Feast of All Saints

by Anne Rice

  “Don’t, get away from me!”

  “Michie, what are you doing, Michie, you gone crazy!”

  “Let me go, Felix.”

  Others were watching, a white man in a shapeless hat, his face invisible beneath the brim, as he turned his horse, its chestnut flanks gleaming in the slanting afternoon sun, and then took off into that little town of cabins, shacks.

  “Michie, are you crazy?” came that same voice again and Felix’s frantic face. His powerful hand closed on Marcel’s shoulder, and he moved him bodily and easily toward those shacks. Through the trees dancers flickered and there came that shrill sound of a country violin, voices carrying over the high fluttering leaves.

  “Let go of me,” Marcel said again between his teeth his fingers trying to pick loose that hand. A shock went through him, near to nausea, time is of the essence, don’t try to stop me, I must see him, I must hear it from him, all those promises. He stood rigid, his feet being dragged through the high grass away from those distant snatches of color and laughter and above the house rising monstrous against the sky, cornices, Acanthus leaves, and gables peering down from that lofty roof, windows blind in the sun.

  “Let me go!” he turned on Felix, his throat painfully dry, but the coachman had slipped an arm under his and had him firmly around the chest. In a moment he was shifted roughly into the close darkness of a large cabin and saw a woman in a red dress rise uncertainly at the hearth.

  “Get out, get out!” Felix said to her, as Marcel tried to swing himself loose, his eyes again turned toward the sky. The woman shied past them, and a horse was bearing down the little avenue between the rows of sloped roofs, porches, gaping doors. Marcel could feel his feet sliding backward against his will as he struck at the coachman, and now he dug his heels into the boards. He knew that horse, it was Monsieur Philippe’s black mare.

  And for one instant their eyes met. Monsieur Philippe, hatless, shirt open at the front, clutching the rein. His hair was blown back from his gray-blue eyes, and they were narrow and without a glimmer of recognition, the jaw set as he dug in his knees and rode on.

  “Damn you,” Felix threw him back against the hearth where he caught himself and stood up absolutely sick to the pit of his stomach. The room went round and round, and suddenly he was sitting on the stone his back to the fire.

  “Now he’s seen you, you damned crazy boy!” Black face glistening in the light of the fire. “What did you come here for, you gone out of your head!” He whipped the bucket of water off the hob.

  “Don’t you throw that at me!” Marcel rose, moving mindlessly toward the open door. Felix caught him just as the sky vanished, and the door shut with a crash, Monsieur Philippe with his back to it, his blond hair blazing in the uneven light.

  “I got him, Michie, I’ll get him out of here,” Felix said desperately. “I’ll take him, Michie, he don’t know what he’s doing, Michie, he’s crazy, drunk.”

  “Liar!” Marcel stared up into those pale eyes. “LIAR!” the word leapt out of him, a convulsive gasp.

  Monsieur Philippe was flushed and shuddering, the lips moving in a silent rage. He lifted the riding crop, the long tender leather strap doubled over to the handle and brought it down across Marcel’s face. It cut deep, deep through the waves of drunkenness. Marcel was sprawled on the floor, his hands behind him, and still he looked up. “LIAR,” he cried again, and again it came down across his face.

  “Michie, don’t, please, Michie!” the slave was begging him, his arm out taking the third blow of the crop. A warm wet blood was trickling down into Marcel’s eyes, he felt himself losing consciousness, and lurched forward trying to get up on his feet. “Michie, please, please,” the slave had both his arms out against which the crop struck again.

  “Bastard, rotten! Spoilt rotten!” Monsieur Philippe growled, and gave the slave one decisive shove. He brought the crop down against the side of Marcel’s face and Marcel felt the shock of the weight of the handle more than the flesh opening. He could not see. “You dare, you dare!” Philippe roared, his teeth clenched. “You dare!” The crop hit Marcel across the shoulder, across the neck, and the back of the neck, each blow so distant and vibrating, the sting and the pain outside the mind. Again he was losing consciousness. He saw blood on the boards. “You dare, you dare, you dare, spoilt rotten, you dare!”

  That slave was bawling; he had himself again in front of the master taking those blows, “Please, Michie, I’ll get him out of here, put him in the wagon, get him back to town.” Why for me! And seeing that boot coming up toward his face, Marcel threw up his hands.

  He heard his jaw pop, felt the wrenching pain in the back of his neck, and then that last shattering blow to the temple. He rose up and fell forward, and it was finished.

  PART THREE

  I

  THIS WAS MARIE’S ROOM. It seemed everyone was in the parlor, Rudolphe, Christophe, Tante Louisa, and Cecile. Marie wrung out a rag in the basin by the bed and touched it to his cheek. The throbbing in his head was so intense when he turned to look at her that he almost moaned. But he felt a consummate relief that he was here, and no longer in that wagon bumping down that road. It must be midnight. He had the sudden fear that if he turned his head too far to the right he would see that Felix was in the room.

  “Is Felix here?” he asked.

  “Out back with Lisette,” Marie said. She was frightened. He reflected he had seen a thousand shades of sadness in her, but he could not recall seeing this fear. So Felix had told them everything, and it was bad enough to bring them all together, bad enough for them to have summoned Rudolphe who was speaking now beyond the open door.

  “Well, I suggest you write to her at once, then, and in the meantime I will take him home with me,” he said.

  “There’s no need to write to her,” Louisa answered haughtily, “she’s my sister and he’s welcome there anytime, we just need to put him on the boat.”

  Cecile was crying.

  “I don’t want him going upriver unless she knows he’s coming,” Rudolphe insisted.

  “But the point is,” Christophe said patiently, “he should not remain here, not even tonight. If Ferronaire should come here, he should not find Marcel.”

  Cecile murmured something choked and inaudible through her low sobs. Rudolphe was saying again he would take Marcel home now.

  Marcel struggled to sit up, but Marie said to him quickly, “Lie still.”

  “No, I’m not going,” he murmured, and then Christophe stepped into the room. The taller broader figure of Rudolphe appeared behind him, and his voice with its insistence upon reason said,

  “Marcel, I’m taking you home with me. You’re to stay there for a few days, get up. You can walk, come on.”

  “I’m not going,” Marcel said. He was sick to his stomach and felt that if he climbed to his feet he might fall.

  “Do you know what you’ve done today, do you realize?…”

  “So I won’t cause you or anyone else any more trouble,” Marcel murmured. “I’m not going to your house, I do not accept your invitation, that’s all.”

  “All right,” Christophe intervened, “then come on home with me,” his voice was quite calm and devoid of anger or urgency. “You’re not going to say no to me, are you?” He did not appear to see the expression on Rudolphe’s face, but went on explaining in a low voice to Marcel that he must stay there for a few days until it could be arranged for him to go to the country. If he sees that expression, Marcel was thinking, if he sees the manner in which Rudolphe is studying him, I’ll never forgive Rudolphe as long as I live. It was that old suspicion, which still infected Antoine whenever the teacher’s name was spoken, and clearly, in this dejected state, Marcel admitted to himself what that suspicion was. But it paralyzed him, this look in Rudolphe’s eye, and when Christophe turned and the men now stared at one another, Marcel almost let out a small warning sound.

  “You have room for him there?” Rudolphe asked dully. But before Christophe could answer, he
said decisively, “I think Marcel should come with me.”

  Marie had risen and gone out.

  A dark expression passed over Christophe.

  “My God, man,” he whispered. “If you still don’t trust me with the tender youth of this community, why don’t you shut down my school!”

  Rudolphe was stunned. He glanced pointedly at Marcel as if to say how can you speak this way before the boy. His mouth pressed shut. “I admire you, Monsieur,” he said coldly. “This was simply my advice.”

  “Oncle Rudolphe,” Marcel said, climbing slowly to his feet and steadying himself by the bedside table. “I want to go with Christophe. Oncle Rudolphe, you must allow me not to be a burden to you just now.”

  “Marcel, Marcel,” Rudolphe sighed, shaking his head. “You are never half the burden to anyone that you are to yourself. Will you stay quietly at Christophe’s until we can reach your Tante Josette at Sans Souci, do I have your promise, will you behave for just a little while as if you were in your right mind?”

  Marcel’s wretched confusion was aggravated by these sharp and loving words, and one perfect and distinct moment was yielded to him, that of Monsieur Philippe with that riding crop, and the boot, and those words, you dare, you dare, you dare. What in the name of God have I done? Christophe slid a firm arm around his shoulder and urged him forward; he moved without saying a word.

  Cecile was in the door, and her face was streaming with tears. Marcel shut his eyes. If she says something angry, I will deserve it and I cannot bear it, he thought. But her hands stroked tenderly at the sides of his face, ignoring the rough beard there and she kissed him quickly and pressed him close.

  “Stay at Christophe’s,” she whispered. “Promise me…”

  Marie had come in with a valise, and he realized it contained his clothes. He wanted to say something to Marie, to Cecile, to all of them, but he could think of no words.

  Rudolphe was giving orders as he left, the coachman Felix was not to be told where Marcel was, he was to tell his master, if asked, that Marcel was “no longer at home.” It had a dreadful finality to it, and Marcel thought vaguely, yes, that’s it, I have not brought the roof crashing in on them, no matter how outraged he is, he will never desert them, it’s merely that I can never live under this roof again.

  Juliet dragged her long boat-shaped tub across the carpet and stoked the fire. She peeled off his clothes and told him to get into the water when it was hot enough and she soaped him all over, rubbing the suds well into his hair. He could see the soot on his hands and how it had become sticky when Marie had tried to clean it off. He lay back against the rim of the tub and shut his eyes.

  “Do you know what I’ve done?” he asked wearily. The cuts on his feet burned in this hot water and he could not decide whether this was pleasure or pain.

  “Hmmmm, we are a fine pair, mon cher,” she said, “both mad it seems.”

  When she had dried him off and wrapped him in a thick white robe, she sat him against her many ruffled pillows, and brought the straight razor and the basin, and put a towel around his neck.

  “Lie back,” she whispered, and deft as a barber began to lather his face. He put his hand up to feel the cuts. It seemed the swelling had died down some, and it felt again like the contours of his own face. “Close your eyes,” Juliet said. “Go to sleep.” And as if he had just discovered this was permissible, he fell into it, only vaguely aware that she had finally finished and had put the covers up over him, and blown out the lamp.

  Remorse. It was one of those words he’d heard but never actually made his own. Guilt he understood, but remorse? He felt it now, however, he was certain, and with it the most agitated dread. With the days of drinking sending tremors through his limbs, and all the house quiet, the streets beyond quiet, and Juliet sleeping deeply in the barest glint of the moon, he lay awake trying to reconstruct the why and the wherefore of what he had done.

  It had seemed he had had to go to Bontemps, but why? No one knew the etiquette of this strangely stratified Creole world better than Marcel knew it, so why? What had he hoped to do to his white father, what had he expected that outraged and anxious white man to do to him? He shuddered, inflicting those blows again in his mind, his sickened and exhausted body unable to sleep anymore, the image of Philippe’s convulsed face confronting him again and again. He wanted to hate Philippe, but he could not. He could not see himself as he had been before he entered the gates of Bontemps, he could see himself only as Philippe had seen him. And his actions were senseless, utter folly, and had brought misery on himself, his mother, his sister, on them all.

  Finally, unable to bear his thoughts a moment longer he rose, pulling on his pants and a soft full-sleeved linen shirt that was Christophe’s, and in his bare feet he padded silently to the door.

  A meager relief touched him as soon as he saw the light at the end of the hail. There was the smell of the kerosene of Christophe’s lamp, there was the barely audible but steady scratch of Christophe’s pen. And savoring this relief Marcel let his eyes drift over the ceiling and the walls. The passage was barren and damp as always, but it was warmly familiar as was everything about him, even the moonlit face of the Old Haitian peering from the open dining room door. And only now did it come clear to Marcel that the day’s violence was over, and that somehow the sanctuary of this house had been yielded to him again. He was in his refuge. And just possibly, as it had happened in the past, the world outside would become blurred, unimportant, even a little unreal. He moved impulsively toward Christophe and felt his relief deepen as he saw the figure bent over the desk, shadow leaping on the wall as he dipped his pen.

  A soft grace emanated from the figure. It wasn’t merely Christophe. Rather it was Christophe carrying on in spite of the day’s insanity, Christophe undeterred from the usual and very significant tasks. It suggested balance, well-being. And Marcel, standing silently in the doorway, felt an overpowering desire to fall into Christophe’s arms.

  There had never been real touching between them. Not even the jostling which boys might occasionally enjoy. And in fact, Marcel had never embraced another man in his life. But he wished now that he could overcome the reticence that seemed inveterate to both of them, and that he could just hold Chris for a moment or rather be held by him in some natural way as brother might embrace brother, as a father might hold a son. Those old suspicions were remote to him, they were trivial and mildly irritating, and seemed something that was part of a confused and dimming world beyond these walls. But he sensed this reticence in him had never been part of those concealed fears; it had nothing to do with gossip or the specter of the Englishman; it was merely his nature, and more or less the nature of all the men he knew. But the desire for this embrace, the need for it was so acute now that he would have left Christophe’s door if Christophe hadn’t laid down the pen and turned around.

  He turned the small brass key on the lamp so that he might see Marcel in the shadows, and he gestured for him to come in. “Drink a little of this,” he said turning to the wine on his desk. “But slowly, it will help.”

  It was that same calm he had evinced in the cottage, miraculously at odds with Rudolphe’s disgust and Cecile’s tears. Marcel took the glass from him and drank deeply.

  “Slowly,” Christophe insisted. He gestured for the chair.

  “Rather stand,” Marcel whispered. He moved to the mantel, setting the glass before him, and stood over the empty hearth. It was quite possible that the pressure of the boards against the blisters of his feet felt good.

  Christophe was watching him. “Rudolphe’s already written to your Tante Josette,” he said. “Have you ever been upriver to this plantation, Sans Souci?”

  At the mention of the place a bitter tremor passed over Marcel. It seemed quite impossible that he was going there.

  “I don’t know those people,” he said in a low voice. “Or rather I know them and that’s all. They aren’t my family, they snatched my mother off the street in Port-au-Prince when the
war was on, when Dessalines was massacring the French. That’s the connection. She was four years old. They brought her up.” He winced. He had never told this to anyone, not even to Marie who did not know it, and without realizing it he shut his eyes.

  “They’re your family then,” Christophe said. The tone was unobtrusive, gentle. “It’s been that way all these years, hasn’t it?” The voice was perfect compassion, devoid of self-consciousness. It was intimate and easy and nothing more.

  “They are not my family,” Marcel whispered, but he stopped, unable to continue because that desire had welled in him again to reach out for Chris, and he wanted to say you are closer to me, more a part of me than they are, but he could not. He glanced at the figure who sat at the desk. It was that old posture, habitual with Christophe, so still and contained that it seemed he was posing for the Parisian Daguerreotype all over again.

  “What are you really thinking?” Christophe asked.

  Marcel shook his head. He rested his arm against the mantel. The room was thick with shadows and the gray night, misty perhaps, showed luminous against the black shutters over the street. But Christophe’s face in the small dim circle of the lamp was gently illuminated and the yellow-brown eyes were probing and patient and calm.