by Paul Boor
While Myer’s shopkeeper wrapped the pink feathers with gaily colored paper and twine, Nicolas noticed a Japanese fan hanging on the wall. Of a diaphanous, ivory-colored paper, intricately hand painted, this was no common fan; it was an Oriental work of art. The scene on the fan depicted a Japanese maiden in a cherry-red kimono, surrounded by fire-breathing dragons. The maiden held a fan that itself was painted with a lovely maiden in a red kimono holding a fan, and so forth, to the tiniest fan—a fan within a fan within a fan.
“How unusual. How delicate,” he said, admiring the fan’s handwork.
“An object so exquisite,” the shopkeeper replied, “would be suitable only for a particular type of lady. A truly unique person.”
“I agree. I’ll take the fan also.”
His treasures wrapped and tucked under an arm, Nicolas hailed a carriage to carry him to the Majestic, where he requested a bath be drawn, his second in as many days. While buckets of hot water were hauled to his room, Nicolas laid out his evening clothes. A freshly laundered shirt, a stiff collar, his favorite vest—a Scrimgeour plaid. At the bottom of his steamer chest he uncovered his last fresh pair of pants. He chose his carmine-red tie.
With the details of his evening before him on the bed, Nicolas inhaled deeply of the balsam scent that clung to his woolens. Fleetingly, his thoughts turned to the Adirondack woods in spring, when the ferns first push through the snowpack and the afternoon sun warms the pines.
But springtime was not a pleasant thought for an ice merchant. What if the ice goes out early? The fear of an early thaw forever gnawed at Nicolas. Three years earlier his final harvest on Upper Spy Lake had been dashed by a premature spring; he’d had no ice to sell that summer, and his losses had been heavy. Worse, the bodies in the icehouse rotted and Thomas Chubb had to bury them in the woods.
Nicolas forced his thoughts back to the evening that lay ahead. He lowered himself into the tub, and the hot water worked its magic on the knotted muscle of his arms and neck. “After I clean up,” he said with a sigh, “I’ll be in need of a fresh shave. Must look my best this evening.” He began to scrub.
23
Supper at Trudeau's
The air in the room changed as Nicolas dressed. The salty warmth of the gulf breeze was missing. When he looked out the open window, he saw the wind had shifted into the north, brisk and icy. It felt like autumn in the North Country. He hurriedly donned his woolens, choosing his heaviest jacket. Taking care to knot his tie to perfection, he trotted to the lobby for that shave.
Nicolas chose carefully among the hansom cabs waiting at the Majestic’s entrance; he was after one with full side curtains. By the time the driver’s fine roan gelding was pulling his cab off the sand, the wind whistled, the cab’s coverings flapped, and a freezing mist was in the air.
Madame La Porte received Nicolas at the front door of the Ball Lane house. A coal fire in the sitting room’s fireplace warmed the entryway.
“Yes, yes, I’m feeling much better,” Madame La Porte said when Nicolas enquired. “Do you see what you’ve sent us from your mountains?” she asked, pushing the front door shut with her back while deftly extracting a cigarette from her silver case. “We call it a ‘norther,’ and this is quite a strong one. Renée will be down shortly. Cigarette?”
In a few moments Renée descended the stairs dressed in a white shirtwaist of light cotton, a black ribbon at her throat. Her skirt was dark and without a bustle, accentuating her trim figure. She’d fastened her hair back with tortoiseshell clips and fashioned it to fall in ringlets like fat sausages behind her.
“Hello there,” she called from the bottom landing.
“My, but you’re lovely this evening,” Nicolas said, taking her hand. “I’ve held a covered carriage. It promises to be an icy night.”
Blasts of wind rocked the carriage and puffed through its draperies. Shutters banged against the houses and sandy debris swirled over the street. On the short run to Restaurant Row, Nicolas removed his jacket for Renée to throw over her shoulders; she pulled it snug and inhaled its woodsy smell.
Trudeau’s restaurant took up the entire ground floor of a large commercial building. The maître d’hôtel, a handsome colored man in formal evening wear, greeted them at the door and ushered them under brilliant gas chandeliers into the rich aroma of exotic French and Spanish spices. The dining room rang with quick-witted conversation and the clatter of silverware on china plates. Renée spoke French. The maître d’ led them to the far end of the dining room, where the gaslights were lowered. A small corner table; an attentive waiter; champagne promptly poured; the clink of glasses.
“Shall I order?” Renée asked.
“I should say you must,” Nicolas replied, smiling at the menu, which was entirely in French. “I trust your judgement.”
Renée lifted her glass. “Yes, so here’s to trust, and our friendship.” Turning a bit more serious, she said, “I’m a strong believer in friendship, aren’t you, Nick? An ‘old world’ sort of friendship. A man and a woman can be friends, can they not?”
“In many ways, yes. In other ways . . . certain things are assumed by society, Renée.”
“Then society must change.”
He considered this for a moment, then lifted his glass. “Here’s to a changing society, then.”
Supper arrived in six courses: First came golden fried fillets of pompano rolled in cornmeal accompanied by a spicy court bouillon. Spooning up the rich broth, Nicolas regaled the lady scientist with tales of the Adirondack skills of guides and North Country hermits he’d known. But when the subject turned to winter and how it left the landscape windswept and grey, Nicolas’s mood turned somber.
“What’s wrong, Nick,” Renée asked. “Why so glum?”
“I was remembering a very sad winter.” Nicolas retold the tale of the loss of his boy Ethan to the woods. He tried to remain stony-faced, but couldn’t keep the emotion from his eyes.
“Back then, my wife, Ruth, was the schoolmistress. After Ethan disappeared, she was stricken with melancholy and never worked again. We tried cures from every charlatan in the state of New York.”
“It’s an awful blow to lose a loved one, Nick.”
“You’ve lost, Renée, yet you continue your work.”
“My patients and the lab are my comfort.” She broke a loaf of crusty French bread. More quietly, she added, “I suppose you might say I’m married to the lab.”
“Like Uncle Francis.”
“Heavens no!” Her eyes, suddenly full of mirth, met his. “Not as bad as Uncle, I should hope.”
Nicolas again cracked a smile. “As for me, I must count myself lucky to have my daughter, Abigail, such a bright girl, and my grown son, Schuyler…though there’s one rascal who needs to settle down, I tell you. He’s a talented musician, but I fear he’ll never earn a living.”
Renée gently set her glass on the tablecloth, where bread crumbs lay like freshly fallen snow. “You seem such an upstanding person, Nick,” she said. “Have you any idea how dangerous your enterprise is?”
“I certainly do. I saw the man lynched in Sailortown, you know.”
Renée’s eyes opened with surprise. “You did? Why, I just heard. You understand, then, that since the end of the war, common citizens—in both North and South—have come to hate body snatchers. I know you’re a fine gentleman, but they’d consider you the lowest of the low.”
“There’s one more way society must change.”
“Why not leave it to the criminals, Nick? They have nothing to lose. You have so much.”
Nicolas pushed back in his chair, and the ugliness of the two dead boys from Buffalo—the nightmare boys—flashed into his mind. Two twisted, frozen bodies from Buffalo, and he had no idea how they’d come to him or why they carried that strange mark he’d discovered.
“There are many, shall we say, ‘side benefits’ to my business, Renée. The students’ learning, of course, but think also of your experiment with that dead boy’s cells.”
“Do you know where that boy came from, Nicolas?”
“From a snowbank.”
“I mean, how he died?”
“I . . . truthfully, I don’t know.”
“I thought as much. Look—I’m as culpable as you now. I’ll say no more, except . . . take care with this business of yours, Nick.”
Their doting waiter brought stalks of cold asparagus and a stew he called étouffée. Renée had her sweetbread omelet; a truffle-stuffed duck came swimming in dark sauce. It was the finest meal Nicolas had had set before him in months, perhaps ever.
“And what about the danger you face, Renée?” Nicolas asked. “Those men at the Cotton Exchange?”
“I’ve thought long and hard about that. Believe me, there’s more than meets the eye to those men.”
“How so?”
“Cotton traders don’t care about anatomy classes. In my opinion, they’re after our docks.”
“Docks? Why don’t they simply add more docks? Galveston has an excellent deepwater harbor, one of the largest on the coast.”
“No, they’re after the east-end location of the medical college. We’re separate, isolated really from the other piers.”
“What advantage is that?”
“You know the story of our cotton jammers, don’t you?”
“Sure. They’re the best in the world at packing cotton, screwing it down tight into the ships, so they’ve monopolized the stevedore jobs.”
“And they’re well organized. Their wages are high. If new piers were built on our end of town, where the medical college is now, the cotton traders could hire their own, cheap labor.”
“Bypass the cotton jammers. Seems plausible . . .”
The supper hour passed and the dining room emptied. Puddings soaked in whiskey sauce arrived and Renée called for “café.”
“Such a fine champagne you’ve chosen,” Nick said, pouring more.
“It’s French.”
“Before coffee arrives, then, I propose one last toast—to Uncle and the cure!” he said, raising his glass. “And, of course, to our new friendship.”
Renée sipped, then stared down into her glass. “Will you write me, Nicolas? When you’re back in New York? As friends?”
“I’m not much with words, I’m afraid.”
She looked up, her eyes gleaming. “I’m sure you write a fine letter.”
“Then I shall try.”
When they rose from the table, the restaurant was abandoned and the gaslights nearly all extinguished. Nicolas told the driver who’d held his carriage for them, “To Ball Lane,” but Renée protested, her lips loosened by the French bubbly. “No! To the beach, sir!” she called to the driver. “We can’t possibly end this lovely evening so soon. This gentleman from the North simply must see the gulf at night.”
Nicolas shut the side curtains against the bitter wind and again covered her with his jacket. He felt a thrill beside her, free from eyes on the street. When their carriage rumbled onto the expanse of beach the tide was out and the north wind had blown the gulf flat as a pond. The scalloped, drifting sand glowed eerily in the moonlight. They stepped down. Their driver huddled under a horse blanket to wait. Renée took Nicolas’s hand and led him to the water’s edge and down the beach; in a few minutes they were out of sight of the carriage.
“Far enough?” she asked, slowing the pace, kicking at the sand. Then she looked up and came to a sudden halt. “Oh, look!” A line of brown pelicans glided over their heads; the huge, elegant birds, at least a dozen, low and silent, nearly motionless, flew in a perfect row into the north wind, their five-foot wingspans bright in the moonlit night.
When the pelicans disappeared over the sand dunes, Nicolas took her by the elbows and turned her toward him. “It’s been such a remarkable day.”
“Yes. Remarkable, indeed.”
She stood with hands folded in front of her, head down. Her curls blew wildly in the wind; he caught wisps of them in his hands and held them to the sides of her face.
“I must kiss you, you know.”
“Nick—”
He bent and kissed her, clasping her face in his hands. He’d not planned it, he intended only a harmless kiss, but her lips were smooth and warm . . . perhaps he persisted a moment too long.
She let out a tiny gasp, then took hold of his shoulders and kissed him back with surprising force. “Enough,” she whispered, placing her hands on his chest and pushing him to arm’s length.
“Forgive me.”
“Oh, Nick,” she said, studying his face. “I want to remember you just as you are. So serious.”
Renée turned back, then broke into a run, calling, “Faster!” over her shoulder, taunting him. She veered landward into a line of sand dunes where the going was hard. Nicolas closed the gap. She stopped and faced him, out of breath.
“No.” She paused, gasping. “No. It’s time we go.”
They roused their grumbling driver from the refuge he’d taken inside his cab, and he whipped his horse at a canter through the night. Renée pulled back the side curtain and the north wind rushed in. She thrust her face out the window, her hair flailing.
“I meant no affront, Renée.”
She turned, her face in a nest of tangled ringlets. “Nick . . . It’s been a glorious day. I haven’t had a day like this since . . . well, I thank you for everything.”
When the cab jerked to a stop at the house on Ball Lane, they sat in silence. Renée pushed the carriage door open and jumped down.
“Please! Shall we meet tomorrow?” Nicolas asked. “I must see you. I . . . I leave on the noon train.”
“. . . We’ll see. I . . . Ta-ta.”
She turned and loped through the gate and up the front steps without a further word. Nicolas sank into the seat, his heart pounding.
“The Majestic, sir.”
Back in his room, Nicolas’s eyes were struck wide open. He walked circles on the Oriental rug, retracing the odd events of a day that seemed like a dream. The feel of Renée at his side at the church, at supper . . . the scent of apple blossoms. The kiss.
It seemed a different world from the one he woke to, a world no longer muddied by two boys dead of unknown causes, nightmares, or those beastly cotton traders. He felt he could solve any puzzle, fix any problem.
Nicolas settled into a chair by the window and tried without success to force his eyes shut against the rising full moon. The gulf’s gentle movement offered no soporific. Hours passed as he sat at the window. With amusement, he stared at the bed he knew would go unwrinkled, and then he saw them—the things he’d forgotten in his haste. The packages, the presents for Renée, still on the bed.
“The feathers! The fan!”
24
Departure
At sunrise, Nicolas packed his steamer trunk. His mind leapt about like a dervish. The hotel lobby was empty; he paced until guests appeared for breakfast, then he arranged for a carriage. Once his trunk was loaded he tucked the presents for Renée under his arm and instructed the driver to carry him to Ball Lane.
Madame La Porte answered the doorbell at the first twist.
“I’m afraid she’s already in the laboratory, sir.”
“I have something for her,” he said, indicating the packages. “Perhaps I’ll go directly to the college? I haven’t much time before departing.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but Renée instructed me . . . you see, her schedule’s extremely demanding today. She chairs the faculty senate, and she’s called an emergency meeting over that horrid occurrence in Sailortown.”
“If I were to go to the college—”
“I think that impossible.”
“Might I leave these for her, then? I’d like to pen a note as well.”
“Certainly.” Madame La Porte took the packages and beckoned Nicolas into the hallway.
“Could the message be taken to her? I’ll hire a carrier, I’ll—”
“Yes, yes, of course.” There was an awkward silence; Mada
me La Porte smiled and gave a nod. “If you like, I’ll see that your message is delivered to the laboratory with all due haste. Perhaps Basil . . .”
Standing in the hallway, Nicolas dashed off his thoughts:
Dearest Renée,
My heartfelt thanks for the delightful evening. It seems a different world here, at least to this Northerner’s eyes. If at all possible, please see me off—we depart the station at noon. Please come.
Nick
Clouds of soot and steam belching from the locomotive’s boiler hung like a pall over the departures platform of the Galveston station. Hired men loaded his trunk, but Nicolas refused to embark. Instead, he stood on the concrete alongside the train, searching the faces of the throng on the platform. The iron monster shuddered and smoked and the powerful pistons of its locomotive cranked once, twice, the great wheels turned, and then he saw her . . . or was it her? It was a hat like hers, pink feathers bobbing along the platform. Had she gotten the gifts?
From out of the cloud around him he heard Adam call out to him. “Van Horne! Climb up, man, she’s movin’!”
Nicolas saw the train lumber forward; he loped alongside, then dashed to keep up, his thoughts accelerating with the locomotive, racing to the long days ahead, the loneliness of his sleeper berth.
He reached for the handrail and swung up. Renée had not come. In minutes he’d be off this sandbar and across the railroad bridge, the bay a blue-grey blur below, the roar of the engine louder, the click of the rails faster.
But no iron horse yet built raced as wildly as Nicolas Van Horne’s thoughts, and the rumble of even the greatest train could not drown the fine trembling of his heart.