Feast of All Saints
Page 79
It was midnight as he roamed the Place d’Armes, early morning when he prowled the deserted market, and dawn at last when he stood over the river where he could glance back at the twin towers of the Cathedral shining wet under the lightening sky or out over the immense swell of brown water which ran on to darkness as though it were the open sea. He was not tired. He was no longer restless, rather his mind had that razor clarity with which he could best perceive. The masts of the ships made a forest under the fading stars, the glitter of a drifting steamboat played like candles on the faceted current, while on the wind there came in snatches the last melancholy and discordant music of a late night Negro band.
The fear was melting in him. Melting gradually as he weighed all about him, saw the world in which he lived, not the world he would some day escape, but the world to which he’d been born. And the desperation of his early years was mellowing into something somber and no longer important as he considered the choice at hand.
He knew the camera, knew the alchemy of vision, patience and precision it had always required. And though the years stretched before him in a heavy sentence of trial and error, he knew without doubt that he could use it well! He would risk all for it, and it would yield to him a treasure of those stunning and complex icons he had always cherished, just as the wood under Jean Jacques’ chisel had yielded to him again and again the perfect line.
And the small universe around him was his to capture, his to fix and frame at the perfect instant in light and shadow exactly as he perceived: the shabby grandeur of the old city, faces of all nations, ragged trees, the ever-drifting clouds—this time and this place as it had shaped his childhood and the man he had become—from the melancholy spectacle of the barefoot vendeuse who passed him now on her way to market, to the majesty of the mourners on the Feast of All Saints.
Time stopped in one sterling moment after another, time defeated in the little miracle of the Daguerreotype, time that was the destroyer of young men’s dreams.
He turned his back to the river. He felt the vibrant hum of the awakening port. The streets were silver in the morning damp, and a lone marchande in the Place d’Armes with her steaming cakes wound her way towards him, saluting him in a high-pitched song. The decision had been made, really; it had been lifted from him some time long before this moment, and he knew now what he must do.
But as he commenced the long walk uptown, toward the bankers and the shopkeepers and the landlords and the dust and the ink and the tinkle of brass, an even greater perception was breaking from the shell of his soul. A future lay before him, a future beyond the rosy image of the planter’s son roaming the capitals of Europe forever outside the things he loved. For this was something he himself could really do, something he himself could really be! And whatever happened, be it failure or the art in which he had always believed, no one could take it away from him, no one could nullify it, no one could ever wake him rudely to say it had all been a dream.
He felt close to Jean Jacques. He felt the fragrances of that small shop. He felt near to Christophe at the lectern, or bent over the lamplit desk the pen in hand.
And as his steps quickened, as the sun leaked down over the gabled roofs and through the rusted gates, he gazed in wonder at the streets about him, at the same old splendor and min he had known all his life, and for the first time, he felt, perhaps the world in all its unspeakable beauty could really belong to him.
BY ANNE RICE
Interview with the Vampire
The Feast of All Saints
Cry to Heaven
The Vampire Lestat
The Queen of the Damned
The Mummy
The Witching Hour
The Tale of the Body Thief
Lasher
Taltos
Memnoch the Devil
Servant of the Bones
Violin
Pandora
The Vampire Armand
Vittorio, The Vampire
Merrick
Blood and Gold
Blackwood Farm
Blood Canticle
Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt
Christ the Lord: Road to Cana
Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession
Angel Time
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anne Rice was born in New Orleans, where she now lives with her husband, the poet Stan Rice, and their son, Christopher.
AFTERWORD
The Feast of All Saints is a work of fiction, but certain real people are mentioned in the book, among them the quardoon fencing master, Basile Crockere; the mulatto Daguerreotypist, Jules Lion; the colored inventor, Norbert Rillieux; and the Metoyer Family of the Cane River, including “Grandpère Augustin” who built the church of St. Augustine which exists on Isle Brevelle today. The “African house” described in the novel stands on the Melrose Plantation which was called Yucca at the time this story takes place.
L’Album Littéraire, the quarterly of prose and poetry by men of color, probably commenced publication in 1843, not 1842 as the novel suggests.
But aside from a few liberties with dates, every effort has been made to render the world of New Orleans Free People of Color accurately. And the occupations of real men and women of color provided the inspiration for the purely fictional characters in the book.
Therefore, I am deeply indebted to many who have written about New Orleans and the Free People of Color in the ante-bellum South, from the popular writers who have kept alive the romance and richness of those days to the scholars whose books, articles, theses and dissertations continue to swell the growing body of work on the free Afro-American before the Civil War.
But above all, I am indebted to the gens de couleur themselves who left us painting, sculpture, music and literature—to Armand Lanusse, poet, editor and teacher, for his work with L’Album Littéraire and the later anthology, Les Cenelles; and to R.L. Desdunes, whose unique and priceless Our People and Our History remains the cornerstone of research in this field.
ANNE RICE
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1979 by Anne O’Brien Rice
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-58572
eISBN: 978-0-307-57584-5
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