Джеймс Кейн - Mignon

“We talked along quite some time, yes.”

By then she had taken a chair and smoothed herself out very modest, especially the ruffle which ran across her chest with a startling deep dip in the middle. I wanted to smooth it for her, and also to string things out so I could hear her talk. She had a soft, low voice, with some Dixie drag, though not as much as I have. In the Chesapeake Bay country we pour it out so thick you can cut it with a knife, but in Louisiana, at least among well-born people, there’s just a slight trace, kind of musical. I could have listened all day, but detected she was under a strain, and suddenly asked: “What do you want of me, Mrs. Fournet?”

“I’m in trouble, Mr. Cresap. I need help — and help from someone that’s Union. Someone that’s honest and decent and smart, as Sandy said you are.”

“What kind of trouble, for instance?”

“My father’s been arrested.”

“For what?”

“That’s it. I don’t know.”

“Well what do the police say?”

“It was not the police who took him. Soldiers came, this morning after I left, to the flat where he and I live, read a paper at him, and took him away. I knew nothing about it till an hour ago, when the couple we rent from were able to find a boy and sent him over to tell me. I don’t even know where my father is held.”

“Sounds to me like a job for a lawyer.”

“No, Mr. Cresap, it’s not.”

She came over to where I was camped on the sofa, leaned close, and whispered: “We have a lawyer, of course. But my father’s in cotton, and it’s a horrible, cutthroat business, here now in the war. Could be our lawyer’s the very one who’s back of this arrest. Could be other people are, Union friends we have. Mr. Cresap, I’m not just a crazy woman, running around wild. I’m scared, because in New Orleans right now, you don’t know who you can trust. That’s why I come to you, a total stranger, and tell the truth, where to nobody else in this town do I dare open my mouth.”

“What do you want of me?”

“First, find out where my father is held.”

“That shouldn’t be hard. What else?”

“Find out what he’s charged with.”

“That should be on the record. What else?”

“Well — if I knew that much, I’d kind of know where I’m at and be able to work things around, especially if I could talk to him, to try and get him out.”

“You mean, you want me to get him out?”

“ Oh, if you only would! ”

By then my arm was around her, and she didn’t seem to find it unpleasant. In fact, as I pulled the ribbons under her chin, unknotted them, and lifted off her hat, she cuddled to me just a little, staring up at my face as a cat stares at your face, to see if you’re taking her in or putting her out in the cold. I patted her, said I was pretty busy on a job Sandy dumped on me, but that for someone as pretty as she was I might interrupt. She said: “I know what the job is. It’s to raise twenty-five thousand dollars to buy machinery with, and put in a whole lot of piles down at the mouth of the river — and if you have to know, it’s the reason I came to you. Because Sandy said you would raise that money, that you always finish what you start. And that’s what I need now. You’re going to start, aren’t you? And finish? You’re going to get him out?”

“... For you?”

“Because it’s right! He hasn’t done anything!”

Suddenly a tear was there, and as she wiped it away she said: “I’m sorry, he’s all I have — has been, ever since my mother got drowned, in the Flood of Forty-nine.” I’d never heard of the Flood of ’49, and my face must have showed it, as she added: “I mean, the Red River Flood of Forty-nine. We’re from Alexandria.”

“I see,” I said, then repeated: “For you? ”

“Well, of course for me. Yes! ”

“What do I get out of it for being so nice?”

She looked kind of frightened, and started mumbling about money, saying she didn’t have much, but that her father had some, made in cotton that winter, and “will pay you what’s right.” But before I could explain I wasn’t talking about money, we were locked in each other’s arms, and our mouths were mashed together. The kiss said she knew what I meant, but I wanted it on the line. I said: “You have to pay. Do you hear?”

“Well, maybe I wouldn’t mind.”

She whispered it, kind of shy, kind of flirty, and somehow a little bit holy, and of course it called for another kiss. Then I buried my nose in her dress, and inhaled the same smell I had caught as she entered the room. I asked: “What is this scent you use? It doesn’t smell like perfume. It smells — warm .”

She held her pocketbook up to my nose. “It’s what they call Russian Leather,” she said. “They steep it in oil of lavender, which makes it soft and gives it this smell — and then they tool it and stamp it. I have a prayer book to match, and a New Testament.” Then, sniffing me: “You smell like corduroy drenched in cologne, but you have china-blue eyes like a dollbaby’s, and hair that looks like taffy.”

“My hair looks like wet hay.”

“No, Willie! I want to lick it!”

“... Where’d you get that name?”

“It’s what your mother calls you.”

“And you think you’re going to?”

“It’s sweet — matches your ’lasses-taffy hair.”

“What did your mother call you?”

“My name, Mignon. You can, if you want to.”

As our eyes met, as breath mingled with breath and smell mingled with smell, something unfolded between us, and then suddenly she jumped up, saying time was going by and we had to line out what we were going to do. On a piece of hotel stationery she wrote her father’s name, Adolphe Landry, and said: “I must go back now to Lavadeau’s, on account of their being so busy on the biggest day of their year, renting the Mardi Gras costumes. And if you find out anything, you come to me there — as quick as you can, Willie, before evening if it’s possible. I must go to the Ball of Erato, and if I could know something before I do, if I could see my lamb just once—!” That’s when we had our first quarrel. I said: “That’s nice, I must say it is! Here I’m to go traipsing around in the wet, finding your father for you, while you trip the fantastic toe in some damned Mardi Gras ball.”

“Willie, that’s not how it is!”

“And Erato — who the hell is he?”

“He’s a she — she wrote poetry, or something. She’s just a name for one of these things we have. But will you listen to me? I have to go to this thing. In the first place, I’m going for Lavadeau, in a costume he’s letting me have, to watch the rest of our costumes, and see that they don’t get ruined when the people begin to get drunk. But that’s not all. Willie, the one that’s taking me must know about my father. He knows everything up at headquarters — and he has to know about this! Why hasn’t he come to me? I told you, there’s no one here in this town that I feel I can trust. I must go to the ball with him to listen to what he says, and, above everything else, keep him from suspicioning that I suspicion him. Now do you understand?”

“All right, now I’ve got it.”

“Get my umbrella for me.”

I got it, then got my oilskin and put it on, came out, and helped her into her cape. She already had on her hat. As I opened the door she put her arms around me again, whispered: “I’d much rather stay here with you — and pay.” And I knew, as we went down the stairs hand in hand, more was between her and me than had ever been between me and a woman before.

Headquarters was at Carondelet and Julia, one block up and six blocks over, and I had the luck to get a cab. So after one last kiss I set her down at Lavadeau’s, which was on St. Charles near the hotel, and kept right on. On Julia, as soon as we turned the corner, the street was full of orderlies holding horses, so nobody could have missed it. It was a three-story building with iron-lace balconies, and a four-story annex in back that was soldered on wrong so the floors didn’t match up. I wanted to hold the cab, not knowing where my search might lead, but the driver wouldn’t wait on account of the Mardi Gras business he’d miss. I paid him off, asked my way of the sentry, and went in. It was the same old jumble of raw pine tables, camp chairs, and chests painted circus-wagon blue every headquarters is, with the same old military telegraph clacking somewhere, so I wasted no time gaping but followed the sentry’s direction and went up to the second floor. I was looking for a captain I knew, Dan Dorsey, who came from Annapolis too and was now aide to the Commanding General. I’d already renewed acquaintance when I bumped into him one night in Cassidy’s Bar, so I could get down to cases at once without singing “Auld Lang Syne.”