how the Catholic conception took root in her so strong and so soon—before the fiend could carry her off into erotic dreams—I can’t honestly say. If you believe in God, you might say God was with her. I don’t think so.
Whatever, my mother and I, tiring of my grandmother’s awful band, soon hired a piano player and a fiddler to play for us. The spirit seemed at first to delight in this as it had in the cacophonous band. In dazzling male form, it would appear in the room, spellbound and happy to reveal it.
But it came to realize we whispered to each other under the notes of the song, and it couldn’t hear or know what we thought or planned, it became fiercely angry. We needed louder music to shut it out and brought back the others to create their din, and then we saw that what was most effective was melody and rhythm. Noise alone was not sufficient to do it.
Meantime, as we prospered, as the plantation was flush, and our money seemed to breed upon itself in foreign banks, and our cousins married far and wide, the name Mayfair became greater and greater along the River Coast, and we reigned supreme on our own land. No one could bother us or touch us.
I was nine years old when I demanded of the fiend:
“What is it you really want of us, of my mother and me?”
“What I want of you all,” he said. “That you make me flesh!” and, imitating the band, it began to sing these words over and over, and shake the objects in the room to the rhythm as it were of a drum, until I put my hands over my ears and begged for mercy.
“Laughter,” he said. “Laughter.”
“Which means what?” I asked.
“I am laughing at you because I too can make music to make you rock.”
I laughed. “You’re right,” I said. “And you say this word, because you cannot actually laugh.”
“Just so,” he said, petulantly. “When I am flesh I shall laugh again.”
“Again?” said I.
He said nothing.
Ah, this moment is so clear in my memory. I stood out on the upper gallery of the house, shielded somewhat by the banana leaves that stroked the wooden banisters. And out on the river, ships made their way north to the port through the channels. All the fields lay in warm spring sunlight, and below on the grass my cousins played, some forty or fifty of them, all below the age of twelve, and around them in rocking chairs sat the uncles and aunts, fanning themselves and chatting.
And here I stood with this thing, my hands on the rail, my face very grave most likely for the age of nine, trying to get to the heart of it.
“All this I have given you,” he said, as if he had read my emotions more clearly than I had myself. “Your family is my family; I will bring blessing upon blessing. You do not know what wealth can give. You are too young. You will come to see that you are a prince in a great kingdom. No crowned head in Europe enjoys such power as you have.”
“I love you,” I said mechanically to it, and sought to believe this for an instant, as if I were seducing a mortal adult.
“I shall continue,” he said. “Protect Katherine until she can bear a girl child. Carry on the line; Katherine is weak, strong ones will come, it must happen.”
I pondered.
“This is all I can do?” I asked.
“For now,” he said. “But you are very strong, Julien. Things will come into your mind, and when you see what is to be done I shall see it.”
Again I pondered. I studied the happy throng on the lawn. My brother was calling for me to come down and play; they would be taking a boat out soon to the Bayou. Did I want to come with them?
I saw, then, two founts of enterprise at work now in this family—one was the witches’ fount, to use the spirit to acquire wealth and advantage; and the other was the natural or normal fount, already bubbling with a great strong flow that might not be stopped were the spirit destroyed.
Once again, it answered me.
“War on me and I destroy all this! You are living now because Katherine needs you.”
I didn’t answer. I went inside, took my diary, went down to the parlor, and urged the musicians to play loud and strong, and then I wrote my