A Separate Country (50 page)

The first vine came around my neck quick, wrapped twice. She was very strong. The harder I pulled against the vine, the more it choked me. I watched Lemerle come around to assist her, and the two of them pulled me back until I was sitting on a small stool with my back against the old oak tree. I couldn’t speak, I saw black spots everywhere. Soon they had me tied to the tree, harnessed by the neck, legs, and arms. The fissures and depressions in the trunk of the tree cut into my back. Danielle came around to the front and spit in my face, but Lemerle told her to apologize and wipe my face. He told her I was not his enemy. “Though,” he said, turning to me, “you might think you are.” She shrugged and wiped my face with the rough hem of her raw cotton skirt. I could feel each stitch scratching, I smelled sweat and perfume.

Lemerle sat back down across from me and smiled kindly.

“Don’t worry, if you’re being straight with me, I won’t hurt you. Just a precaution. Can’t have you rambling around the place while I’m trying to read this book of Hood’s. You could get into all kind of trouble. Now where is it?”

I tried to talk but the pain in my throat was too great. Danielle loosened the vine just a little.

“With the horse,” I said.

He whistled a strange high keening sound, and the two oldest children came running. He spoke to them in English I couldn’t understand, and then I watched them lope over to my horse who, traitorous git, whinnied in delight at their approach. The girl pulled the package of paper from the saddlebag and came running back to her father. The boy pulled the rifle from its holster and began to break it down, tossing the receiver one way, the barrel the other, pieces every which way into the underbrush.

Lemerle took the pile of paper and thanked the girl. He turned to me.

“This might take some time, I’m not learned.”

I shrugged. Where else was I going to go? He laughed.

“You’ll be well fed, don’t fear.”

There was something else I had to tell him. I wasn’t sure if I should, but I decided that I ought to just carry out Hood’s order like he’d said.

“Sebastien.”

“Mmmm.”

“Hood said you’re to judge whether he’s cast off the demon or not. Based on those pages.”

He held the pages as if they were glass and might break. I thought he might cry.

“He remembered that, did he?”

And so began the strangest day and night of my life. Sebastien did not sleep. First he read by the light of day, and then by the light of the cookstove, and then by the light of the red, blue, yellow, and white candles Danielle placed around him in a circle, some shoved into the crooks of low-lying tree limbs, others ground into the dirt at his feet. And he might have been a god, or the statue of one, unmoving and intent on the thing in front of him. Only his hands moved. In the dark I couldn’t see his eyes, only the flash of light against them. My mind wandered. I thought I saw lights far off in the woods. At times I wished they were the lights of Rintrah’s men, come to find me, and sometimes I prayed they weren’t. But they were just swamp lights, or possibly ghosts.

When Sebastien ate, I ate. After the stew, it was mostly hard pan bread and nuts, but I appreciated it all the same. I even thought that maybe Danielle had softened toward me. She brought me an extra crust in the middle of the night, and a cup of coffee that she held to my lips. It warmed me. Then she stood up and stared at me, cocking her head like a bird. She looked me up and down. She whispered something, but I couldn’t hear it, I only saw her lips move.
What are you?
I thought she said. It was a good question to pose to a man trussed up like a Christmas pig in the stinking and gurgling south Louisiana swamp, far from anyone who loved him. A good question.

In the morning the children took turns riding my horse. They painted him with berry juice and hollered in French while racing up and down the clearing, and then down the hunting paths that ringed the homestead and, I could tell by the honk of their voices, led far into the wild country around. I had slept some, and when the morning came it seemed only moments had passed since Sebastien had first opened the manuscript. But when I was fully awake, I could see that he had finished it. It sat on the woodpile in front of the cookstove, neatly arranged and tied again. Sebastien offered me more coffee, but I had to piss so I said no. He got up, slowly as if in pain, or like an old man, and untied me. He helped me up and massaged my arms. When the feeling came back I nearly cried in pain. He helped me to his seat on the stump, in front of the warm stove, and then he paced, looking at me.

“Do you think you know who Paschal was?” he said.

I stretched my legs and began to scratch at them. I’d been feasted on by biting things all night. Whatever was going to happen needed to happen soon, I was too tired. I decided to answer his questions as best I could, no games, no grifting.

“He was a colored who had been their friend.”

“That’s true, what else?”

“Piano teacher.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know what else.”

“Oh, now, that ain’t true.”

He was right, but I didn’t know how to tell him what I thought I knew. But he already knew it.

“I’ll help you,” he said. “You came here by yourself. You came here with a rifle that you could have easily used to kill me from out there in the goddamn wood without riding up in here like a damned cavalryman and then poking around in my stew. You didn’t want to kill me right away, you thought you would do it later. You wanted to talk to me first.”

“Yes. But that was only because Hood had told me to bring you these pages and get your verdict on them, and I’m a man of my word.”

“Oh shit. If that was true, you’d have walked up nice and polite and delivered the message and the book and been on your way. No,
you
wanted to talk to me. That had nothing to do with Hood’s request.”

“That’s true.”

“Why?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You know more, or think you know more, than Hood did. You found out about Father Mike but Hood didn’t, and you’re wondering what else Hood didn’t know. And I’m ready to bet this plantation and mansion right here, such as it is, that you’re wondering about Paschal. Because this book right here,” he said, tapping at it with his foot, edging it dangerously close to the fire, “describes the man like he was some sort of angel, not part of the dirty and sinful world like the rest of us. And that, if I’m guessing right, doesn’t square with what you know about this life. There ain’t no angels, for men like you and me that’s well settled.”

“I ain’t like you.”

“No. But we both seen the worst, mmm? Hood ruined your life like he did mine, didn’t he?”

“Yes. But I don’t hold it against him no more.”

“The hell you don’t. You always will. But you might not act on it, mmm? You can learn to love the man you hate, that’s true. That’s what it means to be a man,
mon frère,
but you don’t just up and change your mind about what you know of men. Men are beasts, they are not angels. Hood wanted that to be true. He wanted to believe there were angels he could protect and heal, who could then clear the books of his debt to God. Everything,
everything,
in that man’s life was either something he owed or something someone else owed him. Of course you see this in what he writes. Even I see it, and I am not as learned a man as you.”

“I reckon that is all true.”

“Ahh, but in the end he knew it was only the Devil who could clear him, mmmm? Me.”

“Yes.”

“Not an angel. Not Paschal.”

“Paschal is dead.”

“Ahh, you’re being a smart mouth.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Paschal was no angel.”

“I agree.”

“I think you require evidence.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Okay, then, here it is. This is what you come for, anyway.”

He shouted out in French toward the house, and after a while the oldest boy came to where we were sitting carrying the youngest, possibly three years old, maybe younger. When the taller boy left, the young one sat down in the dirt and began to chew oak bark and play with ants.

“This is Paschal.”

“I don’t believe in voudou. He ain’t come back from the dead.”

“No, of course not. That is just his name.”

“Seems a bad joke to me. You killed the man.”

“This one was born and got his name some time before I saw Paschal at that goddamn ball.”

“A coincidence.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. He
was
named for Paschal, the man you knew and have read about. Named by me, for the benefit of Danielle.”

I only nodded my head. I watched the boy close, looking for some sign. I stared at his fingers. Were they long and delicate? Was he beautiful?

“Does he look like me?”

“No.”

“You already knew this.”

“I guessed. I didn’t know there was a child.”

“There was, and as far as he knows I am his father. And I will remain his father. I love him like the rest.”

“Paschal…”

“I don’t want you to say it. Just look with your eyes. Don’t say it.”

We sat silently while the boy mumbled to himself, occasionally barking orders to the ants. His voice was pure, like a plucked guitar string.

“You can imagine, I was angry,” he said. “But I love my wife. My
wife
. No matter what anyone else says, she is my wife before God.”

“I understand.”

“You don’t, but you can imagine understanding, and that’s a good quality. It is a kind quality. I do not have it.”

He picked up Hood’s pages and sat them in his lap, still too close to the fire for my comfort. He stroked the rough string and considered his next words.

“I would have left him alone, had he not been there.”

“At the ball.”

“Yes. Yes. I would have left him alone. Danielle had made me promise. Danielle, who had loved me when I was only a murdering wraith, a beast, who had given me children who I could love and who loved me also. Hood and I are not so much different, no? Is that not what Anna Marie did for the General? Mmmm? Yes, she did. That’s what this book says.” He thumped it.

“The difference is that we were always shunned, we had only ourselves and these children and that little house on Marais Street. Long ago I would have killed Danielle, too, and the children. I would not have hesitated. But I had been too long grateful to her, too much in love with those children. But she fell in love with Paschal. I know this is true. She loved me, and she loved him. And why not? I was the worst kind of man, I was shunned by my own people, I was a white man living among negroes, hated by many people. And Paschal was a loved man, a cultured man, a
negro
who was as white as I was and many times more interesting. Why wouldn’t she fall for such a man, a man like her, one of her own, someone who understood things about being a negro I never would understand? My children would understand these things, and my grandchildren, but I could never understand it. I knew what it was like to be cast out, but it was never a permanent condition. I could change, I could reform, I could remake myself. Is that not what you
américains
do? Is that not the way? I was not born an outcast, but she was and so was Paschal, and so why wouldn’t she fall in love with him?

“I found his letter. It doesn’t matter what it said. Except I should say, he wasn’t nearly the lover I would have imagined. He was very formal and yet very clumsy. Cold. I was angry. You can imagine. I was made for anger, bred for it. But there was also a child growing in her, whose she did not know. When she told me this I was so angry and so afraid I would do something terrible, I left and slept in Jackson Square. I had a job the next few days, and I stayed away. My quarry suffered for my anguish. He was a man who had beaten his wife to death and yet had not been tried in a court. I had been hired by her brother. I asked him,
What did she do?
and when he said he’d been drunk and didn’t remember, I cut off his nose. I asked him again, and he said she had been a nagging, frigid cunt. I cut the rest of his ears off and laid them on the ground where he could see them. Finally, when he knew he’d be dead soon, he said,
She didn’t love me,
and I slit his throat.

“When I returned home I was surprised to find Danielle still there, waiting for me. The children played in the little yard out back and on the furniture. The boys argued over the role of Lafitte in their pirate games. They had no idea that anything had happened. They were happy to see me. I played with them and allowed myself to be forced off the plank a dozen times before I went in to see Danielle. She was shaking, but I could see in her face she was ready for whatever would happen. And so, I decided, nothing would happen. I asked her if she loved Paschal, and she said yes. I asked her if she loved me, and she said yes. I told her that the child was mine and she agreed. Whatever had happened, the child was mine. I told her she must not see him again, and she agreed. She said she had not heard from him since she told him about the baby. I was not surprised. As far as I was concerned, he was gone forever and thank the Lord.

“How easy it would have been to kill him! That was my calling in life, that was my craft! If I had set out to kill the man, believe me, I would not have done it in front of a hundred witnesses with the help of drunk buffoons by such a clumsy means as hanging. Believe me, had I meant for him to die, he would have died quickly in an alley on a dark night and been found by the pigs the next morning. He would have disappeared from the earth without sign, unless the pigs left something of him behind. A bone and a mystery. That was how I killed.

“But then, the ball. I went as the guest of a man who thought he needed protection, a weak man who talked too much and yet feared the duel. I despised such men, but they are often rich, and this one paid well. It was his sister that Paschal danced across that ballroom floor, spinning and sliding and turning, so beautiful. He was a satyr. He was flesh and blood! This is what is so awfully amusing about Hood’s little book here. He and his friends thought Paschal was somehow above such things, above the satisfaction of flesh, above the devouring of virgins. Danielle had thought that, though I’m not sure why, since she knew his unblemished flesh quite well, his cock. Hell, even
I
thought that, having seen him around the neighborhood, helping his cousin with their garden and bestowing his lovely and pure smile on all the old women. But at that ball, in the instant I saw his face leering behind the back of his partner, I knew what he was. He was a man of the flesh. Not the man Danielle spoke of in her sleep, not the man she had fallen in love with, not the man I knew she missed dreadfully. He’d broken her heart and I was trying to fix it, and here was this man harvesting more women as if they were all his. It was then that I told my client that the man with his sister was a nigger. And you know the rest, or most of it.