1897
NEG CREOL
by Kate Chopin
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
Neg Creol
At the remote period of his birth he had been named Cesar Francois
Xavier, but no one ever thought of calling him anything but Chicot, or
Neg, or Maringouin. Down at the French market, where he worked among
the fishmongers, they called him Chicot, when they were not calling
him names that are written less freely than they are spoken. But one
felt privileged to call him almost anything, he was so black, lean,
lame, and shriveled. He wore a head kerchief, and whatever other
rags the fishermen and their wives chose to bestow upon him.
Throughout one whole winter he wore a woman's discarded jacket with
puffed sleeves.
Among some startling beliefs entertained by Chicot was one that
"Michie St. Pierre et Michie St. Paul" had created him. Of "Michie bon
Dieu" he held his own private opinion, and not a too flattering one at
that. This fantastic notion concerning the origin of his being he owed
to the early teaching of his young master, a lax believer, and a great
«farceur» in his day. Chicot had once been thrashed by a robust
young Irish priest for expressing his religious views, and at
another time knifed by a Sicilian. So he had come to hold his peace
upon that subject.
Upon another theme he talked freely and harped continuously. For
years he had tried to convince his associates that his master had left
a progeny, rich, cultured, powerful, and numerous beyond belief.
This prosperous race of beings inhabited the most imposing mansions in
the city of New Orleans. Men of note and position, whose names were
familiar to the public, he swore were grandchildren,
great-grandchildren, or, less frequently, distant relatives of his
master, long deceased. Ladies who came to the market in carriages,
or whose elegance of attire attracted the attention and admiration
of the fishwomen, were all «des 'tites cousines» to his former master,
Jean Boisdure. He never looked for recognition from any of these
superior beings, but delighted to discourse by the hour upon their
dignity and pride of birth and wealth.
Chicot always carried an old gunny sack, and into this went his
earnings. He cleaned stalls at the market, scaled fish, and did many
odd offices for the itinerant merchants, who usually paid in trade for
his service. Occasionally he saw the color of silver and got his
clutch upon a coin, but he accepted anything, and seldom made terms.
He was glad to get a handkerchief from the Hebrew, and grateful if the
Choctaws would trade him a bottle of «file» for it. The butcher
flung him a soup bone, and the fishmonger a few crabs or a paper bag
of shrimps. It was the big «mulatresse, vendeuse de cafe,» who cared
for his inner man.
Once Chicot was accused by a shoe vender of attempting to steal a
pair of ladies' shoes. He declared he was only examining them. The
clamor raised in the market was terrific. Young Dagoes assembled and
squealed like rats; a couple of Gascon butchers bellowed like bulls.
Matteo's wife shook her fist in the accuser's face and called him
incomprehensible names. The Choctaw women, where they squatted, turned
their slow eyes in the direction of the fray, taking no further
notice; while a policeman jerked Chicot around by the puffed sleeve
and brandished a club. It was a narrow escape.
Nobody knew where Chicot lived. A man- even a neg creol- who lives
among the reeds and willows of Bayou St. John, in a deserted chicken
coop constructed chiefly of tarred paper, is not going to boast of his
habitation or to invite attention to his domestic appointments.
When, after market hours, he vanished in the direction of St. Philip
street, limping, seemingly bent under the weight of his gunny-bag,
it was like the disappearance from the stage of some petty actor
whom the audience does not follow in imagination beyond the wings,
or think of till his return in another scene.
There was one to whom Chicot's coming or going meant more than this.
In «la maison grise» they called her La Chouette, for no earthly
reason unless that she perched high under the roof of the old
rookery and scolded in shrill sudden outbursts. Forty or fifty years
before, when for a little while she acted minor parts with a company
of French players (an escapade that had brought her grandmother to the
grave), she was known as Mademoiselle de Montallaine. Seventy-five
years before she had been christened Aglae Boisdure.
No matter at what hour the old negro appeared at her threshold,
Mamzelle Aglae always kept him waiting till she finished her
prayers. She opened the door for him and silently motioned him to a
seat, returning to prostrate herself upon her knees before a crucifix,
and a shell filled with holy water that stood on a small table; it
represented in her imagination an altar. Chicot knew that she did it
to aggravate him; he was convinced that she timed her devotions to
begin when she heard his footsteps on the stairs. He would sit with
sullen eyes contemplating her long, spare, poorly clad figure as she
knelt and read from her book or finished her prayers. Bitter was the
religious warfare that had raged for years between them, and
Mamzelle Aglae had grown, on her side, as intolerant as Chicot. She
had come to hold St. Peter and St. Paul in such utter detestation that
she had cut their pictures out of her prayer-book.
Then Mamzelle Aglae pretended not to care what Chicot had in his
bag. He drew forth a small hunk of beef and laid it in her basket that
stood on the bare floor. She looked from the corner of her eye, and
went on dusting the table. He brought out a handful of potatoes,
some pieces of sliced fish, a few herbs, a yard of calico, and a small
pat of butter wrapped in lettuce leaves. He was proud of the butter,
and wanted her to notice it. He held it out and asked her for
something to put it on. She handed him a saucer, and looked
indifferent and resigned, with lifted eyebrows.
"Pas d' sucre, Neg?"
Chicot shook his head and scratched it, and looked like a black
picture of distress and mortification. No sugar! But tomorrow he would
get a pinch here and a pinch there, and would bring as much as a
cupful.
Mamzelle Aglae then sat down, and talked to Chicot uninterruptedly
and confidentially. She complained bitterly, and it was all about a
pain that lodged in her leg; that crept and acted like a live,
stinging serpent, twining about her waist and up her spine, and
coiling round the shoulder-blade. And then «les rheumatismes» in her
fingers! He could see for himself how they were knotted. She could not
bend them; she could hold nothing in her hands, and had let a saucer
fall that morning and broken it in pieces. And if she were to tell him
that she had slept a wink through the night, she would be a liar,
deserving of perdition. She had sat at the window «la nuit blanche,»
hearing the hours strike and the market-wagons rumble. Chicot
nodded, and kept up a running fire of sympathetic comment and
suggestive remedies for rheumatism and insomnia: herbs, or
«tisanes,» or «grigris,» or all three. As if he knew! There was
Purgatory Mary, perambulating soul whose office in life was to pray
for the shades in purgatory,- she had brought Mamzelle Aglae a
bottle of «eau de Lourdes,» but so little of it! She might have kept
her water of Lourdes, for all the good it did,- a drop! Not so much as
would cure a fly or a mosquito! Mamzelle Aglae was going to show
Purgatory Mary the door when she came again, not only because of her
avarice with the Lourdes water, but, beside that, she brought in on
her feet dirt that could only be removed with a shovel after she left.
And Mamzelle Aglae wanted to inform Chicot that there would be
slaughter and bloodshed in «la maison grise» if the people below
stairs did not mend their ways. She was convinced that they lived
for no other purpose than to torture and molest her. The woman kept
a bucket of dirty water constantly on the landing with the hope of
Mamzelle Aglae falling over it or into it. And she knew that the
children were instructed to gather in the hall and on the stairway,
and scream and make a noise and jump up and down like galloping
horses, with the intention of driving her to suicide. Chicot should
notify the policeman on the beat, and have them arrested, if possible,
and thrust into the parish prison, where they belonged.
Chicot would have been extremely alarmed if he had ever chanced to
find Mamzelle Aglae in an uncomplaining mood. It never occurred to him
that she might be otherwise. He felt that she had a right to quarrel
with fate, if ever mortal had. Her poverty was a disgrace, and he hung
his head before it and felt ashamed.
One day he found Mamzelle Aglae stretched on the bed, with her
head tied up in a handkerchief. Her sole complaint that day was, "Aie-
aie- aie! Aie- aie- aie!" uttered with every breath. He had seen her
so before, especially when the weather was damp.
"Vous pas bezouin tisane, Mamzelle Aglae? Vous pas veux mo cri gagni
docteur?"
She desired nothing. "Aie- aie- aie!"
He emptied his bag very quietly, so as not to disturb her; and he
wanted to stay there with her and lie down on the floor in case she
needed him, but the woman from below had come up. She was an
Irishwoman with rolled sleeves.
"It's a shtout shtick I'm afther giving her, Neg, and she do but
knock on the flure it's me or Janie or wan of us that'll be hearing
her."
"You too good, Brigitte. Aie- aie- aie! Une goutte d'eau sucre, Neg!
That Purg'tory Marie,- you see hair, ma bonne Brigitte, you tell
hair go say li'le prayer la-bas au Cathedral. Aie- aie- aie!"
Neg could hear her lamentation as he descended the stairs. It
followed him as he limped his way through the city streets, and seemed
part of the city's noise; he could hear it in the rumble of wheels and
jangle of carbells, and in the voices of those passing by.
He stopped at Mimotte the Voudou's shanty and bought a «grigri»- a
cheap one for fifteen cents. Mimotte held her charms at all prices.
This he intended to introduce next day into Mamzelle Aglae's room,-
somewhere about the altar,- to the confusion and discomfort of "Michie
bon Dieu," who persistently declined to concern himself with the
welfare of a Boisdure.
At night, among the reeds on the bayou, Chicot could still hear
the woman's wail, mingled now with the croaking of the frogs. If he
could have been convinced that giving up his life down there in the
water would in any way have bettered her condition, he would not
have hesitated to sacrifice the remnant of his existence that was
wholly devoted to her. He lived but to serve her. He did not know it
himself, but Chicot knew so little, and that little in such a
distorted way! He could scarcely have been expected, even in his
most lucid moments, to give himself over to self-analysis.
Chicot gathered an uncommon amount of dainties at market the
following day. He had to work hard, and scheme and whine a little; but
he got hold of an orange and a lump of ice and a «chou-fleur.» He
did not drink his cup of «cafe au lait,» but asked Mimi Lambeau to put
it in the little new tin pail that the Hebrew notion-vender had just
given him in exchange for a mess of shrimps. This time, however,
Chicot had his trouble for nothing. When he reached the upper room
of «la maison grise,» it was to find that Mamzelle Aglae had died
during the night. He set his bag down in the middle of the floor,
and stood shaking, and whined low like a dog in pain.
Everything had been done. The Irishwoman had gone for the doctor,
and Purgatory Mary had summoned a priest. Furthermore, the woman had
arranged Mamzelle Aglae decently. She had covered the table with a
white cloth, and had placed it at the head of the bed, with the
crucifix and two lighted candles in silver candlesticks upon it; the
little bit of ornamentation brightened and embellished the poor
room. Purgatory Mary, dressed in shabby black, fat and breathing hard,
sat reading half audibly from a prayerbook. She was watching the
dead and the silver candlesticks, which she had borrowed from a
benevolent society, and for which she held herself responsible. A
young man was just leaving,- a reporter snuffing the air for items,
who had scented one up there in the top room of «la maison grise.»
All the morning Janie had been escorting a procession of street
Arabs up and down the stairs to view the remains. One of them- a
little girl, who had had her face washed and made a species of
toilet for the occasion- refused to be dragged away. She stayed seated
as if at an entertainment, fascinated alternately by the long, still
figure of Mamzelle Aglae, the mumbling lips of Purgatory Mary, and the
silver candlesticks.
"Will ye get down on yer knees, man, and say a prayer for the dead!"
commanded the woman.
But Chicot only shook his head, and refused to obey. He approached
the bed, and laid a little black paw for a moment on the stiffened
body of Mamzelle Aglae. There was nothing for him to do here. He
picked up his old ragged hat and his bag and went away.
"The black h'athen!" the woman muttered. "Shut the dure, child."
The little girl slid down from her chair, and went on tiptoe to shut
the door which Chicot had left open. Having resumed her seat, she
fastened her eyes upon Purgatory Mary's heaving chest.
"You, Chicot!" cried Matteo's wife the next morning. "My man, he
read in paper 'bout woman name' Boisdure, use b'long to big-a famny.
She die roun'on St. Philip- po', same-a like church rat. It's any them
Boisdures you alla talk 'bout?"
Chicot shook his head in slow but emphatic denial. No, indeed, the
woman was not of kin to his Boisdures. He surely had told Matteo's
wife often enough- how many times did he have to repeat it!- of
their wealth, their social standing. It was doubtless some Boisdure of
«les Attakapas;» it was none of his.
The next day there was a small funeral procession passing a little
distance away,- a hearse and a carriage or two. There was the priest
who had attended Mamzelle Aglae, and a benevolent Creole gentleman
whose father had known the Boisdures in his youth. There was a
couple of player-folk, who, having got wind of the story, had thrust
their hands into their pockets.
"Look, Chicot!" cried Matteo's wife. "Yonda go the fune'al. Mus-a be
that-a Boisdure woman we talken 'bout yesaday."
But Chicot paid no heed. What was to him the funeral of a woman
who had died in St. Philip street? He did not even turn his head in
the direction of the moving procession. He went on scaling his
red-snapper.
THE END
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