Blood and Water and Other Tales (17 page)

Lydia gave birth to a baby girl in the summer of 1871, on August 24 to be precise; three days later she died. The delivery was long and painful. Dr. de Trot had no chloroform with which to ease the mother’s ordeal; nor, one suspects, was he as scrupulous as he could have been about the complete and antiseptic removal of the afterbirth. He was an old man now, and his medical training had been undertaken in the 1820s. In any event, Lydia became infected, and de Trot stood by helplessly as puerperal fever ran its implacable course. Toward the end she apparently began to scream for her dead lover, Simon Grampus Lamar, until the convulsions exhausted her; on several occasions she even saw him at the end of her bed, and rose from her pillow, and beckoned him to come close... until, as the doctor records, “
soul and body could remain together no longer, and she was transplanted to flourish in a more congenial soil.”

In the Old South the aftermath of a death was governed by ritual; both conduct at the death scene and reporting of the death itself reflected strict rules of decorum. Relatives gathered, last words were carefully recorded, and coffin and funeral were chosen to demonstrate the wealth and status of the deceased’s family. That was in the Old South; this was Reconstruction. Lydia died at the center of the bizarre microcosm Marmilion had become, a small world of anguished and embittered individuals, and her funeral was humble indeed. Caesar built the coffin, and an Episcopalian minister rode out to conduct the ceremony. The procession consisted of William and Camille, Caesar, and Oscar de Trot; the doctor’s old nag drew the wagon; and poor Lydia went to her rest beneath a simple wooden cross behind the disused sugar mill in the field beyond the kitchen garden. Her death did nothing to allay the animosity that crackled almost palpably now between the two men in the house— rather, the reverse, for William held Caesar directly responsible for the loss of his sister.

And now the story of Marmilion begins to move toward its grim, inexorable climax. Lydia’s child was christened Emily, and Camille cared for her while Caesar labored in the garden. Almost single-handedly that silent man had brought forth fruit and vegetables from the wilderness Marmilion had been at the end of the war. There were pigs now, and chickens, and a cow; and he planned soon to replant the good field beyond the sugar mill with cane. Perhaps in the closeness of his heart Caesar entertained a vision of Marmilion returned to its former glory—with himself as master. Perhaps he even shared that vision with Camille. The old doctor gives us a picture of the household in this, its last period before the tragedy, with Caesar the devoted father returning each evening from the fields to gaze with mute adoration on the coffee-colored baby Camille tended as if she were her own; while upstairs, soaking in the venom secreted by his own vile heart, William Belvedere bitterly schemed the black man’s destruction. We sometimes forget that the Creole aristocracy was descended from thieves, prostitutes, and lunatics—Parisian scum forcibly recruited to populate the colony in the reign of Louis XIV. We are about to witness the spectacle of one such aristocrat reverting to type.

(May 17, 1872)

The night was no worse than usual. I rose at eight o’clock and read two chapters in Hebrew and some Greek in Thucydides. I said my prayers and ate cake and boiled milk for breakfast. The weather was warm and sunny. I read a sermon and then took a little nap. I ate cowpeas and grits for dinner. In the afternoon I sat upon the necessary chair with scant result. I sat then upon my verandah and read a little Latin. Shortly before five o’clock I saw Caesar the Negroe coming across the fields. He walked like a sleeping man. He carried in his arms a bloody sheet that draped a corpse, and upon his back the swaddled form of his infant daughter. He entered my house without a word, and laid his burden on my table. I was forced to drive off the flies that clustered about it. It was with an exclamation of the deepest sorrow that I lifted the sheet and recognized thereunder the lifeless clay of the mistress of Marmilion. She had been dead some days. The Negroe gazed silently at his mistress for many minutes and though I ardently questioned him as to the circumstances of the tragedy he made no answer. Soon after he left my house, and I was unable to prevent his going. He made off toward the river. God help us all.

Despite the extensive searches that were mounted in the days that followed, Caesar and Emily were never found. Perhaps they got clear away, and started a new life in the North. Perhaps they were swallowed by the Mississippi.

I have no more documentary evidence to offer. What follows is the construction of a sympathetic imagination.

It began, three days earlier, in the big room at the front of the house. Caesar was working there. He was sweeping out the ashes of last night’s fire; or more probably—almost certainly—and this is a leap of the purest intuition—he was working with mortar and trowel, rebuilding the great pillar by the fireplace. William entered from the gallery with the shotgun. He stood in the doorway, and as Caesar went about his work he began to taunt him. I need not go into the precise character of his taunts; white men have been insulting black men in a manner essentially unchanged, I would guess, since—when?—Prince Henry’s African expeditions? The wars between Rome and Carthage? The neolithic revolution of 1250 B.C.? William Belvedere stood taunting Caesar with a shotgun in the crook of his arm.

Caesar ignored him. William grew excited. Caesar at last rose to his feet, and turned toward his persecutor. It was at this moment that Camille, who had heard William’s cries from upstairs, entered from the hallway. She saw her son pointing the shotgun at Caesar; and she saw Caesar standing by the broken pillar, a big man, physically strong, and unintimidated.

“Caesar!” she cried.

This is decisive. This is of crucial importance. For you see, Camille had not cried out to William to desist, to put aside the weapon; she had, instead, seen Caesar as the dangerous man, the dominant man; she had cried out to Caesar to back down, not William— and to that weak, contemptible creature this was the deepest cut of all: that even as he apparently held all the power in the situation, standing under his own roof with a shotgun pointing at a
slave,
his mother called upon the other to back down.

They both, Camille and Caesar, must have realized her mistake. Caesar stepped forward to take the gun from William; Camille darted between the two men; William, with his eyes closed, fired at his black nemesis—and his mother fell dead at his feet.

Oh, there is irony here, tragic irony; but what happened next? This is a mystery, for William, like his father, like Caesar and Emily, disappeared. They found bloodstains by the fireplace, and a discharged shotgun leaned against the wall. But they never found William.

Randolph Belvedere, in the opinion of Oscar de Trot, was killed in a duel. But what happened to William? I will tell you my conjecture. Consider: Caesar was a black nemesis, an agent of retributive justice; and he saw before him a vicious, despicable wretch, a wretch who stood for all the misery and oppression suffered by his race. That vile creature had just killed his, Caesar’s, only friend and ally; and with her had died his dream of restoring Marmilion to its former glory—with himself as master! Oh, Caesar punished William, of this I have not the slightest doubt, for I’ve had a son of my own. And he made him suffer terribly, I have no doubt of that, either. And he made certain that no one would find him, that the bloodhounds and Klansmen that took up the chase would find no trace of William Belvedere. And William’s spirit would know no rest, this was Caesar’s intention; never would he lie in the soil with his sister, never would his spirit find peace. No, William’s spirit would be trapped, it would be bricked up, to howl in endless torture in some prison of Caesar’s construction—and there, close at hand, lay the tools to do it with! This was my conjecture—that Caesar bricked him up in that pillar by the fireplace, buried him alive, upright and conscious!

Maybe he chained him up in the pillar first, so that William could watch every single brick being fitted into its allotted place. God knows, there were enough chains, and shackles, and manacles, all the grim hardware of slavery, in Marmilion to enchain an army. Or possibly he drugged him first, so that when William emerged from an opiated daze he found himself sealed up tight in his tomb. I am certain he did not kill him first. William died slowly. He deserved to.

And it took three days for the plaster to dry. I am not a superstitious woman, but this was my conjecture. I’d heard him in there, you see.

The last time I saw Marmilion I came in broad daylight; and as I emerged from the dappled shade of the oak alley, what a quiet glory the old house offered to my eye! The walls were of faded lemon-yellow, and where the plaster had crumbled the exposed brickwork was a beautiful soft red into which, in places, had seeped the grayness of moss. The window shutters and the railings of the galleries were a pale, weathered green; but loveliest of all was the woodwork of the entablature atop the pillars, which had been painted first sky-blue, then pink, then given a final wash of lavender such that it flushed in the sunshine with a delicate, roseate glow. No stone or metal, I now noticed, had been used in the construction of the house; entirely built of brick and timber, and lately touched by the encroaching vegetation, it rose from the soil, so it seemed, organically; and I was awed that despite the heat and damp of the semitropical climate, despite the ravages of neglect, and looting, and war, it yet retained in its decadence such dignity and strength.

I entered. The years had been less kind to Marmilion’s interior. No line was straight; everything sagged and crumbled, and the walls were scabrous with mold, for the rainfall had loosened both plaster and woodwork. I realized, as I picked my way through the ruined rooms, that only the brickwork had resisted the damp. The two great chimneys rose through the structure like a pair of stanchions, or spines.

There were twenty-eight pillars girdling Marmilion, Corinthian pillars with fluted columns of plastered brick and elaborate, leafy capitals. The interior pillars echoed the design, even to the acanthus-leaf motif on the capitals. They were beautiful objects; it was a shame to destroy even one of them.

It was a day’s work with crowbar and hammer to hack and claw that pillar by the fireplace to pieces. But finally I did it, and I found my skeleton. It was beautifully preserved, with not a bone out of place; it was delicate, fragile, white as china; but it was not the skeleton of William Belvedere. Perhaps, once again, I’d exercised too much sympathetic imagination. You see, what I’d found was the tiny, perfect skeleton—of a spider monkey.

Entanked in the ill-lit mood lounge of an East Village nightclub called Babylonia, a sleek green lizard with a crest of fine spines and a bright ruff under its throat gazed unblinking into the glassy eyes of Lily de Villiers. Lily peered back and tapped the tank with a talonlike fingernail. On the couch beneath the video screen Dicky Dee languidly eyed young Gunther, who wore only purple lederhosen and had a magnificent physique. Dicky himself was in plastic sandals, khaki shorts, Hawaiian shirt, and white pith helmet.

“Lily,” he murmured.

The lizard didn’t move, and nor did Lily.

“Lily.”

“Oh, what?”

“Fix me a drink, sweetie.”

It was late afternoon, the club was empty, and the bar was open. Lily straightened up and wobbled over on heels like needles. As she reached for the vodka, Dicky’s eyes wandered back to young Gunther’s pectorals. Upstairs a telephone rang. The air conditioner was humming. It was summer, and no one was in town. Then Lily screamed.

“Oh, good God, what is it?” exclaimed Dicky.

Lily was staring at something in the sink. She picked it up gingerly, then screamed again and flung it on the bar.

“It’s real!” she cried.

“What is?” said Dicky, gazing at the ceiling.

“It’s a—hand!”

A faint gleam appeared in Dicky Dee’s eyes. “A hand?” he murmured, rising from the couch.

The mood lounge was a long room with a low ceiling and no windows. The bar occupied one end and there was a stuffed ostrich at the other. A few tables and chairs were scattered about the floor. In the permanent gloom one did not notice that the paint was peeling and the linoleum cracking; for usually the place was full of decadent types gossiping in blase tones about drugs, love, and disease. But this was the afternoon; it was summertime; and they were the only ones in there.

Dicky peered at the thing on the bar. It was indeed a hand. The skin was pale, with fine black hairs on the back and, oddly enough, the palm. The blood on the stump was black, and congealed, though the fingernails were nicely trimmed. Dicky looked from Lily to Gunther and back to the hand. Tittering slightly, he took the cigarette from his mouth and put it between the fingers.

“Oh, Dicky!” cried Lily, turning away. “How could you? It might be someone we know.”

“True,” said Dicky, taking back his cigarette. “Anyway, you need a lung to smoke. Let’s go and tell Yvonne. Maybe it’s Yvonne’s hand.”

Yvonne was in charge of bookings, and could be found in the office at this time of day. When Lily and Dicky came in, he was peering anxiously at a calendar covered with illegible scrawls and mumbling into a phone squashed between ear and shoulder. They could see immediately that both his hands were firmly attached to their wrists. He raised his eyes toward the ceiling, pressed his lips together, and pulled his mouth into a long sagging line of weary resignation. With his off-white mohawk tumbling in disarray about his ears, he looked, thought Dicky, rather like a sheep.

“I’m going to put you on hold, Tony,” he said. “Something’s come up.” He hung up.

“Come downstairs, darling,” said Dicky Dee. “You need a drink.” Yvonne glanced at Lily’s face. Why was the girl so pale? It was rather becoming. He rose from his desk like a man in pain and ran a thin bejeweled hand through his hair. “I think I do,” he said. Down they went then, Yvonne and Dicky in front, and Lily tottering behind them.