Peter Carey - Parrot and Olivier in America

The roads were filled with choking dust. The carriage was hot and airless. But still I must not fail the test for son-in-law. Vigorously I admired the rivers, the mountains, the new pastures of Great Barrington, the civility of the inn at New Marlborough, each of which I tried to love.

Perhaps it would have been enough to love Amelia, and then her father, and then the land itself, and so on. Yet I felt myself honor-bound to take all this wilderness and ignorance into my heart and embrace it, trusting that it would show, in time, not the coarseness and vulgarity of the Glorious Fourth but something new and fine and worthy of the Declaration. For had not these same woods given birth to the intense spirituality of the Puritans and was that not, already, more noble than the enrichissez-vous of the July Monarchy?

But how many parades could I truly bear to witness without being sick?

And how could I live without my France?

How would I learn to breathe in this awful heat?

I had inherited those wandering choirs of blood which rose singing from my neck and cheeks, congregations of heat that I had seen destroy my mother's cream and silk complexion and send the servants clattering up and down the stairs.

I wondered out loud whether I might not be in need of bleeding.

And this is the thing with Americans, for it was no sooner said than Godefroy had his stockings and his shoes off, the coach was stopped, and he was wading into the bulrushes beside a pond. There he stood, laughing, his splendid white scarf trailing in the water, pointing out a viper fleeing, as if from Good itself.

Then he was returning to the coach with some six leeches latched onto his sturdy calves and these, with great skill-for he had studied the science of medicine at Yale-he removed without tearing his flesh, and-with the leeches still alive and happy-placed two on each side of my nose, and the last two on my forehead.

Thus the dear, dear fellow brought me peace, and as we traveled the last half day to Wethersfield I dreamily recalled Odile with that curious scoop she had made to catch the leeches. How she had loved to cast the engorged creatures into the fire. "Go, demons. Burn in hell!"

As we came out of Wethersfield, along the long river road by Old Farm, Godefroy gently removed the vieilles amies and threw them out into the summer air, and I felt myself safe, in loving company, quite equal to the challenges ahead.

The coach made its final climb to Chapel Hill where we found the great gift of America lay spread before us. We paused while Godefroy climbed out the window and stood on the box beside the coachman where he took the reins himself and cried a great halloo, and then we descended, galloping at a fearful pace. I did not attempt to convince myself that I loved that tree, that gate, that arm of river. I no longer placed these new affections on the scales, comparing them to those I might once have felt in approaching the Chateau de Barfleur.

The hydraulics of my system had been adjusted. I could now believe that my affection for this place would not lead to the dismantlement of the Chateau de Barfleur as the Marquis de Tilbot had lost his family seat which vanished from the earth like a carcass set upon by ants.

We raced toward the Godefroy home and left behind us a great orange plume of dust like a feather in the cap of a chevalier. In the summer dusk I spied a figure in a long white dress walking through the fields from the direction of the river.

"Amelia," I cried.

The coach halted. My future father was already there to help me down. He steadied me, a hand on each shoulder.

"Hold on," he demanded. Then, wetting his kerchief like a nurse, he removed some flecks of blood the leeches had left upon my cheeks.

"Go to, sir!" he cried. And I could not keep from laughing as I set off through the garden, into the orchard, beside the onion maidens who laid down their hoes. The wide grass meadow was like a racetrack and I sprinted toward my beloved, who, without abandoning her flowers, and while holding her skirts from the unclean pasture, called my name. How sweet it sounded in her voice, her lovely lilting American intonation.

And thus we met-in the middle of a great arena-with the onion maidens all applauding and laughing and my family of Godefroys hooraying from beside the carriage.

And here she was, her hand in mine, this astonishing bright-eyed Viking beauty with her arms filled with those snowy-white hydrangeas which grew wild beside the river.

Her eyes filled with love for me, her mouth was ready to receive my kisses-and then I saw her expression change completely.

I thought, God, she has seen the confusion of my treacherous French heart.

"Olivier," she cried, and her mouth was red with blood.

I was Olivier-Jean-Baptiste de Clarel de Garmont, and my nose was bleeding, my heart was burst, a great red stain of crisis presented itself, as public as my shirt.

THERE WAS SOMETHING awful about the blood which had soaked my linen shirt, spread across the flowers, smeared my beloved's mouth. There was no way to make light of it or do anything other than endure the profound embarrassment throughout the Godefroys' wineless evening meal.

Of the matter of the betrothal, not a word was said and I did not judge their reticence improper. Instead I observed how the very definite passions of Amelia's family were diverted, transmuted into a great blooming excitement about matters completely unrelated. The topic was not material. It might have been corn huskers or grasshoppers, but what was closest at hand, what was forever churning over in every room in all the land, was President Jackson's threat to remove the government's deposits from the First Bank of the United States and distribute them among a number of smaller banks. He wanted to do this, he claimed, because the money was the people's and the First Bank of the United States used its wealth to act against the people's government.

On this issue a very angry Mrs. Godefroy and her daughter opposed each other with a violence I had not previously witnessed at their table. Godefroy attempted to tell his stories of the road, but the women's dispute was so intense that all he could do was cut the boiled beef very fine and chew it slowly.

When this field of battle-that is, the very pure and proper table, eight feet by four-had been cleared and scrubbed by the two sisters, my beloved and I were permitted to retire, first to the porch and then along the gravel paths that began as a formal grid at the poplars before twisting themselves among the strangely artless topiary and thence stretching into the wilderness and along the Connecticut River which held its dark and bleeding shadows to itself.

My arm lay across her light and level shoulder. My ribs knew the aching softness of her breast. There was nothing except our feet upon the path to break the warm and luscious quiet.

"How exactly have I offended your mother?"

"Well of course you know."

"My nose."

"Your lips, you silly."

We could now hear the distinct sound of a smaller rill or stream entering the large. "Then here, I repeat my crime."

"No, my sweetest, this is private. It was the public aspect that was criminal."

"I will be her son-in-law. She knows that. She had your father's letter?"

I turned her chin to me and this time it was she who kissed me, her mouth so soft and labial, so engulfing.

She smiled and laid her nose against my own. "Perhaps your kiss was too Catholic for her taste."

"Catholic?"

"She is in a fret I will become a Catholic. For her it is much worse than turning French."

"But a Catholic is a Christian," I argued, more than a little disingenuously. "Can that be so terrible to her?"

"Nay sir, worse. Besides, she knows only the Irish who are beyond salvation."