by Anne Rice
“Marie, tell me,” Dolly insisted, “don’t shut me out.”
Could men do that? Had they done that? Her mouth was sealed shut as she covered it with her hand, her shoulders hunched, her mouth sealed shut again as it happened every time that sensation or memory came back to her. Her nostrils were filled with a personal stench, she was in that dim smoky light, a man’s voice talking casually, almost tenderly to her, her teeth clenched, she began to shake.
“Marie, Marie,” Dolly said softly. She felt Dolly’s hand on her arm. “There is nothing so dreadful that you cannot tell me, that you cannot put this burden in my hands.”
Oh, but that’s where Dolly was so wrong! There was something she could never tell anyone, not even Dolly, something worse than that man straddling her, that pain as his knee bore down on her arm, much worse, something that rendered it all perfectly just, perfectly just and disenfranchised all rage, she was about to scream again.
But she had sunk down into the pillows. She curled up, her forehead pressed against Dolly’s wool dressing gown, her eyes shut.
“I belong in this house,” she whispered. “I belong in this house.”
A heavy listless sigh escaped Dolly. The hand that brushed Marie’s hair from her forehead was warm, light.
Don’t feel sorry for me, don’t feel pity for me, Marie thought dully, her eyes half-mast as she stared forward, the green of Dolly’s gown a pulsing blur. But I can’t go across the yard, can’t let those men, I…I…And without realizing it, she had rolled on her face and away from Dolly, burrowing her head into the pillow, forehead moving back and forth as if she meant to bore through the bed.
“Marie, stop this!” Dolly grabbed her suddenly, lifting her.
Marie gasped.
“Listen to me,” Dolly turned her roughly, shaking her back and forth, her head bobbing on her neck. “You must talk to me, you must let it out!”
Marie’s head fell to the side. She whispered, “I want to die.”
“No,” Dolly’s eyes were glassy, her lips trembling. “You don’t want to, ma chère, you don’t want to die. They haven’t killed you, they haven’t touched you, not you!” And that hand, always so gentle, touched the well between Marie’s breasts. “Now, listen to me, the day you came here, you talked to me, you told me what they’d done…”
Marie drew herself up, a shriek rising behind her clenched teeth.
“…you’ve got to let it out like that now, again. It’s a wound that must be lanced, the poison must be let to drain away…”
“I didn’t know then, I didn’t know,” Marie whispered, the words barely escaping her lips, her eyes rolling listlessly to the side.
“What, Marie!” Dolly pleaded. “What didn’t you know?” Her hand enfolded the back of Marie’s head and brought her close. “Don’t you see, ma chère, they can’t make you into something by what they did, they can’t make you into what they say.” Her voice was low, the words carefully emphasized. “They take the pen in hand, they write the play for us, they tell us to take the parts, placée, white protector, virgin girl. But we can turn our backs on it, we can take the pen from their hand. We are free really, free to live as we want to live.” Her lips pressed against Marie’s hair. “We are alive, look at us, listen to the beat of our hearts, Marie…” she lifted Marie’s chin in her hand. The girl was shuddering, the eyes struggling as if to peer through the heavy lids, and suddenly seeing Dolly, Marie drew up gasping, “No, no,” backing away as if she might fall from the bed.
“Stop it, Marie.” Dolly lifted her hand as if to slap her, but then her lips pressed together, the tears glimmering in Dolly’s eyes. She took Marie by the shoulders and again she shook her hard.
“No, no!” Marie’s mouth fell open, the cry coming louder and louder, “They knew, they knew, they knew when they saw me, stop it, Dolly, they knew, that’s why they did it to me!” she was screaming, the voice rising, dying, rising again. “Don’t you see, I deserved it!” she roared, “I deserved what happened to me!”
Dolly stared at her uncomprehending, holding her still. The girl was sobbing in her tight grasp, the head thrown back, the body heaving as she repeated those words again and again. “Why, chère, why, how could you say such a thing! Talk to me, Marie, tell me!” And desperate, she clutched Marie to her so that Marie’s head fell against her own.
The lips were moving there, the words so low, rapid, feverish that Dolly couldn’t hear, “I can’t stand it any longer, I can’t stand it any longer,” came the rough panting breaths, and then Marie, exhausted, hysterical, turned her lips to Dolly’s ear.
Dolly was staring forward, listening. At first her brows puckered and then gradually her eyes opened wide. “O God, chère,” she whispered. “Oh, bébé,” she whispered, the tears slowly welling from her eyes. “Poor innocent baby,” she cried.
“But Dolly,” Marie lifted her head, looked at Dolly, the whisper thin, shuddering, “don’t you see, I felt those things every time Richard…I felt them even in my dreams, and they knew when they saw me, they knew! They knew they could do that to me!”
She didn’t see Dolly shake her head, she didn’t see the tears slipping down Dolly’s cheeks. She only felt the hands that stroked her hair back from her forehead, the warm body next to her and she knew that at last, at last she had confessed it, she had told someone why she deserved no pity, no love, why it had happened, and limp she lay finally in Dolly’s arms. Dolly rocked her back and forth, she felt the rise and fall of Dolly’s breath. And then as if from some vast distance came Dolly’s voice, simple, devoid of guile or solicitude, saying only, “Now I understand, ma chère, now we have a place to begin.”
III
SIX O’CLOCK AND MARCEL was gone. The windows graying, the sound of a rooster over the back fence. An hour ago, he had risen from the bed, silently, slipping into his clothes. “Don’t go out there,” Anna Bella had whispered. “Must go!” he had said. For a long moment they had embraced, her arm encircling his slender chest, her head against his warm neck. And when their lips met, all the night’s desperate intimacy overwhelmed her again. But he had taken his leave, kissing the tips of her fingers as gently, he let them go. It seemed only minutes ago the sound of his horse at a gallop had left the yard.
But here it was six o’clock, a cart lumbering through the Rue St. Louis, bumping over the deepening ruts, and the clock on the mantel tinking the hour when Michie Vince just might, just might die. Little Martin stirred beneath the airy lace of his broad wicker bassinet, so that Anna Bella moved it subtly, the wheels not even making the slightest creak.
She rose, pulling her silk peignoir over her flannel gown and taking her rosary with her, tiptoed to the chair.
How long did it take to do these things, fire one shot, two shots? For somebody deliberately to die. And what would Marcel do, what would he do if Vincent were the one to fall? Anna Bella moaned, eyes shut, bent almost double in the chair.
Far off, a heavy bell echoed the tiny clock, and from all the kitchen gardens round came the same monotonous clarion of the rooster, faint, repetitive, dull. Little Martin cried beneath his lace, and the wicker basket began to rock. With the rosary still in hand, Anna Bella gathered him up before he could begin to howl. Moving the silk back from her breast, she felt his firm little sucking mouth close on it, hard and big though it was with all the night’s milk that he had not drunk while she was gone. It was soothing that soft sucking, soothing to the ache in the breast, and a sympathetic trickle now flowed from the other side which she had to press firmly with her hand.
When the clock tinked the half hour, the baby was dozing, and Anna Bella had reached the fifth of the Sorrowful Mysteries of the rosary, “The Crucifixion,” her hand moving silently over the beads as the words of the Hail Mary went through her mind. How long would it be before there came that knock to tell her, would it be her neighbors, Madame Lucy or pretty Marie Anais, or would it be Marcel! The windows were a cold blue by the time the clock struck seven and the rain came i
n splinters of glass in the gleam beyond the clouds.
Knock, knock, for the love of God, somebody knock! But what she had never expected was the sound of the key in the door. She shut her eyes, teeth biting into her lip at the sound of those boots. It was unmistakable. “Michie Vince!” she whispered. “Michie Vince!” she cried out. Closing the peignoir under a slumbering Martin she carried the baby with her into the front room.
Vincent was a shadowy figure at the mantel, his hair sleek and shining from the rain. She saw the glimmer of light in his eye first and then his face fully illuminated by the flowing window as he came toward her, his deepset black eyes fixing on the configuration of the infant in the blanket in her arms. The child’s ivory face shone against the snow-white of the wrappings, eyelashes beautifully long, the features in their sixth month exquisitely formed.
Anna Bella’s lip would not stop quivering, and she saw the tears veritably dropping on the child’s head. She let out a little moan as Vincent kissed her forehead and quite suddenly he crushed her against him, the child against his chest. He was cold all over, cold hands, cold cheek, the clothes smelling of winter and wind, and rain.
For a long time she just let him be.
But even after she had gotten off his wet boots and put the coffee to heat and made the fire, still he hadn’t spoken. He could see that she was crying; he could tell from her warm hands that took his head and pressed it against her the depth of her pain and relief.
Even when Martin awakened again, he did not speak. He followed her into the bedroom and watched her put the baby to her breast. Finally, it was she who broke the silence.
“Is that Henri DeLande, is he…?”
Vincent nodded. He was looking at the child. He did not tell her that Henri DeLande had been shot stupidly, miserably in the stomach, and that it had taken him twenty minutes to die. They didn’t attempt to move him, and he couldn’t have endured the pain. Nineteen years old and blinded by the rain, the boy’s own shot had gone wild.
It seemed he wanted to take the baby from her. She herself was looking down at the puckered rounded little lids, the long lashes, moist-matted, and the tiny mouth. She was trying to see what Vincent saw, a skin as fair as her own, the hair softly curled, the dimpled hand opening and closing as if in thought. Now, as if perceiving that a stranger was near, Martin jerked loose from the breast and stared at Vincent. And when he saw no smile on Vincent’s face, when Vincent stared at him with the same seriousness with which the baby stared at him, little Martin began to scream.
“Hush, now, don’t you do that.” Anna Bella pushed him back to the breast. “He doesn’t mean anything by that,” she said. “He just doesn’t know who you are!”
But Vincent’s face was stricken. And he stood up turning away from her and his shoulders commenced to heave with an awful silent crying that seemed to shake him completely and to shake the room. Anna Bella watched, helpless. It was as if some great strong dam had been broken and Vincent’s entire body was shattered by the release while vainly he struggled against it, unable and unwilling to give it voice.
Finally Anna Bella put the baby down, finding the sugar tit hastily among the covers, and turned her attention to the man.
But turning his back to her as he sank down on the side of the bed, he would not face her until he was still.
“Anna Bella,” he said, “Anna Bella, I came here to tell you I was sorry, sorry that it ended the way it did. To tell you myself that I would always provide for you, and for the baby, but that you would never see me again. It was wretched having my lawyers tell you these things. It was wretched of me to put it, as I did, in legal hands.” It seemed he was going to lose his restraint again, but he took his linen handkerchief and wiped impatiently at his lips. That simple gesture sustained him.
“All of this…these Ste. Marie children, the boy coming to Bontemps as he did, and now the girl…it should never have happened!” he insisted. “I mean these children, they should never have been! My brother-in-law was an evil man, selfish and lacking in fiber because he did not care for anyone but himself. It was carelessness and carnality that produced that family, and left it, penniless, to fend for itself. Anna Bella, you and I…that baby…it should never have happened either. It’s wrong! I tell you it should never have happened no matter how great the loneliness, and how great finally…the love!” He stopped. She had her arm about his shoulder, had been holding him all this time, but at his slightest gesture she would have let him go. Her face was mellow and thoughtful, but why, he could never guess. She was thinking of her own reservations, of the day she had gone to the garçonnière and made Marcel take the decision in his hands. Only the slight turning of his head, the pressure of his hand against the small of her back brought her back to this moment. “I understand, Michie Vince,” she said.
He appeared softly handsome to her as he sat there, the morning sun at last warming the windows beyond him, his face slightly gaunt from sleep, eyes touched with sadness like those of a much older man. And a strange thought came to her as she watched him, that he had killed three men in two days, and the last not more than two hours ago. And yet it was not this that tormented him. He did not even think of it now. She looked at the slender white hand, nails trimmed so neatly, that lay upon his knee and thought of this hand holding the pistol, pulling the trigger back. “I understand, Michie Vince,” she murmured, feeling some dull sorrow for her own awakened desire. She was straining to understand the allure of his power, the infinite power and freedom that infused that elegant hand, that white brow. “I understand.”
“But you see, if I had come back to you to tell you myself, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to walk out that door. Anna Bella, I’ve needed you so much. I have loved you so much. God, why did I ever do this to you, why did I do it to myself?”
“Don’t make me cry again, Michie Vince,” she whispered. He drew her close, his left hand pressing her, urging her as if he wanted her to pass out of herself and into his very flesh. His right hand felt the roundness of her cheek as if he could not get over it, the texture, as the skin, firm and silken, resisted the press of his thumb.
“I don’t know if I can leave you, Anna Bella,” he spoke into her ear. “But by God, I cannot bring another child into this, I cannot!”
She sighed. She was looking past him at the sun on the window, the windy shifts of the golden rain. She was thinking of all those times before when he had fallen silent, brooding and haunted, and had held her tight like this in a wordless anxiety when it was time for them to part, and she knew that if she continued to think of that, more that than all he was saying to her now, she could not keep herself from yearning toward him with her whole soul.
But it was past, it was over! Over before the death knell had been dealt it in this very bed last night.
“Michie Vince,” she said looking into his eyes. “You don’t want me and you don’t want this!”
“Lord God, if only they weren’t one and the same!”
“But they are, and you don’t want it, and you don’t want that little baby there in that crib. You can’t even look at it or touch it, you can’t claim it as your own.”
He could not deny this, he could only draw up into himself now, turning away from her, his clasped hands thrust between his knees.
“What are you asking of me,” she said softly, “that I try to change your mind? That I make this bed soft for you again, so there will be nothing but misery for you now and in some part of your life till the end of your days?”
She could see his eyes warming with a curious light that she had often seen in them in the past.
“You’ve never done anything but right by me, have you, Anna Bella?”
“Michie,” she sighed. “I want to do right by us all.”
“But you never thought for a moment that I would let that child want…that I would let you want?” he asked.
She made a quick negation with her head. It had been a rhetorical question. He was making the only gestu
re with regard to little Martin that he could.
His voice was measured, calm now as he commenced to speak, there was an air of relief about him as though his struggle were past. He took Anna Bella’s hand and looked at it.
“I want him to be educated. And I want him to leave this place when he’s old enough, perhaps when he’s twelve, thirteen, before he’s a man. I want him to live somewhere on this earth where the races can achieve some amalgamation, or at least some peace…The legal precautions I have taken for you and him cannot be overturned by a probate court, and they are known to others in my family who will protect them, if or when I die, on your behalf.”
Her large slow brown eyes lingered on his face, and he did not perceive that as they left it, they moved over him remotely, dispassionately, as if seeing the entire man that he was.
“No, Michie Vince,” she said quietly.
Startled, his expression sharpened, his brows knit.
“Michie Vince,” she said, “I know you’re one of the finest men I’ve met, and I may live my whole life through without knowing your kind again. But I’m not rearing my baby boy to go to France because you want him to, I’m not filling his childhood with dreams of some rosy world where he can be a man. I’m teaching him to be a man right here, Michie Vince, where his mamma grew up and where he was born. I’m teaching him how to live among his people right here in the world they’ve made for themselves. And someday, someday if that boy wants to seek his fortune in another country, well, I’ll be the first to give him a helping hand. But nobody’s taking him away from me before that time, and nobody’s teaching him to despise what he is.”