Lancelot

midst these resplendent larger-than-life beings. She, Maude, couldn’t get over it: not only had they turned up in her library, burnishing the dim shelves with their golden light; she had for a moment been one of them!
    Presently Mrs. Robichaux, a dentist’s wife, whom all these years I had taken to be a mild comely content little body, showed up from nowhere and told Raine she would do anything, anything, for the company: “even carry klieg lights!”
    The world had gone crazy, said the crazy man in his cell. What was nutty was that the movie folk were trafficking in illusions in a real world but the real world thought that its reality could only be found in the illusions. Two sets of maniacs.
    Somehow they had dropped the ball between them.
    Lionel came in close with the Arriflex camera saddled on his shoulder. Again Dana moved against Margot. He looked straight into her eyes, lazily and with no difficulty. Margot looked back with difficulty. Three lights were reflected in her pupil.
    Jacoby held both of them, his bent hands on their shoulders, eyes fixed on the floor, like a referee talking to boxers.
    â€œDear,” he said to Margot, “this time let’s try it this way. I want your legs wrapped around him.”
    He’s not from Poland, I thought. He’d lost his accent again.
    â€œHow?” asked Margot faintly.
    â€œHow? Christ, just do it. He’ll help. He’s going to grab your ass and hold you off the floor. Don’t worry.”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œAnd when you say your one line: ‘You will be gentle with me, won’t you?’ I want to hear both fear and tenderness. Can you manage that, dear?”
    â€œI’ll try.”
    â€œYeah, all right. You ready? Remember, Dana, I want to hear the zipper. It’s important.”
    â€œYeah. Right.”
    â€œMerlin,” I asked, “what happens to, ah, Lipscomb in the end?”
    Merlin shrugged. “Just what you might suppose. He is almost reached, first by the stranger, then by his own aunt. But in the end he slips away from both. He gently subsides into booze and Chopin. Sarah opts for life, he for death. The stranger is immolated by a town mob who think they hate him but really hate the life forces in themselves that he stirs. He is the new Christ, of course.”
    I walked back to Belle Isle on the levee. Sure enough, the air had got heavy and still. Yet far above, black clouds were racing, fleeing north of their own accord like the blackbirds which rose from the swamp disquieted. A yellow light filled the space between earth and clouds as if the Christmas bonfires were already burning.
    I couldn’t stand it. I still can’t stand it. I can’t stand the way things are. I cannot tolerate this age. What is more, I won’t. That was my discovery: that I didn’t have to.
    If you were right, I could stand it. If your Christ were king and all that stuff you believe—Christ, do you still believe it?—were true, I could stand it. But you don’t even believe it yourself, do you? All you can think about is that girl on the levee. No wonder you don’t have time to pray for the dead. All you can think about is getting that girl over the levee into the willows.
    No? But if what you once believed were true, I could stand the way things are.
    Or if my great-great-grandfather were right, I could live with that. Do you know what he did? He had a duel! Not a gentlemanly affaire d’honneur under the Audubon oaks in New Orleans, but a fight to the death with fists and knives just like Jim Bowie, in fact on the same sand bar. He had won a lot of money in a poker game in Alexandria. The heavy loser took it hard and began muttering about cheating. That was bad enough. But he made a mistake. He mentioned my kinsman’s mother’s name. She was a d’Arbouche from New Roads. Now my kinsman was a swarthy man; he looked like Jean Lafitte. “What’s that you said?” he asked the fellow, who then said something like, “You got the right name all right.” “And how is that?” asked my ancestor pleasantly. “Well, it’s d’Arbouche, isn’t it, or is it Tarbrouche?” Which was to say that my ancestor had a touch of the tarbrush which was in turn to say that his mother, a very white Creole lady, had had sexual relations with a Negro, and offhand it is harder to say which was the deadlier insult: that she had had