by John Brunner
That, though, was more than going to pay for itself. And at least the designs were colorful. There had been little color in Matthew’s existence recently.
“Driver, stop here!” Gordon shouted, seeing how dense the crowd was. “And bring our bags to the boat!”
Feigning alacrity, Matthew opened the door and jumped down, turning to help the other. He was rudely brushed aside with a grunt that might have meant, “Think I’m a woman, damn you?”
Matthew sighed. The more that kind of thing was done to him, the more firmly his mind was made up. As soon as this trip was over, he was going to quit, come what may. He wished he could do it right now; however, it was quicker and cheaper to go by train to New York from St. Louis than from New Orleans, and some trace of his former ambition did endure, so he was prepared to stick it out a little while yet for the sake of having taken part in the steamboat race. It was one thing for a girl to see a Currier and Ives print on the parlor wall. It could be another for her to meet a young man who had been there, seen and felt and smelled it all.
Whenever he reached that point in his musings, though, he was reminded about Mardi Gras again and felt ashamed.
Perhaps it wasn’t worth fretting so much about women. A man didn’t have to be a husband, after all. But if bachelorhood turned you into a person like Gordon, it was obviously better to get married.
Since boarding the Atchafalaya, Josephine had been feeling giddier and weaker. Voices and other sounds seemed to reach her from far away, as though her reserves had been used up in supervising stowage of the electrical machines… which had been unable to remedy the creeping numbness in her limbs.
Perhaps if Cherouen had not abandoned all concern for his patients in favor of this chase after fame and fortune—perhaps the machines might have helped in the long run…
Like a blade of chilling steel an image transfixed her.
With ever-lessening vigor she had continued to fan herself with the purse she always carried. The movement stopped in midair. She was staring across the wharf to distract herself from Cherouen’s continual complaints. Everything looked very small, very distant and incredibly sharp, as though she were gazing down the wrong end of a telescope.
And she had just seen…
“Oh, how could I have been so blind?” she whispered to the air.
“But I keep telling you!” Cherouen thundered—at Motley and Tyburn, Drew having sensibly found some other duty to attend to. “When you took Larzenac to St. Louis, you weren’t so nice about the proper departure time, were you?”
“We’d been getting ready for two days!” Tyburn retorted, with something as near bad temper as his nature permitted. “They cabled us before the liner left Europe! And you turn up on no notice at all, demanding that Captain Drew make over his boat to you as though you were an officer commandeering a stray horse! Were you an officer in the war?” he concluded with sweet venom.
Unmistakable despite the distance, there on the wharf was Eulalie Lamenthe. Once Athalie was dead—so Josephine had dared to hope—she would reign unchallenged over that portion of the city which her employer would not notice if he trod in one of its leavings, for he was fixated on “modern” and “progressive” treatment. The purpose of being a doctor was not to heal, but to exercise power. Had the stupid man finally realized? Was that why he was dashing off to St. Louis like a boy chasing a jack-o’-lantern?
But it didn’t matter. His electricity could never help when what was—what must be—at the root of her problem was supernatural.
Of course! The tingling numbness invading her body was the sign of a curse that must have been pronounced by Eulalie in revenge for her cousin’s death.
I never thought she’d be so powerful so soon!
Now she must have come to gloat. For if she could put so successful a spell on Mam’zelle Josephine, there was no telling what she could do to a steamboat! Why, at the first bend she might make its boilers explode!
At exactly that moment the band on the wharf broke into a tune she recognized—who better? For it belonged to a song about herself, “Mam’zelle Josephine.”
She had been so proud when she first learned of it. She still had no idea who had written it, but its catchy lilt had at once made it a favorite with all the musicians in New Orleans, from ragged street boys with jew’s-harps and cigarbox fiddles to the pianists in the smartest hotels.
But right now it convinced her that her worst fears were well founded. Her religion had taught her that chance did not exist. Every event was the decision of a god, and the gods were the decision of Damballah.
So it could not be by coincidence that precisely now precisely that tune was being played…
Frantic, Josephine straightened and ran toward the stage, her steps inaccurate as a drunkard’s. Cherouen called after her in amazement. By then she had almost reached her goal, but the effort cost all her resources, so she could be unbalanced by a trivial thing like catching the strap of her purse on a projecting hook and spilling its contents and as she bent down to reclaim them, thinking even as she did so that she should not, for she must quit this ill-starred, this doomed, this accursed vessel right away—
The world swam upward into a funnel of mist, and she fainted.
The fit of unconsciousness was brief. It seemed that a bare moment had passed when she opened her eyes again to find Cherouen’s familiar features looming over her. But they were set in a most undoctorly expression, and he was waving something furiously at her, something she remembered having been in her purse.
There were other people nearby, but they didn’t matter.
Cherouen was almost hissing, such was his rage. The words seemed at first not to apply to her; then abruptly they broke through and became real.
“You crazy bitch! Begging me for help when you were doing this to yourself! Fool! Idiot! Blockhead!”
The thing he was holding: a bottle of the skin-lightening preparation she had ordered from New York, where it was so fashionable nowadays among society ladies…
“Arsenic!” Cherouen ranted. “How the hell do you expect me to cure you if you’re poisoning yourself with arsenic?”
He spun around and pitched the bottle overside. Then he made to punch, not slap, her face. She cried out, scrambling to her feet; he would have come after her and made sure the blow landed, but someone seized his arm. Another person, she thought, tried to catch hold of her, but she eeled aside and somehow—she never knew how—descended the stage. Those in her way, including Wills and Grant who were trying to stem the flow of would-be passengers, took it that she was insane or drunk, and for fear of being attacked or vomited on gave her room to pass.
She was half-convinced that when she reached the wharf she would be confronted by Eulalie. But there was no sign of her.
Faintly she could still hear Cherouen’s storm of insults. Her sluggish thinking fastened on what he had last said. He didn’t want her to lighten her complexion. He was saying it was done by poison because he didn’t know how to do it for her. Wait, though: her skin hadn’t grown much lighter, and some patches were actually darker… Her own anger burgeoned. What was the use of living in a doctor’s house if he couldn’t help you when you did something—well—ill-judged? It was human to make mistakes, wasn’t it?
And calling her those foul names was the last straw!
She clenched her fists. She was going to revenge herself on Cherouen somehow! But that would mean following him to St. Louis!
Simultaneously, on other levels of her disordered brain, fear grew in measure with her anger. If she left New Orleans she might return to find her work undone, her followers convinced she had deserted them. Yet if she stayed, she would be vulnerable to Eulalie, who was now so strong she could convert a harmless medicine into poison!
And, on the level of anger again, she felt a molten eruption of hatred against the boat that was to carry Cherouen—
And a fireburst of relief at not being aboard her because she was cursed by Eulalie, who right
now must be enjoying the special favor of Damballah…
Her thoughts churning like the water behind a steamer’s wheels, Josephine cast about for a course to set, and suddenly decided that all she needed to do was wait until someone relieved her of the need to decide again. Perhaps forever. She therefore stood passive, waiting.
What she did not realize was that she was talking to herself nonstop, so that anybody within earshot might know the chaos ruling in her mind.
As though I didn’t have enough on my hands, the old fool has to lose his head over some dime-a-dozen yellow girl!
What made it worse, of course, was that it should be the same girl who, along with Lamenthe, had made him look ridiculous in front of Tyburn and Whitworth…
Woodley kept a stern face, but there was no way of hiding what had happened. The moment he discovered Dorcas had not preceded him on board, Parbury’s wrath had burst out like high-pressure steam. In vain Woodley himself, the clerks and other officers, had attempted to calm him. The more they pleaded, the more he brandished his stick and the louder grew his cries of treachery and deceit. Emerging from the cabin with glasses and cigars in their hands, the majority of the first-class passengers were looking on. Woodley sweated; he didn’t give a hoot what the deck passengers thought, but among those who had taken staterooms were the people he was relying on to tell the world that the Nonpareil was efficiently managed as well as speedy. Above all, there was that damned reporter whom Parbury himself had escorted up the stage!
He cast around for some line of argument that might hit home. Perhaps the girl had misunderstood her instructions. Perhaps she had been overcome by the heat. Perhaps she was afraid to travel aboard a racing steamer. There were a thousand possible explanations. Though, of course, if what he was hearing was a sample of the way Parbury spoke to her at home, it could well be she had simply reached her breaking point and seized her chance to run away.
Was that—? No, not young enough. For a moment he could have believed he’d spotted Dorcas, but it was illusion.
Now, of all times, for this to happen—less than five minutes from first bell, less than twenty from the actual start of the race! He cordially wished he could clap Parbury in irons.
“I know what’s become of her,” Auberon muttered to Arthur and Louisette. “Don’t you, Joel?” he added with a chuckle.
“I could make a guess,” the latter answered slowly.
“Out with it, then!” Louisette ordered.
“Parbury doesn’t know it, but—” Auberon’s chuckle turned to a giggle. “But this girl he’s mashed on is mashed on that darkie pilot of Drew’s. I think if she has to be on one of the boats she’d rather it was the Atchafalaya. Right, Jewel?”
“It’s very likely,” Joel admitted, frowning. Luckily his telescope had been at the Intelligencer office; he raised it to scan the other steamer. But of course it was absurd to think the girl would show herself at the moment.
“Darkie pilot?” Arthur said sharply. “The one Drew trained himself and hired back for his record run?”
“The very same. Drew’s kept him on for the season.”
“Hmm! I thought the only other pilot on his payroll was Tyburn. That makes a difference. Everybody says Lamenthe is so determined to make his mark, he drives himself as hard as he drives his boats. Maybe we should have chosen the Atchafalaya after all.”
“Then you’d have missed my dee-light-ful company,” said Auberon, and added, nudging his sister, “Anyway, would you trust your wife to somebody like that when she’s in an—ah—interesting condition?”
“Shut up, Obe!” Louisette hissed.
But his mind was already on a different tack. He said in an altered voice, “Joel, lend me your scope… Thanks. Now that is very strange indeed!”
“What can you see?” Arthur demanded.
Disregarding him, Auberon went on, “Joel, you met Cherouen on Mardi Gras. I guess you must have tried to interview him, right?”
“Sure. I went to his place a couple of days later. But all I got was such a puff, my editor said he wouldn’t run it without being paid.”
“Sounds typical,” Auberon remarked drily. “I dropped in on him too, about—well, another matter. And I met his chief nurse, same as you must have. Take a look and tell me if that isn’t her standing alone like a stump in a burnt field.” He handed back the telescope. “And if it’s true that Cherouen is on the Atchafalaya and determined to be at St. Louis quicker than Larzenac, her reason for not going with him should be very interesting! I’m going to ask her about it.”
“Obe, it’s almost time to leave!” cried Louisette.
“Don’t worry,” he soothed. “I’m what the English call a bad penny—always turn up. Coming, Joel?”
The reporter hesitated a second. But the rumpus around Parbury was dying down; under the combined onslaught of the officers, who had now been joined by Gordon, he was at last showing resignation, although the fury on his face had been replaced by a cold anger. Possibly someone in the know had told him where Dorcas had most likely gone—
Oh, that was for later. Right now his duty was to exploit to the utmost his privileged position. There were going to be a great many reporters covering this race, but from shore, because their editors were unwilling to risk the chancy schedules of steamers being driven to their utmost. At just the time when an edition was closing for press, they might be stranded on a sandbar, or tied up for repairs miles from the nearest telegraph office. Graves was taking a considerable gamble on sending Joel. It behooved him to add every scrap of inside information to his reports.
“I’ll tip the guy on duty to let us back up the stage!” Auberon proposed, divining the grounds for his cousin’s reluctance, and hurried him away.
At just the same moment Woodley was finally able to make for the Nonpareil’s huge, gleaming brass bell and give it the single tap that warned all those not traveling to return to shore.
Scant seconds later, the sound was answered by a chime from the Atchafalaya. Then, and only then, like a collective sigh of relief, the bells of other boats were rung.
That symbolized something crucial. No other steamer moored at this wharf was going to pull out until the rivals had their chance to get clear.
Grinning satanically, Manuel signaled the bass drummer to give the extra thump that instructed the band to stop playing at the next double bar. He was feeling very pleased with himself. To think the boat he was on was going to win a race and be famous all the way to New York, maybe to Europe!
The calamity of Mardi Gras still haunted his dreams; never had he made such an idiot of himself! Had he not, though, been mortified by working as a waiter…
Well, it was over. The good Lord willing, and His Mother, he would never do the like again. For the time being, he was content. He was making a handsome salary, and he enjoyed the acquaintance of Mr. Katzmann the caterer, and Mr. Bates the steward, and many others. What chiefly occupied his mind as he led the band back on board was the choice of music to accompany tonight’s supper.
Safe aboard the Atchafalaya, having secured a stateroom on the strength of Mrs. Grammont’s cable, Gaston heard the music stop with relief. To have his head filled with such trivial noise while struggling to compose his funeral anthem—why, the notion was intolerable!
Someone had said, in his hearing, that this steamer and the one with the raucous band were going to race all the way to St. Louis. If so, he sincerely hoped the other boat would remain permanently out of earshot, either in front or behind.
But this one, doubtless, would be in front, for had it not already carried Dr. Larzenac, and was it not now carrying another doctor with a French name? When he came aboard, Cherouen had been involved in some kind of hurluberlu; accordingly Gaston had made no attempt as yet to become acquainted. Since, however, each in his own way they were both bound on the same errand, it could only be a matter of hours before they were as bosom friends.
So much did the prospect cheer Gaston, he was annoyed to find him
self whistling the tune “Mam’zelle Josephine,” which the band had been playing when it quit, instead of a solemn stately theme, as he had intended.
And then, suddenly, a gang of black workers on the Atchafalaya’s foredeck started to chant in unison, apparently to give the time for some menial task like coiling ropes. Gaston shivered. These barbarians! These savages!
Perhaps, though, some of what he heard would ultimately contribute to his tone poem about the Mississippi. Recently he had been thinking he might get back to that project.
He wished he could afford to stand a round of drinks at the bar. That way, as he had seen on excursion boats, one might readily buy conversation, if not friendship.
But if Mrs. Grammont changed her mind before he reached St. Louis…
Of such stuff are nightmares made. He concentrated on the spectacle before him, striving to translate the rough utterances of the Negroes into what he regarded as real music.
All of a sudden Eulalie realized what a sight she must look, having dashed out of the house in a dress barely better than a wrapper, then come across town in overcrowded streetcars which had left her sweating and panting and with her hat awry.
She was not usually careless of her appearance. It was concern for her son that made her so today.
A few minutes still remained to complete the errand she had set out on. She glanced around for something that would offer a reflection, spotted a tolerably clean window, and hurried toward it, groping in her purse for a comb.
Something infinitely more important met her fingers.
Reassured by its solidity, she smiled. Then the overwhelming pressure of her surroundings dismayed her again: so many people, so many horses and mules, wagons, carts, bales and containers and crates and sacks and chains and ropes, and above all so many steamboats! Like a frightened bird, her mind darted this way and that; she found herself wondering why she had never before visited her son at the boat he was working on, for what she saw struck her as more real than the abstracts of money or even jewelery which had made fortunes for the family of her Alphonse.