by Anne Rice
He stopped. The fingers that had almost touched her settled instead on the back of the chair.
“…he’s already spoken to Madame Elsie,” came the small, weakened voice, “and with Old Captain dying upstate, well Old Captain’s not coming down here anymore. It’s just Madame Elsie now, so it’s all arranged. That is, if I say yes to him,” and then plaintively she looked up to Marcel.
She saw nothing but the blue eyes staring at her, saw the smooth tan face with its pale shadowing of gold, the mouth still, as if in wonder.
“…that is, if I say yes to him today. He’s from your father’s people, Vincent Dazincourt’s his name.”
Vincent, Vincent, it was like something grating, a scratching that persisted like some animal scraping at a door. Vincent, Vincent, the hawk-eyed white man who had risen that day in Madame Elsie’s parlor just as Marcel had touched the knob, oh, yes, he had to be, because he was the same “Vincent” with those black eyes who had come to Christophe’s with the silver walking stick: Don’t make the same mistake again.
“…a fine gentleman like your father,” she was saying, her eyes down, her forehead furrowed, her hand rubbing anxiously at her hair, “from his wife’s people…Dazincourt…his wife’s brother, actually…from Bontemps.”
“Bontemps?” he whispered.
“…well-to-do…” she was saying, “and young. Well, he has the front rooms up yonder, the upstairs suite. He and Madame Elsie they talked about it for hours already, and he wants my answer today.” Her eyes narrowed for a second as her teeth touched her lip. “It’s the old-fashioned way, she saw to that, I’d have my own house, and with Old Captain dying upstate, and Madame Elsie as old as she is…” Teardrops hung in her lashes as she lifted her eyes. The eyes were imploring and slowly she rose from the chair. “I have to tell him today…” she whispered, and then faltering, she burst out, “I don’t care anything about him!” She sobbed. “I don’t care anything about that man!”
“Then say no to him!” Marcel gasped furiously. “Tell him to leave you alone! My God, Anna Bella stand up to him, I can’t do this for you!” he declared.
“But why!” she was crying. “Why stand up to him? For what! Why!”
He turned his back on her, the fists he’d made striking one another painfully until finally he turned on the wall. He smashed his fist into the plaster. And smashed it again.
“Marcel,” she cried behind him. “Marcel.”
“No!” he said, turning. “No!” He was staring at her with wide eyes. “Anna Bella when I am eighteen years old I am leaving this place! I am going to France or so help me I will die. And nothing, nothing is going to stop that, not you, not the devil in hell, not God. I will not tie that millstone around my neck, I will not do it!” he cried.
He could no longer see her, he was utterly blinded by his own tears. But he knew she was moving away from him, that she had turned like someone brutally wounded and she was reaching for the door. His tongue thickened and failed him when he tried to say her name, but he had hold of her, just in time, and with his arm slammed the door shut again.
And now he had buried his face in her neck and it was he who was crying uncontrollably while she caressed him, her timid hands stroking ever so slowly, her firm breasts crushed against him as he was wracked with his own sobs. And it was she who comforted him, let him lean upon her, she whose lips touched his cheek as her fingers touched the back of his neck.
“Listen to me…” he was whispering now as he caught his breath. “If he’s a gentleman, if you are sure…” he was stammering…“If it is what you want to do, if it is what’s best…but you musn’t do it foolishly, you musn’t do it in haste.” A slow sigh came out of him, shuddering, it was just what Richard had wanted, what Marie had told him to do, be a brother to her, preside over it, help in it, give his consent. “Are you listening to me?” he asked her. Resentfully and roughly he wiped away his own tears. “You don’t have to do it unless it’s arranged as you want it, do you understand!”
She was just crying, and she laid her head to one side against his shoulder so that he could feel the silken resilience of her bouffant hair.
“If only I were older, wiser…” he said. “Then I could…I could…”
“I know,” she whispered, “I know…”
“But you musn’t let that man force you, don’t you understand me, Anna Bella, swear to me, if he tries to force you, I’ll go to Monsieur Philippe, I’ll go to my mother, I swear to you…”
She let out a soft sound against him. Calming, slow. And then he felt her drawing back. He was dazed, and curiously tired. She had taken his face in both her hands and then she kissed him on the forehead.
“You know how it would have been,” he whispered, not looking at her but looking off to some distant and fabled boulevard where he saw carriages rolling over the Pont St.-Michel, where he saw the rose window of Notre Dame. “It would have been just a little house somewhere right in these streets…” He was alighting from one of those carriages, in his dream he wore a top hat, a sweeping cape. And in his dream he went into the foyer of Notre Dame. The bells sounded above, the people moved like ghosts beneath the immense arches, “and we would have had children, so many children, and I would have …I would have been so bitter! Bitter that I had never gone, never seen…” In top hat and cape he turned again to the open church doors. Sun streamed on the square before him, streamed on the winding walled river Seine, streamed on the high roofs. The entire city of Paris gleamed in that sunlight as he stepped into the open air. “I just couldn’t give that up, Anna Bella, I just couldn’t. But if that man hurts you, I swear to God…!”
And again she was holding him, almost rocking him in her arms.
When he drew up, he felt sickened and still.
“I’ll never see you again, will I?” Anna Bella asked. “I mean, not really, not like this.”
He shook his head.
“You know I told him once that I would think on it, think on it, living with him, but only if after I could still see ‘my friend.’ He asked me who that friend was. I told him it was you. I told him all about you, ‘course, I never said who your father was. I wouldn’t say anything like that, him being well…he’s your father’s brother-in-law, I would never make that mistake. But I told him how it was with you and me, at least, at least the way that it used to be.”
Again Marcel shook his head. “He may say it’s all right now because he’s wooing you. If I were wooing you, I’d kneel at your feet. But he won’t say that a month from now, he won’t want to come in from the country to find me in his house.”
He saw her brows knit, saw the tears welling again.
“Besides,” he whispered, “you can’t ask that of me.”
“No, I guess not,” she answered softly, almost dreamily. “Good-bye, Marcel,” she whispered.
And as he stood, seemingly unable to move, she withdrew, silently closing the door. It seemed a full minute passed that he stood there, and then suddenly, he cried out, “Anna Bella, wait!”
He came after her, but stopped in his tracks.
She had already reached the foot of the steps, and Monsieur Philippe stood at the back door of the cottage, his blue satin robe tied carelessly in front, as he leaned on the frame, cigar in hand. He was staring at her as she cut across the courtyard in front of him, her hands working fast to pull on her gloves. Never once did she look at him, her small head bowed. A little rain was falling, so light it couldn’t be heard. But she stopped boldly to open her umbrella and as the droplets began to speckle the black silk, she went on.
Monsieur Philippe raised his eyes to the gallery above. He regarded Marcel coldly before turning back into the cottage and shutting the door.
VI
MONSIEUR PHILIPPE had a late breakfast. He scattered the newspapers over the table, and downing three and four glasses of beer, sat smoking until the afternoon. Marie, home from Mass, put on her opera gown again at his request so that he might have another look at i
t, and showering her with kisses, he presented her with the little portable secrétaire. It was a gem of a thing with lacquer and gilt, come down several generations, he explained to her, she must treat it with love. She might set it on a table to write a letter, or even use it on her lap when sitting in bed. It had a crystal inkwell, a packet of parchment paper for notes, and several new feather pens. He was delighted with the changes in her, asked if she needed more money for the hairdresser. The aunts, he said, were to spare nothing for her new dresses, and should just send the bill on to old Jacquemine.
Cecile, aloof and weary, sat nestled into the settee observing all this, saying not a word. And when they were alone in the parlor, the three of them, Marcel, Philippe, and herself, she quietly mentioned that Marcel had had some difficulties with the old teacher which is why she had put him in the new school.
“Ah…I knew there was something,” Philippe snapped his fingers. He turned the large page of the newspaper, carefully flattening it. “And it’s all straightened out? You’re behaving yourself?” he glanced at Marcel.
“Studying very hard, Monsieur,” Marcel said dully. He dreaded the moment when he might have to explain about Anna Bella. He hadn’t the faintest idea what he was going to say.
“Hmm…” his father said. He made some notes in a leather-bound book, murmuring aloud. “Repair the gutters, hmmmm, dresses for Marie, and you, I suppose you’re growing an inch a day, you didn’t buy that horse, hmmmm? What’s the matter with you? Well, ma chérie, ma petite, I have to go.”
Cecile sighed as she put her arms around him. Marcel made to vanish but Philippe called over his shoulder, “Mon fils, wait for me in the yard.” He had already sent Felix to fetch his carriage from the stables.
“Monsieur,” Cecile asked gently. “When do you think that he should go? When he’s eighteen? Is that when they want them to enter the universities?”
“Eighteen is plenty of time,” he said. “And here,” he drew out that wad of bills again in the gold clip. “Let him go to the theater if he likes, that Booth will be coming through with Shakespeare, let him learn English, too. Is that man teaching him English, we all have to give way to it, learn it sooner or later, does this Christophe teach him anything practical at all?”
Well, it’s coming now, Marcel was thinking when they finally met on the front path. The rain had stopped. The banana trees were glistening and clean. And the air with the brightening afternoon sun was not so cold.
“That little girl,” Monsieur Philippe said, looking warily up and down the narrow street. He stepped back into the gate. “What was she doing in your room this morning, would you tell me, please?”
His blue eyes, shot with red from the night’s drinking, were strikingly cold. He had seldom taken such a tone with Marcel and Marcel felt a curious humiliation.
“Monsieur, she and I are like brother and sister, we played together when we were children, why, she lives just up the street…”
“I know where she lives,” said Monsieur Philippe, his voice flat, and somehow filled with meaning. “You’re spoilt,” he said, his lips moving in a loose smile. It was a smile of the mouth only. “That’s your trouble, spoilt from the day you were born. Have you ever wanted for anything?” he asked with a haughty lift of his head.
“No, Monsieur,” Marcel muttered.
“You’re just a boy, you don’t know anything about this world, do you?” And doubling his large white hand into a fist, he tapped Marcel’s shoulder playfully. Marcel felt a peculiar chill. “That little girl’s too old for you now, she’s a young woman!” he said. “Now I don’t want to hear of her being back there again.”
The carriage had appeared at the corner, turning from the Rue Burgundy into the Rue Ste. Anne. It stopped before the boardinghouse four doors away.
“No, Monsieur, never again,” Marcel murmured mechanically.
A slender young man with jet black hair came down the boardinghouse steps, bounding easily to the granite carriage block over the water that still ran in the street.
So they’re going back to Bontemps together, or to their family in the St. Louis Hotel. And they’ve conferred in this little matter of Anna Bella, Monsieur Philippe had known of it when he saw her in the yard. An unpleasant shock went through Marcel. He did not immediately understand why he was so astonished when the carriage lumbered to the gate, or why his lips drew back in an irresistibly bitter smile. Felix had jumped down to open the door. Marcel looked away.
“You remember what I said to you,” Monsieur Philippe said with a warning finger. “You study your lessons, and be good to your mother. And don’t forget Lisette’s birthday this week, that girl will be twenty-three if you can believe it, buy her something nice.” He fetched that money clip for the third time. Marcel stuffed the bills into his pocket murmuring that he would take care of it, of course.
“And you watch out for your sister!” Monsieur Philippe said lastly. “You see she doesn’t go out without Lisette or Zazu, or you go with her yourself.” Sister, sister, the word emerged with clarity in the swirl of Marcel’s thoughts. His wife’s brother, that was who this Dazincourt was, the brother of Philippe’s white wife. And he brings the man here to the gate of his mistress’s house. Marcel regarded him as if Monsieur Philippe were not still murmuring some vague admonition, as if he were not squeezing Marcel’s arm a little too hard as he mounted the carriage step.
It disgusted him suddenly, these two fine gentlemen, this brother, who must surely sit at his sister’s table to eat her food, to drink her wine, and here he comes to town with her unfaithful husband and takes a mistress only a few doors from his brother-in-law’s mistress. The door of the carriage had shut. The whip cracked, and the great wheels ground into the deep ruts as it moved slowly forward and gaining speed with the trotting hooves passed from his sight.
Oh, what did he care about these white people, their entanglements, their lies? Didn’t he know that they had shaped his very world with their domestic treachery, built the cottage in which he lived, hung the very pictures on the walls? Yet he stood still at the gate, gazing toward Madame Elsie’s boardinghouse, Anna Bella’s words running like a thread through his mind. “He’s a gentleman just like your father, a fine gentleman just like your father.” Gentleman, indeed. Would he kiss his sister when he saw her next, having just passed the gate where he had seen her husband’s bastard child? Mistress, bastard, he abhorred these words, what had they to do with him? I love you, Anna Bella.
Go inside, put on your Sunday best, the table will be prepared for dinner, white lace, silver, Tante Louisa will be along shortly with pastries for dessert. Look at that gilt-framed picture of Sans Souci in the country, white columns, he ought to write Tante Josette a letter, they would all be talking about the opera, he had one hundred dollars in his pocket for the theater, so he’d ruined his new suit, there were half a dozen frock coats in his armoire and shirts with collars stiff as a board. I love you, Anna Bella. “He’s a fine gentleman just like your father,” that’s the point! Don’t do it.
He saw those hawk eyes peering through the shadows of Christophe’s hallway, that white skin, the hand clutching the silver walking stick…“that a man of color cannot defend himself upon the field of honor…that a man of color cannot defend himself against a white man at all.” I love you, Anna Bella, don’t!
Down the Rue Ste. Anne came a cluster of gens de couleur wandering home from twelve o’clock Mass, pink and blue dresses lifted carefully over the mud, black frock coats, umbrellas picking at the wet brick banquette like walking sticks. “Bonjour, Marcel, and how is your Maman?” Don’t, Anna Bella, don’t. He stood nodding, arms folded, as if in a dream. Bonjour, Madame, Bonjour, Monsieur! I won’t ever see you again, will I? Not like this. Sunday dinner, white linen, red wine.
He turned suddenly, leaving the cottage yard behind him and walked steadily toward the Rue Dauphine.
He wasn’t thinking anymore. It did not matter if Christophe cursed him, or what he would have to swe
at on his knees. He found the latch of the gate broken just as he had left it the night before. The side door was open still where he had broken the lock, too. But he turned just before he entered. He looked down the narrow alley with its ivy spilling over the brick wall. Above hung those slatted blinds bolted over the windows as they had always been, and as he had seen them the first time he had ever passed into this yard. And the tall banana trees, wet and flapping in the chill breeze, still hid all of the world outside except for the gray sky. The slime had been washed from the tiny window in the gate, and he could see only a blur of color there of the street beyond. Only he was not frightened this time as he had been on that first afternoon. He felt nothing of that instinctual wariness. Rather, turning to the door, he could not wait to push it back and enter the long hall.
It seemed they both saw him as soon as he appeared in the reading room door. Christophe at the round table ate his breakfast, the folded newspaper in his hand. And Juliet, her shawl drawn over her shoulders, huddled in the great wing chair by the fire. Coffee steamed on the fender. The air was warm here. Frost covered the panes.
“Cher!” she said. “Come in.”
Christophe lifted his cup, eyes fixed on Marcel.
“Cher!” she said again with that same vague amazement. “Sit down.” She came round to him as he settled at the table, she lifted his face, inspecting the cut on his chin. “Not so bad,” she whispered, “why, it’s hardly there at all.”
“Did you read the reviews of the opera?” Christophe asked in a low voice.
She had set a cup before Marcel and was filling it with coffee and cream. “Here, cher,” she said.
“What did I tell you, the baritone stole the show.” Christophe said. “Get him something to eat.” She lifted a piece of cake from the plate with a knife.
“You ought to read it,” Christophe sighed, laying the paper aside. He sat musing. His brown eyes appeared tired. He pushed his cup forward and his mother filled it. Then she moved slowly back to the fire. Her hair was loose over her shoulders, the light glinting on her face, and she wore that same peacock shawl threaded with silver that she had worn on the day Marcel first met her in the street.