Parrot and Olivier in America (35 page)

I had a mind to put him in his place but I heard a foghorn and understood the
Phoenix
might be early. Therefore, in company with a fishwife and a press of burghers, I strolled out on the jetty and peered into the mist and coal smoke, which had democratically arranged its factions in stripes of brown and white, the whole illuminated most tremulously. From this spectral effluence appeared the
Phoenix
, looming high, klaxon loud. On the starboard side, as it drifted silently toward the dock, stood what might have been the emblem of America: frock-coated, very tall and straight, with a high stovepipe hat tilted back from his high forehead. I thought this is the worst vision of democracy--illiterate, hard as wood, overdressed, uncultured, with that physiognomy I had earlier observed in the portrait of the awful Andrew Jackson--a face divided proudly in three equal parts: hairline to eyebrows, eyebrows to nose, lips to chin. In other words, the face of one who will never give any weight to the wisdom of his betters. To see the visage of their president is to understand that the farmer and the mechanic are the lords of the New World. Public opinion is their opinion; the public will is their will. This was on no account what I hoped to find.

The specter raised a hand in salute and I realized it was my own servant. You can say this was due to myopia. I would say it was on account of fancy dress, the American habit of changing oneself from one thing to another which seems to be the national occupation, for they did not come all this way, as one of them said to me, "to stay the way I were." The air was perfumed by salt and industry. The rogue raised his other hand and in it I made out a thin oblong brown package which must certainly be
Tartuffe
. This was what I had waited for, what had kept me awake, and in a very few minutes he and I were side by side like partners, following behind James and his cart toward the Hitheren Wharf, where the
Zeus
was coaling.

When we were finally above the wharf I looked hard at John Larrit to see if he was damaged by his journey. Certainly his dress suggested he had become insolent, but seeing him at close quarters I relaxed sufficiently to wonder at the domestic situation he had found his wife in. I did not chastise him for his lateness.

"I have heard from Miss Godefroy's father," I said to him, rather to my own surprise.

He smiled at me. "Hey-ho," said he.

"The letter came not two hours after you departed. Written on his own account without encouragement."

"Everyone wants to meet the governor."

"Commissioner," I said. "And you have the book?"

He patted the side pocket of his frock coat. I could rehearse it on the voyage. I would know it word-perfect before we were as far as Exeter.

"And all was well with your wife?"

"Of course," he said, rather tersely.

We were by now descending a clay cutting to where the
Zeus
lay moored in a stench of mist and fish and coal.

The incorrigible James loaded our trunks together, side by side on his massive back. I thought, Should I tip him? Could he possibly be a slave?

"They did not have the
Cartouche,"
the Parrot said.

"They?"

"The bookstore had no
Cartouche."

"Tartuffe."
I smiled with difficulty, aware that he would sometimes, as the English say,
pull my leg
.

"It is no matter," said he. "Your lordship can relax."

"
Tartuffe?"

"He had a great stock in English translation, but I would not touch them."

"Oh dear," I said, staring at James who awaited me, clearly in expectation of his reward.

"Your lordship need not worry," John Larrit said, finally removing that dreadful hat. Said he, "I found you a lovely edition of Moliere."

James held out his hand.

"Bon voyage,"
said he.

Parrot looked at me tenderly as I shook the black man's dusty hand.

"You asked for
Cartouche?"
I demanded. "Or
Tartuffe?"

"Tartuffe, Tartuffe
, of course
Tartuffe
. If the joke don't suit you, never mind. It is more a matter of what I have."

He produced the parcel and it was coal-black James, still waiting, who produced a little penknife, cut the string and collected the paper.

Only then, as he shook the Parrot's hand, did I begin to realize what I was looking at.

"See," said the member of the parrot family, "it's a lovely edition."

To all this James paid close attention, as if to a game of shuttlecock.

"It is not
verse,"
I cried. "Not verse."

"It is Moliere." He shrugged, complacent, half educated in spite of how he mimicked me, not even clever enough to be afraid.

"It is not even a
play
. Did you not read it?"

"Your lordship, look at the pages," he said. "Please. It is a treasure."

And then I saw, of course, he had bought me a pretty picture book. But how could I recite a picture book? It was no use to me at all. Every shopkeeper knows that the
L'Impromptu de Versailles
is not even a proper play. The characters have no lines. They admit it themselves. They spend their time worrying that they have no performance for the king. It is all about how Moliere will retaliate against his critics, but it ends with the king excusing them the command. There is no verse. There is no play. I knew my face was coloring. I was a beet.

"Dear sir," said Mr. Larrit, forger, thief, murderer for all I knew. I reached for the whore's purse of a book, a flimflam filigree woven around the great name of Moliere, and I thought of the Englishman's alleged pictures of savages and eucalypts. I wrenched the book free of him and made as if to cast it in the coal pit.

"It is a nonsense," I cried, looking with dismay as the volume, against my wish, rose from my hand like a partridge frightened by beaters before dropping, stone dead, into the Delaware River.

My servant uttered a cry, raw and raucous as a gull. He cast his hat and coat aside and jumped. There was an awful splash. He disappeared.

I thought, Dear God, he's killed himself. I was the French commissioner. I could not be
tainted
.

But the colliers were clapping and the great hawking
bird
rose, spitting, snorting, coughing, holding the book on high, dripping wet, his eyes rimmed red as a kitten's.

He would not look at me, not even when James and I pulled him up onto the dock. It was the Negro to whom he entrusted my Moliere.

"Here," said he. "Protect it."

And who was he to say protect it, but I gave James a silver dollar to retrieve my property, and thus we boarded the
Zeus
, a very silly pair indeed.

II

THAT TUESDAY MORNING Captain Cammer's steamboat
Zeus
, carrying sufficient fuel to feed her boilers all the way to New Haven, departed the Crooked Billet Wharf. No matter its name, it proceeded out into the bay like a floating stack of firewood.

The picture was less dire belowdecks where I followed my servant's dripping path into a large public cabin with curtained windows in the style of a Broadway oyster house. Along the bulkheads on each side were banks of settees that would later be converted into berths. Aft of this cabin was the violent engine compartment, and aft of that two smaller cabins, one of which I engaged for my drowned Englishman who continued to hold his
Versailles Impromptu
away from him
(like a pudding on a tray
as the purser commented). For myself I took the deluxe cabin, not on account of its size, which was not so considerable, but for the big windows that stretched across the square transom stern.

Here, in this compartment perfectly constructed for the contemplation of the American sublime, was placed the inevitable machine, that awful monument to democratic restlessness--a rocking chair.

Oh Blacqueville, I wish you were here to see these Americans. They are the most turbulent, unpeaceful, least-contented people, far worse than Italians and Greeks. Clearly there is nothing less suited to meditation than democracy. You will never find, as in aristocracies, one class that sits back in its own comfort and another that will not stir itself because it despairs of ever improving its status. In America, everyone is in a state of agitation: some to attain power, others to grab wealth, and when they cannot move, they rock. They dig canals, they tear along the rivers in a rage of machinery, the engines pumping like sawyers in a pit, the shores denuded of their ancient trees. Napoleon restored the fortunes of France by plunder, and a similar economic principle is here being enacted, the mower splintering the scythe, the smokestack eating up the wind. And there will be acres more of it to pillage if Old Hickory has his way.

It is strange, in New York and Philadelphia, to see the feverish enthusiasm which accompanies Americans' pursuit of prosperity and the way they are ceaselessly tormented by the vague fear that they have failed to choose the shortest route to achieve it.

I have it from Duponceau that the restless Benjamin Franklin--who supposedly taught himself five languages, invented bifocal glasses and the lightning rod--is responsible for the awful rocking chair. I had that particular horror removed from the deluxe cabin and replaced with a comfortable wing-backed reading chair which would not rock no matter how heavily I sat in it. Having arranged all the papers on my bed, I spread my leather case upon my lap and there, setting all physical excitements aside, prepared to enjoy my memory of she toward whom the churning wheels propelled me.

I first took up the very gracious letter from Mr. Godefroy. He wished, he said, to draw me to the other side of Sing Sing so I could witness the authentic Auburn style of penitentiary without the distraction of Mr. Elam Lynds and his busy lash. This last comment I understood exactly. He was opposing the threatened cruelty of the Auburn system but was also against the Quakers. He hoped, I read--and this was perhaps the sixth time my eyes had crossed his sentence--that I would be a guest in his own home and make the acquaintance of
those members of my family as yet unknown to you
.

Dear heavens. Dear Miss Godefroy. She had spoken of me.

The door flung open, banging brass on brass. And there was Mr.
Stasis
himself, his hair standing high, wearing a comical yellow nightshirt that did not protect one from his bony knees and big raw feet.

"I'm very sorry," he declared.

Well
, thought I, as I appraised the apparition, a kind of Holy Rooster.

"I am extremely sorry," he said. "I wished only to serve."

Serve what? I thought. Dear Lord, look at him.

"I had no clue you wished Moliere in bloody
verse
. You did not say so. Sir. You never did."

"I said
Tartuffe
. Dear fellow."

"And
Tartuffe
you would have had, but there was not a bloody crumb of him. The old Yankee said he had no call for
Tartuffe
. I did not believe him until he showed me he had almost nothing in the language. It was English floor to ceiling, books of the very worst kind. How to do this. How to do that. And Bibles. And arguments about the soul. Shelves of them, and not a word you'd take some pleasure in."

"You should dry your clothes."

"I don't give a fart about my clothes. I care about your bloody book."

"Mr. Larrit, you will go away and be very quiet."

"I am set to save your book," he said, more quietly, searching in his pockets to no avail.

"If you must, please do it then."

"Wait sir. I will convince you yet."

"Of what?"

"This
Impromptu
is your man."

Did the idiot think I would take Miss Godefroy walking so I could act out for her a great man's failure?

"No, no, let it rest poor fellow."

"Ah, but I have discovered sawdust," he said, and was gone, leaving me with a mystery I had little inclination to investigate.

The book, being ancient and handsomely bound in calfskin, was clearly a fetish. He revered the
objet
, mistaking it for what it contained, an embarrassing misunderstanding such as the Negro James had suffered when he took that gentleman's black hat and placed it on his own grizzled head. Thinking himself elevated, he became comic. So it was with the agitated Mr. Stasis and his
Versailles Impromptu
.

At the same time I was touched by his remorse. It was the first sign he had ever given that he truly wished to serve me, and it suggested a happier prospect for the days and weeks when we would collate the pages of my interviews, transcribe them, and begin the first rough ordering of the French commissioner's report. I returned to my study of the character of Mr. Lynds who had placed a cutthroat razor in a murderer's hands and ordered the felon to shave him before the assembled prisoners.

"Sir."

The Great Bird of the Antipodes had returned, dressed once more in a gray waistcoat although without his hat or shoes.

"There is no staining," he announced.

"Staining?"

"Your pages will be saved. They are ready to be ironed."

And off he went, barefooted, and I felt him running along the centerboard of the ship.

By the time he returned, the last of the sunset lay on the waters of Long Island Sound and I had lit my lantern and tried a taste of ginger wine. He stood at the cabin door, dressed in his frock coat and wearing shoes. In his hand he held the edition I had been so very disappointed by.

"Sir?"

"Please enter."

He stood before me, opening its pages one by one, and--had he been my butler and had the pages been, say, shirts--I would have been impressed with the rescue he had undertaken.

"You see sir," said he. "It is a beauty."

"You are a clever fellow."

He took my compliment solemnly. "I know paper, sir," he said, squatting down beside my chair. I had not the tiniest interest in that rare failure of Moliere's, and yet I looked at what he showed me for as an
objet
one must admit it was a well-made one, the calf covers being gilt tooled with a flower in each corner and a triple fillet.