Rebels of Babylon (43 page)

“You lied to me,” I said.

He smiled indulgently. “Now, you’re just heated up. You know that isn’t true. I won’t deny a certain amount of … of going at things roundabout. But a man takes the course he thinks best and—”

“Had you spoken to me forthrightly, many lives would have been saved.”

Constantine, the servant who seemed the chief of the lot, never flinched. Of course, that is the servant’s proper attitude. Mr. Champlain paid the fellow no regard, either. Nor did he allow the reappearance of Simon-Peter with a tray of food and drink to interdict the flow of our conversation.

“Well, now … I’d say you’re assuming a great deal, sir, a great deal. I knew some things. Didn’t know others. But I did have the sense to point you where you needed to go. I will accept that blame,
cher,
if blame has to fall upon my head. Don’t be shy now, have a little feed. You won’t get
beignets
like that the other side of Canal Street, let alone back up North. Men eat together, they can hold on to their civility that much easier. Simon-Peter, if that coffee’s not warm enough for the major, you go on down and get us up another pot.”

The servant poured, the coffee steamed. I drank.

“I was saying, Major Jones … you’ve been in this city long enough to know that nobody knows everything. Damnation, none of us even know half of what we think we do. Five men living along Villere going to give you six different answers, you ask them a simple question. Been living here all my life and I don’t know the half.”

“You used me.”

He frumped his grandly padded chin and nodded. Flesh rippled downward. “Now, that’s another thing entirely,
cher.
Acourse I used you. I won’t deny it. And you used me. Didn’t you? We enjoyed ourselves a transaction of mutual benefit. That’s the thing you have to understand about us down here … we take it for granted that life is made up of using other people. Instead of being hypocrites about it, we put some manners on it. Try to do it gracefully, if not graciously. Folks down here have realistic expectations of their fellow man. Say nothing of their fellow woman.” He grinned, with a dough-ball suspended before his mouth. “You got what you wanted. Now, didn’t you?”

Yes, I had gotten what I wanted. But I had not wanted it to be gotten so.

He barely chewed the treat, but swallowed eagerly. His breast was littered with crumbs and dusted with sugar.

He touched the corner of his mouth with a napkin. Which was not immaculate.

“That’s the thing about New Orleans, now. It’s a
generous
city. Give you what you want before you hardly know to ask for it. Trouble is, acourse, that many a man wants a number of things that aren’t particularly good for him. And those sorts of things are a New Orleans specialty.” He lofted another ball of dough. Indeed, they were so light they almost floated. Only the snow of sugar weighed them down. “Like these
beignets
here. Delicious. And bad for you in just about every way there is. But New Orleans is going to give you all of them you want. Yes, sir. Unto a surfeit, Major Jones. Unto a surfeit …”

He ate and smiled. A dab of powdery sugar adhered to his nose. “Many’s the man who leaves us sadder, but wiser.” He dusted himself with his napkin again and added, “I’d say, you should be a happy man,
cher.
You’re getting up from the table with all your winnings. Seems to me, our fair city’s been good to you.”

“Do you know what happened on the river today?”

“No. And I don’t want to know. See, now. I collect facts. It’s like collecting buttons. You don’t have to do a thing with ’em, you don’t want to. Facts are no bother. But too much outright knowledge makes a man uncomfortable. Simon-Peter, the major looks to me to want more coffee. And the truth is, I’m going to be cautious around you from now on. Careful as a poor relation in the visiting parlor. I didn’t take you for a fool. I’m not this old for nothing. But I will admit to misapprehending the degree of your cleverness.”

He smiled again, for that was his natural state, no matter the emotional climate. “Oh, it’s another failing of ours, you won’t have to draw a pistol to get me to admit it. No, sir. We all think we’re just clever as old Talleyrand, Fouché and Marie the butcher’s wife all balled up into one. Truth is that we’re not so much clever as intricate. This is an
intricate
city. To the outsider, it passes for a clever one. But that’s only because it has more layers than a twenty-dollar whore has petticoats. We make passing the time of day as slow and complicated as an audience with Louis XIV. Damnation, now, we were clever we never would have mixed ourselves up in this fool’s war.”

He would have talked all night, if I had let him. Talked, but said nothing. Along with food, talk was his remaining joy.

“And Miss Peabody? Can you say that you did not lie about her? With your suggestions that she … misbehaved?”

“Oh, now. I was only describing the possible avenues of behavior open to the ladies here in New Orleans. I spoke philosophically.”

“You implied she was a … that she was given over to immorality.”

“Did I? I don’t recall exactly. Acourse, we may have different understandings of immorality. If you mean that I suspected her of a less than perfect decorum by
your
standards …”

“Admit that you blackened her name. By suggestion.”

He began to find me tiresome. His smile failed. “Major Jones … has anybody ever told you that there are things in this
life you really don’t want to know? Has anyone ever whispered that in your ear? Have they, now? As for Miss Peabody, the truth is that none of us will ever know everything that happened—or that didn’t happen—with the doors shut and the shutters closed up tight. But never underestimate the appetite of the female. Pretend she is a doll, and she’ll devour you.”

“That is no answer.”

“See, now. You know what the difference is between a handsome woman and a plain one? Besides the obvious? It’s just this,
cher:
the beauty gets to take her pick of follies. But the plain girl has to seize the folly that’s offered her. She may never get another chance.”

“Not all women choose folly. Do not judge the female race by Mrs. Aubrey.”

His smile returned, but now it was a small thing. “I knew we were coming around to her.”

“Was she the doll who devoured you?”

He laughed and slapped his girth. “Does it look like any woman on earth could swallow me up?”

His laughter had a brittle, desperate sound.

“You said yourself,” I reminded him, “that the people of New Orleans are endlessly curious. But curiosity is not a local matter. I am curious, too. I like a story that has a proper ending. Tell me about Mrs. Aubrey and I will go.”

He twisted his mouth like a rag that wanted wringing. But he did not answer.

“Why did you bring her down after all these years?” I demanded. “How many was it? Forty?”

“Forty-two.”

“You waited forty-two years for a lover’s revenge?”

His eyes hunted down the pink swells of his cheeks. “Nothing’s ever quite that simple. Yes, I waited. But I didn’t know exactly what I was waiting for. Until she began her business with the negroes. Selling them back into slavery. Yes, sir, I knew about that. Didn’t take Descartes to figure it out. I knew that much, I admit it. And it offended me,
cher.
It offended me to a
degree you will not credit. Because you know only a little of me.” He smiled again, almost merrily. “And I’m a big man, as you can see. Based on size alone, I take some getting to know.”

“She broke your heart?”

He let those words sink through the floor until their echo seemed dead and forgotten. Then he surprised me with the smallness of his new voice. “I broke my own heart. Fool that I was. God knows what she told you herself … Jane Aubrey does like to rearrange things. Fact is, yes, I loved that woman. But I
chose
to do so. At first. I loved the idea of loving a married woman—she was just a few years off the boat from England. Yes, sir. The much-heralded English rose. Her mother had married a New Orleans man—second marriage—and she brought Jane along. Married her off, quick as could be, to Gene Charboneaux. Not a bad man. And not a good man. Crooked as Satan in a poker game, but he had the gift of making himself good company. Even while he stole you blind. Told myself I would rescue that damsel from a thief and a liar. And I failed to understand that I was turning myself into a liar and a thief. I pursued her, Major Jones. I don’t deny it. But, frankly, it wasn’t much of a hunt.”

He looked at me with flesh-smothered eyes. “Truth is, she
wasn’t
a beauty. Though she had a little something. By God, I swear I didn’t see it coming. Just thought I was in for a little dalliance, something out of a book. But once I got the ball in play, Jane took over the game.
She
fell in love with me. Like the lash of a whip and the burning of the flames. So wild it frightened me. I’d just been playing,
cher.
But she raised the stakes higher than I knew they could go.”

He scratched an ear with the quick strokes employed by a hound. “Oh, I’d filled her up with all sorts of crazy, romantic tales. I was in love with romance,
cher …
much more so than with any flesh-and-blood woman. Told her I was going to carry her off to South America, set up a kingdom amid the revolutions, make her a queen. Child’s nonsense. Silliness, and nothing but. Just me talking for the sound of my own voice. But Jane hung on every word.”

He twitched at a sharp-edged memory. “I got what I wanted, Major Jones. Yes, I did. That’s the tragedy of it. I got what I wanted. Once in my life. And it ruined my life. Thing is, once … once she gave herself to me … once it wasn’t a fine dream anymore, but something real and mean around the edges of all that glory …
then
she started closing herself off. She was the romantic one, see. I was play-acting, but she was the real article. The romantic kind that prefers a dream to imperfect flesh and blood, to sweat and bone. I didn’t see it coming, not for an instant. Once she made me truly fall in love with her, so hard it was like being smashed on rocks every minute of the day … once that happened, she slammed her door in my face. Said she couldn’t love me, after all. That what happened between us was only ’a little error of the heart,’ as the French say. That she had a husband, responsibilities. All the things women say when the truth is impossible.”

He twitched again. “Poor Gene Charboneaux had a miserable end. Miserable. I wasn’t the only one, you see. Just the first. Far as I know. But, God almighty, I did love that woman. Ruined my life.”

His eyes were no longer with me. “I have many failings,
cher.
Vices in the multitudes. But I never could quite destroy what I felt for that woman. Nothing like her. Nothing on earth, or in Heaven. Scorch you like the fires of Hell, then just get up and walk away.”

He took up a ball of dough, then set it down again, untasted. “Talking immortal love, until she had you convinced, until you believed it yourself. Then, once she had you on your knees, she’d just walk away. Counting her money. Only thing she ever really loved, I do believe. Maybe it was the only thing she trusted.” Muddling layers of chin, he shook his head. “Couldn’t kill it, what I felt for her. Just couldn’t kill it. So I never married. Just could not do a thing that cruel to another woman. Not that it doesn’t happen all the time. But I claim my own peculiar sense of honor. Might even say I cling to it. Thought Jane might marry me after old Gene was gone, but I never even got to ask
her. She married that poor fool Aubrey before Gene was half-way in the ground. Richest fool that ever sailed up this river. Killed him, too. Acourse, he was a sailor and the Lord knows what he brought to the marriage bower. Besides his money. God knows, that woman loves money. I hope to God, I pray to God, she’s found out just how much good it does a body.”

Although it all sounded a terrible muck to me—and I could not think nice thoughts of Mrs. Aubrey—we are made to engage our fellow man, to offer comfort.

I said, “The queer thing, Mr. Champlain, is that she loves you. Even now. But you must know that.”

I was not prepared for the outburst. Bricks shook and mortar crumbled.

“Then why didn’t she come away with me, the damned whore?
”

I had to let the air calm. Twas acrid as the smell of exploded gun-powder.

He wept before me, an old, misshapen man. Shedding tears in front of his servants, which I do not think is done.

“I would’ve taken her to the ends of the earth! To Heaven or Hell. Instead, she ruined our lives. It was stubbornness. Nothing but damned stubbornness. And fear. She was afraid of love, when it came back at her. Didn’t trust it. That’s the sin and the shame of it. She didn’t trust love. Only money.”

“This very night,” I said, still hoping to soothe him, “I saw her cling to your portrait.”

He looked at me as if I understood nothing, and never would.

“It’s easier to love a portrait than a man,” he said.

I COULD NOT sort it out and no longer wished to. I took me back to my hotel and slept. Doubtless snoring like Mr. Irving’s Dutchman.

Is anything more tangled up than love? At times, I think it is our greatest blessing. Then I see it wielded as a curse.

We are strange beasts. After the day and night I had passed, you would have thought me fated for mad nightmares. Perhaps
of my mother, or of my loss in India. Of burning men, of Hell, of spoiled lives. But after saying my prayers and giving my face a wash, I slept as soundly as a babe on laudanum.

A knock upon the door of my room awakened me. Twas a bell clerk, sent from below. He bore a silver platter, upon which lay a single visiting card.

“Waiting for you down to the lobby,” the lad told me, before I even had time to read the name. “He says how I’m to ask if’n he can come up.”

The card announced H. BEYLE.

Roused from a mighty slumber, I could not place the name. I stood there in my nightshirt, trying to gain some purchase on the world, and only woke up properly when a gentleman passed and deplored my impropriety.

The insult was just, but smarted. Then I remembered the person who was H. Beyle.