The stranger continued to stand in the open doorway undaunted by the attention he was attracting, staring out into the empty darkness as if he had just witnessed a spectral apparition. He bore the demeanour not of the sinner, but of a man long and greatly sinned against. He was thin of body, wore a pencil moustache along his upper lip and a wispy goatee on his chin. His flaxen hair, from under a wide hat, was grown long over his collar. Even wet and bedraggled it was evident that his suit was good, tight fitting and well cut, such as is only seen in the port of New Orleans among the scions of the upriver plantations or the well-to-do young Yankees lately settled in the city.
Whist being a game best played by a party of four, I was gladdened by the sight of a newcomer to square our triangle. I called out in English to invite him to join us, but he remained mutely standing and looking into the darkness, staring down some great, secret demon. I tried again, in Spanish, with the same effect, and a third time in French. This caused him to flinch, as if startled from a mesmeric episode. He then asked, in the most perfect French, the kind of French rarely heard in these parts, what game we were playing. Widow whist, I replied, although we would prefer a game of Boston if he were willing.
Without another word he sat and we began to play. He played Boston with neither skill nor luck, and gave no indication that he had any interest in winning. He played by rote, more machine than man, paying scant attention to the cards. He had to be constantly prodded and prompted, suggesting that his mind was as distant as his person was near. After the game, as my companions were leaving, he asked them to return his money – he must have lost a dollar or more in a short time – and by way of reply my two friends laughed, judging his request an attempt at humour. Their reaction left him in a state of even greater despondency.
When we were alone, I resolved to satisfy my curiosity about the youth, and asked if he had just seen a phantom, for he had the countenance of a man so confronted. He assured me that he had seen no such thing. It took but little prompting for him to begin – tentatively at first, and then, assisted by a bottle of rum, with gathering confidence – an account of his life, both recent and ancient, of which the following is a summary.
The newcomer’s name was Jean-François Feuille. That very afternoon, he told me, he’d waded fully clothed into the muddy waters of the Mississippi with every intention of never returning to shore alive. Once fully submerged, he changed his mind and, after a great struggle, managed to haul himself out of the river despite the pull of the current and the added burden of his sodden woollen suit, which he had worn to prevent this precise eventuality. Thus, he told me morosely, he had proven himself a coward twice over – retreating out of cowardice from committing a coward’s act. The young man intrigued me, and I asked him his provenance.
Feuille was the youngest son of a wealthy, ambitious Bordeaux farmer. I told him I was from Toulon and he seemed somewhat uplifted by this compatriotic bond. Although his father had envisaged a career in the priesthood for him, as a child Feuille had instead developed a love for the paintings adorning the walls of his parish church. His father’s disapproval only fanned the flames of his ardour, and at the age of sixteen, against the wishes of the paterfamilias, he’d set off for Paris, determined to become an artist. Thanks to a letter of introduction penned by an aristocratic family acquaintance, he’d studied under the tutelage of the master Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson. Feuille, by his own admission, was a devoted and conscientious student but not an especially gifted one, and at the end of his studies he’d spent several fruitless years scrounging an existence in Paris, garnering few commissions of his own.
When word of the successes of certain French portraitists in America began to filter back to France, Feuille resolved to emigrate. He inherited a modest sum after the death of his father, sold all he possessed (which didn’t add up to much) and bought a passage to New Orleans, determined to establish himself in the New World. His emigration did not, however, mark the slightest upturn in his fortunes – if anything they worsened. He was afflicted, he complained, by a profound timidity that prevented him from making the acquaintances and friendships required to prosper in his trade. To make matters worse, he had lost a good deal of his inheritance, such as it was, playing cards during his passage across the Atlantic. Upon his arrival he discovered a compatriot, Jean Joseph Vaudechamp, had arrived from France only a month earlier and set himself up in a studio in the city’s French quarter. Moreover, unlike himself, Vaudechamp had arrived with a benign temperament and substantial capital: he had placed advertisements in the Orleans Gazette boasting of his renown in the royal houses of Europe, and had furnished and decorated his quarters in the style of the artist’s studios of Paris, with a divan, vermilion silk-screened wallpaper, ancien régime furnishings, velvet drapery and, on the walls, a gilt-framed portrait of a plump young woman – his sister, although the astute Vaudechamp hinted to prospective customers that it was, in fact, a noble woman for whom he had suffered an unrequited passion.
Feuille had, in the several weeks since his arrival, spent almost all that remained of his father’s wealth and was now on the verge of ruin. All was lost, he said, including his honour, for even if he had the money to make the return passage to France, it would be as a failure.
I’d had occasion, in the course of my life as Joubert, to become acquainted with many unfortunates who had suffered the most accursed fates. None of them had borne their burdens with such lack of grace. I ventured to remark that perhaps not all was lost, that if he so chose he might discern silver linings to the clouds that palled his horizons. No, he continued relentlessly, on the contrary – everything, everything was lost. He was damned, he cried, his head in his hands, cursed and damned, and did not wish to live another day.
As I listened to the painter’s tales of woe, I felt welling up within me a most unexpected combination of feelings that I can only describe as envious contempt. What wonders I might do, I thought, in his circumstances, endowed as he was with a young, handsome body, an educated mind and good standing. As the natural and almost immediate consequence of this sentiment, an idea sprouted that, despite all efforts to banish it, quickly colonised my mind, as if every attempt at suppression merely hastened its triumph. Picture the scene: the two of us alone except for the innkeeper, wiping glasses with a bored look on his face at the far end of the empty room. The thunderstorm now at an end, a brilliant sunshine poured through the inn’s small, solitary window.
He was not a ship’s captain. He wasn’t even a sailor. In fact, he told me, he’d been seasick the entire journey across the Atlantic. But I was suddenly seized with the desire for the very thing he wished to throw away. If he cares not for his life, I thought, I shall care for it in his stead.
At times the best plans come to us fully fledged, as if bestowed from the heavens. So it was on this occasion. I told Feuille all he needed to do to revive his fortunes was to paint a portrait as an advertisement of his powers, which he might subsequently exhibit to attract more customers. It should be a portrait of a remarkable visage, one that would arrest the attention of every passer-by with its virtuosity. I offered to commission such a portrait of myself, as I was at the end of my life and wished to have my countenance, such as it was, memorialised. Afterward, he would be welcome to display it in his studio for a time until other commissions were asked of him. At first, he refused my offer – in fact, he evinced a most disagreeable stubbornness. I had to insist upon it several times, and cajole him into accepting, which was only further evidence of his foolishness, for my suggestion was plainly as wise as it was generous. Finally he agreed, although not without a look of doubt upon his face. He suspected me of exploiting him but was not able to divine exactly how. I gave him my winnings from the card game we had just played – some three or four dollars – then twenty dollars more as a guarantee of my sincerity, and so that he might buy any supplies as were necessary for the agreed purpose. We even fixed the date – on the morrow – and the time – two o’clock in
the afternoon. I poured two last glasses of rum, emptying the bottle, as a celebration of our agreement.
Then came the moment of inspiration. He raised his glass to his mouth with an avidity that suggested a weakness for liquor. I put my hand on his arm to stop it momentarily from lifting any higher. ‘The eyes,’ I said, leaning forward, ‘are the thing. Render them well and you capture the soul of a man. Render them ill and you have missed him altogether.’
He nodded his agreement. ‘The eyes are at once the most important feature of any face and also the most difficult to paint,’ he said. My hand was still on his arm. I felt it lifting upward once more but prevented it from doing so. I asked him if he had a preference for painting eyes of a certain colour over eyes of another colour – did he prefer to paint blue eyes, for instance, or dark eyes? He thought about this a moment and replied that in his experience dark eyes were generally easier to paint than blue or green eyes, for oftentimes they were less variegated, and the tint easier to imitate. Ah, I said, then I shall ensure my eyes are brown tomorrow. Feuille gave a puzzled look and asked me to repeat what I had just said.
‘In that case, I shall ensure my eyes are brown tomorrow,’ I said, ‘to make it easier for you to paint them.’
‘But your eyes are blue,’ he replied.
‘They are blue today, but tomorrow they will be brown.’
‘By what magic will they have changed colour from one day to the next?’
‘There’s no magic in it,’ I said. ‘In a short time I can change their colour from blue to brown.’
This visibly astonished the poor man. ‘Is this some kind of joke at my expense?’
‘Not at all, merely an ability I’ve possessed from birth, just as some contortionists have the ability to bend themselves backwards in two, or others can speak in tongues.’
‘How is it done?’
‘I merely concentrate my mind for three or four minutes and the colour is transformed.’
‘You do this with your eyes closed?’
‘Quite the contrary, it can only be done with my eyes wide open.’
‘Can you demonstrate this to me?’
‘Of course,’ I replied, ‘I won’t say it is a trifle, but it is no great thing. All that is required is the utmost mental concentration. You must look into my eyes without looking away. Shall we try it now?’ He nodded vigorously. ‘Very well,’ I said, ‘watch very carefully.’
{71}
Jean-François Feuille
Born 1797
First crossing 1825
Second crossing 1838
Date of death unknown
DESPITE THE STING of his temper, there had been something resolute about Joubert: his dogged nature, his dependable body, his old sailor’s ways, his indefatigable ethic of work and purpose. It was not so with Feuille. He was a man of feeble spirit and great appetite – a glutton, a squanderer, a débauché. If he did not hold grudges, as Joubert did, it was because of his prodigality. Even before the crossing, I had detected a dissipation in him. After it, I could not help but sink into its mire. I now had youth, good looks, education, talent and even a little social standing, and yet in every other respect the man I was now was the inferior of the man I’d been. Where Joubert was resilient, Feuille was easily discouraged; where Joubert was vivacious, Feuille was sullen; where Joubert made friends, Feuille collected enemies; where Joubert was resourceful, Feuille was incapable and disorganised. Forever after, it was as if the part of me that had crossed over and the part of me that was already there were in constant battle with each other. I found myself the prisoner of impulses I could barely master.
During a crossing, one enters into a body and inherits its capacities and incapacities, its appetites and proclivities. But one also enters into a mind. When I crossed with Feuille, I brought with me all the memories I had accumulated in the course of my previous two lifetimes. I also inherited a corpus of new memories, the memories of this new me, all its pleasures and tribulations, its qualities and flaws. How much more frightened of pain was my new host than Joubert had ever been! And how much more in need of pleasure!
The crossing itself, though complete and unimpeded, had been decided upon on the spur of the moment. As soon as it was done a part of me regretted it. There was Joubert in front of me with the same expression of bewilderment in his eyes that I had seen in Alula’s: the bewilderment of the ambushed soul – a soul that knows something has happened without knowing precisely what. For once the crossing has begun, its effects are so strange and pleasant that it is a rare will that is strong enough to resist it. Resistance, after all, is simple: all that is required to prevent a crossing is to look away. But few who have begun a crossing can defy its seductive pleasures. It was sad to look upon the man I had just been, the body in which I had lived for more than three decades, now sitting directly in front of me with that look of shock upon his face. I took all the money in his possession – he was too deep in his stupefaction to murmur a word of protest – then I wished him well and was gone. Knowing exactly how much more money he kept hidden in the skiff he slept in, I went to the river, found his boat and took the rest.
Almost as soon as I had left that coffee house in New Orleans I realised something was amiss. I had committed a wrong, perhaps even an evil, and try as I might I would never shake the shadow of my guilt. My first crossing had been motivated by my love for you, but the purpose of my second was more nebulous. It did not take long for the enormity of my wrongdoing to take hold. For as long as I was Joubert, there remained the possibility, however remote, that restitution of the Law might still be possible. Now that I was Feuille, there was no such possibility. Now there could never be a return crossing. I had thrown away any chance that the Law might be preserved. It was desecrated now, once and for all, and I was the one who had desecrated it. But – or so I reasoned to myself – a thing can only be broken once. Once broken, it can be broken again and again, and the result is the same.
I forgot about you too, Koahu – or rather I did everything I could to erase you from my mind. I put my convictions at the service of my interests. The Law, I told myself, was merely the superstition of a backward people. A crossing would not – could not – bring about the end of the world. The Law was merely the invention of men, men who sought power and control over others. The Law served only to limit our freedoms. I renounced my faith in it and yielded to all the freedoms within my reach, and in so doing became something terrible to behold: a charming persuader who sought only the satisfaction of his basest desires.
I began touring the cities of the American south, promoting myself as France’s finest portraitist, offering the planters, merchants, officers and other eminences the occasion to have their likeness, and those of their families, their houses and animals, even their slaves if they so wished, forever memorialised by the application of oil on canvas. Wherever I went, prosperous men would give me foolish amounts of their money to sit in a room with them, their wives and daughters for hours and days on end, while in the evenings I would spend their money on women, cards, liquor and roast meats.
Customarily, a portraitist arrived at the home of his subject with a canvas already painted in all respects save the face. If the subject was female, the canvas would show the figure of a woman in the centre, with a large empty space where her face would be. For the standard fee, the background would be an Arcadian scene. For an additional fee, the client might specify the particulars of the portrait. He or she might request a classical or a bucolic scene, or ask that a dog be included in the subject’s lap, or that a particular object – a pair of elegant hands, a jewel, an item of clothing – be displayed. Such things were all subject to negotiation, and every particular represented an additional profit for the portraitist.
This was how I met the woman who would become my wife, Hortense Michaux, only daughter of the widower Desire Michaux, owner of the famous Desire plantation of Louisiana. He sauntered into my rented studio in Lafayette one day and said, ‘I wish to immortal
ise my daughter.’ She couldn’t travel, he explained, so I would have to displace myself to the Desire plantation, some ninety miles upriver of New Orleans in the Saint James Parish. I would be in want of nothing, he promised, and would be paid twice my usual fee.
I departed New Orleans on a steamboat two days later, in Desire’s company. I quickly realised that, as Feuille, I suffered from an especially vicious form of the landlubber’s affliction: seasickness. It’s a wonder I ever crossed the Atlantic. Desire distracted me from my travails with tales of himself, his primary theme of conversation. He had been born the third in a line of sugarcane planters and married a cousin who died in childbirth. He was a heavy-drinking braggart, unpleasant in every way but one: he loved his only daughter more than anything else in the world.
When I finally met Hortense, on the porch of the master’s house, she was sitting down. I was not struck by her beauty so much as an innate, sincere goodness. The chair she sat in had four small wheels at the ends of its legs and handles sticking out of the back of the frame. She had been struck by polio as a child and was unable to walk. I unrolled the canvas I had earlier prepared, a figure of a faceless woman wearing a silk mother-of-pearl evening gown. Hortense, however, insisted that I paint her wheelchair, as she called it, with a scene of the plantation in the background. When I told Desire this would add several days and several scores of dollars to my fee, he said, ‘Take your time, boy, take your time,’ and clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Pronay votrah toe,’ he added in his mangled Acadian French. He was very proud of his ability to speak French, but just about every time he did I nodded and smiled in reply without understanding a word he had said. It mattered little. On such occasions, a nod and a smile were all that was required of me.
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