by Anne Rice
Marcel could see Christophe clearly from where he sat. He saw Christophe looking at his watch; then at the clock on the wall. And then at the small stack of hand-delivered letters on his desk. Christophe’s face then became as mobile and agitated as that of a fiercely humiliated child. He slumped into his armchair and stared at the empty desks as if he could not quite believe his eyes. Finally Marcel rose and came through the double doors walking softly down the center aisle.
“Damn!” Christophe whispered. “Damned insufferable bourgeoisie!” He ran his hands back through his hair.
Marcel leaned his shoulders against the wall and with folded arms waited.
“I’ll take new students!” Christophe said. “They won’t come,” Marcel answered.
“And when the others see this room is filled again, they’ll come back.”
“They will never come back.” Christophe glared at him.
“That is,” Marcel said, “unless you put Bubbles out of the class.”
“But this is madness! What harm is he doing!” Christophe demanded, but before giving Marcel a chance to answer he glanced at the dark brooding figure of the young slave in the remote corner of the room and told him gently to go upstairs.
“I am his master,” Christophe said as soon as the steps had died on the stairs. “If possession is nine-tenths of the law I am his master, and if I decide he may be educated that is enough to satisfy the law.”
“It will satisfy the law, Christophe, but it will never satisfy the parents of the other boys.”
“And why are you still here, Marcel!”
“Ah, Christophe!” Marcel said in disgust.
But the hurt in Christophe’s eyes was more than he could bear.
It seemed a half hour passed that they remained there, Christophe muttering from time to time under his breath and then pacing the room.
Finally Marcel said quietly, “Christophe, do you remember the day that you showed us the rug?” This was a little Kerman rug, a treasure, which Christophe had brought down from his room. All the class had been dazzled by the medallion and the flowers, their intricacy and violent colors, and Christophe had astonished them by telling them this thing had been made for the dirt floor of a tent. “You told us the key to understanding this world was to realize it was made of a thousand varying cultures, many so alien to the others, that no one code of brotherhood or standard of art would ever be accepted by all men,” Marcel said. “You remember? Well, this is our culture, Christophe, and if you ignore it, or try to go blindly against it, you’ll accomplish nothing but the ruination of the school.”
“Marcel, there is not one of us,” Christophe burst out, “not one of us who is not descended from a slave! To my knowledge no coterie of African aristocrats ever settled willingly on these shores!”
“Chris, don’t make me the spokesman for people I don’t admire! If you don’t send Bubbles out of the class, then there will be no class.”
At that point, Christophe shot Marcel such a venomous look that Marcel backed off and rested his forehead against the frame of the front door.
“Go to Monsieur Rudolphe,” Marcel said. “Tell him you’ll take Bubbles out. If he sends Richard back, then others will follow. Go to Celestina. If she sends Fantin back, then the other quadroons will follow, too.”
Five minutes later, walking at great speed, Christophe and Marcel had reached the Lermontant shop.
Rudolphe, who had just finished showing a series of veils and bombazine yardage to an elderly white woman, took his time as he let her out the door. The winter sun was bright through the front windows and seemed irreverent as it fell on so much folded crepe and items of mourning on display.
“What can I do for you, Christophe?” Rudolphe asked stiffly as if nothing had happened. He gestured for the teacher to take a chair and ignored Marcel as if he were not there.
“You know damned good and well why I’m here, Rudolphe, my classroom is empty! My students have withdrawn!”
“You should have known better Christophe.” Rudolphe dropped his pose at once.
“You’re a leader in this community,” Christophe said coldly, “if you hadn’t withdrawn Richard, the exodus would not have occurred.”
“Oh, no, Christophe, there are some barriers no one will cross regardless of what I should do, I assure you. But I don’t want to mislead you. There are barriers I have no intention of crossing myself. You brought a slave into your class, you sat him down with my son and my son’s friends…”
“Because he wanted to learn! He wanted to make something of himself…”
“Christophe, that might draw a tear in a Paris drawing room but not here.”
“You mean to tell me you don’t believe the boy should learn? Suppose a white man named Lermontant had taken that attitude towards a certain famous slave of his by the name of Jean Baptiste!”
“Don’t twist my meaning,” Rudolphe said. “I’ve taught my black apprentices to read and write myself at this very desk, I’ve trained them in accounting, business management, so that when they finally got their freedom they could make a living on their own. I’ve given two of my slaves their freedom in my time and each has paid me back by his own labors with the knowledge he took from this shop. Teach that boy in private and everyone will respect you for it. Give him a fine education if you like, but do not sit him down in a classroom with our boys. Don’t you understand what’s at stake here, don’t you understand these times?”
“I understand that you’re a bigot and a hypocrite!” Christophe said.
“Monsieur, you try my patience more than any man I’ve ever met!” Rudolphe rose suddenly and stalked to the door. Marcel was frightened. He was on a verge of going after him, thinking that Rudolphe was storming out of his own shop in his confusion, when Rudolphe merely gestured through the glass.
“Do you see those men in the street, the men patching the banquette, there!”
“Of course I can see them, I’m not blind.”
“Then you can see they’re Irish immigrants, and you can see that everywhere you go, there are Irish immigrants, patching the bricks, digging the canals, waiting the tables in the big restaurants, and in the hotels. Irish or Yanqui or some other Anglo-Saxon, and do you remember who used to wait the tables and drive the hacks here when you left? Our people used to do that, gens de couleur, the honest laboring gens de couleur from whom these people in a never-ending tide have taken the jobs! They’d take my job, too, if they could. Had they the capital and the wits, they’d set up an undertaking store right beside this one and take my white customers away from me and my colored ones too. And do you know what we look like to those Yanquis, Christophe, do you know what they say about us to the foremen on the construction gangs and the bell captains in the big hotels, ‘why, they’re niggers, free or not, and we’re white, they’re no better than slaves, give those jobs to us.’ We’re an offense to them, Christophe, and they’d take any opportunity they could get to push us right back into the morass of poverty and misery from which a lot of us came.”
“Rudolphe, what has that to do with a handful of wealthy young men who’ve been born with silver spoons in their mouths, we’re talking about an élite de couleur! The cordon bleu.”
“No,” Rudolphe shook his head. “We’re talking about a caste, Christophe, that has won its precarious place in this corrupt quagmire by asserting over and over that it is composed of men who are better than and different from the slaves! We get respect in one way, Christophe, and that is by insisting ourselves on what we are. Men of property, men of breeding, men of education, and men of family. But if we drink with slaves, marry slaves, sit down in our parlors with slaves or in our dining rooms or in our classrooms, then men will treat us as if we were no better! And all that we’ve gained since the days when New Orleans was a fort on the river, all that, will be lost.”
“It’s wrong what you’re saying, it’s logical, practical, and wrong,” Christophe averred. “That boy’s part of us.”
&n
bsp; “No,” Rudolphe shook his head. “He’s a slave.”
Christophe sighed.
“You’ve defeated me, Rudolphe,” he said. “I expected pomposity, talk of inherent superiority, of white blood. But you’re no such fool. You’re a Machiavelli in a shopkeeper’s guise; you do what works best.”
Rudolphe raised his eyebrows thoughtfully.
Christophe rose and jerked open the door without a word.
“I have a paternal feeling for you, Christophe.” Rudolphe put a hand on his shoulder. “Send that boy out of the class, teach him on your own time, and I’ll let it be known you made a simple error in judgment. I’ll call on the LeMonds and the LeComptes, myself.”
As soon as Christophe reached the classroom, he wrote out a simple notice stating that school would be resumed with a special Saturday session the following day, and posted it on the outside door. Then he wrote a brief letter which he folded and gave to Marcel. “You do too many favors for me, but here’s another,” he said. “Take this to your good friend, Rudolphe Lermontant.”
“All right,” Marcel said. “But will you be here when I get back?”
Christophe shook his head. “I’ve got to call on Celestina,” he said with a bitter smile. “And old Brisson, the grocer, and a few other good parents, And after that I want to spend a little time with Bubbles and explain this to him.”
“He understands,” Marcel said.
“No,” Christophe shook his head. “He can’t imagine anyone taking so much notice of him, or caring so much whether he’s alive or dead, or sitting in a room or not sitting in it. And after that, I want to be alone. I’m not good company for anyone.” He looked up at Marcel. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve made up my mind to compromise myself and I won’t waver. I’ve done it before. Now, go on.”
Marcel had not seen such an expression on Christophe’s face since the Englishman had died, and three times that evening he knocked on the townhouse doors without result.
But the morning before the opening night of the opera, the classroom, without Bubbles, was filled as before. The first lectures were cold, brilliant, and without a flicker of passion, and only toward the afternoon did some of Christophe’s usual spirit return. As the day wore on, Marcel became more and more anxious that Christophe would climax with some bitter denouncement, but at four o’clock they were dismissed without any extraordinary words. The students clustered for an hour afterward, talking warmly and affectionately of all manner of unessential things as if they wanted to assure their teacher of their devotion (now that he had given in) and Marcel could see that Christophe got through it with obvious strain.
As soon as the school was empty Christophe stalked into the back reading room, making no acknowledgment of Marcel by the fire, and got his bottle of whiskey out of the press. He set it down on the round table, shoving the papers and journals aside angrily and filled a glass.
“Don’t do this, Chris,” Marcel said after Christophe had drunk two glasses as if they were water.
“I am in the privacy of my own home right now, I can preach sedition and abolition to the rafters here if I like, and I can also get drunk!”
“Tonight’s the opera, Christophe. You told me once you were counting on the opera to keep you sane…”
“Only a Creole could think of the opera at a time like this,” Christophe said, draining another glass. He sat back, obviously calmed for the moment by some six to eight ounces of pure whiskey. “Well, I shall be at the opera!” he said. “My soul may be in hell but I shall be at the opera.”
“Drunk?” Marcel asked. “Christophe, people will be watching you, they’ll be looking for some gesture from you because of all this, and they’ll be looking for the opportunity to make some gesture themselves…”
“Go home,” Christophe said drearily. “I told you I’d be there,” and without theatricality, he removed a crumpled note from his pocket, rolled it into a ball in one hand and shot it to Marcel. It read in large childish print:
MICHIE, I AM ONLY TROUBLE TO YOU I HAVE GONE BACK TO M. ROSE.
AFFECTIONATELY, B.
Marcel studied it. Yesterday morning in this very room, he had spelt out the word, “affectionately” for Bubbles never dreaming for what. “He’ll come back,” he said. “He’s run away before and he’ll run away again. Besides, Dolly Rose has never been able to keep a male slave. Tougher blacks than Bubbles would rather clean the ditches than stay with her.”
But Christophe merely sat there, drinking the whiskey and suddenly both of them were roused by a loud knock on the door. It was followed immediately by the impatient tapping of something metallic on the glass. And then the door opened with a click and through the long vista of the deserted classroom Marcel saw the figure of Dolly Rose.
She wore a dress of lilac taffeta and a loose black cape over her shoulders, head bare, and her cheeks ruddy from the cold. Christophe, too, saw her, but he did not move, slouched back in his chair behind the table, watching her through the double doors.
“Chrisssstophe!” she sang out softly, moving lightly through the wilderness of desks. She did not appear to know that she was being watched, and seemed to enjoy being alone in the vast room. With a series of little pirouettes, she moved behind the lectern and suddenly with a gesture so genuine of feeling that it was startling, brought her clasped hands up to her bowed head. As she raised her eyes, her voice rang out dramatically as if before an immense audience.
“Randolphe, Randolphe, kill me then, for if I cannot go with Antonio, I do not wish to live!” she cried. “Kill your beloved Charlotte! For death alone shall possess her if Antonio can not possess her.” And then grabbing herself about the throat she proceeded to struggle as if being strangled by her own hands. But a deep false masculine voice boomed from her at the same time, “Yes, die, Charlotte, die! Not because you want to go with Antonio! But because you are the heroine of a bad novel!” And strangling, she fell over “dead” on the lectern.
Marcel could hardly restrain his laughter.
“All right, Dolly!” Christophe said, and even on his lips there was the slight twist of a smile.
She slowly lifted her head, staring at him from the corner of her eye. Then she marched back the center aisle, eyes appraising the walls with their engravings and maps, and the great world globe in its corner, and entered the reading room as Marcel, resentfully, rose to his feet.
“Bonjour Blue Eyes,” she said winking at him. Her face was radiant, the old shadows gone, the lips faintly rouged enticingly. But then she became serious and said to Christophe who had not risen, “Peace?”
“Go to hell,” he said.
“You want your little bootblack, don’t you?” she said. The tender flesh beneath her eyes quivered. She was lovely enough to make Marcel forget what she’d done. All the gossip about her “waning beauty” was spite. Warily, he looked down.
“Yes,” Christophe sighed.
“Then take me to the opera tonight,” she said.
Christophe studied her, his own eyes flinty, suspicious.
“I am accompanying my mother, but thank you, Madame, you flatter me,” he said.
“Your mother. How tender!” she said with a mock dramatic tilt of her head. “Why, I thought you might have planned to take Bubbles!” she laughed. “You’re so fond of him, after all.”
Christophe’s face darkened with anger. The swelling of a vein showed against his temple. “Get out of my house, Dolly.” he said.
She approached the table and just as he reached for it, snatched the glass of whiskey and took a drink.
“Hmmmm…you must be one very rich schoolteacher,” she said, running her tongue over her glistening lip. Again Marcel looked away, only to look quickly back at her. “Or did your English friend leave that?” she asked.
Her eyes glistened without a scintilla of deeper feeling. And she was so fresh, her café au lait skin so clear and creamy that she seemed the embodiment of seduction, something inherently dangerous and irresponsible
which could never be held to account. Marcel disliked these thoughts and tried to think on who she was. There were soirees at her house nightly now, with white men trooping up the steps. “Take me to the opera,” she said gravely.
Christophe frowned. “Madame, you’re mad.”
“I do as I like these days,” she said quite seriously. Then uncertain, she drifted about the room, her fingers playing with the back of the wing chair. She flashed a sudden brilliant smile at Marcel. But then she was to the point again. “No one owns me anymore, Christophe, no one tells me with whom I can be seen. I am mistress of my own house. I do as I please.”
“Not with me,” Christophe shook his head.
“Not even for Bubbles?” she asked.
Marcel turned his face toward the windows. She was a Circe. If Christophe were to appear with her, it would be the finish. The white men on the parquet might not give a damn about it anymore, but all the colored community would see this. Dolly Rose’s house might as well have had a shingle over its door.
“What do you want, Dolly,” Christophe sighed. “What do you really want!”
At these words her façade appeared to crack. Marcel saw the sudden involuntary pout of her lip, the flicker in her eyes. She pulled back the chair across from Christophe, and seated at the table drew a sheet of paper out of her muff. She handed it to him. One glance over Christophe’s shoulder told Marcel it was the title to the slave.
“Sold to Christophe Mercier for the sum of one dollar,” she said. “One slave Bubbles, Senegalese. Hmmmm? Go on, take it.”
Warily, Christophe studied the paper. Then he folded it, and slowly he removed a silver dollar from his pocket and reaching across the table put it in her open hand.