Edward Laroque Tinker.
"Toucoutou."
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COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY EDWARD LAROQUE TINKER
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
FIRST EDITION
PUBLISHED APRIL, 1928
SECOND PRINTING MAY, 1928
DESIGN AND DECORATIONS BY THE AUTHOR
To My Father
HENRY CHAMPLIN TINKER
and
MY NEW ORLEANS FRIENDS
whom he would have loved as
I do had he known
them
N. B.
It would never have occurred to me to define the word Creole, if I had not come across it in "Modern English Usage," by H. W. Fowler, published in Oxford, England, as recently as 1927, where I found:
"Creole. See Mulatto 3.";
and, upon turning to "Mulatto," came upon this very ambiguous and incorrect definition:
"3. Creole does not imply mixture of race, but denotes a person either of European or (now rarely) of negro descent born and naturalized in certain West Indian and American countries."
It was this that impressed me with the necessity of giving a correct definition.
Most of the good dictionaries in both French and English agree that this word derives from the Spanish "Criollo," which in turn comes from the word "Criar," to create, to be born, and that Creole means the issue of European parents in Spanish or French Colonies; and of course the fact that the parents must be of European descent necessarily implies that they must be entirely white. The "Petit Larousse" specifically says that a Creole is a person of pure white race born in the colonies.
The mistake current among certain misinformed people that Creole denotes a person of mixed white and negro blood is due possibly to the fact that they confuse the noun Creole with the adjective Creole. It has been customary over a period of years to apply the adjective creole to anything produced in Louisiana; so there are creole carrots, creole mules, creole eggs, and, in the same way, creole negroes, to differentiate them from the "bossals," as the negros imported from Africa were called. But when the noun Creole is used, it can mean only one thing and that is a pure white person born of European parents in Spanish or French colonies.
In justice to the many delightful and cultivated Creoles whom I have the pleasure of knowing, I feel I must add that the Creoles who appear as characters in this book are for the most part of very humble origin; and, although like personalities did exist, they should not be taken as any criterion of the best element of the race. Indeed, the Creoles themselves have coined a word to describe such people, and call them "creolasse."
For those who are interested in the meaning of this and of the other Creole words a glossary has been provided in the back of the book.
ONE
"BRONZE JOHN" was King. His saffron shadow hung over New Orleans like a pall. The hot streets unevenly paved, when at all, with large stone blocks, brought from abroad as ballast in the bellies of ships, radiated a stifling heat.
Not a sound broke the quiet of the Third District, which lay drowsing just below the Vieux Carre. The Creoles called it the Faubourg Marigny because the land had once belonged to the Marigny-Mandevilles, Franco-American hosts of Louis Philippe when he visited Louisiana. It was a debonair scion of this distinguished family, Bernard de Marigny, a gay dog in the grand manner, who had laid out and sold this suburb. He was driven to this sacrifice by debts, superinduced by his unfortunate habit of lighting his cigars with five dollar bills and his theory, sedulously practiced, that no price was too high to pay for good wine, beautiful women or fast horses. The names he gave the streets were more illuminating than many biographies. Love street received its appellation because it was there he kept his sweethearts and, very logically, Goodchildren street was near by. Craps street was so named because he lost the lots on both sides of it during a session of that subtle game by wrongly predicting the arrival of a seven before an eleven; and he indicated his attachment to the cause of culture by baptizing other streets Music, Art, Painters, Poets, Great Men and History.
But not even a ghost of past pleasantries lingered there now. All doors were latched and the green blinds that guarded every window were tightly shut as if the weary houses wished to hide their sorrows by closing their eyelids. A couple of listless men, in a dumpcart drawn by a dejected mule, turned the corner and one slowly climbed over the wheel to empty some carbolic acid into the open gutters "to prevent the spread of the contagion."
The rattle of great wheels bumping over the ruts and the brisker click of steel-shod hoofs on stone broke the hush as a huge cotton float, drawn by four mules on whose flanks the constant friction of the trace chains had raised long lines of foamy sweat, came down the street. The negro driver, balancing marvellously, cracked a whip and snipped the near leader on one of his long ears in an effort to obtain more speed and be rid of his horrid load — an enormous mound of piled pine coffins, unpainted, and raw looking, that dripped a trail of disinfectant on the road like the track of a snake in dust.
Hundreds of small white rectangles were attached to every lamp post, fence and door jamb. The slightest breeze made them flutter in the wind and the crisp rustle of these bits of paper sounded like spirit voices whispering, "Decede! Decede!" They were the printed death notices with which the Creoles always announced a demise in their families. Quaint sad little cuts of a tombstone, shadowed by a weepingwillow watered by a weeping widow, adorned them,and a deep black border framed all the particulars of birth, death, parentage and place and time of burial. Streamers of crepe hung mournfully here and there on door knobs — black accents of grief.
The sinister silence that brooded over the Faubourg was in no way disturbed by the one tiny figure in sight — a little girl not more than seven or eight who sat on the scrubbed wooden steps of a small single storied Spanish house roofed with heavy tile. She was pretty in an exotic way, with her glossy brown hair in two braids down her back, and large lovely blue eyes whose dark lashes were so long and thick they cast a purple shadow on the smooth creamy mellowness of her skin. Her simple little guinea-blue dress, spotless and fresh, showed she was scrupulously cared for. She had been crying and tears made her eyes glisten as she kept looking up and down the street.
Heat poured down mercilessly and was reflected back and forth from the walls of the houses. The little girl waited — a half hour — an hour, but never once relaxed her tearful vigilance. The sound of hoofs came finally, but this time gentle, slow and plodding. Toucoutou looked up and the ghost of a smile broke through her tears. She knew before it came in sight that the noise was made by Dr. Octave Boisdore's old white horse, "Charbon," that had dragged, so faithfully for the last eighteen years, his quaint two-wheeled caleche, an Americanization of a Cuban volante.
Toucoutou hurried in and scratching gently on a closed door inside, whispered, "Voici le medecin!" Running out again she got to the front door just as the small negro driver pulled up at the banquette. The doctor's chin was sunk in his splendid white beard; little trickles of sweat rolled from under his high silk hat down the sides of his accipitrine nose into his moustache; his black Prince Albert coat, the necessary insignia of his profession even in that heat, was hunched at the shoulders and greyed with dandruff. The poor man slept, exhausted by the endless round of night and day visits the yellow fever epidemic imposed on every available physician. The little coachman, who was black as soot, shook his master's arm. By some strange whimsy the doctor had always insisted on calling him "Neige" or "Snow," just as he had called his old white horse "Coal." Immediately Dr. Boisdore was just as alert as if he had never dozed and, briskly stepping from his chariot, he put his hand on Toucoutou's head and smiling down said, "Eh bien, cherie, how goes it with Bujac?"
"Badly, very badly," replied the little girl in French, "I ran to your office two hours ago, but of course you were not there, and all I could do was to write on the slate on the door for you to come."
The doctor hurried in and opening the door upon which Toucoutou had scratched, closed it behind him, leaving the child frightened and apprehensive crouching down near the jamb.
Within the room the atmosphere was unspeakable. Although the temperature outside was over a hundred degrees, the two windows were both tightly closed and shuttered and for forty-eight hours the door had only been opened long enough to permit the necessary entrances and exists. The airtight room was stifling and foul with the awful cadavric stench peculiar to yellow fever. Pushed in a far corner, to protect it from even a stray seepage of air, was an enormous four post bedstead whose smooth Santo Domingan mahogany columns were as large around as a woman's waist. On it lay the figure of a man. His drawn haggard face of a terrible sulphur yellow was just discernible in the dim light, with dark eyes shiny with fever and a mop of moist black hair sticking to his forehead in dank wisps. From time to time he twisted querulously, seeming to struggle to throw off the heavy blankets that smothered him up to his chin.
Holding the coverings in place with one hand, a tall straight full-bosomed woman rose from a chair by the bedside and shook hands with the doctor as he asked: "Bon jour, Mme. Sevrisol, how goes your patient?"
"Eh bien, me, I am afraid, doctor. Two hours ago he retched and retched and there came — the black vomit — like coffee grounds. I know what that means, I have nursed too many." Tears welled from her blue eyes and she sobbed, "What will become of poor little Toucoutou and me?"
Although many times the kind old man had beheld the same tragedy, he had never become callous; and patting Claircine Sevrisol's shoulder he said, "Bien, bien, ma fille, il ne faut pas vous decouragez. I have had cases where even after the black vomit they are walking the streets today. Good nursing is everything and, Dieu salt, no man could have better than you. Just so soon as you called me and I see he had fever and pains in his back and his legs, I knew at once and no time was lost. Did I not cup him right away of a pint of blood to reduce the congestion?"
His words made Claircine remember the horror she had felt when he pressed the little square of bronze to the back of Bazile's neck. She could still hear his scream as the doctor touched the spring which released the flock of tiny blades that slashed into his skin. She had thought the old man callous when he had paid no atten tion and gone calmly ahead touching a match to a rag saturated with turpentine which he had put in a glass cup. She had almost gone faint as, after it had flamed a second, she had seen him clap the glass over the scarified tissue which the vacuum caused to bulge up into the cup and ooze blood from every cut.
She was brought back from the memory of her horror by the sound of the doctor's voice continuing, "And did we not then start to clean his system of the venom? Emetic, mercurial purge, ten grains of quinine and then the opium to quiet him. You gave them as I told you, didn't you?"
He waited for no answer but went on garrulously: "I know you have permitted no courant d'air to blow on him to cause a congestion. I don't understand what can be the matter. There cannot be much of the venom left in his system, but you might try putting a freshly sliced onion by his bedside — they say it absorbs it. But be sure to change the slices often and burn them after wards or otherwise you will spread the disease. It is lucky for Bujac that he has it today when he can have the attention of an enlightened physician. When I was a young man in the epidemic at Mobile the doctors shaved the heads of their yellow fever patients and put a heavy blister on their skulls and one on their backs right over their kidneys. The Spanish Inquisition could have done no more — the poor devils could only lie on their stomachs."
As he talked he gently pushed the woman away and felt the patient's pulse with one hand while he held in the other an ornate gold watch as large as a turnip.
"Ah ha! His fever has increased, his pulse is stronger, maybe there is too much of that rich Santo Domingo blood in his veins yet. It might help to get eight leeches and place four on each mastoid right behind the ear. Not yet would I dare cup him again."
Claircine breathed a sigh of relief.
On and on went the doctor. "Rest assured that the latest discoveries of medical science are helping Bujac. Send Toucoutou for the leeches; let your patient have a sup, no more, of orange flower water every now and then and above all keep him well covered up and let him perspire as much as possible. No courant d'air. That is all you can do except to pray le Bon Dieu."
He got up saying, "I almost forgot; do not be afraid if you hear cannon fired at sunset. Someone has told the Mayor and his associates, ce tas d'imbeciles, that it will change the atmosphere and disperse the infection. He has ordered it done. He's so panic-stricken that he would repeat the Credo backwards if anyone told him it would stop the plague." The doctor was off on his hobby and Claircine knew she could not stop him.
"Fools," he exploded, "if they would only clean up the stinking swamps that empest the city; if they would see to it that the filth from the cesspools is not washed into the houses on every flood, they might accomplish something. Even Dr. Latour has gone crazy and is try ing to have orders issued forcing everyone to build daily fires in their back yards for an hour every morning and evening to kill the infection. Sometimes the retreat of the epidemic has followed all this burning of tar and firing of artillery, but it's just as the eating of a salt herring was followed by the recovery of a Frenchman and the death of an Englishman."
"Ces sottes! ces insenses! They are no better than the inhabitants of that Italian town who, in the Middle Ages, stopped a plague by killing all the cats and dogs and throwing their bodies into the streets and public squares to putrefy. Ca m'agace! But I talk too much. Attention! You and Toucoutou must be careful. Dieu sait I want no more patients. Remember, take a purge twice a day and at night wash your bodies all over with this alkali which I will give you. Dr. Latour believes that to carry a piece of camphor in the pocket helps. Of this I cannot say. At least it will do no harm. Bonsoir et bonne chance."
As the doctor went out Claircine called Toucoutou to the door and gave her some money to go to the pharmacie of M. Bonnabel to get the leeches.
The child ran every step of the way, glad to feel of some use. She had hardly breath enough left to gasp out, "Oh! Monsieur Bonnabel, gimme quick eight leeches, he's awful bad."
The queer old dessicated Frenchman, creaking in all his joints, tottered over with surprising speed, to the window where there stood a glass bowl containing a few bits of floating green seaweed and a dozen or so revolting-looking leeches stuck, like blobs of black sealing wax, to the inside of the glass. The child watched him with fascinated repugnance as he fished out the nasty little beasts with his hand, turning his head the while to say, "I'm sorry they will cost you more dear, yes, I no can hire them out lak' other time. Since the fever I must say, parole d'honneur, that they innocent of a bite lak' a new born bebe." Placing them in a little pasteboard box he put it in the child's hand. She turned to go but a deep rooted habit overcame her and she said, "Gimme lagniappe, lickerish root." The druggist opened one of a long line of glass jars and handed her a bark-covered piece of brown wood about the size of a lead pencil.
Quickly home, she crept into the sick room and gave Claircine the box. Shivering in frozen horror she watched her hold the slimy slugs to the flesh behind the sick man's ears until they fastened and, after a while, began to bloat perceptibly. The sight so upset her that she forgot to chew the "lickerish" root she still held clutched in her hand.
Claircine turned to the child and said, "Stay here, chere, until I go fix supper."
Toucoutou gulped and her under lip trembled. Stay in that terrible room, alone with that restless figure that no longer recognized her, watch those black beasts suck his blood — ough! But obediently she sat down in the chair next the bed and stared straight ahead into the darkness, trying to forget all the horrors which surrounded her. Five minutes passed and she never moved a muscle — then suddenly her head collapsed into her hands and she sobbed noiselessly, tears running out between her fingers. Thus Claircine found her when she came back and gathered her into her arms to comfort her. When the tears had stopped the woman said, "Allez mignonne! Go and eat the nice warm supper I have left on the back of the stove for you."
When the little girl closed the door behind her, Claircine busied herself straightening the bedclothes. The leeches had swollen to nauseating monstrosities; some had fallen off, disgorging drops of blood upon the pillows. She removed them all and placed the lethargic black blobs on a saucer by the bed. Then she put fresh pillowcases on the pillows damp with sweat.
The patient seemed quieter, he had ceased his nervous tossing; probably the leeches had drained too much of his life's blood. To her experienced eye (she was known as the best nurse in all the quartier) Bazile Bujac was failing; she did not think he could last until morning. Dropping on her knees, she buried her face in the blankets and wept softly. Finally she became calmer and, still on her knees, dragged herself over to the bureau on which a candle burned before a plaster image of a saint. Fervently she prayed to the Sainte Vierge for the life of her man, prayed with a passion and a straining concentration that would have moved even a painted figure with a plaster heart. She promised Her a weekly candle at Her shrine in the Cathedral St. Louis if her prayers were granted.
Finally she got to her feet with decision and opening the door found poor little Toucoutou, like a sad but faithful puppy, sound asleep in a pathetic huddle on the floor just outside. Tears sprang once more to her eyes as she lifted the child gently and carried her to her bed in the adjoining room. She managed to undress her without waking her up and, kissing her on the forehead, left her to go back to her patient.
Holding a candle to light his face, she stared intently at Bazile, trying to believe he looked better; but no, her prayers had not been answered — already his eyes had begun to lose the shine of fever and become filmed and dull, the bilious yellow of his face and neck more pronounced and the cadavric odor in that stifling room of rebreathed air almost unbearable to her nostrils refreshed by her short absence. Even his body had begun to chill. She was desperate, he must not die — no, not even if God wished it. Vague atavistic memories stirred in her. Secret tales and teachings from her mother, more than half-forgotten, became alive once more in her memory. Suddenly they quickened her into action. She hurried from the room to the back door and, reaching out into the darkness beside it, grasped the wooden washtub (sole bathing facility for the family) that hung there and carried it quickly to the sick room. Then she went on mysterious errands to various parts of the house and came back bringing strange incongruous objects.
In that ghastly shadowy room, stifling and stinking with the stench of death, where one sole candle wore its small yellow halo and the quiet body of a man lay staring sightlessly into the darkness that was the ceiling, this woman went about her work quickly and deftly without the slightest hesitation, as if she was directed by some secret voice. First she poured water into the tub from a pitcher until it covered the bottom two inches deep. Kneeling beside it, her shadow on the wall burlesqueing her every movement in a monstrous manner, she placed an axehead in the centre of the tub, upright upon the surface from which the helve should have jutted out. On the side uppermost she carefully balanced four horsehairs — three black and one white. Then she poured a little pile of red pepper into a silver teaspoon and placed it on top of the hairs, its bowl fitting into the helve hole. With infinite precaution so as not to upset anything she pushed the tub with its strange cargo under the bed. Taking a handful of cornmeal she scattered it in the form of a cross on the floor in front of the tub and wet the lines with sprinkled rum made from molasses. Still crouching beside the cross she began to intone quietly strange muttering words. She did not even know their meaning; the voice of her forebears was speaking, and in her ears sounded the monotonous maddening beat of the ancestral tam tam.
Tigi li papa,"
Toucoutou awakened by the droning sound left her bed and crept to the door in her white nightgown, her eyes large with fear and gooseflesh raising on her arms and back like the teeth on a rasp. Hot as was the night, she felt cold all over as she heard Claircine's mellow voice with its rhythmic reflection of the thudding big drums softly continue:
Ah tingonai ye:
Ah tingonai ye, ah tingonai ye,
Ah ouai ya, ah ouai ya,
Do se dans godo
Ah tingonai ye."
Pure fear held the child as, kneeling on the scrubbed cypress boards, she put her eye to the keyhole and, in the dim light, saw the woman's body gradually cease its rhythmic writhings that had synchronized with her incantations. She saw the yellow faced creature on the bed twitch weakly as the woman drew her superb figure up to its full height, opened both arms wide in the sign of the cross, threw back her head and began to pray the Voodoo, serpent god of Africa, to spare the life of her man. Suddenly Claircine fell to her knees, prostrating herself to the gris-gris she had made. The prayer continued, her voice taking on the unreal emotional intonations of the camp-meeting evangel. The sounds finally ceased and the figure of the woman lay exhausted on the floor shaken gently at intervals by little sobs like the catching of a breath.
Toucoutou, her knees red and aching from the rough grain of the wood, crept miserably back to her bed unutterably oppressed by a feeling of absolute loneliness — of being deserted. The two people she knew best and loved most had suddenly become as strangers to her.
That weak raving thing, that lay on the bed in the other room, she could not recognize as the cheerful kindly affectionate man she had been so fond of, and certainly that wild figure she had seen through the keyhole, doing such strange things, could not be the same person who fed and dressed her every day and whom she adored. Never again could she have the same feeling of perfect safety she used to know when cuddled in those arms. She suffered as only a sensitive child can and her bed seemed a little white island on which she had been set adrift — alone — in a limitless black universe. Finally however, she slept.
In the other room Claircine dragged herself to her feet and laid her firm strong hand with its delicately tapered fingers on her patient's forehead. She was not going to trust his recovery to supernatural powers alone; good nursing should not be neglected. His fever seemed to have diminished. She held up his head and forced him to swallow a few sips of orange flower water and then sat down at the head of his bed. She felt she had done everything in her power. Now she could only wait and tell her beads.
TWO
The night wore on, and all the little pinnacles of Claircine's life drifted her mind as she sat quietly by the bedside of Bazile St. Amant Bujac.
She remembered her emotions the first time she saw him almost as vividly as though it had happened the day before. The plantation near Lance-a-Veau had been simmering with excitement for a month with the news that the young master was returning to Santo Domingo from Paris, where he had been at school ever since a child. There had been a tremendous housecleaning under the eagle eye of Comba Nea, her mother, a statuesque bronze mulatress descended from a long line of Arada Voodoo priests. Claircine had worked with the other house servants, lost in admiring wonder as she dusted the carved rosewood furniture or ran her fingers over the lustrous surfaces of the flowered red silk brocades that covered it. She had stared in awe at the two sparkling cascades of pendant crystal drops that fell in a shower of fractured light from the ceiling at each end of the grand salon and had tried to count the number of candles concealed within their glittering mazes. What had most fascinated her, however, had been a lovely clock, cunningly made of marble and bronze-dore which ticked under its oval dome of glass flanked on each side by branching candelabra.
Claircine remembered with what meticulous care Comba Nea had looked to her toilette on the Sunday morning the young master was expected. When she had started to tie her gaudiest tignon around her chestnut brown hair (which together with her blue eyes were her only inheritance from her dead father, a Frenchman from Normandy who had come over as an indentured carpenter) the older woman had said, in her soft creole patois, "Non! Non! If you wear that you might as well have nigger wool. Show your good points. Let the field hands wear the tignon, but you're the prettiest girl on the plantation and maybe you'll get your freedom yet." There had been a meaning twist to her words that Claircine had not fully understood at the time.
She felt again the queer fullness in her throat and the flutter of excited nerves that had come to her standing with the other house slaves marshalled at the front steps behind the commanding figure of Comba Nea, as the travelling carriage, drawn by six horses, drove up bringing Bazile and a gay party of friends. She heard once again two hundred field slaves, massed on the lawn opposite the front door, raise their shout of welcome:
The econome, old M. Boncheval, came down the steps to greet the young master; and Bazile's gay dashing figure and supple assured movements, as he turned to shake hands with the old man who had come to give account of his stewardship, won her heart at sight.
M. Boncheval led Bazile and his guests inside to the delicious dejeuner that had been prepared for them and Comba Nea hurried Claircine and three young quadroon slave girls around the house and in the back door to serve at table. Every succulent course was washed down with a different wine imported from France, and as one guest remarked, each one seemed to be superior to the others that had gone before. When they had finished their gay meal the gentlemen repaired to the front gallery for coffee, cognac and cigars.
Once more a great shout went up from the waiting slaves and the black men sitting astride the big drums beat a fanfare on them with their hands. A tall fine looking negro, Kiflo, with mighty muscles and a shiny black face, came to the front and made a commanding gesture. The noise ceased. The banza players began to tune their rude instruments, made from half gourds attached to the ends of sticks and strung with four or five strings. It was the ancestor of the modern banjo.
Kiflo, like all Mandingoes, had brought with him from Africa the art of improvisation. He gave a signal and there was a roll of drums and picking of banzas as he intoned in a rich throaty baritone.
"Mire, petit mouche vini!
Jordi c'est jour calinda."
as they grimaced and gestured, swayed and jumped; the men wonderfully agile in their short cotton pants and colored vareuses; the women suggestively graceful in their batiste chemises and abbreviated cotton print skirts that clung to every swelling line of their figures. Their barbaric necklaces and earrings together with the brilliant Madras handkerchiefs which they wore on their heads gave the scene an exotic touch.
The chant continued, the leader intoning a line and all the other negroes joining in the chorus, their voices making strange wild chords.
Kiflo, — "Quand nous va caba danse a nous,"
All, — "Mire, petit mouche vini"
Kiflo, — "Maitre layo va bail calalou"
All, — "Mire, petit mouche vini"
Kiflo, — "Zote va gagne empil tafia"
All, — "Mire, petit mouche vini"
Kiflo, — "Et demain nous va cabicha"
All, — "Mire petit mouche vini."
On and on it went until finally Kiflo's invention failed him and he stopped the singing with another of his regal gestures.
There was a pause for breath and then he announced, "Calinda!" The drums had begun to boom and the banzas to twang as eight or ten young mulatresses stepped forward and started to dance.
The rest of the negroes sat on their haunches in a large circle rolling their eyes, keeping time with their heads and patting their hands in rhythm to the drums. The girls danced with their whole bodies and encouraged by the shouts of the negroes and the laughing applause of the gentlemen on the gallery, they accented suggestively the movement of their hips. As they began to show signs of tiring, Claircine remembered how someone had seized her arm and whispered in her ear "Dansez!" Then she felt herself shoved into the circle. Obediently she had started, but soon found herself dancing alone as the other girls melted away at Comba Nea's command whispered in a strange dialect. She did the same steps, but, where the other girls had been coarse and lascivious, she was perfectly free from any immodesty, for she danced in a gay graceful innocent way. She imparted a certain unconsciously sensuous quality to her movements that had its effect on the men on the verandah. She danced with her whole heart aimed at the young master — the handsomest and most romantically attractive man she had ever seen. He never took his eyes from her for an instant and, with quick female intuition, she realized she had aroused his desire. As she danced forward to the steps in one final burst she heard one of the gay young blades say to Bazile, "A pearl, mon cher, a pearl! If you wish to sell her, I'll give you one hundred and fifty English pounds." To which Bazile had laughingly replied, "I must test my treasures before I agree to sell any of them."
Suddenly, with a quaint little gesture of submission she stopped and as she stood, breathing deeply, she felt she had made an alluring picture with the rich color on her cheeks showing through the toned ivory of her skin and her lithe young figure curving into passionate possibilities. As she looked straight at Bazile a spark passed between them.
At fourteen she had become his mistress, and she still remembered the thrill of that first night when she had gone to his room. Women ripen early in the tropics. It had been inevitable — it was the custom of the country. Just as King Solomon's contemporaries would have regarded him as mildly insane or physically debilitated if he had forsworn his endless marital opportunities, so the fact that a rich planter did not take unto himself a golden colored concubine was considered as a reflection upon the manliness of his character and even upon his virility; but by no stretch of the imagination was his abstinence regarded as a virtue. To have a good looking octoroon mistress was the chic thing to do; it was just as much a mark of social distinction as the possession of fine horses and carriages, — and equally a reason for pride.
For six months she had been absolutely happy, every day spent in a golden haze of anticipation of the nights, when, with bare feet, she stole into his room after everybody was asleep. She knew he loved her passionately. He never seemed to tire.
Then had come red rumors of revolution to disturb her Garden of Eden. Terrible tales from other parts of the island reached them. The negroes were said to be rising, setting the torch to fields of cane, burning the plantations, violating white women and murdering their husbands, parading in wild frenzied mobs with bodies of babes impaled on pikes carried on their shoulders. Rumor had it that the brutal black leader Etienne had decapitated M. de Souverbie and used his skull as a basin for his calalou; while Jeannot, even more bestially ferocious, was supposed to have torn the unborn child from the beautiful young Madame de Sejourne before the very eyes of her husband and thrown it to the pigs, as he kicked her corpse and shouted, "Eh, bien! you'll make no more whites."
Claircine shivered involuntarily as she remembered her horror when she first realized that her mother Comba Nea was fanning the flames for a rising in their district. Her fear had been entirely for her Bazile. What if the mad negroes were to treat him as they had Robert the carpenter in another part of the island where they decreed he die by way of his trade, and had strapped his body between two boards like the ham in a sandwich and then proceeded to saw them slowly in two — and Robert with them.
To protect her master she had appeared to acquiesce in all Comba Nea's projects and had even gone to a meeting of the negroes in the forest. The picture of what she saw there still scarified her memory. Once more she heard the maddening iterated thudding of the tam-tams and watched the glare of the bonfire gleaming upon the body of her mother, a wild figure naked except for a red cord bound around her forehead and some red handkerchiefs tied to her waist that swayed and jerked with her mad gyrations. Sweat made glistening highlights that rounded her quivering breasts and the salient curves of her lascivious body. In the shadows hundreds of dark figures twisted and shook convulsively in the hectic steps of the bamboula. Tam-tata tam-tata tam tam! Tafia rum simmered in a cauldron. From time to time Comba Nea, the Mamanloi, threw in handfuls of dead hornets to give the fighters courage.
Tam-tata tam-tata tam tam! Suddenly the grunts and hard breathing, the sounds of bestial passion that had been coming from the shadows under the giant trees, ceased. The drums stopped. There was a complete hush. Only the crepitations of night insects sounded.
The Mamanloi was frozen with arms outstretched in the sign of the cross; the firelight flickered over her superb figure giving her flesh a vibrant quality as she intoned in a rich emotional voice the same incantation that she, Claircine, had just sung at Bazile's bedside.
Her mind still drifting in the past, she seemed to hear again the hoggish grunt that broke the nervous tension of the crowded blacks and their sibilation of expectancy that sounded like the hiss of a monstrous snake.
A giant negro dragged a huge black boar to the fire. Chanting, the queen danced slowly around it as the dark Colossus turned it on its back struggling and held its feet. With a snakelike motion she snatched a long knife from the altar and slashed it across the pig's throat. Blood spouted out with horrid gurglings and choking sounds. She held a calabash to the gushing red stream and drank deeply of the warm fluid which trickled from the corners of her mouth, maculating her breasts and body.
Tam! tam! tamtam. Tam! tam! tamtam. The big drums started once more, the players astride them beating with their fingers on the goatskin heads.
Negroes, both men and women, crowded around filling vessels with the blood that dabbled their hands and ran down on their chests as they drank. One man fell, on the ground beside the corpse of the boar and held his mouth to the open wound, gulping until others greedily pulled him away. Tam! tam! tamtam.
The bamboula became even wilder, while women squatting around the carcass cut off the bristles in small bunches and tied each one with a bit of string carefully wound in the same direction. These the Mamanloi laid on the altar in front of a box in which was a serpent, symbol of the great god Vaudoux. As the men danced by she gave to each one a little bundle of the bristles, telling them that, as long as it was in their possession, no knife or bullet, not even a silver one, could kill them.
All this was burned into Claircine's mind and she remembered how she had quietly escaped and had managed to reach the big house safely after she learned the negroes were trying to nerve themselves to an attack on Bazile's plantation at sunrise. Not once had any idea of loyalty to her mother crossed her thoughts; her every anxiety had been for her master. Creeping quietly into Bazile's room she waked him gently. When she had told her story they went to his safe and took all the gold they could carry. Any attempt at resistance would have been suicidal. Knowing this they paddled down the river in a pirogue. By daylight they were on a vessel bound for Cuba and as they looked back they saw a column of smoke that marked the grave of Bazile Bujac's fortune. She remembered their stay at Saint Yago de Cuba where many of the refugees from Santo Domingo had gathered and later their trip to New Orleans by vessel. How seasick she had been!
New Orleans she liked better than Cuba, because there she met many of her friends who had preceded her and the language was French. Their supply of gold had almost disappeared in Saint Yago because Bazile never refused a fellow countryman poorer than he and the condition of some of the ladies who had taken refuge there was pitiful. However, Bazile's delightful manners and charming personality soon got him the job of teaching the rich Creole ladies of New Orleans the latest dances from Paris. He gained enough in this way for them to take a small house on Maine street where she had done the cooking and made him perfectly comfortable. The joy of those two years was still fresh in her heart and she had been almost glad he had lost his money because it enabled her to do so much more for him.
But it did not last long. One day he came home and told her he was going to marry a wealthy Creole, the daughter of a wine merchant. Jealous rage flamed up in her heart and she snatched a knife with which she had been peeling vegetables and tried to kill him. He was quick enough to wrench it from her hand and force her kicking and biting into a chair. The sound of his voice finally brought her back to her senses as she heard him say, an implacably hard look in his eye, "Claircine, you know I love animals, but when they disobey me I know how to treat them. If you're quiet and make no scandal, I'll give you your freedom and buy this house for you and see you have some money every month, but if you make any scenes or cause me any trouble, I'll horsehide you as I would one of my dogs that did not obey me; and I'll sell you as a field hand. Be reasonable, Claircine, you know I was never born to be a dancing teacher and if you'll be patient awhile I'll be able to give you everything you want and even come back to see you now and then."
She remembered she had kept a sullen silence and after a while he left the house angrily. As soon as he had gone she packed up her few dresses and hurried to Madame Rigaud's, an old friend she had known in Santo Domingo.
The next two years of her life had been a nightmare, notwithstanding Bazile had given her her freedom. Sick at heart, for she never ceased to love him, she had listened through pique to the importunities of a rich Creole, Monsieur Sevrisol, and had become his mistress. He had taken a house for her in the American Faubourg where, speaking only a very broken English, she was desperately lonely, far from her friends. Here a daughter was born. At the end of two years an epidemic of yellow fever had carried off both her lover and her daughter. She grieved for the child. Sevrisol she never loved. She left the American quarter which she so hated and with the money he had bequeathed her she had bought the little house where she was now living.
Then came the glad day when Bazile drifted back to her, complaining bitterly of an unhappy marriage. They had been together ever since — very discreetly, for he continued to live with his wife who had inherited the wine business.
Now the yellow fever had come once more to take toll of her. When it broke out first, Bazile had put his wife and children on the train and sent them to the healthy North. He remained, secure in the thought that he was immune after having survived so many epidemics, and had gone to stay with Claircine. How they both looked forward to their holiday! He had declared he was starving for some of her calalou, that no one else in that benighted country could cook it with the real taste of Santo Domingo.
And now after all these years, here was poor Bazile at death's door!
Claircine got up from her chair and stretched her stiffened body. Putting a hand on Bazile's forehead she decided his fever had gone down. A faint ray of light slid through the hole cut near the top of the solid wooden shutters, and she knew it was morning. As she started for the kitchen she heard the noise of wheels and then the terrible call that had come each morning since the epidemic began — "Bring out yo' dead!" The wagon stopped. In a sudden nervous panic she ran to her front door and looked out in time to see a long white bundle carried from the house across the street and callously dumped into a cart on top of other like packages. The wind fluttered the covering and a human foot stuck out stark, strained, yellow and tragic. The driver jerked at his mules and shot a stream of tobacco juice over the wheel as he said, "Ain't doin' so good terday Zizi, only eleven so fur." She glanced quickly at the man addressed and recognized Zizi Bidonnier, the cesspool cleaner, who had enlarged the field of his endeavors.
Claircine slammed the door and ran unnerved and sobbing into the kitchen.
THREE
Two days had seen Bazile Bujac on the road to recovery but still very weak. Claircine could not quite decide whether to attribute his cure to her prayers or to her incantations, though deep down in her heart she inclined to the belief that it was the power of voodoo that had saved his life. Exhausted by her days and nights of ceaseless nursing, she went to get a little sleep; leaving Toucoutou with her patient.
Bazile, who had the ravenous hunger peculiar to those recovering from yellow fever, begged the child to bring him the rest of the red beans and rice left from her lunch. Claircine, of course, would have known better, but little Toucoutou merely did as she was told.
The heavy food eaten before the veins in the stomach had had time to recover their normal tone proved too much for his weakened blood vessels and he was suddenly taken with an internal hemorrhage. Toucoutou ran screaming for Claircine, but by the time she got there he was dead — a dreadful sight as he lay on the bed, his skin a deep yellow approaching green, and blood oozing from his nose and running from the corners of his mouth over the bedclothes.
For Claircine the world seemed to have stopped. She sobbed and groaned with all the emotional abandon characteristic of the negro side of her ancestry.
As she recovered from her first paroxysm of grief the memory of that terrible cry, "Bring out yo' dead!" cut into her consciousness. She knew that in that sweltering heat interments could not be delayed, for with deaths averaging a thousand a week, the few embalmers worked only for the very rich; so she realized that if her Bazile was not to be thrown wrapped in a sheet into that frightful human offal wagon, she must act quickly.
She sent Toutoucou, red eyed and frightened, scurrying to get Madame Rigaud to stay with the body, meanwhile putting on the black dress that forms part of every Creole wardrobe, even the poorest, against just such an emergency.
When Madame arrived, sympathetic and voluble, Claircine took Toucoutou by the hand and hurried rapidly to Gossiron's over on Rampart, through streets just beginning to show signs of life with the cooling coming of sunset. Just as she arrived the hearse drawn by its team of sweat-greyed blacks was driving in. The office was filled by overwrought men and women who clamored around a small fat Creole, clad in the traditional uniform of his profession — a black frock coat and tie. His hands flew around his head in rapid in-coordinated gestures as he shouted, "Non! Non! c'est impossible. I hav' no more coffin. My men are exhaust'." Claircine recognized among the besiegers Madame Giron the wife of the confiseur. She remembered now having heard their daughter had died. Well if Madame Giron could obtain no help, rich as she was, how was she, Claircine, going to get any attention?
As she sat hopelessly in the background, she thought of an Irishman she had once nursed through a bad attack of dengue fever. Yes, she was sure now, it was Dennis Shea and he was one of Gossiron's drivers. If she could only find him. Still holding Toucoutou by the hand, she slipped quietly through a side door into the stable. There was something comforting about the pleasant smell of horses as she walked between the long lines of stalls to a yard in the back and there discovered the man she was looking for sitting in his shirt sleeves on a box, smoking a comforting pipe, his high silk hat pushed on the back of his head. When she told him of Bujac's death he was all quick Irish sympathy and said, "Now listen, I know there ain't a coffin in town but don't ye worry. It ain't Dennis Shea that will let them early morning birds take annybody of yours to his last bed. I ain't fergot how ye saved me from that kind of a ride mesilf. Now ye go home an' don't harry yesilf. After I've had me supper I know where there's some good boards in a fince, an' I'll fetch thim over an' make ye as fine a coffin as any carpinter. Thin in the mornin' I'll sneak me carriage out early widout the boss knowin' an' drive ye to the graveyard."
"Yes, but a priest I mus' have," wailed Claircine, "his soul mus' not stay in the Purgatoire." "Lave it to me," replied the good-hearted Dennis, "lave it to me an' I'll git Father Flynn, as good an Irishman as ever drained a dram, to stop an' say a prayer."
Claircine went home heartened, and after she had given Toucoutou her supper and put her to bed, she began the grewsome task of preparing her man for burial. Her work was lightened by the arrival of Dennis, who came staggering under a load of boards with saw, hammer and nails in a bag over his shoulder. He helped her get the corpse into its clothes and then went out to the kitchen to begin his grim job of carpentry.
Claircine knelt beside the bed where she had watched so many hours and prayed the Virgin that the soul of Bazile should soon go through Purgatory to Heaven; and, holding his cold hand in both of hers, she buried her face in the bedclothes and sobbed desperately. The sound of hammering in the other room brought her back to realities and she went out to the kitchen to drip some coffee to cheer Dennis in his work.
The next morning Claircine and the child were dressed and ready when Dennis drove up with Father Flynn inside his carriage. Toucoutou in a little white dress with a piece of black ribbon around her arm opened the door for them and stood wide-eyed and frightened by the side of the older woman as the Father, standing at the head of the coffin, read something she could not understand from a little black book. Then the two men picked up the rough wooden box, some of the planks of which still bore traces of the yellow-green stain that had protected them when they had been part of a fence. They staggered out to the carriage and propped it up on end on the box seat. Father Flynn said a few perfunctory words advising resignation to the Will of God and hurried away to other duties. Dennis helped the woman and child into the carriage and then climbed up onto the box seat and started off.
As they drove out Claircine sat stiff and bolt upright, her face taut. The nervous way she picked at the handkerchief in her lap showed how hard she was fighting to keep herself in hand. Toucoutou, with all a child's curiosity, could not resist looking out of the window, and what she saw remained indelibly fixed in her mind. She never forgot the man walking along the sidewalk with a coffin, child's size, balanced on his shoulder and water streaming from his eyes; or the black hearses dripping disinfectant like carbolic tears; or the pockmarked negro pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with an overhanging coffin, followed by a black frocked frightened white woman with a child in her arms; or the boys driving dumpcarts, piled high with corpses, who beat their spavined mules to a gallop; or the old woman and the young man tugging together at a child's wagon on which was precariously perched a full sized casket.
People and vehicles got thicker and thicker as they neared the cemetery. The road was just one ghastly funeral procession two and a half miles long. Dennis had to walk his horses. The heat became so intense he pushed his beaver to the back of his head, and, taking off his coat, hung it over the end of the coffin.
Toucoutou could see great lazy columns of smoke trailing black into the skies like enormous streamers of crepe pinned to the clouds. They came from fires of tar burnt in the graveyards as a preventive of infection. But nothing could kill the stench of the tainted air.
The impromptu hearse and mourners' carriage, all in one, stopped near the gates, around which clustered withered old men and greasy women of all colors selling sweetmeats and bellywash; some with their candies on little tables, others with baskets on their arms wandering through the crowd calling their wares.
Lazy green bottle flies, gorged and lethargic, swarmed everywhere, even over the "dainties" of the vendors who made futile attempts to brush them off with fly whips made from strips of gaily colored paper fastened on the end of sticks.
The child sitting in the carriage caught jumbled phrases over the ceaseless humming of the mob:
"Pralines! Pralines!"
"Bel calas tou' chaud!"
"Damn shame yellow jack got him."
"Bel pain patate."
"Creme a la Vanille!"
"God! what a stink!"
People kept ebbing in and out of the gates, their expressions harassed, pitiful, frightened, nauseated, sad, — or worst of all, with the terrible vacant stare of the morbidly curious. One gesture was common to them all, however, each and everyone held his handkerchief to his nose. Here and there moved gravediggers, recruited from the vilest types of black and white laborers, who were easily recognizable because the lower part of their faces were swathed in cheap cheesecloth soaked with camphor.
Dennis picked out an Irishman from among them and beckoning him over, offered him two bits to lend a hand with the coffin.
The man only laughed brutally and answered, "What do ye think I'm in this stink-hole for? Sure an' I wouldn't raise me hand fer less than two dollars an' in there they're paying five dollars an hour to bury th' stiffs an all the whisky ye can guzzle besides."
"It's a hell of a way to treat another Irishman an' him dead," said Dennis as he glanced at Claircine to see if she had overheard his lie.
"Why didn't ye say so at furst?" said the man, "I'll take the two bits then."
Together they lifted the coffin down and Dennis opened the carriage door and helped his passengers out. Then the two men took opposite ends of the pine box and walked heavily into the graveyard with their burden. Claircine followed with only her harried nervous eyes showing above the handkerchief she held to her face, while Toucoutou, horror-stricken, clung to her skirts and openly sobbed with fear.
Inside were sights that would have nauseated far more callous people. Coffins were stacked in piles of fifty under the hot, torrid sun, many of them burst open with the swelling corruption within. Terrible dark trickles oozed from the broken sides and flies feasted everywhere. The stench was almost insupportable. An occasional whiff of carbolic acid came as a blessed relief. Workmen were digging a shallow trench not two feet deep because the water lay so near the surface. They stopped frequently, swore and passed a bottle from hand to hand, lifting the cloths from their mouths to be able to drink. The molasses rum had its effect and one man broke into an obscene song current in the lowest bawdy houses. Another, at the end of the ditch, cursed as his pick met an obstruction and he kicked some human bones from the trench with a brutal, "Room for yo' betters! God damn ye!" Zizi Bidonnier drove in with his grisly load and his helpers shoveled the corpses into the fosse like so much manure, there the gravediggers pushed them around with their mattocks and kicked them into position so that they would take up the least possible room. There were grim glimpses of stark bodies or lemon-yellow staring faces as the coverings of the cadavers became disarranged under this treatment. They filled what was left of the space with others from the pile of bursting coffins and covered them with loosely-heaped clods of earth, through the interstices of which flies found their way to lay their ovaria in the putrescent mass and raise more countless swarms of flies. The workmen threw a few shovels' full of lime over the hundred foot long trench and considered their job finished.
What was evidently the interment of a person of consequence was taking place over in a corner. The family slaves were employed in digging a deep grave and were up to their waists in water. When the coffin was put in, it floated and wouldn't go down to the bottom. This did not find the party unprepared for an auger was produced and holes were bored in the top of the coffin. The two slaves then stood on either end balancing by holding each other's hands, and the casket sank slowly down in the grave with ghastly gurgles of escaping air.
No wonder New Orleans was known up and down the river as the "Wet Grave."
Meanwhile Dennis' helper had gotten tools from somewhere and they were both sweatingly engaged in digging a shallow hole. They dropped the coffin in and threw some earth on top, while Claircine stood by graypale and staring eyed. When it was over the kindly old Irishman led her unresisting back to the carriage through all the horrors she no longer saw. As they drove off she shuddered miserably in one corner of the carriage while Toucoutou huddled in the other. She was weeping quietly.
FOUR
It was two days after the funeral and Claircine was beginning to recover from that frightful nightmare and plan for the future — Toucoutou's and hers. She had loved Bazile passionately and, on the whole, they had been happy. She had forgotten already the terrible scenes that her quick unreasoning temper, inflamed by jealousy, had so often precipitated. But, after all, these had not been frequent and had usually ended in amorous episodes that had healed their rancors. Death often gilds the past.
A nebulous plan had been slowly forming in her troubled brain and now quite suddenly it became concrete, driving her to action. Dressing carefully in the dark clothes she had worn to the funeral, she told Toucoutou she would be gone several hours.
She stepped out of her front door onto a banquette of black dirt held in place by long pieces of the gunwales of flatboats that had served their purpose and been broken up for lumber. From each house little streams of dirty water and filth oozed across the sidewalk into a deep ditch of stagnant water covered with a thick green scum in which could be discerned all sorts of lacy fernlike patterns of noxious looking water vegetation. The road beyond was of sunbaked black mud, cut by deep ruts and pitted by large holes with a treacherous morass of water-logged and rotting refuse on the bottom. A sickening odor assailed her nostrils. The sanitary department, and indeed the whole municipal government, had been paralyzed by the epidemic and the City Council had adjourned after trying in vain to organize a Board of Health.
Coming to the encoignure, Claircine kept her shoes fairly clean by using the stepping stones which crossed the street. The city seemed dead and the only people she met until she reached the St. Louis Cathedral were two ladies leaving a low poverty-stricken cottage on batiste handkerchief. At last they left even the gutters that they could not live in such a place, so she decided that they must belong to "Les Dames de la Providence," an association of Creole ladies who aided the needy sick during times of pestilence.
She entered that naive little church with its triple steeples that made it look as if it had been shaken out of some quaint archaic print and dropped into the Place d'Armes — its perfect setting — and, dipping her fingers into the font of Holy Water at the entrance, made the sign of the cross on her forehead. The cool dim depths of the interior unconsciously brought her peace. She passed the mysterious confessionals with whispering black figures kneeling beside them and genuflected automatically towards the altar as she crossed the centre aisle on her hurried way to the shrine of the Virgin which stood on one side. Lighting her candle from one of those flickering before the image, she placed hers with the rest and knelt reverently, murmuring "Ave Marias" that the soul of Bazile might pass quickly through Purgatory into Heaven. Then she prayed fervently that the errand she was about to undertake would be successful and that the Mother of Christ would look down into her heart and see that her motives were pure. She arose from her knees and walked out slowly so obsessed with her plan that she was oblivious to her surroundings. She did not even see the old women kneeling at the various shrines praying for the recovery of their loved ones. Most of them were swathed in worn black and the pathetic crook of age and hard work showed in their backs. "Corbeaux Noires," the unregenerates called them, and they were a sombre contrast to the rich note of color made by the fat beadle as he slept sterterously in the corner of the last pew, his large paunch distending his impressive scarlet and gold-laced coat to the bursting point. His metal-topped staff of office, which was long enough to reach a drowsy boy even in the farthermost corner, sagged drunkenly from the crook of his elbow.
Coming out into the sunshine Claircine felt encouraged. She believed she had seen a slight smile curve the Virgin's lips as she had prayed and everyone knows that is a good omen.
As she walked along Chartres street, usually teeming with life but now silent and deserted, all the smart shops were shuttered tight. It gave Claircine a terrible feeling of premonition; as if some frightful catastrophe were about to occur. She comforted herself with the thought that the worst possible calamity had already happened to her — she had lost Bazile — any other misfortune would be relatively easy to bear. Turning into several by-streets she finally came to the house of Madame Rigaud.
She was a widow of past middle age whose husband had been a rich planter in Santo Domingo, clever enough to foresee the revolution and to deposit considerable funds abroad before it burst. As a consequence when he died his widow was left moderately well off. She was very fat with a placid kindly face as she sat rocking in her darkened bedroom, fanning herself with a palmleaf fan. The folds of her white muslin blouse volante cascaded down the ample curves of her body giving her somewhat the appearance, in that dim light, of a quite important foaming waterfall. Her hair was done up in papillotes and, just as Claircine was ushered in, she was sipping a glass of sweetened orange flower water.
"Oh! ma chere," she said without getting up, as Claircine kissed her, "it mek my heart to bleed for you, yes. Me, I know what it is;" she sighed ponderously and continued; "but what mek you come out this time o' day, with plenny heat like this?"
Claircine hastened to say: "But I don't find this hot. Out in the street it is more cooler than in here." Then she explained her errand. Madame groaned and positively refused to move out of the house. It was only after much urging that she consented to try, predicting the while she would certainly die if she did. As she fixed her hair and hooked her corsets with much puffing and struggled into respectable black silk, Claircine kept explaining in detail just what she wanted her to do.
Finally the two women started out. Claircine's superb erect figure, well proportioned even if a trifle overdeveloped, was in damning contrast to the older woman's bulging outlines as she walked heavily along almost eclipsed by an enormous black cotton umbrella. Their progress was slow, interrupted by many halts while Madame groaned and mopped her face with a batiste handkerchief. At last they left even the gutters behind and came into a country road where the air, though hot, smelt of clean green things. Madame Rigaud, breathless, rivulets running from every pore, finally balked under the shade of an enormous live oak and refused to budge another inch. She thought she was going to die, she said, and she might just as well do it there without again going into that terrible sunshine. She could not have been wetter if some one had tried to drown her in the Mississippi, she insisted; and in her present condition she was sure the black dye of her dress must be irreparably staining her new corset cover and possibly even her chemise. Today the French dyes were not to be relied upon; they were not as good as when she was a girl. But then how could anything decent be expected from spawn of the Sans Culottes? At heart she was a Royalist. If they were going on such a journey why had not Claircine provided a carriage? She, Madame Rigaud, would have been glad to pay for it, yes, a hundred times rather than ruin all her dessous and risk passing on "of an apoplexy." Claircine had meekly replied that it was impossible to get one as they were all employed in going to funerals. But this in no way pacified the old lady and she continued her tirade as she subsided at the foot of the tree with a soft sqush and a groan and leaned back against the trunk for support. It was a strange contradiction that any one so short of wind could be so long winded, but then that is only another of the inexolicable things about the female.
Claircine saw her plans go glimmering as she looked down at Madame sprawled at the base of the tree, her dark bonnet tilted to one side and her umbrella still open on the ground. She tried to tell her that they were almost there; that if she would only look to the right she could see the roofs of the Ursuline Convent just behind the trees; but the old lady refused to even turn her head. Fanning herself with her damp handkerchief, she said again that if she had to die she would rather die there. Claircine dropped her eyes in utter hopelessness . . . and saw something that cheered her ... a thin line of business-like red ants was disappearing into the intricate convolutions of Madame's starched petticoats. Suddenly there was a frightened squawk and the old lady bounced to her feet as if propelled by some unseen force, and began to beat her skirts wildly, screaming she was being eaten by a serpent. Claircine rushed to her assistance and by shaking the forest of stiff petticoats managed to expel the biting marauders, although in her excitement she exposed to view the starched and fluted bifurcated drawers that protected (or rather failed to) Madame Rigaud's fat thighs. This mishap helped more than any arguments of Claircine to persuade her that the only safe place for her to rest was the convent.
In a final spurt of effort they arrived at the house of the Ursulines, squatting long and low behind its gorgeous old live oaks and seeming to look inscrutably out over the river. Claircine asked the nun who answered her ring if she might see the Mother Superior. The woman said she would find out and ushered them into an enormous, bare, high-ceilinged room with a line of wooden benches placed at mathematical intervals along the four walls. Its austerity was appalling and only relieved by a large painting of the Virgin hung in the dead centre of the further wall, and an old foot-pump harmonium. The picture was evidently executed by an artist whose piety must have made up for his lack of skill.
Madame dropped down on one of the benches and Claircine sat beside her, the cool quiet was grateful to them both after their long hot walk. Twenty minutes passed, giving the younger woman ample time to go over her story once more before the measured clump of squeaky shoes was heard on the bare boards of the hall and the Mother Superior entered followed by a lay sister.
Claircine rose and kissed her hand, as the Superior, her kindly old eyes looking from a calm immobile face, said: "I can see you are in trouble, my child. Sit down and tell me."
Speaking French, their mother tongue, Claircine told her story simply and circumstantially. "Yes, reverend Mother, I am in trouble and only you can help me. I will tell you. To go back to the beginning: Arthemise Desanges came here from Switzerland some years ago, and to support herself, she was compel' to make lady dresses for her living."
"Yes," interrupted Madame Rigaud, "and she was a good dressmaker, too. She made clothes for my two little angels what God was dispose' to take to Heaven."
Claircine paid no attention to the interruption but continued: "Arthemise was young and she was lonely in a strange city, so when she met Jean Jasmin who come from Switzerland like her, — you know what happen'. I ask your pardon, reverend Mother."
"Granted, my child. I have not always been a religieuse; nor are we entirely ignorant of the ways of the world," she replied; a suspicion of a smile coming into her fine tired old eyes.
"Well, Arthemise had two children by Jasmin; first a boy, after that a girl. And when the little Anastasie had only one year, there come the yeller fever; and Arthemise, her home far off, she die, quick like that."
"Ah! it was sad, very sad," broke in Madame. "There she be young and pretty one day, and nex' day she dead, her face yeller like that wall yonder. Me, I went to the funeral."
Claircine went on. "Well, poor Jean Jasmin, he didn' know which way to turn, an he ask my Bazile who was his lodge brother, what he mus' do with those little enfants; and Bazile, he say, 'You just give them to Claircine; she got none of her own and she take good care of them.' So little Anastasie she come to me when she had one year, and her little brother eight years, too. A pretty baby she was, reverend Mother; brown curly hair and blue eyes. I love her like she belong to me. After when a year had pass, Jasmin he died, and last year Maitre (he was the boy child) had a fight with Bazile and run away. But Anastasie she stay with me always, and now she have eight years.
"Three days ago Bazile Bujac, my husban' . . ."
Madame coughed dryly. She had come to help in every way possible, but she could not immolate her feelings sufficiently to permit of Claircine's arrogating to herself Madame's own status of a legitimate married woman. That was asking too much.
Claircine, embarrassed, cast down her eyes and hesitated, before continuing: "He was the same as if he be my husban'. I loved him since I was fourteen an I love him a whole lot more than plenty women what be married by a priest. The reverend mother will understan' when I say that for all my light color I am an octoroon. What would you? Anyhow Bazile he die of fever three days ago." Her voice faltered, sobs choked her throat and her eyes ran with tears.
The Superior patted her hand and talked of the Will of God and the duty of submission.
Claircine became calmer and took up her tale once more. "Now me I am all alone and little Anastasie, — Toucoutou I always called her because she was so round and fat, — has eight years and it much better for a little white girl not to be raised alone in the house of a femme de couleur. If you could take her, good Mother, into your school and give her the education a white child should have. Almost it will kill me to lose her. But me, I have prayed the Virgin to soften your heart that you could take her. Madame Rigaud here, can tell you her mother was a brave femme, laying aside her one weakness; and, as for the child — she has the conduct of a little angel. I work my fingers to the bone to pay what cost you ask, if only you will let me come and see her sometime." Claircine broke down again and seizing the Superior's hand in both of hers kissed it, weeping.
The nun turned to Madame Rigaud and asked her the story was true in every particular, and when she had been answered in the affirmative, she turned to Claircine and said: "Has the child been baptized a Catholic?"
"But yes, Mother — Anastasie Jasmin. Ah, but I forgot, here is her baptismal certificate," and fumbling in her reticule she extracted a much worn legal-looking paper and handed it over.
The Abbess read it,nodded her head and said, "Bring the little girl to see me. I also make no promises, but, is she is the kind you say, we will find a way to keep her in. Dieu sait there will be many gaps in the ranks of our pupils at a time like this. Our charge is two hundred dollars a year and forty-five more for the board over the holidays of August and September.That is without the extras for music and drawing. However, that will make no difference for, if we taker her, we will be willing to accept whatever you are able to pay."
"Dieu soit beni! Now I feel like a heavy load is off my mind," said Claircine, her voice husky with emotion; "I will bring her tomorrow. I am sure you'll take her when you see her."
Turning to the lay sister, the Abbess asked her for a list and handing the printed slip to Claircine said: "This is what the child will need if we take her."
Claircine thanked the Mother Superior with fervor and asked her blessing while Madame Rigaud struggled to her feet and said, "Le bon Dieu will certainly bless you for what you have done this day. Toucoutou is a little cabbage, yes."
As they went out Claircine stopped a moment under the oaks. Now that it was all over she found her hand shaking so that it rustled the paper she still held. As she looked down and read the list of commonplace articles: so many changes of underwear, handkerchiefs, towels, table napkins, one white sunbonnet, two blue ones, "Gingham or Toile du Nord," a net veil, two mosquito bars, blankets, a comfort and "table service (knife, silver fork, spoon and goblet)," her nerves became calmer as she figured out how they could be procured. A sigh from her companion brought her back to earth and they started for town. It was cooler now in the late afternoon and a little breeze had sprung up so Madame was traveling better, but even so they did not arrive at the edge of the city till almost nightfall. As the sun went down the air became on fire with mosquitoes, each with a sting like a fine red hot nail. Madame fought them hysterically waving her perfectly inadequate piece of cambric. Finally she said she could go no further.
As Claircine stood looking desperately at her wondering what she could do to get her companion home before they were both devoured by the maringouins, the old lady suddenly pointed excitedly and said, "Look! Look! The city's all on fire yonder."
Pillars of dense black smoke were rolling up in languid curves fire hundred feet into the still sultry air.
"Mon Dieu," wailed Madame, "my house is burning I know. Oh, what for you make me go out? Who will save all those nice things I have, — my ormolu clock that Monsieur gave me in Paris and those picture of mes enfants?"
Claircine, as soon as she was able to interrupt the flood of bemoanings, said, "Don't worry, the fire is not to your house. It's le Maire, what give order to burn some barrel of tar all over the city to chase the fever. They put it first in the cimetiere. If you had read your L'Abeille this morning you would know all about it."
"Read L'Abeille?" echoed Madame indignantly, "Nevair. I prefer to have it tell me nothiag, nothing. For fifteen year I do not allow it my house, no. Not since it publish' that scandale about my cousin Polycarpe."
"Come leave us go quick. Les maringouins bite too hard," interrupted Claircine, anxious to get home; but her companion still refused to budge even with the help of her arm. Just as she was deciding to leave the old lady where she was and try to get Dennis Shea and his carriage, she heard a pleasant voice behind her saying, "Pardon me, but the lady seems ill. May I help?"
Claircine turned and saw a pleasant faced, young man, very evidently a gentleman, even though he carried a large grocery basket on his arm.
"Thank you, Monsieur," she replied in a relieved tone of voice, wondering what this agreeable American was doing in the French quarter. "If you will take her by her other arm, maybe we can pull her home. She lives not so far away."
The young man inquired about Madame's condition and when he found she was merely tired, he said, "Well you are much luckier than the family I have just left. There was a widow and three children, the youngest three years old. The mother got the fever and the oldest little girl, only eight, cooked for the whole family and nursed her mother besides. They were strangers here and poor, so, when this child came down with the fever too, the whole family would have starved to death if I had not discovered them. I did the best I could but I have so many calls to make. What they needed most was a nurse. I hunted everywhere, but there was not one to be had. At last I had an inspiration and went to Basin street to a house of what they call evil women. There I spoke to the person who ran it and told her all about this poor family. She cried, actually wept real tears and said that all her girls were out nursing but that she would go immediately. We stopped on the way and filled this basket with groceries and medicine and I left her there. No one in the world could be a kinder, gentler nurse. I don't care what you say, that woman has a heart of gold."
"Monsieur speak the truth I know. He is maybe a doctor?" Claircine hazarded.
"Oh no, not at all," he replied, "I am a lawyer by profession, but I am also a member of the Howard Association. You've heard of it; we are all pledged to help the poor and the sick in times of pestilence."
As he talked he was pushing Madame firmly along the street by one elbow and she, like a balky horse whose mind has been taken off its stubbornness, arrived home without realizing it.
She thanked the young man and invited Claircine to come in and repose herself, but the latter refused saying she must hurry home to Toucoutou.
As she went through the streets she saw figures scurrying from barrel to barrel, igniting them with flaming flambeaus that left trails of smoke and sparks as the men ran. They made her think of devils stoking up the fires of Purgatory against the coming of the fever victims, and she shuddered for Bazile and whispered some Hail Marys for the quick delivery of his soul. Smoke poured up in dense clouds and she whiffed with pleasure the decent clean smell of burning tar that seemed to conquer the decaying odors of the ill-kept city.
She found Toucoutou waiting for her. She cooked the child's supper and as they ate it together in the kitchen she told the little girl her plan. Toucoutou wept and flatly refused to go. There were many scenes in the next few days, but before two weeks had gone by An?astasie Jasmin, familiarly called Toucoutou, was an inmate of the Convent school.
Five
When she had been living with Claircine, Tou?coutou had revelled in the almost perfect fre dom of a little wild animal. There had been practically no restraints. If she wanted to go out to play in the sun, she had gone and had come back only when she was tired. All her meals had been movable feasts with hours differing from day to day; but whenever she had been hungry between times, there had always been a cold pone or a sugary baked yam where she could find it. Claircine's rule had been indulgent except for her in frequent outbursts of uncontrollable anger. At those times poor Toucoutou could do nothing right and was often unmercifully slapped. However, she had got to know the storm signals and always took refuge under the house, like a frightened puppy, when she saw them coming and stayed there until she heard Claircine rattling the pots and pans on the stove — a sure sign that she had relented and was cooking a good supper of grillade and rice with pain perdu for dessert to make up for her harshness.
Now since she had come to the convent the child felt unbelievably lonely. To begin with, everyone called her Anastasie instead of Toucoutou, to which she had always been accustomed. To her ears it sounded unfriendly — as if people did not like her and were trying to hold her at arm's length. Indeed, everything was different. As the prospectus so primly said: "The primary object kept in view by the Ladies of the Institution, is the adorning of their pupils' minds with knowledge and the forming of their hearts to virtue. . . . The young ladies are always under the superintendence of one of the Sisters, whose maternal vigilance secures the preservation of morals and the willing observance of the rules." It was just this perpetual vigilance and its ceaseless repression of her every instinct and desire that almost drove the wild little creature mad. The future as glowingly depicted in the same pamphlet by the gentle Ursulines who boasted they had "the consolation of seeing the young ladies educated by them become the pride and joy of their respective homes, the charm and edification of society," held no allure for Toucoutou. She hated the terrible monotony of doing the same thing every day at the same time; the same old routine, going to bed, getting up when the bell rang to hurry into clothes stupidly like those of every other little girl, waiting in a jostling line to fill a heavy mug with water at the sink and gathering round a large wooden tub that had been placed, partly filled, in the middle of the dormitory for them to wash their teeth over. This latter happening, however, was the least disagreeable of the day for, notwithstanding it was forbidden to talk, they managed to whisper and giggle under cover of loud sounds of spitting and the splash of mugs emptied into the tub. They even discussed the possible meaning of some of the strange-sounding sins good old Father Vilaire read out on Sundays. The tooth-washing ceremony was always prolonged as long as possible, till one of the nuns insisted on starting them off for the dining hall, two by two in a long dismal cue. The convent food tasted flat and insipid in comparison with Clair?cine's cooking and she almost gagged at sight of the weak coffee, already mixed with milk, poured from a tin pitcher into her mug and the piece of bread, with its lardlike butter, which was all they had for breakfast. The rest of the day was one continuous methodical horror. The hours of study, of recitations, of embroidery, even their over regulated time of play in the garden, stretched out interminably. Nothing she ever wanted to do seemed to be ladylike, according to the nuns. As she sat and stitched and stitched her legs would twitch with a desire to run away — out into the sun, back to Claircine and freedom. Tears often started to her eyes and dropped down on her embroidery and, when Sister Theresa noticed it, she would pat her on the shoulder understandingly and the child would feel strangely comforted.
The Thursday night bath was just as much an irritation to her as all the other regulations. At home it was a rite she had even looked forward to, in winter especially, for then Claircine always lighted a brisk fire in the grate and placed towel to warm on a chair near by. Toucoutou remembered her sensuous pleasure at the feel of the hot water and the pleasant heat of the fire on her glistening wet skin as Claircine turned her graceful little body to keep all sides warm.
The method of bathing in the Convent, however, was perfectly incomprehensible and abhorrent to her. To quote again from the prospectus, the Nuns proudly vaunted "a suite of bathing rooms, twenty-five in number" in which the pupils might have "the advantage of refreshing bath several times a week during the bathing season." In practice this had meant an all-over bath on Thursdays and a foot bath on Saturdays during the said "season." This was so carefully specified because none of the rooms were heated, except the study hall, which had a tiny open fire at each end of its high-ceilinged vastness, and the good nuns wished the fond parents to be assured that they would not only not countenance, but would refuse to permit, any such dangerous practice as bathing during the cold months of November, December, January, February, March and April.
Toucoutou never forgot the horrors of her first bath there, and ever afterwards hated Thursdays a little more than she disliked the other days in the week. Sister Theresa had given her an unbleached muslin nightgown affair with a drawstring at the neck and short full sleeves and had taken her to one of the dark gloomy little bathing rooms where she asked her to undress. She had shown her how to slide the nightgown over her head before she slipped off her undervest and she had told her how highly immodest and indecent it was for any young lady to ever look at her body and that, if she did, she committed a sin that must be confessed to Father Vilaire. Toucoutou could see no reason in all this, but had been forced, nevertheless, to get into the tub clothed like a member of the Ku Klux Klan on parade and to do her bathing by soaping her gown until the suds came through to her body. The child rebelled inwardly; she wanted the feel of the soft warm water on her skin, not the clammy clinging sensation of the wet cloth.
It was at night that she suffered most as she lay awake on her narrow cot, alone in the dark, and listened to the gentle breathing of the other little girls. They might just as well have been dead, or a thousand miles away, for all the alleviation they afforded her loneliness. Then it was that she ached for the comforting feel of Claircine's arms around her, the delicious taste of a cold baked yam, the satisfying savor of red beans and rice; and above all, for the power to do just as she wanted when she wanted. Often she cried herself to sleep.
One night the lonely homesick ache became too unbearable for her to stand any longer. She waited until she was sure that everyone was sound asleep in the dormitory before she crept from her blankets and, dressing noiselessly, tiptoed down the long room and through endless empty bare halls to the stairs. Every time a board creaked she cringed with fear and her memory of Claircine's tales of spirit zombis peopled every shadow with a hair-raising African ghost. The horrors of convent life, however, were more awful to her than her fear of the supernatural, and she crept on down the stairs to the big front door. Standing on her toes, she was struggling with the enormous key which was still in the lock, when she heard quick footsteps and swung around in time to see a black-robed figure swoop down on her. A ghastly fear froze her for an instant and then, with the panicky fury of some cornered wild animal, she silently began to fight — biting, scratching and kicking desperately. Sister Theresa held the crazy child firmly by the shoulders and spoke to her gently until she felt the little figure go limp. Then she picked her up in her arms and carried her to the big bare reception room where Claircine had told her story to the Superior. She sat down on one of the hard benches and, with the child still held to her breast, said, "I understand perfectly, Anastasie dear, you felt homesick. Tell me all about it."
The little girl sobbed out her loneliness and was strangely comforted when she felt a tear from the sister's eye drop on her cheek. Possibly the nun remembered a time when she too had longed for freedom or maybe it was merely a sense of frustrated motherhood that had been roused by the pressure of the child's warm trembling body against hers. They talked long and in the end Anastasie felt very much better and Sister Theresa had promised she would tell no one about the escapade if the child would agree to confess her sin to Father Vilaire next Saturday. Anastasie crept back to her bed without being discovered. The love that was in her heart for Sister Theresa comforted her as she dropped off to sleep and dreamed that she saw the sister, a smile on her face and a halo behind her head, sitting with a child in her arms, just like the little statue of the Virgin on Claircine's bureau; and as she looked again she saw that the child was herself.
All the rest of the week a cloud hung over Anastasie — the black thought of Saturday's confession. What penance would the priest impose? Something dreadful she felt certain, for there was a second sin on her con science which she had not confided to Sister Theresa.
When the fatal day finally came she knelt beside the tiny confessional in the chapel and haltingly told Father Vilaire of her attempt to run away. As the fat kindly old priest cleared his throat to begin his lecture, the child cried desperately, "Wait! mon pere, wait! There is another worse sin that I have to tell you yet."
"What is that?" he asked.
It was an awful moment for the child and she hesitated before she blurted out, "Father, I committed adultery!"
"What! my daughter?" exploded the priest completely jarred out of his usual manner of tolerant boredom.
"Yes, Father, I did." She stuck to her story bravely.
"But, my child, it's impossible," he replied.
Anastasie, now thoroughly scared, began to sob heart-brokenly. Evidently if Father Vilaire believed her incapable of so terrible a sin, it must be even more heinous than she had thought.
The old priest managed to calm her with difficulty. With a twinkle in his kindly old eye, he said very seriously, "Explain, my dear, how this terrible thing happened."
Anastasie hung her head in shame but finally, by a supreme effort of will, she managed to stutter, "I ... I took a bath . . . without that horrid old nightgown . . . I did . . . and I looked at myself too."
With suppressed gurgles that almost choked the good father, he explained that the sin of which she had been guilty was not usually known by that name.
After this episode the child began to become accustomed to the blighting routine, although it was months before she became perfectly resigned. She finally learned to read and write, sew beautifully, play the piano a little and sing simple French songs in a sweet rich voice. She never left the Convent, even during the holidays, for Claircine, who came to see her twice a month on visiting days, always said that she'd "learn more better how to be a lady" if she stayed all the time with the nuns.
As a matter of fact Anastasie's manners did become, for the most part, gentle and ladylike, except for occasional bursts of anger so fierce as to be remarkable in a child. One of these paroxysms had occurred when she overheard Marie Rosette say to some of the other children, "Don't play with Anastasie, no one knows who her mother is." Anastasie, quick as a cat, had whirled on the other little girl and had slapped her face and then pulled her hair and scratched her until one of the nuns, with the "maternal vigilance" stressed in the prospectus, separated them. It is only fair to add, however, that these outbursts occurred only when she felt she had been unjustly put upon.
So, except for these occasional flare-ups, Anastasie's life at the convent rocked along more or less contentedly for two and a half years.
Six
Claircine had loved Bazile with all the strength of her passionate body and soul. He had been the main-spring of her life. With his death she seemed to have run down — become purposeless and unbelievably lonely.
Maitre Jasmin, Toucoutou's brother, had run away before Bujac's death, unable to bear the restraint the older man had tried to impose upon him. Now Maitre only came back to stay with Claircine when he was hard up. She was afraid he was a mauvais sujet, but she loved him nevertheless, — even more than Toucou?tou; notwithstanding that he did little or nothing to lighten her lot.
After Toucoutou had gone to the convent, the hours in the lonely house on Goodchildren street had hung heavily on Claircine's hands. She made the unfortunate discovery that she could find forgetfulness in a bottle of cognac. This had helped to cause great changes in her. Since Bujac's death she had coarsened and grown old, her beautiful Junoesque figure had become bloated with unhealthy flesh and even the whiteness of her complexion had darkened to such an extent that, before she might have been taken for a white woman, now even her blue eyes could not prevent it from being perfectly evident that she was a woman of color.
She had grown lazy also and sat around the house most of the day in that Creole "mantle of charity" a "gabrielle," which is a loose cool one-piece garment of calico that gave her somewhat the appearance of an overstuffed chair in its summer slip covering. She had found only two alleviations to the dreariness of her life (that is besides the bottle) and these were her daily trips to the French Market, where she met all her old cronies, and her bi-monthly visit to Toucoutou, whom she adored and was inordinately proud of. Now she no longer tried to appear as a white woman when she went out, and frankly wore the brilliant tignon de Madras. They were her only extravagance and she always bought them from Madame Celestine who imported the best ones from Santo Domingo and sold them in a little shop, encoignure Villere and Bayou. It was probably a harking back to the thing she had loved in her youth, because she always tied them in the manner they were worn in Haiti with one end sticking smartly down over the ear, instead of with the knot on top and the two ends lopping out like rabbit's ears, as was the fashion in Louisiana.
One day she was lolling listlessly, as usual, in her rocking chair, when she heard a wagon stop in front of her door — a rare occurrence. She went to the window and looked out through the broken slat in the front blinds, which served as her peephole on life, and saw that a four-wheeled covered wagon painted a funereal black was standing before her stoop. It had a sliding door in the side and was drawn by a ramshackle old gray horse driven by an ancient Jehu, equally gray and decrepit. The driver creaked down from his seat, pushed back the door, and an Ursuline stepped out in her white starched coiffe and her shapeless black uniform. Tou?coutou followed her and the nun turned and grasped her firmly by the wrist, as the old servitor struggled feebly with a small rawhide trunk.
Claircine hurried apprehensively to the door and said, "Enter sister. Tell me, what's the matter?"
Beyond a grim "Bonjour" the nun said nothing until she had been shown into the parlor and had sat down in one of the carved rosewood chairs covered with hair cloth. It was not until then that she released her grip on Toucoutou and said, "I am very sorry, but the Reverend Mother instructed me to tell you that she can no longer keep Anastasie. You must make other arrangements for her."
"But for why? She do something wrong?" asked Claircine nervously.
"I had rather not tell you," replied the nun, "suffice it to say that she conducted herself in a manner such as none of our young ladies have ever done since the foundation of our convent here in 1727." There was a very acidulous accent on the word "ladies" that made the invidious comparison only too evident.
Claircine, her face red with sudden rage, turned on the child and burst out, "Eh bien, petite salete, qu'est ce que tu a done fait?"
Anastasie sullenly replied, "Me, I made a fight with Marie Rosette because she call me 'ti negue, Toucou?tou'."
"But that is not all," interrupted the scandalized nun. "She attacked her like a petite sauvage and bit her hand so badly that the doctor had to come and sew it up like a piece of embroidery. Marie Rosette is the daughter of Monsieur St. Marat too, the great banquier. Ah, what a disgrace to the convent!" She sniffed, outraged all over again at the very memory of such a thing.
There was a long embarrassing silence. Claircine boiled and was only restrained by the presence of the nun.
The good sister rose and said, "Well, I will leave her here. When I get back I will pray that the good Lord will once again make her a little Christian." When she had delivered this parting speech, she went quivering with righteousness to the door, evidently relieved to escape from the near proximity of such an abandoned child.
Claircine, paralyzed by the collapse of the plans she had nourished for years, let her go without a word. As the door slammed she turned, livid with rage, on the girl and boxed her jaws unmercifully, and shook her until she was almost breathless. Toucoutou fought back fiercely.
For two or three days thereafter Claircine's temper was unbearable and Toucoutou began to feel that even the dull grind of the convent was preferable. However, when the older woman got over her first disappointment she became genuinely glad to have the child back again and showed it by cooking all the things Toucoutou had been fondest of. After the tasteless insipid food she had eaten for the last few years it was like Heaven to her. She quickly fell back into the routine of life in Good-children street and revelled in the absence of lessons and her freedom to run the streets whenever she wished. Soon she became the acknowledged leader of the children of the neighborhood and bands of them followed her even as far as the Place d'Armes. Here they played in the little park, under the trees surround ing the statue of General Jackson on horseback, which had been recently erected. Sometimes when they became too boisterous, they disturbed the old watchman sitting on a bench, pinching snuff from his silver box as he dreamed of "dans le temps" when he was a gay young Qeole blade, and he would hobble after them shaking his staff of office. The children would scatter in all directions over the grass with a tingling feeling of being in real danger. As they ran some stumbled over quaint little signs in French and English stuck in the ground. The Anglo-Saxon version was evidently a literal translation from the French, made by some Qeole employee of the city, for it read:
They got their greatest thrill, however, when the iron-clad omnibusses, painted red and black, backed up to the calaboose in the Cabildo, one of the old Spanish buildings which flanked the cathedral. Then they gawked at the prisoners being disgorged and speculated as to what would be done to them.
Toucoutou frightened the younger children by insisting that the criminals always had their heads cut off and proved her point by asking her companions if they had ever seen a prisoner come out after he had gone in. Once the children had managed to slip into the building when a careless warder had left the gates open. In a courtyard in the middle, paved with dank stone and surrounded by tier on tier of balconies, were the stocks which Toucoutou triumphantly pointed out to her followers as the machine they put a convict into to hold him while his head was being chopped off.
One day, however, her theory got a terrible jolt. They all had seen an Italian as he was taken from the police wagon into the Cabildo. His peculiarly villainous face was made even worse by a knife scar running from his ear to his mouth. Some few days later the children had stopped to stare at the chain gang as they worked in the street guarded by a Conducteur de la chaine, cuddling a sawed-off shotgun in the crook of his elbow. The prisoners were attached to each other by a chain, running from ankle to ankle, which clanked grewsomely as they moved. They were like a string of artificial Siamese twins, all dressed in coarse pantaloons and red shirts with large black numbers on them. Suddenly one little girl called excitedly, "Look, look, there he is!" and they all saw the Italian with the split face. Toucoutou tried to insist he was the twin of the one they had seen go into the Cabildo, but the coincidence of the scar had been too much for the children and, as a consequence, her prestige had somewhat suffered.
As Toucoutou wondered what she could do to regain the influence over her crew that she had hitherto held by her personal audacity and enterprise, she bethought herself of the old hermit of St. Louis street. He was a dirty, repulsive, bearded old man, who was reputed to live on rats and other similar dainties. He believed he received celestial messages in a language of which he only had the key and he kept posted on his door mysterious bulletins, written in strange heiroglyphics, that no one had been able to decipher. She knew the children were convinced he varied his peculiar diet by cooking and eating any youngster he could catch. Sometimes the bravest of them used to hammer on his door and then run away to a safe distance to watch him burst out and shake his fist at them as he cursed. Toucoutou determined that the most spectacular thing she could do in this crisis would be to knock on his door and then wait for him to come out. When she announced her intention to her cohorts they openly scoffed, so she told them to follow her and they would see.
When they got to St. Louis street the other children stopped a discreet half block away from the old man's hovel, but Toucoutou continued on slowly. She had courage and a very large share of determination for a little girl, but she trembled as she knocked on his door. She stood her ground, however, even when she heard a noise of hurried, shuffling feet inside and saw the door roughly jerked open. The hermit stopped, surprised to be confronted by a little girl who did not run away.
Toucoutou looked up at him, smiling ingenuously, and said, "Monsieur, please, what time it is?"
The old man hesitated, mumbled, "God's time," and disappeared, slamming the door.
The child had that suddenly relieved feeling of one who has just survived some terrible danger unscathed and went skipping back to her companions, rudely thumbing her nose.
By the time Toucoutou had arrived at the age of fourteen, however, other more grown up amusements began to appeal to her. She had become tall and graceful, with lovely chestnut hair that had a natural wave; her eyes were a deep blue and her skin a smooth mat-ivory without a fault. Perfect physical health coupled with a lively curiosity about life had given her a vivacity and vividness and a certain slumbering intensity, gen erally found only in a black-haired Latin. Her convent manners were gentle and pleasant and, due to the soft liquid quality of her voice and accent, she spoke a French that was far more melodious than that spoken by the French themselves. The English she had learned at the convent was also agreeable, but marked by quaint Qeole peculiarities.
Now Sunday became the day of the week she liked the best, because it pleased her vain little heart to dress up in her pretty starched white clothes with bows of brilliant ribbon in her hair and long white cotton stockings with black shoes on her slim legs. Of course it rather irked her to walk beside Qaircine to the Cathedral for morning mass and she even felt a carefully hidden mortification at being so obviously under the tutelage of an octoroon. But the afternoon made up for all that. She had struck up quite a friendship with her brother Maitre, who always came on Sundays to share the heavy but delicious dinner that Qaircine prepared for them; pork chops cooked in a grillade rue of onions, butter and herbs with just a dash of garlic, catfish broiled on a furnace, crawfish bisque, beaten biscuit, calalou, a sort of Santo Domingo hash, strong aromatic dripped coffee and various other delicious dishes with which she varied her menus.
One Sunday after they had eaten and Qaircine had had her little glass of cognac and composed herself for a nap in her big arm chair, the brother and sister sallied out. Walking along Goodchildren street they passed people sitting on all the doorsteps, chatting and laughing. As they approached nearer to Esplanade they began to meet the formal family groups of a higher class of society. The procession was generally led by two immaculate, stiffly starched little girls, their black hair carefully curled in ringlets on both sides of their faces; then came a little boy or two in uncomfortable, broad, white collar and flowing bow tie. The proud procreators brought up the rear; the mother, in a hoop skirt with a handsome shawl around her shoulders partly covering her tight-fitting bodice; the father, in funereal black. They all took themselves so very seriously that they did not seem to be having as good a time as the common people on the doorsteps. Even the smallest of the children walked with a solemnity and decorum that was amazing.
As human beings rise in the social scale their spontaneous enjoyment of life seems to become less. The necessity of behaving in accordance with the fancied importance of their position acts as a ball and chain on their pleasures.
Toucoutou, sensing this instinctively, said to her brother, "Me, I like Goodchildren street more better."
When they reached Esplanade, ladies were driving up and down under the big trees that grew in the centre of the avenue, bowing to groups on the front galleries or to people on the banquette. There was a ceremony about the constantly waving shiny top hats that irked Toucoutou.
They went eight islets or so further and then they heard music. Toucoutou began to walk on her toes and swing her slight hips in time to the rhythm. The music grew louder as they reached Congo Square.
Seven
In the Malay States there is a very rare and beautiful bird, the Argus pheasant, whose habits of sex attraction are almost human. In the middle of the tropical forest the cock clears a circular space fifteen feet in diameter, making it smooth as the top of a billiard table, without even a twig, a leaf or a blade of grass to mar its surface. Here, each spring, he invites his mate and for her fascination performs a series of pirouettes, struttings and wing capers that are marvels of grace and dexterity.
For the slaves of New Orleans, Congo Square served just such a purpose. Here they congregated on Sunday afternoons and preened their poor feathers in their weekly mating dances. Early in the morning the negroes from the country, hundreds of them, started to come into the city at sunrise, on foot or in cane carts, in pirogues or in small flatboats, to sell their master's produce, or their own, in the French market. They had 'tanier roots for scrubbing brushes, home made brooms, desirop batterie (in season), oranges, pecans, long stalks of sugar cane, vegetables and berries. Here they chaffered, laughed and enjoyed themselves until their wares had been disposed of and then gravitated towards Place Congo.
This square lay in a straight line back of the old St. Louis Cathedral and about half a mile inland from the river. Indeed it blocked the farther end of Orleans street, which had its beginning at the quaint old garden, named in honor of the beloved Pere Antoine, which suns itself just behind that ancient church. In days gone by Congo Square had been called the "Plains" and had Iain just without the old city's boundaries as marked by the bastions erected by the Spaniards for defense along the line where now runs Rampart street. Even in those days it had been the scene of many excitements — executions, balloon ascensions, bull baitings and circuses, especially Senor Cayetano's whose fame has been pre served in the old chanson Creole which runs:
"C'est Michie Cayetane
Qui sorti la Havane
Avec so chouals et so macacs!
Li gagnin ein homme qui danse dans sac;
Li gagnin qui danse si ye la main;
Li gagnin zaut' a choual qui boi' di vin;
Li gagnin oussi ein zeine zolie mamzelle
Qui monte choual sans bride et sans selle: — "
There, too, took place the wild games of raquette between the contending clans of the Bayous and the La Villes. This was a sort of lacrosse played with two small racquets instead of one, in which the player held the ball as if he were trying to carry an egg in two long wooden spoons. Wrestling and throwing each other down were within the rules and feeling ran so high the games sometimes ended in a battle royal in which even the spectators took a hand.
Now the town had grown around this spot and the wide plains backed by a cypriere had shrunk to a mere city islet or block, surrounded on three sides by squat cottages. Some were evidently meant for twin families for each half of their cement covered fronts was cut by a window and a door with a wooden step underneath. Solid wooden shutters protected these openings, hung on heavy hand-forged hinges. They were blues or greens, faded to softness, making gay mellow color chords with the yellows, pinks, old reds and browns of the painted plaster wall surfaces which had been toned and given subtle variety by tropic sun and rain. Some of the houses had red roofs of Spanish tile flecked by green moss in their interstices, others grayish French slate picked out by a rooftree line of brick-colored tile. Twin dormer windows, much too tall to be in proportion, stared like goggling eyes out of the easy slope of most of them.
The top of the Treme Market towered above on the lake side and even higher still loomed the two conical watch towers of the Parish Prison which at sunset spewed forth terrifying swarms of bats that darkened the sky and denied the atmosphere with a musty stench.
The Old Basin, which gave access to Lake Pontchar?train by way of Bayou St. John, was only half a block away and, framed between houses, glimpses could be seen of the masts of luggers loaded with produce from across the lake and of schooners their decks piled high with sooty charcoal.
The square itself was dotted with splendid old sycamores whose whitewashed trunks gave a festive air and the ground underneath was worn smooth as a bald pate by scuffling feet. An antiquated cannon sat upon a crazy old wooden carriage and pointed menacingly at Rampart street. Formerly it had stood in state in the Place d'Armes and boomed each night the nine o'clock signal for the slaves to be at home. But now the pleasanter ringing of the bells of St. Louis had replaced it and it had been relegated to the Place Congo.
The slaves as they streamed towards their meeting place were dressed almost alike. The men wore cotton shirts open at the neck and trousers tattered to the knee, the women coarse chemises and skirts of cotton or calico, guinea-blue in color for the most part. A few wore quantiers as the pieces of rawhide were called, which were cut to the shape of the foot and laced on like sandals; but most went "bare foot," except some of the house servants of the rich Creole families. Their clothes were much more elaborate than those of their country cousins from the plantations — as is always the case. These city slaves wore shoes and the women tied glow ing tignons around their heads like turbans with such skill that it made them seem taller than they really were. Some who had earned, perhaps, the special grati tude of their masters, even flaunted gold hoops in their ears or wore barbaric necklaces. Their Madras tignons were chosen with scrupulous care as a foil for the copper-gold tints of their skin; checked patterns of chestnut brown and rich deep reds on a canary-yellow ground being the most sought after.
To the casual observer all these slaves would have seemed just negroes with the same general characteristics and appearance; but not so to the appraising eye of the Louisiana planter. He made his living by the handling of slaves and knew that there was as great a difference between the various tribes as exists between Frenchmen and Swedes or Russians and Italians. These astute plantation owners sat in their clubs and discussed the pedigrees of their negroes just as they did the pedigrees of their racehorses. One would assert it was foolish to ever buy an Ibo as members of that tribe were so likely to commit suicide at any little sorrow, and if one did, all the rest in the gang generally followed suit; for they believed the transmigration of souls was the road by which they might win back to Africa. Another might say, in the same manner that he would suggest a cure for a spavined horse, that this peculiarity had been easily controlled in Santo Domingo by beheading the corpse of the first who killed himself and exposing the head on a stake in the negro quarters and then telling the negroes that that would be the fate of all suicides. This plan was efficacious as they believed the soul of a body so mutilated could never return to their native land and they preferred to live rather than be eternally condemned to exile. Discussions often waxed warm on the question of which crosses produced the most seduc tive concubines. The majority agreed that the octoroon whose grandmother had been a Jaloff was likely to be the most beautiful, for the women of this tribe were noted for their straight lithe figures, small hands and feet, and features so exquisitely chiseled that if it had not been for their color and the woolliness of their hair they could have passed as ancient Romans or Greeks. It was admitted without controversy, however, that even more beautiful than these were the women of color from Santo Domingo; and the eyes of old gentlemen who, in their youth, had enjoyed their charms brightened in speaking of them. These Louisianians were not surprised at this supremacy in looks, because they knew that the first blacks, according to Barthelemy Las Casas, were brought to the island in 1505, some two hundred and odd years before they were introduced into Louisiana, and that ever since the planters of Santo Domingo had been choosing the handsomest from among their slaves as mistresses. So, in fact, for three hundred and fifty years a process of selective breeding for lascivious beauty had been going on there, and had produced a type so exotically lovely that when, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the best of the Santo Domingan families had fled the slave revolution to take refuge in New Orleans, accompanied by their sang-melee mis tresses, many of whom had only one sixty-fourth negro blood, these women were immediately dubbed "Les Sirenes."
A man trained as these Louisiana planters had been could have pointed out among the streaming crowd of blacks, the bossals, as the negroes born in Africa were called, and could even have differentiated between the various tribes — here a Bambara turkey-thief with long blue tattoo marks, swollen in the middle, running from his temples down his neck, there an Arada, savage, avaricious and a voodoo; Agonas, Socos and Fantins who have the qualities in common of being proud warriors, capricious and unafraid of death; blood-thirsty Judas; Mandingues, cannibalistic and thievish but good workers, their front teeth filed to points; Bissagots and Sosos who in their own land had carried shields of bullet-proof elephant hide and here made good hunters and watchmen for their masters; gentle intelligent Mozambiques very black and given to consumption, whose tribe in days gone by supplied Asia, Abyssinia and Arabia with their eunuchs; and Congoes, who gave their name to the Place Congo, gay, gentle, eaters of bananas, quick-witted, thick-lipped and lubric, lovers of song and dancing and preferred over all others as house servants. Possibly, so an old French historian suggests, the libertine tendencies of these Congo women had something to do with their popularity among their masters. Black children of the Gold Coast, the Ivory Coast, the Grain Coast, the Pepper and the Malaguette Coasts had been ravished to form this crowd.
As the negroes walked towards the gates in the iron fence which surrounded the dancing place they ran the gauntlet of the vociferous and merry vendors of edibles who completely surrounded it as by a second wall. Their wares were exposed on deal tables shaded from the hot sun by common cotton awnings, their supports festooned with streamers of parti-colored paper, fluttering in the breeze to scare away flies. There was "limonade" and "biere du pays" in bottles cooled in pails of water; succulent catfish, broiled on little charcoal furnaces which looked like water-buckets made of baked clay; bowls of hot gombo file, pralines, calas and hot coffee, — lots of it, strong and aromatic. Voodoo doctors wended their way through the crowd selling for two bits gris-gris warranted to win back errant lovers.
As they came in, the negroes separated into little groups that drifted to different parts of the grounds. Each group had its own music. Sometimes there was only one old darky playing a fiddle, other bands had three or four pieces; banjoes of four strings, tambourines, triangles and "quills," which were reeds of graduated lengths made from joints of the common brake-cane strung together and blown into as Pan played his pipes. Some danced the suggestive "Bamboula" which got its name from the fact that in the West Indies the big drums used to supply its music were made by stretching a goatskin across the end of a joint of giant bamboo.
In the centre, in the most conspicuous place was an orchestra that was particularly alluring, to judge from the large crowd that surrounded it. An old Santo Domin?gan negro sat astride a section of a large hollowed tree and beat with the palm of his hand and then his fingers upon the stretched skin. He produced a splendid savage rhythm as he played with the rapt absorption of a fanatic, completely insulated from all the world by his music. Beside him sat a younger man who beat a staccato counter rhythm on a very much smaller drum. A tin whistle, an accordion, and a fiddle were played by three other negroes, while still another rattled a gourd that had been part filled with pebbles or grains of hard corn. One tooted a wooden trumpet shaped like the horn of a cow, but the strangest instrument of them all was half the jawbone of a mule with all its teeth staring from their sockets, which a Tittle bow-legged, wide-grinned Congo held in one hand while he scraped an enormous brass key up and down the teeth with the other, making a sound reminiscent of the wooden rattles of the Spanish "Ser&ios."
The men and women collected around this orchestra were no field-hands, but the elite of slave society — the house servants; and they were about to dance the Congo, sometimes called Calinda or Danse Creole. There was a flourish of the drums and ten or fifteen young negresses stepped into the middle of the circle. They were all shades of yellow-copper and red-copper, "teint sauvage" they called the latter, and there were no deep blacks among them. Each grasped a gay Madras handkerchief "catty-cornered" in their hands and, raising their arms, held it behind their necks as the assembled company began to chant:
"Ah voila mo la, Ah voila mo la
Ah voila mo la, jeunes gens,
M'allez voir ca y a fait moi!"
The musicians started playing and the women in the centre took up the refrain, singing the same thing over and over as they began a slow movement of the feet and body, posturing as they made the gay Madras handkerchiefs seesaw behind their heads like huge fluttering butterflies. A man, a superb physical specimen, leaped suddenly into the circle and did intricate, violent steps and surprisingly agile pigeon wings. His blue-black skin soon shone with sweat. A gris-gris, brought from Africa, hung about his neck and just below his knee he wore a "bram-bram sonnette," a few little bells affixed to a piece of rawhide tied around his leg, that tinkled with every movement. He had a sharp direct glance and a proud carriage, which indicated that he had been a candio or chief in his own country and explained why he, a dark black, was received as an equal by this group of mulat?toes. There was an aristocracy among slaves based upon color values — the lighter the skin the higher the caste — and it has survived until today.
The Candio, having shown his skill, bounded to the first woman in the dancing line and, placing himself opposite to her, they did a few quick shuffling steps together before he danced over to the next in line to repeat the same thing. He danced with each woman in turn and then in splendid leaps went back to the first to begin all over again. The line of women kept in continuous motion, the tignons on their heads and the handkerchiefs in their hands making a rich, glowing, ever-shifting kaleidoscope. One voice sang a verse of the endless tale of Mouche Preval who gave a grand bal, which ended so disastrously in the arrest of everyone present and then all joined in with fervor on the chorus:
"Danse Calinda, Boo Djumb, Boo Djumb.
Danse Calinda, Boo Djumb."
patting their chests, slapping their thighs and swaying their bodies in time to the music. The crowd was always in rhythmic movement, never still for a second.After a time the big negro showed signs of weakening and was pushed aside by another who jumped eager ly into the circle and began to show his prowess. His demoniac contortions were greeted with yelling, stamping approval.
It was just as the excitement was at its highest that Toucoutou and her brother arrived and took up their position on the outskirts of the crowd to watch the dancing. Maitre soon drifted away to another group where they were doing the bamboula, leaving his sister alone.
The dance had turned into a frenzied counjaille and everyone that felt the urge had sprung into the centre and was contorting furiously. The band played wildly a maddening rhythm and a new musician who had appeared from nowhere was sitting astride the big tam tam, at the opposite end from the regular player, and, all his strength concentrated upon it, was belaboring the hollow wood with the whitened thigh bones of an ox.
The aim appeared to be to find out which one of them could last the longest. A stocky girl from the country, her feet shuffling with the rapidity of water buckets on the side wheels of river steamer, her expression an old brown owl's, moving not a muscle, danced opposite to an enormous black with a brutal face and a gorgeous body. Fat Arada mothers, notorious for their elephantine hips and fleshy bustles, danced with the best of them, every part of their ungainly bodies quivering like huge blobs of jelly. The dancers moved faster and faster, sweat pouring from their bodies; the music played more maddeningly than ever; the swaying crowd of onlookers became even more crazy and Tou?coutou standing on the outskirts of the circle began to dance without knowing it. Her whole soul went into the synchronized sway of her muscles as her body moved to the music. She was supremely happy. Her dancing differed so from that of the negresses that it was like the stride of a thoroughbred compared to the lumbering gait of a percheron. Toucoutou's wild lithe balancing body, her arms, her legs, her hands, her fingers, even the poise of her head, all went into her dancing and her eyes shone with a subtile suggestion of unconscious sensuousness and unrealized passion that fired the one man who saw her.
A young high griffe, from his modish clothes and carriage evidently a free man of color, was the only person whose attention had not been riveted on the revelry. He had been watching Toucoutou and the aban don of her dancing made so piquant a contrast to her young freshness that it exploded a sudden fierce desire of possession in him. Still absorbed in the rhythm of her movements, she unconsciously came closer to him, and, as she turned her back, he stepped quickly forward. Throwing his arm around her neck, he twisted her head towards him with his other hand and kissed her on her mouth, saying laughingly, "Sister, yo' sho' can dance."
With all the quickness of a reflex action Toucoutou's left hand slapped his face while the sharp little nails of the other raked his cheek.
An expression of vacant surprise came over his face as he released her and blurted out, "Listen! I didn't mean no harm. You just danced so till I got foolish."
"You dirty nigger," she gasped, "I'll make my brother kill you for that."
"For why you talk that a way? You ain't white. No white lady ain't able to dance lak' dat."
Toucoutou looked at him for a second, his mouth open, stuttering, and three long rakes across his cheek just beginning to show blood, and then she whirled and ran around the crowd to find Maitre. Breathlessly she told him what had happened and pointed out the hurry ing back of the man who kissed her disappearing down Orleans street.
"I know him," said Maitre, "he's that fresh little free nigger barber, Sans Facon. Wait till I catch him! But Toucoutou, w'at you was doin'?" He looked at her suspiciously.
"Jus' dancin' that's all," she replied.
"Wat! you dancin' with a passel o' niggers on Congo Square? No wonder then. Why ain't yo' got mo' sense? I'll sho' tell Claircine."
"You do and I'll put the same mark on you like I put on that nigger," threatened Toucoutou still wrought up.
They quarreled all the way home until they reached the little house in Goodchildren street and found Claircine moving about the kitchen getting a cold supper for them.
Maitre immediately told her what had happened in Congo Square, and Claircine flew into so terrible a temper that Toucoutou had no time for retaliatory measures against her brother and had to devote all her attention to weathering the storm herself.
"W'at," railed Claircine, "you went an' dance with a heap o' dirty niggers on Congo Square — an' on a Sunday? I'll beat yo' back till yo' belly blue. You remember you white! W'at for you think I pay my good money all those year at the couvent? Fo' you to go an' disgrace yo'se'f befo' de whole town? The Ursuline don' take nigger wench yonder. Like it wasn't enough for you to disgrace everybody bein' sont home from the couvent, now you go an' make a fool-show out yo'se'f befo' all Congo Square. I'll learn you out yo' nigger ways."
Toucoutou stood her ground defiantly as Claircine advanced towards her and struck her a blow on the cheek with her open hand that sounded like a miniature clap of thunder.
Candent fury fired Toucoutou and she burst out, "Nigger! Nigger! Nigger! Why you talk thataway? You're a nigger yo'se'f. If it hadn't been for you they wouldn't have put me out of the convent. Marie Rosette called me 'ti negue' 'cause you were the only person came to see me visiting days and she heard you call me Toucoutou instead of Anastasie."
"That don't excuse you actin' lak' one," riposted Claircine, "I don't see for why I work my fingers to the bone all these year if you gonna lose all yo' white ways jus' fo' a little nigger music."
On and on went the tirade for hours while Toucoutou maintained a sullen silence.
EIGHT
TOUCOUTOU was window wishing, her nose flattened against the glass show window of Valsin Labiche's store in Frenchmen street. She stood enthralled by the gorgeous Malakoff displayed on a mannequin inside, whose expression was so vacant and sickly-sweet that, luckily, only a wax face could have achieved it. It was exactly Toucoutou's mental picture of what a real lady should look like, so she pressed her mouth, languished her eyes and tried to iron out of her face all vivacity and sparkle in a vain attempt to imitate the inane emptiness of countenance of the lay figure. Her heart yearned for the stately spread of that hoop skirt and the priceless sheen of that black, blue and green plaid with the saucy little shoulder shawl worn carelessly over the tight-fitting, long sleeved, deep waisted bodice.
Alluring daydreams drifted through her mind. Ele gant in that dress, she saw herself sailing into the Varieties Theatre on the arm of that handsome young Creole, who had tried to speak to her on Chartres street an hour before. She could even feel the admiring eyes of the whole audience turn towards her as he bowed her into the stage box and, above the rich rustle of her silk skirt as she sat down, she almost heard the whisper that ran everywhere in the pit, "She is a pretty girl." She decided she would pretend to be unconscious and look proud and bored and prissy — like the model.
Suddenly she realized that a man had stopped and was standing close behind her. Her heart began to speed up and she blushed alluringly. Could it be that handsome young Creole? Would all her daydreams be realized? She did not dare to look around for fear of a disappointment. A rich throaty voice, unmistakably negro, said, "Listen, chere, ah knows who you is now; you's Claircine's gal, so you ain't got no call to do me like you done me Sunday. Maybe I ain't so white as you, but all two of us niggers, just the same. Tell me chere, is you a cooin' dove or is you a settin' dove? 'Cause ef you's a cooin' dove, hawk's right after you."
Disappointment stunned Toucoutou for a moment as she found this was not the bold suitor of her dreams, but merely Sans Fagon, the little nigger barber who had kissed her that day on Congo Square. But it was only an instant before she recovered herself and slapped him across the cheek with so sound a smack that his jaunty straw hat fell off and rolled away. Before she could strike again a man's hand had reached out and snatched the little barber by the collar, forcing him face forward towards the wooden curb and a neatly shod foot had booted him into the green slimy water of the deep gutter with a splash. She heard an angry voice hiss, "Run, you damn black nigger, for if I ever see you again I'll surely cut your liver out."
It was all over in an instant and as Sans Fac.on awk wardly scrambled to his feet and began to run, leaving a wet trail behind him, Toucoutou looked towards her defender to find that after all her dream had come true — it was her admirer from Chartres street.
With feminine quickness she noticed at once a hun dred details about him; his deep brown eyes, lovely enough for a girl's, his olive complexion, the pleasant quick smile that lurked around the corners of his mouth, his smart clothes and the Gallic liveliness of his ges tures when he dusted his hands, one against the other, ridding himself of any possible pollution from the touch of such a low person as his late adversary — although victim might be a more accurate word under the cir cumstances.
He bowed most correctly to Toucoutou and said, "I regret, Mademoiselle, that you had such an unfortunate experience. You must permit me to see you home so this cannot happen again."
Neither of them realized, or for that matter cared, how ridiculous such an excuse was in view of the fact that the little barber had already disappeared around the corner on the run.
Toucoutou, thrilling with a sense of real adventure, tried to force her vivid little face into the silly simper of the wax mannequin as she turned to thank him. The two blocks they walked to the house on Goodchildren street was a procession of triumph for the girl. Roman emperors, home from victories over foreign lands, could not have felt prouder of the myriads of captives that followed their victorious chariot wheels than she was of this her first conquest. She spoke to him (he had said his name was Placide Taquin) in the soft alluring French she had learned at the convent, languished her eyes and minced a little as she walked. She pretended not to see the women who sat on the low doorsteps in shapeless slovenliness; but, when she heard their very audible comments, "Hein, la petite Toucoutou has a beau — and she not yet had her first communion," it gave her such a splendid sense of elation and so restored her self-confidence that all the way home she chattered like a magpie, forgetting altogether her silly posings.
As for Placide Taquin, he was a Creole and the deeply passionate blood of Spain mingled in his veins with the more volatile but equally ardent blood of his French ancestors. By the time they had arrived at Claircine's house he had received a coup de foudre. The vital youth of the girl and her exotic beauty with its promise of a sensuousness not yet quite realized had enflamed his quick Latin blood and he had conceived one of those sudden unreasoning infatuations which the French call a beguin.
When they arrived at the house Toucoutou led him into the front room which was only two steps above the banquette, with the door opening straight into street it. She asked him to sit down on the sofa while she went out to tell her old nurse to bring him a glass of biere Creole to refresh him after his exertions.
While he waited he looked around curiously trying to decide from the furniture what manner of people lived there. He noticed on the opposite wall a terrible crayon of a man with a wooden expression. A faded funeral wreath hung over one corner of its heavy gold frame and he wondered whether or not it was her father. At least he looked respectable enough he thought, as he gazed on the libellous representation of Bazile Bujac's features. His eye strayed to the heavy round mahogany centre table supported on its massive single pedestal with spreading feet and he looked approvingly at the colored glass vase and the red plush photograph album the latter adorned with corners it, which reposed upon in relief made of silk. In and clasp of brass and rose a an angle of the room, was rococo etagere; odds and shelves — a ends littered its little triangular queer cups and saucers, sea shells, old fans and, crowning bijou of all which occupied the top shelf in lonely eminence, cheap china Cupid with basket for matches fast was a ened between his wings. The furnishing was completed by two rosewood armchairs that matched the sofa and few odd mahogany seats standing with their backs to the wall, on a bare floor of well-scrubbed cypress boards.
Toucoutou returned smiling, her day dreams still buzzing in her head, and said, "You tole me your name was Placide, yes? Are you kin to the Placide who owns that theatre, Placide's Varieties?"
He replied gaily that he was not but that that did not prevent him from getting tickets and he would be glad to take her whenever she would go.
Her eyes shining with excitement she clapped her hands and said, "Oh, let's go Saturday night."
"Hadn't you rather the Opera?" he asked as an after thought.
"Oh, yes, yes, that's much mo' better," she began.
Claircine interrupted, bringing in a tray on which were two tall glasses of biere creole, a cooling concoc tion of pineapple, ginger, cinnamon and sugar fer mented in water. With it were some little oiseaux, small dry cakes of cinnamon flour and sugar baked in the shape of little birds. She passed the tray to Placide as Toucoutou said, "This is Monsieur Taquin who saved me from that nigger today."
Claircine replied in correct French, "It was very good of Monsieur and I am deeply grateful. If her brother was not a vaurien and lived here as he should, he could have protected her." She passed the other glass to Tou coutou, placed the tray on the centre table and with a respectful, "May God bless you for what you have done this day, Monsieur," she left the room.
Placide immediately moved over to a place on the sofa beside Toucoutou and asked, "Did you really mean you'd go with me on Saturday?"
"For sure," replied the girl, eager little sparks com ing into her eyes.
"Magnifique," he answered, "then I'll make all the arrangements. Oh! but I never thought. Will your mother let you?" Sudden consternation crossed his face.
"But me, I have no mother," said Toucoutou, "I am orpheline.""With whom do you live here then?" he replied, looking relieved.
"My mother and father died of the yellow fever when I was just a little girl and Claircine, my old nurse, took care of me, yes, and brought me up," she answered.
"Well that's all right then," he said as his hand reached out and took hers. The smooth acquiescent warmth of it set him on fire. "My! but you're pretty," he continued.
Blushes surged over her face and neck, but she made no resistance as his arm slid around her waist and he pulled her towards him. Indeed she raised her face per fectly naturally and her warm, moist, passion-red lips met his. She was conscious only of the strength of her desire as she clung to him, everything else in the world faded away.
There was a discreet cough in the hall and they jumped apart, flushed and excited, as Claircine came into the room and said, "Possibly Monsieur might re fresh himself with another glass of biere. Monsieur looks warm — the room it must be hot, yes."
Placide, embarrassed, refused the drink and said he must be going. He shook hands with Toucoutou, a con tact that set his blood to racing again and said, "Until Saturday then, I'll come for you at seven."
"But Toucoutou," broke in Claircine, "where you go to on Saturday?"
"A 1'opera," replied the girl gaily. "No, not sans chaperon." The woman turned to Placide and continued, "Monsieur has to believe, yes, I mus' take care fo' this little girl. He would not wish to make her a scandale in the quartier."
He hesitated a moment and said, "Bien, I will get a loge grillee then." Nodding to Claircine, he left the house with rather a crestfallen air.
Toucoutou ran to the window and watched his trim young figure walk to the corner and disappear. She noticed the riffle of gossip that stirred the doorstep sitters as he passed, and it gave her a pleasant sense of importance such as she had never felt before.
Claircine in a temper, closed the door behind him.
"Listen good, Toucoutou," she said, "we don't want no lagniappe bebe' 'round here, don't know he papa name. You ack like one balayeuse. What will he think of you, kissin' lak' that the first time you see him? Where you think you belong? Over in those 'Mahogany Hall' with those putains? Remember you w'ite, an' I got yo certificate of bapteme to prove it. You can marry in the Cathedral by a priest, you don't have to be placee like any yaller salope."
As she stopped for breath Toucoutou exploded, "I don't care. Me, I love him, I run away with him, I do anything he ask, just so I be near him."
"You talk that way, petite imbecile," stormed Claircine, "an me, I'll fine a way to stop you, even if I got to beat you to death. Me, I could choke you with these hands, yes, when I think how I work lak' a slave to keep you with the Ursuline."
Her mood changed suddenly and she collapsed in a chair weeping and whined, between sobs, that she had wasted her whole life on an ungrateful huzzy who was willing to throw herself away on the first thing in pants that looked cross-eyed at her. Possibly the cognac she had been drinking all the afternoon had something to do with her storm of self commiseration.
Toucoutou was really tender hearted and very fond of Claircine as well, so the old woman's tears were far more effective than her anger. The girl put her arm around the heaving shoulders and said, "There, there, Qaircine, me I got plenty sense. What you want me to do?"
Claircine finally quieted down and patting the child's hand said, "I love you, chere. It is yo' happiness w'at I want. Don't go so quick. Gimme time to fin' out if he come from good family. You mus' not trow yo'self away on a poor w'ite. Claircine has her moyens; leave to her to fin' out. If he be all right, on Saturday you can go, yes."
Although the cognac may have very much increased her self pity it had not diminished her native shrewdness.
Toucoutou pouted. She knew she would find a way to see him no matter what Qaircine's investigation dis closed, but she thought it wiser seemingly to acquiesce, so she said "Tres bien, Claircine, but gimme some money please, to buy some silk at Labiche store fo' mek me a dress."
Claircine went to the big mahogany armoire in her bedroom and, taking a key from her bosom, unlocked the door and groped in the dark interior until she un earthed her pocketbook from layers of clothes, little pasteboard boxes, bottles of all sizes and shapes, some partly filled with liquor, and an indescribable array of broken and useless objects. She carefully counted out and gave Toucoutou some money and then they both left the house together, but parted on the corner; Tou coutou to make her purchases and Claircine to visit some of her gossips.
When she got to the store the girl glued her nose to the window, standing just as she had been when a few hours earlier she had had her first adventure with Placide. That time seemed years away from her now, she had undergone such an emotional experience since then. In the morning she had been a child, interested in dolls, now she was a woman, interested in a man and passionately so. Toucoutou of course did not realize what had happened to her, she only knew she was happier than she had ever been before, that there was a zest and excitement in life, a premonition of something wonderful just about to happen. She studied every detail of the gorgeous plaid dress with all the avidity of the female animal for anything that may increase her sex attraction, until an indelible picture of it was photo graphed on her mind. Then she went into the store and plunged into the keen joy of picking out the materials for her first silk dress.
Eglantine Ferchaud, known by courtesy as Madame Labiche due to the fact that she was the mistress of Valsin Labiche, the proprietor, was behind the counter. Although she was barely eighteen she had shown such a flair for running the business that he had gradually left it entirely in her hands and employed his time in more congenial pursuits — such as befitted a gentleman — horse racing, cockfighting and the one nearest his heart, drink ing. It was Eglantine who had installed the wax figure in the show window — the first one ever seen in the Faubourg Marigny. The neighbors had shaken their heads and predicted she would ruin Labiche, but the increased sales had justified her business acumen. She was known for her quick temper and her gossipy tongue and now she had become a little irritable at the length of time Toucoutou took in making her choice.
"Voyons, Toucoutou," she said, as the girl wavered between a lovely singing pink and a plaid silk something like that on the model in the window, "me, I can't stan' yere all day."
Thus admonished, Toucoutou decided on the plaid as being the most grown up and after having bought her sewing silk and all the other little necessaries to match she hurried home and set feverishly to work. She had learned to sew beautifully from the nuns and now for the first time she enjoyed doing what always before had been a terrible drudgery to her.
Claircine found her still at work when she got back late, only just in time to put the supper on the stove. She had found out all she wanted to know. Placide Taquin was in every way eligible. He came of a good middle class family of means and he himself was already successfully launched as a cotton factor.
"Listen Toucoutou, you mus' play yo' cards good, yes," said she to the girl, 'or you nevaire get one husban'. A man wants not to marry himself, no' if he can get w'at he want without. They tole me w'en I was yong lak' you that you can't fin' a husban' in the vetiver, an' that's for true. C'est tres bien to go a 1'opera with him, but, if you love him an' want kep him, do like I say, yes. Permit him hoi' yo' hand, but don't you kiss him no mo' until he has propose. Mek' no mistake. You have only you. You ain't got no dot, an' as they say in Jamaica, w'en a man marry with a poor girl, he marry with empty bottle."
"All right, Claircine, I'll be careful; but don't you find he got lovely eyes and become his clothes well? An' I bet you he know good how to dance." Claircine paid no attention to this ebullition and told the child that if she would do what she was told she could have the lode-stone gris-gris. She disappeared from the room and soon returned with a small piece of blackish molten-looking rock in the palm of her hand. She gave it to the girl saying, "That kep' my Bazile true to me so long as he live. Keep it always by you." Toucoutou raised her skirts and placed it in the safest place she knew — her stocking — as Claircine continued, "For make mo' sure, you get some hair off his head fo' keepsake and give it to me."
When Saturday came, Toucoutou was all dressed and waiting an hour before time. As she stood in the parlor she preened herself before the long gold framed pier glass, while Claircine rocked in her chair smiling with pleasure at the lovely graceful picture the girl made in her new dress, which was as near a perfect copy of the one she had seen in the window as she could make it.
"Look Toucoutou, don't you forget," said the old woman, "you hav' to fight with yo' sef so well as with him. So don't you make yo'self so cheap no mo'. No kissin'! If you play with fire you burn yo' chemise."
"But don't call me Toucoutou no mo'. Call me Anastasie, my right name. Me, I'm too old for nickname. My dress ain't short no mo' and my hair is up."
As Claircine was about to answer the knocker ham mered on the door. She went to open it, while Anastasie flew to the sofa and sat down primly at one end, her skirts billowing out on each side.
Placide, alert and graceful, entered and came towards the sofa. Anastasie, with an over emphasized air of bored aloofness — her idea of the best manner of a grande dame, held out slim white hand with lovely a tapering fingers, which Placide clasped eagerly. He by seemed almost abashed this sudden transformation from the vivacious young girl he had kissed, to the grown-up and rather bored looking young woman. He felt that if he could once get out of the house he might retrieve his aplomb, so, after solicitously inquiring as to whether she had suffered any ill effects from her scare, he immediately said, "I'm afraid if we don't start, we'll be very late."
STOPPED HERE
As if his words had released a spring, Anastasie bounced from the sofa, entirely forgetful of her new found dignity and, seizing her little bonnet, hurried to the mirror to put it on at its most becoming angle. Qaircine placed a shawl around the girl's slim young shoulders and, picking up a wrap for herself, blew out the lamp and followed the young couple, keeping a respectful distance in the rear. Anastasie took Placide's arm as they left the house and no actress on her first night could have felt more self-conscious and nervous than the poor child did as she ran the gauntlet of all the women lounging on their doorsteps and caught their comments, some admiring, others envious and mean, but all so personal that she blushed becomingly and hoped against hope that Placide was a little deaf. One rawboned neighbor, who had floated down from Kentucky on a flatboat with all her family and belongings, said, "Hunh! Toucoutou's treed a man, an' she mos' too young ter tek' up the scent." ^^ 223Toucoutou almost cried with mortification when she heard the woman's Creole commere say unkindly, "When she-cat got tom-cat, she mak1 proud ways." In deed, the child was so ashamed that she was tongue tied until Placide had helped her into one of the funny little tram-cars, embellished on their sides with scenic paint ings and drawn by a single mule with a bell on its collar. As they had the car all to themselves except for Clair?cine, who sat apart, the girl soon began to feel more at ease and started to chatter. When they got out to walk to the Theatre d'Orleans, many a masculine eye turned to follow Toucoutou's bright animated face with its pink flush of excitement. Passing between the Roman-Doric columns that flanked the entrance to the playhouse, Anastasie was much impressed by the obsequious way in which the attendants showed them to their loge grillee, a box with a movable lattice in front which rendered the occupants invisible although still permitting them to see the stage. These loges were used for the most part by gentlemen accompanied by their mistresses, or people in mourning who wished to secretly alleviate their sorrow by attend ing the opera. Placide had been forced to take one, as , that was the only way in which a person of color would have been permitted to accompany them. ?^^ 124 .
Anastasie could never tell afterwards what she saw or heard; all she remembered was a beautiful pink haze of emotions. She was perfectly happy as she sat there. The mere feeling of the physical nearness of Placide thrilled her and, when his hand touched hers, she was filled with ecstasy and felt strange' little sensa tions of pleasure run up each side of her spine like am bulating goose-flesh. When the performance was over they returned as they came. Perfectly oblivious to Claircine as she followed behind, the young people walked hand in hand through the dark lonely streets from the tram-car to the house. Here Claircine unlocked the front door and went back to the kitchen to get a candle. Without speaking, Placide pulled Toucoutou to him and kissed her on the lips. As they clung to each other, a burning desire almost fused them into one with its heat. The girl felt herself slipping and, afraid that Claircine would come back, she put her hands on his chest and pushed him away with a supreme effort, saying, "Placide cher, give me a piece of your hair, so I can always have some of you close to me." Still trembling with the force of his desire, he took his penknife from his pocket and, opening a blade, handed it to her. As he lowered his head, she reached up and hacked off a tiny lock. Her nervous hand pulled his hair && 125
and he said "ouch." They both giggled and it released their tension. As Claircine came towards the door with a flickering candle in her hand, Anastasie whispered, "Bonsoir, Placide, you come see me tomorrow?" and went in, turning for a parting look before she closed the door. Placide mounted the front step and pressed his lips to the cold knocker just where he had seen her hand rest on it. Wild schemes boiled through his head. He would go to her bedroom window at the back of the house and get her to let him in. He could not live away from her a minute. Time, until the next evening, stretched out in his mind as a black abyss of loneliness. He must feel the touch of those lips again — soft, yielding and mad dening. Gradually, however, he calmed down and finally de cided to go home. A little hymn of exultation sang in his heart as he went. He had not gone half an islet before he noticed the bent figure of a very old colored woman hobbling in the shadows just ahead of him. She was mumbling to herself and as he passed her, he caught the words, "That Toucoutou Jasmin, she. . . ." He whirled on the old hag and said, "What's that you say, old tame?" 126
"Pardon, Michie," she spoke the bastard French of the uneducated Creole negroes, "I ain't say nuthin', jus' a ole woman talkin' to hersef, tha's all." "No you're not! Tell me what it was you said," he ordered angrily, rather irritated at the interruption of his dreams. "I jus' speakin' 'bout a cockroach scrawlin' out a flour barr'l an' callin' hersef white, thas all," grumbled the old woman. Thoroughly roused now he caught her roughly by the arm and said, "You tell me damn quick what you mean by that or it will be the worse for you." "Pardon, Michie," she whimpered, "I no say nuthin' 'cept Toucoutou Jasmin she no mo' white than me." "You lie, you old voodoo," he interrupted, "she's as white as I am. I'll have you sent to the Parish prison and see the Sheriff gives you twenty." The old woman suddenly dropped her cringing atti tude and, looking up at Placide out of the corner of her eyes with a certain bold shrewdness, she said, "Listen, Michie, he kin give me forty, but de truth won't change for no whip. Dat gal she bebe to Claircine, an' I know, me." The old woman's change in attitude and a strange conviction in her words impressed him. Was this the
$J9Sp^^ explanation of Anastasie's living alone with Claircine? A terrible doubt entered his mind. Maybe it would have seemed queer to him before, if it had not been for his beguin. Limply, he collapsed on a nearby doorstep. The sudden change from his exaltation to this frightful sus picion was too much for him. Taking off his hat he mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. "Why did you tell me that, you damn old nigger?" he asked weakly; but all he heard as the old crone hobbled away was, "I ain't said nuthin', I'm a poor ole woman, I'm mammy to Sans Facon." The next evening, after dark, Placide came to the house on Goodchildren street and found Anastasie sit ting on the doorstep waiting for him. The sight of her made his heart beat just as wildly as it had before the old woman had told him she had colored blood, even though the knowledge had somewhat changed his plan of campaign. "Bonsoir, chere, it seems a year since I've seen you," he said as he squeezed her hand, "come let's go inside." As the front door closed behind them he glanced quickly around and then kissed her — a long kiss. 128
Finally he said, "Now run along, little sweet potato, and tell Claircine I want to speak to het — alone, you understand." "What for? You don't want me to hear?" she asked rather hurt. "I'll tell you later, but go now and do as I say." Anastasie hurried out and Placide sat down on the sofa. In a moment Claircine appeared in the doorway, her face set in unusually hard lines as she said respect fully, "Bonsoir, Monsieur, you wish speak with me?" "Yes, Claircine, I do," he answered. Then suddenly without any preliminaries he shot out, "I want Tou?coutou." Claircine's face remained perfectly impassive as she answered, "Monsieur know how he can get her, n'est ce pas?" "How?" "Make marriage." "But I can't marry her, you know that as well as I do. There's a law in this state forbidding the marriage of a white person with a black, even if I was willing to do so under the circumstances." "Then Monsieur is colored?" Claircine countered quietly with a perfectly impersonal manner. "What do you mean by such impudence?" burst out
Placide, flaring up, "you know damn well I'm white and nothing but white." "Yes, but so is Toucoutou." "Don't lie to me, Claircine," he interrupted. "She's your daughter; so how can she be white? You can placer her with me. I'll be kinder to her than many a husband, give her a nice house in her own name and plenty money besides, so if anything happens to me she'll be cared for; but I can't marry her and I won't." As he spoke Claircine's expression was inscrutable; her face hardened and he could feel her irrefragable determination as, with a quiet dignity that rather im pressed him, she said, "I tell no lie, Monsieur; Toucoutou is white, all white. She not my bebe. Peop' they say so because she live with me. But her true name be Anastasie Jasmin, an' both her parent was from la Suisse." Then simply and clearly she related the story of Tou?coutou's birth just as she had told it to the Mother Superior of the Ursulines. When she had finished she said, "Me, I don' ask Monsieur to b'lieve only me. I got certificat de bapteme, I kin show." She left the room and returned in a minute with a legal-looking document in her hand. She gave it to him and watched his face intently, trying to judge its effect upon him as he read. 130
As he went over it two or three times, his mind marshalled the evidence. On the one hand there was the assertion of the old colored woman who had told him that Toucoutou was Claircine's daughter, but then she was Sans Faxon's mother, so she had a grudge. That might account for what she had said and of course Toucoutou's living alone with Claircine would give credence to a story that she had colored blood. On the other hand, Claircine had explained most plausibly how that had come about; and then, here was this baptismal certificate, correct in every detail and properly authenti cated, which showed that Anastasie Jasmin was of white parentage and enrolled upon the record of white births. He began to waver. There was not the slightest trace of colored blood in her appearance; her brown softly curl ing hair had no suggestion of kinky negro wool and her creamy white complexion gave the lie to any such idea. The image of her, his imagination conjured up, fired his blood and all possibility of logical cool reasoning fled, burnt up in the heat of his desire. Finally he raised his eyes from the paper he held in his hand, and said, "Bien, I'll marry her tomorrow." A little glint of triumph showed for an instant in Claircine's eyes and was cautiously quenched as she raised a deprecating hand and said, "But Monsieur is too much in a hurry, yes. Anastasie is young — only fo'teen, an' she has not yet made her first communion. It would be a sin in the eyes of God to take her befo'. You mus' wait till after."
Placide talked and argued but nothing could budge Claircine from her position, so finally he had to acquiesce. Then he told her to send Anastasie to him. The woman went into the kitchen and, sending the child to the front room, she stepped down into the back yard. By the faint light of an oil lamp that shone through the open door, she groped at the base of the big cypress cistern until, under the drip from the faucet, her fingers found the lock of Placide's hair which she had placed there, tied in a piece of red flannel with a little string wound carefully around it from left to right. Still crouch ing with her fingers touching the soppy package, she mumbled: "Aie! Aie! Voodoo Magnam! If ever he leave dat chile Zo li pain man bo Casse cou li!" Rising, she went quietly into the house, comforted with the thought that, as long as her voodoo worked, Toucoutou would not lose her lover. But she realized that even so she must not overlook her other precautions. Toucoutou's passionate temperament might spoil all her
plans; so, moving as stealthily as a cat, she took up a position near a door from which she could glance into the front room without being seen. 733
HIHE TAQUIN, dressed in his best, walked PLACIDE nervously along Royal street. He wore a.black suit with a white lawn bow tie, a chapeau de paille and, even though it was a lovely Sunday morning — the first after Easter, his waistcoat was of dark wine-colored velvet dotted with black spots. A white cape jasmine in his buttonhole and a heavy gold watchchain across his front were the only other touches of color to enliven the re spectable blackness of his attire. A young, silky mous tache darkened his upper lip and, as he took off his hat to mop his forehead, it was evident that his hair was sleeked down with the favorite Creole pomade made of prickly pear and castor oil disguised with bergamot, until it rivalled in glossy blackness the polished leather of his shoes. There was a hungry eagerness in his manner as he passed hurriedly in the rear of the Cathedral St. Louis without even a glance into its old garden filled with lush banana trees, crepe-myrtle soon to burst into glow ing pink, and tall impressive magnolias with white blos soms shining spotless from the sheen of their dark green foliage like stars in a storm-black night. He turned to the left into Orleans alley with its flock of balconies guarded by slave-wrought iron railings, simple and charming in design, and quietly slipped into the side entrance of the Cathedral. The night before he had hardly slept at all, so now the dark still coolness was grateful to him as he dipped his fingers in the Holy Water and made the sign of the cross. Choosing a seat partly screened by a column, he knelt, mechanically repeated
a few Ave Marias and then sat back closing his eyes. As if on a silver screen, he began to see visions on his eyelids, far more seductive than those that had tor tured Saint Anthony. People kept coming in until they almost filled the church, but still his eyes remained shut; and it was not until the organ released its solemn singing richness of tone that he was awakened from his contemplation of passionate visions to behold virginal young figures of girls, dressed all in white with filmy gauze floating from their heads and flickering yellow-tipped candles in their hands, fluttering forward down the centre aisle like great snowy moths fascinated by the mystic light that led them onward. He searched eagerly to find Toucou?tou. She was the loveliest of them all; her lids lowered demurely, their long black lashes casting a deep lavender shadow on her cheeks whose rich coloring seemed to glow against the misty white of a. veil, held in place by a little wreath of daisies and orange blossoms. In one hand she carried a long slim white candle with a tiny bunch of flowers tied to it by a large white satin bow. It seemed almost like a slighter repetition of herself; the sheath of her slim white dress like its tapering slimness, her face the pale flame — except that hers was the more gracious form with its suggestion of delicate curving breasts and the sway of graceful narrow hips. Her other hand held a rosary of white ivory beads and a prayer book with covers of mother of pearl, both of which Placide had
given her. As a blotter drinks up ink, the sight of her absorbed him and he was oblivious to everything else. He did not even see the group of little boys that followed in white stockings, shoes and trousers and tight black bombazine coats. His heart pulsed so fast he could hardly breathe and great surges of blood beat up through his body, leaving a tingling hot feeling in his face. Little rhythmic shivery sensations swept in waves over his skull at the roots of his hair. His fingers twitched with the desire to follow the soft curves of that lovely body, to feel the camel ia texture of her skin. His eyes felt hot and in flamed and he hungered for her — as he had been hunger ing for days.
gpgpSpgpjpfp^^ TEH ^^ MUCH happened in Goodchildren street after dark and this first Sunday following Easter was no exception. It was past eighty-thirty and the lights of most of the houses in the islet had gone out, except in Claircine's, when a heavy old carriage on C springs, the kind generally to be seen in funeral processions, bumped over the dry but rutty road and drew up before the lighted house. Without waiting for the negro coachman to get off the box and open the door, Placide jumped out and disappeared inside, not stopping to knock. He found Anastasie standing in the middle of the front room dressed in the plaid frock and little bonnet she had worn to the opera. Her brilliant violet-blue eyes were big with a little fear, a great desire and much excitement. The dim yellowish light of the oil lamp on the centre table gave almost the effect of footlights as it lit her face from below and only half revealed her young beauty, giving it a mystic quality that held Placide motionless for an instant on the threshold. Then in two steps he was across the room and had swept her into his arms crushing her willing lips to his. They were perfectly inarticulate. There was no neces? ^v^-'vv 737 * jI J?
sity for words, their senses spoke a far more eloquent language. A touch, a look released far more emotion than ever mere speech could have done. It is age that demands the searchings and hairsplittings of speech. Youth has a more effective method of communication. As soon as Qaircine appeared, dressed in her best black silk with a bonnet on instead of her usual tignon, Placide hurried them both into the carriage. Anastasie and Placide sat side by side on the back seat with Clair?cine vis-a-vis, as they bumped down Frenchmen street into Chartres and finally drew up at the Cathedral. Here they got out and the lovers walked hand in hand down Orleans alley, which was eerie and silent, its stone flaggings patched with moonlight and the dark shadows cast by the overhanging iron-railed balconies. Waiting at the side door they found two of Placide's friends who were to act as witnesses. There were hushed greet ings; the ghostly atmosphere of the narrow little alley hidden under the solemn loom of the massive church seemed to impose restraint. They entered and found the priest standing in a small island of light which radiated weakly from a few wax candles. All beyond was cavernous gloom. In a manner impersonal and bored he droned through the marriage ceremony. Possibly this detachment was his defensive armor ^^^!^^^^s^ 138
against the rankle of his enforced celibacy. When he had finished he led them to the register and everybody duly signed. It was all over. The bride and groom and Claircine were once more in the carriage driving back before Anas?tasie realized that she was now Mme. Placide Hypolite Taquin. Reaching the house once more they got out and went in with Claircine. She made them sit down while she disappeared in the kitchen and returned with a tray of sandwiches and a bottle of anisette. Placide refused the food, but tossed down his little glass of liqueur at one gulp. Anastasie, however, forced him to eat a sand wich and munched one herself, afraid of hurting Claif?cine's feelings if she did not. Placide got up impatiently and Anastasie came over to where he was fidgeting and, putting her hand in his, said simply, "I'm ready, cher." He called the coachman in and soon the little rawhide trunk, gay with its bright brass nailheads, was upended safely on the box seat. As they went out of the house Claircine watched them, crying openly, and said, "Monsieur Placide, be kine to that chile. She good an' she hones.' If you treat her bad, I hope somebody goin' put a gris-gris on you that rot yo' bone an' keep you frum sleepin' so long you live." "No fear, Claircine, I love her too much not to be kind sWWrtWfctMHWWWHWW*^^; 239
to her," he said gaily, as Anastasie kissed her goodbye and the pair went out and got into the carriage. Claircine watched them from the door until they dis appeared and then went into the kitchen, still weeping. She brought out her bottle from its hiding place, put it on the table and proceeded to take comfort from a fre quent glass of cognac as she rocked in her chair. It was a practice she had indulged in more and more ever since Bazile's death and it had made both her temper and her judgment very uncertain. As the carriage bumped along, Placide put his arm around Anastasie's waist and she dropped her head on his shoulder with a contented sigh, saying, "This is the only time I ever like goin' in a carriage. The first time, I was only a little girl and I went to the cemetery in a carriage like this to bury my guardian when he die of the yellow fever. He was in his coffin on the box seat just like you see my trunk now. Me, I'll never forget the ter rible things I saw that day; I still dream about it and wake up crying. Then the next time was when the nuns expell me and sent me home in their horrid old black wagon. But riding this way makes up for all the rest, be cause I love you, cher." She raised her lips to his kiss. The carriage had gone but two islets when it came to a stop before the only two-storied house in the block. Adhft&AAdWWHWWWHWWiAA 140
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ELEVEN npOUCOUTOU was blissful. Her house was far JL grander than anything she ever imagined she could possess, and Placide was wild about her. She soon settled down into a happy routine. Every morning after he had left for his office she dressed carefully and started for the French Market.Zaire following with a gay tignon on her head, a kerchief of Indienne crossed over her bosom, a crisp white apron covering her Attakapas blue skirt and a generous market basket hanging from her arm. They made a smart picture as they paraded down Frenchmen street and crossed Espanade into Chartres. Toucoutou held her lithe little figure superbly and seemed not to hear the envious whispers of the shutter-peepers that greeted her passing. Sometimes she chose Decatur street instead of Chartres so that she might see the levee; its network of masts and crossyards silhouetted against the sky, with here and there white sails drying in the sun, looking like summer clouds as they billowed lazily. She adored the bustle and movement, the mer chants' clerks scurrying about, pencil behind ear and notebook in hand; the long ant-like lines of negro steve dores singing and coonjining as they unloaded twin
"Oh! Placidc, comme c'est beau!" she cried, her eyes reflecting the sparkles from the crystal chandelier that hung dripping with glass icicles and festoons from the centre of the ceiling. She uttered little "Ahs!" of delight as she ran over and sat on the carved rosewood sofa cov ered with its respectable and enduring black haircloth and looked at the imposing chairs and centre table that completed the "parlor set" and at the brocade curtains that hung in red gloriousness from under golden cor nices of moulded brass. Jumping up she flew at Placide who was watching with pleasure from the middle of the room and, throwing both arms around his neck, kissed him on the lips saying, "Oh, Placide, cher, you did this all for me, an' I didn't know a thing about it." He held her close to him and kissed her on her eyes, her mouth, her cheeks, as his hunger for her became un endurable, until she fought him off and said, "Placide, cher, be good, here comes the cocher." As he went to pay the man she walked over to the large mirror in its im posing gold-leaf frame that topped the white marble mantel, with its highly colored sevres vases on either end and its clock "sous cloche" between them. She began to arrange her hair; but the reflected glories of the room made her forget about her appearance — for a minute, until Placide, returning, said, "Hurry bebe, you must 2 42
see the rest of the house" and, seizing her hand eagerly, he led her upstairs. Going into the chamber at the top of the steps, she saw an enormous fourposter, its lustrous Santo Domin?gan columns large as a woman's waist, supporting a tester whose underside was elaborately upholstered in flutings of green satin radiating from a central silk- covered button. Gleaming white sheets were turned down and already on one side Anastasie's little muslin nightgown was laid out, in long-sleeved, high-necked primness. Placide said to Zaire who was kneeling beside the trunk unpacking, "Allez! Zaire, va't en, filez, vite! I will help Madame," and as the woman went out discreetly closing the door behind her, his feverish fingers began fumbling at the hooks of Toucoutou's bodice and he stripped it off her lovely arms and reached forward to kiss her neck just where the live warm flesh showed above the cold white line of her chemise. Her hoop skirt suddenly collapsed into a dark circle about her feet and she stepped out of it, her stiff-starched long white petti coat crisply crepitating as she moved. While he watched her hungrily as starved man looks at food, she un a hooked corset cover and took off, disclosing under a it neath many-boned corset and a chemise. a
Her hands worked behind her back unsuccessfully trying to unfasten her petticoat and she looked up at him and commanded prettily, "Help me Placide, the string is in a hard knot." He walked around behind her and, as he leaned over to see what the difficulty was, his silky black moustache touched her bare shoulder. A sudden frisson of passion blazed up in her and fired him too. He felt like a man who has searched all his life long for a jewel and has at last found it — but done up in a thousand wrappings, each of which he must first remove — one by one. The near warmth of her, the heady perfume of her youth, the answer to her passion flaming up in him suddenly drove him mad; his futilely fumbling fingers tensed and he snapped the string. The petticoat fell to her knees in sharp starched angles, disclosing still more lingerie. In a voice shaken and strange with the exasperation of wait ing he blurted out, "Mon Dieu, chere, you have so many skins as an onion!" She laughed — a delightful throaty little gurgle — but suddenly gave a sharp cry of surprise as darkness en veloped her. As he carried her towards the bed she realized he had blown out the lamp. AiM^^fcAtWrAAA 144
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ELEVEN npOUCOUTOU was blissful. Her house was far JL grander than anything she ever imagined she could possess, and Placide was wild about her. She soon settled down into a happy routine. Every morning after he had left for his office she dressed carefully and started for the French Market.Zaire following with a gay tignon on her head, a kerchief of Indienne crossed over her bosom, a crisp white apron covering her Attakapas blue skirt and a generous market basket hanging from her arm. They made a smart picture as they paraded down Frenchmen street and crossed Espanade into Chartres. Toucoutou held her lithe little figure superbly and seemed not to hear the envious whispers of the shutter-peepers that greeted her passing. Sometimes she chose Decatur street instead of Chartres so that she might see the levee; its network of masts and crossyards silhouetted against the sky, with here and there white sails drying in the sun, looking like summer clouds as they billowed lazily. She adored the bustle and movement, the mer chants' clerks scurrying about, pencil behind ear and notebook in hand; the long ant-like lines of negro steve dores singing and coonjining as they unloaded twin
stacked river steamers with ornate superstructures look ing like white icing on wedding cakes; the Irish draymen cursing and beating their horses or each other with per fect impartiality; the enormous heaps of sugar hogsheads, rice sacks, cotton bales, flour barrels, stacked piles of lumber, merchandise of every description; each minia ture mountain topped by a small gay colored flag, flut tering in the breeze, every one different, to indicate to illiterate negroes the place to put each separate commis sion merchant's wares. Her pleasure in the scene was added to even by the low-swung cotton floats drawn by four mules as they dashed here and there, with their black drivers precariously keeping their footing on the jouncing floorboards as they cracked their whips spec tacularly. Lagging a little on the way, fascinated by all this movement, she would finally reach the French Market. It too, hummed and clattered with life. Under its tri angular roof of Spanish tiles, supported on mottled-buff cement pillars, a colorful crowd eddied lazily. Ample quadroons in guinea-blue dresses and brilliant head handkerchiefs rubbed shoulders with foreign sailors, shaping their wavy course for the fragrant coffee stands to sober up. Sadfaced little girls tugged enormous mar ket baskets as they bought the supplies for their families and never forgot to ask for lagniappe. Blind beggars whined at Creole ladies in somber mourning. Black was almost their uniform for they "mourned" at the death of
even third cousins and Creole families were enormous in those days, with endless ramifications. "Les Veuves de Malabar" the flippant called them. Negro roustabouts jostled Italian truck growers and slattern Choctaw squaws squatted at one end of the market, stolidly wait ing for purchasers to buy their gombo-file and little piles of herbs spread out on a blanket in front of them. Creole gentlemen, in true French fashion, were doing the marketing for their households before they went to their offices, followed by some trusty old slave with basket on arm. Haunted by delicious memories of all the myriad delicacies of the Creole cuisine — Jambalaya, Riz a la Destrehan, Daube, Crawfish Bisque, Corn Bread and Grillade — these bons viveurs searched for the raw ma terials from which these dishes were made. They chaf fered with the stall keepers, for the most part Italian women, obese mountains of greasy flesh, with pensile breasts, inflated stomachs and elephantine hips. Perhaps the mere unceasing sight of the ingredients of so many potential good dinners had been enough to swell them to their huge proportions. From the steel hooks above the game booths hung 147
SFW^ rainbow-headed mallard, speckled woodcock, needle-beaked snipe, pathetic disembowelled rabbits, and occasionally a "possum," skinned, stark and ratlike. That supreme delicacy — tiny papabottes, little larger than humming birds — were occasionally to be found; but quickly disappeared in the market baskets of amorously-inclined old gentlemen, who considered them an unfail ing specific for flagging energies — a theory which prob ably arose from the fact that Spanish flies were the chief articles of diet of these succulent little birds, which were picked but not drawn before cooking, and then munched bones and all. Indeed a regime of papabottes and black cock oysters washed down with champagne was the sub stitute in those days for the modern Voronoff operation. The crowd lingered at the meat stalls, where fresh pork was displayed in smug whiteness and hunks of roast beef were skewered to the wood by thin round slivers of iron, while from above on huge hooks hung whole carcasses of lamb with festoons of highly spiced chor?rizzo in between. On the ground chickens cackled in coops and gray geese seemed to brood pompously over vanished greatness, when the honking of their forebears had saved Rome. On marble counters lay heaps of small racy river shrimp, or their coarser brothers from the lake, their 148
long threadlike whiskers inextricably mixed. Silvery? shiney pompano were there and flame-pink snapper, sheepshead, and that negro tidbit, — succulent but repul sive-looking black catfish. The fruit and vegetable booths were gayest, however, looking like giant quilts; the colored patches supplied by bunches of yellow or red bananas, orderly piles of lusci ous Louisiana oranges, small bundles of carrots that had sucked the color of sunlight through their lacy green tops and imprisoned it in their conical roots, somber brown — heaps of sugary yams pure gold inside, zebra-striped cushaws, cabbages both red and white, rich green spin ach leaves, orange spots of persimmons. Toucoutou made her way through all this milling crowd to find the food to tempt the delicate palate of her Placide. Scraps of conversation floated to her above the continuous hum, "Tha's too mooch, what you theenk, I made of money?" "Quartee riz, quartee pois et lagni?appe du sel." Toucoutou bartered with the best of them, just as she had seen Claircine do, nor did she ever forget to insist on her lagniappe, sometimes z'allumettes or salt or a spray of basilique for seasoning. She was never offered lagniappe vin rouge, however, for that was a terrible concoction made of the rinsings of wine barrels pepped
up with tobacco juice and alcohol, the prime favorite of the colored cooks when they went to market alone. Her purchases made and carefully stored in Zaire's basket, she would return home to put on her comfortable blouse volante, eat her lunch and rest and sew until she got dressed again to be ready for Placide's return from the office. Sometimes the stifling hot afternoon air became on fire with mosquitoes and then she took refuge in the big mahogany bed, dropping the mosquito bar around it, for windows and doors could not be entirely shut in that swelter and screens were unknown in those days. She was always alert and happy when he got home; after their early supper he often took her to the Orleans Theatre, where she thrilled over Mme. Fleury as she sang "La Brise" or "Je t'aime, mon maitre, t'aime!" je 6 song Anastasie learned to sing to Placide with great a effect, accompanying herself on the piano he had given her. Other evenings they went to the St. Charles Theatre, in the Faubourg Americain across Canal street, or to the Varieties, but there the plays were all given in English, which made them more difficult for her to follow. She liked best to listen to her native tongue, and her husband humored her in this as in everything else. fly There was only one in her ointment. Placide had not asked his widowed mother's consent to his marriage.
yyW^.W?9g999gg9gy'yW?3^ > He knew it was useless as Madame Taquin had set her heart upon his marrying his rich but very homely cousine, Marie Celeste, and he was afraid of his mother's terrible grim determination. He had been perfectly right too, for, when she heard of his marriage she became so enraged that she had a slight stroke and fell unconscious. She re covered sufficiently to disown him and, because his house was just across the street from hers, she locked her front door and swore never to use it again as long as her son was married to that poissarde, as she called her daugh ter-in-law. She lived and died true to her word, for when her body went to its last resting place it was carried out through a little door that opened on the side street. It had been so provided in her will. Living as close to her mother-in-law as she did, it was impossible that Toucou?tou could escape meeting her. When this happened she felt miserable for a week after as the old woman always looked clear through her without the slightest gleam of recognition in her implacable eyes, fierce black points in the centre but misty with age around the edge of the iris. One day Toucoutou had gone to Valsin Labiche's dry goods store to buy some needles and thread. When she went in she saw Madame Taquin, with her back towards her looking at a gorgeous Paisley shawl and heard her say "Oh, no, it is much too dear for me." Anastasie started to leave quietly but she caught Madame Labiche's eye and read in the curl of her lip her opinion of such a retreat. The storekeeper's "wife" was only a few years older and her very evident disdain was the straw that broke the camel's back of Anastasie's patient endurance. Color flooded her face and with an assured step she sailed up to the counter and, picking up the shawl, said firmly, though with inward quakings, to the woman be
hind the counter, "If Madame cannot afford it, thenPlacide I will. Charge you know — Madame — it to me Taquin on Union street between Love and Goodchil?dren." With her little chin stuck impertinently into the air she turned and walked out with the shawl over her word. arm, before Madame Taquin had time to say It a was the first occasion on which that grim old dame had ever been routed. As Anastasie walked home she felt strange fluttering a At first she thought the result of the excite sensation. it ment of her recent encounter, but as the feeling persisted she soon realized that her suspicions were true, and that the address she had given — Union between Love and Goodchildren — was in reality prophecy. She was sure a she was enceinte and decided to tell Placide that night. Then maybe he would not be angry with her when he heard what she had done to his mother. She felt no
^^ ompunction for her act, however, for she knew the old lady had conducted a merciless campaign against her, poisoning the minds of her neighbors and even going so far as to summon Placide and tell him that unless he left his wife she would disinherit him. But he had been splendid and had told his mother that he had rather have his wife than all the money in the world. Anastasie hoped the child would be a son and just like Placide. Thus dreaming she came home and started to make herself beautiful against her man's return. That night she told him and when he had taken her gently in his arms and kissed her, she said, "Placide, promise me one thing, cher. Swear, parole d'honneur, you will do for me just exactly as your father did when you were born — in every little detail." ***** Few callers came to the house on Union street. The fact that Anastasie had been brought up by Claircine coupled with Madame Taquin's belligerent attitude created a feeling of hesitation among the neighbors. Nothing can be as ruthless and resourceful as a mother?in-law's attack upon a hated daughter-in-law, and of course it is peculiarly devastating because she has the added advantage of being presumed to be solely inter ested in the welfare of her son, even though in reality the question involved is merely one of her own pride overlaid with jealousy. As a result no one had visited the bride in her new house except Claircine and her old friend Madame Rigaud; so, when one afternoon a month or more after Anastasie had broken the news to Placide, the door knocker hammered and Zaire came up to an nounce that Madame Parle was calling, there was great excitement.
Anastasie made a most careful toilette and came down to find an enormously stout middle-aged Creole lady sit ting on one end of the horsehair sofa. The uneven dis tribution of weight made one fear the other end was in imminent danger of flying up and upsetting its burden upon the floor. Anastasie wanted to smile at the idea but instead politely said she was glad to see her visitor and sat down primly. Words began to flow from the mountain of flesh upon the sofa, unctuously and unceasingly. Although her French was excellent, she chose to speak poor English, thinking it more chic. "Oui ma chere, I have weesh to pay you a visite for long time, yes; but a doctor's wife is so beezy, especially when he has a success like he has. Me, I have to go see all the new bebe and say how they are pretty even when they favor a meenie-cat. All the lady say they fin' nobody
to come up to heem in a confinement. Such a pretty dress as you have on." Anastasie tried to say she was glad Madame liked it, but was not allowed to even commence, as Madame Parle resembled the Mississippi — once she had broken the levee, she swept grandly on overwhelming every thing in her course. "Yes," she continued, "I have watch you when you go make market. You have much pretty clothes. Monsieur Taquin must be reach, him, yes; they must cost plenty. I Metor was mo' steengy. For could wear some fine dress like that only the doc if first con&neme nt he make no a sou; when the couple young and poor. charge, not is a And don't you think after that, they be ready to pay when time I some lady on Esplanade, who hold their heads high, yes, who owe for as many as ten confinement." On and on she went until Zaire came in with two But you know, many some more come? a pass glasses of orgeat, then Anastasie was able to edge in word or two as her caller drank. a Finally Madame Parle heaved herself to her feet; al though one might have imagined this extra effort would have made her too short of wind, she recommenced her breathless flow of words. Patting Anastasie's hand she said, "Now, my dear, you mus' come an' see me and meet 1.5.5
Popo and Titine. They mos' the same age as you, yes, and Popo is so talent. She will devel-#/> to be a grande ac?trice, yes, some day you will see, and remember Doctor Parle is wonderful, yes. All the lady say so, the one what pay like the one what don't!" That evening when Placide came home Anastasie told him all about her afternoon and made him roar with laughter as she mimicked Madame Parle and her timely suggestions about the doctor. ***** There was great excitement in the house in Union street. Zaire had run over to Claircine's with the news and had sent a little nigger boy running to Monsieur Placide's office. Claircine hurried over to get old Zabette and they made their way to the house as fast as their ageing legs could carry them, arriving just as Placide appeared all out of breath. He found poor little Toucou?tou in the huge old bed, her face looking as wan and white as the sheet that covered her. The two old women busied themselves around the room making mysterious preparations. He leaned over and kissed his wife's fore head, not knowing what to say; just as a paroxysm of pain wracked her and she cried out. He looked on fright ened and helpless with tears streaming from his eyes as Zabette came nearer and patting her hand said, "Non, 156
non cherie, don' take on so bad. The mo' harder vous souffrez now the mo' quick the pain be done. Dr. Parle, he be here soon, but wat mek you need him, when I be here?" While she was resting between pains, Toucoutou called to Placide in a far-away, tired voice, "Placide cher, you can't do no good here. Go now and don't forget your promise." He stooped over and kissed her again and then, going to the tall mahogany armoire, he took out some things and left the room. Dr. Parle passed him in the hall with hardly a nod, such was his professional concentration. Toucoutou was a healthy normal little animal, so it was soon over and she lay exhausted as Zabette washed a fineninepound baby, with black hair just like its father's, and dressed it in the beautiful clothes Toucoutou had made during her long time of waiting. Dr. Parle had al ready left the room and stopped on the way to break the good news to Placide. Claircine, who had her instruc tions for months, now brought out a small blue silk cushion and held it in her arms while Zabette put the baby on it. Then she left the room and went downstairs with her burden. In the salon she found Placide in full evening dress, stiff shirt, white tie, and clawhammer, although it was 6?&?6&&&6&&ft?ft&6&6 157
^ only three o'clock, clothed as if he were going to a ball and fidgeting around the room with a cold cigarette dangling from his lips. "Claircine, tell me!" he said as he caught sight of her. "She's fine, Monsieur Placide, and, she want you to come by her. But look here, see w'at I got." Placide held out his arms and looking rather fright ened, took the pillow and the baby. He peered down at the funny little red face and said, "What is it? Would it hurt to kiss it?" "How it will hurt to kiss a boy?" she answered with a woman's superior smile at man's inadequacy on occa sions of this nature. Rather reverently he kissed the tiny forehead and started upstairs followed by Claircine who warned him not to stumble. Toucoutou heard him as he came in and turned her head to smile weakly as he laid the cushion gently on the bed beside her where she too could kiss the krinkly little red face. "Thank you, Placide," she said in a small voice, "I wanted our child to be received in the world just like you was and your father too." As Anastasie snuggled her baby into the crook of her arm, Placide sat beside the bed and watched, waves of tenderness, of a desire to protect, of pity, of all sorts of 158
P3^s;?:i?w?:v:i93^w^^^ primeval emotions swept over him — feelings he had never had before and could not quite understand or de fine. He reached out and held her white relaxed hand in his and said, "You know, cherie, that house over on Craps street that I took you to see a few months ago? Well I bought it and put it in your name; here are the deeds as a birthday present. You shall have all the rents. If I die I want you to have enough to take care of your self and of our child." Toucoutou not daring to move for fear of disturbing the baby, squeezed his hand and smiled — a tender little expression.
TWELVE IN the past year Toucoutou had often felt lonely. None of Placide's relatives or friends had come to call on her and even the neighbors had been very aloof. Many of her days had been long and sad as she awaited Placide's homecoming. This had been particularly true in the last few months of her pregnancy when her condi tion brought on fits of melancholy which made her weep frequently and feel it was possibly better to die than endure such loneliness longer. She bravely hid all this from Placide, however, for she instinctively realized it was not wise to damp his friendly, gay affection by dole ful complainings. If this ostracism had hurt Placide, at least he had never shown any evidence of it; but then that was his way, he seemed always able to forget the things that were disagreeable. Now since her baby had come all was changed for her. Zozo, she called him, was of constant source as a joy. He was far more exciting to wash and dress and feed than any doll she had ever had. The neighbors too, began to visit, following like sheep in the footsteps of the redoubtable Mme. Parle. The good little doctor stopped in also from time to time as he made his rounds, ^
ostensibly to see that the baby was all right. As a matter of fact he really liked this gently vivid happy-minded — young mothersuch a contrast to the commanding mountain of flesh that captained his destiny. Although the meek ineffectual little man felt at times he was bear ing a cross, he realized that on the whole it was possibly for the best. His was the soul of a scientist not a practi tioner, and he knew deep down in his heart that only the constant nagging and aggressive generalship of his wife kept the family from starving; for, left to his own de vices, he would have spent his life squinting down a microscope at blood cultures, casual as the proverbial lilies of the field in his trust in the Lord for sustenance. ? One morning he stopped by with a message from Mme. Parle. Monsieur and Mme. Taquin must come on Friday night to a little soiree they were having; Popo would surprise them; he could say no more; they would see for themselves. The invitation thrilled Toucoutou for it would be her first appearance in society, so she made great prepara tions. She tried on some of the pretty dresses she had before the baby was born and found them too snug across the bosom, so she ordered a brand new one and care fully superintended the pressing of her husband's rarely used dress clothes. 261
When Friday came Placide and Anastasie made a brave showing as they walked to Mme. Parle's house over on Piety street. Ripples of talk among the front step sitters followed them as a troubled wake follows a ship. When they got opposite the Labiche store, Eglantine was sitting out in front. Her eyes clouded with a mean envy as she saw how lovely and smart Anastasie looked. Raising her voice she said in a loud aside, "Hein! that Toucoutou she make me sick. She wouldn't be steppin' so high if she know what I know. Insultin' her better like she did old Mme. Taquin!" Anastasie turned up her little nose, sniffed daintily and walked on making believe she had heard nothing, as she hung on Placide's arm and talked with animation. Eglantine's face flushed in anger and she mumbled to herself, "You mek' me any of your proud ways, petite cancrelate, and I sho' will smack yo' face." By the time Placide and Anastasie arrived, the party had already gathered and were seated facing a rough little stage with a row of candlesticks, in which candles were flickering, placed at intervals along the front edge by way of footlights. It was bare of all furniture except an old table piano pushed back in the far corner. A complete hush fell at the Taquins' entrance. A few of the women openly sniffed and whispered to their neigh hots; but the men took their presence in far better part and an appraising look might have been seen in the eyes of some as they glanced from Anastasie's vivid little face to the commonplace acridity of their wives. Most of the men wore sombre black business suits; but there were a few frock coats. Placide, however, was the only one who had appeared in the glory of full dress, except Leon
Golar who was in love with Popo. Words began to flow from Mme. Parle as if some secret faucet had been turned on as she crossed the floor to meet her guests. "Oh, ma chere, so glad you come," and looking at Placide, "But you become your clothes nice, yes. You have not arrive too soon. Popo will make you a good surprise; elle a toute la prestance d'une actrice. Some day she will make us to be rich, yes, and fameux. Popo, come here, you have to know Mme. Taquin," she called to a thin anaemic girl with a sallow complexion, dank black hair and a long nose separating a pair of soulful eyes. Popo gave them each in turn a limp white hand, glancing first heavenward and then at her feet to give full value to her really lovely long black lashes and to convey at the same time an impression of artistic tem perament. Mme. Parle waved Placide to a seat among the males 163 i&&
and dragged Anastasie to a chair beside her, saying in a voice of command that would have been a credit to a general of division, "But first Titine must play her morceau." Gapping her hands, she ordered, "Titine, au piano!" A younger counterpart of Popo went languidly to the piano and was about to begin when Madame com manded again, "Titine, tell what piece." "It is a romance for the pianoforte from 'Zampa, ou la Fiancee de Marbre'," replied the girl meticulously. "Ah, yes, she play that so good!" sighed Madame. "Her teacher he say she goin' be soon ready for the Conservatoire." Titine attacked her "morceau." She had dash and daring, that is the best that could be said of her playing. At times her fingers stuttered over runs and notes were slurred or altogether mislaid — but still she had dash — and strength. As she turned page after page the seance developed into an endurance test. Would Titine drop exhausted from her stool while her audience was still awake, or would loud snores from the company punc tuate her victory? Anastasie was counting the pages, it helped to keep her awake. The twenty-eighth and last ended in a stirring crescendo and the rattle of polite applause marked the contest a draw. feAAt^A^ws^WfAA 164
^ There was a rustle of movement as people changed their cramped positions and a desultory conversation broke out among the women, while the men looked vacantly at the opposite wall. As a male amusement, a six day bicycle race would have had far more appeal. Titine, who had gone back to the piano after making her Bow, now began to play softly. Suddenly Popo ap peared in the doorway, her eyes wide open in an unsee ing stare. The little crown of white flowers in which she had made her first communion was on her head and her oily black hair flowed down in dank tresses over what was very evidently a long white nightgown, thinly by the addition of few light silk (if at all) scarves floating from her shoulders. She took disguised aa very dramatic pose, her hand in the air, and groped her un seeing way onto the stage, gazing fixedly at nothing. As she began to recite the mad scene of Ophelia it was idea in her mind evident confused that there was a blindness and insanity should be dramatically depicted in the same way. The music had changed to a queer tremolo and Popo's voice passed from gentle soliloquiz ing to hysterical ranting as she picked flowers from the bya air. Only miracle were her floating scarves kept from being ignited from the candle "footlights" as she strode around. She came to her climax, her voice rising
to a febrile screech, her arms waving wildly when — a sudden stream of water shot from between the outside shutters straight across the room, hitting Popo in the chest with unerring accuracy and gluing her draperies as closely to her figure as if she had been struck by a cyclone. Women screamed, the candles sputtered and went out, Popo collapsed on the stage weeping loudly and the stream wavered from side to side, as if aimed by someone convulsed with laughter, drenching almost the whole audience. Two of the younger men slipped quickly outside and found a hose, still flowing, attached to the hydrant and saw the figure of a man escaping around the corner. Leon Golar, trying to comfort Popo held her in his arms, her sopping hair taking the starch out of his im maculate shirt bosom, while she sobbed incoherently, "Nobody else but Felix Rouzan could do a trick so mean like that. Manieres sauvages d'un Americain! Jealous because he did not get invite. Me, I would not marry with him, no not if he were the last man in the whole Faubourg." At the other end of the room Mme. Parle was erup ting, "He will go to the calaboose, yes; it is a big in-sult; maybe he has ruin a great tragedienne for life; he will have to pay, yes, for all the fine dress he has spoil! But
S!3Qfflfi?SW what will he pay with? He got nothing to his name, rien; that mek' the reason nice people no ask him to their home. Li gaigne n'arbre pou here. (He's so poor, he got a tree for a mosquito bar.) You cannot squeeze jus' from a pierre, no. He shall go to the prison, yes. My aunt she marry with a cousin to M. le Juge Poupard, an' he will see that Felix pay." In the midst of all this commotion Placide and An?astasie quietly started for home. She would have laughed if she had not been so much afraid that her new dress was permanently stained. The next morning as Anastasie tried to repair the damages, she began to have doubts about the charm of society. If all social affairs were like her initial one she decided she would have a much better time going to the Orleans theatre alone with Placide. However, she felt that, even if she did not like it, she must give at least one party herself to even up her social obligations. So she invited the Parle family and such of the other neigh bors who had called on her, to a dance. For two days before the event Claircine and Zaire worked in the kitchen making kisses, luscious moist, coconut cakes, daube, biere creole and elaborate salads, while Anastasie sat upstairs singing to Zozo as she sewed on her new dress of white organdy trimmed with blue ribbons to match her eyes. Her soft rich voice floated down to the women working in the kitchen and they both smiled at the quaint old creole nursery song she repeated over and over again.
"Mape couri dans bal, dans bal, dans bal, Mape couri dans bal, dans bal chez Macuba. Aie, yaie, yaie compair Lapin Li un ti' bougre qui conne danse Aie, yaie, yaie compair Lapin Li un ti' bougre qui conne saute." As she sang and sewed, glancing every now and then at Zozo gurgling happily in his cradle, there was only one cloud on her horizon. Placide had rented the house he had given her when her child was born to old Palmire Caiman, the meanest, most scurrilous old skinflint in the whole Parish of Orleans. For a month now he had not paid his rent and Anastasie wanted the money to buy some new baby clothes and a pair of coral ear-rings. Old Palmire had been very nasty to Placide the last time he tried to collect the rent, saying twenty-nine dollars was an outrageous price for such a house, and had of fered to compromise for twelve. When Placide had -
threatened to sue he said, "Put me to law and be damn, but it sure go bad for you." Anastasie was wondering what he meant when Placide came in bringing bottles of anisette for the party and the matter faded from her mind. When the evening of the dance finally arrived, Mme. Parle was the first to appear. She was so enormously impressive that she seemed to be dragging the poor meek little doctor in her wake, like a battleship towing a pirogue. Popo and Leon Golar followed with Titine and and Felix Rouzan (of all people) bringing up the rear. He had transferred his affections to Titine and was for given after he had elaborately explained. He told her that he had been very much afraid of Popo's draperies catching fire. That he happened to be passing the day before and noticed the stage arrangements through the window and thought the placing of the candles so dan gerous that, even though he had not been invited to the party, he determined, nevertheless, to watch over Popo. That he waited all evening at the window, having bor rowed (surreptitiously) the fire company's hose, and had seen a little lick of flame ignite one of'her draperies (he would swear it by the Holy Mother) and then to save her life, he turned on the stream. That was all. His intentions had been of the best. The Paries accepted the 169
story. Sons-in-law were scarce and besides Felix had just inherited from an old aunt. Other guests began to arrive, the Voodries, the Poulards and Mile. Sirene, who had walked all the way over from Madmen street with fat Mme. Waddle, the widow of the ship chandler. Even poor old Professor Makartee, the lame piano teacher, hobbled in on his crutches, dressed in his shiny frock coat, his fine old head with its shock of white hair sticking out like a turtle's from an enormous low collar tied with a lawn string tie. Anastasie received them all, standing in the middle of the parlor floor, which had been cleared for dancing. The soft glittery light from the crystal chandelier over her head made her look the most desirable thing any of the men had ever seen, as she stood there slenderly erect, her white bodice intensifying the mellow brilliance of her coloring and her bell-like skirt falling in filmy flounces, each one piped in blue. But not even the eager little sparkle in her eye or her gay vivacity could keep the guests from behaving like well trained old fire horses, and immediately taking their usual places — the men all seated on one side, the women on the other. Popo, who had just announced her engagement to Leon Golar, was the only one besides Anastasie who showed any animation. She was telling old Mme.
Waddle that at lunch everyone complained that the soup had tasted so strangely; Titine who had made it could not understand, so she had gone out and stirred the soup kettle with a big spoon and brought to light . . . the dish towel that had been boiling in it all the morning. Mme. Waddle sniffed and said, "Well, ma chere, for me that is not good cooking — I find it more like laundry work." Luckily, just at this instant, old Boule de Neige, the cotton-pated negro who played for all the dances, started up a quadrille. This broke the ice and everybody began to have a good time. Waltzes, mazurkas, polkas and schottisches followed. In an intermission Professor Makartee insisted that Anastasie should play; and she, remembering Titine's marathon, performed a short piece of only a page and a half. After this, of course, Popo felt she should not hide all her "prestance d'une actrice," especially as she wished to impress Leon with the fact that he had become en gaged to a very talented young person. So she intimated to her hostess that if she were sufficiently urged she would consent to recite. Going to one end of the room, she raised her'hand for silence and gazed off soulful ly into vacancy with that detached expression of an artist silently communing with her soul for inspiration, while Anastasie said "sh, sh." She chose as her "piece" "Mari?quita, la Calentura," a touching little poem written in French by Camille Thierry, a local man of color, which told the sad story of a Spanish light-o-love who had
followed an officer to New Orleans in the old days and, when she had been deserted by him, became quite de mented and roamed the streets for years, the pathetic butt of all the children.
Popo recited it with a bathos that ruined the poem but with better luck than at her own party, for she finished her declamation without accident.
During supper the talk turned to Mme. Parle's soiree which had ended so disastrously in a deluge. That "grande" dame (in the fullest sense) bemoaned the fact that she had been put to such great expense in re-papering her room; "So much as the doctor he mek' weeth five bebes" was her quaint standard of compari son. This reminded the widow Waddle of a similar incident, so she took charge of the conversation looking almost as impressive as Mme. Parle herself; a huge cameo brooch palpitating on the apex of her ample, black silk bosom and long earrings to match resting on the roll of flesh that served her in place of a neck.
172 dWWfc "Ma chere," she said vivaciously, and everyone hung on her words, for she had the reputation of being a most titillating though good natured gossip. "You are no more worse than old Mme. Laprune. Las' week fire ketch to the house nex' door to where she live. The pom piers they come, and a beeg, beeg crowd; but you theenk Mme. Laprune she r-run out, so? Pas du tout; she stay r-right in her r-room an' her children they come an' they say 'Queeck, queeck maman, we mus' save you,' an' she say, "No, here I stay an' pray the Blessed Mother so my house she not burn down.' The fire nex' door she get mo' an' mo', an' Madame son, he r-run upstairs an' he say, 'you mus' come, or you be burn black like a nigger.' An' she say, 'No, I stay here on ma knees.' He r-run out to get some peop' to help heem with hees maman, because she so beeg fo' one man to carry. An' while he gone, the fire she got mo' hot, an' one glass he break een de window an' Madame she jomp up an' say, 'Dieu me sauve,' an' she r-run to the armoire an' she tek' a bou?teille of holy water w'at le Pape he bless, yes, an' she pull out de bouchon an' she trow the water on all the wall, an' the bed an' the picture, an' then she r-run downstairs in the strit. Wen the fire be put out, Madame she say to her son, 'You see, I save our house!' An' he say, 'Me, I
thought it was de pompiers.' An' she say, 'No, no, mon fils, eet was the holy water wheech I sprinkle.' An' den they go een an' the son he go upstair first, an' he louck in her r-room an' he call, 'Mon Dieu, come see what you have done!' An' Mme. Laprune she take one louck at her r-room an' she scrich, 'God forgeev' me! Me I took the bouteille with ink, fo' the bouteille with holy water'." As the laugh which followed this sprightly recital died down, Mme. Waddle ended by saying, "So you see, Mme. Parle, there is somebody mo' bad off as you."
When the party finally broke up after more dancing,
everybody said the soiree had been a splendid success and Anastasie herself began to believe there was some thing in social life after all.
,1/ ...,.] v .
~r
THI&JXEH
A FEW days after the party Placide told Anastasie .AJL he thought she would have to sue old Palmire Caiman to get the rent of the Craps street house and he took her to the notary so she could sign a power of attorney which would permit him to begin the action. She never gave the matter another thought until about two weeks later when Placide came home in the middle of the afternoon, his face white and strained. As soon as she caught sight of him she had a quick sinking feel ing, like a fluttering of imprisoned birds, in the pit of her stomach. He took her hand silently and led her up to their bedroom, carefully closing the door before he spoke a word. Then he pulled a paper from his pocket and said, "Anastasie, that devil, Palmire, has done a white-livered thing. You remember I sued him for you? Well, he filed an answer taking exceptions and in that answer he said, "Placide's voice shook, "he said that our papers were wrong because they did not describe you as Anastasie Jasmin, free woman of color. God! I'd like to kill him, but what good would it do? That paper would be still on file in the court." Placide sunk his head between his hands and ruffled his sleek black hair with his fingers. Anastasie's straight little figure standing beside him went rigid, her face became pale, and for the first time a certain hardness and determina tion spoiled the gentle curves of her mouth. "Listen, Placide," she said, laying her hand gently on his head, "I don' care fo' myself, not so much; but they mus' not make my Zozo a nigger. They got to keel me first. Tell me what those lawyer tole you. They couldn't have no way to make him take it back?"
"Yes," replied Placide, "he said we can make a motion to the court to have it expunged from the record."
"What's that 'expunge'?" asked the girl.
"That means that he will ask the judge to remove from all papers that Palmire says you're a ," his voice trailed off hopelessly.
"Me, I can prove I'm white!" flared back the girl. "Tell Zaire to go bring Claircine, quick before another minute pass. Allez vite! and tell her bring that paper she show you before we married."
*****
Two days later Anastasie and Placide, accompanied by Claircine, went to the law office of Christian Keppel. After a short interview they all started for the court house.
Anastasie, her mouth tightly shut to keep her under
^
lip from trembling, walked between Keppel and Placide, who had a most harassed look. Claircine followed a few paces behind, tears brimming her eyes. She felt obscurely that in some way they blamed her for the catastrophe. When they arrived old Caiman and his lawyer, a shyster notorious for sharp practice, were both waiting. As he caught sight of them Placide felt his fingers itch but he controlled himself. With Anastasie, however, it was different; she found herself getting absolutely out
fly
of hand; she felt that in another second she would
at Caiman and scratch his eyes out, kick him, beat him,
bite him — kill him
she could. The violence of her feel
if
ings did not surprise her, because she could not think —
her whole ego was concentrated in the one desire to rid
the world of him. She saw in him only the beast who had
tried to make her
nigger, and she suddenly
son
a
acquired all the desperate ferocity of
she lion with
a
cubs. She started forward, her lovely face convulsed
with passion, when Placide, who sensed her intention,
by
the wrist and, forcing her into
grabbed her
seat,
a
whispered fiercely, "Stop you little fool, you'll make
worse." Keppel began to speak in his booming voice: "May please the court, this defendant Palmire Caiman has
itit
dastardly action. He owes this rent;
been guilty of
a
?"?drtWfc 177 AAAiW ^^WW^ there is no doubt of that. Even he, as lost to all sense of decency as the skunk who cares not whom he befouls, will not deny it. Yet to save a few filthy dollars he has
vilified this lovely young mother and her child; accusing her of negro blood, in an attempt by blackmail to frighten her out of collecting her just dues. Why, may it
please the court, a carrion buzzard, feeding on offal, is a clean and holy angel with wings in comparison with that money-hoarding jackal."
Bang, bang went the judge's gavel, as he said, "Coun sel must refrain from vilification."
The opposing lawyer jumped to his feet and was yap ping at the judge, but, perfectly unruffled, Keppel turned to him and said, "If either you or your client feel that
by any possible chance I have personally insulted you, your seconds will know where to find me." The attorney subsided, neither he nor his client seemed disposed to take up the gage.
"Now, your honor," Keppel continued as if nothing had happened, "I will offer in evidence the baptismal certificate of Anastasie Jasmin, whom your honor now sees in court in the person of Mme. Taquin. You will notice that it shows she was baptized in the Saint Louis Cathedral, and that it was recorded in the twelfth
volume of the register for white people and not upon -^-^-A-^-^^-^-^-^-^^?
178 the register for Personnes de Couleur Libres; and that she was therein declared to be the natural daughter of a Monsieur Jean Jasmin, native of Berne in Switzerland and of Arthemise Desanges of Santo Domingo. The fact that the child's name appears on the white register is enough by itself, but in addition I have here in Court the old woman who raised Mme.Taquin. Here is an affidavit setting forth all the circumstances of Anastasie Jasmin's birth and upbringing, which this woman Claircine Sev?risol is prepared to swear to. If your honor will ad minister the oath, I will then offer it in evidence."
Anastasie was trembling with a nervous chill and Placide's face was as white as his teeth which gnawed his little black moustache when the judge said, "Clair cine Sevrisol, stand up! Is that your full name?"
"Yes, Monsieur le juge," she almost whispered, her knees so weak they hardly supported her.
"You are a free woman of color, are you not?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"Have you read the paper I hold in my hand and do you thoroughly understand it?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"Do you swear by the Holy Evangelists that all state ments contained in it are true to the best of your knowl edge and belief?" ROflnfl&ggAft
"I do," quavered Claircine, raising her right hand in imitation of the judge's gesture.
"Then sign here," he said.
Claircine approached and with shaking hand made a scarcely legible signature, and collapsed on a bench weeping.
Keppel noticed her condition and said to the court, "Your honor must forgive the emotion shown by this old woman. This terrible accusation has broken her heart because of her affection for Mme. Taquin, whom she brought up from childhood. Now that this affidavit has
been sworn to, I offer it in evidence." The lawyer for Caiman jumped to his feet and said, "I demand to see it before it is accepted." Keppel handed it to him without demur, and, after he had read it carefully, he said, "No objection."
The clerk handed the affidavit to the judge, who read it carefully and, when he had finished, looked up and said, "Has the counsel for the defendant anything
to say?"
When that gentleman had replied, "No," the Judge solemnly cleared his throat and delivered himself of his opinion. "In view of the evidence received by this court,
showing conclusively that the complainant in this action, Madame Taquin, is a white person; and further, because MftJMaffi
the question of her race does not in any way affect the merits of this case, I order that all qualification of Mme. Anastasie Taquin as a free woman of color be expunged from the records; and I wish further to say that this de fendant has behaved in a most shameful manner and
that his counsel is equally guilty for embodying in his pleadings matter that was wholly irrelevant to the ques tion at issue and very evidently only included for the purpose of intimidation. We will now proceed with the action to recover the rent."
Placide squeezed Anastasie's hand as she blinked hard to keep back the tears.
181
TQURTXEH
THE morning after her appearance in court, An?astasie was busy bathing Zozo when Claircine ap peared in the room and sat down. As she looked at her child and remembered the agony of mind she had just been through, the young mother suddenly flared up and, with an angry gleam in her eye, burst out, "Claircine, you make me plenty trouble. I have to tell you, you can't come to my house no mo'." "I only come here to help with Zozo," the old woman replied humbly. "Well me, I can take care of him without you. You only bring trouble every time you come. It was because you kept comin' to see me at the convent that Marie Rosette call me a little nigger and we made that fight and I got sent away. Now I'm married, and you keep comin', and what happen? Old Caiman he almost make my baby a nigger in court, and me too. You stay way from here for good. I don't want to see you no mo'. People they got to forget you ever raise me." "But Toucoutou chere — ," she began to expostulate. "You stop call me Toucoutou!" the young woman in terrupted hotly. "That's a nigger nickname." -y^Sfsf":fff^^
"Bien, Anastasie then; you know my house is lone some. You know Maitre he only come to see me when' he got no other place he can go, an' his pocket is empty. An' I'm gettin' ole an' I love Zozo." The old woman be gan to cry gently.
"Je m'en fiche, you think I care how you feel?" said the girl hotly. "You or nobody else can make my baby out to be a nigger. You go way from my house and stay way. I don't want you to put your foot here no mo'."
Claircine, now too angry to be sorry for herself, got up and blazed out, "You don't feel shame to talk like that to pore ole Claircine? You got no thanks in yo' mind
—
fo' all she do? That all she get — a smack in the faceafter she work hard like a dog to keep you in the con vent? Who was it but Claircine love yo', feed yo', put clothes on yo' back? Who fix that gris-gris wat make Placide to marry with you? Where yo' be now if Clair cine didn't sign that paper in the court, eh? Now you big lady, got everything yo' want, what yo' do? — kick old nigger off the banquette like a wore out shoe, leave her starve, leave her die, all alone by herse'f. Mebbe I be damn fo' all the lie wat I tell. Mebbe I nevaire get out of Purgatoire; but the Blessed Mother sho goin' fix it that you suffer hard fo' yo' cold heart way with old Claircine."
183 Anastasie sullenly went on washing the baby and said never a word as the old woman left the room and went down stairs.
Claircine walked into the dining room and, opening one side of the black carved oak sideboard, took out a bottle of cognac almost full. She drew the cork and held the bottle to her lips, letting the consoling liquid slide down her throat. Then she unpinned the white silk
fichu from her bosom and, wrapping the bottle in
it,
left
the house. Months went
by
and Anastasie did not see Claircine.
she were sick, but when his wife told
Placide asked him what
if
she had done,
with his
seemed to meet
it
approval for he said nothing. She could not understand
his reticence because she did not realize that the whole
question of the aspersions upon her color was such
a
source of suffering to Placide that he had unconsciously
mechanism. His was not
worked
defence
out
a
a
par
ticularly strong character; for while he had
large streak
a
of almost feminine tenderness that made him very lov
able and kindly, this type of man seldom has the strength
disagreeable situation squarely. His natural
to meet
a
inclination was to temporize or avoid. Although he was
devoted to his child, his feeling for his wife was
a
passionate obsession that completely dominated him. !&^
184 Any suggestion, direct or indirect, that she might have colored blood caused him such acute suffering that he drowned all such ideas deep down in the well of his subconsciousness until apparently, to all outward ap pearances, he had no knowledge whatsoever that the purity of her blood had ever been questioned. Naturally he resented and avoided anything that in any way aroused these painful ideas he had so carefully insulated from his conscious life, and was therefore secretly re lieved that his wife had forbidden Claircine the house.
From Zaire, Anastasie heard disquieting things. She had seen Claircine in the French Market very drunk and all the neighbors were gossiping about it. Anastasie felt a little conscience stricken, but she thought of Zozo and steeled herself, deciding to let things continue as they were.
During the winter a new family had moved into the
islet. Captain Jason Sparks, commanding a vessel plying between New Orleans and the West Indies, had installed his pretty young bride in a house near the Taquins and had left her there while he went on a voyage. Anastasie and the lonely young woman became intimate friends and were always together.
One Spring morning they decided to go to look at some of the new modes displayed in the Decatur street V^^
shops. Having gazed their fill, they wandered towards the French Market, which always fascinated both of them; — Mrs. Sparks by its novelty and Anastasie by its sheer life, color and movement. As they drifted through the milling crowd intent on bargaining for their dinners, the two young women dragged all eyes into their wake, leaving little stabs of quick desire in the men and of envy in the women; envy of their youth, their vitality, their allure. They were both modishly dressed for that period. Anastasie, the prettier of the two, wore a funny little round flat hat, decked with meaningless bows and stream ing ribbons and stuck at an angle on her smooth brown hair piled high. A tight bodice, long-sleeved and sloping to a tiny pointed waist, confined the softly rounded charm of her nascent breasts; and the voluminous folds of her skirt were unable to neutralize the sensuous effect of the languorous sway of her narrow hips as she walked. Chattering gaily, soft glints, like imprisoned fireflies, came and went in the deep blue of her liquid-lovely eyes,
and her cheeks had the soft warm tone of Jersey cream that has stood all night. She was a trifle too vivacious, her laugh a little too loud; while the quick fluttering gestures she made with her hands betrayed the fact that her nonchalance was merely to cloak the pleasure she felt in the stir she made as she passed.
1 86 She had not noticed, sitting in opulent curves on a chicken crate, an old octoroon, dressed in respectable black calico, softened at the neck by a spotless white kerchief, her head bound up in that brilliant Noah's Ark of color — the tignon de Madras. She swayed a little and her countenance had a vacant relaxed expression until she caught sight of Anastasie. Then a quick look of pleasure lighted her face and she called involuntarily in a voice slightly thick but very mellow, "Eh bien, Toucoutou, comment to ye, chere?"
Anastasie glanced quickly out of the corner of her eye and then faltered. A look of apprehension drove every vestige of youthful gaiety from her face, made her seem almost old — but only for a second; then her little chin snapped into the air and, turning to her companion, she said in a very distinct voice, "That's only old Claircine; don't mind her, she speaks to me free like that because she was my old nurse and carried me in her arms as a
baby."
A terrible expression twisted Claircine's face as all the grievances she had nursed for months flamed up in her heart, released from restraint by the cognac she had been drinking. Struggling awkwardly to her feet she shrieked hysterically, "In my arms you say I carried you, in my arms? God know it was here that I bore you! herelHere!
187 HERE!" and at each "here" she struck her ample paunch a resounding blow with both hands.
Anastasie went pale and that shocked, dumbly ques tioning look of a person struck by a bullet came over her face; then the rich blood surged back through the cream gold of her cheeks till they looked like the sunny side of a peach. She nervously clutched the arm of her friend and urged her from the market place, murmuring
—
into her ear disjointly, "The old woman's drunk every one knows she is — ask anyone round the market — she doesn't know what she is saying."
Whispers sprang up in their wake, — here, there, everywhere; and the sound of these susurrations killed the drink-fanned flame of Claircine's anger as a fat-pine torch is quenched by a plunge in the Mississippi. She stood swaying, a pendulous pyramid of grief, with streams of tears flowing down the ample curves of her cheeks. She knew well that New Orleans was a huge sounding board. That a whisper in the French Market is heard in Carrollton and Craps street, in Madmen and Solomon at almost the same time. Crushed, she realized what she had done, and waving aside the market people gathered around to savor this choice tidbit, she picked up her basket and hobbled off, eaten by an unutterable self loathing, convulsed by sobs that shook her huge
288 &&&&4^^&&&&&*%&&&& body with grotesque twitchings. But Claircine's re pentance had come too late; already rumors were spread ing in ever-enlarging circles like concentric rings on the surface of a pond into which a stone has been cast; cruel blasting gossip, corroding vanity like sulphuric acid, soiling self respect.
Anastasie continued to talk feverishly as they hurried from the crowded market into the comparative calm of a side street, but her companion seemed distrait; and suddenly making some flimsy excuse, left her alone. As
a wounded animal seeks its cave, Anastasie hurried home. Her under lip quivered and her tear-filled eyes took on the expression of a little puppy that had been brutally beaten. As she stumbled through her front door she gave no thought to the house of which she had been so proud when she came there as a bride. All it meant to her now was a refuge in which to hide her hurt and escape from curious cruel eyes. Quickly she ran upstairs to her own room and threw herself on the great bed, burying her face in the starched frilled pillow covers. Terrible retch-like sobs wracked her slender body. Nig ger! Nigger! Nigger! pounded through her brain, each repetition giving her physical pain. Was she, or wasn't she? Claircine had always told her she was white — she had gone to the convent — they took only white girls there. Why, why, had Claircine brought her up as a white girl, to ruin it all this way? It would have been kinder to have let her grow up a little nigger wench? Was she? As a child, before she went to the convent, she could only remember negroes. All Claircine's friends had been women of color, some practically white, others slightly darker. Not a single recollection did she have of either mother or father — had not even seen their pictures. There was Bazile Bujac, of course, he was white — she remembered how he looked as he lay dead of the fever. He had been at their house so much, sometimes even lived there for months. She loved him for he had always been kind and gentle with her, but she realized now Claircine had been his mistress. Was his friend, Jean Jasmin, whom she had never seen, really her father? "Mo pas negue! Mo pas negue!" she sobbed, dropping into the gombo French of her childhood. She couldn't be. Didn't she look as white as anybody? Nevertheless, a terrible doubt galvanized her. She sprang up and ran to her long mirror. She was reassured when she saw reflected the warm ivory pallor of her skin, the delicate modelling of her thin nostrils, the sensuous but refined curves of her luscious lips, her glossy brown hair with its gentle wave, the smallness of her hands and feet and the light grace of her lovely figure that child bearing had
&?^^??3rft^
190 ^ not spoiled. Yes, she looked white; there was no slightest trace in her of the heaviness of figure, the kinkiness of hair or the coarseness of feature of the African. Even the half moons at the base of her nails were pink and showed no trace of the bluish tinge as do those of the mestee. Staring hard into the mirror, so close her little nose almost touched its reflected image, she decided she looked white, — but was she? She must know. She dabbed powder on her face trying to repair the ravages of her crying spell, but other tears welled up and made little runways in the white. At last she became calmer. Patting her hair into place she put on her poke bonnet, tied the ribbons under her chin and quickly went out of the house. When she got to Claircine's the front door was un locked and she hurriedly walked in, shutting it behind
her. The old woman was asleep in her chair, the lower part of her face smothered in the fleshy rolls of her double chin. She was breathing stertorously and from time to time a snore jerked her head. From the corner of her half opened mouth drooled a thin string of saliva. On the table stood a bottle and a glass. A wave of dis gust and physical revulsion flooded Anastasie at first and was quickly succeeded by a white hot anger that that sodden thing could have done what she had — could have caused this tragedy for little Zozo and herself. Roughly she seized the old woman by the arm and shook her; shook her till the great flaccid body quivered like jelly. As her sodden senses returned, she opened her eyes and stared dully at Anastasie who kept repeating as she kept shaking her, "Claircine, Claircine, tell me who was my mother?" The fat face, crowned with its giddy tignon, rolled clumsily on the big bosom until a light of memory began to liven the old eyes and tears welled up to flow down over her cheeks. Anastasie stopped and sat down while the stream of tears in creased, and Claircine began to rock backward, and for ward, groaning over and over again, "Jesus, Mary and Joseph forgive me fo' wat I done this day." "Shut up, Claircine," said the girl, "tell me for true are you my mother?"
"Yes, fo' true, you my chile, Toucoutou, an' see wat I done to my own flesh an' blood!" wailed the old woman.
Anastasie's face went empty and dead, her figure slumped in the chair and her head sagged. She could no longer comfort herself with a doubt; the certainty was a terrible blow. All she could say was, "What make you want to talk that way in the market?"
"I'd cut my tongue out if I could take back what I
AA&dfeSnteftArfKWSnSrt^^ 192 y^^^p^
say." The words rushed to the old woman's mouth. "But look how you keep me way from you like I was a bad sickness. All I want was to work fo' you, slave fo' you like I always bin do. Jes' come round an' help with the cookin' an' cleanin' so I could see you an' hear yo' voice sometime. Jes' be near little Zozo an' wash him an' feed him. My God! you my flesh an' blood even if I be a nigger. I work so hard to keep you in the convent — to raise yo' a w'ite girl. I promise to Bazile I keep people from knowin' yo' a nigger. He was yo' Pa an' he got you baptize on the w'ite register. He had money an' plenty friend. An' now you marry to a w'ite man an' got a chile, I don't expec' no pay fo' wat I done. I didn' even want fo' you to know I was yo' Ma. All I ask was to work fo' you, be near you, be yo' kitchen nigger. An' wat you do? You run me away. You wouldn' leave me see Zozo. You wouldn' leave me hear the sound o' yo' voice or see the sight o' yo' face. You wouldn' leave me work fo' you. You drove me home an' lef me alone — alone widout nobody."
The old woman started to cry again, but between the sobs was able to continue. "I don' want the priest to know, so I cain't go to the church an' make my confes sion, not sence I swore to a lie in the courthouse — swore by the Holy Evangelists you not my chile. So now me, I got to burn in Purgatoire w'en I die, an' ole woman too, an' there ain't no way fo' me to git out neither."
"But that's no reason," cut in Anastasie, "why you should ruin Zozo and me by sittin' in the French Market, callin' out before everybody that you borned me."
"Don't you understan'?" wailed Claircine, "Here was me, a poor ole woman alone, w'at couldn't see her flesh an' blood. I worked fo' you all my life an' now I didn't have nothin' to do; an' I griev an' I griev, an' the only ease I got come out a bottle. An' after I was drunk, the liquor made me think my Toucoutou don't care nothin' no mo'. Me, I forgot then you didn' know I was yo' Ma, an' my heart hurt me, an' there in the market I was so glad to see you. It was just like Heaven open up an' a angel come down. An' then, an' then you turn up your nose at your poor ole Ma, an' you say w'at you did;
—
an' the liquor made me wil' — an'you know I got a temper like my Ma ... I wish to God I cut my tongue out first."
As the old woman rambled on, Anastasie recovered from the first shock and her mind began to work. To all intents and purposes, the court had decided she was white when it expunged from the records old Caiman's accusation that she had colored blood. As for Claircine, she had been drunk in the French Market and could in?
"?
sist that what she said was not the truth, and had only been inspired by her condition. For Zozo's sake An?astasie felt she must follow any course that gave a possible chance of success. Maybe she could brazen it out. How awful it would be to go to the theatre and have to sit in the loges des personnes de couleur; to have her white friends turn their backs on her, or stare through her unseeingly when they met in the street, as her mother-in-law had done. That old Jezebel would surely use this story to try to make her Placide leave her. Well, that part of it didn't need to frighten her. She never doubted her genius for seduction; that was always the heritage of women of mixed blood, born, as they were for generation after generation, of passionate though casual unions. There seemed to be a queer justice, she felt, that these women, against whom the cards of life had been so fatally stacked, should be endowed with a
'
weapon of sex attraction more efficient than that of their ? . luckier all white sisters. Anastasie remembered that she had always heard it said that once a man became en tangled with an octoroon he never escaped. Well, if she did have colored blood she would be able to hold Placide.
She broke in upon her own thoughts to say to Clair?cine, "Who knows beside me that you are my mother?" "Nobody chere, nobody.'
"You got any proof?"
"Not a scrap o' paper."
"Can I trust you not to breathe a word even when you get drunk?"
"You can cut my tongue out if you don' believe."
There was a loud knocking on the front door and
Anastasie said, "I'll hide in the back room. I know it's some of your friends comin' to ask questions. Go see them and get rid of them soon as you can."
Through a crack in the door, the girl listened to the conversation. She had been right in her surmise, it was one of the old women from the market who had come ostensibly to sympathize with Claircine although the real object of her visit was to ferret out some juicy mor sel of gossip that would make her the centre of attrac tion when she retailed it at the morrow's market. Clair cine met her indirect inquiries with, "Mais non; she no mo' my chile, no mo' I be chile that mule you see cross th' banquette. Wat mek' you want believe w'at I say in the market be fo' true? Tchut! dat no be me talkin'; dat be Monsieur Hypoleet' nigger-gin talkin', what I got over yonder to Poydras market."
Completely baffled, the old gossip soon left, and An astasie hurried home, planning as she went.
JTFJJJJl
had come into Anastasie's life
COMPLICATION
and she developed a surprising amount of courage and determination in meeting it — possibly the courage of a cornered rat fighting for its young, but admirable nevertheless. She was of better mettle than her husband, for she accepted her problems as real and took thought how to solve them; she never, as he did, tried to fool her self into believing they were non-existent by ignoring
them entirely because they were painful. She could not tell whether he had heard of Claircine's outburst in the French Market or not; because he.never even alluded to
it,
nor did she let him know of the revelations she had
later forced from Claircine. She knew him so well that
she instinctively realized he would suffer less
she did
if
not rob him of the consolation of
possible doubt. She
a
loved him so much she wished to spare him in every way conceivable; that was her only motive, and no ques tion of personal mortification or fear of losing him in spired her reticence.
Now of course, her most serious problem was her mother. Her revulsion at the thought showed her that she had not the slightest sense of duty or affection. All the love she had for Claircine as a little girl had curdled into a rankling sense of injury. There was a residue, however, of an impersonal feeling of pity, such as she would have felt for a stray dog or a hungry hobo; for Anastasie was naturally warmhearted and generous. The one dominant passion of her life was her child. It came to loom even larger than her love for Placide — great as that was. That her Zozo should be a white child with all the privileges of the dominant race, was an obsession with her and she would have sacrificed any thing or anybody, herself included, to aid in its accom
plishment.
Claircine had become to her only a grave danger threatening the realization of her ambition, therefore no consideration for the old woman's welfare weighed for an instant. It was entirely a question of expediency. She realized thoroughly there should be no apparent con nection between her mother and herself. People must be allowed to forget that Claircine had brought her up. But the question was how to accomplish this. It was im possible to cut the old woman adrift entirely, because there was the ever present danger that she would get drunk again and talk.
Finally, after several sleepless nights of planning, she arranged for Claircine to come to her house to see Zozo
198 once a week, after dark, so she could slip in unseen. This would ensure her remaining more or less contented and at the same time give her daughter an opportunity to keep an eye on her and try to prevent her getting drunk. The scheme appeared to work out fairly well and, as the old woman was visibly ageing very rapidly, Anastasie felt that this particular problem would soon solve itself.
She decided it was the best policy for her to be seen everywhere and she made it a point to frequent all places that were open only to white people. Placide took her to every first night at the opera and to every new play. Often they dined at the best restaurants. She watched him closely, trying to determine how deeply it hurt him when his friends cut him, but he did not give the slightest sign.
Nobody questioned her right as a white person to go to these places. People weighed the evidence which gos sip had made public through the city. On the one hand, the court decision, backed by her birth certificate and Claircine's sworn statement, went to prove she was white; on the other, there was only rumor supported by Claircine's statements in the French Market, made when she was drunk and which she would surely repudiate now. There had been several recent suits in which peo? ^^
pie accused of having colored blood recovered large damages from traducers who had been unable to sub stantiate their accusations. Then too, there was always the risk of having to fight a duel with Placide. For all his gentleness he was famed as a swordsman and shot, and in those days there was no other way in which a question arising between gentlemen could be settled. Consequently, no one was certain enough, or rash enough to be the first to "put her in her place."
Gossip there was aplenty, however, and many of her former friends looked the other way when they passed her on the street, and her invitations became fewer. Rumors came to her that Eglantine Labiche was talking scandalously; but of course that was easy to understand. Eglantine was jealous; she was only the mistress of La
biche, not married, as she, Anastasie, was; and her child looked unmistakably mulatto, not white like Zozo.
It rankled just the same to hear that Eglantine had said to one of her neighbors, "That Toucoutou, with all her proud lady ways, ain't better than me. Carbon zames va donne la farine. (You cain't mek' flour out o' coal.) You heard w'at ole Claircine she say, hein? Bien, tafia toujou die la verite." (Molasses rum always tells
the truth.) Eglantine was beneath her notice, — high griffe mis
200 tress of a worthless counter-jumper. She'd pay no atten tion to her; look right through her when she met her in the street. Anastasie walked over to her mirror and tried to force her sweet sensuous lovable little face into the grim hard expression of her mother-in-law. Yes, that's the way she'd look at Eglantine, whose very ex
istence she'd ignore. Anyhow it was better to let peo ple talk themselve out and forget, rather than give them anything new to gossip about.
Mme. Parle, out of pity or in the hope of future busi ness for the doctor, had been one of the few to remain friendly and had sent her an invitation to Popo's wed ding, that gifted tragedienne having finally decided to give up all her hopes of a future on the stage in order to marry Leon Golar.
The evening came and they started for the Cathedral afoot, preceded by a small negro boy, carrying Anas?tasie's party slippers in a black silk bag and a fanal to light their passage through the dark rough streets. The cocodri, that was the creole name for these lantern bearers, had been an idea of Anastasie who had been pathetically anxious to bolster up her feeling of in security by appearing as important as possible whenever they went out. Placide had satisfied her whim, as he always did, and bought her a little slave boy for this
- purpose. After the church ceremony was over they started to walk back to the Parle's house for the recep tion. Anastasie suggested that as it was dark, no one would see them if they stopped in for a minute to ask after Claircine, who had been seriously ill; so sick in fact that they had to employ old Zabette to care for her. The old woman was sleeping when they got there so they did not disturb her, but Zabette said she was failing fast and could not last the week.
The Taquins started once more for the Paries', but they had not gone two islets before Placide was caught by a dandy-trap, and a jet of liquid mud had squirted all over his shoes and pantaloons. Water lay so close to the surface that loose bricks or flags, when stepped upon by the unwary, often became miniature geysers, and had earned their name of dandy-catcher from the damage they inflicted on the wardrobes of the indigenous beaux. For a moment Placide swore, but almost immediately began to laugh at himself as the little cocodri turned back, and putting down his lantern, cleaned his master up as best he could. This incident together with their visit delayed them so that when they arrived all the other guests were there, sitting solemning around with the backs of their chairs touching the walls. Where the little stage had been, sat Popo. One wondered whether
202 the night gown and the first communion wreath which had been the foundation of her costume when she "did" Ophelia, had not again been called into service adorned this time with a bride's veil. Beside her sat Leon, look ing very uncomfortable, his hair pomatumed flat and turned up in a little crest across his forehead, like a barkeeper on a Sunday.
Mme. Parle got up from her seat next the bride and started over to greet her late guests, when suddenly Mme. Patrick O'Hara, a tall, gaunt, acidulous "Cajun" from the back parishes, who had married an Irish con tractor, rose from her chair and said to her spouse in a very audible tone, "Patrique, we go. Me, I will not stay
at no party where there's a nigger." There was general consternation as she stalked out followed by her hus band looking thoroughly unhappy.
The blood rushed into Anastasie's cheeks, which was the only sign she gave that she understood the remark was aimed at her. Placide, seething with anger, made a move to follow the little Irishman out of the room, but his wife put her hand on his arm meaningly and said, "You didn't go to kiss the bride yet, cher."
As the Taquins went over to Popo, all eyes seemed to fasten on them, and, after they had congratulated her and sat down, there was a long awkward silence. Finally,
fc*
203 someone hazarded the remark that the stage of the river was very high this year. Another pause. People stared at the walls opposite to them. Another banal sentence was thrown, so to speak, into the middle of the floor, where it lay and expired for want of some one to pick it up.
Mme. Waddle, who took to talk as a toper takes to tipple, stepped into the breach and shot her contribution into the verbal vacuum, by asking, "Have you heard that old man Polycarpe Jambon he die yesterday an' he buried today?"
For the first time more than one person spoke at once and several voices were heard saying, "No"; "Pas possible"; "Too bad, he kep' such a nice rabais shop an' he had plenty money too."
"Yes," she continued, "they had to bury heem ver' queek, for he was a funny ole man an' he always say to —
hees son, 'Don't call no croquemort — how you say yes, ondertaker, fo' me when I die. Me, I want to go Heaven weeth all wat I came into the worl', an' I don't want to have to spit no cotton w'en I ask St. Pierre to open the door fo' me.' Well, those Jambon boy they done like he say about the ondertaker, an' they geev' their papa one fine funerailles. They invite all hees friend an' geev' a good collation, an' after they et every?
*A?&
r
204 thing in the house, dey start fo' the cimitiere — a hearse
an' five carriage. The horse they walk slow an' sad to Claiborne street. Wen no one see them, the driver crack —
they wheep, an' the horse go queek, queek — au galop
mors au dent — so they get home to they supper mo' sooner. That strit to the cimitiere she is so rough, yes, that the peop' they shake round in those carriage like — like h'everything. The coffin he jomp an' he bus' open the back door an' fall out the hearse on one end. It come
—
open in two piece an' what you theenk?"
She made a dramatic pause and everyone hung on her words. "Ole man Jambon he sit up an' he rub hees head,
an' he look roun' an' see that hearse and that coffin all broke up an' he say, 'Tonnere de Dieu, for why they soch a horry to get rid of a ole man that they cain't drive mo' careful?' An' the son, he say, "Well it damn lucky for you they didn'.' They pick up the ole man an' poosh heem in the first carriage an' they all go back home. Wen ole Polycarpe Jambon he fin' they got nothin' mo left to eat yonder, he raise a big temper an' swear some mo' an' say they ain't satisfy to try to bury heem alive, that now they try to starve heem to death wen he ain't
had nothin' to eat for twenty fo' hour. An' you know they had to sen' out to the corner an' buy oyster loaf for heem, before he stop talkin'!" Shouts of laughter stopped Madame's recital and she beamed with pleasure at their appreciation. But after a desultory fire of questions, they relapsed once more into their previous impassivity. Long and terrible silences ensued. No one seemed to dare to enter the lists after Madame's brilliant achievement.
When it got to be eleven-thirty the Taquins could endure it no longer and arose to go. Mme. Parle rushed over and, seizing each by a hand, pleaded with them earnestly not to leave, adding by way of inducement that "at minuit, we goin' to serve ham and anisette." Even this, however, could not persuade them to endure any more of those terrible silences, and they departed.
When they reached home they found Zaire waiting up to tell them that Claircine had died. Anastasie searched her heart, but was honest enough to admit she had not the slightest regret. On the contrary, she felt very relieved, for all the worry of wondering whether Claircine would talk was over for ever. Now, possibly, her Zozo was safe.
She did not go to the funeral, but sent money to Maftre, her brother, with instructions to make all ar rangements and pay all the bills. Of course she wore no signs of mourning; it would have been very bad policy, and she made it a point to be seen everywhere and ap?
-
pear very gay. So when, a few days after Claircine's funeral, the new-fledged bride, Mme. Golar, invited her to come and spend the day in her little cottage, she accepted with alacrity. Popo with all a recent matron's interest in children, had especially insisted that Zozo be brought too. Anastasie dressed him carefully and then put on her smartest gown. After inspecting Zaire to see that she was starched and crisp, the trio started out with the slave a few paces in the rear carrying Zozo in her arms. They had not gone far when Anastasie turned her head to speak to the child and as she did so stubbed the toe of her shoe on a large dishpan of garbage that lit tered the dirt sidewalk near the wooden curb.
"Oh! Madame," gasped Zaire, "it was the left foot."
Anastasie stopped stock still and looked as if she were about to cry, for she believed implicitly that ter rible luck follows on the stubbing of the left foot — that was common knowledge. For a moment she contem plated going home, but pride egged her on and she de cided that she must never let Zaire see she believed in any such nigger superstition. With an uncertain smile she said, "That's all foolishness, Zaire," and started off again, but not without a nagging premonition of evil.
The slave was openly perturbed and followed shaking her head gravely.
They had to pass by the Labiche store and Anastasie's uneasiness increased as she saw that Eglantine was sit ting on her steps, gossiping with her neighbor standing in the next doorway. All the things the storekeeper's wife had said about her rankled deeply in Anastasie's heart and now, at the sight of the woman, a wave of the same feeling of implacable hatred that she had against old Palmire Caiman swept over her. As the little proces sion arrived just opposite the store, Eglantine pretended not to recognize her and, looking straight at little Zozo, called to her friend in a loud tone of voice, "Pretty bebe for a mulatto, no?"
At this uncalled for attack on her child, a sudden frenzy of rage blinded Anastasie, and in a second she had reverted to the absolute savagery of her African ancestors. All restraints snapped and she whirled with the lithe ferocity of a cat and dragged four bleeding welts across Eglantine's cheek with her nails, at the same time tearing at her hair with her other hand.
The seated woman, though taken by surprise, jumped to her feet and joined battle fiercely. As they tore and clawed at each other, their hysterical voices screeched high, broken by that frightful gasping rale of fighting women, that once heard poisons the memory for months afterwards. Accusations blackened the air, "You're a
^ 208 dirty nigger!" "Non, c'est toi." Vile names sprang to
Anastasie's lips, names that she never realized she knew; and Eglantine outdid her in sluttish rejoinder. "Fon?gasse!" 'Twain!" "Poissarde!" "Trainarde!" "Salope!" "Garce!" panted from their lips.
In an instant an avid, curious crowd came running, and jostled and elbowed around the scratching, scream ing women, but did nothing to stop them. The vile jests of the men and the way in which they egged the com batants on showed the sadistic pleasure they took in the spectacle. Just as both the fighting women were becom ing exhausted, a large determined female, who had forced herself through the mob, stepped between them and dragged Anastasie away, a complete wreck, sobbing and crying, her hair disheveled, her face bloody and her clothes torn to shreds. Zaire, who had been standing by paralyzed with fright, came running over with Zozo in her arms and started to help her home, crooning soft Creole to her as if she had been a child. When they got there the slave bathed her scratched and swelling face and persuaded her to sip a little "eau de fleurs d'oran?
ger," the universal Creole sedative.
As Anastasie became gradually more calm, she real ized what a fool she had been. Claircine was to blame in the first place, but she herself had now made matters a
&& tWWfc^rtWMriWWWWWHWWWWk
209 thousand times worse. Was it those few drops of black blood in her veins that had turned her into a frenzied fighting animal — that wiped her brain clean of every carefully considered plan and left it boiling with an in sane desire to kill and maim? Was she the same little girl who had been brought up by the nuns in all gentle ness? It made no difference now; the question was what must she do? No use trying to shift her burden to Plac?ide's shoulders. His only suggestion would be to fight a duel with Labiche. But what good would that do? If he wounded or killed Labiche would that stop the tongue of that poissarde, Eglantine? Of course not, she'd talk all the more. It was too bad her lying throat could not be slit. Anastasie felt she would not have the slightest compunction about doing it herself. That solution was impossible, of course, but some way must be found to silence her tongue.
Anastasie was gay, cheerful and lovable but not un duly intelligent. Nature, or whatever force it is that apportions gifts to the members of the human race, had endowed her with a sensuous-slight figure, beautiful features, a cream-tawney complexion, languorous eyes and a mouth meant for kissing, not conversation; in fact with every feminine weapon necessary to obtain her two instinctive goals — a husband to support her and a father
?!f 210 ifclMHMfirfW^hM^^ for her children. That was sufficient, and made super fluous the fact that thinking was almost a physical pain to her; or at least apparently so. However, the more she puzzled her harassed little head, the more certain she became that she must risk everything on one bold move. She decided she must sue Eglantine. If she did not, that woman would go on talking a thousand times more and, if then nothing happened, others would be encouraged to do the same. It was dangerous she felt, but it was her only chance, and, now that Claircine was dead, she thought the only mouth that could damn her was closed forever.
Anastasie spent the rest of the afternoon disguising the ravages of her fight and dressing herself in her most seductive gown. When Placide came home she rushed to him and, throwing both arms around his neck she kissed him and cooed, "Cher, promise you will do some thing for little Zozo and me?"
When he answered, "Why, you know I always do, Anastasie," she kissed him again and told the story of her terrible afternoon. "And now you see we must sue Eglantine for little Zozo's sake," she ended.
Placide was very angry; he refused to consider
it;
he
would prefer to fight Labiche. He dreaded the terrible
publicity. They talked far into the night and in the
morning they went once more to the office of Christian Keppel, the lawyer. Anastasie had feminine weapons that Placide could never resist.
212
i^ffft^Sft^tf^^JS^f^S^^S^^ SIXTEEN
!&6r^^
seethed in the Creole part of the EXCITEMENTcity. Anastasie Taquin had sued Eglantine and Valsin Labiche for ten thousand dollars damages for calling her a nigger. It was the sole topic of conversation in the Faubourg Marigny and people could not pass in the street without stopping to talk about it. Some said she was right, others that Eglantine had been only tel ling the truth, but the balance of public opinion went against Anastasie. None of them seemed to bother their heads much about whether she was actually white or colored, they merely let their prejudices form their opinions. The whites felt it was a preposterous imper tinence for any person, about whom there might be even a question, to attempt to invade the sacred ranks of the Nordics. The majority of the negro population, whose kinkiness of nap an3 darkness of coloring marked them ineradicably for what they were, resented equally keenly that a woman suspected of black blood should desert her color in an attempt to steal all the superior priv ileges of the ruling race. Among the "Cordons Bleus," however, it was different and it was from their ranks that she recruited the few supporters she had. "Cordon
&*&&*&&
213 Bleu" was the name given to those among the free peo ple of color who were almost entirely white and could trace back their paternal filiation to some of the good families of France and Spain. Many of them had been educated by their French fathers in the best schools and colleges in France and had returned to New Orleans only to be relegated by their few drops of colored blood to the anomalous position of the free mulattoes, — superior to the negroes, in truth, but infinitely inferior to the whites. Many of them were cultured, some of the wo men were very beautiful in an exotic sensuous way, and all of them, as a matter of course, nursed the secret ambition of going some place where either they or their children might pass undiscovered into the ranks of the dominant race. Their straightness of hair and lightness of coloring made such an apparent metamorphosis easi ly possible; and therefore, they secretly applauded An?astasie's action because she was attempting to fulfill what was in them a suppressed desire.
The preparations for the trial had been one long drawn-out battle. Witnesses had to be found and won over, and even when won, Anastasie had to walk with care lest some chance word of hers offend them; and constant vigilance was needed to prevent Eglantine or her friends from enticing them into the opposite camp.
^
Weeks had been wasted by the lawyers in the inter change of formal pleadings and exceptions; the court calendar had been full; each side had asked for adjourn ment after adjournment to gain some minor advantage; so a year had dragged by before the case came to trial.
The unceasing strain and worry, the continual nag ging apprehension endured through this long wait, had made both Anastasie and Placide nervous and on edge. They no longer looked happy, as they had before they became involved in lawsuits. All joie de vivre had de parted from the little house on Union street near Love and they had the first quarrel of their married lives. Nothing can be as devastating as a serious lawsuit. An astasie had not been able to sleep all night and so at sunrise she started to make her toilette for court. She must look her very prettiest, she thought. Who knows but what it might make some difference with the judge? And beside she had heard Eglantine had bought a new dress for the occasion and she would never let that huzzy outshine her.
Just before it was time to start, she dabbed her face thickly with white powder, obsessed by a terrible dread of even looking sallow.
All the inhabitants of the lower Municipality seemed to have gathered at the court house, augmented by many
from the Vieux Carre — whites, blacks and all the subtle variations between. It was like circus day. Even the vendors of edibles had set up their little stands, quick to scent the chance of an honest penny. But while the scene outwardly suggested the prelude to an innocent performance of the trained animals of "Monsieur Caye?tano, who comes from Havana with his horses and his monkeys," the occasion in reality had much more simi larity to those circuses given by the old Roman em perors, when the sufferings of human beings made a
people's holiday. Eglantine was already there, surrounded by a group of her friends, talking with tremendous animation and, very evidently, enjoying her transitory importance.
Anastasie heard her say as she passed, "That Toucou?tou got no mo' chance to get ten thousand piastres out me and Valsin than a macaque got to be yo' granma. Not so much," she added with a laugh as she looked intently at her vis-a-vis, who was a mulatress. "My law yer, he a fran' to the President o' the United States. Didn't he sen' him to be ambassadeur at Europe, no?
Wat you theenk, Judge Poupard he goin' decide agains' such a man?" Anastasie passed by without appearing to hear, en tered the bare little court room and sat down on one
216 side near the rail that separated the body of the court from the table for counsel and the judge's bench be yond. It filled her with misgiving to see her lawyer, Christian Keppel, engaged in friendly smiling conversa tion with Eglantine's counsel, Phanor Lanusse. The idea flashed through her brain that Keppel might be selling her out. How could he otherwise talk that way to a brute he knew was engaged to persecute her?
The two men made an interesting picture as they
stood conversing. Keppel showed his Dutch parentage in the tenacious squareness of his face, with its long de termined, shaven upper lip and the stubborn tilt at the end of his rather coarsely modeled nose. His face was very red (a color seldom found in that land of mat com plexions), which made his eyes look even more implac
ably china-blue. They had that hard quality that gives no hint of what is going on behind them. His head was round with closely cropped reddish-blond hair and his figure was short, sturdy, combative. He gave the im pression of a person with a very shrewd insight into the motives of men and a determined will to control them if it suited his purpose.
He was the direct antithesis of his opponent who looked much more a man of the world. Lanusse was a Frenchman with long black hair brushed back from his forehead and curling on the high collar of his blue dress coat with shiny brass buttons. A hawklike nose separated a pair of deep, black, hypnotic eyes. His manner was dignified yet easy and it was apparent that he was urbane though quick to anger — in short, the proud im petuous Latin type. Where Keppel won by a dogged appeal to logic and common sense, Lanusse swept every thing before him by sheer oratory and magnetic, im perious personality.
Chancing to glance around, Keppel saw his clients and came over to shake hands with them across the railing.
Anastasie said naively, "Oh, Monsieur Keppel, will you please to win? Eglantine say Phanor Lanusse is a more better lawyer, but me, I do not believe, no." While she did not quote Eglantine quite literally, at least that was what had been intimated and anyhow she thought it would serve to put him on his mettle.
There was no time for a reply, the court room had been filling up until not a vacant space was left, and now the clerk could be heard announcing in a droning voice the entrance of the judge. Everyone rose and re mained standing until Judge Poupard, a thin sallow lit tle Creole with a long white mustache and neat correct imperial, had sat down.
218 **6&&tl6&li&&&& If she had been waiting for her turn at the guillotine, Anastasie could not have felt any worse. She had a nervous, sick sensation in the pit of her stomach and little muscles twitched spasmodically in different parts of her body. Excitement and apprehension ravaged her. If only it were over. As various lawyers wrangled over motions that had nothing to do with her case, she
thought she would jump out of her seat and run away screaming. At last the clerk called:
"Anastasie Taquin
against
Valsin Labiche
and
Eglantine Ferchaud, his wife."
Anastasie felt as if a pail of cold water had been dashed in her face as she heard her name called out, and she did not catch her breath again until after both counsel had answered, "Ready." Phanor Lanusse arose to his feet and in a well-modulated, cultivated voice moved to dismiss the case on various legal grounds. After the judge had refused and granted an exception, Keppel stood up and made a short, concise statement of what he intended to prove. His voice was loud and harsh and he boomed and rumbled until the windows
*WWHWH
219 ^^r3-vW?WW^
rattled. He finished and said something to the clerk, who called out, "Madame Justine Rigaud."
There was a rustle and all heads turned to stare at the poor old lady tottering down the aisle assisted by a poverty-stricken relative who lived on her charity. She was no longer the fat, sleek, complaining person who
had gone to the Ursulines Convent with Qaircine. She was much older and had been very ill. Now her black dress drooped on her emaciated form as if it had been hung on a hook in the closet. A black sunbonnet covered what was left of her scraggly white hair, framing a face so eroded with fissures and hollows that it looked like a relief map of a mountain range. The faded iris of her eyes, ringed by the halo of old age, had gone misty on the edges, blending imperceptibly into the yellowish whites. Her skin had a leathery sallowness, patched with darker liver spots and her hand was palsied as it rested on the Bible while she was sworn. She collapsed into the raised witness chair facing the court room and Kep?pel began his examination.
In answer to his question she testified she was eighty-nine years old and had known Claircine all her life. She also knew Arthemise Desanges, a dressmaker who made clothes for her children. "This Arthemise, before she die, had two child with Monsieur Jasmin, sans cere?
&&&? 220 ?& monie, and he put them, Maitre and Anastasie, in Clair?cine's care on the advice of his friend Bujac. A little mo' later Jasmin die too, and leave them orphelin."
"Please stand up, Madam Taquin, just where you are," said Keppel.
Anastasie complied, feeling her knees tremble and the color surge to her cheeks, as all eyes swung from the witness to stare at her.
"Now, Mme. Rigaud," continued Keppel, "I ask you to look at Mme. Taquin the plaintiff and say whether she is the Anastasie you referred to in your testimony."
A. "Yes fo' true. You theenk I forget that little girl
w'en I change her diaper so many time? Her
eyes mo' blue as bebe, yes, but she same one w'at
I say was chile to Arthemise Desanges."
A titter swept the room and Anastasie sank back in her seat, her face a brilliant pink. That old fool talked too much, she thought.
Q. "Was Arthemise Desanges white or colored?"
A. "How come she be colored? She borned in la Suisse. She be all w'ite an' she be good modiste too, an' work hard all time."
With a courteous wave of his hand towards Lanusse, Keppel boomed out, "Your witness, Sir." Phanor Lanusse arose and with the greatest urbanity
221 said, '"Now madame, are you white, or are you a per son of color?"
A dull red mounted to the old woman's cheeks and an angry expression gave sudden animation to her tired, dead face as she answered, "Me I don' see w'at that got to do with the case.'
"Answer my question please," insisted Lanusse.
A. "Well me I don' know."
Q. "Don't know, how can that be?"
A. "I don' know who is my father or my mother. Me, I was born in Santo Domingo, an' I go to Cuba w'en General Leclerc he went back to France."
As the cross examination progressed, she showed a strange forgetfulness. She did not seem to know when Arthemise had died nor when the children were given to Claircine. Questioned as to whether she had ever known Claircine to have children of her own, the old woman replied she had not and when asked who An?astasie's father was, she stated with heat, "Me, I ain' no piller, an' I ain' no bolster neither, an' I ain' no pecker through no keyhole. How you expec' I know? I ain' ask question about nuthin' don' mek' me no never mind."
The courtroom roared at this sally and the judge had to rap for order. 222 Anastasie gave a sigh of relief as the old woman tot tered back to her seat.
Jules Segain next testified he had always known Clair?cine and that when he had once gone to her house to serve a citation on Maitre Jasmin, she had told him that Maitre was not her son, but only a boy she had brought
up-
Then came Dennis Liberty, a long gangling Irishman with a chin so ingrowing and an Adam's apple so pro truding that one seemed the encore of the other.
Anastasie thought him a very weak reed. He was so shy he always looked like a sick calf whenever he came near her, but she believed she could make use of his abject devotion.
On direct examination he testified he had known Claircine ever since she lived in Goodchildren street and never knew her by any other name. He didn't think Claircine had any children of her own, because his mother had always said Anastasie was not Claircine's daughter. He often visited the Taquins, but always met white people there.
When Lanusse took him in hand for cross examina tion he did not do so well.
Q. "Who were the parents of Maitre and Anas tasie?"
223 A. "I don't know."
Q. "And yet you say you know they were brought up by Claircine Sevrisol?"
A. "Yes."
Q. "Was Claircine their mother?"
A. "No."
Q. "What? You say you don't know who their
parents were, you saw them brought up by Clair cine and yet you insist she was not theirmother?"
A. "Yes — no — yes."
His Adam's apple leaped from his low collar up to his chin and back again. The courtroom tittered.
Q. "What is your business?"
A. "I'm a ship's painter and a ladies' shoemaker."
Q. "Are you working at either now?"
A. "No, I live on my income."
Q. "From what source is it derived?"
"Don't answer," boomed Keppel, jumping up, "I object, the question is irrelevant, incompetent and im material."
"I am leading up to the question of this witness' credibility, as your honor will see," said Lanusse suavely. "Objection overruled," said the judge, "the witness may answer."
A. "It comes from what my mother gives me." Q. "How old are you?"
A. "F-f-forty."
Q. "And you're living on your mother are you?" The only answer was another agile leap of the mobile Adam's apple as Lanusse waved him off the stand with a sarcastic, "That's all for you." A hush fell on the assembly as the next name was called — Sister Theresa — and a figure in the simple robes of an Ursuline nun, with her sweet calm aloof face framed in white linen, walked quietly up to the witness chair. In a gentle voice she said she knew Anastasie
Jasmin, who had been one of her pupils at the convent — had stayed there two years and a half.
Q. "Did you always think she was a white child?"
A. "Certainly yes, the convent never accepts young ladies unless they are of pure white blood."
Q. "Is the Madame Taquin sitting over on the left the same Anastasie Jasmin you taught?"
A. "Yes." Lanusse asked no questions. As Sister Theresa left the room the judge announced he would take a recess until two o'clock. Anastasie and Placide hurried out, not speaking to
anyone and greeting Mme. Parle and Popo with only a nervous nod. At the door she got into a jam of people and heard an old quadroon say to her commere with a mean laugh, "Coupe zore milet fait pas choual"
(cut ting a mule's ears doesn't make a horse) . She thought she had suffered so much she would be callous, but she found such things hurt her just as deeply as ever and she hurried on with flushed cheeks. When they got home they were too nervous to eat and only drank several cups of black dripped coffee which Zaire had ready. For a few minutes she played with Zozo, and then hurried back to court. The crowd was even greater than it had been in the morning. Mme. Parle was the first witness to be called. She progressed down the aisle with the stately effortless mo tion of a battleship sailing up the Mississippi, the secret of her motive power just as unapparent. Her voluminous black satin rustled and she bowed to the judge as to a social equal who realized, as she did, that they were both far above the rabble gathered in the court room. Yes, she testified, she knew Mme. Taquin. The wife of a popular doctor must know so many people. Yes, she had always considered her a white person. In fact she had invited her to Popo's wedding, and Monsieur le Juge must well know that a person in her position could not permit anyone at her daughter's wedding un less she could be sure she was comme il faut and, above all, white. Why she had even gone to Mme. Taquin's home on several occasions and she must admit that, while the guests were not possibly — how should she say — of the haut monde, Monsieur le Juge would un derstand, still they were good honest people and without a doubt white.
M. Lanusse now took the witness in hand and in his perfectly modulated voice, whose charm was enhanced by a slight foreign accent, asked, "Mme. Parle you are absolutely sure, are you not, that Mme. Taquin is of pure Caucasian descent?"
A. "Oh! no Monsieur, she is Americaine."
Q. "I mean, Madame, are you sure she is white?"
A. "Certainement, how could it be otherwise and me in my position?"
Q. "Did you ever hear any rumors?"
A. "Yes, me I hear some, but I don' believe."
Q. "Why?"
A. "fte-cause I ask Anastasie."
Q. "And you believed her and sought no further in formation on the question?"
A. "For sure I believe — she mo" white complexion than you, M. Lanusse, an' you come from France,
yes, an' she marry weeth a fine familee like Mr. Taquin an' got a nice b6be w'at look white as milk w'at Dr. Parle he bring in the worl'."
Q. "You say the plaintiff came to your daughter's wedding. Did anything happen there?"
A. "No."
Q. "Wasn't there a scene of some kind?"
A. "Oh, you mean Mme. O'Hara. She say she go home because they have one nigger there. But me, I wouldn't believe her. She's a Cajun from Avoyelles Parish an' she all proud &e-cause she marry weeth a Irlandais even though she ain't got no bebe."
As Lanusse said, "Thank you, Madame, that's all," she arose, bowed smilingly to the judge and the lawyers and proceeded majestically back to her place, a smug
expression on her face as of a consciousness of duty well done, with a dignity and decorum in keeping with her position.
She was replaced on the stand by a Mrs. Schnecken?becker — a hard working middle-aged German hausfrau.
"Do you know the parties to this suit?" Keppel
bellowed.
A. "Ya, I know Anastasie and Eglantine; but I ain't deef."
Q. "Did you frequent the plaintiff's house?"
A. "Sure I go there."
^
Q. "What kind of people did you see there?" A. "Allkine."
Q. "I mean were they white or colored?"
A. "Both."
Keppel was surprised that his own witness should go back on him; and poor Anastasie, almost frantic, sat on the edge of her seat in her excitement; pinching Placide's knee unmercifully.
Keppel returned to the attack and after many ques tions extracted an admission from the stupid stubborn woman that the only colored people she had seen there were Zaire, the slave, and old Joubal, who cleaned the cesspool. All the other frequenters had been white.
She made up for her thick-headedness, however, by giving some important information. She said that once when she had visited the Labiche store, Eglantine had given her six yards of calico, one handkerchief and a pair of stockings, "all for nutting."
Q. "Why did she give them to you?"
A. "I donno."
Q. "Did she ever talk to you about testifying in this case?"
A. "No, but I heered her husband say that Anas
tasie was suing him, but as soon as he would win he would give everybody plenty money."
it,
Anastasie knew that the next witness was her last — a witness she mistrusted — a "brand snatched from the burning" right out of Eglantine's camp. As the clerk called, "Miss Roach!" she again sat on the edge of her bench in tense anxiety.
A cheaply pretty white girl, about twenty, self-con sciously switched her way to the chair. Yes, she had
known the plaintiff for eight years and had always con sidered her white, but Eglantine and Valsin Labiche she had only known for about a year. Both of them told everybody in the neighborhood that Anastasie was
colored.
The witness said further that Eglantine had offered presents to Madame Delphine Delay and Marguerite Mouchon to testify against Anastasie. Why Eglantine had even offered her an umbrella, a veil, two dresses, and a pair of gloves, but she had refused it. Later Valsin
promised her "a hundred dollars when he could win the case."
Lanusse cross examined.
Q. "You used to live at Mme. Taquin's?"
A. "Yes, I left there about a year ago."
"Why did you leave?"
Q.
A. "Because I wanted to." "You testified, did you not, that you also lived
Q. at Mme. Labiche's?"
A. "Yes; I only stayed there a month."
Q. "In what capacity did you live at Mme. La biche's?"
A. "As a servant."
Q. "Where do you live now?"
A. "At Mme. Taquin's."
Q. "Oh, you went back there did you? And in what capacity are you living there?"
A. "As a friend."
Q. "Do you have your meals with Monsieur and Madame Taquin?"
A. "No."
Q. "Are you sure you're not a servant?"
A. "Yes."
Q. "Is it not true that you left Mme. Taquin's to go and spy on Mme. Labiche and was it not Mme.
Taquin who promised you presents for testifying instead of Monsieur or Madame Labiche?"
A. "No." As the Roach girl left the stand after making a very poor impression, Keppel said, "May it please the court, we have here a gentleman from the Mayor's office who
is under subpoena to produce the passenger list of the Brig Davis of Santo Domingo, which arrived at this port on September the ninth, eighteen hundred and nine under the command of Captain Rousseau. I will offer this passenger list in evidence."
There was the usual legal wrangle before it was finally received. He then in turn offered a certified copy of the birth certificate of Anastasie Jasmin, and an au thenticated copy of the statement about her parentage that Claircine Sevrisol had sworn to at the time of the suit against old Palmire Caiman. When these also had been accepted, Keppel announced he rested the case for the plaintiff.
The Judge looked at his large gold watch and said with a delightful French accent, "Gentlemen, it is get-tin' ver' late. I adjourn this case ontil ten tomorrow."
Anastasie relaxed and suddenly realized under what terrible tension she had been all day. Placide heaved a sigh and, smiling weakly at her, said, "Well, it wasn't so bad today, I think we have a good chance."
"That's all right," she whispered, "but me I'm afraid. You can't know what bad lie that Eglantine make her people swear to."
When the Taquins got home they held a post mortem that lasted far into the night and it was only towards morning that they dropped into a fitful sleep. SEVENTEEN
Anastasie and Placide, both of them red-WHEN and wan looking, arrived at the court
eyed room the next morning it seemed to be still more crowded than the day before. The report of yesterday's
proceedings had spread like the Mississippi in flood
times and the case had become even more a cause celebre. The crowd of morbid curiosity seekers, that had been drawn to the trial as the buzzard is to carrion, seemed to Anastasie a gloating mob, devoid of pity, whose only emotion was a sadistic desire to see a poor girl pulled down and shamed, her inmost life and pride
exposed naked and quivering to the public gaze. It made her realize that her whole existence for the last year had been a perfect hell of anxiety, and that if she had known beforehand what it entailed she never would have undertaken the suit — no, not even for the sake of her little Zozo.
The court was declared in session by the usual drawl ing call of the clerk and Lanusse arose, suave and digni fied as ever. It was his day, and he began by again moving for a dismissal on the ground of insufficient evi dence as he had done at the opening of the trial. When his motion was denied he started in an impersonal and logical manner to outline what he intended to prove. Anastasie winced as she heard him detail the strength of his case and speak of the outrageous impertinence of any woman who would even claim to be white, let alone bring a suit for slander, in the face of such overwhelm ing evidence as he was about to produce.
Eglantine tossed her head as she listened and openly sneered, looking at Anastasie. The first witness called was Julian Lacage, the keeper of the Register of Births and Deaths in the church of
Saint Louis. A furtive frightened look, moth-eaten gray hair and the sallow saddle color of his face and hands gave him somewhat the appearance of a church rat. One instinctively searched for a tail after glancing at his sharp nose which stuck out from a head hunched be tween badly bent shoulders.
He testified it was quite common for colored persons to be enrolled on the white register, but very rare for the reverse to happen. He knew of only one case where this had been done.
When mistakes occurred, he said, a marginal note was made opposite the name, usually in the handwriting of the priest himself. Lanusse then said, "I show you a copy of the certifi?
234 G^sps^^
cate of baptism of Anastasie Jasmin, stating she was enrolled on the Register of White Persons, Plaintiff's exhibit B.; and ask you whether it is not possible that she may have been erroneously so enrolled?"
Keppel jumped to his feet bellowing, "I object! Coun sel is too old in the law not to know that that is a highly improper question." He continued to give various good legal reasons why this was so for at least five minutes.
However, after a long wrangle, the question was asked in a changed form and allowed.
Lacage answered that he had already stated that mis takes not only could, but did, happen and he would say further that many of them had never been rectified.
Lanusse then asked him how he could determine whether a child was white or colored, and he replied by the complexions and the statements of the parents.
On cross examination, Keppel asked only two ques tions; had he examined the original record of birth of the Plaintiff and were there any marginal notations on it showing that a mistake had been made in registering Anastasie Jasmin as a white person.
Lacage replied that he had just before coming to court and that there was no marginal notation of any kind opposite her name. He was excused.
"Madame Delphine Delay," called the clerk. A middle-aged woman of ample curves, dressed in respeaable black, took the stand. At a first quick glance she would have been taken for white, but a certain ani malism in the breadth of nostrils, an indescribable sug gestion of grayish citrine in the flesh tones and a slight tendency to frizzle in the hair would have revealed to a careful observer that she was tinged with negro.
Yes, she had known Claircine Sevrisol — had seen her enceinte. She could not remember quite when, but thought it was the year the old Arsenal burned down. Indeed Claircine had promised she should be the god mother, but the child was still-born. Yes, she saw Clair cine sometime later in History street, suckling a little girl and asked her if that was the one for her; but Clair cine had replied, "No, I have not seen you for some time, so I've given her to another godmother."
Lanusse asked if Claircine had said anything else and she replied, "She said plenty. She say her breas' hurt her, an' I say you one beeg fool not to wean that chile."
Q. "Have you ever seen that suckling child since?"
A. "Plenty, plenty time. She de same what marry with Mister Taquin. There she be settin' over yonder all dressed up lak' she come from Basin street."
Eglantine gave a shrill laugh, which she pretended to 236 stifle, and her followers openly sniggered, for they knew that in Basin street abode the women of pleasure. The Judge's bushy brows made one continuous line across his forehead as he hammered with his gavel and cautioned the witness that unless she confined herself to answering the questions, he would be forced to punish
her severely for contempt. The examination went on.
Q. "Did Claircine ever tell you of the parentage of this child?"
A. "Yes, she say that Monsieur Bazile Bujac w'at
keep that Magazin de Vin en Gros in Burgundy street, he the pupa, yes. An' she say too, she take that chile an' her brother Maitre to see Monsieur Bujac every Sunday evenin' time; that Bujac he mek' himself godpapa to that chile at the Cathe dral so they could come an' see him."
Q. "Did you consider Claircine and the two chil dren white or colored?"
A. "Me, I know Claircine sence 18 12. Of course they colored. Huh! That Anastasie, not so ver' long back, she come to me an' say how worried she be 'bout this proces an' I console her an' I say, every time anybody try to git out they class, some-thin' like that goin' take place, sho'."
Peter Ham, who followed Delphine Delay, was a muscular but drab little man, whose business it was to break up flatboats, after they had completed their jour ney down the river, and turn them into saleable timber. He admitted he had known Claircine Sevrisol, but said she also went under another name, and he knew this, because he had once rented a house from her and that one month she signed the receipt for the rent "Arthe?mise Desanges." He objected, but she told him it was all right — it made no difference — because her full name was Claircine Arthemise Desanges and she had only taken Sevrisol because that was her husband's name.
Ham identified the rent receipts, some of which had been signed "Claircine Sevrisol," and others in the same handwriting, "Arthemise Desanges." After a legal battle they were marked in evidence and the testimony went on.
The witness testified he had seen Claircine pregnant in 1818 and when he came back from France, she showed him a baby playing on the floor and said, "This is the little mulatto boy chile I borned while you was away." Years later he met her crying on Esplanade and she told him she would never dare call Toucoutou her child again, because she had sworn before the judge that she was not her ma-ma.
On cross examination Keppel asked him if Claircine
238 & had been in the habit of drinking to excess, and when the witness said yes, he asked if Claircine was drunk at the time of these conversations.
His answer was, "She sho' was tipsy some o' those time."
When Zabette Soulie was called, Toucoutou gasped. She was Qaircine's old friend and had assisted at the birth of her Zozo. Surely she was not going to be a traitor. Anastasie watched her make her way to the witness stand with apprehension.
Zabette was the emaciated type of little old woman, bent of back and clawlike of hand from a long life of hard work. Her face fell into deep hollows under each cheek bone as if the flesh were being sucked in between her toothless gums, and her drooping nose and up-pointed chin seemed to be straining to meet.
She was a midwife and had known Claircine ever since 1809. She had been with her when Maitre was born in 1818 or '19. Was Claircine a colored person? She certainly was, and Anastasie too, for all her white lady ways; though she didn't pay her bills like a white lady, that was sure.
Anastasie was paralysed by Zabette's perfidy. Sud denly the explanation flashed into her mind. She remem bered the old woman had nursed Claircine in her last
^ 239 illness and, evidently, Maitre had not paid Zabette with the money she had given him. The imbecile! The crook! Well, it was too late now, the harm was done.
Keppel asked the witness, "You don't pretend to say you were present at the birth of Anastasie Jasmin, do you?"
"No, but that only &e-cause me, I was up to Saint Landry Parish 'tendin' a lady, an' Claircine she mus' git one other sage femme," replied the old woman.
"Then when you say Claircine was the mother
Q.
of Anastasie Jasmin you do not speak of your
own knowledge?"
A. "But yes; didn' I see Claircine en grossesse, an' didn' she tell me Anastasie was her bebe an' all what a hard time she hav' birthin' her?"
Keppel decided he would only prejudice his case by going further with a witness so openly hostile, so he waved his hand and said, "You evidently did not under stand my question; but never mind, that's all."
A very voluble old octoroon woman, Marguerite Mouchon, went on the stand next. She took evident pride in telling her long rambling story, but the gist of it was that she had known Claircine in Lance-a-Veau, Santo Domingo, where her full name had been Claircine Arthemise Desanges. It was only when she lived with
240 Monsieur Sevrisol, a white gentleman, that she took his name. After he and their daughter Lolotte died, she went back with Monsieur Bujac and had two children. About the time of the first cholera, she had seen Claircine en ceinte and two months later with Toucoutou in her arms. One day she met her in the street crying and Claircine said she "felt bad" because she had sworn that Toucoutou was not her daughter for now the girl had not paid her the reward she promised. Claircine also
said she was on her way to sell her rosary and spectacles to get money to hire a room, because Toucoutou was too stingy to keep her house in repair.
Marguerite's tongue wagged on and on as she told how a young colored man, named Lucien, had called on her to advise her to testify in favor of Toucoutou, but she had told him right out she wouldn't testify for any girl who hadn't even gone to her own mother's funeral.
Marguerite continued, that the next day while she was out, Monsieur Taquin called and told her daughter that if she, Marguerite, testified against his wife, he would cane her in open court.
After a long cross examination Keppel asked her whether she ever went to Mme. Taquin's house and knew of her own knowledge what kind of people fre quented it.
WMttMrt??&
241 She laughed that she was not in the habit of visiting white people, and that Mme. Taquin claimed to be white.
The honors clearly went to Marguerite, and, as she went to her seat, Eglantine reached out and ostenta tiously shook her hand, saying loudly enough to be heard by Anastasie, "I reckon that will teach that little she-mule not to try to kick me."
Up to this point Anastasie's only desire had been to
—
run away escape — hide somewhere from all those cruel eyes, that made her feel that every glance ended in a barbed fishhook fastened through her skin. But now, at Eglantine's sneer, she felt the Arada blood of her grand mother, Comba Nea, boil in her and a blind fury swept her, and she wanted to bite and scratch and kick and kill Eglantine, just as she had tried to do the day they fought in the street. Placide, realizing her feelings, attempted to distract her by persuading her to listen to Manuel Pujol, a little weazened old man with a gray beard, who was now testifying. He was saying, he had known Claircine Sevrisol since 1816; known her also under her other name of Arthemise Desanges. He used to go to see her every Sunday when she was living with Bazile Bujac, who was the secretary of Terrestrial Orb Lodge number 3, of which Mr. Lanusse here and he
^>^SrifSfSrSf
242 were both members. He saw Claircine pregnant and
later saw the children there too. She was in that condi tion about 1830 and he thought it was Toucoutou, but he could not be quite certain. The way he had happened to remember about it was that he was living with a col ored girl who was confined about that time, and the next night she told him that Claircine had had a child on the same day.
Bujac told him at least ten times that he was the father of Claircine's children; he never made any secret of it. Indeed he, Pujol, had once asked Bujac if he was not, as a respectable married man, ashamed to have such a family as that. But he only laughed and said, "Ce sont
seulement des coups de canif donnes au contract." (Nothing but a few penknife gashes in the marriage contract.)
One day the witness met Claircine on Poet street, accompanied by a young girl, and said, "That's a fine girl, Claircine, she is so pretty as you." He said Madame Taquin still "favored her ma" and looked just like Claircine in her prime. Elodie Bujac was called next. She was a hard, gaunt,
sour-faced individual, the legitimate daughter of Bazile Bujac by his white wife, whose father had been the wine merchant. She had never married and the reason could be easily deduced from the remark a New Orleans wit once made, when he described her as, "Vin du pays, sec, meme un peu aigre."
Anastasie was very apprehensive. She had always hated Elodie ever since those Sunday afternoon visits, when Claircine used to take her and Maitre to call on their "godfather," and Elodie flounced into the house with a supercilious expression, whenever she saw them coming.
The woman testified in a calm measured voice with no apparent bitterness that she had known the Plaintiff, Anastasie or Toucoutou Taquin, since she was born, and also knew her brother Maitre. These children, who were called Jasmin, were in reality the children of her father, who tried to conceal the fact. She had been told this by her mother, and it was common knowledge that Clair cine was her father's concubine. He never admitted that the children were his, but insisted that Claircine was their mother.
A year or so before she died, Claircine had come to her mother's house to borrow three dollars, saying she did not get enough to eat because Toucoutou treated her very badly and wouldn't even have her house repaired.
Keppel took the witness in hand but he only elicited information that was against his client. No more witnesses were called. Phanor Lanusse closed his case after he had put in evidence the baptismal certificate of Maitre Jasmin and Bazile Bujac's last will and testament; the only interesting point about which was, that it gave the family name of his grandmother as Jasmin — certainly a strange coincidence.
Anastasie was stunned at the amount of damaging testimony Eglantine had been able to collect, for she had believed Claircine implicitly when the old woman said there was not the slightest evidence to prove them mother and daughter. However, when Keppel started summing up, his eloquence encouraged her. She pitied herself sincerely as she heard him say, his big voice re verberating through the whole court room: "Here is this beautiful young woman, blonde with blue eyes, skin as fair as milk, married to a splendid young man of one of our most respected families and with a sweet baby growing up.
"On the other side we have this woman of color, Eglantine Ferchaud, notoriously the concubine of Valsin Labiche, even boasting of it shamelessly in her formal
pleadings. For months she has striven to wreck my cli ent's life and that of her family, first by innuendoes and then by direct statements publicly made, that she has negro blood. What may have been the motives lying
245 ^ behind this cruel campaign of vilification, God alone knows, or possibly the devil who inspired it. I for my part can only suggest that the woman was jealous that my client was leading a happy, honest existence, while she was living a life of shame. Whatever the motive,
the fact remains that Eglantine Ferchaud and her par amour Labiche have used every vile means in their power to injure the reputation of my client. The defend ants have pleaded the truth of their accusations by way of justification, but let us weigh the evidence they have put forward to prove their point. Some of their wit nesses have made statements on the stand that might lead you to believe that my client was a daughter of Claircine Sevrisol and therefore a person of color. But
is,
the question
are these witnesses worthy of credence?
Would you believe them even under oath? You have
heard
testified during the
course of this trial,
that
it
Eglantine Ferchaud has attempted time after time to
bribe our witnesses.
not plausible that
Is
it
a
woman, so
lost to all honor and decency, would also tempt her own witnesses with rewards to make them twist their testi mony and tell what was not so? You have heard Miss Roach state under oath that she was present when such
by
Eglantine Ferchaud herself After her evidence would you
were made, both
attempts
by
and
her paramour.
place the slightest credence in the word of any of the witnesses for the defence? On their testimony would you blast the whole life of this lovely young mother, my client, ruin the future of her child and destroy the home and happiness of this proud young husband and father? You certainly would not, and how much less would you
be willing to do so after hearing the evidence we have adduced.
"Not a link is missing in our chain of proof. Here in my hand is the birth certificate of Anastasie Jasmin. It would be impossible for my client to have tampered with that — it was made when she was only a few months old. It states that she was the natural daughter of Jean Jasmin and Arthemise Desanges — and its au thenticity has never been questioned. Did you not hear
the keeper of the records, Monsieur Lacage, summoned here by the other side, say that it was recorded in the book kept solely for the use of white persons, and that no marginal notes were made against this entry stating it was in any way incorrect?
"Here is a certified copy of the passenger list of the Brig Davis. The original was made in 1809, years before the birth of the Plaintiff. See, it says:
'Jean Jasmin, age twenty-five, born Switzer
land, profession, habitant.
?i??&4&*?&&S?teiris 247 ? 'Arthemise Desanges, age twenty, born Switz
erland, profession, habitante.' I call your attention to the fact that this record has never been in our hands — it was brought directly here from
the Mayor's office by one of his employees. Both these papers show that there was, beyond a peradventure of a doubt, a white person by the name of Arthemise Des anges who came to New Orleans and was the mother of Mme. Taquin, and that a Jean Jasmin also came at the same time and on the same vessel.
"But my opponent says that Arthemise Desanges and Claircine Sevrisol are one and the same person; and what documents do they offer to prove this? Some re ceipts for rent signed Claircine Sevrisol, and others for the same house signed Arthemise Desanges. But have these papers come from the custody of city officials? Oh, no. They were brought here in the pocket of one of the
defendant's star witnesses; and you have heard of the kind of pressure Eglantine Ferchaud is accustomed to exert on witnesses. Have you ever thought how easy it would be to copy the big, shaky, illiterate handwriting of Claircine Sevrisol? Does it not seem strange to you that this witness should have kept these old rent receipts twenty years or more? In the face of the testimony of Mme. Rigaud, who knew intimately both Claircine Sev?
fc& 248 risol and Arthemise Desanges, how far fetched and foolish is this charge that these two women were one and the same person.
"During his examination of his witnesses, Mr. La?nusse has made quite a point of the fact that old Gair?cine is alleged to have said on several occasions that Anastasie Jasmin was the fruit of her own womb. But you will remember that each time a witness so testified I asked whether Claircine had been drinking, and each time the answer was yes. Under these circumstances, it may be possible that Claircine did say these things. I doubt it in view of what has been proved about the witnesses for the defence. However, her drunken maud?lings did not prove anything, except that she was a poor, lonely old woman, grieving for her child who died years before and hugging to her bosom the delusion that the daughter of another, whom she had loved and brought up, was in reality her own. When she was sober she never made any such statements because she knew they were untrue; it was only when liquor mazed her mind that she ever said what her heart wished. It was when she was cold sober that she went before a judge and told under oath the real truth about the parentage of the Plaintiff. Here is the document marked in evidence. After deposing that Anastasie Jasmin was the daughter
249 of Jean Jasmin and Arthemise Desanges, she said, 'that although Anastasie Jasmin is considered to be of colored blood by some, on account of her having been raised by deponent, she is nevertheless the child of white parents according to deponent's best knowledge and belief; and
moreover is not the daughter of deponent as she has been supposed to be for the reason above rejerred to.' Here is a voice from the grave solemnly testifying that An astasie Jasmin is white. "Do not forget the living witnesses either who have
stated that they frequently visited the Taquin house and that the friends they found there were always white. Do you wish to prevent this young mother from ever again consorting with such friends? Do you wish to relegate
this refined woman, educated in the Ursulines convent, to the society of negroes for the rest of her life? Do you wish to blast the life of her young son? No! thrice no! So in view of all the evidence, both documentary and oral, which we have adduced, you must decide for the Plaintiff and force Eglantine Ferchaud and her par amour Valsin Labiche, both equally guilty, to pay for tKeir dastardly attack upon my client's fair name and happiness, and so vindicate both her claim and her child's to being members of the Caucasian race."
There was much more of the same sort of thing be
250 fore Keppel finally finished. All through his summing up, Anastasie had been as taut as the E string on a violin, listening with every fibre of her being to what he had to say. He succeeded in firmly convincing her that she had won. After that plea, no judge could be cruel enough to relegate her to the loges pour personnes de couleur, or make her baby out to be a little nigger. She heaved a long sigh and sank back on her bench, reaching over and squeezing Placide's hand. Neverthe less, as Phanor Lanusse rose to his feet, dignified, suave, and very much a man of the world, she could not fight
toff a little tremor of apprehension.
He settled his black stock comfortably under his chin, brushed his hand over his long oily hair, bowed to the bench and began in a quiet voice: "May it please your
honor, my distinguished opponent has just made a very moving plea in behalf of his client in which he has stressed the personal unhappiness she will suffer in the event this case is decided against her. I have no doubt
is,
wife and
that she
he says,
virtuous
good
as
a
a
mother; but there are other things in this world of far
more import than that she shall be able to frequent
If,
in
white society for her selfish pleasure and pride.
spite of the conclusive evidence we have presented that
woman of color, the Plaintiff
enabled to pass
she
is
isa
251
herself off as a white woman, the levees will have been broken and a black flood will rush through the crevasse that will sully the white purity of our race and retard our civilization a thousand years."
* Keppel jumped to his feet, waving his arms and bel lowing, "I object! I object! Counsel very well knows that his remarks are highly improper; neither the Negro race nor the Caucasian is on trial here. It is a simple question: did the Defendant slander the Plaintiff or did she not. All this dragging in of the race question is merely done in a flagrant attempt to bias the mind of
the court."
Bang, bang, went Judge Poupard's gavel, as he said drily, "This court has been long enough on the bench and has heard a sufficient number of lawyers sum up, not to be swayed by divagations of counsel. However, Mon sieur Lanusse, you have been wandering into questions that are irrelevant and immaterial and very possibly too great for you or me to answer. You may proceed, but
please confine yourself to the cause at issue."
Lanusse bowed to the court and continued.
"The facts admitted .by both sides are: that Claircine
Sevrisol came to New Orleans from Santo Domingo and was the concubine of one Bazile Bujac; that about 1833 she is found bringing up the Plaintiff, then a little girl
^ of three, and continues so to do until the child arrives at the age of fifteen and marries Monsieur Taquin.
'A difference of opinion arises, however, as to how this child came into the custody of Claircine Sevrisol. My opponent declares that Anastasie was the natural daughter of one Jean Jasmin and an alleged Arthemise Desanges, and that, just before his death, the said Jas min confided Anastasie and her brother Maitre to Bazile Bujac, who in turn gave them to his mistress, Claircine Sevrisol, to raise. They rely principally on two docu ments to prove their contention — the one a list of the passengers arrived at New Orleans on board the Brig Davis of Santo Domingo, and the other Anastasie Jas min's certificate of baptism.
"Among the entries on the passenger list appear,
'Jean Jasmin, aged twenty-five, from Switzer
land, an inhabitant.
'Arthemise Desanges, aged twenty, from
Switzerland, an inhabitant.' From this my opponent argues that, as the passenger list alleges that Arthemise Desanges was born in Switzer land, she must therefore be of white blood; but that doesn't necessarily follow, because it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that there may be some few negroes in that country. Also, he fails to point out to
253 you that there is a serious discrepancy between the pas senger list and the birth certificate, in that it is stated in the certificate of birth that Arthemise Desanges, the mother of Anastasie, is a native of Santo Domingo; and
if this be true, where would be my opponent's presump tion of white blood? For we know that that island is full of negroes. Which paper are we to believe? If you bear with me for a moment it will be easy to decide.
"In the last part of the 18th century, there occurred,
*a?
among the slaves of Santo Domingo and Haiti, the most cruel and horrible uprising the world has ever known. Those of the white planters and their families who were not brutally massacred were forced to flee the island. Some took refuge in Baltimore, some in Phil adelphia, some in Cuba and others in Louisiana. As you know, the population of this city was doubled almost overnight by the numbers of refugees who flocked here. They came practically penniless, some of them accom panied by the few slaves who had remained faithful. Although most of these people had been very rich and lapped in luxury all their lives, they were now forced to earn their living and, because they were starving, they were willing to accept starvation wages. This caused a cut-throat competition that greatly lowered prices paid all through the state and naturally created a strong prejudice against the refugees on the part of the Louis?ianians. Then too, an almost hysterical fear swept the state that the strange negroes, who had accompanied their masters, would infect the home slaves with the virus of revolution. "In 1809 when Napoleon embroiled France with Spain, the Santo Domingans who had sought refuge in Cuba were given the choice of becoming Spanish citizens or leaving the island. Too patriotic as Frenchmen to recognize any alternative, they elected to go to New Orleans. Their sole capital, in most cases, consisted of a few faithful slaves. This was a serious cause of em barrassment, however, for, in an effort to steer a middle course between the abolitionists and the slave owners, Congress had passed an act making it unlawful to im port slaves into the United States from foreign parts. On account of the already mentioned competition and fear of slave uprisings, many Louisianians were in favor of a strict enforcement of this law as against the Santo Domingans; but Governor Claiborne took the broad-minded view that these slaves had been imported under conditions of peculiar distress and that he would permit them to be landed, on their owners putting up a bond for their appearance, while he referred the matter to the President. "But I am straying into the pleasant fields of history. It is sufficient for our purpose to know that Bazile Bujac, as well as all the other Santo Domingans in Cuba, must have known it was difficult, if not impossible, to get
slaves into the United States. Suppose Bujac and Qair?cine had been in Cuba at that time, what would they have done? Most of their friends were in New Orleans and it was the easiest and quickest place to get to. Bujac, being young and lusty, would never for a moment have considered abandoning a slave mistress of whom he was fond, so he must have done the obvious thing.
"When the Brig Davis from Santo Domingo bound for New Orleans touched at Cuba, he took passage for him self and Claircine; but not under their own names. For himself he adopted the family name of his mother and called himself Jean Jasmin and rechristened Claircine, Arthemise Desanges, stating she was a Swiss, a decep
tion easy to carry out since she spoke French and was fair in coloring. After they had arrived safely in New Orleans, Bujac evidently resumed his own name, because there were a number of his compatriots here who would have recognized him. Claircine, for some reason, seemed to have kept both her names alive, as was proved by the testimony of Peter Ham who stated, as you doubtless remember, that he had rented a house from her and she
*
had signed, at different times, both names to the re ceipts, which are now in evidence.
"When Maitre and later Anastasie were born, Bujac, who evidently had some of the kindliness of a father, did not wish to blast his children with the stigma of an inferior race and so tried to conceal their parentage by inscribing them as the children of Jean Jasmin and Arthemise Desanges — the two names that would have come most naturally to his mind under the circum stances. But it was right here that they made their first slip. They had evidently forgotten that, in order to get into New Orleans they had given Arthemise Desanges' place of birth as Switzerland; while in the birth certifi cate she was described as being a native of Santo Do mingo. In view of these facts it is self-evident that the statement in the birth certificate is the true one and the one in the passenger list, the false, for if the truth had been told in the passenger list she would not have been
permitted to land in New Orleans. Therefore there re mains no scintilla of evidence in the record going to prove that Arthemise Desanges was either of European birth or of white blood. It does appear, however, from the very exhibits put in evidence by the Plaintiff, that she came from Santo Domingo; and so admittedly does Claircine Sevrisol. But was any passenger list put in
bAA-^^ 2.57 evidence showing the arrival in New Orleans of Clair?cine? No, and the reason is simple. There is no such record, and it does not exist because, when our witnesses said that Claircine and Arthemise were one and the same person, they spoke the truth, and it was in reality Claircine Sevrisol, travelling under the name of Arthe mise Desanges, who was landed in New Orleans by the Brig Davis in 1809.
"As against this documentary evidence and the testi mony of our witnesses, all of them men and women in the prime of life and memory, the Plaintiff brings only one witness — a very old woman — to vouch for the fact that there ever was an Arthemise Desanges in real life. In all this large city of New Orleans they have been able to find only one person who has seen this mythical char acter, although she is said to have lived right here for twenty years until she died. Old Justine Rigaud is the
only one who testified she was acquainted with both Arthemise and Claircine, and that the children of Arthe mise were given to Claircine to raise. Strange to say, this witness, who does not know whether she herself is white or colored, is aware of the maternal filiation of the Plaintiff, but knows nothing about her father, nor even whether Claircine ever had any children or not, although she lived in the same neighborhood.
258 *?''v'^^
"Claircine's voluntary statement that she was not the mother of the Plaintiff, made under oath several years ago, is not entitled to any weight as it was clearly done to further her daughter's plan to pose as a white woman. That this is the true interpretation is proved by the many oral declarations made by Claircine, both pre vious and subsequent to the written affidavit above men tioned, stating she was the mother of the Plaintiff; and both our witnesses and our documentary evidence have amply corroborated this view of the matter.
"Nor can there be any doubt that Bazile Bujac was the father of these children. We have the testimony of several witnesses to that effect and especially that of his legitimate daughter, Mile. Elodie Bujac, and surely it was not such a story as she would willingly fabricate about her father. Even the name Jasmin, as we have seen, points the finger of suspicion at him for in his will he gives the name of his Swiss mother as Marguerite Jasmin — a circumstance that would tend to explain, as we have before mentioned, why the two children re ceived that name.
"I say again, that, on comparing the testimony given in behalf of the Plaintiff with that brought out by the defence, no sane person can doubt for an instant that Arthemise Desanges was in reality Claircine Sevrisol;
259 and it follows as a self-evident conclusion that, as Anas?tasie Taquin claims she is the daughter of Arthemise Desanges, she must then be the child of Claircine Sev?risol. Zabette Soulie corroborated this, when she testi fied that she was present when Claircine gave birth to Maitre Jasmin; and if you will examine his birth certifi cate, which I have placed in evidence, you will see that the same parents are named in it as are reported in that of his sister.
"There has never been any denial during the whole progress of the case that Claircine was a woman of color and so, as her daughter, the Plaintiff, Anastasie Taquin, must also be of colored blood. When my clients made this statement about her, they were animated by no malice, but were merely telling the truth and doing a civic duty in unmasking this woman, who was so bra zenly pretending to be of white descent in order to foist herself as an equal on white society. I humbly submit that as the Defendants merely told the truth about the Plaintiff, the court cannot do otherwise than absolve them from the charge of slander and render a decision in their favor."
All the confidence Anastasie had acquired as she lis tened to Keppel, oozed from her as Lanusse went on and on, until she began to feel as paltry as a pricked
260 balloon. She thought he would never finish and if he
had been the devil himself, she could not have hated him more heartily. Of all hatreds, the violent hatreds of the impotent are hardest to bear, for the weak are hand cuffed by the knowledge of their own insignificance, and so are deprived of the luxury of translating their emo tions into action; for they do not dare to vent their wrath, but must swallow its venom and endure its poi son. Anastasie's feeling against Lanusse was of this kind and he seemed so really the personification of all evil to her that she found herself glancing at his feet for signs of the cloven hoof. At last, when she thought she would go almost crazy, he finally stopped and court was ad journed after the judge had stated he would reserve decision.
The crowd started to filter out laughing and talking, leaving Anastasie and Placide standing nervously in a corner waiting for Keppel to end his conversation with the clerk so they could speak to him. Finally he turned and, sweeping his papers into a green baize bag, took up his hat to leave.
Anastasie, pathetically full of an adolescent adoration for him, felt he was a hero, her embattled champion, animated solely by a knightly preoccupation that JUS TICE should be done. Her poor, worried little heart
261 4hfc??AA& overflowed with gratitude and tears welled into her eyes, as she hurried across to stop him and, impulsively putting a hand on his arm, said, "Oh, Monsieur Keppel, you are wonderful. Never before did I listen at such a speech. All my life, yes, I will thank you for the way you have work for me and my little Zozo, and Placide, he feel that way too." She put her other hand on Pla?cide's arm and smilingly brought him into the conver sation.
"You know," she continued, "I don't think no judge
be able to dispute yo' word, — even if you be wrong. But tell me," a note of anxiety quavered her voice, "do you think we have win?"
He accepted her homage with a condescending smile,
saying, "Ah, that I cannot tell. You have a chance." As he spoke, his thoughts were far from being those of a knight errant receiving the guerdon of his lady's praise, and it would have made Anastasie even more unhappy if she had been able to read them.
What he was actually thinking was that perhaps he had gone to too much trouble in this case. She was pretty, yes, but after all the other side very prob
was
ably right and she was just an exceedingly good looking woman of color. He wondered whether her husband was away from home much at night. Well, if they both
262 were so pleased with the way he had tried the case, pos sibly he had better add a few hundred to the amount of the fee he had decided to ask.
But even if Anastasie had been able to read his mind, she would not have believed it — would probably have thought she had not read aright; for she belonged to that hardy perennial — the ingenuous layman — who will never cease to be taken in by the cheap meretricious oratory of his lawyer, nor realize that it is an eloquence that can be turned on or off at will and on either side of any question; that it is merely an histrionic trick and has no relation whatsoever to his conscience. Indeed, the law has a marked similarity to a sister profession, much more ancient — in fact reputed the oldest of all; the only difference being that, while one is a prostitution of the mind for money, the other is that of the body.
3&fa??!&!'??&?ri?
263
EIGHTEEN
anxious days of waiting for the judge's deTHE if anything,
cision were, even harder to bear than the actual trial. Anastasie was so afraid a message would come while she was out, that she never left the house, but spent all her time with Zozo. Her cheeks had become wan and a trifle hollow and her eyes, to which this change had given an appearance of even greater size, were accentuated by transparent blue shadows. She
was a
looked pathetically wistful and there suggestion of drawn apprehension about her as if she expected, at any moment, to be informed of some new calamity. As
she sat by her son's crib while he slept, tears often trickled down her cheeks. Placide's face had changed too. Now it was almost
always glum. So many happenings had forced the ques tion of his wife's ancestry upon his attention that he could no longer keep it more or less comfortably sub merged in his subconsciousness. He hardly spoke to her any more, for the one thing which obsessed him had become too painful a subject for conversation, and yet it did not leave room in his brain for any other thought. He still loved her passionately and it tore his heart to
"> -^^^
see her suffering, but there was nothing he could do. Life seemed to stretch out before him in one long mel ancholic vista embittered by petty slights and mean nesses, constant heart burnings and hurt feelings. All gaiety and joy had been crushed. There seemed to be no possible escape and for the first time he took to drink ing as the only alleviation. Anastasie realized this and it worried her. Was she going to lose both the case and her Placide too? She employed every wile she possessed to hold him. She was always dressed and pretty when he got back to the house, took the greatest care to see he had exactly the dishes he loved to eat and forced herself to a cheerfulness she did not feel. He sensed its unreal ity and its lack of spontaneity only increased his irrita tion. Why this was so, he did not himself know. It was an obscure and contradictory reaction. Possibly her obvi ous effort made him realize more poignantly the depths of her pain; which made him suffer the more and, as a galled horse shows signs of irritation when its rider mounts the saddle, he, already raw with misery, was irritated by the increase in his burden. When one re members the inherent feeling of the Southerner regard ing the negro, Placide had really stood by his wife splendidly, but the long drawn-out strain of nervous waiting had begun to undermine his resistance and for the first time they were near a break. It was Anastasie who kept them together. She still had a passionate allure for him and when they went to their room, their overtaut nerves found relief in paroxysms of passion. The feel of her warm seductive body in his arms drove every other thought from his mind and all memories of his sufferings were consumed in the flame of their union. Possibly due to the very fact of their overwrought con dition, she found that her power to arouse him was even greater than before. It made her feel safer.
On the morning of the fifth day after the trial, Anas tasie was sitting in the front room with Zozo in her arms. The blinds were closed, but through a broken slat she could see Zaire busily scrubbing the doorstep with a latanier brush and hot water. As she glanced down the street, she noticed an undersized mulatto hurrying towards the house and thought she recognized Sans Facon. A faint smile curved the corners of her mouth
because she never saw him without remembering how funny he looked scrambling out of the gutter on the first day she met Placide. Quite out of breath he came up to Zaire and said, "I jus' come frum the cote house, an' the jedge he decide against Toucoutou. She won't git no money frum Eglantine 'cause she jest a nigger lak' you an' me."
266 MMMMmmMmaamMMMMMeMOAMaAmm
Anastasie heard and tensed in a nervous rigor. She trembled so uncontrollably she nearly let Zozo slip from her arms, her heart almost stopped and she had a
sick feeling of nausea, as if she had been kicked in the pit of the stomach. Her face became haggard and her eyes looked enormous in the half light of the room and had the large round stare of a nocturnal animal.
She heard Zaire say, "Go on 'way frum here, Sans Facon, yo' no count trash, or I sure will scald yo' with dis hot water bucket."
At the words she clutched her child to her and, bury ing her face in the angle of warm pink flesh formed by his neck and shoulder, she whispered, "Pore little nig ger, pore little nigger," with a keening in her voice that was infinitely sad. She judged his future suffering by her own.
Placide hurrying home found her in the same posi
tion. The shock of the decision had swept him clean to all personal irritation or sense of injustice, leaving only a feeling of great pity for the woman he loved. He put his arms around her and kissed her wet eyes.
Zozo had gone to sleep and Anastasie pushed her husband gently away to lay the child on the sofa. Then she came to Placide and said, "Are you content to leave little Zozo stay a nigger? There
267 ain't nothin' you can do — the lawyers can do?"
Placide buried his face in his hands and sobbed. She knelt beside him and ran her slim pink fingers gently through his hair.
He spoke haltingly, his voice coming hoarse and muffled through his hands as he said, "I can't tell you,I — ah — just can't tell you."
"Tell me what, cher," she asked, "what there is can be worse than this?"
He raised his white drawn face; a little muscle twitched uncontrollably in his cheek under one eye, as he replied, "Keppel sent for me this morning and, after he had told me that the case had gone against us, he said that there were certain consequences resulting from the decision that he felt I should know. Then he told me," he hesitated again.
"Tell me, cher, tell me. Don't worry me this way," she urged. "Well," he continued, "he said we were not married and that Zozo was . . . Zozo was . . . illegitimate."
"Why he must be crazy," she broke in. "Wasn't we married by a priest and didn't we have all the papers? You know good my certificate is upstairs right now in the armoire."
"I know, I know," he replied, "but read this that he
268 gave me," and he handed her a slip on which was written: "Civil Code of Louisiana "Art. 25. Free persons and slaves are in
capable of contracting marriage together; the celebration of such marriage is forbid den, and the marriage is void."
"But I ain't no slave," she burst out. "I know, I know," he said, "but read on." Looking again at the paper, she saw: "There is the same incapacity and the same
nullity with respect to marriages contracted by free white persons with free people of color."
"What's that nullity?" she asked.
"Keppel said that it meant that our marriage was just as if it had never taken place; that a marriage of this kind was against the law and even if it did take place it wasn't any marriage."
"Well me, I don't see how any law can say somethin'
ain't so when 'tis so." "But it does, that's the law," he answered dejectedly. "Do that mean you can leave me and Zozo any time
you want to go?" Her voice was tinged with sudden fear. "Yes."
"But Placide, cher, you wouldn't?"
"No, I wouldn't," he replied in a monotonous color less voice. "If I intended to I would have gone a long time ago. I knew soon in the case that Claircine had lied to me — that you were really her daughter — and I tried to leave then. You remember when I said I had to go away on business, the only time I ever left you, well, that time I tried to run away forever. My God, you don't think it was any joy to know that my family could say they were right — to feel my friends grow offish — to realize the men talked behind my back and laughed at me — would have done it to my face only they knew they'd have to fight if they did. I got as far as Baton Rouge, but I couldn't sleep — I had to see you — had to feel the touch of your skin, the fire of your soft warm lips on mine — had to hear the sound of your voice. I went almost mad with longing. I got up in the middle of the night and walked down the hill to the wharf and waited for the first packet to come along to take me back to you. When I saw the cinders shooting up, red against the night, from the smokestacks of that boat as it swept down the river towards me, I felt happy and at peace again for the first time since I had left you. My God, black, white or yellow or whatever any court de
270 cides you are, I know I can't live without you. I never
said anything before; I kept it all inside, tried to forget
it;
but for
year I've known that you and Clair?
about
a
me — didn't want to believe."
I
cine fooled
must have really known be
guess
I
I
fore, but
Anastasie did not check his outburst and when he had finished she had too much intuition — too much sex instinct to attempt any justification. She did the much wiser thing. She lifted his chin with her hand until she could look long down into his eyes and then kissed him on the lips — passionately, and said, "I'd lie, I'd steal,
I'd murder to get you, cher, 'cause
love you. But
it
I
don'd do no good now to talk about that; for Zozo's sake we got to do something. Ain't they got some higher court?"
I
"Yes, we could appeal, but"But
don't think we'd win."
little
might and,
there be only
if
we
even
a
can't stand to see pore little
I
we got to take it.nigger and
chance,
Zozo
bastard too."
a
a
*
*
*
The appeal was made and
year dragged by; such
is
a
the speed of courts, which seem almost to prefer to
by
of litigants
clear their calendars
the natural death
of cases; and the higher
by
rather than
the trial
the
court, the slower grind the wheels of Justice. ?*AA Anastasie suffered. Anxiety as to its outcome was always there, hiding in her memory fringe, but ever ready to pop out and poison any little pleasure she
might have. Everywhere she went she encountered sniffs or averted eyes; and whisperings and mean laughs fol lowed her as a tail follows a kite. No one openly in sulted her, however; the pending appeal saved her from that, for people were afraid of a suit for slander if the decision should be in her favor. She became so self-conscious and unhappy under this continued treatment that she never left the house unless it was absolutely necessary. Most of the time she just sat and brooded, her brain, like a blind horse turning a mill, ceaselessly travelling the same circular path. From constant mull ing over her troubles, she almost came to dissociate her self from her own personality and seemed to be looking down, as from a mountain, on the characters in her drama — herself among them, all shrunken to the size of insects, moving and squirming irrationally, like maggots in a cheese, with no apparent design or meaning. This mental aloofness brought her some alleviation for, as this distant aspect dwarfed her in size, the importance of her calamity shrank in proportion. Luckily for human beings, it is possible to suffer only so much before phys ical exhaustion, or a revamping of values, dulls the pain.
272 ?* Now she saw Claircine as a poor stumbling atom, self-defeated, and, for the first time, she held no particle of rancor against her. She realized that, after Bazile's death, the sole preoccupation of her mother's life had been to see her daughter happily safe within the ranks of the whites; it had been an obsession. Knowing this, she was puzzled to discover the reason why the old woman had worked ceaselessly for years to build a white wall around her and had then, with her own hands, pulled it down; only to begin to reconstruct it all over again from the broken pieces. Was it because of that wild irrational temper Claircine inherited from Comba Nea? But had not she, Anastasie herself, done exactly what her mother had done — struggled that Zozo should be considered white and then destroyed all the results of her effort by fighting with Eglantine? Yes, and that was temper too. She wondered whether her little Zozo would repeat all the mistakes they had made and defeat himself in the same futile manner? Were all people just foolish, groping microbes because of what had come to them from their ancestors?
Blindly and stumblingly, more by a sort of intuition than by mental processes, Anastasie was slowly working out the hypothesis that the theory of free will is only a theory, while heredity is a fact inescapable.
273 ^^^y^.^^.^l^J^^
Sorrow had sharpened her wits. From a healthy, happy, sensual, little animal, she had become a woman and a mother who was beginning to think. She won dered and wondered if there was not some way of keep ing her child from repeating all the fatal errors of Claircine and herself; some way of controlling in her son that devastating, inherited temper. She would try being firm with him and, whenever he gave way to one of his fits of anger and screamed until he got what he wanted, she would just let him continue until he saw it was futile. Maybe that would help.
A slender, vague hope, that perhaps, as he was so
young, his temper might be partially controlled by train ing, had come to modify her first inchoate feeling that heredity was inevitable.
If she could only take Zozo away to some place where they were not known and give him a fair start, then maybe, if she tried hard, she could realize for her child what Claircine had unsuccessfully attempted to do for hers. But as long as there was a chance for the Supreme Court to reverse the decision of the court below, she
must wait to take
it;
though she felt she would
even
gladly give ten years of her life to run away — anywhere — and take with her the two beings she loved the most.
274 NINETEEN
kVER on Mara is street was a. strange, brown-
painted, wooden building, profusely decorated with scroll-saw arabesques, running under the eaves like paper lace along the edge of a shelf. It was what was called in New Orleans a raised cottage, because its only floor was raised high in the air on pillars of brick to keep it dry in time of flood. Over the door hung a sign, "Soci?t6 des Bons Amis," and in front was a landing, at each end of which steps fell away to the ground. It was just one big room inside, with a platform at the further end, on which, pushed back against the wall in the centre, stood an old store showcase. Under its glass rioted an orgy of color, screaming reds, poisonous greens, golds and purples. They were the robes of office of the high potentate and other functionaries, only used on gala occasions. It was the smart club for the free people of color and none but the Cordons Bleus could ever hope to join.
Extra benches were stacked up three deep in one cor ner, and eight or ten high griffe men were lounging on chairs grouped around an old piano near the stage. They talked and smoked and spat into cuspidors, dotted over 275 the floor like small sanitary islands. Sans Facon, the little yellow barber, was strumming the keys and hum ming. He was the troubadour of the club and often composed quaint songs that swept the colored portion of the city. A gay, haunting little melody seemed to be obsessing him, for he tried it over and over again with all sorts of variations.
One of the loungers called out, "Bon Di, Sans Facon, quit that an' really sing something. Sing Marianne."
Just as he had obligingly started the first verse, quick feet were heard clattering up the front steps and the door was burst open by a breathless negro who shouted, "Has yer heard? Toucoutou's a nigger fo' sure this time. I jest seen Gollias whut keeps the office by Monsieur Phanor Lanusse an' he tole me he hear him say de Su preme Court had done decided for Eglantine."
A buzz of excitement broke out and they all gathered round, asking for details.
A fat, good-natured looking negro shouted, "Ah-ah! Tar ain't gwine be milk till there be a week with fo' Thursdays."
Everybody joined in his guffaw — that
is,
all except
Sans Facon, who still sat at the piano, with
a
queer
little smile pulling the corners of his mouth as he bent
his head over the keys to hide it. His fingers again
276
started to play the little air that continued to haunt him. He began to hum and an occasional word could be understood. Satisfied at last, he raised his head and, swinging around on the piano stool, his face a broad grin, he called, "Come on 'round, I wants to sing you somethin'."
They all crowded close to the piano in anticipation, for Sans Faxon's reputation as a lyrical satirist was wide spread, and they suspected that he'd found a subject worthy of his prowess.
His agile yellow fingers slipped over the keys and a gay derisive little chorus burst from the piano, setting feet patting and voices humming. All the Creole songs of the people of color began with a chorus instead of a verse and Sans Faxon played his over two or three times until he was sure his audience had caught the melody, then he threw back his head and, in a sweet though husky tenor, sang:
"Ah! Toucoutou, ye conin vous,
Vous ce tin Morico.
Na pas savon qui tace blanc
Pou blanchi vous lapo." in the soft slurred words of the gombo French, which translated was: "Ah, Toucoutou, I'm wise to you, 6*&6&&?&&&&&4&&??6 277 You're just a nigger wench;
There is no soap so white, for true,
Your sooty skin to blench."
Shouts of laughter greeted the song and the singer, encouraged, went on with verse after verse that told the tale of poor Toucoutou's lost battle. After each one, the mocking, mean, little chorus was repeated, all the rich negro voices joining in making chords that had the mel low quality of tone of a splendid organ. The sound rolled out of the windows and people passing stopped outside the door to listen, shaking with laughter as they caught the import of the words. Never had Sans Facon had such a succes fou. He had appealed to crowd cru elty, an appeal which seldom fails.
The Supreme Court decision had stripped Anastasie of her last shred of protection and now Sans Facon's song made her the butt of a whole race, who hated and despised her, because she had deserted them — had al most succeeded to all the privileges and dignities of the whites, leaving them to suffer alone the handicaps that were the fate of their color. It gave them a scapegoat upon which they could vent all the bitterness of their position, and so it was quite natural that the song sprang from lip to lip like the plague.
The next morning the Vieux Carre fluttered with
HSrtrSMhS^AA 278 iJrWWW3r^WWWWWK^^
white dodgers on doors and fences, lamp-posts and trees, as it used to do in times of yellow fever, when people died like flies and the Creoles posted their death notices
everywhere. These little paper rectangles were different, however, for they carried no black border and, instead of a widow weeping by a funeral urn, they bore as a heading the one word TOUCOUTOU in large black fat-face type, and underneath was printed the chorus and verses of Sans Faxon's success.
&*?&
279 TOUCOUTOU
Refrain:
Ah! Toucoutou, ye conin vpus,
Vous ce tin Morico.
Na pas savon qui tace blanc
Pou blanchi vous lapo.
Si vous te gagne vous proce
Oui, negue ce malere.
Move dolo qui dans foce
Ce pas pou meprise.
Refrain: Au Theatre meme quand va prend loge, Comme tou blanc comme ye fot,
Ye va fe vous prend Jacdeloge, tantot,
Na pas pace
Refrain: Quand blancs loyes va donin bal Vous pli capab aller. Comment va fe, vayante diabal, Vous qui laimez danser?
Refrain: Mo pre fini mo ti chanson Pasque manvi dormi; Me Mo pense que la leson Longtemps li va servi.
Refrain:
280 Toucoutoti
chomjs
pfts ?? ? von qui u co bUao Fob bluefcl tom U po. 8i
pu poa mo
Even though these dodgers differed from the conven tional Creole funeral announcements, none the less were they notices of death; for, not only did they proclaim the demise of Anastasie's happiness, but they also gave it the coup de grace.
Groups gathered around the posters wherever they were found and there was always one literate among them who could read the words to the rest, amid chuckles and guffaws, and one, at least, who could hum the air. It seemed as if the whole town had learned the
song overnight — that
is,
all except its victim. She, as
yet, was happily ignorant of her imminent crucifixion.
&ft ^ TWENTY
A NASTASIE had always had the most slavish re?_/JL spect for the opinions of people who wrote books. She was sure they were a race of superhuman beings whose knowledge of life and the world was only second
to God's. While she had never met any of these semi?celestials, she felt almost certain she could recognize them at sight by the nobility of expression and the aura of mentality that must surround such beings. In all the novels she ever read (they were not many), Virtue
always triumphed and the heroine passed unspotted through difficulties far more crushing than hers, to live "happily ever afterwards" in the last chapter. Her confi dence in the omniscience of authors had given her a secret hope, which had been her sole consolation through her trials, that everything would "come out right in the end" for her also. Therefore the decision of the Supreme Court, which destroyed her last hold, struck her with even greater force from the very fact that, il logical as it may seem under the circumstances, it was really an unexpected blow.
When Placide broke the news to her, she seemed to lose all the courage with which she had met her previ 2$2 ous reverses. As he tried to comfort her without success, she wept so bitterly and looked so abjectly wan and hopeless that it tore at his heart strings. He made no progress at all until little Zozo, waking up from a nap, toddled in and leaning against her knees asked to be picked up. She swept him into her arms and hugged him convulsively. After one more tempestuous burst of tears she became calmer. The feeling of her boy in her arms
inspired her with new plans for his future; and she turned to Placide and told him that for their child's sake, for her sake they must leave New Orleans. He flatly refused — all his business was there — he would be ruined if he had to sell at forced sale; but there was another reason that he did not tell her — that his pleas ure was there too. He knew and loved both the place and the people and had never known any other. He could not face leaving it forever, for New Orleans, like a seductive mistress, takes from her men all desire to de part from her even for the long, hot summers.
They argued futilely until almost sunrise and it was not till then that Anastasie, exhausted, fell into a fitful sleep. When she awoke Placide had already left for the day. She missed Zozo and, looking out of the window, saw him playing on the banquette under the watchful eye of Zaire, who was engaged in her eternal scrubbing
283 3^^
of the front doorstep. Anastasie felt unutterably alone and wanted the comforting presence of her child, so she dressed quickly and went down to get him. He restored her morale. For his sake she must face things, go on as if nothing had happened. Well, she'd begin right now. She'd take the basket and go herself to the French Mar ket to get the supplies for the day. At least she could give poor Placide a good supper. Starting out bravely, she instinctively took a roundabout way to avoid passing Eglantine's. As she went along she imagined people were grinning derisively at her, but she kept her chin up and appeared to pay no attention. Several times
passers-by started humming when they caught sight of her — a queer nagging little tune she had never heard before — but she couldn't catch the words.
It was a lovely warm day in very early Spring and, as she passed a garden, the smell of sweet olive floated to her nostrils and gave her comfort. She decided there must be hope in a world where things could smell as pure and clean and delicate. After all, she still had both her husband and her child. Placide had stood by her nobly and had not deserted when he had had every chance to do so. Now that the struggle and suspense were over and she knew the worst, she almost felt happy again.
WWWWi 284 Just as she was about to slip under the cool, grateful shadow of the roof of the French Market, which was seething at its very busiest, she caught sight of Eglan tine's son playing with some little boys on the corner. Quickly she looked away, fearful of her new found peaceful mood in the face of all the disagreeable memo ries that anything associated with Eglantine had for her. As she went on, she heard the children singing and their feet came clattering after her. Strange, it was the same tune she had heard so often that morning. She recog nized a word — Toucoutou — rand stopped stock still. The urchins surrounded her still singing at the top of their
lungs:
"Oh Toucoutou, we're onto you You're just a nigger wench as they waggled dirty, little, accusing fingers in her direction, and when they came to the lines:
"There's no soap so white, fo' true
Your sooty skin to blench." they went through all the monkey motions of washing their hands with soap.
Roars of men's laughter, punctuated by the shrill staccato of the women, almost raised the roof of the market. One old fish dealer, who was cleaning his wares, hammered a fish he held by the tail up and down
285 on the marble top of his stand, until he suddenly real ized he had made it perfectly unsaleable. Obese Italian women sat by their stalls, their enormous paunches twitching and quivering with mirth until it looked as if they had been suddenly galvanized into attempting the dance of the Ouled Nails. Men in blue vareuses pushed up their black felt hats and wiped their streaming eyes with red bandanna handkerchiefs. Negroes threw back their heads and opened red plush caverns that seemed to split their faces in twain — and roared. Everybody was in on the joke. In an instant a crowd had gathered.
Toucoutou turned the gray white of an oyster and did not know, for a moment, whether she was going to faint or be violently sick. With a superhuman effort she pulled herself together, broke through the ring which surrounded her and started running for home, tears streaming down her cheeks. She had all the sensations of a hare hunted by harriers, as the boys followed, mock ing, for a few blocks and then gave up.
The flaying of Toucoutou had begun — leaving every nerve exposed and sore to cruel unceasing irritations; stripping from her all happiness, all pride, all self?
—
respect. From then on she was like a prima donnaeach appearance was announced by the motif of "Tou coutou." The air may have sounded gay, but it was in
286 p^Spp^^
it,
reality a motif of tragedy. She could not escape
the
song seemed to trail her with all the ferocious tenacity
of
on the track of
If
she
bloodhound
runaway slave.
a
a
went out, children were sure to tag her singing the cruel
tune and washing their hands in pantomime. Nor when
she staid at home was she safe, for
she approached her
if
by
"Tou?
front window she was greeted, as like as not,
coutou, ye conin vous," as some negress sent on an
errand tarried in front of her house to catch
glimpse
a
of its notorious owner and cast
stone of lyrical insult.
a
Not even in her huge mahogany bed, with her head
buried in pillows, was she free from the harrying. "Peau
z'onion" would be sure to come along, crazily crowned
by
the seven hats which he always wore, one piled on
top of the other, yelling
at the top of his lungs. The
it
notes of his big base voice searched out her ears even
through the pillows, and each one became
jagged rock
a
thrown with unerring aim at her heart. She would lie there cringing and trembling, waiting for the next sound to assault her. Never for an instant was she allowed to forget those few drops of black blood that stained her genealogy. All day long, colored marchande women, with huge baskets on their heads filled with fruit and vegetables or calas or pain patate, and old negro men
by
peddling clothes poles or charcoal,
her
streamed
287 ?fi?rtfcSrtMrfWW house singing "Toucoutou," between the times they cried their wares; and, as if even this were not enough, when she told Zaire to drive filthy old "Marie le Pou" off her doorstep, the crazy old woman moved to the next house and screamed "Toucoutou, ye conin vous" at the top of her lungs the whole afternoon through, as Zaire scalded their doorstep to kill any vermin she might have left. When night came, and they all disappeared, tipsy men, lurching by her window, hiccoughed the refrain
under the moon. Once she even caught Zaire humming the air unconsciously, and her strained nerves snapped and she slapped her hard across the cheek and ran into the darkened parlor to sit bolt upright and dry-eyed for an hour, trembling so her teeth chattered.
One evening Placide came home even more morose and harassed looking than usual. Toucoutou asked him what was the matter but he evaded her question. All through supper he seemed very nervous and after they had finished he finally said, with a poor attempt at non chalance, "Did you see the notice in the 'Picayune' this morning?"
"Why no, cher," she replied, "you know I don't read the paper. What was it?" "It was a notice for Captain Rick's band to meet to night at the corner of Frenchman and Burgundy."
^ "But that couldn't be us," she said hurriedly with a little catch of fear in her voice. "Of course not," he answered, but his voice lacked conviction.
Neither of them said a word, they just sat and looked at each other for a full minute. As is so often the case, it was the woman who pulled herself together first, and it was Toucoutou who broke the awkward silence and began to rattle on about the household affairs and what the baby had done. He answered in monosyllables. They each in their way showed signs of a strained apprehen?
siveness and when they were not talking they gave the impression of listening intently but secretly.
The moon rose and finally the nine o'clock bells rang in the St. Louis Cathedral to warn all slaves to be off the street and in their beds. Placide gave a sigh of relief at the sound and said, "Well, it's so late I guess we've escaped. They must have gone to somebody else. Let's
go to bed."
No sooner had they reached their room, however, than they heard the shuffling of many feet coming up the street. There were bursts of laughter and the jan gling clank of metal on metal as they approached. Placide quickly blew out the lamp and they both peeked from their darkened window and saw a motley crowd of
28 y &&?5?&&&?????43? men, each one armed with a strange instrument. There were drums, tinpans, cornets, trombones, triangles, watchmen's rattles, penny whistles, conchs, gongs, bells and trumpets. At the head marched Captain Ricardo, "old Rick" as he was affectionately called by his cohorts, resplendent in a glossy top hat perched rakishly over one ear, a flashy waistcoat, rivalling Joseph's garment of many colors and strung across with two or three gold watchchains; a turned down collar with a figured cravat, a long black "frock-tail coat" and shoes so shiny they reflected the radiance of the moon in glinty high lights.
By day he was a notary, by night a philanthropist — at other people's expense. Whenever an unevenly matched couple were married — an old man and a young girl, an old woman and a boy, a man or woman of questionable blood with one of pure white birth — Captain Rick is sued a proclamation to his "Sheet Iron Band" by insert ing a small advertisement in the "Picayune," giving the time and place of meeting; then at the head of his rabble on the night appointed he marched to the house of his victim.
Now Captain Rick took his stand on Anastasie's spot less front steps and held up both hands for silence. These were the moments for which he really lived — between whiles his pleasure in life hibernated. As he
290 swayed his mob of clerks, longshoremen and counter-jumpers to his will, he got a feeling of power and popu larity that thrilled him and a glow of generous right eousness warmed him through and through when he thought of the good press notices he would receive for securing a large donation for the Female Orphan Asy lum. Never did he have a qualm for his prey — that they could suffer mortification and heart aches, that he might abort forever their pathetic attempts to squeeze a little happiness from life — never entered his mind. They were merely the insensate stepping stones to his renown, just as the dying gladiators provided fame and popularity for the Roman Emperors.
"Now boys," he called, taking his pose of conscious power, "we'll play 'Home Sweet Home' gently and pret tily. Ready?" He gave two preliminary beats with his
right hand and then at a wide sweep of both arms the Charivari was on.
The "music" finished, Captain Rick turned and knocked at the front door. When no one came he began to bang harder and harder until Anastasie, afraid he would break in, sent Zaire, trembling and gray with fright, to the door. She opened it only a crack and the Captain called through, "Tell your master Captain Rick wishes to see him."
291 ^
Zaire slammed the door and went to the bedroom, where Placide was pacing up and down with twitching lips and nails dug into palms. When she delivered the message, he turned on her and shot out explosively, "Tell Captain Rick he can go to Hell!"
Anastasie, white and wild looking, implored, "Oh no! cher, no!" and turning to Zaire said, "You tell Captain Rick that Monsieur is so sick he can't come to see him."
When the Captain received this information he re plied to Zaire, "Well, go and tell your master, then, that Captain Rick would be most gratified if he would con tribute four hundred dollars to the Asylum for Female Orphans."
—
Anastasie begged Placide to pay pay any price to get rid of them. She reminded him of the time when rich old Madame Dubouc
(whom the whole quartier called "La Chevre" on account of her pronounced beard) had mar ried a boy half her age, and how Rick and his awful band had serenaded her for three whole nights before he was able to squeeze a donation from the miserly old woman. Anastasie even wept, but all to no purpose. Placide, sore, bitter and stubborn said he'd be damned if he'd be plucked — Rick and his band could play until they blew up as far as he was concerned — the lawyers had robbed him enough.
292 After the Captain had waited awhile and received no answer to his demand, he turned to his band and said, "Gentlemen, evidently Mister Taquin is not as generous as we might wish and his silence is a sign that he resists our proper demands. Therefore, gentlemen, we must sound the 'Alarum of Refusal.' Ready? Fire!"
The most deafening series of yawps, squeaks, shouts, booms, boos, bangs, rattles, and roars ever heard broke out in a horrifying cacophony and lasted a full five min utes. It was cut off so short by Rick's upraised hands that the ensuing pause gave almost the anomalous im pression of an explosion — an explosion of silence. The members of the band rested and recruited their strength. Flasks were drawn from bulging hip pockets and, after their owners had absorbed a generous portion of the gurgling contents, they were passed from hand to hand. Nightcapped heads were hanging out of windows up and down the street and a small crowd of men, whose houses did not afford a good view of the "festivities," had gathered in slippers with coats and trousers hastily pulled over nightshirts. Coarse suggestions were ban
died back and forth between the onlookers and the band. One man called, "Say that Toucoutou, she's a good looking wench, I wouldn't mind taking her to the Quadroon Ball myself." But his friend, more cautious, shouted back, "Not fo' me! She's a little hell-cat. She might do you same as she did Eglantine and scratch your eyes out." Rick's voice, "Are you ready now, boys?" interrupted the speakers and the "Sheet Iron Band" detonated in a rendition of "Toucoutou." The wind instruments carried the air — more or less — but were almost drowned at times by obbligatos on all sorts of weird contraptions. There was the pulsing beat of some old negro drums, resurrected for the occasion, the rhythmic racket pro duced by running a large brass key up and down the teeth still embedded in the jawbone of a mule; the crashing sound of sheet iron and sections of stovepipe struck with a poker, the clear ringing of triangles con fused now and then by the noise of watchmen's wooden rattles, relics of the Spanish "Serenos" — a pot pourri of horrible and unusual sounds. Those "musicians" whose mouths were not employed in blowing "sang" the words with raucous voices, and someone had invented new verses with filthy innuendoes that made the onlookers shout with approval. "That Toucoutou she wanted to put on airs and associate with white people, well now she'd see how far she'd got." This was the general feeling of the crowd and they took a sadistic pleasure in her bait ing. The melody was recognizable, but that's all. It was a performance distinguished by its enthusiasm and force rather than its finesse. Again the band rested and caught its breath before it
launched into an ear-splitting version of "Danse Ca?linda, Bou-Djoum, Bou-Djoum!", which is the old negro song that the slaves sang in the Place Congo when they danced the Bambou/^ on Sundays.
Anastasie, lying on the bed in tears, recognized it in spite of the pillows with which she had muffled her ears and realized that they played that particular tune as a sardonic musical imputation of her color. It was the last straw, her overstrained nerves snapped and she screamed hysterically to Placide "Stop it! Stop it! or I'll go crazy." He stood looking down at her, little muscles twitching and jumping in his face, his hands clenching and un
clenching uncontrollably. He could bear her suffering no longer and suddenly he weakened, ran out of the room and, throwing open the front door, called to Cap tain Rick. At his signal the band stopped its "playing" and as soon as he could be heard, Placide said, "All right, I'll pay."
"But not four hundred now," replied Captain Ric?ardo. "My band has had to play so hard to bring you to your senses that your contribution to the Asylum must be doubled."
stis??&?:
29.5 Placide stiffened and looked for an instant as if he were going to strike the Captain, who was grinning urbanely at him; then he remembered poor Anastasie and the terrible expression on her tear-stained face and all the fight went out of him. As he turned back into the house he said, "Wait until I get my check book." He returned quickly and handed the Captain a 'draft for eight hundred dollars drawn to the order of the asylum.
The Captain bowed and thanked him ornately for his "princely generosity," and the band and crowd broke into loud applause. As Placide was about to shut the door in his face he said, "Of course you realize, Mister Taquin, that if payment on the check was to be stopped, I and my band would be forced to return every evening to serenade you until a much larger sum had been paid."
Placide's answer was to slam the door and Captain Rick and his band disappeared down the road laughing and joking in high good temper.
Quietude descended on Union street and it slept once more under the moon. No sign of life was visible, save only a cat bonelessly slinking through the shadows.
Inside the house there was no such peace, however. Anastasie did not sleep nor did she permit her husband to. She begged and implored him the whole night through to take her away to live — anywhere — she didn't
296 care. She threw herself on the floor and held him by the knees as she wept. She painted the happy life they would lead together in some other part of the world. How much she would love him — if only he took her away. She was seductive and sad by turns and used every female wile in her armory. He sullenly spoke of his in vestments, his business, and how they would be sacri ficed at a quick sale. She lashed his pride. Did he want to live in a place where his old friends cut him dead in the streets because he had married her? Even a black nigger wouldn't stand that. Well, if he would not leave with her then he'd have to stay alone, she was going even if she had to become a bad woman to keep from starving. He wouldn't like to know that she was in any
body's else embrace but his, and she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him with her warm and pas sionate lips. She loved him so, she said, it would kill her to be separated from him.
Towards morning he made a grudging concession. If she would be patient, he would see what could be done towards selling his property by Mardi Gras time. The idea of waiting gave her a deadly nauseated feeling, but if freedom from the continually reiterated rhythm of that terrible song came at the end — she must endure in the meantime.
Gd&G
297 ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi^ffi^
She felt the whole city had leagued to torture her and a sense of cruel injustice rankled deep. What had she done to deserve it? Only what the good Abbe had preached — married the man she loved, instead of living with him as most of the octoroons were doing. Why should everyone attempt to drag her down when she was only trying to live respectably?
The weeks to Mardi Gras dragged by in leaden, tor
turing monotony. She never left the house in daylight now, for she could not bear the appraising, lecherous stares of the corner loafers. It gave her the sensation of being exposed naked on the slave block, and the sound of that terrible song, following as surely as her shadow, made her feel as if her skull had been cracked open and red pepper rubbed on her raw brain. Often she wished she had never been born and sometimes looked at her delicate wrists with their tracery of blue veins like water ways marked on a map and wondered why she could not open one and let the black blood flow out and disap pear. Gladly she would have cut off her hand to become all white in this way.
There was no surcease for her. Even sleep did not afford the peace of temporary oblivion. A horrible, tor turing nightmare kept recurring night after night until she dreaded to close her eyes.
&?4r?: 298 She dreamed each time she was lying in her arklike bed crying and, as she buried her face in her hands, the tears that trickled through her fingers felt hot and sticky. Suddenly she glanced at her hands, they were covered with coal black splotches which smelt of tar. In a ghastly panic she -called to Placide, but he wasn't there. She looked down and, to her horror, saw herself stark naked and noticed that wherever tears rolled off her face and dripped on her breasts and body, little black spots remained. She clutched for the sheet to try to rub them off, only to find all the bedclothes gone. She rubbed the stains with her fingers, to no avail, and, in frantic panic, began to tear at the tender skin of her breasts with her nails. The spots remained. In pure fren zied terror she screamed. The walls of the house seemed to crumble and disappear at the sound and she was left sitting on her bed on the levee. Men came running towards her from all directions, nigger stevedores, Irish draymen, loafers, sailors, clerks; they crowded close around her bed, pointing bawdy fingers at her body, their jabbering faces, leering and bestial, imprisoning her in a solid wall. She heard a husky voice rasp out, "Look at that yellow slut, all spotted up like a leopard," and she searched frantically for something with which to cover her nakedness, but there was nothing.
299 A huge nigger shouted out, "Why sister, you're a nigger, jes' lak' me!"
Bending her body over her raised knees, trying to hide her breasts with cramped elbows, she made an effort to cover her face with her hair, as she sobbed hysterically, "no! No! NO! It ain't true, it ain't TRUE!"
"True! True! Look at the black spots!" roared the crowd.
One face focussed her attention by its utter abom inable repulsiveness, as she stared around that wall of grinning masks searching for a way of escape. As it approached nearer and nearer, it had the look of a scrof ulous satyr, bloated and diseased. Saliva dripped from its loose, lecherous lips as it mumbled, "I'll get that pie bald strumpet yet." Like a bird fascinated by a serpent, she was helpless and desperate as that horrible face came closer and closer, growing to giant proportions as itapproached — tillitseemed tofilltheworld. Shebroke into a cold sweat as she felt its fetid breath hot upon her cheek. Suddenly the weight of its whole smothering body seemed to fall on her and she could not breathe . . .
At (his point she always awoke struggling and screaming, and Placide had to light the lamp and fetch her hand mirror before she could control her hysterical crying and be made to believe that her face and body
?
300 9999^9?9999*9^^ were not in reality maculated by black tar-like tears. To put the finishing touch on her torture, she was now ridden by the constant fear that she was going in sane.
^ EPILOGUE
^^
GRAW, chicle le paw!" Children couldMARDI on every street in
be heard shouting it merrily New Orleans. It was the magic phrase that announced the death of dull care and a whole day of mad, unre strained gaiety. People streamed past the little house on Union street, some in their Sunday best, others in mask ers' motley with little paper bags of flour in their hands to throw at merrymakers. None stopped to jibe or sing "Toucoutou" as they passed. They were hastening too
eagerly to Esplanade to coalesce with the good-natured crowds milling on the sidewalks and to watch the gal leries on both sides of the street, gay with people, men and women of all ages, grandmothers, matrons, lovely young girls and even .babes in the arms of starched, fat, negro mammies — all joining in pelting with bon-bons and blossoms the lovely Creole ladies, dressed in the latest creations from Paris; they drove up and down in
flower-decked carriages drawn by mettlesome horses, whose glistening coats rivalled the polished silver fit tings of their harness.
With the prospect of such a spectacle hurrying them on, it was no wonder they had no time to waste on the
302 baiting of one poor woman. But late in the afternoon when the fun had begun to slacken and the people to tire, two bands of wandering roysterers converged be fore Anastasie's house. A masked red devil with an enormous pitchfork seemed to be the leader and a grue some skeleton, armed with a scythe and with white bones painted on skin-tight black clothes, capered in macabre fashion beside him. They produced an evanes cent illusion that Death and the Devil had come to free poor Toucoutou from her Hell on earth and snatch her to a Hell below. But it was dissipated when the devil seized his spiked tail in his hand like a baton and started to lead his bizarre bunch of harlequins, clowns, coryphees, pirates and pierrettes in singing "Toucou tou." One pretty little ballet girl, with a dimpled chin showing under her black half-mask and a pair of almost perfect legs under her abbreviated tarleton skirts, threw her arms around the devil's neck and whispered in his ear. Without stopping his singing, he drew all his non descript retinue into a sort of "follow the leader" game. Suddenly he headed straight for Toucoutou's steps and threw his weight against the front door. It gave, and the whole mad crew streamed through the house, laughing and shrieking and singing "Toucoutou." They danced wildly around the parlor, cutting all kinds of silly mon
?MWWHWWWWWWWWWWWWfc&
303 key capers until they were out of breath. In the pause, the girl in the ballet dress, whose figure looked very much like that of Eglantine, ran to the foot of the stair case and screamed up mockingly, "Eh ben, Toucoutou, for w'at you don't want to come out today? Maybe with a mask on yo' face they won't take you for a nigger, no."
There was no answer, nothing moved in the house but the roysterers; so the Devil and Death and Malice, soon tiring of a persecution where they could not see the writhings of their victim, ran hand in hand from the house, not knowing that the night before Toucoutou, Zozo and Placide had secretly taken ship for Havana, never to return. ARMOIRE
BANQUETTE
BAMBOULA
BLOUSE VOLANTE
BAYOU
BOSSAL
BEGUIN
BALAYEUSE
GLOSSARY
3^^
Large, upright, wooden wardrobe, used for storing clothes in place of closets.
Sidewalk.
A wild dance the negroes brought from Africa. Its name comes from the fact that in the West Indies the drums used to play the music for it were made from huge joints of bamboo, covered on the end by stretched goat-skins. It is a wild, gross dance of leapings and suggestive writhings and is performed to the accompaniment of both singing and playing. It is the dance used in Voodoo ceremonies.
A loose, one-piece garment, the Creole equivalent of a "Mother Hubbard."
A sluggish watercourse or outlet to a lake. It is a corrupt form of the old French word "Boyau," a gut or narrow
passage.
A negro slave in Louisiana who had been born in Africa.
French slang for a sudden, violent pas sion for one of the opposite sex.
A female street-walker. It is from "bal?ayer," to sweep. The word became cur?
wws
305 CALALOU
CALINDA
CORDON BLEU
GALAS
CRAWFISH BISQUE
rent because the skirts were so long they swept the street.
A Santo Domingan hash.
A negro dance generally performed to a satirical song called "Michie' Preval." It came originally from Santo Domingo and the West Indies and had a slight resemblance to the Spanish Fandango. The women held Madras handker chiefs by the corners and made graceful play with them.
A Louisiana name for a very light-col
ored person of mixed blood, who was well educated and whose white father was of excellent family.
Round fried cakes, made of rice flour, which were sold on the streets by colored marchande women. It is the Creole version of a doughnut.
A delicious rich soup made from craw fish. The heads are saved and stuffed with the highly seasoned meat from the crawfish tails and a few are served in each plate. The inexperienced try to munch them, shells and all. The proper way is to seize the head by the feelers, which are carefully left on for this purpose, and then extract the meat
with a spoon.
306 CONDUCTEUR DE LA CHAINE
CREOLASSE
COUNJAILLE
CROQUEMORT
COMMERE CANDIO
DANS LE TEMPS DAUBE ECONOME ENCOIGNURE EAU DE FLEURS
D'ORANGER
FONGASSE FANAL GARCE GRILLADE Chain gang guard.
A local word for a common vulgar Creole person or thing.
An African dance similar to the Bam?boula. "Coonjine" is the Americaniza tion.
Slang for undertaker. It means literally
"corpse-breaker" and is an allusion to a common belief that undertakers broke the bones of bodies in order to make them fit more easily into coffins.
An intimate, gossipy, woman friend.
An African chieftain. spelled Canjo. In the old days. A pot roast. Sometimes
Overseer.
On the corner of.
Orange flower water, used as a Creole sedative.
Vulgar term of reproach for a woman.
Lantern.
Woman of pleasure.
Meat fried and then cooked in a well-seasoned rue. rWHk 307 &? GABRIELLE
GUINEA BLUE
GRIS-GRIS GOMBO FILE
ISLET
A one-piece garment something like a blouse volante.
A cotton material of a dark blue
ground, with a stripe or figured pattern in white; worn by negroes. It derived its name from textiles made in India for trade with the West African or "Guinea" Coast.
A Voodoo charm.
At the time of this story, the Choctaw Indians were in the habit of gathering the leaves of the sassafras when they were green and tender. They pounded them to a powder after they had dried them and the squaws sold the product in the French Market. It was called file. The gombo file was a wonderful, thick soup concocted from the frame of a fowl, a knuckle of veal and oysters, deliciously seasoned. A tablespoonful
of file was added just before it was taken off the stove and it was served with rice.
A city block in New Orleans. In the early days when the town was flooded each year, a deep drainage ditch was dug around each square, so, when high-water came, every block was com pletely surrounded by water and be came an island or "islet."
308 JAMBALAYA
L'ABEILLE
LAGNIAPPB
LES VEUVES DE MALABAR
LOGES POUR PER?SONNES DE COULEUR
LATANIER
MIRE, PETIT MOUCHE VINI MAMANLOI MARINGOUINS
MACAQUE MARCHANDE WOMEN
OISEAUX
A dish of Spanish origin made of rice, chicken, ham and sausage, all cooked together and highly seasoned.
The Bee. A New Orleans bi-lingual paper.
A trifling article added gratis to a pur chase in shops or markets to encourage custom.
The widows of Malabar. Local expres?sion for women who habitually wear black. It is a reference to characters in an old French opera, "La Fille de Mme. Angot."
Theatre seats reserved for colored people only.
Pronounced by negroes " 'tanier." It is Latania Borbonica, a dwarf palmetto, growing in the swamps of Louisiana and Florida.
Behold the little master comes.
Voodoo high priestess or queen.
Mosquitoes.
Monkey.
Colored women who peddled their wares carried in baskets on their heads.
Little Creole cakes made in the shape PIROGUE
PAPALOI PAIN PERDU
PRALINES
POMPIERS PAPILLOTES PLACER
PLACE of birds. They were small and dry and made of flour, sugar and cinnamon.
A small canoe. The old spelling was periogue. It possibly comes from the Spanish peri-agua (over the water) ; because these light boats gave the im pression of skimming over the water.
Voodoo King.
?
Stale bread dipped in a mixture of milk, eggs and sugar and then fried. It is dear to the heart of Louisiana chil dren.
A delicious Creole confection made of pecans and brown sugar.
Firemen.
Curl papers.
Literally "to place," but in Louisiana it has a special meaning. In that state there were a great many women who, although they appeared to be white, or almost so, had in reality a small trace of negro blood. Many were very good-looking and some even well-educated and refined. They were too white to marry negroes and public sentiment, backed by strong laws against misceg enation, made it impossible for them to marry white men. They therefore became the mistresses of white men,
310 QUARTEE RE, QUARTEE POIS ET LAGNIAPPE DU SEL
SANG-MELEE
SERENO
Smop PB BATTERIE
Ti N?GUE TIGNON DE MADRAS
but did not lose caste by so doing, as it was an accepted practice. The man made all his arrangements with the mother of the girl and paid over an agreed amount, which would serve to take care' of her in the event he died or deserted her. When all the details had been completed, the girl gave a party to her friends — a sort of engage ment entertainment, after which she went to live with the man. This was
called being "place"" or placed.
Half a nickel's worth of rice, half a nickel's worth of peas and for lagni?appe, some salt. ?
A woman of mixed blood.
A night watchman under the Spanish re'gime.
Molasses made by the open kettle proc
ess.
Gombo French for little nigger.
Large squares of brilliantly colored cot ton material, made originally in Mad ras, India, and used by negresses as a fichu or to tie around their heads. There were many different fashions of tying them and the women took great pride in their color and their manner
of arrangement. VOODOO In French Vaudoux, sometimes spelled hoodoo. A secret negro cult, worship ping the serpent and engaging in orgi
astic dances.
ZOMBIS African ghosts or spirits.
Z'ALLUMETTES Patois pronunciation of des allumettes, some matches.
THE END
Cable, George Washington. "Posson Jone'" and P?e Rapha?: With a New Word Setting Forth How and Why the Two Tales Are One. Illus. Stanley M. Arthurs. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909. Google Books. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. <http://books. google.com/books?id=bzhLAAAAIAAJ>. Text prepared by:
Source