The Bride of Texas, page 37
“But Uncle Amos was all for it.”
“And she was too?” asked Kristuvek. “That cousin of yours?”
“She went nuts” said Lusk. “When she died, Brown married again.”
“Look,” said Padecky, “the only soldier was your great-great-great-grandfather, and you’re just a common busboy at the Swan Hotel.”
“I’m a waiter already,” protested Lusk.
“Busboy or waiter,” declared Padecky, “you’re still no soldier.”
“But it’s in our blood,” Lusk insisted. “Uncle Amos came to America on the same ship as Jakub Benjamin, a Jew from Prague who joined Brown in Kansas and fought beside him in a battle against Kentucky slave-owners!”
“A Jew?” Kafka piped up. “Jews don’t fight battles.”
“In America they do. Everything is possible in America,” said Lusk. “They say there were three of them with Brown. Somebody called Weiner — he was older and fat; and then Gustav Bondy — he was supposed to be from Prague too. He was the wildest of them all. He even fought Kossuth in the revolution in ’48.”
“Do you by any chance happen to be a Jew?” Kafka asked darkly.
“Why?”
“Because you keep going on about having things in your blood!”
But before Lusk could deny it, Padecky asked, “Did your Uncle Amos do any soldiering with them three Jews under Brown?”
“Well, no,” admitted Lusk, “he just knew them. Well, at least he knew Benjamin. They were on the same ship.”
“So what exactly have you got in your blood?” Padecky was getting mad again. “Was your Uncle Amos a soldier with Brown or wasn’t he?”
“No, but my aunt baked bread for him.”
Molly Kakuska walked into the pub with Schroeder.
“Why?” asked Slavik.
“Because he loved it,” said Lusk. “It was rye bread with caraway seeds, like they make in South Bohemia. Brown couldn’t get enough of it.”
“Oh, so this is where you all are!” said Molly Kakuska. “I’ve been waiting for you an hour in the hall —”
“That’s how Auntie snared him,” Lusk went on. “It was on account of that bread he married my cousin Dianthe. She wasn’t much to look at.”
“You’re all supposed to be in the Readers’ Circle,” said Molly.
“Let us alone, girl,” said Padecky. “We’re dealing with more important matters.” He turned to Lusk. “Look here, if it’s bread-baking you’ve got in your blood, you can be chief cook and bottle-washer if you want. But commanding us just because your uncle was buddy-buddy with some Jew from Prague who says he fought under Brown in Kentucky — I’d have to see it to believe it! What we need is somebody who knows what the hell they’re doing, not some busboy whose great-great-great-great-grandfather croaked on White Mountain!”
“We missed our chance,” said Shake later. “We could have had a commander with a direct line to the famous John Brown. Instead we picked a Slovak, a Hungarified one at that, who worked as a valet to Dr. Walenta, who was a Germanized Czech who made his reputation in Chicago as a skinflint on the insurance company’s side, fixing the entitlements of the crippled workers in that big train wreck in ’58.”
“That’s what I said, you had a valet for a commander,” said Houska.
“Geza was about as much a valet as you are a —” Shake couldn’t think of an adequate comparison.
“Me, I’m never any different,” said Houska. “Call me an ordinary farmer.”
“That’s it. That’s exactly what Geza said: he was never any different,” said Shake. “He was a soldier, first and last. Even in Chicago, when he dressed up in tails and held the door open for Dr. Walenta’s classy patients.” And he went on to quote Molly Kakuska’s reply.
“More important matters? Is bending your elbow more important?” she said, pointing to the empty beer steins that were banned at the Readers’ Circle.
“We’re drinking for courage, girl,” declared Padecky, who was undergoing an opportunistic change of opinion. “There’s going to be a war.”
“Jesus in Heaven!” exclaimed Molly.
“Was sagt er?” Schroeder wanted to know what he was saying.
“There’s going to be a war!” Shake translated into German for him.
“Well, I should hope so,” replied Schroeder in German.
“Jesus in Heaven!” repeated Molly.
They told Schroeder what their meeting was about, and the Prussian immediately offered to command them. Kafka said it wouldn’t be possible.
“Warum nicht?”
“Because we’re going to call ourselves the Slavonic Rifle Company.”
“We’re going to have red trousers,” Kyspersky interjected.
That was when Schroeder told them about Mihalotzy, Dr. Walenta’s valet. He wasn’t certain whether the man was a Slovak or a Hungarian, just as he didn’t know if Dr. Walenta was a Czech or a German. But they were both Austrians, he was sure of that.
“Are you hanging about with that Hun?” Shake asked Molly after the meeting.
“I don’t hang about with anybody, Mr. Schweik,” declared Molly. “He just keeps coming around, and besides, Franta went to Cedar Rapids for potatoes.”
“Does Schroeder come around when Franta is home?”
“Well, he can’t then,” said Molly, blushing.
Schroeder walked over to them and Shake backed off with a touch of regret in his heart.
“Poor Franta,” said Stejskal.
“Did she marry Schroeder?” asked Paidr. A cannon boomed from the direction of Bentonville. The sergeant couldn’t shake his ominous thoughts.
“No, she didn’t. She married Franta Kouba. But he was taken prisoner at Chancellorsville and died in Andersonville,” said Stejskal. “I was there with him. I got exchanged, but by that time Franta was dead. I had the sad duty of telling Molly.”
“What happened to Schroeder?” asked Paidr.
“He’s fighting with Sigel, as far as I know,” said Stejskal. “At least that’s what he said. Except that Sigel hasn’t been in action for a long time, not since he got knocked on his backside by those cadets from the Virginia Academy.”
“And Schroeder?” asked Paidr.
“What makes you so interested?” asked Javorsky. “You got eyes for the young widow Kouba?”
“She must be worth the sinning,” Paidr said, “from the way Shake talks about her!”
“Yes, well, there’ll be no sinning with her, brother,” Shake sighed. “Not for me, anyway.”
“Maybe there will be, now she’s a widow,” said Houska. “Widows are easier.”
“What do you know about it, farm-boy?” Javorsky said.
“Nothing,” said Houska. “That’s what they say.”
The sergeant looked at Salek and saw Salek looking at him. But Salek had never found out about the moonlit night the sergeant had spent with his wife. Salek had been dead drunk that night and the sergeant had left early the next morning. Salek had finally caught Vlasta in flagrante with the priest of the Polish Church of the Immaculate Conception, and the only reason he didn’t cause a scandal in the Church was that Vlasta agreed to divorce him. Salek took his place in Chicago history as the first Czech to divorce his wife. Cup entrusted little Annie to the Kakuskas to raise, and joined Lincoln’s Slavonic Rifles on their way to the battlefield at Perryville. Vlasta became a waitress in the fancy Swan Hotel and continued to sin against the fifth and ninth commandments.
Salek dropped his gaze. A horse neighed. A shooting star streaked across the North Carolina sky.
“No, friends, it will never happen,” said Shake. “But how could a man hold himself back in the presence of such beauty?”
He went on to describe the second slap in the face Molly had given him — when he tried to steal a kiss from her that night in the dance hall on the corner of Van Buren and Canal, because she looked so beautiful in the costume the ladies had made for the Ladies’ Circle Ball to raise money for the Slavonic Rifles’ red trousers; Molly’s dress was pink with a blue-trimmed white apron and a blue ribbon around the waist.
“Why didn’t the women just make the trousers for you and be done with it?” asked Javorsky.
“You can’t deny a woman the pleasure of dressing up,” said Shake.
“Was it you going to war or was it the women?”
“Nobody much figured on a war,” explained Shake. “By that time the Slavonic Rifles had fifty members, and we thought that once we had the red trousers we could draw another fifty to the Union cause and then we’d have enough for a whole company. Mihalotzy even had a Hungarian colonel take a letter to Lincoln asking the president’s permission to use his name.”
“So Mihalotzy was actually a Slovak?” said Salek.
“I don’t know and I don’t think he really did either. More than anything he was a soldier, eager to get fighting, and it’s like they say — as ye sow, so shall ye reap.…”
“Was he killed?”
“At Buzzard Roost Gap, in the spring of ‘64,” said Shake. “He was in command of Hecker’s Twenty-fourth Illinois. I wasn’t with them any more. He was a real hit at the Ladies’ Circle dance, though. He charmed them with the way he spoke Slavic. That whole night it was ladies’ choice.”
As soon as Dinah stepped into the parlour with the brandy on a tray, she noticed the mesmerizing effect Lida’s braids had on Étienne. She also noticed the girl’s brother looking at her, but she was used to glances from white boys. As the buggy was leaving, she waited in the shadows on the veranda. Étienne stood there waving, and he was still standing there long after the buggy was just a cloud of dust dissipating in the moonlight. Finally he turned and walked past her into the house. He stopped in the doorway and turned back to her. “Not tonight,” he said softly. “I’m not —” He hesitated. “Not tonight.”
There probably won’t be a little house in Austin, she thought. The Louisiana fiancée will have a different kind of competition now. She sighed.
Early the next morning Étienne left the house, but he came back before noon and locked himself in his room. That evening Gideon rode off into the setting sun with a letter fixed with a big red seal.
“No more jassing about for you,” Benjamin teased. They were in the kitchen. “Young massa’s in heat for somebody else.”
“At least I’ll get some rest,” she snapped.
That night she stayed in the cabin with her family. But the next day — the evening following the afternoon that young Towpelick brought Étienne a letter without a seal on it — Étienne told her, “Come tonight.”
Was he in heat? Was Miss Blue-eyes the cause?
Early in the morning after that fateful afternoon, Étienne appeared at the Toupeliks’ farm with a bouquet. Standing in the doorway, Cyril could see the patch of purple flowers approaching on horseback along the path between the cotton-fields.
“We have a visitor. I wonder who he is?” he teased Lida, who was on her way back from putting a bucket of fresh milk in the pantry.
“My husband,” his little sister replied as she passed him. “Look after him while I change!” And she was gone.
“Who did you say?” he called after her, but she didn’t reply.
Étienne reined up his horse in front of the house, wished him a good morning, and said, “Is Miss Linda at home?”
“My sister will be right out,” said Cyril. He wondered about asking casually after the girl who combined all the beauties of both worlds, but he couldn’t think of a way. Lida emerged from the house as pretty as a picture in her Sunday best. Étienne climbed down from his horse. He was amazingly nimble for a man with a wooden leg. Cyril now understood what his sister had said.
“I need to ride out to the Ribordeaux place this afternoon,” Cyril said in an offhand tone next morning, after the Negro had delivered them the letter with the red seal. “Do you have a message I should pass on to somebody?” And he grinned.
Lida looked him square in the eye. “No, I don’t have a message. But you could take him a letter.”
“Do you want me to check it for mistakes?”
“No, mistakes don’t matter. The more the better.”
He could see how she was playing Étienne. She was far more calculating than she had been back home. She was an exotic blossom for de Ribordeaux. She knew the impact of braids and bows and charming blunders in English. She had stuck the flowers in a pitcher of water and put them on a windowsill decorated with pictures of doves and four-leaf clovers. That was all she could draw, but it was enough.
She ran off and returned with a letter. It didn’t have a seal, of course, and the stationery came from her father’s supply, brought from the old country. Once every three months, he would write a letter home saying how well they were doing in America.
“Give him this.”
He made a face at her again and said, “Your husband?” He glanced pointedly at little Deborah, who was playing on the doorstep with the kittens.
“Just you wait and see!” she hissed. He saw the same fire in her eyes that he had seen when the old veteran had brought her home from Amberice. “That won’t matter at all,” she said. “And you stay out of it!”
“I hope you’re right,” he said. “But I wonder.”
The fire faded from her eyes. “It’s worse for you, Cyril.” She smiled, without a hint of rancour. “And how come you need to ride to the Ribordeaux place today?”
He felt embarrassed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Of course you do. I’m not blind. And I wish you well, big brother. But this is Texas —” She laughed and ran back inside.
He was furious with her, but gradually he calmed down. What if she was right?
The door to the plantation house behind the bougainvillea was opened by Benjamin, though Cyril didn’t know his name yet. “No, massa’s gone to New Orleans this morning. Oh, you mean Massa Étienne? Massa Étienne’s in the summer-house out back.” Benjamin took the letter.
“I’ll wait for a reply.”
She slipped quietly into the front hall, holding a duster made of rooster feathers as if it were a sceptre. An African princess. She gave him a broad white smile.
“Good morning, miss,” he said.
She looked around, but they were alone. She looked into his eyes. Perhaps he came from a country with black countesses. “You calling me ‘miss’?”
“Well,” he said, “you’re too young for me to call ma’am.”
She laughed, and jiggled the feather duster under her nose. She sneezed.
“Could I —” he said, “could we meet sometime, miss?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you want to?”
She shook her head. “It’s not that. It depends on —”
“On what?”
A clock chimed the hour, as pleasant as the sound of music in the night. A door opened and the sun cast a limping shadow on the white stone hall floor. The man with the wooden leg was walking through the doorway, reaching out to shake his hand. The princess with the rooster-feather sceptre vanished into the labyrinth of the big house.
“It was so kind of you to go to the trouble,” the man was saying. “I do appreciate it. But I can’t ask you to —”
Instead of finishing his sentence he ushered Cyril into a room he knew already — the naked goddess on the seashell hanging over the fireplace and, on the walls, portraits of ancestors in lace and velvet and pearls and shiny buckles and gleaming belts, pearl earrings worn by women as pink as dolls, and paintings of fleshy-faced men and women whom the artist had rendered with much less care than their finery. Étienne invited Cyril to sit in a Louis XIV armchair, though Cyril didn’t know this, and opened a carved humidor to offer him a cigar Cyril knew was from Cuba. It was long and fat, with a straw down the centre so the smoke was always fresh, unfiltered by the tobacco which would otherwise have spoiled the taste as the cigar burned down. Mr. Carson smoked the same cigars and offered them to guests as well, though from a more modest humidor.
“I’ve heard that Mr. Carson has put two servants at your father’s disposal. The manufacture of oil from cotton seeds genuinely interests us,” Étienne said, broaching a subject he wasn’t the least bit interested in. He asked how soon Mr. Towpelick might be able to set up a similar plant on the de Ribordeaux plantation. The smoke from the two cigars mingled with the fragrance of verbena, which reminded Cyril of the perfume Dinah had been wearing.
“A month or two, as I said.”
“I’m also interested in your ideas about our system of servitude. True, our opinions differ —” He paused to inhale some smoke and think a bit. “Well, at least we differ in part,” Étienne continued. “Yes, I’d truly enjoy discussing it with you, and other things as well. But next time, have your sister use one of the servants at her disposal. Or have her tell Benjamin to wait for her reply, or have him come for it. That would save you the trouble.”
Another pause. Wisps of pure, unfiltered smoke rose to caress the fleshy cheek on one of the portraits, then drifted across a gloomy canvas where names and dates, written in gold and framed in decorative little boxes, represented the de Ribordeaux family tree.
“Our mansion was in the Department of the Seine,” Étienne told her. “After St. Bartholomew’s Day my great-grandfather had to leave. He ended up in Louisiana.”
“Miss Hortense had a novel about that,” said Dinah.
By then, the man with the wooden leg knew that his golden-brown girl could read French. He saw her differently now than he had the first or second time she had come to him. He was no longer giving her orders. She was the one who asked, “Do you want me to, massa?”
One day he said, “I don’t want you to call me massa!”
“What should I call you?”
“Étienne.”
“Massa Étienne?” she said.
“No! Just Étienne!”
So, from then on, he was Étienne.
“Our line,” he said, “goes back uninterrupted to the fifteenth century, and there it fades into the dawn of history.”
“Mine fades into the dawn of history too,” she replied, relishing the phrase, “starting with my mother. I don’t know who my father is.”
