Benjamin January 1 - A Free Man Of Color by Barbara Hambly

money. For them, money is everything! Look at the houses they build, out along the Carrolton Road, in the LaFayette suburb and Saint Mary! I recall a time—not ten years ago it was!—that the whole of the city of Jefferson was the Avart and Delaplace plantations, and a half-dozen others, the best sugar land on the river. And what do they do now? They build a streetcar line, they tear up the fields, and the next thing you know, you have these dreadful American houses with their picket fences! Exactly that which that canaille Granger proposes to do along Bayou Saint John! Him, fight a duel? Pffui!”
    He flung out his hands in indignation—evidently challenges to duels, like trouncings with canes or fistfights in the court downstairs, did not come under the same category as murder.
    “Why, in my office this evening, the way he and those sordid friends of his behaved! A disgrace! They are not gentlemen! They have no concept! They cannot tell Rossini from 'Turkey in the Straw'!”
    “You're right about that, sir,” agreed January gravely. As he spoke he felt a deep annoyance at himself, to be playing along as he had played along during his childhood and adolescence, falling back into the old double role of manipulating a white man's illusions about what a man of color was and thought. Still, the role was there, script and inflections and bits of business, a weapon or tool with whose use he was familiar, though he felt dirtied by its touch. “In Paris, the Americans were the same way. Every ball I'd play at, you could tell right where the Americans were sitting.”
    “And that is why we cannot summon the police tonight,” concluded Froissart, turning regretfully back to the beautiful, ruined woman lying between them. “They do not understand how to do these things quietly, discreetly. Of course, of course they must be summoned in the morning—after I have spoken to Monsieur Davis. ... Of course he will want to summon them. . . .”He chewed his lip in an agony of uncertainty, and January remembered the mother of one of his friends in Paris, who would put aside bills “for a few days until I know I have the money” and then eventually burn them unread.
    Angelique's body was a bill that would be burned unread. Not because she was an evil woman or because she had harmed every life she touched, but only because she was colored and a placee.
    “Well, what would you?” sighed Froissart—January could almost see Mme. du Gagny sliding yet another dressmaker's dun into that nacre-and-rosewood secretaire. “It is how it is. ... Good heavens, how long have we been here? People will begin to ask. . . . You must return to your piano and say nothing, nothing. Be assured that the matter will be taken care of in the morning.”
    January inclined his head and arose. “I'm sorry,” he said humbly. “I was so shaken up by seeing her here like this, I ... It took me a while to get my thoughts back. Thank you for your patience with me.”
    Froissart beamed patronizingly. “One understands,” he said, as if he himself hadn't gone fishbelly green at the sight of the body—January guessed he was one of those who headed for Mandeville at the first of the summer heat and had never been through an epidemic at firsthand in his life. “Of course, the shock of it all. I hope you are better.”
    “Much,” said January, wondering if he should fake a spell of dizziness with the shock and rejecting the idea— and his own consideration of it—with loathing. He made a show of looking around as if he'd forgotten something, playing for as much time as he could scrape. “Much better.”
    Froissart turned and left the jewelbox room with its grisly occupant, and January perforce followed. He glanced back at the crumpled body, the grasping and greedy woman who had assumed he was a slave because his skin was darker than hers. Still, she did not deserve to be forgotten like an unpaid bill. I did my best, he apologized. More, certainly, than he