Canaan's Tongue (15 page)

“How long has it been, Miss Gilchrist? Seven weeks? Thirteen?”

“You know how long exactly.” She pressed her knuckles to my temple—: they were cool and white as pianoforte-keys. “To the hour and the minute, you poor crushed olive.”

“I can’t deny it.” I kissed her hand again. “Tell me, darling, how you’ve lived.”

She turned away from me, not unkindly, and pressed her face into the cushions. “Come to bed now, Aggie.”

The change had been clear to me as soon as her eyes had opened—: the simple, unbegrudging welcome I’d dreamt of since our first encounter had finally been bestowed. I could think of no earthly reason why—; but I found, to my surprise, that I had no need of one. The fact of it was enough.

I stood and let my coat fall to the floor. My shyness had passed, and I was suddenly in a fever to possess her. She’s
convinced,
I thought. After all this time. I knelt and cupped her face in both my hands.

She gazed up at me sternly. “Your hands are filthy, Aggie! Go and wash them.” But as I rose from the bed she caught hold of me by my shirt. “We’re pieces in a puzzle,” she whispered. “We fit into each other. Did you know?”

“Yes, Clem. Something new is made when we come together,” I murmured, running a hand along her ribs.

She gave a quick, shrill laugh and brought the bed-sheet to her mouth. “If you only knew
what
! Run along now, Mr. Ball! Go on!”

I shuffled bemusedly over to the basin. She’d come to a decision of some kind, I knew, but my thoughts went no farther than the fact of her on the bed. There’ll be no great change, I told myself, with a sudden pang of joy—; only in her manner toward me and in my entire way of living. I did a very poor job of washing and came directly back to bed. She did not seat me at her feet—my usual station—but laid me close beside her, her eyes meeting mine in a frank, approving way that made the teeth rattle in my skull. The blood roared so emphatically behind my eyes that it was all I could do to keep from crying out. I’d never known such a violent and total happiness.

“I want to leave this place,” she said, pulling the netting closed around us. “I want to leave this place tonight.”

“We can go straight-away, miss,” I answered. “Get your garters on!”

“This is no promenade, Virgil.” Her voice was hushed and urgent. “We can’t simply walk outside, like two children playing at courting.” Her eyes moved past me toward the door. “I don’t mean to be dragged back to this pit once I’m gone from it. Not ever.”

As if by the sudden turning of a corner from sunlight into shadow, the air went cold around me and every object in the room was edged in a clear, transparent light. Clem was not at liberty. Fool that I was, the thought had never crossed my mind—; I hadn’t dared to conceive of her running off at all, much less running off with me. But she could
not
run off. The Trade owned this house, this room, this bed. Owned her.

“All right, Clem,” I said at last, letting out a breath. “I’ll come for you at seven. Don’t pack more than we can carry.”

She smiled at me—a smile such as I’d never seen her give, the smile of the girl she’d been, perhaps—and drew me closer still. “Can you manage it by six?”

I mulled this over for a bit. “I’ll need to find a room for us, firstly. Somewhere out of view.”

“Not in the Quarter,” she said. Her breath came quickly now. “We wouldn’t last five hours.”

“Of course,” I said. “Not in the Quarter.” The realities of our elopement, both its pleasures and its consequences, began to gather outside the netting like mosquitoes. I had no doubt we’d be hunted if we ran. The Trade specialized in runaways, after all. The memory of the shape I’d seen in the night made my eyes and throat go ticklish.

Clem was talking all the while, giving me precise instructions, repeating things often to make sure I understood. She’d been planning her escape for months, I realized—years, perhaps—telling not a soul. I listened closely to all she told me, and when she finished I rose quietly to go. Time was very tight. It would take at least till six to make the arrangements, but Clem was adamant that I return before that hour. By the time my coat was buttoned, I’d guessed the reason why—: a caller was expected at half-past.

“Who is it, Clem?” I mumbled. I’d never asked such a question before—made a point of not asking, in fact—but something in her voice gave me a queasy feeling. She was afraid of this caller, whoever he might be. A wave of jealousy swept over me, and in the self-same instant I found myself thinking it might be best, after all, for her to keep this last appointment.

The shame I felt at this thought undid me altogether.

“Who is it?” I asked again, more sharply. “Is it somebody I know?”

She rose from the bed and came to me. “Do you know why I’ve decided to run off, Mr. Ball?”

I gave a crooked smile. “Have you gotten yourself religion?” “I’m in the way of starting a family,” she replied.

When I said nothing to this, she leaned closer to me and whispered—: “And so are
you,
Virgil Isaiah Dante Ball.”

The floor dipped and wobbled a moment, as if it were balanced on a barrel—; then it righted itself, and I was able to continue breathing.

Clem waited patiently for me to speak.

“You’re sure of that?” I said at last. “You’re sure, I mean, that
I’m
the party in question—?”

“It’s your doing, Aggie,” she answered, her face radiant and mild. Not even that question could jar her from her beatitude. “We take
precautions,
you know. With the paying customers.”

I’d been a paying customer myself, of course—; but I forgot it at once. “You mean—with me alone—?” I stammered.

“Don’t be angry with me, Virgil,” she said softly, misunderstanding the look I gave her.

“I’m not
angry
with you, Clem! It’s only—” I spoke without thinking, as I so often did in her company—: “I haven’t killed him yet, you see.”

She tilted her head at this, squinting very slightly. “Who do you have to kill?”

I cleared my throat. “Half of New Orleans, miss, to be safe.”

She smiled at this, her face still lit as if from within—; but there was truth to my joke, and she knew it. I drew her closer still and kissed her. I was calmer after that kiss, and free of all desire—: I wanted, in fact, for nothing on this earth. I felt no fear of the future, or of the war, or even of Morelle. I am ready to die, I thought, then laughed indulgently at myself. To think of dying at such a time!

I SPENT THE DAY MAKING PREPARATIONS, both spiritual and worldly, for springing Clementine from her Bastille. In spite of my bedazzled state—or perhaps because of it—the day was an unequivocal success. An aged bachelor I’d worked under ten years before, an importer of spices and cigars, had a room to let in the Eleventh Ward—; he expected us that same evening. There remained only the hiring of a cab, the bribing of the old Creole who kept bar at Madame Lafargue’s, and the cleaning and the cartridging of my pistol. A host of shapes visited me that day, the first I’d ever seen in day-light—: hoops of lazuli and gold, translucent yellow flowers, varicolored hexagons and stars. They didn’t discomfit me in the slightest. I took them, in fact, as great good omens. The world was about to end, I knew, by fire or by flood—; with Clem at my side, however, I wasn’t altogether sure I’d miss it.

It was just past three-thirty when I returned to Madame Lafargue’s—the middle of the night in that house—and not a soul was stirring. The Creole had spent my money wisely, on a cigar and a pint of cherry brandy, and nothing troubled his repose. I’d steeled myself for a scene with Madame, but there was neither hide nor hair of her. Fortune, it seemed, had strewn our path with roses.

Once her effects were stowed in the cab I’d hired—canvas-topped for privacy, and drawn by two unassuming nags—Clem bade the driver start without a single glance behind her. We made our way creepingly down Dumaine Street—which smelled fouler than usual, on account of the warm weather—then southward along the levee. To my amazement she fell asleep at once, her face pressed hard into the canvas. I laid her across my lap, taking great care not to rouse her, and rode the rest of the way to the Eleventh Ward in the most immaculate state of bliss that I have ever known. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the change was becoming real to me.

My former employer, a regal, antiquated-looking Jew, was waiting for us on the stoop of his shop with a basket of ginger-cakes and a jug of fino sherry, by way of a wedding-present. Tesla was his name, and I’d done things for him during my tenure at his shop that another stock-boy might have balked at—; the importers of New Orleans subsisted along the margins of the law, and Tesla’s little shop was no exception. He wept tears of joy to see us. I began, cautiously and quietly, to congratulate myself on my talent for intrigue.

That night Clem and I stayed awake well into the morning, indulging in our new-found gift for talking plainly with one another. I gave the clearest account of Memphis that I could—: she listened closely, not once interrupting, and at the end of it simply took my hand in hers. I had best leave that same day, she said, to get to 37 before the news of our elopement did. Once again her even-headedness left me speechless. I detailed my strategy of doing away with Morelle at the close of our next reading—with a knife, I said, or something equally discreet—and she nodded at this, too, though with perhaps a bit less confidence. This was enough to halt me in my tracks.

“Should it not be with a knife?”

She frowned. “It’s not
that,
Virgil. It’s only—”

“What is it, darling? Tell me.”

She bit her lip. “You believe in your eye now, you say. You believe the R——”—she always spoke of Morelle this way, as if the mention his actual name might invoke him, as it would a demon—“about the shapes. That they come out of the future.”

I hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Yes.”

“Why not do it
before
the reading, then? Why give him a chance to see what’s coming?”

I hadn’t thought of this, of course. We decided that I’d attack Morelle after the session itself, but before the signs and shapes had been decoded. With that the business portion of the night was settled.

We united a short while later in a manner approved of by my faith—if not by hers—to the accompaniment of old Tesla creaking back and forth above us. Clem declared him our minister in absentia, rapped three times against the head-board, and pronounced us man and wife. When at last we fell asleep, the old man was still going about his rounds—; I pictured him patrolling the corridor with a blunderbuss left over from the French and Indian War, hunting for tobacco-thieves and weevils. My sleep that night was free of any visions.

Our parting that morning was not especially grave. Clem had awoken in an almost trance-like state of indolence, sloe-eyed and contented, and barely saw me to the door. I’d never seen her so untroubled. One reason for this, I flattered myself, was her growing faith in me—; another was revealed to me soon after. As I was buttoning up my great-coat, she beckoned me to her trunk and brought forth two glass vials, the kind sleeping-draughts are sold in, for me to admire.

“If things don’t run well, little olive, don’t you fret. There’s more than one way to serve the R—— his quittance.”

I took one of the vials and brought it to the window. It held an ounce of oily liquid and a tuft of light-brown hair. I nearly choked. “Where did you get this, Clem, for the love of Christ?”

She only smiled. “Don’t you worry about that. Only remember—: any one of those hairs is as good as a brace of pistols.”

“This is
Morelle’s
hair? The Redeemer’s?”

She nodded, taking the vial back from me and slipping it into her pocket. I looked at her mutely, feeling, as I so often did, that I’d never truly made her out before. Her trust in those bottles was childish, of course, and put me in mind of Asa Trist—; yet hadn’t I myself, only the day before, seen the future reflected in a spinning marble?

I kissed her on the brow and left her. I was to return within the week. If Morelle remained alive, we’d sail at once for La Habana—; if he was dead, we’d sail for any port we pleased.

“I’ll Take You to Him.”

I KEPT MY EYES HALF-CLOSED WHEN VIRGIL LEFT, says Clementine. I hardly missed him.

I hardly missed him because I was full of him. I was filled up precisely, like a measuring-cup. Such a simple thing, and plain! The thought and the smell and the weight and the manner and the notion of Virgil Ball. That he, out of all of them, should have filled me so exactly! Not to overflowing, mind, not gluttingly—; but never a half-grain short. I moved about the room with my head held straight, like a debutante working at her posture, for fear that I should spill a single drop.

I spent the morning ordering my trousseau, which I’d thrown together willy-nilly, and sorting Virgil’s heap of clothes. Not since my eleventh year had I folded someone else’s linens. What a queer thrill I got, what a half-forbidden feeling, from arranging his sundries on the window-bench! He’d taken nothing with him but a jack-knife and a candle. His shape was still pressed hard into the bed. I took off my shift and my bloomers and laid myself down in it. I felt snug in his outline, like a mouse in its burrow. It was mid-day by then, and hot as blazes already. The old man creaked about upstairs. A chill came up suddenly through the heat, making me feel small and solitary—: then I remembered. I’d forgotten it for a while, as there’d been so much else to think of. But it came back to me just then, and blew the solitariness off like smoke.

I had a family in me.

I woke with a start, dry-tongued and foreign-feeling. A rapping sounded at the door. I opened it on Goodman Harvey.

He looked at me and gave a cry. Had he expected someone else? I wondered. I had yet to come all the way up out of sleep.

“Something terrible hath happened, mith,” he said, keeping his eyes screwed downwards.

“What?” I said.

“I’ll wait here, on your convenienth, mith,” he mumbled, clapping a hand over his eyes.

Then I understood, and gave a laugh. “Just a minute, Mr. Harvey,” I said, and went to fetch my shift. He was all but making the sign of the cross when I looked back at him. I laughed again. “Don’t be shy, Mr. Harvey! Won’t you step inside?”

“No, mith!” he said.

He was sorely in distress. His face was tight and blanched and the spot where a chin would be on anybody else was all aquiver. He stood shuffling his feet, moving without going anywhere, exactly the way Virgil used to do. “Mith Clementine,” he mumbled. “It painth me very much to tell you—”

Virgil!

I threw a shawl over my shift and rushed back to the door. “What is it, Mr. Harvey?” I cried. The chill was upon me again and I felt barer than before. I could all but see my breath. “What is it, sir?”

Harvey’s mouth worked for a moment to no effect at all. “It’th Virgil, mith!” he got out at last. “I’ll take you to him.”