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

Mostly, January remembered, she would ask, "Might we play another piece, Papa? It's still short of the
hour."

And old Rene Dubonnet would generally agree. "If it's no trouble for Monsieur Janvier, ma chere. Thank
you for indulging her—would you care for some lemon ice as well, when you're done, Monsieur?"

Not an unheard-of offer from a white Frenchman to his daughter's colored music master, but it showed
more than the usual politeness. Certainly more politeness than would be forthcoming even from a
Frenchman these days.

He realized he didn't know what her name was now. She must be all of twenty-seven. If she hadn't
spoken he might not have known her, but of course she had known him. He and the waiters in their white
coats and the colored croupiers in the gaming rooms were the only men in the building not masked.

All this went through his mind in a moment, while she was still trying to make up her mind whether to
deny that she knew him at all or to deny that she was the child who had played modern music with such
eerie ferocity. Before she could come to a decision he gestured her to the empty office of the Salle's
master of ceremonies and manager, one Leon Froissart, who would be safely upstairs in the ballroom for
some time to come. Had he been in Paris January might have taken her arm, for she was trembling. But
though she must be passing herself as an octoroon—and there were octoroons as light as she— as a
black man he was not to touch her.

Only white men had the privilege of dancing, of flirting with, of kissing the ladies who came to the Blue
Ribbon Balls. The balls were for their benefit. A man who was colored, or black, freeborn or freedman
or slave, was simply a part of the building. Had he not lost the habit of keeping his eyes down in sixteen
years' residence in Paris, he wouldn't even have looked at her face.

She left a little trail of black cock feathers in her wake as she preceded him into the office. The room was
barely larger than a cupboard, illumined only by the rusty flare of streetlights and the glare of passing
flambeaux that came in through the fanlight over the shutters; the cacophony of brass bands and shouting
in the street came faintly but clearly through the wall.
She said, still trying to bluff it through, "Monsieur Janvier, while I thank you for your assistance, I ..."

"Mademoiselle Dubonnet." He closed the door after a glance up and down the hall, to make sure they
were unobserved. "Two things. First, if you're passing yourself as one of these ladies, some man's placee
or a woman looking to become one, take off your wedding ring. It makes a mark through the glove and
anyone who takes your hand for a dance is going to feel it."

Her right hand flashed to her left, covering the worn place in the glove. She had big hands for a
woman—even as a little girl, he remembered, her gloves had always been mended on the outside edge,
as these were. Maybe that was what had triggered the recollection in his mind. As she fumbled with the
faded kid he went on.

"Second, this isn't anyplace for you. I know it isn't my place to say so, but why ever you're here—and I
assume it's got something to do with a man—go home. Whatever you're doing, do it some other way."

"It isn't . . ." she began breathlessly, but there was guilty despair in her eyes, and he held up his hand for
silence again.