Something else must still be mentioned here, something that would eventually have dealt a deathblow to the love of this man, who often made overly great pretenses concerning the fair sex, even if he still loved his wife with the same intensity and dedication as before. Albert was of German origin, and Claudine was French. With a husband such as Albert, only spirited engagement could have prevented the utter cooling of their love, and he could not manage this with Claudine. Although he spoke excellent French, he usually failed to strike on the most spirited phrases. Once the first rush of sensuality is past and love cannot speak in its native language, there is a natural inclination to lower the temperature. One speaks in vain of the beloved’s worth, since an alien language cannot completely make it known, and distrust or indifference eats ever deeper into the heart. One learns little or nothing of the positive qualities of the other, and in short husband and wife remain foreigners to each other even in marriage.
It is extraordinarily rare for spouses to be happy when they do not speak the same language. They normally function as little more than automata on public display, bound together by an arbitrary contract, and the children of such parents are always odd, at best traitors to their national self-awareness.
But enough of philosophy; we would rather take up the romantic threads once more.
Pale as a marble statue, Claudine rose from her chair and sat down on a love seat in the corner. She was deeply offended. Total contempt had taken the place of her pain, and her features expressed this attitude all too clearly. In the spirit she searched her past and came to understand that this man had never really loved her, that his wooing of her had simply been a matter of plucking a fragrant flower just so that it would wither without his attention. She was now assured of the truth to the words he had just spoken, and in the place of her contempt there grew a sense of injured pride she had never known before, for she had taken to her breast a man she thought had loved her.
Albert, who had just risen from his chair to return to his usual work, noted with astonishment the proud glare and cold contempt that expressed itself in her pose when he happened to catch his wife’s eye. He, the smooth, slick lover, who normally had a thousand tricks up his sleeve to soothe an irritated woman and bring her back into his arms, now did not dare speak even one word to her. He went into the neighboring room, where he told the maid to prepare the large crystal lamp and to make ready another small fireplace, since he had been suddenly chilled as the north wind replaced warm Gulf breezes. Then he ordered the girl to prepare a couple of glasses of grog and bring them to his room. He assumed this drink would reverse his cross mood, putting him into a positive frame of mind for his drawing. He was totally wrong about this. The liquor guided his imagination in precisely the direction he wished to avoid, and in lurid colors it painted the horrors his reckless behavior might bring. Then he felt painful stimulation in his limbs, and desire rose up in revenge with all its enchantment and magic. As if he were bathed in welling mists of incense, sensuality now clouded his eyes. He let fall the pencil he had taken up several times to finish his drawing, and now he brooded, head sunk on his chest, over—the beauty of his wife.
She had never seemed more beautiful to him—even on their wedding night, her virginal charms had not injected greater excitement into his veins than did his wife at this moment. He loved variety in his physical enjoyments. Until now he had held a love-intoxicated Venus in his arms, but now he even wanted to embrace once more the cold marble she had become. His wife now seemed more beautiful than ever, with her proud stare and cold contempt, than she had with enticing eyes and burning lips. His eyes flickered, and his head seemed ready to burst at the thought of a liaison. He pressed his head with all his might against the sharp corner of a table, as if he were trying to squeeze the blood out of it; he let his lips hang open, and he wallowed in a decadent chaos of images of every sort. He felt that he could no longer endure this condition. He had to make a rash decision. In his mind he was already throwing himself at the feet of his disdainful Claudine and beseeching her to forgive him and grant him her love once more.
Then he suddenly stood erect and pounded his forehead with his clenched fist, breaking into a Satanic laugh: “Greenhorn that I am,” he started to converse with himself, “that I still am, I cast up the most wonderful, overheated images, torment myself with the most fantastic images of what divine enjoyment I would have if I could still take her in my arms this evening, and I don’t even consider that to win this boon she would first have to forgive me, in which case I would have the same old friendly eyes and normally colored cheeks before me. Nature is indeed cursed with eternal contradictions and deceptions! First nature shows me a goddess chiseled out of alabaster with a strict, cold stare and proud countenance, shows me an earnest Minerva who turns back into a waiflike Venus in my arms. If only one could enjoy that creature we know as woman in all her phases! This cheat nature, who grants us her most beautiful gifts only in our imagination and never in naked actuality! Yes, we are only born with our powerful sensuality in order to rave unceasingly about love—otherwise it is nothing! Love does not grant us an ordinary pleasure for once, such as we might have at any well-set table. It is enough to drive one mad!”
In this manner he disputed with himself for a while longer before turning to his work, seemingly satisfied. But he didn’t manage to get anything done. He reached for the compass instead of a T-square, and instead of an ordinate he drew a circle. Indeed, in his preoccupied state he took up an old casting plan long since set aside, and he set about calculating the gears of a machine that had been figured months ago, whose models were already at the foundry. He threw it all aside in disgust, sank down in his chair, and thoughtlessly stared at the half-closed door that separated him from his wife’s bedroom.
He sat musing for a while, then he thought he could hear the closing of the other door of the bedroom, which led to a hallway. He listened carefully. The light in the bedroom was gone. At the same moment he heard the door of the outer room open and quietly close. He picked up the tall crystal lamp and opened the door. Everything was gone. Neither the maid nor his wife were there. As he looked around he saw that one pillow was gone too. The down comforter his wife normally covered herself with was also not to be seen. She must be making her bed in the outer room this evening. He set the lamp on the table and went to the window, which he opened, allowing the fresh air to cool the burning fever of his brow. He was still undecided about whether to speak with his wife this evening. After long consideration, he decided not.
Before he went to sleep—midnight was long past—he reached into his bookcase and fetched Lord Byron, his faithful but perilous companion since his wedding. He opened to his favorite canto in Don Juan, feeding heart and soul with the bright, shining mirage of this poet:
How can a wife still satisfy lust,
Since sin cannot be found in a wife’s kiss?
Could Petrarch love his Laura as wife—
He never would have written a sonnet in his life!
When we look in on Claudine, we find her sealing a letter, which the maid is to take with her in the morning on her way to the market. From the following laconic lines, the reader can see the decision she has made and learn much of both spouses’ futures:
Madame
la baronne Alma de St. Marie Église
New Orleans, Rue de Bourbon no. 135.
Dear aunt!
I want to speak with you as soon as possible concerning an important matter. If you would be so good as to have an hour to spare in which I might visit you? Prepare to learn something extraordinary, and stiffen your courage until the moment of our meeting. There are situations in life for which one can never be adequately prepared. In any case I believe that you will once more be a rescuing guardian angel with your usual openheartedness and goodness. With deepest respect I kiss your hand, your
Claudine R——n
née de Lesuire
The person to whom these lines were directed is an old,
respectable lady who, besides a few of the minor failings of her sex, has the great weakness of being somewhat obsessed over her aristocratic origins. Whoever violated her aristocratic pretensions even in the slightest immediately lost her favor. Although she could not really be called rich, she owned three houses in Bourbon Street and a volante with two horses. A mulatto she just obtained through an inheritance completes her half-dozen slaves. She belonged to that French clique in New Orleans that could still boast of the hereditary titles they brought with them in the period of the emigration. This considerable clique of French aristocrats, which excludes even the richer Americans from its circle, since they are regarded as not of equal birth, plays the same role in the small circle of New Orleans that the grandees of South Carolina play in the whole United States. Many of them rush to Paris in the summer—at least this was the case until 184810—to enjoy full recognition of their old splendor. They then return to New Orleans at the end of autumn, with their experiences in the great capital providing material enough for the soirées and tea dances of the winter season. A truly aristocratic enjoyment, this life of wandering between the salons of two different hemispheres!
When the sun rose from the dark shadows of the hollows in the morning, Claudine rose from her bed enriched by experience but poorer than ever in love, desires, and hopes.
Chapter 5
A WELCOME GUEST
Jenny and Frida had barely been able to put their hair back in order in front of the mirror, and they were standing with burning red cheeks as the man repeatedly, energetically pounded on the door.
“Tell me, sister,” Jenny turned to Frida and said, “where could Tiberius be hiding that people may enter so freely without being announced in advance? We might have been most embarrassed to be found sleeping in broad daylight. We would be considered to be good for nothing. But listen! I think the person has gone back down the stairs, so that we can see who it is in the shadowed walk.”
They both went to the window and lifted the shades wide enough for them to lean out. On the stairs could be heard a man’s footfall, cushioned by the carpet, and soon a man emerged from the front door of the cottage and stood on the stone steps, frequently looking back at the entryway, often making a step forward as if listening to hear if anything stirred in the house.
“Who could that be?” the sisters asked one another as they searched the face of the man standing below.
“It isn’t Albert, the young architect?” Frida continued.
“What could you be thinking about? Look now, as he turns about—he has a full, red beard, so one can hardly see his face, and that’s supposed to be Albert? You must be quite mistaken, little sister.”
“The red beard wasn’t visible before, and you really must admit that he looked exactly like the young architect from the back; he had the same free and unrestricted movement, the same size, see—even the same coat…”
“Indeed, and the same red hair,” Jenny remarked ironically, “look how it rolls out from under his gray hat. That’s a coarse fellow! How happy I am that we slept through his coming—who knows what troubles this person would have caused us.”
“Ever since young Hagen repaid our hospitality so poorly last year, I no longer have the same trust in people of that sort, who announce themselves and make themselves into guests in an instant. Things here are different from Germany.”
“But we’re talking like children, dear little sister. Is it established that this man wants to become a guest? Perhaps he is here for an utterly trivial matter. Look, he’s still standing down there—look, look, now he’s finally moving—for God’s sake, sister, now he’s seen us!”
The two sisters shrank back from the window, holding each other’s hands and standing in the middle of the room on their tiptoes as they listened at the door to hear the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Their anticipation was all too justified. The man came up the stairway even more rapidly than he had gone down, and in a few moments he was at the door of the drawing room. He had seen and recognized them, blonde Frida thought; she was convinced that he must be an acquaintance of some sort, since a stranger would have perceived the awkwardness of his visit and left. Only a close relative or an acquaintance would have allowed himself to rush right up the stairs on seeing them. That would be inexcusable for anyone else.
The stranger had not yet reached the top step when the parrot, who had been napping in solidarity with the sisters, began to squawk with all his might, letting loose with a long tirade of all the words and phrases he had learned, including his notorious “Señor” and the names of his mistresses.
“So, I really am in the right place!” the stranger said to himself, after he had heard the names Frida and Jenny more than twenty times. “My dear cousins really do live here—they won’t recognize me all at once. The long voyage, the large beard, the tanned face—all of this makes me unknowable.” He stepped up to the bird’s cage and began to chat with it and to pet it. He didn’t do that for the bird’s sake, or to have a little enjoyment with it, but only to give himself time to consider how he was to approach his cousins and whether or not he should identify himself at once. Then he saw that the shawl hanging beside the birdcage was the same one he had bought for Frida the previous year. Now all doubt had vanished. The cousins must be in the next room, where he had glimpsed them from the street. Besides, the bird continued tirelessly to shriek out the names Frida and Jenny—there could no longer be any doubt.
In the meantime, the two sisters conferred on how they were to greet the man still a stranger to them, since he had to be received in the drawing room rather than in the parlor on the lower floor, owing to little Tiberius’s negligence.
Under the prevailing circumstances, it would be difficult to observe the proper decorum there, since various feminine articles that should have been cleared away lay scattered about, and the stranger was likely to enter at any instant…
After a few moments had passed, however, the sisters were hanging on the neck of their cousin and kissing him, storming him with questions, and he was replying to their charming attentions in kind, kissing them back heartily and twice over.
Once the stormy first moments of the reception had passed, the sisters began speaking about their domestic situation, which they related gently and hesitantly to their astounded cousin. He was quickly initiated into the two young women’s difficult position, and they agreed that he should stay in their home during his sojourn in New Orleans, sharing good times and bad.
“Now I’m on my way to the kitchen to teach our negligent Tiberius a little lesson,” the businesslike Frida declared, after she had recovered from the excitement of her cousin’s arrival and the revelations he had made—which must be kept from the reader for a while—were past, making way for quiet reflection. “Besides, it’s almost noon and our cousin must be hungry.”
“Dear cousin, how can you believe that I should think of food in the presence of such lovable ladies; that would be quite an improper thought,” their gallant cousin Karl remarked, holding Frida’s hands in his so as to prevent her from going. “Besides, now is no time for me to be concerned with eating.”
“Everything at its proper time, dear cousin, but I would like to see how you would fare if we let you starve for several days. You would certainly tire of our presence in the end—but you certainly don’t mean that. You men always want to think us women to be ethereal beings who can live off a pretty face and poetry, and you cannot imagine our feelings might be injured by that.” After saying this, she slipped out of her cousin’s hands and sprang rather than walked down the stairs, finding the kitchen in perfect order but without Tiberius. The black cook must not have been long gone, however, since the recently beheaded hen on the floor still gave evidence of life, forlornly flapping its wings against the planks.
The young residents of the cottage had no domestics left save young Tiberius, still in his teens. Everything went through their own hands, separately or together by turns. Jenny, the younger of the two, h
ad not yet passed her eighteenth year, one year less than Frida, and she was all the more unprepared for taking care of and doing for herself because her husband had provided her with two mulatto servants, besides Tiberius, who was his own. Since her unhappy separation from him, she had shared with her sister all those small cares and concerns, which even the smallest household supplies, with an empathetic spirit. They were reasonable enough to see the need for sisterly cooperation, all the more so due to their disgust with men, of whom one had utterly vanished and the other had been amusing himself with whores and courtesans.
Since the new arrival will often concern us in the course of this novel, it would be proper to sketch him with a few strokes right at the outset, paying some attention as well to his physical appearance. Accustomed from his earliest years to the inequities of material life, and growing to manhood struggling for a free existence, he had learned to bear the changing fortunes of life and had adopted the stoic good humor one finds with men whose powerful, lively constitution views misfortune not as a burden but as a source of future activities and enterprise. Let us add that he completely lacked that gift of reflection which torments and obsesses a person when contemplating his own fortunes and problems, so that we could describe him as a happy man, even if the experiences he would relate might appear dark. He was seized by an unlimited lust for travel, seemingly born to wander forever. He was a natural adventurer, which is to say that he was an adventurer by necessity and instinct, not driven to it by an artificially adopted philosophy of life.
The Mysteries of New Orleans (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures) Page 8
