Hagar
by
Barbara Hambly
Everyone in New Orleans agreed that it was
not possible to get all the way through Lent without some break in
one’s piety. God could not really have intended to chastise genuine
Christians (said Anne Corbier, when she stopped by Rose Janvier’s
house with the sewing) while all those uptown American Protestant
animal heretics got off scot-free.
“But they don’t,” pointed out Rose, setting
before the older woman – her sister-in-law Olympe’s mother-in-law –
a cup of black coffee (cream was absent for Lent) and a small dish
of strawberries. “Their ministers instruct them to be solemn and
gloomy all year round, so I suppose it evens out.” A logical Deist
after the school of Jefferson and Voltaire, Rose herself was
perfectly willing to eat beef – could the slender finances of the
Janvier household have supported such extravagance in this
hard-pinched, bank-deficient year of 1838 – had she not known it
would silently grieve her devout husband, and quite vocally grieve
Anne, the grandmother of the niece and nephew currently living
under the Janvier roof.
Benjamin had gone – as he was periodically
obliged to do these days – to mend the family exchequer by taking a
job in Washington City, but Gabriel and Zizi-Marie Corbier, in
addition to being lively young people and excellent company, were
of enormous help to Rose in the upkeep of the huge old Spanish
house on the Rue Esplanade. It was ostensibly to return
fifteen-year-old Gabriel’s neatly-mended shirt, and to present
seventeen-year-old Zizi-Marie with a new shift, that Anne Corbier
had come that chilly spring afternoon. In actuality it was with the
double purpose of inviting Rose and her young companions to a ball
(“Very quiet, very decent, hardly a festivity at all…”) at the
small sugar-plantation of Belle Jour in celebration of the birthday
of the wife of its owner, Arnaud Levesque (“Candide is such a good,
pious woman God Himself must celebrate her birthday, and cannot
possibly have any objections to us doing the same…”), and at the
same time soliciting Rose and Gabriel to be a part, as it were, of
her costume.
“Maître Corbier and I have been married so
long,” twinkled Anne, “and the old ruffian is still so sweet to me,
I thought we’d go as Abraham and Sarah, from the Bible. But since
everybody in town knows he has a roving eye – at his age he should
be ashamed of himself! – I thought we’d better have old Father
Abraham’s fetching Egyptian concubine Hagar along, and her son
Ishmael all dressed up in sheepskins…” She nodded at Gabriel with a
smile as he came in from the gallery, quite properly through
Benjamin’s room on the river-ward side of the house. “…and baby
Isaac for good measure.”
Gabriel exclaimed, “ Formidable ,
Granmere!” and in his wicker basket, five-month-old John January –
whom no one ever dreamed of calling Johnny – made a single muted
gurgle, as if to inquire whether he, too, would have to dress up in
sheepskins. “You’ll do it, won’t you, Aunt Rose?”
Rose rolled her eyes, asked why Zizi-Marie
couldn’t personate the Egyptian temptress (“T’cha! At her age? It
wouldn’t be decent!” and, “No, Aunt Rose, she’s already going as
Maid Marian with Antoine Mercelot…”) (“Does everybody already know
about this ball except me?”), and agreed. As far as Rose was
concerned, Granmere Anne was quite right in that nobody should be
obliged to remain at home and contemplate Christ’s sufferings for
forty days, particularly if one had doubts about what Christ had
actually said (the accounts in the Gospels, which Rose had read in
Greek, did not match up) and if he had existed at all.
Picture-books in the library – accumulated in those days prior to
the collapse of three-quarters of the banks in the United States
when Rose and Benjamin had operated a school – were consulted as to
what ancient Egyptian concubines would wear (“I
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