Benjamin January 3 - Graveyard Read Free Page B

maneuvered his arms back to where the edge of the piano would take the weight of them and struck up the country dance “Mutual Promises,” January felt his heart chill with dread. Something had happened.
    He felt sick inside.
    Let me introduce you to Monsieur le Cholera, he had said to the drums that had mocked him for the hard-won security of his freedom, for the complex beauties of the music that was his life.
    January could still remember the first time he'd met St.-Denis Janvier, the sugar broker who had purchased his mother, himself, and his sister Olympe. Could still see in his mind the man's close-fitting coat of bottle-green satin and the fancy-knit patterns of his stockings, the eight gold fobs and seals that hung on his watch chain. Could still feel the rush of relief that went through him when that paunchy little man had told him, I have purchased your beautiful mother in order to set her free, and you, too, and your sister. Relief unspeakable.
    I'll be safe now.
    No more nightmares about his mother going away, as others on the plantation had gone so abruptly away. No more fear that someone would one day say to him, You are going to go live someplace else now-someplace where he knew no one.
    All his life, it seemed to him, he had wanted a home, wanted a place where he knew he was safe.
    He'd been eight. It had taken him a little time to learn to be a free man, to learn the ins and outs of a different station, what was and was not permitted. To learn to speak proper French and not say tote for “carry,” or aw when he meant “bien stir. ” But throughout the boyhood spent in the garçonnière behind the house on Rue Burgundy that St.-Denis Janvier gave his new mistress, throughout the years of schooling in one of the small private academies that catered to the children of white men and their colored plaçées, January had never lost that sense of being, in his heart of hearts, on firm footing. At least the worst wasn't going to happen. At least he wasn't going to be taken away from those he loved.
    From “Mutual Promises” they whirled into “A Trip to Paris.” The ladies laughed and skipped in their bellshaped skirts, their enormous lace-draped sleeves that stood out ten inches from their arms; gentlemen flirted decorously as they held out white-gloved hands to white-gloved hands. Mr. Greenaway of the pomaded curls hovered protectively around the wealthy Widow Redfern, fetching her crepes and tarts and lemonade and presumably soothing her not-very-evident grief while she talked business with Granville the banker. Granville himself showed surprising lightness of step in dancing with his drab little pear-shaped wife and with every pretty maid and matron on the American side of the room. From the sideline, Mrs. Pritchard watched with resigned envy.
    The American ladies all seemed plainer than their French counterparts, duller, an effect January knew wasn't entirely owing to having less sense of dress. No American lady would be seen in public, even at a ball, in the rice powder and rouge that no Creole lady would be seen without. It seemed to him, too, that they laughed less.
    He supposed if he were a woman married to an American he wouldn't laugh much, either.
    St.-Denis Janvier had sent him to study with an Austrian music master, a martinet who had introduced to him the complex and disciplined joys of technique. Music had always been the safe place to which his soul had gone as a child: joining in the work-hollers, picking out harmonies, inventing songs about big storms or his aunt Jemma's red beans or the time Danro from the next plantation had fallen in love with Henriette up at the big house. All of this, Herr Kovald had said, was what savages did, who knew no better. Kovald had played for him that first time the Canon of Pachelbel-and January's soul had entered onto that magic road, that quest for beauty that had no end.
    He had studied healing also, and in much the same fashion: first with old Mambo