“I don’t know that he didn’t. He has a beautiful historic home, filled with valuable paintings. In the estimation of most people your uncle amounted to quite a lot.”
“Most people? Most people are idiots, Charbonnet.” He laughed in his ugly way and drank again. “You ever have a best friend? You know, somebody in your life you care about more than any other? Somebody you share everything with?”
“Sure.”
“For Uncle Charlie that person was Levette. So let’s pretend for a second you’re Uncle Charlie, and it’s 1941. One day you and your buddy go out for a drive and end up parked at the foot of the big new bridge they’ve put over the river. You start walking up that thing, it rises like a mountain out of the goddamn swamp. You reach the top and you look out and see the river and the land and it puts a lump in your throat, it’s so beautiful. You’re happy. But then you glance over at your friend—you love this person, okay?—and he’s climbed up on the guardrail. ‘Oh, Levette. Get down from there, Levette.’ I mean, what are you going to do? Then before you know it he’s catapulted off the side into the longest swan dive anyone’s ever seen.”
“A swan dive?”
“That’s the story.”
“I don’t see Asmore doing a swan dive.”
“You’re probably right. He probably just jumped, huh? Uncle Charlie never told me any of this, he refuses to talk about it. But I grew up hearing the story. What made him go crazy? Why is he such a hermit? How come he never shows up at any family get-togethers? You’d ask any one of those questions and that was the answer you got: the story of Levette doing the dive from the bridge.”
“And your uncle saw it all?”
“He saw it. After Pearl Harbor he tried to enlist but the Army wouldn’t have him because he was F-something. In other words, so certifiably nuts that he couldn’t pass the medical. I think about that sometimes. The world is at war, all these thousands and thousands of young people are sacrificing their lives trying to stop Hitler and the Japs, and Uncle Charlie’s here in the French Quarter still hanging his lip over his weird friend. Talk about your priorities being fucked up.” He pointed at me with the bottle. “Something had to happen.”
He excused himself, went back into the house and returned with two more beers. He offered me one and I waved it away, and this seemed to please him. He rubbed a hand over his belly before sitting back down.
“You said something had to happen. Do you mean you think something happened between the two of them that prompted Asmore to kill himself?”
“Yeah, that’s always been my guess. Why else would Uncle Charlie become a hermit the way he did? It’s like he was guilty, he had blood on his hands.”
“How long did he live here in the cottage?”
“All the way up until his mother died and they divided her estate and he got the house. That would’ve been around ’48, ’49. My grandfather got this place and an office building on Canal Street, and that explains how I eventually ended up living here. We always tried to involve Uncle Charlie in family events. My sisters got married and they invited him. He didn’t show. We’d send him invitations to things and he wouldn’t even RSVP. Uncle Charlie was all about Uncle Charlie. He did his own thing. Know what that was, Charbonnet?”
I waited as he brought a beer to his mouth and finished it off. He belched again. “Uncle Charlie’s thing,” he said, “was always to sit there and wonder why he couldn’t stop his friend from jumping off the bridge.”
She came to the door in her usual jeans, T-shirt and lab coat, hair pulled back and tied with a slip of scarlet ribbon. I’d punched the bell only once, expecting to be met by Joe Butler if anyone at all. I was so surprised to see her there in the trap of iron bars, and not a glowering scarecrow, that my head went blank and I could not think to speak. “It’s you,” I managed to mutter.
“Jean Rhys Goudeau, restoration girl.” She took a step back, pulling the door with her. “And you are?”
“John Francis Charbonnet, Junior, prematurely retired newspaper hack. But you can call me Jack.”
“Nice to meet you, Jack.”
“Pleasure is mine.”
It now was almost six o’clock in the evening, some three hours after I’d left Larry Lowenstein at his cottage in the French Quarter. I’d spent the better part of the afternoon at a tavern on the corner of Saint Charles and Martin Luther King, and just a block away from the Guild’s studio. I’d had more beer while seated at a table watching the streetcars rumble by. Levette Asmore was black, and my landlord had been with him when he died. That said it in a nutshell, and yet I was at a loss as to how to relate this information to Rhys. Asmore’s connection to Lowenstein, a former client of hers, would be stunning but welcome news. Perhaps we could get him to talk. What I wasn’t sure about was how well she would take the revelation that the artist had not been white, as she’d long presumed. Apparently Rhys’s racial identity, which seemed to place her in a subgroup that was neither white nor black, and added to a perception that she was different and apart, a breed unto her own, needed some tweaking. She was blacker than she knew. In the tavern I’d gone from laughing to nearly crying at the bleary absurdity of it all. Although I was as confused as ever about most things, it was clear to me now that the whole business of classifying a human being by the color of his skin, let alone its tone or degree of color, was a lot of crazy horseshit.
“May I see the painting?” I said.
She bit her lip and studied my face. She was going to send me away, I was certain, but then she added to the day’s load of surprises. “Follow me.”
In the studio upstairs there were four large worktables standing next to each other, spaced a few feet apart, so that there was enough room to walk between them. Each table held a panel, and she’d arranged the panels in their proper order, as they’d hung on the wall at Wheeler. The panel on the second table from the left actually had two pieces of canvas: a large rectangle and the narrow strip that had fallen to the ground and colored me gray with residue. In two of the panels you could see the rectangular-shaped holes cut to accommodate the air-conditioning vents. Because Rhys had spent more time working at the center tables, the center of the mural was well on its way to being cleaned while the edges still remained hidden beneath layers of paint. Imagine a window so densely coated with dust and condensation that you can’t see through it. In the middle of the window, now, wipe clear an area in the shape of a circle, allowing a view.
“Stand here, Jack,” she said, holding my waist with both hands and guiding me to a spot at the foot of the tables. She then lifted the ends of the second and third tables and brought them flush against each other. This matched up the edges of the middle panels, and gave the painting a narrative form that it didn’t possess when the panels were separated. “Tell me this isn’t the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen in your life.”
In the painting a beautiful man, dressed as a swashbuckling pirate, embraced a beautiful woman in the middle of a French Quarter street, while all around them Carnival was in full swing. The man had white skin; the woman, who wore the crown and frilly clothes of a fairy princess, had a darker complexion. I recognized the lovers: Asmore had painted himself in the arms of Jacqueline LeBeau. As many as a hundred other faces populated the scene. They were black and white, yellow, red and brown, and every combination and shade in between. Each figure was presented in colors even bolder than those in the Ninas murals at the Sazerac Bar, and each wore a costume, some with feathered masks, others with tall, pointed hats wrapped in brightly colored ribbons. The figures danced together, kissed and hugged each other, conversed in pairs and in groups, shared smokes and bottles of alcohol, and howled or pointed at a smiling caricature of the moon. Above the party a costumed black man on stilts reached for the hand of a costumed white woman on stilts, the tips of their fingers touching. A yellow man, tall and thin, whispered in the ear of a red one, who was short and heavyset. A young brown woman swooned in the arms of an older black one. In the distance
stood town houses with still more revelers, arranged several deep on the balconies. These people, too, appeared to be of every race and sexual orientation. In the foreground a black child and a white one held hands as they navigated the crowd. Sprawled on the ground next to them was a group of rough characters shooting dice. It was hard to distinguish each man’s race, but the joy they seemed to find in their illicit game was shared equally among them. As I studied their faces one of them struck me as being familiar. Something about the shape of the jaw, and the owlish contours of the eyeballs, triggered the recognition. It was none other than Lowenstein, with his hair a thick patch standing on end, a pack of cigarettes screwed into the sleeve of his shirt.
The scene was both an orgy and a celebration. “Look at me,” each of the figures might have been saying. “Look. I am alive.”
“It could be this year’s Carnival,” I said. “Or next year’s.”
“Have we really come that far, Jack? I’m not sure we have.”
“It reminds me of that line from Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, the one about little white boys and white girls joining hands with little black boys and black girls and walking together as sisters and brothers.”
“Yes, it does, but ratcheted upward exponentially. Those little kids there at the bottom are indeed holding hands, but most of the other figures seem to have more serious contact in mind. Now consider that Levette made this picture more than twenty years before Reverend King gave his famous speech. This might’ve been Levette’s idea of utopia, but you can’t overstate how shocking the scene must have been to your average white-bread American in the Deep South in the year 1941. It’s a defiant renunciation of Jim Crow and segregation. It throws every sexist and racist taboo on its head. And while the image might fit today’s idea of America as a melting pot, sixty years ago this kind of integration would’ve been greeted with hysteria. See all these happy people in the painting, Jack? Most of them would’ve had their asses tossed in jail. Others would’ve had their skulls cracked, and I promise some would’ve been lynched. In that respect, Levette’s mural is asking for it. The man wasn’t stupid. He had to know he would be pissing people off.”
She stepped in front of me and, using a fingernail, carefully removed a fleck of something from the canvas. “Do you remember the story I told you about the artist from Mississippi who depicted whites and blacks swimming together in a public pool? For that the man was dragged out of his house and beaten. Levette’s message is a helluva lot more incendiary than that guy’s. Levette has blacks and whites actually touching each other, Jack. The two on stilts are obviously a couple, and other interracial pairs look like they’re about to go at it in the street. No wonder city officials and the WPA ordered the painting destroyed. What’s more surprising is that Levette himself wasn’t tarred and feathered the moment anyone had a look at this thing.”
I kept returning to the portrait of a dog in the middle ground, its coat a quilt of colors. The dog had a superior expression on its face. “Even the mutt is telling people to go to hell,” I said.
“Yes, even the mutt.”
“It’s kind of corny.”
“I suppose it is. But a lot of art is corny without an historical context. Even I can remember when people in this town called any dog that wasn’t purebred a nigger dog. Didn’t matter if it was a good dog, if it was a dog that did tricks or saved people from house fires. If it wasn’t a certain type, with papers, it was a nigger dog. Well, that little dog right there is happy, he’s happy with his place in the world, and it doesn’t matter what anybody calls him.”
Now she pointed to the figure of Jacqueline LeBeau. “Levette gave her the Beloved treatment, didn’t he? The poor girl looks like she just tumbled out of the sack. She’s the virgin princess who’s been deflowered, and by a rogue! Look at her expression, Jack. It’s almost exactly like that of the little colored dog. You think she cares what anyone thinks of her and her handsome pirate?”
“Pirates are rebels,” I said, glancing at Rhys for confirmation. “That’s why Asmore presents himself as one, isn’t it?”
“Very good, Jack.” She was standing close behind me; I could hear her breathing. “I’ll need a few more weeks to finish. But I also need to sleep—real sleep in a real bed. The cot in my office has done a job on my back.”
“You should go home, Rhys. Give it a break. But first let me buy you dinner. There are some things I need to tell you.”
She stood looking at me, then found another fleck to remove from the painting. “Some things, are there? That sounds rather ominous. Are they bad things, Jack?”
“No, I wouldn’t call them bad. But they are significant. They’re things about Asmore I think you should know.”
“In that case let’s get moving. Know what I have an envie for? Red beans and rice—a big, messy plate of the stuff. How about Mother’s on Poydras?”
“Mother’s is good if we don’t have to stand in line with all the tourists.”
“Let’s go see.”
As she was locking the building she said, “Oh, I hate to leave the painting. This is the first time it’s been out of my sight since we…?”
“Stole it?”
“Right.” Now she blew a kiss and started across the street. “Bye, Levette. Be good, sugah. Mama will be back soon.”
We drove downtown in my car. Rhys clapped her hands at the sight of an open parking slot on the side of the restaurant. Business was slow tonight, without a wait in line. We placed our orders, paid at the register, and claimed a table in the middle of the room. My name was called and I went up for our food. I placed Rhys’s plate in front of her and she forked up some beans and rice even before I’d had time to sit down. “Sorry, Jack. Obviously I’m starving.”
“Eat,” I said. “That’s why we’re here.”
“It’s not pizza, it’s not a burger in a sponge box, and it’s not indefinable chicken parts. Okay, Jack. Now let me hear what I need to know. I promise I can handle it.”
“This isn’t easy for me,” I said. “I’ve debated whether to tell you, because I’m not really sure what it means yet.” I paused and waited for her to look at me. “Levette Asmore was black, Rhys—he was an African American. He started passing as a white sometime after he moved to New Orleans. I interviewed his last surviving family member yesterday in a little town in Saint Landry Parish, a place called Palmetto. Her name is Annie Rae Toussaint. She was his first cousin.”
“That would make her my cousin, too.”
“Yes, it would. You’re related, the two of you.”
“Does this upset me?” She put her fork down and sat up tall in her chair. Her head moved on a swivel. “I don’t think it does. Do I look upset to you, Jack?”
“Maybe you’re chewing faster than you should. That’s the only thing I can see.”
“I’m chewing faster because the food is so good.”
“What about the tears in your eyes? What would that indicate?”
“That I’m sleep-deprived? Yes, I’m sure that’s it.” She reached across the table and placed a hand on top of mine. “What’s important, Jack, is not how your discoveries inform Rhys Goudeau’s story, but how they inform Levette Asmore’s. It’s his drama we’ve set out to understand, and his mystery we need to solve.” She pulled her hand back. “It was Levette’s masterpiece that got lost, not mine.”
I’d ordered onion rings and a Ferdi poboy, a sandwich combining a long list of improbable ingredients, a chunky beef gravy called “debris,” made from roast leftovers, most prominent among them. I took a few bites out of the thing and watched Rhys’s eyes for clues to how she was feeling. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she said.
“You’re sitting right in front of me. Where the hell else am I supposed to look?”
She gave me a wad of paper napkins for the debris that was running down my arm now. “What else?” she said. “I hope there’s more. That can’t possibly be the best you can do.”
“Leve
tte was rooming with Lowenstein when he jumped from the bridge.”
She stared at me and continued chewing. Her head moved up and down. “When he killed himself. From here on out let’s call it what it is. Saying he jumped from the bridge sort of sanitizes what happened. Levette Asmore was a suicide.”
“He and Lowenstein were sharing a cottage in the French Quarter at the time. Lowenstein apparently witnessed everything that day on the bridge.”
“Did Mr. Lowenstein tell you this?”
“His nephew did.”
“Have you confirmed this with Mr. Lowenstein yet?”
“No, but only because I haven’t approached him with it. He’s a tough one, and I’m not sure he’ll be accommodating to more of my questions. He’ll talk about the past, but only in trade for something he wants. As we were driving over here I thought of a way to get him to open up about Levette. He told me once that he saw the mural before it was destroyed. I bet he’d give up a lot for another look, including the story of what happened that day on the bridge. Will you let him see it, Rhys?”
She was a while before answering. “It’s risky, but I’d do it. Sure, I would. Soon enough others will have to see the painting, too, if we intend to sell it. Nobody can be expected to offer a dime until they see it in person.” She put down her fork and leaned back in her chair. “You can probably guess that having others experience the painting isn’t something that excites me in the least. The fact is, I loathe the thought. Right now Levette’s mural is mine. When others come to inspect it I give up that sovereignty. Does that sound selfish? I suppose it does. But having the painting to myself has been nothing short of magical. I would tell you it also was a spiritual, life-altering experience but you probably wouldn’t buy that. The last couple of weeks have been the most intense and gratifying of my life, Jack. It’s almost been like having a lover, a secret lover, who no one else in the world knows about but me.” She smiled and ate more of the red beans. “Okay,” she said, “now it’s my turn to tell you something. Remember back, if you would, to the night when you and I met at Patrick Marion’s dinner party. I told you then about repairing one of Mr. Lowenstein’s paintings.”
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