Libre (2 page)

He recalled, too, from his own childhood, how
he – the ungainly son who too closely resembled his mother’s slave
husband – had been early relegated to the garçonnière, and how
Dominique, from her birth, had been given her own pretty room in
the cottage, much like this that Marie-Zulieka and Lucie shared.
The walls were papered with green-and-white French wall-papers;
armoire, bureau, and the bed beneath the looped-back pink cloud of
the mosquito-bar, were French, and new. Like Dominique obviously
her mother’s lace-trimmed princess, clothed in white mull-muslin
with whose simple prettiness even the most exacting Frenchwoman
could not have found fault.

Of a piece with her mother, he thought,
glancing back at Casmalia. Aside from the tignon — the wrapped
head-scarf mandated by law to mark all women of color, slave and
free, apart from white women – Casmalia’s simple elegance would not
have been out of place in Paris or London.

Yet he’d seen her wearing diamonds, when he
played music for the quadroon balls. Louis Rochier was obviously a
generous patron.

And a generous father. The jewel-box Lucie
opened for his inspection was a miniature treasure-house of pearls,
sapphire, and aquamarine, expensive and yet carefully chosen to be
not one carat more than rigidly appropriate for a girl just “out.”
Yet something was missing...

“These are the things M’sieu Dutuille sent to
her, on the occasion of her contract being signed.” Rather
impatiently, Casmalia cleared the small stack of books from the
corner of the bureau, and spread out upon it a much costlier parure
of rubies. “Of course completely unsuitable for her to wear as yet
– perhaps ever, if you ask my opinion. She’s so fair they’re not
her color at all.”

It was a subtle brag. Like the white, upon
whose power they depended, most
libres
saw greater beauty in
pale complexions and silky hair than in the reminders of a
slave-born past. “I suppose she’ll have to wear them to please
him,” Casmalia continued airily. “When the time comes, I’ll suggest
she have them re-set.”

“I think they’re pretty,” ventured Lucie, and
her mother sniffed.

“Vulgar. But as you can see, Ben, she
certainly did
not
abscond. Not and leave all this behind. I
don’t see her pearls here – there was a pearl-and-aquamarine set
that her grandmother gave her, God rest her soul:
far
too
showy for morning. I can’t imagine she’d have worn it...”

“She did,” provided Lucie. “And I think it
was beautiful.”

“Nonsense. It was incorrect to wear in the
daytime – what on earth can she have been thinking? And no one is
interested in what little girls think.”

“And I’ll bet you have jewels just as
beautiful, Lucie,” said January, who had carefully taken everything
out of Marie-Zulieka’s jewel-box and gently probed with his fingers
every corner of its satin lining. “Would you show them to me,
before I go?”

They were, as he’d guessed, just as carefully
chosen to be suitable for a girl of nine: a single pearl on a fine
gold chain, coral beads, a gold cross to wear on Sundays... “And
what’s this?” With great care he lifted the tiny, brittle bundle no
bigger than the joint of his little finger, wrapped in pink paper,
though quite properly he didn’t open it.

One didn’t, with such things. Not without
permission.

“That’s my gris-gris.” Lucie took the bundle,
unwrapped it to show the tiny dried foot of a bird, a sparrow or a
wren by its size. “It brings me good luck. Zozo has one, too.”

“And does Zozo keep hers in her
jewel-box?”

Lucie nodded.

He re-filled and closed the box, and replaced
on the corner of the bureau the books Casmalia had tossed aside:
Böckh on ancient Greece and Lamarck on animals, a Spanish edition
of
Don Quixote
and a text on the stars that had been much
talked of in Paris when he was there a few years ago. Inside the
cover of each was marked,
A. Vouziers, 12 Rue de la Petit Monaie
–
that address was crossed out, along with two others he
recognized as being in the same maze of ancient streets behind the
Louvre in Paris, and then
, — 53 Rue Marigny.

He said, “Then we can be sure it will bring
Zozo good luck as well.”

*

“I consulted with my sister,” said January
that evening to Hannibal Sefton, at a break during the dancing in
the Théâtre d’Orleans while the guests made serious inroads on the
buffet and the musicians sorted through their music and flexed the
cramp from their hands. “She says she didn’t sell Zozo Rochier
anything to make Marie-Therese Pellicot sick, but the symptoms
sound like hellebore of some kind. My aunties back on the
plantation would give the children something of the kind, when we
got worms. I hope Agnes didn’t force Marie-Therese out of bed to
come to the ball.”

His eyes strayed across the dance-floor that
had been raised over the backs of the seats in the pit, to the wide
double doors that led through to the lobby. From the lobby a
discreet passageway existed to the building next door – the Salle
d’Orleans – where a ball was going on for the ladies of the free
colored demimonde, the
plaçees
and their daughters.

M’sieu Davis, who owned both buildings, was
careful to stagger the intermissions so that the husbands and
brothers of the respectable ladies attending the ball at the
Théâtre could sneak back in good time to have a cup of punch with
their wives, after dancing with their mistresses next door.

“Surely she wouldn’t.” Hannibal set his
violin on top of January’s piano, unobtrusively collected two
champagne glasses from the tray of a passing waiter, and led the
way to the lobby. It wouldn’t do, for the musicans to be seen
drinking the same champagne as the guests. “Even Agnes...”

“Agnes Pellicot is living on investments that
have gone down in value and has three daughters besides
Marie-Therese to bring out.”

Needless to say, the sister January referred
to was not the lovely Dominique but Olympe, his full-blood sister
who’d run off with the voodoos at the age of sixteen.

They traversed the passageway to the upstairs
lobby of the Salle, and emerging, January scanned the room for
Dominique: cautiously, because a black musician who was perceived
as “uppity” – that is, attending a ball designed for white men in
some capacity other than that of a servant – was just as liable to
be thrashed on this side of the passageway as on the other. Music
still flowed like a sparkling river through the archways that led
from the ballroom, and with it the swish of skirts, the brisk pat
of slippers on the waxed floor, the laughter of the ladies and the
rumble of men’s talk. Impossible to tell whether his sister would
be able to gracefully slip from her protector – or whether she’d
remember to do so. In ten minutes he’d have to be back...

A moment later, however, Dominique appeared
in the archway, a fantasia of green and bronze, calling back over
her shoulder, “Darling, if I don’t get some air I’ll be obliged to
faint in your arms and that would simply
destroy
the flowers
you gave me—”

January took his untouched champagne glass,
picked a waiter’s silver tray from a corner of the buffet in the
lobby, and carried the glass to her with the respectful air of one
who knows his place. “Would madame care for champagne?”

“How precious of you, p’tit! What I’d really
like is about a quart of arsenic to give to Eulalia Figes – such a
witch! She said my dress…”

“Were you able to find out about Nicholas
Saverne?” January had learned years ago that if one truly needed
specific information, ruthlessly interrupting Dominique’s
digressions upon her friends and acquaintances wsa the only way to
get it.

“Oh, a perfect chevalier, dearest. He speaks
French like a Parisian, he sends to Paris for his boots – he really
does, p’tit, Nathalie Grillot’s mother checked – Bourdet makes his
coats, the best in town, but it’s all show. Maman Grillot – and
Agnes Pellicot – both looked into his finances when he seemed to be
showing an interest in Nathalie and in Marie-Therese, and learned
that he’s always borrowing from somewhere-or-other to invest in
lands that he turns around and mortgages to invest in steamboat
shares, but at the bottom he’s not worth the horseshoes on a dead
horse. And he owes money to God and all His saints – to every
shirtmaker and tobacconist and hatmaker in town. But men are
impressed – bankers, and investors, I mean, and tavernkeepers,
who’re the ones who control votes. Henri’s mama—” Henri was
Dominique’s protector, son of the truly formidable Widow Viellard –
says Nicholas Saverne tries even harder to impress the Americans,
and that he’s spoken of running for Congress.”

“He may well succeed,” remarked Hannibal,
returning from a trip to the unguarded buffet, a bottle of
champagne in hand. As a white man – albeit an outcast – he ran less
of a risk for helping himself. “Americans seem to be impressed by
the show of wealth and aren’t as careful about checking on a man as
Mama Grillot and Agnes Pellicot.”

“Handsome?” January asked.

Dominique shrugged coquettishly. “If you like
all your goods in the shop window.”

“Does Marie-Zulieka love him?”

The young woman’s eyes lost their surface
brightness as her delicate brows tugged together; from playful
bubbliness, her expression shifted, thoughtful and a little sad. “I
don’t think Zozo really loves anyone… except Lucie, of course, and
that
frightful
old tutor of hers, M’sieu Vouziers. One would
think when a girl’s finished with her governess’s lessons she’d be
glad to toss her books into the river – Heaven knows
I
was.
But when has any man stopped courting a pretty girl just because
she tells him she isn’t interested? He
always
thinks he can
make
her interested. And if that girl’s about to be pushed
into an arrangement with the likes of Jules Dutuille—”

“What’s wrong with Jules Dutuille?”

“He drinks,” responded Dominique promptly.
“Oh, all men drink, of course – I think they’d go insane if they
couldn’t…”

“I certainly would,” put in Hannibal.

“Well, all you do when you drink is recite
poetry nobody understands, and then fall asleep,
cher
.”
Dominique reached over to pat Hannibal’s thin cheek. “You’re very
sweet about it. You don’t say cruel things, or destroy one’s
letters from one’s family, or kill one’s pets… My maid’s
sweetheart’s cousin is a maid in Dutuille’s household, you see, and
anyway everyone knows about Dutuille.”

“I don’t.”

“That’s because you’re serious and
hard-working and have no time for idle chatter in the cafés.” She
flashed him a dazzling smile, which sobered again at the
recollection of things she had heard. “He never lets his wife see
her family – they live up in St. Francisville — nor his son’s wife;
they go in terror of his rages. He’s tried three or four times, to
come to an arrangement with a mistress, but Babette Figes begged
her mother not to conclude the contract with him, and so did
Cresside Morisset. Only Zozo couldn’t refuse him, you see, because
her father was in business with him. So yes, she could have run off
with Nicholas, only I don’t think she did.”

“Why not?” asked January, curious, though it
was a conclusion he’d already arrived at.

Dominique shrugged again. “Because if she had
she’d have taken her jewels, silly! That appalling ruby parure is
worth over a thousand dollars! With his debts, he’d never have let
her pass up that chance. On the other hand…”

She hesitated, and January finished softly,
“On the other hand, Nicholas might have thought himself justified
under the circumstances in slipping poison into Marie-Therese’s
coffee himself, and kidnapping Zozo, guessing she’d go without a
fuss.”

The young woman nodded. “I think that’s what
her mama fears.”

“And if she didn’t take her jewels,” he
continued, “which are worth a thousand dollars, there’s no telling
when Nicholas might decide that once Marie-Zulieka has run off to
Mobile with him,
she herself
is worth fifteen hundred
dollars.”

Dominique’s eyes widened. The thought had
clearly never crossed her mind. “Oh, no,” she breathed. “No, p’tit,
he
wouldn’t
…”

“Don’t underestimate what a white man would
or wouldn’t do, when there’s money involved, and a woman not of his
own race,” said January quietly. “One more thing, and then we have
to get back to the ballroom. Is Nicholas Saverne here tonight?”

Dominique silently shook her head.

*

“I don’t understand,” said Hannibal, some
hours later when next the Theatre musicians had a break. “Your
sister and her friends are free women, aren’t they? If Jules
Dutuille is such a blackguard – and I must say in the defense of us
devotees of Dionysus that a man needn’t be a drunkard to treat
women like cattle – Marie-Zulieka can say no. Her mother might put
up a fuss – God knows my aunts did when a cousin of mine refused to
marry a chinless Viscount who would have paid off my uncle’s
gambling-debts – yet there’s no way she or anyone can
force
her compliance.”

January was silent for a few moments,
reflecting on the width of the gulf that even after several years’
residence, still separated the shabby Irish fiddler from the world
of New Orleans. Even Dominique, raised in the free colored
demimonde, was separated from the world of her brother and her
older sister Olympe, who remembered what it was to be slaves. The
narrow brick corridor to which they’d retreated – it led to the
kitchen quarters of the Salle d’Orleans – was at least warm. From
it, he and Hannibal could look across the rear courtyard to the
lighted windows both of the Salle and, beyond, to those of the
Theatre where the well-bred French and Spanish Creole ladies were
still pretending their vanished husbands and brothers were “out
having a smoke” or “down in the gambling-rooms.” Another world.