The smell of the overgrown garden was like that of a jungle or a swamp. The doughboy rang the bell one more time, fingers blotching white and red as he twisted the curlicue-ironwork stem. Then he stood back and looked toward the upper balcony, trying to see into the rooms beyond.
Some boards had rotted and a green fuzz flourished against the white paint of columns and walls. Flowers and hedges and fruit trees bristled untrimmed and scraggly. Like a tobacco-stained beard. The grass was virgin to the mower.
With a sigh, he shouldered his seabag, set his campaign cover to shade his eyes, and headed for Melancon's Saloon. It was a hot day and a dark stain like an irregular lagoon dampened the khaki shirt between the powerful muscles of his back. His uniform was irregular. He had been mustered out in transit, un-gassed, unwounded and still alive. A miracle of The Great War.
The bar was dark after the glare of the afternoon. Wood, sawdust, whiskey and last night's sloshed beer. The bar smelled like home. Larry Lejeune, civilian with still a little Army pay in his pocket, dropped his duffle to the floor and put his boot up to the brass rail. He plopped the campaign cover to the bar and felt coolness where the sweatband had been.
"The soldier Lejeune returns," Melancon said when he realized who it was. Lejeune was glad to hear 'Cadien French in his own home town, Pont Breaux, Breaux Bridge. In France, the Americans in his outfit called him Frenchy and were always getting him to translate, mostly for contraband souvenirs and sex. He did not like the French of France, nor the Frenchmen.
"Beer and whiskey, like in the old days," he said in American.
"Yes, yes, of course," the bartender said, still in French.
The beer was cold and the whiskey took some of the gray tiredness from his neck and shoulders. Melancon wiped the bar though nothing had been spilt. He waited for Lejeune to get that first drink out of the way.
"Bad business out there in France, ainh?"
Lejeune shrugged. "Yes," he said.
"Pont Breaux, she grow, yeah," Melancon said in American. Lejenue set his glass down. Melancon poured him another.
"Lagniappe," Melancon said.
"What happened on the corner? The American family left this country, or what?"
Melancon made a face like a man who just cracked a rotten egg over a frying pan. He shook his head in the cadence of the ever-moving bar towel.
"Bad business here, too," he said.
Lejeune's heart pounded against his dog tags but he just leaned on the bar and held his shot glass of whiskey to the light, squinting through it to the world as though unconcerned. He did not want to seem eager, yet he wanted Melancon's next words like a man underwater wants the surface. At that moment, the swinging doors rattled and Pepe Broussard walked through to the bar.
Lejeune recognized him immediately, but for Broussard the darkness was too abrupt. Lejeune hoped Melancon would bring him up to date before the thing would start with Broussard. Broussard had been at Belleau Wood, too. But Melancon called him over and they shook hands hard and clapped each other's shoulders and argued over who would pay for the drinks. Broussard won.
They had retaken Belleau Wood, and driven back the Huns again by the time the conversation turned back to the Americans on the corner. Broussard turned to it. He whistled low, shook his head, whispered.
"A bad thing, a bad thing with the Americans," he said. "A bad thing." He shook his head again the way a man will do when a storm takes away his catch, lost in a reverie of waste, of pity for the circumstance. "Melancon was here," he said. "He should tell it."
"Syphilis," Melancon said. It was an American word. They thought of it as an American disease. Melancon leaned close to them to whisper it although there were only two other clients, both men, of course, and both at the end of the bar. Then he stood back and nodded slowly, eyes narrowed for emphasis. "Just after you left."
He made two circular swipes with the bar towel then continued.
"I don't know what happened to the husband," he said. "Long gone now. That is to say, I don't know if he contracted the malady."
"How did you know she got it?" Lejeune asked, wanting to ask if she had gone, too. But he was afraid, more afraid now than ever. Melancon leaned close again, but Broussard cut in.
"Mercury," he said, another American word. "It turned her blue."
"No!"
"Yes, yes," Melancon and Broussard said in unison.
"You know, it always does," Melancon said. "But with her it was worse. I tell you, man, it turned her indigo."
Broussard and Melancon laughed and so Lejeune laughed with them. It would be suspicious not to laugh. Melancon poured them each another drink and refilled Lejeune's schooner of beer.
"You know," Melancon said, "that might not be bad. Caouane in colors. One could have a red one for Saturday..."
"Indian," Broussard said.
"Black for the night," Lejeune said, diversionary.
"Oui, oui, une négresse pour la nuit," Melancon said. His cheeks cherry red with pleasure at the mischief in the thought.
"But, tell me the truth, the American woman, it turned her blue? Truly?"
"Yes, yes, royal blue," Melancon said.
"Blueblood," Broussard said, American.
"An so they left, ainh?"
"He left ... with the children. And the servants left. She remained behind. Why go anywhere? When you are blue and the rest of the world is white or black? Ainh? And besides, everyone would know she is a syphilitique," Melancon said. It did not seem strange to them at all to make a 'Cadien word out of an American one.
"What happened to her?"
"Nothing."
"Ainh?"
Broussard laughed. Nothing was funnier to Broussard than someone not understanding.
"She is still there. Locked in that house … alone."
"Hainh!" Melancon snorted. "But, who would bother her who has that rot."
"Another syphilitique," bellowed Broussard.
Lejeune laughed in chorus with them. Melancon had stopped buying so Lejeune stood the next two rounds. Then he made the excuse of family waiting, shouldered his duffle and walked out into the evening. There was almost no one in the street. He walked slowly until he knew that he was quite alone. Then he tossed his duffle into a thickness of shrub and darted into the overgrown grounds of the huge old house.
Once inside the canopy of leaves and branches, he was just another shadow. The sun had set. The only light was that opaque translucence of twilight, a state between day and night. The French call it l'heure bleue.
He saw her. She crossed the window of her boudoir and he saw her clearly, saw what they had been talking about in the bar. In the gray-blue twilight, her skin glistened azure. There was just that one glimpse but enough to see how beautiful she still was. Still slim, with movements like a palmetto in the wind.
Lejeune moved around to the rear of the house. He banged on the door but there was no answer. Undoubtedly, the young 'Cadien boys had tormented her as they always tormented the strange and reclusive.
He banged again and the door swung open. It was not locked. He stepped into the kitchen.
There was no light, no electricity. When his eyes were accustomed to the greater darkness, he saw the shadowy outlines of grocery boxes, discarded cans and containers and trash. Something scurried amid the refuse.
The swinging door to the dining room creaked open. There was no litter here. There was only the musty odor of disuse. And dust dulled dusky the gleaming, polished old oak table beneath the now-dead crystal chandelier.
Passing one of the great chairs in the drawing room, he slapped the cushion and felt rather than saw the little dust cloud rise and settle back upon the drying leather. Flakes of leather adhered to his fingertips. He rubbed the dry bits of hide away as he slowly climbed the stairs.
Heavily carpeted and well-made, the stairs did not creak as he ascended. The door to her boudoir was ajar. With the tips of his fingers he shoved it open, as though he expected a German sentry inside. It swung easily, silently, the full arch.
She was there. Standing in the far doorway to the balcony. She was radiant. Hair combed lovely loose and straight down curving at her shoulders. Her hair had streaks of gray, now, and the gray-blue of the twilight matched it to her skin. Skin glowed, it shimmered.
She stepped into the night-gathering remnant of evening, as though to show herself to him. To display herself. The thin, soft under-gown seemed to impart the bright hue of her skin, a dark shadow at the juncture of the slim, rounded thighs. Twin turquoise areolae undulated with the passionate heaving of her chest at the sight of him. Outside, the sky turned violet. As though she heard his thoughts, she turned her head, looked through the window where he had seen her from down below. The violet light caught the green of her eyes. She smiled their secret little smile.
"You've come back," she said, American.
"Moi suis-je revenu." he said, as in the beginning, he had used language as the arm's length Tantalus, keeping the American lady at bay. The smile did not change. With elegance, grace she turned. She went into the bedroom.
He followed. She was his, his alone, a woman like none other. And no other man would approach her. Not now, not for this. The mercury was not a cure, it only ended the symptoms. He knew that from experience. She waited at the foot of the bed, turning to him as he reached her.
There was that green-violet glint in her heavy-lidded eyes as she embraced him with her whole, long body. She led him backward with her to the bed, cleaving to him with arms and legs as he fell. Stronger than he had ever known her, she clutched him. And yet, as the fabric of the bedclothes puffed and billowed with their weight combined, she faded. She faded as ink washing from paper in the rain, fading as she fell backward to the bed. She evaporated as a blue mist of early morning. Not rich, warm, female fullness but dry, stretched, leathery arms long dead embraced him.
He fell upon flake-dried skin; brittle, splintered bone. He tried to rise, to escape her bed, but she held him fast. Unearthly strength in arms and legs entwined, bound him, anvil heavy. The dull blue skin, like swaths of old tattoo, now tightened and he knew that he was trapped. Forever. Gazing into eyeless sockets, blue lips withdrawn to a permanent, triumphant grin.