“Vanitas,” says Tante Fanny. “The Latin word for—?”
“Vanity,” I guess.
“A word with two meanings. Can you supply them?”
“A, a desire to be pretty, or finely dressed,” I begin.
She nods, but corrects me: “Self-conceit. The holding of too high an opinion of one’s beauty, charms or talents. But it also means futility,” she says, very crisp. “Worthlessness. What is done in vain. Vanitas paintings illustrate the vanity of all human wishes. Are you familiar with Ecclesiastes, chapter one, verse two?”
I hesitate. I scratch my arm through my sleeve, to feel the little gold charms.
My aunt purses her wide mouth. Though she is past fifty now, with the sallow look of someone who never sees the sun, and always wears black, you can tell that she was once a beauty. “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities,” she quotes; “all is vanity.”
That’s Cousine Eliza on the wall behind her mother’s chair, in dark oils. In the picture she looks much older than sixteen to me. She is sitting in a chair with something in her left hand, I think perhaps a handkerchief; has she been crying? Her white dress has enormous sleeves, like clouds; above them, her shoulders slope prettily. Her face is creamy and perfectly oval, her eyes are dark, her hair is coiled on top of her head like a strange plum cake. Her lips are together, it’s a perfect mouth, but it looks so sad. Why does she look so sad?
“In this print here,” says Tante Fanny, tapping the portfolio in her lap with one long nail (I don’t believe she ever cuts them), “what does the hourglass represent?”
I bend to look at it again. A grim man in seventeenth-century robes, his desk piled with objects. “Time?” I hazard.
“And the skull?”
“Death.”
“Très bien, Aimée.”
I was only eight when my uncle and aunt came back from France, with—among their copious baggage—Cousine Eliza in a lead coffin. She’d died of a fever. Papa came back from Paris right away, with the bad news, but the girl’s parents stayed on till the end of the year, which I thought strange. I was not allowed to go to the funeral, though the cemetery of St. James is only ten miles upriver. After the funeral was the last time I saw my Oncle Louis. He’s never come back to the Plantation since, and for seven years Tante Fanny hasn’t left her room. She’s shut up like a saint; she spends hours kneeling at her little prie-dieu, clutching her beads, thumping her chest. Millie brings all her meals on trays, covered to keep off the rain or the flies. Tante Fanny also sews and writes to her old friends and relations in France and Germany. And, of course, she teaches me. Art and music, French literature and handwriting, religion and etiquette (or, as she calls it, les convenances and comme il faut). She can’t supervise my piano practice, as the instrument is in the salon at the other end of the house, but she leaves her door open, when I’m playing, and strains her ears to catch my mistakes.
This morning instead of practicing I was up in the attic again, and I saw a ghost, or at least I thought I did. I’d taken all the dresses out of the old sheepskin trunk, to admire and hold against myself; I’d remembered to bring my hand mirror up from my bedroom, and if I held it at arm’s length, I could see myself from the waist up, at least. I danced like a gypsy, like the girl in Notre-Dame de Paris, whose beauty wins the heart of the hideous hunchback.
When I pulled out the last dress—a vast white one that crinkled like paper—what was revealed was a face. I think I cried out; I know I jumped away from the trunk. When I made myself go nearer, the face turned out to be made of something hard and white, like chalk. It was not a bust, like the one downstairs of poor Marie Antoinette. This had no neck, no head; it was only the smooth, pitiless mask of a girl, lying among a jumble of silks.
I didn’t recognize her at first; I can be slow. My heart was beating loudly in a sort of horror. Only when I’d sat for some time, staring at those pristine, lidded eyes, did I realize that the face was the same as the one in the portrait of Cousine Eliza, and the white dress I was holding was the dress she wore in the painting. These were all her clothes that I was playing with, it came to me, and the little gold bracelet around my arm had to be hers too. I tried to take it off and return it to the trunk, but my fingers were so slippery I couldn’t undo the catch. I wrenched at it, and there was a red line around my arm; the little charms spun.
Tante Fanny’s room is stuffy; I can smell the breakfast tray that waits for Millie to take it away. “Tante Fanny,” I say now, without preparation, “why does Cousine Eliza look so sad?”
My aunt’s eyes widen violently. Her head snaps.
I hear my own words too late. What an idiot, to make it sound as if her daughter’s ghost was in the room with us! “In the picture,” I stammer, “I mean in the picture, she looks sad.”
Tante Fanny doesn’t look round at the portrait. “She was dead,” she says, rather hoarse.
This can’t be right. I look past her. “But her eyes are open.”
My aunt lets out a sharp sigh and snaps her book shut. “Do you know the meaning of the word ‘posthumous’?”
“Eh …”
“After death. The portrait was commissioned and painted in Paris in the months following my daughter’s demise.”
I stare at it again. But how? Did the painter prop her up somehow? She doesn’t look dead, only sorrowful, in her enormous, ice-white silk gown.
“Eliza did not model for it,” my aunt goes on, as if explaining something to a cretin. “For the face, the artist worked from a death mask.” She must see the confusion in my eyes. “A sculptor pastes wet plaster over the features of a corpse. When it hardens he uses it as a mold, to make a perfect simulacrum of the face.”
That’s it. That’s what scared me, up in the attic this morning: Eliza’s death mask. When I look back at my aunt, there’s been a metamorphosis. Tears are chasing down her papery cheeks. “Tante Fanny—”
“Enough,” she says, her voice like mud. “Leave me.”
I don’t believe my cousin—my only cousin, the beautiful Eliza, just sixteen years old—died of a fever. Louisiana is a hellhole for fevers of all kinds, that’s why my parents sent Emile away to Bordeaux. It’s good for making money, but not for living, that’s why Napoleon sold it so cheap to the Americans thirty-six years ago. So how could it have happened that Eliza grew up here on the Duparc-Locoul Plantation, safe and well, and on her trip to Paris—that pearly city, that apex of civilization—she succumbed to a fever? I won’t believe it, it smells like a lie.
I’m up in the attic again, but this time I’ve brought the Bible. My brother, Emile, before he went away to France, taught me how to tell fortunes with the Book and Key. In those days we used an ugly old key we’d found in the cellars, but now I have a better one; the little gold one that hangs on my bracelet. (Eliza’s bracelet, I should say.) What you do is, you open the Bible to the Song of Solomon, pick any verse you like, and read it aloud. If the key goes clockwise, it’s saying yes to the verse, and vice versa. Fortune-telling is a sin when gypsies or conjurers do it, like the nègres making their nasty gris-gris to put curses on each other, but it can’t be wrong if you use the Good Book. The Song of Solomon is the most puzzling bit of the Bible but it’s my favorite. Sometimes it seems to be a man speaking, and sometimes a woman; she says I am black but comely, but she can’t be a nègre, surely. They adore each other, but at some points it sounds as if they are brother and sister.
My first question for the Book today is, did Cousine Eliza die a natural death? I pull the bracelet down to my wrist, and I hold all the other little charms still, letting only the key dangle. I shake my hand as I recite the verse I’ve chosen, one that reminds me of Eliza: Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold. When my hand stops moving, the key swings, most definitely anticlockwise. I feel a thrill all the way down in my belly. So! Not a natural death; as I suspected.
What shall I ask next? I cross my legs, to get more comfortable on the
bare boards, and study the Book. A verse gives me an idea. Was she—is it possible—she was murdered? Not a night goes by in a great city without a cry in the dark, I know that much. The watchmen that went about the city found me, I whisper, they smote me, they wounded me. I shake my wrist, and the key dances, but every which way; I can’t tell what the answer is. I search for another verse. Here’s one: Every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night. What if … I rack my imagination. What if two young Parisian gallants fought a duel over her, after glimpsing her at the opera, and Eliza died of the shock? I chant the verse, my voice rising now, because no one will hear me up here. I wave my hand in the air, and when I stop moving, the key continues to swing, counterclockwise. No duel, then; that’s clear.
But what if she had a lover, a favorite among all the gentlemen of France who were vying for the hand of the exquisite Creole maiden? What if he was mad with jealousy and strangled her, locking his hands around her long pale neck rather than let Tante Fanny and Oncle Louis take her back to Louisiana? For love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave, I croon, and my heart is thumping, I can feel the wet break out under my arms, in the secret curls there. I’ve forgotten to wave my hand. When I do it, the key swings straight back and forward, like the clapper of a bell. Like the thunderous bells in the high cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. Is that an answer? Not jealousy, then, or not exactly; some other strange passion? Somebody killed Eliza, whether they meant to or not, I remind myself; somebody is to blame for the sad eyes in that portrait. For Tante Fanny walled up in her stifling room, and Oncle Louis who never comes home.
I can’t think of any more questions about Eliza; my brain is fuzzy. Did she suffer terribly? I can’t find a verse to ask that. How can I investigate a death that happened eight years ago, all the way across the ocean, when I’m only a freckled girl who’s never left the Plantation? Who’ll listen to my questions, who’ll tell me anything?
I finish by asking the Book something for myself. Will I ever be pretty, like Eliza? Will these dull and round features ever bloom into perfect conjunction? Will I grow a face that will take me to France, that will win me the love of a French gentleman? Or will I be stuck here for the rest of my life, my mother’s harried assistant and perhaps her successor, running the Plantation and the wine business and the many complex enterprises that make up the wealth of the Famille Duparc-Locoul? That’s too many questions. Concentrate, Aimée. Will I be pretty when I grow up? Behold, thou art fair, my love, I murmur, as if to make it so; behold, thou art fair. But then something stops me from shaking my hand, making the key swing. Because what if the answer is no?
I stoop over the trunk and take out the death mask, as I now know it’s called. I hold it very carefully in my arms, and I lie down beside the trunk. I look into the perfect white oval of my cousin’s face, and lay it beside mine. Eliza, Eliza. I whisper my apologies for disturbing her things, for borrowing her bracelet, with all its little gold and silver trinkets. I tell her I only want to know the truth of how she died so her spirit can be at rest. My cheek is against her cool cheek, my nose aligns itself with hers. The plaster smells of nothing. I set my dry lips to her smooth ones.
“Millie,” I ask, when she’s buttoning up my dress this morning, “you remember my Cousine Eliza?”
The girl makes a little humming sound that could mean yes, no, or maybe. That’s one of her irritating habits. “You must,” I say. “My beautiful cousin who went away to Paris. They say she died of a fever.”
This time the sound she makes is more like hmph.
I catch her eye, its milky roll. Excitement rises in my throat. “Millie,” I say, too loud, “have you ever heard anything about that?”
“What would I hear, Mam’zelle Aimée?”
“Oh, go on! I know you house nègres are always gossiping. Did you ever hear tell of anything strange about my cousin’s death?”
Millie’s glance slides to the door. I step over there and shut it. “Go on. You can speak freely.”
She shakes her head, very slowly.
“I know you know something,” I say, and it comes out too fierce. Governing the nègres is an art, and I don’t have it; I’m too familiar, and then too cross. Today, watching Millie’s purple mouth purse, I resort to a bribe. “I tell you what, I might give you a present. What about one of these little charms?” Through my sleeve, I tug the gold bracelet down to my wrist. I make the little jewels shake and spin in front of Millie’s eyes. “What about the tiger, would you like that one?” I point him out, because how would she know what a tiger looks like? “Or maybe these dance slippers. Or the golden cross, which Jesus died on?” I don’t mention the key, because that’s my own favorite.
Millie looks hungry with delight. She’s come closer; her fingers are inches away from the dancing trinkets.
I tuck the bracelet back under my wrist ruffle. “Tell me!”
She crosses her arms and leans in close to my ear. She smells a little ripe, but not too bad. “Your cousine?”
“Yes.”
“Your oncle and tante killed her.”
I shove the girl away, the flat of my hand against her collarbone. “How dare you!”
She gives a luxurious shrug. “All I say is what I hear.”
“Hear from whom?” I demand. “Your Pa Philippe, or your Ma?” Millie’s mother works the hoe-gang, she’s strong as a man. “What would they know of my family’s affairs?”
Millie is grinning as she shakes her head. “From your Tante.”
“Tante Marcelite? She’d never say such a thing.”
“No, no. From your Tante Fanny.”
I’m so staggered I have to sit down. “Millie, you know it’s the blackest of sins to lie,” I remind her. “I think you must have made up this story. You’re saying that my Tante Fanny told you—you—that she and Oncle Louis murdered Eliza?”
Millie’s looking sullen now. “I don’t make up nothing. I go in and out of that dusty old room five times a day with trays, and sometimes your tante is praying or talking to herself, and I hear her.”
“But this is ridiculous.” My voice is shaking. “Why would—what reason could they possibly have had for killing their own daughter?” I run through the plots I invented up in the attic. Did Eliza have a French lover? Did she give herself to him and fall into ruin? Could my uncle and aunt have murdered her, to save the Famille from shame? “I won’t hear any more of such stuff.”
The nègre has the gall to put her hand out, cupped for her reward.
“You may go now,” I tell her, stepping into my shoes.
Next morning, I wake up in a foul temper. My head starts hammering as soon as I lift it off the pillow. Maman is expected back from New Orleans today. I reach for my bracelet on the little table beside my bed and it’s gone.
“Millie?” But she’s not there, on the pallet at the foot of my bed; she’s up already. She’s taken my bracelet. I never mentioned giving her more than one little trinket; she couldn’t have misunderstood me. Damn her for a thieving little nègre.
I could track her down in the kitchen behind the house, or in the sewing room with Tante Marcelite, working on the slave clothes, or wherever she may be, but no. For once, I’ll see to it that the girl gets punished for her outrageous impudence.
I bide my time; I do my lessons with Tante Fanny all morning. My skin feels greasy, I’ve a bouton coming out on my chin; I’m a martyr to pimples. This little drum keeps banging away in the back of my head. And a queasiness, too; a faraway aching. What could I have eaten to put me in such a state?
When the boat arrives I don’t rush down to the pier; my mother hates such displays. I sit in the shady gallery and wait. When Maman comes to find me, I kiss her on both cheeks. “Perfectly well,” I reply. (She doesn’t like to hear of symptoms, unless one is seriously ill.) “But that dreadful brat Millie has stolen a bracelet from my room.” As I say it, I feel a pang, but only a little one. Such a story for her to make up, calling my aunt and
uncle murderers of their own flesh! The least the girl deserves is a whipping.
“Which bracelet?”
Of course, my mother knows every bit of jewelry I own; it’s her memory for detail that’s allowed her to improve the family fortunes so much. “A, a gold chain, with trinkets on it,” I say, with only a small hesitation. If Eliza got it in Paris, as she must have done, my mother won’t ever have seen it on her. “I found it.”
“Found it?” she repeats, her eyebrows soaring.
I’m sweating. “It was stoppered up in a bottle,” I improvise; “it washed up on the levee.”
“How peculiar.”
“But it’s mine,” I repeat. “And Millie took it off my table while I was sleeping!”
Maman nods judiciously and turns away. “Do tidy yourself up before dinner, Aimée, won’t you?”
We often have a guest to dinner; Creoles never refuse our hospitality to anyone who needs a meal or a bed for the night, unless he’s a beggar. Today it’s a slave trader who comes up and down the River Road several times a year; he has a long beard that gets things caught in it. Millie and two other house nègres carry in the dishes, lukewarm as always, since the kitchen is so far behind the house. Millie’s face shows nothing; she can’t have been punished yet. I avoid her eyes. I pick at the edges of my food; I’ve no appetite today, though I usually like poule d’eau—a duck that eats nothing but fish, so the Church allows it on Fridays. I listen to the trader and Maman discuss the cost of living, and sip my glass of claret. (Papa brings in ten thousand bottles a year from his estates at Château Bon-Air; our Famille is the greatest wine distributor in Louisiana.) The trader offers us our pick of the three males he has with him, fresh from the auction block at New Orleans, but Maman says with considerable pride that we breed all we need, and more.
Astray: Stories Page 13
