by Anne Rice
“But I saw him at noon today,” Christophe whispered. “He complained of a headache from walking in the sun, that was all, a headache.” Bubbles and Marcel stared at him. It was clear he could not accept the situation. The Englishman had begun to have violent chills.
A terrified Tante Louisa opened the door for Marcel at midnight, greatly relieved it was only that Englishman friend of Christophe’s who was ill. Of course she knew nurses, but all of them had their hands full, ah, this heat, this rain. Nevertheless, Marcel took the names from her and began going door to door.
It was near dawn when tired and discouraged he rang Rudolphe Lermontant’s bell. Rudolphe in his nightshirt wiped the shaving soap from his face as he stood in the door, a stub of candle in one hand, a peculiar expression passing over his features, his eyes almost dreamy as he looked at the deserted street. “I told that man,” he said wearily and without pride, “to get out of the city, to go out to the lake for a while until the end of summer. Every day he walked past the shop with his head uncovered in the heat of the afternoon. He uttered some poetry to me, some mad English foolishness about the Hounds of Hell! All the nurses are employed by now, even the old women who ought to be retired.” Marcel, studying his wide musing eyes, was suddenly struck by a faint shudder. Rudolphe knew the Englishman was a dead man, he knew that he would be bathing that body, dressing it perhaps before this day had passed.
“You must know some names, just anyone…” Marcel murmured. “Christophe’s caring for that man by himself.”
Rudolphe shook his head. “There is one young lady I can think of, but your chances of getting Madame Elsie to let her go up there are as good as mine,” he said.
“Ah, Anna Bella.”
“You remember ’37, Madame Elsie’s was almost a hospital, and every time I came to pick up a body, that poor little girl was there. She knows as much about nursing fever victims as anyone around. But Madame Elsie, well, now that’s another affair.”
“She’ll do it for me,” Marcel said, and turning he ran, forgetting to offer Rudolphe his thanks.
The sun was just rising over the river and the sky resembled perfectly a sunset as Marcel entered Madame Elsie’s yard. A mist hung over the flagstoned garden, and beyond through the gray branches of the crepe myrtles a light already burned in Madame Elsie’s windows, and against the backdrop of that light Marcel could see the outline of a figure on the porch, a lone woman in a chair. The creak of the rocker sounded clearly in the stillness. He stopped at the edge of the path. A pain throbbed inside him like a heart. But then a faint voice reached him, a voice singing low, a voice that did not know it could be heard. It was not Madame Elsie in the rocker, it was Anna Bella.
She rose as he pounded up the steps. She wore an airy dress, replete with her usual lace, a thin crocheted shawl over her shoulders, her heavy hair undone. And as she turned to him, he saw that she had been crying.
“Why Marcel!” she whispered.
“Anna Bella,” he said as he took both her hands. “You’ve got to forgive me, but I need you now, Anna Bella,” and without guile or craft or stammered apologies he told her at once all about the Englishman in Christophe’s house.
“Just you wait right here, Marcel, while I get my bag,” she said.
He was so relieved that he squeezed her hands before he let her go, and then, forgetting everything, he clasped her tight, kissing her quickly, innocently, on both cheeks.
“But what about Madame Elsie?” he whispered.
“To hell with Madame Elsie,” she whispered back.
As they hurried up the block, she asked a few rapid questions about when the Englishman had been stricken and how.
“The man’s been all over the world, he wasn’t the least afraid of yellow fever, he’s been in the tropics before,” Marcel explained.
But when they reached the gate, Anna Bella hesitated, looking up at the shuttered windows, the dark outline of the chimneys against the pale but brightening sky.
“I’m here with you,” he said.
She turned to him, her eyes large and soulful and just for an instant there was her silent reproach. Then she went in.
She had the sickroom in order at once, told Christophe to shutter the windows but to let in the air. The sheets had to be changed, they were damp, and there ought to be more blankets and drinking water, and water for compresses for the man’s head. “Quinine won’t do this man any good,” she said when Christophe suggested it, “leeches neither, you just got to keep him really warm.” She sent Bubbles on to the pharmacy to get a glass feeder for the drinking water, and told Christophe he was no longer acclimated after all this time, he ought to get out of the room.
“I’m not leaving here!” he said with mild astonishment. “The fever never affects us, besides.”
“’Course it does…sometimes. But I knew you’d say that. If you’re going to stay here go to sleep, you’ll have to spell me for a while later on.”
Just before noon, Marcel was awakened abruptly. He had been slumped up against the wall in the corner of the room. Now Bubbles told him that Lisette was downstairs with Madame Elsie’s girl, Zurlina. They wanted Anna Bella to come home. The Englishman was shuddering violently and did not know where he was. He murmured names that no one knew.
The day looked unreal to Marcel when he went outside. His head ached violently, and the sun seemed to cut brutally through an uncommonly clear sky. Zurlina was haranguing him, demanding that Anna Bella come out, and without realizing it he was leading her back toward his own gate. His mother stood in the shade of the banana grove. “What is all this?” she asked. And when he told her, stammering, speaking in fragments, he saw a resolution forming in her face. “That old crow,” she said, as she gazed with narrow eyes toward Madame Elsie’s door.
“She’s coming down here herself to get that girl, if you don’t bring her out,” said Zurlina.
“The hell she is,” hissed Cecile and barely lifting her majestic skirts she marched toward the boardinghouse at the end of the block.
When Marcel returned, cradling a pot of hot coffee between two towels, the Englishman was vomiting black blood. And Christophe was trembling so violently that at first Marcel thought he was ill. The Englishman’s face was gleaming, his eyes rolled up into his head. Chest heaving beneath the blankets, his hands twisted the covers, the knuckles white.
It was late afternoon when Marcel stumbled out again, too tired to protest when Christophe told him to take some supper before he came back, that they would send for him if there was a change. He had the best of intentions of returning with soup and bread for all of them, but once at home he fell across his bed. Lisette had promised to wake him in an hour. He went into a deep sleep.
It was dark when he awoke, the cicadas were singing in the trees. He jumped up, almost cried out. The evening star hung in the sky and the night seemed strangely empty around him. He was certain the Englishman was dead. An awful anguish overcame him, that falling to sleep, he had let the man die.
Rushing up the dark stairs and along the empty hall, he found Anna Bella sitting quietly in the bedroom, her rosary beads in her hand. Dim candles flickered on a small makeshift altar, with a prayer book propped open to a picture of the Virgin, the whole set on a linen napkin on Christophe’s desk. The corpse lay neatly against a snow-white pillow. Marcel let out a low moan.
“Marcel,” she whispered drowsily, rolling her head to one side as if it were heavy on her neck.
He walked softly toward her as if somehow the dead man would be upset by the sound of his steps. Her hand burned against his, and feeling the weight of her forehead against him, he clasped her shoulders and held her, trying not to give way to tears.
“Where is Christophe?” he whispered.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “It was terrible, Marcel, it was the worst!”
She rose, leading him to the doorway, but just outside she stopped. She was looking back at the man on the bed, and obviously did not wish to leave the bod
y all alone.
“Oh, Marcel it was the worst ever that I’ve seen,” she said, her voice very low. “I tell you when that man died, I thought Michie Christophe was going to lose his mind. He just stood there staring at that man as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. And then she came in, that crazy woman.” Anna Bella shook her head. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “She just walked in here real slowly as if she didn’t have anything in particular on her mind. And there was Michie Christophe just holding onto his own head and staring down at that man. And then, shrugging her shoulders, just like this, she says to him, ‘I told you, didn’t I, that he was going to die.’ I tell you, Marcel, she might as well have been saying the weather was hot, or come to dinner or shut that door. And I thought that man would kill her, Marcel, he started screaming at her, he called her names I never heard a man call a woman, and his own mother, Marcel, why, he called her words I wouldn’t say to you right here. He ran at her, trying to get a hold of her and she went down on the floor, sliding right down the wall, to get away of him, Marcel, it’s a wonder they didn’t knock that poor dead man right off the bed. Well, I got my arms around his waist, I held onto him with both hands, I said, ‘I’m not going to let you go, Michie Christophe,’ and he just slammed me back against the door. I tell you my head’s still spinning from that.”
Marcel murmured a negation, his head shaking.
“Oh, the language that that man was using to that woman. Well, she got up fast enough on her hands and knees and then she ran out. I don’t know where she went. And Michie Christophe just stood there staring again at the bed. It was like he didn’t even know I was there. ‘Michael,’ he said to that Englishman, not moaning for him, Marcel, talking to him. ‘Michael,’ he kept saying, and then he jerked him up by the shoulders, shaking him like he could wake him up. This is a mistake,’ he said, ‘Michael, we’ve got to get out of here, this is a mistake!’ Then he was turning to me and saying it, like he could convince me that it was all a mistake. ‘That man’s not coming back, Michie Christophe,’ I said. ‘Let him go. That man’s dead.’ And oh, when I said that to him, Marcel, why he broke down just like a child. He was crying, crying, like a little boy. He kept looking at me, I swear he looked just like a little boy. I put my arms around him and held onto him, he was just rocking back and forth. One minute I’d been scared to death of him, and then I was just holding him like a child. I don’t know how long that went on. It was a long time before he got quiet. He just wandered out here by the stairs. He had his hands on his head again. I told that worthless Bubbles to get on over to Michie Rudolphe’s and get you on the way. And when I turned around Michie Christophe was gone.”
“Gone?” Marcel made a soft, weary moan. “But where?”
“I looked all through this house, they were both of them gone. I came back here to wash and lay out the body. Michie Rudolphe’s gone up to the hotel to see if he can find some papers in the man’s room. And that Bubbles, I don’t know where he is!”
“Forgive me,” he shook his head. “Forgive me. For asking this of you, for leaving you here alone…”
“No!” she said emphatically. “I’m the last one to worry about, Marcel. You put that out of your mind.” Her eyes were clear, honest. And it was so like her, and so unlike anyone else that he knew, that as he looked down at her he felt a peculiar catch in his throat. He wanted to kiss her, just gently, innocently, and he resented all the voices now which told him he must not. But hesitating only for a moment, he found that his hands were on her arms, her small plump arms, and his lips had brushed the rounded firm deliciousness of her small cheek. Everything about her was roundness, ripeness, and he was overcome suddenly with all the bold and bewildering physical awareness of her that he had so long denied. Only now did he realize how he had held himself back, how his eyes had resisted her, how his imagination had refused to weave this voluptuous flesh into the fantasies in which Juliet had become his queen. He had clenched his teeth now, his hands still holding her, and he was wrestling with some violent ugly anger against the whole world: against Madame Elsie, against Richard, but above all against himself, the young boy who couldn’t have her, and wouldn’t have her for all his dreams of Paris instead. A shameless sound escaped his lips, he could feel her cheek against his chin, feel the roughness of his own neglected beard against that ripe fruit. But even now he might have won this battle had she not drawn up on tiptoe and kissed his lips.
Her mouth was soft, guileless, utterly innocent as it opened, sucking gently, daintily at his breath. And in the sudden mounting of his passion, the battle was lost. He had lifted her, and turned her, drawing her close against the wall as if he meant to conceal her while he kissed her over and over, his hands fumbling through the pleated muslin of her skirts for the contour of her hips. The house lay deserted around him, dark rooms gaping onto the hall. He might enfold her, carry her, but then his thoughts became one with the movement of his limbs. And so purely, sweetly, she gave herself over to him, that precious virginal innocence terrifying him, maddening him, heightening his desire. “No!” he whispered suddenly, and drew back from her, roughly pushing her away.
“Damn you, Anna Bella!” he stammered. He felt for the post at the top of the stairs. “Damn you!” he clutched the railing, his back to her, holding tight to it with both hands. “I can’t, I can’t…I can’t let it happen!” he whispered. A throbbing in his head blinded him and became a dizzying pain. “Why in hell do you think I’ve stayed away from you, why in hell…” He turned on her suddenly to see her staring at him with immense glimmering brown eyes.
She didn’t move. Her lips quivered. The tears poured down her cheeks. And then, her white teeth cutting into that tender vulnerable lip, she came forward, and lifting her right hand cracked him hard across the face.
He winced, shut his eyes. It seemed, as he heard her moving away from him, he positively savored the pain. And when he looked up she was gone.
Approaching the door of Christophe’s room, he saw her sitting before the candles, her rosary in her left hand. With her right, she waved languidly, steadily at the flies that buzzed over the dead man’s face.
She was sad and distant as if he were not even there to see it, her cheeks glistening with tears. He stared at the dead man, stared at the candles, and then blindly he took up his position to wait for Rudolphe at the foot of the stairs.
VI
MADAME SUZETTE LERMONTANT HATED her husband Rudolphe with all her heart. She hated him and resented him as she did no other human being in the world. And she loved him at the same time. With a love laced with admiration, submission, and appalling need. She could not endure a word of criticism against him, though for twenty-five years not a day had passed during which she did not wish at one time or another to beat him to death with her bare hands. Or better yet, stab herself in the breast to spite him, or blow her own head off in his presence with Grandpère’s 1812 gun.
Since the very first day of their marriage she had endured his ranting, his criticism, his scathing judgments and violent rejections of all she believed, all she held sacred, and she was no more used to it now than when it had all begun. Year after year he attacked her manner of speech, her manner of dress, threw her favorite volumes of poetry across the room in disgust, called her an idiot and a fool in front of family at table, and glared in SILENCE at her nervous, chattering friends.
Somewhere during the long years of quarreling and tears, she had come to realize an all-important point: none of this was personal with Rudolphe. He would have treated any wife the same way. But far from easing her anger and pain, this revelation made her bitter, deepened her outrage. Because she realized that in all her ruthless self-examinations resulting from his condemnation, and all of her intense striving to make herself understood, she had been utterly wasting her time. Rudolphe ground her to powder for the benefit of some audience in his imagination for which her part might have been played by anyone, it was merely a supporting role. And sometimes screaming at her with his fist cl
enched as he strode back and forth across the room, he seemed some savage giant who might consume the earth, the water, the very air she breathed.
Had she been a more submissive woman she might have learned to accept Rudolphe’s flamboyant fury the way one accepts the weather. In fact she might have undermined it with indifference and affection astutely combined. And had she been completely strong on the other hand she might have beaten him somewhere, or drawn back, content to live alongside him within a fortress of herself, sneering from aloft. But she was the perfect mixture of the two dispositions, a woman of strong personality and marked temperament, who nevertheless did not wish, and had never expected, to stand on her own two feet. She wanted Rudolphe’s love and approval, and she wanted him to tell her what to do.
And among all the men she’d ever known, there was no one figure whom she respected, trusted, as she did Rudolphe. He had given her uncommon security, and was admired by everyone around him not only for his business sense, which was splendid, but for his professional decorum, his family loyalties, his stunning capacity to lead and calm others, his remarkable wits. He was a man of substance. And handsome to boot.
They had shared joys and sorrows together, suffered the loss of a daughter, the complete defection of two sons, and theirs remained a passionate marriage when they had the time for it, complete with a great deal of commonplace affection, kisses, snuggling together under the covers, shared enjoyment of the good Creole cooking, exotic flowers for the garden, imported wines.
But constant were the ripping arguments. Suzette had only to declare a preference for it to be trampled, and she was berated day in and day out for being spineless in those matters where she had become clever enough to declare no preference at all. In all these years, she had never caught on herself to what others had sometimes hinted: Rudolphe was a little afraid of her, and of his love for her; he thought that all women were something slightly subversive that had at all times to be controlled.