Days of the Dead.pdf - Upgrade Systems

January took a sip of the gin-which was cheap and unspeakably bad-and said, "You may be right
about that."
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The diligencia jolted, bringing him back to the present. To the knowledge of money in his pocket, and
Rose-whom he had not known existed on that hot storm-whispering night three years ago-at his side.
Slowly he said, "Hannibal has been my friend for three years. Drunk or sober, I don't think you could
find a more peaceable soul in creation-or a more hapless one." He spoke French-across from him the
two German mer­chants muttered together in their native tongue and glanced worriedly out at the gray
and yellow landscape of stone, distant pines, and dust. The entire journey had been a series of
translations and recapitulations, and even in the close confines of the swaying coach January and Rose
had a curious sense of privacy, as if everyone else were trapped within their own linguistic worlds.
"But it is also true," he went on, "that I have no idea what Hannibal did, or even what his name was,
before the night I met him." The morning after that encounter on the waterfront January had gotten his first
music pupil in New Orleans, and two nights after that had been hired for his first job playing at a
quadroon ball. Hannibal had been playing as well, as usual the only white among musicians who ranged
from musterfinos-men who were considered to be "of color" on the grounds of one African
great-­grandparent-down to January's nearly-pure African blackness. For this reason alone the fiddler
was considered rather degenerate by the whites in the town.
"No," said Rose softly. "No ... He's never spoken of his family, or where he comes from, not even
when he's drunk."
January nodded-Hannibal had never mentioned what he was doing in the deserted darkness of the
New Orleans levee, contemplating the River Styx.
"Oh, he'll mention that he was up at Oxford, and his speech gets very Irish when he's drunk. He turned
up in New Orleans about a year before you did; he'd teach the girls at my school to play violin, piano,
and harp, and would correct their Latin in exchange for supper. I couldn't pay him in cash, of course."
Her mouth quirked reminiscently as she spoke of the school she'd taught on Rue St. Claud, the smile
fleeting away the next moment like the silver flash of fish among reeds. January well recalled the old
Spanish house to which she'd first led him on a night of wind and rain during the terrible season of yellow
fever in the summer of 1833. Most of her students-daughters of quadroon and octoroon plaçées by their
white protectors, even as she was herself-­had left the city then. Only six remained, four of those
des­perately ill with yellow fever. He remembered Rose's bitter tears at their death. Two years later, she
still grieved for them, and the loss of the school had been like the loss of her family.
January's hand sought hers, its tightening an unspoken reassurance. We will have a school again. She
flashed him another quicksilver smile. Their wedding-night had been spent in the big old house on Rue
Esplanade that was, mir­acle of miracles after years of mutual poverty, their own. It was still a matter of
astonishment to him that though he daily missed Ayasha still, his grief did not lessen the won­der of his
love for Rose.
Her hand tightened in return, and in a lighter voice she said, "So for all I know, Hannibal could have left
a trail of corpses from here to Ireland and on across the Continent. Unless..." She hesitated, genuine
doubt springing into green-gray eyes that were her legacy from a white father and a white grandfather.
"You don't think he could have done murder while under the influence of opium, do you? And not