All Souls' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell

said. “But it’s a whole thieves’ alley thereabouts, no wonder. You’d be better off with a berth on a ship, or a billet with me at Les Casernes. But never mind, we’ll find something for you.”
    Arm in arm, they entered the theater. The walls were washed to a pale shade and pleasantly lit with candles in sconces. The theater seemed about half full; Maillart let him know it would hold fifteen hundred spectators. He pointed out Governor Blanchelande in his box, and the other box reserved for the intendant , the latter empty this evening. Maillart himself had taken seats in the amphitheater along with several other young officers of the Regiment Le Cap. The doctor passed through several rapid introductions, not quite catching the names. He was pressed for news of Paris, but he’d been long enough at Ennery that most of the officers were more current than he.
    As soon as the colored women began to enter their boxes, the political talk died off. Of course the mulattresses didn’t come directly in with the officers; their boxes were in the rank above, and reached by a separate stairway. But once they were in place, they were no more than a hand’s reach away. A rotund young captain whose name the doctor thought was Baudin tore the white cockade from his hat and tossed it upward as a favor, addressing the woman who reached across her rail to catch it by her first name, Fleur.
    Fleur, Jasmine, Chloe and Nanon were the four women in the box immediately overhead—so the doctor could gather from the banter that passed between him and the members of his party. The women knew the officers by their first names as well. All four were slim and lovely, close to white whatever mix of blood they carried, and dressed and coiffed to rival ladies of the court. To the officers’ banter they responded not with the minced coquetry of French demimondaines , but with a slow and balanced languor, a rich dark energy like waves moving through molasses.
    All this while the officers chattered to them loudly, an excruciatingly circumstantial discourse couched in language that would have embarrassed a barnyard animal. A raw blush struck the doctor at the roots of his hair and stained him halfway down to his navel, so it felt; he was relieved to think that in this light it probably would not show. He turned to the stage, where the blue curtain was slowly lifting from behind two gargantuan busts of satyrs.
    So the play began, a comedy. To the doctor it seemed poorly written, worse performed, the actors often faltering, requiring prompts, and yet he did his best to bend his mind upon the stage. The officers’ raillery with the girls continued apace, though sotto voce now. The room seemed close, even underfilled as it was, and the doctor was in an uncomfortable sweat. Mosquitoes plagued him too; a cloud of them hung over the whole amphitheater. Maillart and the others seemed insensible of the bites, though now and again one of them would automatically slap himself.
    Finally the play lurched to its intermission and the curtain lowered for the entr’acte . The doctor got up and followed Maillart into the bustling corridors. A cluster formed around the governor, men of affairs taking this opportunity to catch Blanchelande’s ear in an idle moment. Captain Maillart cut efficiently through the crowd, the doctor washing along in his wake.
    “What do you think of our players?” Maillart said over his shoulder.
    “Abominable,” the doctor said, with no pause for reflection.
    Maillart chuckled. “Ah well. There was an actor here who told the committee, ‘You’d be in poor shape to pay me if I did know my parts.’”
    The doctor smiled, turned his head in owlish circles, looking at the people. There were many of the merchants and the planters there, some with their wives or daughters, white women in fair numbers too and in their full regalia. He was thinking that Monsieur or Madame Cigny might well be in the company, if he could find someone who