Feast of All Saints

by Anne Rice

  “I’m afraid,” Marcel said.

  “Why?”

  “Because if it’s really true that there’s no order, then anything can happen to us. Anything at all. There’s no real natural law, no right and wrong that’s immutable, and the world is suddenly a savage place where any number of things can go wrong.”

  He walked slowly back and forth pondering this, and then continued quickly, “Juliet told me a story once of something she witnessed in Saint-Domingue. It wasn’t actually a story, it was one of those strange little details she lets slip sometimes in an airy way as if it’s been floating for years in her mind. It was an account of an execution, of three black men burned alive before a crowd. She told me…”

  “I’ve heard,” Christophe stopped him.

  “But the point is I couldn’t get it out of my mind for days after she’d told me, the vision she conjured, it was unspeakable to me that men could die like that, that people would watch…and if there is no real right and wrong, if there is no natural law that is immutable, then things like that can happen all over this world…dreadful things, worse things if there are worse things, and somehow it would never ever be made all right. There wouldn’t be any justice, and suffering ultimately would have no meaning, no meaning at all.”

  “And suppose it’s the opposite,” Christophe said. “That there is a natural law, a real right and wrong?”

  “Then I should not be sleeping with her because she is a woman of forty and I’m a boy of fifteen, and she’s your mother and you are my teacher and pupils come to this house every day, and those who might discover it would abhor her and abhor me. And yet it seems sweet and harmless, and I…I don’t want to give it up! I won’t give it up, not unless you force me to give it up or she sends me away.”

  “But don’t you see?” Christophe said calmly. “It doesn’t really come to that day-to-day.” He sat up on the cot and faced Marcel. The light from the shed threw the shifting shadows of the leaves across his face distorting his expression, rendering it impossible to read. “When you find out that there is no ultimate good and evil in which you can place your faith, the world does not fall apart at the seams. It simply means that every decision is more difficult, more critical, because you are creating the good and evil yourself and they are very real.”

  “Decision…” Marcel murmured, “the Englishman’s word.”

  Christophe did not answer.

  “In Paris, the night he took you with him,” Marcel said tentatively, “ ‘it’s a decision the world will not understand.’ ”

  It seemed to him Christophe nodded but he couldn’t be sure. He was very sorry he’d mentioned the Englishman. Bubbles’ music had died in the interval and Christophe appeared almost unnaturally still.

  “Did you say?” Marcel murmured, “a moment before, did you say that the good and evil were very real?”

  “I said it,” Christophe whispered.

  “It’s never going to be easy, is it?”

  “No,” Christophe answered.

  “Not even when it’s only love.”

  “…and when you really come to understand that,” Christophe said, “then whether it’s love or not love, you are really alone.”

  Alone. The night had been restless, Zazu’s hoarse breaths, Monsieur Philippe’s tread on the porch, and the steaming heat that rendered the slowest gesture heavy and exhausting, until finally the morning had come with its wilting sun and Marcel had commenced his search for Lisette.

  III

  BY MIDMORNING he had been all through the market and past a dozen or more of the little grog shops in which he’d caught her before. He had stopped at the neighborhood kitchens, conferred with Bubbles, but Lisette had not been seen. And finally, after putting it off to the very last, he walked steadily and anxiously toward Anna Bella’s gate. However, the sight of the neat little cottage with its whitewashed walls and green shutters, the crepe myrtles sheltering its front path, stopped him in his tracks. He could not imagine himself slipping past those windows to find Zurlina in the back kitchen, and yet he could not bring himself even to knock on the door. It seemed the pendulum in his mind swung back and forth: he must ask, Zazu was receiving the Last Sacraments, and yet would Anna Bella want him here on this errand, unable even to remain for a moment’s talk? And then again the pendulum swung: he wanted to see her, to see her! And beneath that fragile conviction lay some sense of her now as settled in her new life and of himself so content in his own. Whether he would have gone up or not he was never to know for, within minutes, Zurlina had opened the front blinds and come down the path.

  She wore her snow-white tignon like a turban and her face against that stark linen was very much the pale wax of some gnarled tree trunk, lined, yellow, and seemingly hard.

  “Et Zazu?” she rubbed her hands on her white apron.

  “Where is Lisette, is she here?” he asked, and without realizing it, he ripped his eyes from the front shutters behind her, and turned to go. Anna Bella might be there, Anna Bella might see him at the gate.

  A mean laugh escaped Zurlina’s thin lips, the skin above them wrinkled in vertical lines. Marcel despised this woman, she had been haughty to him always, some proud and blistering extension of her old mistress, and he turned his back on her now.

  “Lola Dedé,” she said in a low scornful voice. “Go to Lola Dedé if you want Lisette.”

  Marcel nodded but he did not look back. “Lola Dedé!” he muttered contemptuously. He had heard the name. So that was the voodooienne to whom Lisette returned again and again for powders and charms; he had often passed her dilapidated gray house sagging upon its long lot near the Rue Rampart and it disgusted him as did all of the voodoo about him, the whispers among the servants, those random nighttime drums. But he knew he must go there. “Tell your mistress,” he turned now to the departing Zurlina, “tell her I give her my best.”

  The thin lips drew back in an ugly grimace and the low nasal voice, caricature of the dead Madame Elsie, snorted a vague assent.

  Marcel took his time about it but at last he came to the shell yard outside Lola Dedé’s door and approaching with a bowed head, he knocked hard on the weathered wood.

  Only an eye showed itself in the crack, and a rank smell, soiled bodies, soiled clothes, seeped out into the fresher air. “She’s not here,” said the voice.

  “You tell her for me her mother’s dying,” he said placing a hand against the door.

  “She’s not here!” the voice averred again, and it seemed a rumbling commenced within, soft laughter. Marcel told himself this was fancy.

  “You tell her to come home!” he said, as the door slammed shut in his face. He looked up in despair at the gray rain-washed shutters, the sagging roof, and then with a sudden sense of relief turned fast for home.

  As soon as he reached the garçonnière he knew it was the end.

  Marie and Cecile stood quietly on the porch and Monsieur Philippe was at the bedside alone.

  “Go in now, if you want to take your leave of her,” Cecile whispered anxiously. She had twisted her handkerchief into a piece of ragged string. There was panic in her eyes, and her skin was moist.

  “And Lisette, did she come back?” Marcel asked.

  “No,” Marie shook her head. “Go in, Marcel,” she said gently.

  He hesitated at the door. He had gotten off easy with Jean Jacques, he realized that now, and he had gotten off easy with the Englishman, but he wasn’t to get off now. For a moment he was absolutely incapable of moving into the room. Then Monsieur Philippe, looking up, motioned for him.

  Zazu lay with her mouth open, the white of her lower teeth showing against her dark lip, her breath coming in labored gasps. And when his father pressed him against the bed, she opened her eyes. She knew him at once, she had come round, and feebly she took his hand.

  It seemed his voice left him, and only when Monsieur Philippe said that he ought to go on out now, did he kneel down and say to her softly how much he’d loved her, how well she
’d cared for him all these years. The sudden thought came to him that this would alarm her, but again she smiled. Her heavy black lids closed, but not all the way. And he whispered quickly, “Monsieur!”

  Philippe bent over her. Then she opened her eyes again. “Look out for my girl, Michie, look out for my Lisette.” she said, her voice so faint it was barely clear.

  “I will, my poor dear,” he said to her. It seemed her eyes rolled up in her head. Marcel was shaken.

  “Look out for her, Michie,” she whispered again as if she would not give in. The voice was dry and seemed to scratch inside her throat. “Michie!” her eyes widened. “Michie, she’s your girl, too!”

  “Yes, yes, my poor dear,” Monsieur Philippe said.

  She was dead.

  For a long moment Marcel stood staring down at her. He had never seen the life go out of any living being, and as he watched her face relax in death, he felt the tears come.

  With a solicitude that amazed him, Monsieur Philippe drew Zazu’s rosary from the covers, and slipped it over her fingers. “Adieu, ma chère,” he whispered heavily. Then he folded her hands atop the counterpane and he brought the lids of her eyes down gently, letting her head sink to one side.

  And when he stepped out on the gallery with Marcel behind him, he struck a match hard to light his cigar. “Damn that girl!” he said.

  Cecile turned, shuddering, and walked swiftly down the length of the porch to the stairs. Marie had gone into Zazu’s room at once.

  Then Marcel touched his father’s arm. Lisette stood at the entrance of the alleyway, her yellow tignon bright against the green brush. She was glowering at them, and even from where he stood Marcel could see she was unsteady.

  “Is my Maman dead?” she asked in a low voice.

  Monsieur Philippe moved so fast Marcel was nearly knocked off balance by him. But Lisette turned and ran. She was gone before Monsieur Philippe ever reached the bottom of the steps. He stamped out the butt of his cigar and beckoning angrily for Marcel, he stalked into the cottage.

  “I have to get back to the country,” he said. He was picking up his cape and putting his flat black wallet into the pocket of his coat. Cecile sat in the corner of the parlor, her head bowed.

  “Your mother can’t take care of this, go get your friends, the Lermontants,” Monsieur Philippe said with his eyes on her. Indeed, she looked miserable, and extremely weak.

  “I imagine they’ve taken care of a few devoted servants in their time.”

  “Yes, Monsieur.”

  “So get them to do it right.” He slipped several twenty-dollar bills into Marcel’s hand. “And when you see that girl, you tell her to do what you say. You be the master here now, you get her in line!” He pointed a warning finger at Marcel. “I’d do it myself if I didn’t have to get back to the country and discover what little surprise my young brother-in-law has cooked up for me now. He’s had time enough to flood the entire plantation in my absence and turn the crop to rice!” He gathered his keys, and removing his watch checked it by the clock over the mantel.

  “But Monsieur, what’s the matter with her!” Marcel whispered. He was not in the habit of asking his father questions, but this was too much. And there had been those muted arguments for months.

  “She wants her freedom, that’s what’s the matter, wants it on a silver platter now!” Monsieur Philippe declared. “Got some fancy notion I should tell poor Zazu on her deathbed that I was setting her daughter free.”

  “Freedom!” Marcel gasped. That she should want it was hardly a surprise to him, but was this the way to get it? Lisette who had been nothing but trouble all her life, Lisette who was rebellious to the marrow of her bones? And now to do this? He shook his head. It was more than folly. It was insane.

  “Run off with that woman on her deathbed,” Monsieur Philippe was muttering. “I took that girl out of the kitchen yard at Bontemps, gave her money, brought her to live in town!” His face was working with his anger. “Well, she’s not playing games with me! And what would she do if she were free, I’ve seen the nigger trash she runs with and the white trash too!” He hesitated, his lips working angrily, his eyes casting a protective and pointed glance at Cecile. “Don’t you take any sass from her,” he said to Marcel under his breath. “I’ve never whipped a house slave in my life, but by God, I’ll whip her if she doesn’t get back here before you put Zazu in the ground. Go to those Lermontants,” he said over his shoulder. He approached Cecile, his hand out for her shoulder. “And you tell her if she ever wants a petition from me for her freedom, she’s to do as you say!”

  It wasn’t until the morning of the funeral that Lisette finally appeared. The Lermontants had buried many a loyal and faithful servant for their white and colored clients alike, and they did well as always, a procession of neighboring servants and friends following the coffin to the grave.

  Cecile was trembling violently as the coffin left the house and quickly shut up the windows and the doors as if to keep some unnamed menace away. Marcel disliked leaving her, knowing Marie could be of no comfort to her, and after the brief ceremonies at the St. Louis Cemetery, he hurried home.

  A note had come from Anna Bella. His mother behind a veil of netting, her head against her pillow appeared asleep. For a moment all he saw of the note was an ornate and curling script replete with beautiful capitals, and then slowly the sentiments, perfectly and briefly expressed, made their impression on him with a peculiar pain. Anna Bella had commenced her confinement. She had been unable to come. He held the note for a moment, quite unwilling to let any thought form in his mind. Rather, he saw himself in the Rue St. Louis approaching Anna Bella’s gate. But Lisette. Lisette. He slipped the note into his pocket and went out to cross the courtyard to his room.

  She did not disappoint him. She came wandering in, her eyes red, her dress filthy and carrying a tattered broken bouquet in her hands. But as soon as he saw her, her head to one side like a bruised flower, and saw the way that she picked the petals from the chrysanthemums that she carried, letting them fall on the shells of the alleyway, all the anger went out of him.

  “They covered her up already, Michie,” she said.

  Marcel followed her into the kitchen and into her room.

  “You’d better sleep it off, Lisette,” he said.

  “Go to hell,” she answered.

  He watched her. She was throwing these flowers all around the floor. Now she was tramping on them with her feet. Now she tore the tignon off her head, and her copper hair poofed out in thick tight ripples and she scratched at it, shaking her head.

  He sighed and sat down in the corner in Zazu’s old rocker.

  “You remember after Jean Jacques died?” he started. “You got that diary for me out of the fire.”

  She stood in the center of the room scratching at her head.

  “I remember it, if you don’t,” he said.

  “Well, bless you now, Maitre, you’re one kind man.”

  “Lisette, look, I know it’s grief that’s eating at you, and I know what grief is. But Michie Philippe’s really put out at you, Lisette, you’ve got to get yourself in hand!”

  “Oh, come on now, Michie. You scared of Michie Philippe?” she demanded.

  He sighed. “If it’s your freedom you want, this is no way to get it.” He rose to go.

  “Get it, get it?” she came after him. “And what should I do to get it?” she hissed at him. Reluctantly, he turned his head.

  “Act like you’d know what to do with it, that’s what! Running off like that with your mother dying. Michie Philippe’s at his wits’ ends with you, don’t you know that?”

  But instantly he regretted this. He could see the fury in her eyes.

  “He promised me my freedom!” she said, her fists striking at her own breast. “He promised me when I was a little girl, he’d set me free when I was grown! Well, I passed my twenty-third birthday, Michie, I’ve been grown for years, and he broke that promise to me!”

  “You c
an’t get it this way!” he pleaded with her. “You’re being a fool!”

  “No, you’re the fool! You’re the fool to believe anything that man ever said. Sending you to Paris, putting you up like a gentleman, don’t you believe it, Michie,” she shook her head, “My Maman served that man for fifty years of her life, she licked his boots, he promised her she’d see me free before she died and he broke that promise to her! If he wouldn’t set me free before she shut her eyes on this world, he’s never going to set me free. ‘Oh, you just be patient, Lisette, you just be a good girl, you just take care of your Maman, what you want with freedom anyways, Lisette where you going go?’ ” She spat on the brick floor, her face twisted with contempt.

  “He’s been good to you,” Marcel said in a low voice. He started for the kitchen door.

  “Has he, Michie?” She came after him and reaching out swung the door shut behind her, facing him, so that for an instant he was blinded and saw only a sparkle of light in the rough cracks.

  “Now stop this, Lisette,” he said. He felt the first real urge to slap her. He moved to push the door. She clutched at the latch. He could hardly make out the features of her face, and the kitchen seemed at once damp and suffocating. He took a deep breath. “Get out of the way, Lisette.” The sweat broke out on his forehead. “If Maman hears all this, she’s sure to tell him.”

  It seemed the faint light gathered slowly in her eyes as he became accustomed to it; her face was a grimace. He could smell the wine on her breath.

  “If he can break his promise to me, Michie, he can break it to you,” she said. “You think you’re so special, don’t you, Michie, you think ’cause his blood’s running in your veins, he wouldn’t do you dirt. Well, let me tell you that with all those books of yours and schooling of yours, and that fancy teacher of yours, and that fancy lady you keep up there right under everybody’s nose, you’re not so smart! ’Cause that same blood’s running in my veins, Michie, and you never so much as guessed. We got that in common, my fine little gentleman, I’m his child just as sure as you are! He slept with my Maman same as he slept with yours. And that’s how come he hustled us off Bontemps years ago, ’cause his wife caught right on to what you never guessed in fifteen years!”