‘She gave me away,’ said Julia. Her voice came out double, vibrating. Her eyes fell upon the small neat skull on the shelf. A cat, she decided, and her eyes filled up. Poor puss.
‘She’s watching over you anyway,’ he said. ‘And she’s not the only one.’
‘You said I wasn’t cursed.’ He wasn’t going to help her, it was obvious. How could she ever have thought it? ‘Can’t you tell me anything?’ she said. ‘I wanted you to tell me what I am. I don’t know.’
‘No curse to lift,’ he said. ‘And what you are? You’re a strange girl, that’s all. Hush.’ He closed his eyes and sat silent for a while. ‘You’re going across the sea,’ he said, ‘you’ll keep moving.’
‘Me?’
‘Just moving, always.’ He opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘Something’s coming,’ he said, ‘big something.’
‘Bad or good?’
‘Both.’
She laughed. ‘That means nothing.’
‘No,’ he said seriously, ‘that means everything.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘No matter.’
What did you expect, she thought. Wave his arms? Say the right words? Lo! A miracle. ‘But there are curses,’ she said, pulling on one of her gloves.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I can fix a curse. I can lift a curse. Whole lot I can do, but I can’t lift a curse that isn’t there. Can make you feel better though.’
‘What about what my nurse said? How my mother walked out in the dark of the moon and that’s why I’m like I am.’
‘Your nurse don’t know what she’s talking about,’ he said. ‘Your mama can walk out any old moon she likes long as she’s careful.’
He was back there in the chair opposite her, leaning on one elbow, frowning, his snake advancing from his left shoulder into the air before him.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said, ‘it just seemed wrong. Why the baby gets the curse for what the mother did. And maybe she didn’t even know she was doing it.’ She looked down at her hands, one gloved, one hairy. ‘Madame Soulie says there’s a devil baby running about on the roofs. I was so scared. I couldn’t get to sleep that night for thinking about him.’ She pulled on the other glove. ‘Poor thing. Running about all night across the roofs and down the alleys all on his own and everybody running away from him and all because of something his mother did.’
The Doctor’s face was serious. He looked at her for a long time without blinking or saying anything, putting his hand beneath the head of his snake. His eyes were full, as if he’d seen a whole world of sorrow. She couldn’t tell how old he was. Old. Poor eyes seen it all. ‘You know I knew that devil baby,’ he said, and a chill ran through her.
‘For sure.’
‘Is he real?’ she whispered. ‘Is it true?’
‘True as anything.’
‘And he cries in the alleys?’
‘I never heard him.’
‘What was he?’
‘Born red. Scales, like this.’ He ran a finger along the snake’s body. ‘Born screaming. Nothing anyone could do. Mama couldn’t look at him. Friend of mine tried to raise him but he ran away. Don’t know where he went.’
‘Ran away? A baby?’
‘Six months old, up and ran. Little bumps here,’ he touched his brow, ‘little horns. No hoofs, never had hoofs.’
‘But what was he?’
‘A baby.’
‘A baby what?
‘Who knows? I knew his father. And he said his wife never said that thing about the devil anyway, people just made that up.’
‘And you saw him? The baby? What was he like?’
‘Oh a very bad thing. Couldn’t get near him. Terrible thing. Woman I knew tried with him but he grew too quick.’
‘But what was he?’
‘A bad baby. And when people started seeing him here and there his whole family took off. He’s around, they say.’
He took from under the table a small bottle and a tiny red bag and slid them across the table to her, and she understood that their time was up. ‘What is this big thing that’s coming?’ she asked.
‘Love,’ he said, ‘up the road.’
‘Within a year, you said.’
‘Within a year. For sure.’
They stood.
‘Did he have a name?’ she asked as he held the door for her, ‘The baby?’
‘Valentine,’ the Doctor said. ‘His name was Valentine.’
She paid one of the women $15 on the way out.
‘He’s marvellous, isn’t he?’ Madame Soulie said as they got into the carriage. She was tipsy from drinking wine in the front room.
‘Is he not a slave?’ Julia turned the red gris-gris bag in her fingers. It was sewn shut. She had no idea what was in it, only that it felt like tiny chips of bark and would draw fortune. The love potion was in her pocket. ‘What is he? How can he have so much money? That good house.’
‘A free man,’ said Madame Soulie and laughed. ‘Came as a slave from Africa and now look. Free, rich and black. He must have power.’
The night of the show, Julia dusted herself with orris root and combed herself very carefully, arms, breasts, shoulders. Her head hair, adorned with gardenias and feathers, was done up in curls. Rose-pink silk flounced about her short full figure on a froth of white petticoats. From the carriage she saw the posters all along St Charles Avenue for the show, her name at the top and bigger than all the rest. She saw the crowds on the steps and all along the block, the flowers above the great doors in front of the theatre, and all the lights from the chandeliers shining out from the foyer. The carriage took them round the back. Rates, in a frilly white shirt, his sparse grey hair pomaded, handed her down and led her in through a warren of scurrying forms only dimly seen through the veil to a small room with mirrors and chairs, a table with glasses and a bottle of brandy.
There was some time. The walls were flimsy. Next door, Ted and Jonsy and Michael were laughing about something. Myrtle, brush between her toes, painted Indian ink around her eyes. Delia blew a kiss to her reflection. Julia fiddled with her gardenias, flicking an imaginary speck of dust from her rose-coloured stocking, inspecting the pearl buttons on her tight white shoes.
Her nerves were jiggling.
She felt better sitting in the wings, watching, waiting her turn drinking water and wine. Funny how different people were when they performed. Jonsy, the stone-faced and silent, laughed and grinned, cakewalking across the stage, the whiteness of his skin and hair against the pinkness of his eyes and suit. Ted curled his hands into claws when he picked at his flesh, his face turned into something unearthly and slightly wicked. He pulled the skin under his chin up over his face till it covered his nose completely and his eyes glaring out above looked mad. Then it was Myrtle and Delia’s turn. They played a Jew’s harp. Myrtle’s lips were waxed and carmined round the frame. Delia, balancing on a pedestal by her side, plucked the reed.
The world stopped at the footlights.
Rates came and stood at her shoulder. ‘What a marvellous place this is,’ he murmured suavely. ‘Think of this, Julia. Only three years ago the great Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, was