Rebels of Babylon

by Parry, Owen

  And then the grand fellow went silent.

  I was astonished. For truth be told, the creature was no beauty, but plain as Indus mud. Of course, not every woman can rival my Mary. But the lass was a negress, in any case. Mr. Barnaby was white as boiled cod.

  Now, you will say: “Oh, hypocrite, Abel Jones! We know about your tawny love in India.” But I will tell you: That was India, see. Where such things happen. This was in America, even if the locale was New Orleans. What might be done by dark and hid away would not find much acceptance in the daylight.

  I worried about Mr. Barnaby. Broken-hearted fellows are prone to errors of the heart. I wished him well and did not want him ruined.

  We halted in front of Mr. Champlain’s manse, a structure neither big nor small, but laden with generations of inheritance, not all of it fortunate. I moved to leave the cab, but Mr. Barnaby held me back with a hand upon my shoulder.

  “I ’as to say a word or two, forgive me, sir. But you’ll want to be cautious about yourself from now on. Oh, I doesn’t mean with Pére Champlain, who wouldn’t hurt a fly what wasn’t stinging ’im. But generally speaking, like.”

  I wished to assure him that I am ever careful. But it was not worth the pain of further speech.

  “It’s just that business what keeps coming up,” he continued, unwilling to release me. “Le bouc sans cornes. ‘The goat without ’orns,’ sir. What they done to that poor Mr. Pelletier is exactly what they mean to do to you, if you missteps.”

  “Skin me alive?” I asked in my crippled voice.

  “It ain’t even done with a knife,” he added. “The Grand Zombi ’imself does it with ’is teeth. Mostly, they only skins a black cat for their ceremonies. But when they gets perturbed, they skins a man.”

  MR. CHAMPLAIN DID NOT stand on ceremony. In fact, he did not stand at all, but sat behind an enormous plate of victuals. The repast lay braced in front of his mighty belly with the help of an apparatus resembling a scaffold. He wore a bib like a mammoth babe and laughed like a child to see us.

  “Welcome, welcome, all!” he cried, waving a half-et sausage in one paw and a great spoon in the other. He looked as jolly as John Bull over a beefsteak, although his line was French as soiled linens. “Mr. B., you’re just in time! Sit right down there, sit right down. Have yourself a nice feed up, keep me company, cher. Constantine, get my skinny friend there some breakfast, something that’ll put some meat back on those bones. And fetch up that paste Mama Delarue mixed up for Monsieur le Major.”

  Restraining himself from biting into a sausage that longed for his mouth, he smiled at me, teeth florid with his meal.

  “Honored, sir, to have the privilege of another visit after so short an interval. Honored! Thought you’d come on over tonight, I allowed myself that presumption. You and that poor fellow there who’s starving himself straight to death, Lord knows why. Sure, now. Been expecting you, to tell the truth. That is, we hoped our hospitality would lead you back to our humble door. Terrible swelling you have there. Must hurt worse than a man’s irrigation system a few weeks after a visit to Madame Pettibon’s. But don’t you worry, just set yourself down. Sit down, sir. I took the liberty of ordering up a salve, having heard something of your tribulations with the dental profession.”

  He glanced about himself in exasperation, then called out loudly, but amiably, “Constantine! Bring another fix-up of those saucissons, bring ’em right on up here now! I’m getting skinny as a young girl with consumption. Major Jones, I assure you, from personal experience, that not half an hour from now you’ll be a different man. Then we’ll get some hominy mash poured down you, so you don’t starve to death and embarrass our fair city. But sit down, cher! Be at home!”

  I sat, drawing out my pencil and my dwindling supply of paper. I wrote: “This salve? Is it voodoo?”

  I rose again to lay the note beside the grand fellow’s plate, which was disorderly.

  Mr. Champlain cackled so uproariously that a bit of half-chewed sausage struck my brow. “Voodoo? Mama Delarue? She’d be unhappy to hear it, most unhappy. See her over at St. Louis’s every morning, on her knees without a cushion. That is, I’d see her if I ever got an urge to get up again and stroll over to the cathedral. Which I judge unlikely. But that’s no never-mind. Mama Delarue’s a better Christian than the abbesse herself. Just knows how to mix up a salve or toddy for when the apothecaries run out of patience trying to kill a man. Can’t say where she learned it. Never ask about a lady’s past or the ingredients of a sausage.”

  He held up a glistening specimen of the latter and devoured it with hardly a pause in his speech. “Relied on her myself. Many’s the time. Why, if I had to stop enjoying my petit déjeuner just because of a little toothache, I’d shrivel up and die in twenty-four hours. Man has to keep up his health with a proper diet.”

  He shook with glee and the frame of the house shook with him.

  The colored lackey, Constantine, reappeared. He balanced so many trays and plates and bowls that a Delhi juggler would have fled in terror. His antique dress seemed even more worn, his wig the sort of thing kept for remembrance, not for use. But whatever economies else the household practiced, food did not seem to be in short supply. After serving Mr. Barnaby without stint, the fellow placed a jolly plate of sausages—some gray, some brown, some almost black—before our impatient host. A regiment of the line could have dined on the bounty.

  The servant stepped toward me, bearing a little crock and a swab on a stick.

  “You just open up there,” Mr. Champlain commanded. “Let old Constantine fix you on up. You won’t regret it, cher.”

  Now, you will think me foolish, but I opened my mouth as instructed. True it is that I knew not what might be mixed into that concoction. But my misery was such that the risk seemed minor.

  The servant had fingers as deft as a London tailor. He daubed and swabbed and painted me up until I felt a tingle, almost a burning. The taste was not appealing, that I will tell you.

  I did not interfere with the process, but only wondered at Mr. Champlain’s system of intelligence, at his ability to sit within his parlor, as immobile as the mountain that declined to come to Mahomet, and still learn all the secrets of New Orleans.

  When Constantine, who looked older than the sages of Benares, finished spackling the wound inside my mouth, he made a little bow and slipped away. The finest servants are like the best of women, silent and accommodating.

  “Candle-inch from now,” Mr. Champlain called after him, “you bring the major up a bowl of buttered grits. I know an eatin’ man when I encounter one.”

  Although he could not be accused of daintiness as he supped, my host took such delight in moving morsels of food from his plate to his gullet that it seemed almost cruel to interrupt his pleasure. But I had many a question. And not an excess of time.

  I wrote: “How did you know about my jaw?”

  The question pleased the fellow better than the gift of a ribbon pleases a country lass. He granted himself a dripping bite of pancake, then said, “See here, now. Nothing dark and mysterious, vous savez? Simple as chicory coffee, cher. Horatio over there could tell you better than I can. If he had a mind to. Truth is, the folks who really know what happened, what’s going to happen, and what should’ve happened but didn’t here in New Orleans are the household staff. The stable hands, the yard boys. And those among the free coloreds who aren’t trying too hard to be free of their color. Nothing but one big spy-on organization. They see all and tell all. But they don’t tell all to all. The important things have a price. But the common coin of affairs, they spend that freely. A white man can’t sneeze in the Faubourg Marigny without some dame blanche out on Washington Avenue asking her lady’s maid whether monsieur has the pneumonia or just snuffed up some pepper.”

  He chuckled. “It’s their great power over us, Major Jones. That Marie Venin you had some confusion with? Or Marie Laveaux, for that matter. The mother or the daughter, doesn’t matter. Voodoo-hoodoo, poodle-tootle. A
ll slops for grandmère’s pet cochon. They don’t read minds or fortunes, our voudouiennes. They just know when to slip a picayune into Auntie ’Phelia’s pocket, or when to threaten some sprightly, high-yalla gal with everlasting heartache, she doesn’t tell every last thing going on in that house where she’s serving with two fingers and listening with two ears. No, sir. Goes for all their womenfolk, to some degree. That ability to pry. Madame Noir may not be a born queen. But she has the power to drag a queen down from her high-society throne, she takes a mind to. Sure, now. No self-respecting white woman in New Orleans believes a single word her sister tells her. But they all believe what their colored hairdresser has to say. How’s that jaw?”

  The truth, strange though it seem, is that my mouth felt remarkably improved—so much so that I had not even noticed. Present pain demands our attention, but when pain creeps away, it slips our minds.

  I nodded to signify my improvement and my gratitude.

  Unable to contain his delight in the victuals any longer, Mr. Barnaby cried out, “Capital! Absolutely capital! A body’s never disappointed, when ’e calls at Maison Champlain.”

  “You ain’t half fed up, Mr. B.,” our host insisted. “Horatio? You go tell that worthless Constantine we’re missing half our meal up here. Tell him to see if he can’t find us the other half.”

  The vast fellow chortled. “Dear me, Major Jones! Almost forgot to ask you about poor François Pelletier. I hear there’s been a misfortune. Fact is, I hear he’s dead and done up voodoo-style. That true?”

  I nodded. Touching my jaw to see if the skin remained feverish. Warm it was still, but not hot to the touch as it had been earlier. Even the swelling seemed to have decreased.

  “To be expected, I suppose,” Mr. Champlain decided. “If the voodoo folks hadn’t come after him for one thing, I suspect some of our less amiable white citizens might have paid him a call over another. Does sound needlessly unpleasant, though, what the whispers claim was done to him. Almost enough to make a body wonder whether things might not be a touch more complicated than they seem. Acourse, plenty of folks resented François Pelletier, whether for good reasons or bad. So very many. Some just thought he was too pretty, I suppose. And the Pelletiers aren’t native to the city. From Haiti, originally. Rich folk at one time. Talk is they crossed Henri Christophe, had to leave quicker than a man likes to go. Anyway, not even the less-than-white felt much affection for his ideas. Founding a newspaper, calling for the vote, talking about running for office, things like that. Plenty of coloreds have done mighty well among us, cher. Owned slaves themselves, and they’re going to miss ’em. So they weren’t all that happy with François. Said mean things, hard things about him. I don’t know how much of the talk a man should believe, in the end. Par example, I heard it said he planned to set himself up an African kingdom, stocked up with liberated slaves. Though I personally believe his ambitions were somewhat milder.”

  He lowered his head down into the folds of his neck, watching me with one brow raised above a flesh-packed eye. “Now, I don’t have your skills of investigative thought, Major Jones. Wouldn’t pretend to. I’m just a fat, old man who sits and thinks things over. You’re the great Descartes. I’m simply un petit Pascal. Très petit. At least in that regard. But I do have my pensées. And it does seem to me that, if someone felt an irresistible desire to kill young Pelletier and do it all tidy, so no blame would fall on the actual killer, that someone would be happy to create the appearance of a voodoo ceremony to misdirect the authorities. Might even hire himself—or herself—a voudouienne. Have her followers do it, make it look sincere. Might hire her for any number of other things, for that matter. And everyone in this bonne ville would simply accept that Pelletier had crossed his fellow negroes and paid the price. That Constantine gets slower by the hour. Horatio? I swear, I’ve been deserted by those boys for the last time. Probably downstairs eating themselves into a delirium.”

  Our host enjoyed the heel of a loaf of bread, lathered so richly in butter that I could smell it.

  “Take your Miss Peabody,” he resumed, although he had not finished the task of chewing. “To my head-hanging-down shame, I was indecorous in my remarks last evening. When I mentioned a certain lack of physical grandeur. Can’t think what came over me. Ungentlemanly. And I never did finish my thought, only told you the half of it, as I recall. But, then, I’m an old man, easily distracted. Times I don’t even remember what meal I’m eating on. But Miss Peabody, now. Would’ve liked to meet that young woman. Half broke my heart that she never had the courtesy to call. Had to rely on the eyes of others to form my picture of her. And the problem with the eyes of others, cher, is that they’re only eyes.”

  His expression grew as winsome as a cat’s. “See here, now. I don’t have the flair of the cavalier like our mutual friend, Mr. Barnaby. Oh, I had my amours, when I was young. But look at me now! Ha! Only thing I’m going to romance is a roast chicken. But a man learns a thing or two, if he pays attention. A man who lives long enough appreciates that the sweetest meat is in close to the bone, not that perfect-looking cut on the outside. A man learns to prefer the oyster to the gumdrop, Racine over Molière. And if a man’s fortunate … or terribly unfortunate, you might say … once in his life he meets a woman who just doesn’t make any sense to him. First look at her, he thinks she’s an embarrassment to the eyes, beneath his notice. Yet his eyes never quite look away completely, because they can’t. He just can’t help continuing to notice her. Can’t explain why. He never can say what it is about her. He’ll look for reasons. Drive himself crazy trying to figure out what’s happening to him. It’s her ‘charm,’ he’ll tell himself. Or maybe her eyes. Or how she sings and plays the piano. But the truth is that it isn’t any of those things. It’s just her. The woman-magic in its highest degree.”

  He laughed, but not happily this time. “It’s a thing far beyond voudou, the power certain women have over us. First time we meet ’em, we think we’d be embarrassed to be seen with ’em on our arm. Next thing, we’re on our knees. Or all the way down on our bellies. Begging. Helpless as infants. So deeply in love and lust and passion and desire and any other names you can think of for it that we don’t know whether to shoot her through the heart or shoot ourselves through the head. Sure, now. I’d bet a case of Leoville-Lafitte that Cleopatra was that sort of woman. Maybe even la Pompadour.” He smiled. “Or Eve.”

  I wrote: “You mean Miss Peabody?”

  “Couldn’t rightly say. Never met the poor mam’selle. I’m merely speculating. The way old men like to do.” I caught a glimpse of his collar, but his chins quickly hid it again. “Even if she was one of those sirens, one of those unexpected vixens, not every man would’ve seen it. Some men do, some don’t. The appeal of the flaxen-haired demoiselle is universal, Major Jones. Or almost so. But these other women, the deadly sorts … their appeal seems tailored for certain men. For the unsuspecting connoisseur. Such women sacrifice the casual desire of the masses for the all-consuming passion of the few. Who knows if Miss Peabody had that sort of appeal? Or whether she just managed to confuse a poor, pretty-face buck-nigger. Like our Mr. Pelletier.”

  His smile twisted like the rope in a hangman’s hands. “Come to think on it a little more, I’m afraid I might be leading you astray, cher. And it would shame me to frustrate the noble cause of justice. I didn’t mean to suggest that Pelletier might’ve killed Miss Peabody in an outburst of passion. Though I suppose that, too, is a possibility a man like you would consider all on your own.” Small eyes gleamed behind barricades of flesh. “Fact is, I’m not suggesting anything at all. Though I’ve known cases, here in this city, where just the right nudge turned an impassioned lover into a brutal murderer. Say, if he was torn between his unquenchable desire for one of those inexplicable sirens … and a good woman who just loved him and meant well by him. Say, if he was a poor man. With ambitions. And he saw that the seductress with the lopsided face and the brown mole would only ruin him, saw it plain as day. God forbid th
at any question of funds entered into the matter. Between the confusions of love and the lust for money … cher, I’m afraid that anything could happen. Anything at all. Although I doubt that any of this applies in the instance of which we speak. But here’s Constantine, delivering your much-needed sustenance!”

  BUTTER ALONE FLAVORED the lukewarm mash, but I devoured it greedily. All the while, my host and Mr. Barnaby chattered about society, speaking of friends and enemies, then of friends who had become enemies, and finally of enemies who had begun to appear in a friendly light. Two hopeless gossips they were, and you never heard the like between two men, except in a barracks. Only their gender bearing toward sin distinguished their conversation from that of two ladies.

  When I looked up from my bowl at last, Mr. Champlain smiled. “Grits taste a sight better if you salt and pepper ’em, but I figured that might not suit your grave condition. Terrible thing, when a man can’t even chew. Though it strikes me you’ve been chewing over a couple of other things. Weren’t wondering how to ask my opinion of the Widow Aubrey, were you? Sure, now. I do hope you enjoyed your visit with her. Not many folks do. Sitting in that woman’s parlor is akin to standing before a judge who makes up the law as it suits him. Or running afoul of a banker who holds your paper. Hard woman. Hard. But a woman who runs a shipping concern has to show a certain mettle, I suppose. Not much more I’d choose to say about her.”

  I decided to take a risk and wrote: “She was dishonest with me. She denied a close relationship with Miss Peabody and Pelletier. There seems to have been much familiarity.”

  Papa Champlain shrugged when he read my scribble. Roiling the skirts of his coat and disturbing his cutlery.