“Scripture wouldn’t help you, Clementine,” the R— said. “This story was left out of the Good Book, on account of being too old-fashioned. You might say it comes from the Old Old Testament.”
I let the light from the picture fall on me. “Tell me the story,” I said.
The R— took a breath. “Nachiketa, the son of a prosperous farmer, is sent by his father as an offering to Death. Death is out when he arrives, and Nachiketa waits unattended for five days. When Death finally returns, he apologizes for his impoliteness and offers Nachiketa a boon. Nachiketa asks Death for the secret of everlasting life.”
“Is that what’s in the picture?” I asked. “Is he being told?”
The R— nodded. “Death says there are two choices open to the seeker—: to repeat this life — with all its agonies and pratfalls — in one body after another, or to renounce the pleasant for the good, vanity for the real, and thereby pass into eternity.”
I closed my eyes, trying to follow. When I opened them I said—: “Is that him? On the right?”
“Nachiketa?” the R— said. “Yes.”
“Which does he choose?”
The R— gave a laugh. “The second path, of course. Nachiketa lets all vanity fall away.” He turned his back to the bar and rested his shoulders against it. “You might say I had that window fashioned as a reminder to myself.” He brushed my cheek with the back of his hand. “Or possibly as a caution.”
I’d never before thought of the R— as having religion. “What do you mean?”
“Only that I, in my life, have never failed to prefer the pleasant to the good. The idea of repeating this existence of ours, with all its countless disappointments, is a delightful one to me. Had I been Nachiketa’s father, I’d have wished him god-speed on his voyage to eternity and drunk his health that night at the nearest house of fun.”
He tipped the lantern on its side and lit it. The window paled but it was still a glory. I looked at the R— in dim-witted wonder that he could love the pain of life so dearly, and at the same time I understood that this love was at the root of his power over Virgil, over the rest of his company, over me.
“I have need of a successor, Clementine. I may not live forever, but the Trade will—; I’m convinced of that.” He turned to me. “That’s why I take such an interest in you. In you, chère Mademoiselle, and in that babe you carry.”
I remembered now who it was beside me. I let out a bitter laugh. “Have you taken to breeding your lackeys now, Thaddeus? Aren’t you finding enough in the quimhouses and saloons?”
“Ah! Clementine.” He brought the lantern close to his face, that I might better see his eyes. They shone like candle-flames. “ This child would be no lackey. This child would be master of this country—; master of this country, and of me.”
I said nothing, only looked from his face to the beautiful window, then back to his face again.
He took me by the arm and led me out into the dust and the heat of the afternoon. I’d not been out of doors for a week and my eyes went half-blind from the daylight. I’d become happy suddenly, in spite of my anger and suspicions. It was the R—’s doing, I knew, but I didn’t care to part with it. I closed my eyes and let him lead me on.
ONCE A MONTH VIRGIL CAME BACK TO 37. After a few hours with the R— he’d be allowed to come and see me. Now that we were away from Lafargue’s — away from the red and yellow lights, away from the window and the bed — I began to see what kind of man he was. The R— helped me to see it. Virgil was kind in his way, but womanish. When he visited he’d wait till he was sure we were alone—: then he’d stammer out every possible sort of nonsense. From his talk you’d have thought that he was helpless as a child. No power, no money, no say over anything in the world. No say over the sundry burthens that he carried.
“You have the Trade, Virgil,” I’d remind him. “You left us here, with the R—, and you went away. You left us here as a down-payment.”
That stopped him in his tracks. His mouth would open and close and he’d say nothing. I’d wait for him to speak, to stand up for himself, to explain, but a box of sorts would open in my guts and I’d hear my old voice clamoring, shrieking at his averted face, ordering him to leave me. He’d go off then in a fright, pleading with me to be quiet—; or else he’d start his fool story over from the beginning. Or he’d rush up all at once and hiss into my ear—:
“I can still do it, Clem. I mean to. Once you’re in safety with the babe.”
By “it,” he meant killing the R—.
“I’m in safety now, Virgil,” I’d say, looking back at him with my eyes half-closed. I said this to punish him at first. But as the weeks went by I managed to believe it.
The days passed easier and easier. I was free to come and go as I saw fit. My body being what it was, it got harder and harder to take my strolls, but I came to know the island very well. Outside the Panama House it was men everywhere but never once did any of them so much as look at me unless I asked them a straight question. The summer was a fierce one, hot and stifling as the tongue in my mouth, but by September the hours of the day were a single gilt delight. The island ended in a narrow spit of sand and reeds and I’d lie there on my back, surprised by everything I thought. The water would rush together into a V and the sound of it would brush against me and I’d close my eyes and remember what it was like before my life, when I had no life at all, only a body, a shape like the one that was fattening itself day by day in the hollow of my belly. I knew it was the babe that kept me in the R—’s favor, the babe and nothing else, and I wished to myself that it should never be born but stay inside me always, sheltering me.
Six weeks before my time Virgil went away and stayed gone. I asked the R— what had become of him but he simply shrugged his shoulders. I’d always gotten letters from Virgil when he went off, stiff with vows and protestations—; but I seemed to have died to him now, and he to me.
The R— brought Parson to see me every day. Parson would lay a long hairy ear-lobe against my belly and whisper to me that it was to be a boy. I understood that a boy was what the R— wanted, and I set my will to it accordingly.
When my hour struck, the R— informed me, Parson was to be my nurse. “You must have a nurse, Clementine,” he said. “You can’t go birthing the little chap into your night-pot.” He smiled at me and I understood that I had to have a nurse and that the nurse I had to have was Parson. I thought of the mouse and of Parson’s downy face and I said to myself that before I’d have him as my nurse I’d have the Mississippi River. But I smiled at the R— and said that Parson was certainly very knowledgeable.
Every so often we’d have news of the war. In those first months there were hurrahs among the men at every Dixie victory, and high hopes for an autumn armistice. I’d never imagined thieves to be such patriots. The R—, of course, was not. He made a great show of support for the South, sporting a magnolia sprig on the collar of his jacket, but in private he fretted that the war might end too soon. When the tide first turned, that autumn, it was all he could do to keep from cutting capers.
One morning in mid-winter I was roused out of sleep by a chorus of yells, followed by all manner of stompings and bustlings on the stairs—: I opened my door to find the entire house filing out onto the bluff. I pulled a shift over my night-shirt and hurried after them. Not a hundred feet below us, creeping steadily up-river, were three of the most hideous monsters I had ever seen. They were as long as a house and covered in sheets of iron—; cannon stuck out of them like bristles from a sow. Each of them looked heavier than the whole D’Urberville Hotel. The men above-decks looked like maggots on a chop.