A Separate Country (25 page)

“Felix?”

“Yes?”

“Felix, why are you and Alcée always whispering? What is it I may not hear?”

“Nothing, General, for you to worry about. Minor matters, clerical details.”

“It has been clerical details that have marked every loss, every penny of mine that disappeared somewhere into those wharfs, and so I do not consider them minor. Tell me.”

Felix was tall, stooped, and sallow. He paid a disturbing amount of attention to his mustache, black and gleaming and thrust ahead of a bony face and sunken cheeks. His jacket was too broad for his shoulders, the waist of his pants too loose.

“We discuss how to run off with your money, of course!” He grinned and I frowned. “A joke, General, a joke.”

Why did these men, Felix and his friend, Alcée—built fat, short, and fidgety like a beetle—think they could joke with me? What had I ever done to encourage
that
? I knew jokes, and could laugh, but not with such men, and at my own expense. I demand respect, but I am not without humor. Humor. Laughter. Innocence. I understand it.

Oh hell, I
was
without humor. I
am
without humor. Who is this man writing on this page? So weak, so ingratiating, so worried. I do not recognize him. I should have broken the skinny one’s neck. He had stolen from me, I was sure of it, but there I was, negotiating with the bastard, listening to his joking barbs. Filthy Creole, no doubt a fornicator and possibly a sodomite. God had struck him down, and would continue to strike him down. Why else would he look like a man already dead, bones awaiting their tossing into some great common grave for the worthless. Or into the river. I was humorless, yes.

I wanted to eat his heart, remove his eyes, cut him in two. My hand ached where the arrow had marked me. I had tied my lot to this man, this goblin. I had been weak.

I took him by the front of his shirt and pulled him down to the floor by my chair so I could look into his eyes. His eyes were nearly black, and I thought I detected fright. This fed me, made me bolder. I slapped him and he cried out. He tried to get to his feet and I pulled him down again.
I am still strong,
I thought. He waited for another blow, eyes closed, but I held back. I savored the look of anticipation in his face. He was terrified, and I had terrified him.
Good.

“Do not ever take a liberty with me. Not again. You won’t do it again.”

One end of his mustache had found its way into his mouth. He tried to spit it out while keeping an eye on me. The moment could not last, but for now he was mine. I could feel my leg growing back, I could feel the muscles again. Power flowed back into my arm, my muscles grew taut and whole. I nearly jumped to my feet. Foot. I thought better of it. But I knew I still had power, that I could command a man to sit on his knees before me.

I wondered if I could kill Felix, who remained quiet and kneeling during my reverie. He breathed heavily, a thin and whiny rasp wrenching from his chest. He watched me, and in his eyes I could see the fear had passed and all that remained was puzzlement and growing impatience. I swept my good arm across my desk, sending papers and glassware to the floor. The letter I had been writing (
May I be forgiven the imposition, friend…
) fluttered down between my feet. I must have seemed insane.

“General, this is not necessary. I was merely making a joke, a bad one, yes, but still a joke.”

“Is it a joke that we have no money, that we are believed fools in every lounge and club up and down this city?”

“I do not know this. Who speaks of this?”

“Liar.”

“Perhaps it is only the jealous who speak this way.”

“Jealous of what, for God’s sake? Perhaps it is only
me
they speak of.”

Felix’s eyes narrowed to nothing. He was not stupid, nor was he entirely without courage.

“What are you suggesting?”

His head was very hard. The metal knob of my cane cracked against him and then vibrated so painfully I nearly dropped it. He fell in place, keeled over, and curled on the floor like a puppy. I sat and watched him, peaceful and still, until I could see his chest rise and fall.

My head began to ache, caving in at the temples. (My head hurts as I write this. My heart is pushing against my chest. No more cigars.) I surveyed the room: a riot of paper and ink and ledgers and broken glass extending out from where I sat. I contained all of that also, but I felt no thrill in it. Just pain in my head.

I stood up, gathered my hat, and hobbled over the casualties. There lay the record of my fortune, all of it empty or illegible. There had been no fortune, only a childish trust and childish fantasies.

Lord help me, but in that moment I gave serious thought to killing the man. I required a sacrifice equal to the loss of my standing, equal to the humiliation of being deceived by two godless French twits, equal to the horror of knowing I’d been the financier of their descent into the underworld. I knew this, yes. I had followed them, tracked them, made a reconnaissance of their movement, their activities, their lives. I do not beat men without reason.

On several evenings I had pursued my prey from glass of liquor to hanger steak at Arnaud’s, to more liquor in the clubs and the negro music dens, to (most unnerving) the little cottages off Rampart Street where the two kept their colored women. Pretty little cottages. My partners walked arm in arm, point to point, holding each other up. Too drunk to notice me clunking from shadow to shadow. Drunk on my money. I had been defeated without ever engaging, without meeting the enemy until it was too late.

Felix lay on the floor, quiet. One side of him, the side that lay against the hard, old barge-wood floor, had become white in the dust, as if he were disintegrating, ashing away, restoring himself to his original state. I left him there. I walked into Alcée’s office and broke open the locked drawer of his desk, where I knew he kept the true book on our business. I took it and ripped out the first page. It said, in thin and angular letters,
Défense d’entrer
. I thought,
Oh, of course it’s private, and thank you for reminding me or otherwise I might have taken it or violated its secrets. Forgive me!
I stabbed that page through with his sterling letter opener and pinned it to the desk. I had their record of crime, and I left my own, bleeding and foggy-headed. We were square. Our partnership would take months to sever cleanly, but I was free from that day on.

I walked out and down onto Common Street. Behind me I could feel the heavy, moist river breathing on me, pushing me on and away. I slipped through the shadows that chilled the wood of the banquette. I passed Plato and said nothing. He sat on his box drawn back between buildings that leaned against each other. He had pulled his hat down over his face. His eyes followed me, and he smiled.

The more I walked, the less my head hurt. I went down unfamiliar streets and saw nothing I knew: strangers, galleries, screeching children throwing old fruit, screens of graying sheets floating in the air from lines cast between houses. Dogs sniffed at me, interrogating the stranger with the limp. Water crashed from a basin held in the window above to the courtyard three stories below. It sounded like breaking glass.

The less I knew of what I saw, the calmer I became. The known world contracted, all was simple. I sat in a nearly abandoned café and watched my hand stir the syrup of coffee clinging inside the cup. My hand was steady. I was steady again. Now I could feel remorse. Sparrows dipped in at my feet, where the remains of old bread lay dried and disintegrating. I admired the birds, like brown brushstrokes on slate. They reminded me of my men rushing across dark fields. I flinched at the memory and downed my drink. What were my prospects? I might hunt sparrows and serve them up fried on the street. Silly. I could not decide whether to get up from my seat or stay counting the grinds in the bottom of my cup. I stood up and sat down. The old man at the counter danced slowly to the music in his head. A palm put me in shade of a sudden, a breeze cooled my face. I walked out.

I found my friend Rintrah on his corner packing up his merchandise for the day. He had artichokes, ghastly things. I walked so slowly toward him, so deliberately, like I was swimming down the street. He saw me and I saw the alarm on his face. He said nothing and offered me an artichoke for free. I held it like an egg, afraid of what might hatch from the barbed, dark thing. He rocked on his heels, his hands in the pockets of his vest, and waited for me to say something, but thought better of it. For a moment I entertained the thought that he already knew what had happened, that behind that thick beard lay the face of a seraph. Everywhere at once, nothing unknown to him.

“General?”

“May I sit?”

He gestured at the stoop behind him. I watched the street go by. I had hardly ever imagined such places during the war, certainly not the vibrating, growling, clanging street presided over by a dwarf on his fruit box. When I thought at all of this other world, it was always something like a tableau containing houses and streets, neat, trim, and empty.
Empty
. I had not thought of people in this paradise beyond smoke and rifle fire and shouting.
I had thought of an empty place
,
one in which I could walk alone, undisturbed, amid the achievements of man, his monuments and landscapes, without having to hear anyone else jabber on in my ear
. So many damned people on the street. So many people everywhere. I suppose had I thought of a woman, the place wouldn’t have been entirely empty. Yes, I had, an Eve to my Adam, only without the will to disturb me nor the means to lead me from my happiness. I thought of Anna Marie then.
No Eve like that, for damned sure
. Nothing was what I had dreamed, not even love. Some things were more interesting.

“Are you well, General?”

“Silence!”

I was listening to the spies passing by, down the alley, carrying their bombs in grocery sacks.
That’s Hood! I’m sure he’s looked better, but how would you know? I heard he’s made of wood, not just his leg, but his head and his heart too. But I am cruel.

They would report back to Washington. They would report my weakness. I thought I should fall in and show the colors, show that I would not be crossed or defeated. There were no lieutenants, I would have to do without them.

Maman, who is the man talking to the air? Does he talk to insects?

They are all enlisted, all maneuvering. Flanking me!

Don’t look
, cher.

Rintrah had finished packing up his artichokes and stood quietly next to me. He removed his short straw hat and scratched at his tangled and dense black hair. My head began to hurt again. I noticed that my shirt had stuck to my chest in sweat. I whispered.

“Clear the street.”

“What?” The dwarf leaned his ear toward me.

“Clear the damned street!” I shouted. Women turned and hurried on, pulling hats close over their eyes. I watched their feet click-clacking away from me, thin heels and thick heels, brown toes and yellow toes.
No respect
. Had they been respectful they would have arrived for formation in matching footwear. Nothing conformed now, there was no standard.

“Keep the whores out of camp, no exceptions.”

Rintrah sighed, as if he’d seen people like me before.

“Come with me, General.” He took my arm and tried to pull me to my feet. “Let’s get you out of here before you make more of an ass of yourself.”

I tried to stand up on the brick step, caught the edge with the kindling I called a leg, and toppled over. Rintrah fell with me, cursing me. A crazy quilt of eaves and corners reared up against the sky above me, General John Bell Hood, and among them I saw two brown thrashers twisting together in flight. I lay heavy on Rintrah and he jabbed at my ribs with his sharp, fat fingers.

“Get up, you’re killing me.”

“I wouldn’t kill you. Don’t have it in me anymore.”

“General. Christ.”

The thrashers disappeared behind a narrow coal chimney, and I rolled off and stood on my knees. My leg had been queered and I straightened it. When Rintrah got to his feet he stood taller than me. Fierce, broad, craggy browed.

“General, you’re drunk. Let’s leave the street.”

“I am not drunk.”

I followed him. He looked back at me, suddenly curious about something. A thoughtful look passed his face.

“Does Anna Marie know where you are?”

“No.”

“Come with me.”

It was an order, pure and clean and without deception. There was no answer but to follow, and I did so thankfully.

The garroters,
Rintrah said,
they been sleeping all day, but they just getting up now, so you stay close, General
. I didn’t understand him, so he made a sign with his hands around his neck. He made his eyes bulge out farther, until they seemed about to pop out of his head, and I told him to please stop. As the light left it got dark quickly between the buildings and along the sidewalks. The sky was still lit up warm, but we were in the dark as if sunk in a pit. Rintrah slowed down some and was careful about looking around corners and down alleys. We walked down an alley so narrow I could barely get my shoulders through, and at the other end was a courtyard greened by date palms and a great, fraying mass of hibiscus, where the cobblestones looked as if they would never dry.

In the dark, it was a different city. I didn’t see anything of the city I’d seen earlier. The noise of the day, what I had once thought was like a song, was a fine wailing. Like something in pain giving up, or someone sad knowing the sadness was forever. The dark had done it, I thought, nothing to worry about. Things are strange in the dark, sounds and shapes and lights come out of places all of a sudden, places you can’t see and so you think they come from nowhere, out of the air, ever present. But then in the day you see where you’ve been and you aren’t afraid and you laugh at yourself and you have a nigger shine your shoes.

The dark buildings seemed like they were leaning over the wet street, about to fall in on us, Rintrah and me and the pickpockets, fancy ladies, sick and insane who drew around us. I stumbled into a hole in the street and cried out, but Rintrah was there to catch me. Ladies in purple and yellow dresses leaned out from their balconies on the second floor above the street—it was Burgundy Street—and waved their kerchiefs. I watched hunched men in tight hats duck into the dark doorways beneath those balconies. I was blinded by each quick shot of light that hit me and disappeared as quickly as the doors could be opened and closed. I stopped walking and let my eyes get themselves back and righted, and when they did I looked down the street and I saw block and block and block of women raised up high above the black stream of men and boys and dogs in the street. They were leaves that had been taken up by the wind and never let back down. I stood still long enough that some of the whores right above me took notice, and they called for me. For a moment, just a moment I swear on my Bible, I wanted nothing else but to be upstairs with them, surrounded by all that color, raised up and laid down by all those soft hands. They called to me with lewd words, and I thought they sounded sweet. They leered at me and I saw only kindness. I stared up at them and they began to poke fun at me. I looked stupid. I was stupid. What did I have anymore? There was no money, and I was a fool for all to see. I let the whores have their fun with me.