down on the accused, prepared to pronounce judgment.
It was only now that the obvious occurred to him. Peregrine leaned forward and put his face in his hands. Although he had no way to really know, he was possessed with the certainty that the woman he had been following was the porcelain-skinned girl from the night before.
How could he have been so stupid?
And, all the more appalling, what if he had caught her?
How perfectly he remembered what she had said to him.
I can free you from the pain.
Except that she hadn’t.
Somebody sat on the bench beside him. Peregrine jumped as if jolted by an electric current, looking up, expecting it to be her.
“Sir?”
“I am too old for a wet nurse, Captain,” Peregrine said to his aide.
“I’m just looking out for your welfare, sir.”
“You were following me.”
“Yes, sir, I was. You went back to the opium den.”
The set of Peregrine’s jaw softened and he had to look away from O’Rourke. “I feel bad about Yu,” he said, not wanting to confess to his subordinate the fear that he could not escape his need for the poppy’s poison.
“That Chinaman was no choirboy, sir.”
“He wasn’t a murderer. He didn’t deserve to hang.”
“Rough justice is the way of the world, sir. Men don’t always get it right. We have to trust in God for that.”
“God,” Peregrine said, looking up at the church through narrowing eyes. “Where is God when innocents die?”
“The fact that we don’t understand His plan doesn’t mean He doesn’t have one for us, sir.”
“God has abandoned us.”
“You must not believe that, sir.”
“Where is God in any of this?” Peregrine jabbed a finger toward a legless beggar across the square. The man, a former Confederate soldier, judging from his tattered jacket, held a tin cup up to passersby, begging for alms.
“You must not give in to despair, sir. Hold on to the hope that you will once again see your wife and children in heaven.”
Peregrine felt as if he’d been struck a hard blow in the stomach; the breath caught in his throat, and he began to shake. He would have broken down if Seamus O’Rourke said another word, but the captain said nothing, perhaps thinking he had already said too much.
“I appreciate your concern, Seamus,” Peregrine said finally. “I’ll be all right. And I don’t need a minder. General Butler has ordered all the hop houses in New Orleans closed, and I doubt there is a pipe to be found in the city. Butler is nothing if not efficient when it comes to exercising authority over the civilian population.”
“Is there anything I can do to help, sir?”
“Do you have a supply of tar opium?”
O’Rourke’s expression was shocked until he realized Peregrine was joking.
“The only thing that will help me is getting back into the fight, Seamus. A man can’t think about his troubles looking down the throat of a rebel battery.”
“Are you acquainted with Colonel Joseph Stroyan? He’s on Butler’s staff and an old mate of mine.”
“Irish?”
“He’s as Irish as Paddy’s goat, sir. Joey knows where General Butler keeps his skeletons hidden—or as I should say, where Spoons keeps the spoons hidden, if I may be so bold. He might be able to help expedite your transfer papers, sir.”
“Don’t get yourself into trouble on my account, Seamus.”
“Not to worry, sir. Joey is as smooth as good whiskey. He’s a lad who can say little and imply much, if you get my meaning.”
“Don’t sell Butler short.”
“Compared to the murdering English, old Spoons is harmless as a tomcat.”
Peregrine offered his hand. “This means a lot to me. I won’t forget it.”
“It’s a pleasure to be of service, sir.”
“And one more thing.”
“Sir?”
“Don’t follow me again. That’s a direct order.”
Peregrine walked up the middle of the street, keeping pace with a mule and its drunken rider. The man slumped forward in the saddle, periodically wobbling violently from side to side yet managing to stay seated on his mount. A door across the street opened and a man in shirtsleeves came out and stumbled off toward Jackson Square.
Air, exercise, and the conversation with O’Rourke had cleared Peregrine’s mind, and he found himself thinking hard about the differences between appearances and reality.
Two drunks came into the street to fight, but Peregrine hardly noticed the commotion. By the time he got to them, the brawl was over. The winner disappeared and the loser sat on the stone curb leaning forward on his knees, blood dripping from his nose and mouth into the gutter. The seam was ripped out of the shoulder of his jacket, cottonlike padding extruding from the wound.
Peregrine abruptly stopped and looked hard at the man, at the blood on his face, clothing, and even the street, crimson in the light of the streetlamp.
More often than not, appearance was reality, Peregrine thought. He did not have to dip his fingertips into the blood to know that what he saw was real. If he were to insist on submitting his perceptions to a formal series of tests and proofs—hardly practical—he would likely be forced to conclude that nothing was certain, and that all of experience was, like O’Rourke’s conception of God, a matter of faith.
Peregrine knew what he had seen the previous night, Butler’s report be damned. The opium he’d taken might have distorted his perceptions to some degree, but he had been conscious and aware.
He resumed his way up the street, his pace unhurried, walking now as one walks when one has no clear destination in mind.
Peregrine had no rational explanation for what he had seen. A beautiful young woman with teeth like a viper’s, who drank the blood of the living, leaving corpses in her wake—such a creature did not fit into the scientific modern world of 1863. And yet Peregrine could not deny the evidence of his own senses. Which was the more logi-cal: to believe something he had seen but could not explain; or to deny the possibility of what he had witnessed and knew to be true, but could not rationalize?
Peregrine wished he had asked to see General Butler’s report about the opium den incident. Did the investigating officer really believe the victims had been strangled? Or did the report detail strange wounds in the dead that defied a simple explanation?
It was easy for Peregrine to imagine Butler either ignoring the report or falsifying its conclusions. Butler was not a man who appreciated uncertainty, especially when it might jeopardize his ambitions. Attributing the deaths to a Chinaman, and hanging him quickly to bring the matter to neat conclusion, would satisfy his taste for brisk administrative efficiency. On the other hand, fears about a monster preying on the French Quarter would threaten the sense Butler had cultivated that the conquered city was squarely under his thumb. Mysterious murders and rumors about supernatural beings might well lead to the sort of public hysteria that would call Butler’s authority into question. Were their roles reversed, Peregrine might have been tempted to cover up the facts in the interest of expediency and maintaining control over the hostile populace.
But Peregrine had to know.
Either he was losing his mi
nd, or there were wounds in the neck of Evangeline McAllister and the others.
There was one way to submit the matter to proof.
He turned right at the next cross street, setting off in search of a corpse.
The sound of a woman’s sobbing came from the house on Chartres Street. Peregrine climbed the stairs, which were in need of paint, and went in the open door. From the foyer he could see the casket in the parlor. Chairs were arranged in a semicircle before the casket, each occupied by a woman. Peregrine was the only man present.
He came into the room, nodding as the women looked up with curiosity. That Evangeline’s station had fallen further than he had imagined was evident from a cursory look at the painted ladies, whom he took to be the other residents of the house.
“You must be Major Dickinson,” said one woman, rising and coming to greet him, her manner making it plain that she was the senior member of the household. The beauty in her face had faded but she held herself with authority. She might have been a popular courtesan in years gone by, the mistress of wealthy and powerful men.
“Yes,” Peregrine replied, surprised at his easy duplicity.
“I am Mrs. Foster.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am.” He bowed. “I wish it were under better circumstances.”
Mrs. Foster gave a solemn nod. “You’ve come to pay your last respects to Miss McAllister.”
“I wonder if I might have a private moment with her?”
“I understand perfectly, Major. I’m sure she would have been glad you came. She thought very highly of you.”
Mrs. Foster turned toward the hall. Without a word or sign, the others rose en masse and followed her from the room, Mrs. Foster sliding the pocket doors closed behind them.
Peregrine stood stiffly over the casket, wondering if he could force himself to do it. He had seen his share of men killed in battle—the maimed, the dismembered, some blown to bits so that there was nothing left but a tangle of greasy entrails spread out across the dirt. But somehow this was hard for Peregrine to look at: a lovely young woman in a long black dress, laid out for burial.
American Gothic Page 3