Free Feast of All Saints by Anne Rice Page A

“Chris!” over and over.
    Marcel watched petrified as they embraced. It seemed Christophe turned her around and around in his arms, his laughter coming soft and rich and low under her gasps and cries. She was kissing him all over the face and neck; she was beating gently on his shoulders with her fists.
    Suddenly her cries slowed, became deeper, and an awful sorrow broke loose in her voice. Christophe sat slowly in the wicker chair at the table and folded her against him so that she buried her head in his neck.
    “Maman,” he said to her softly, stroking her as she sobbed against him, saying over and over, as if with a broken heart, “Chris, Chris…”
    Marcel pulled on his pants and his shirt at once. There was no time for his vest, watch, comb. Jamming his unfastened cuffs into his jacket sleeves, he turned around, shirt open at the throat and saw the man’s large dark eyes fixed on him in the gloom. Juliet cried still, and Christophe’s hand patted her gently. He looked down at her, much to Marcel’s relief, and lifted her chin so he could look into her eyes. The light fell on his profile, gleamed for an instant on his forehead as he said to her, “Maman…” as if that word alone conveyed all the eloquence that he might need.
    She was feeling his face, kissing his cheekbones, then his eyelids.
    Shaking and on the verge of tears himself, Marcel pulled on his boots, and shoving his socks down into his jacket pockets turned toward the door.
    “But who is this?” Christophe asked. Marcel froze.
    “Oh, yes…” Juliet wiped at the tears on her cheek with the back of her hand. “Oh, yes, come here,
cher
, it’s Christophe…” and when she said her son’s name again her voice broke. She appeared to shudder, to kiss him again and then hold him tightly. Marcel was utterly miserable. But then she said, “Come here,
cher
, come come come!” and held her hand out toward him.
    Marcel’s legs were trembling so violently that he could only make himself approach the table by a severe act of will. And when he felt Juliet’s hand slip into his and clasp it, he looked deliberately into Christophe’s eyes.
    It was the face he’d only just seen in the little picture, of course. A somewhat square face, the tightly curled hair making a neat frame for it with a straight line across the forehead and carefully trimmed side-burns. It was a common enough face where Mediterranean and African blood combine, the features small, the skin a light brown and supple, the jaw square, the whole effect being one of evenness, the kind of face which in later years is often rendered powerfully distinguished by its frame of graying hair, and the grizzled line of a mustache.
    But the expression of that face was hardly the lifeless rendering of the portrait. It had rather a fire to it that seemed all but menacing in the twilight, something of mockery or absolute rage.
    Marcel withered.
    “This is a smart boy,” Juliet said. She was crying still, and in another burst of excitement she kissed Christophe again. He was holding her firmly in his right arm, as if she weighed nothing on his lap, and with his left hand now he smoothed back her hair.
    “I can well imagine,” he said under his breath as he glanced up at Marcel, but his mother did not appear to hear.
    “He read your letter to me, told me you were coming home, of Paris papers saying this, that you were coming home,” and again she began to shake with sobs.
    But Christophe was gazing levelly at Marcel, and he raised his eyebrows dramatically, pretending to study him with interest.
    “These boys, they worship you, they put letters under the gate,” she said excitedly, “But this one, Cecile’s son, he came to me like a gentleman! No peeping at the windows…”
    Cecile’s son
. It was like feeling the noose slip around his neck. How in the hell could she have known he was Cecile’s son! She seemed not to know the time of day, the day of the month, the month of the year! And