"Barbara Hambly - Benjamin January 1 - A Free Man of Color" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

The Austrian—Herr Kovald—taught the children of other placees and seemed to think it only the
children's due that their illegitimate fathers pay for a musical as well as a literary education for them. If he
ever thought it odd that Ben did not appear to have a drop of European blood in his veins it was not
something he considered worthy of mention.

Ben was, he said quite simply, the best, and therefore deserved to be beaten more, as diamonds require
fiercer blows to cut. Common trash like pearls, he said, one only rubbed a little.

Herr Kovald had played the piano at the quadroon balls, which in those days had been held at another
ballroom on Rue Royale. Then, as now, the wealthy planters, merchants, and bankers of the town would
bring their mulatto or quadroon mistresses—their placees—to dance and socialize, away from the
restrictions of wives or would-be wives; would also bring their sons to negotiate for the choice of
mistresses of their own. Then, as now, free women of color, pla?ees or former plasees, would bring their
daughters as soon as they were old enough to be taken in by protectors and become plafees themselves,
in accordance with the custom of the country. Society was smaller then and exclusively French and
Spanish. In those days the few Americans who had established plantations near the city since the
takeover by the United States simply made concubines of the best looking of their slaves and sold them
off or sent them back to the fields when their allure faded.

At Carnival time in 1811, Herr Kovald was sick with the wasting illness that was later to claim his life. As
if the matter had been discussed beforehand, he had simply sent a note to Livia Janvier's lodgings,
instructing her son Benjamin to take his place as piano player at the ball. And in spite of his mother's
deep disapproval ("It's one thing for you to play for me, p'tit, but for you to play like a hurdy-gurdy man
for those cheap hussies that go to those balls . . ."), he had, as a matter of course, gone. And, except for
a break of six years, he had been a professional musician ever since.

The ballroom was full by the time the cotillion was done. January looked up from his music to scan the
place from the vantage point of the dais, while Hannibal shared his champagne with the other two
musicians and flirted with Phlosine Seurat, who had by this time discovered that powdered wigs and
panniers were designed for the stately display of a minuet, not the breathtaking romp of a cotillion.
Between snippets of Schubert, played to give everyone time to regain their breaths, January tried again to
catch sight of Madeleine Trepagier—if that was she he had thought he'd glimpsed in the ballroom
doorway—or of Angelique Crozat, or, failing either of them, his sister Dominique.

He knew Minou would be here, with her protector Henri Viellard. During the four years between
Dominique's birth and January's departure for Paris, he had known that the beautiful little girl was
destined for pla-fage—destined to become some white man's mistress, as their mother had been, with a
cottage on Rue des Ramparts or des Ursulines and the responsibility of seeing to nothing but her
protector's comfort and pleasure whenever he chose to arrive.

The practical side of him had known this was a good living for a woman, promising material comfort for
her children.

Still, he was glad he'd been in Paris when his mother started bringing Minou to the Blue Ribbon Balls.

He caught sight of her just as he began the waltz, a flurry of pink silk and brown velvet in the wide
doorway that led to the upstairs lobby, unmistakable even in a rose-trimmed domino mask as she
grasped the hands of acquaintances, exchanged kisses and giggles, always keeping her alertness focused
on the fat, fair, bespectacled man who lumbered in at her side. Viellard appeared to have been defeated
by the challenge of accommodating his spectacles to the wearing of a mask—he was clothed very