The difference between yourself and a nigger, Mssr. LeVertier, is the sum of a single molecule.
I thought at first he hadn’t heard me. He stared down at the topmost sheet, the one that outlined my methods and my protocols. The idea came to me that perhaps I hadn’t spoken it aloud, and I had just opened my mouth as wide as I could get it when he said—:
This is what you’ve been about, then, all this time? This is the result of your first term at our academy? His black eyes dug into the paper.
Mssr. LeVertier—
What molecule?
A decatomic protein, I said. The wildness came on as I said it. C2H2Fl3O1N2. The most beautiful compound I have ever seen.
Preposterous! he muttered. But a hum came out of him regardless. The crease of his lips was peaked and white. It twitched at both its ends.
Where did you find it, Mssr. Trist, if I may pry? May I ask you to reveal so much? His eyes were full upon me now and I could not stomach them. Kindly remove your eyes from me, sir, I howled, but again he did not hear. Did he?
In the blood, I suppose? Is that it? In suspension?
It was all I could do. Not blood, I said. Not blood at all.
What’s that? he said. Not blood? He was white all over. Speak up, little Asa. Speak. Have you forgotten already? Forgotten how?
Skin, I spat out, the sound cotillioning in my mouth. In the skin the skin the skin.
He went quiet as a pond. In the skin, he said. The wildness had gone from one breath to the next and I felt undressed and afraid. Please, Mssr. LeVertier, I said.
His eyes were gone already. They could barely stand to look. They wandered from my hands to my smock to the microscope to the bottles ranged transparently behind me. The bottles! I must get his eyes away from them.
Look here, Mssr. LeVertier, I said. I pulled the top sheet from my notes. Underneath lay my first sketch of the decatom. I coaxed his eyeballs down to it.
Merely a sketch, I offered.
He took up the paper with a twitch. Blinking slowly, like a horse, he held it high above his shoulder, as a school-master would a dirty drawing—:
This is the molecule, is it? Your protein molecule? Your pigment?
I shook my head. No, sir. Not a pigment.
Not a pigment, Mssr. Trist? What, then, would you have it be?
I said nothing for a goodly while. I took a breath—:
His mark.
His mark, Horseface repeated. He lowered the paper. Whose?
G*d’s, I answered. Stamped in Moses’ time onto the flesh of his chosen peoples. The niggers and the Jews.
He laid the paper daintily on the table.
You see God in this, do you, you baboon?
It represents the Passion, I said. I spoke slowly and carefully, so that he might follow. Christ’s quartered host, superimposed over the Doric crucifix. It’s been tipped to one side, as you can see—: He is about to be taken down from the cross.
He was smitten. In others words, then, Mssr. Trist—
In other words, sir, He is dead already. I paused, seeing that he was not yet satisfied. I said—: Do you see now, Professor? Science and Heaven do agree.
Science? he said, staring down at the desk. Science taught you this?
G*d taught it to me, Mssr. Horsepiss, I answered, and gave a little bow.
Abduction from the Seraglio
I CAME BACK FROM MEMPHIS A KILLER THRICE OVER, Virgil says. And I had one murder in me yet.
I arrived at 37 alone, off a stern-wheeler bound for Baton Rouge. My idea was to kill Morelle at the next of our match-and-candle sessions — kill him quickly and with a minimum of fuss — and go straight to Clementine with the news. I truly believed that I could do this—: I’d just put a bullet in his double, after all.
But Morelle was a far cry from Morris Barker. For six days he showed no inclination toward a reading, and I never once caught him unattended. South Carolina had just announced its secession, and his thoughts turned upon this fact like wool upon a spool. I grew more and more restless, more impatient to see Clementine—; on the seventh day I found I could wait no longer. I boarded the next down-river steamer, a new boat christened the Hyapatia Lee, though Morelle himself cautioned me that my old rival Lieutenant Beauregard was on it. The date was December 27, 1860.
As there was no hope of avoiding the lieutenant for the duration of the trip, I resolved to seek him out at once. With his uniform and moustaches he was an easy mark—: I found him reclining like Caesar Augustus on a divan in the front saloon, following a game of faro at a nearby table with the bashful fascination of a child. His hair was now distinguished by a romantic sprinkling of gray—; his eyes had a melancholy satisfaction to them. The port wine he sipped was evidently to his liking. He looked at me blankly when I greeted him, then broke into a pearly-toothed grin, clapped me on the shoulder, and motioned to the bar-boy for another glass.
“Lay down your burden, brother!” he said, patting the cushion next to him. “How long has it been? Four years? Six? Aren’t you surprised to see me?”
“I’d heard you might be on this boat,” I said.
Beauregard squinted back at me with genuine wonder. “How, by god?”
“I’m not the Redeemer’s only opera-glass, Lieutenant.”
This half-hearted joke was lost on him, of course. He regarded me soberly for an instant, then replied—: “Either Morelle’s hoo-doo works better than I’ve credited, or the Trade’s grown even bigger than I thought. I myself didn’t know that I was going to be on this boat, Mr. Ball, until five o’clock this morning.” He pushed the bottle toward me.
“What are we drinking to, Lieutenant?”
His air of satisfied stolidity returned. “You knew I was going to be on this boat, sirrah, and yet you ask me that?”
I poured myself a glassful, took a good-sized sip — it was really very fine — and felt suddenly inspired. Only one thing could have put him in such high spirits. “To your promotion?”
“You’re a sly old toad, and no mistake!” Beauregard crowed, striking me between the shoulder-blades three times in quick succession, as though I was choking on a giblet. He seemed to remember me as his dearest, truest comrade—; and I was disinclined, just then, to set him straight. I detected the Redeemer’s hand, clear as heat lightning, behind Beauregard’s turn of fortune. Perhaps I’d discover something I could use.
I drained my glass and the lieutenant refilled it at once. This, it was evident, was not the afternoon’s first bottle—; it was safe to assume that the promotion had been a large one. I wondered which wires Morelle had tugged upon, and precisely which advantages he stood to draw. War between the states — the possibility of war — was at the bottom of it, that much I knew. It had been his sole obsession the last few months.
We drank to one another’s health. “It must be quite an advancement, Lieutenant, if they’re calling you all the way to New Orleans,” I offered.
Beauregard held up a crack-nailed finger. “Not New Orleans,” he said. “I’m off to Charleston in the morning—; to the battery in Charleston harbor. And guess why I’ve been sent for, Mr. Ball.” He scratched his head thoughtfully, as though trying to work out a sum. “Guess in what capacity.”