“Belvidere, Deidamia, Celestiella, Wales, Adelaide, Springet, Hannah, Gizard, Jane, Eliza, Diana, Adeline, Lydia, Penelope, Harry, and Semiramis still have to pay their arrears from last week,” Madame Brulard’s masculine voice sounded, taking an officious tone, which—by the way—did not suit her.
Those called each gave her larger or smaller amounts of money, according to their services, which slid nimbly into Parasina’s open purse.
Pharis stood next to Elma, shaking; for this time the dark features of her mistress promised no forgiveness. She thought of Hyderilla’s torments and feared something similar. Elma toyed with her black locks and seemed not to notice the short man, who stood in front of her and seemed about to devour her with his greedy eyes.
The girls all stared with great interest at Parasina’s purse, as whole and half-eagles were marching in droves into her fund of sin.21 There were still two more who needed to hand over their cash: Elma and Pharis, who were at the very end of the row.
“Now, my gold chickens,” she began with repulsive overfriendliness, showing both rows of her teeth, “show yourselves worthy of your names—hurrah for my California diggin’s!” The little man laughed dutifully at the bacchantic maenad’s bad joke, sneering with sordid pleasure at both the girls. Pharis and Elma lowered their eyes, in keeping with the demands.
“You’re shuddering, Pharis?” Parasina commanded, “Speak! I hope you’re no dumb clike—— Hyderilla … you would fare even worse than she did …” As she spoke, she moved her hands over Pharis’ shaking body, searching for money. Finding nothing, she commanded several girls to search the guilty party’s bed with care. She herself rushed to lift the poor child’s shift over her head to search, as Pharis covered her eyes with her hands. After this proved fruitless as well, poor Pharis’s hands were tied behind her back with her own shift, and she was commanded to accompany Madame and the short man upstairs.
“Monsieur Dubreuil,” Parasina turned to the short man, sounding each word incorrectly in the usual manner of Negro-French, “do you want to take care of this cheat’s execution yourself? Go into this chamber with her; everything is ready: tongs, nails, hammers, brushes, and ropes—and if this doesn’t suffice, behind the tapestry of each chimney there is a universal tool comme il faut. I will leave you now to put my books in order. À revoir, Monsieur Dubreuil!”
“Madame!” Dubreuil called out to the woman, disappearing into the next room, after he had checked his watch, “‘tis already eight—I have to preach at nine! I will put the punishment off until evening.”
Parasina broke into thundering laughter at Dubreuil’s words, holding her sides with both hands. “Please tell me what the theme of your sermon is today, Monsieur?”
“On the sixth commandment!” the little man responded, raising his eyes unctuously on high.
“It will have a poor start today,” Parasina remarked, laughing away.
“Have no fear, Madame! The Holy Spirit will appear to me in the form of a glass of good cognac and enthuse me. I have been accustomed to it since youth. À revoir, Madame Brulard!”
“Adieu, Monsieur Dubreuil! The cheat will remain shut in the chamber until you return … depend on it!”
Dubreuil left the Negress’s house and rushed to his room with lowered gaze, occasionally responding to the greetings of churchgoers he encountered on the way.
Chapter 8
AN INTERMEZZO AND FURTHER EVENTS AT MADAME BRULARD’S
Just as is the case with Greek mythology, so also Catholicism once had its classical era. What were the crusades, after all, but an Iliad? The Christian peoples were bound together in flourishing life, filled with poetry, and their martyrs and saints were not yet hypocrites and charlatans. The immaculate Virgin was the ideal for women and obsessed youths, and many a believing soul died under the cross of the savior. A pilgrimage to Loretto was not yet a joke, a formal pose, or a deceitful speculation for the money of the masses. Enthused saints really believed in their visions, and so their deceptions were innocent. The charming elective affinity between Abelard and Héloíse could only germinate in such an age. A Raphael of Urbino could only have created his delightful angelic heads and portraits of the Madonna under the warming rays of a Catholic sun. The great Dante Alighieri could rise “higher and higher” into heaven with his beloved; for his Divine Comedy was dictated by a believing heart.*
But cold skepticism crept in with Boccaccio’s Decamerone, and the poet was transformed into a brooding scholastic. From this time on, classicism was at an end, not only in Catholicism, but in Christianity in general, and, with this, morally speaking, the whole pretension of an orthodox Christianity should have ended as well. The history of mankind would then have been saved the insult of three hundred years of hypocrisy. Christianity has used understanding only as an instrument for exploitation and shameful purposes. With Ignatius Loyola, demonic forces descended into churches sanctified by naive faith, driving rest and peace from the breast of the faithful. The holy bosom of the sole saving Church—a phrase in step with reality during the classical period of Catholicism—became a place of torment and execution where black broods and filthy fools dispute. The stink of corruption and corpses became a substitute for the scents of myrrh and incense.†
How the reader manages to bring these reasonings into harmony with this chapter, how he is to discern even a spark of dialectic and logic in what has been said—those are simply the sort of things a reader of “Mysteries” has to be prepared to do.
The old French church on Rampart Street was crammed full of people today.22 Many who could not get into its narrow interior stood outside on the steps or in the portal, balancing on tiptoes in order to hear the famous preacher’s thundering speech. Up to a hundred cabs, volantes, and buggies rolled up only to depart because it was impossible to get through the crowd into the church.
Among those who had taken comfortable and advantageous seats near the chancel sat two ladies dressed in deep mourning, of whom the younger followed the preacher’s unctious words with most anxious attention, often blushing and staring at the floor when she met his eyes. The older lady sat stiffly on a cushioned chair, her face turned to the altar. She held a black velvet prayer book decorated with a gold clasp set with precious gems. From time to time she was forced to look about in response to the noise and movement at the door, which disturbed her devotions. Her Scottish origin was evident from her long, full neck and her small, elliptical ears.
The facial lines of the preacher expressed a peculiar enthusiasm, with a forced eccentricity that would lead a connoisseur of humanity to doubt whether this man, who was proclaiming the Word of God, raising high his finger in blame, really had an unsullied heart and a pure, childlike faith. At least that was what one man who stood right by the chancel thought, as he looked up with restrained animosity, then examined the devotions of the listeners. He had not come here to hear the Word of God or to let himself be enthralled by an imaginative explication of the gospel—he was driven by a curiosity to see and hear the famous preacher, even in a place that was hateful to him. The angelic Miss Dudley Evans, who was here with her mother, the idol of the clergy of New Orleans, also happened to be the object of his love.
Whoever possesses a personality receptive to art and poetry will certainly never forget the impression that a Madonna by Raphael first made on him. Miss Dudley Evans was just such a Madonna, with all the allure of a fresh rosebud just opening, saturated with the sanctified aura of innocence. Even as a young child, growing up in the perilous magic circle of the Catholic garden of errors, she was imbued with an obsessive love for the Mother of God and an unlimited obedience to priests, something that was dangerous for a child but doubly so for a virgin. Often compelled by her mother to severe acts of penance and chastisement, her eyes had taken on a suffering and painful expression that contrasted with the rosy freshness of her face and exercised an endless charm on all who came near her. Miss Dudley was the perfect image of a saint, and if she had lived a hundred year
s earlier, she would certainly have been canonized by some addled pope—for her piety, surely, but even more for her ineffible beauty. Even the aloof King Solomon, the lusty singer of the Song of Songs, would have committed a sin or two on seeing her, despite his wisdom, and he would have held off saying “all is vanity” for a while.
The proclaimer of the divine—no, the desecrated—word stood on a prayer stool, since with his small stature he would otherwise hardly have reached the top of the pulpit. In his zeal, he often bent half his body over it, as if any moment he was about to fall into the crowd. He clenched his little hands together, his eyes rolled like fiery pinwheels in their deep sockets, and his body rose and fell above the rim of the chancel, so that at times he was not visible at all; he raised both arms in the air and let his eyes roll heavenward, then he became quite still and crossed his hands over his breast, muffling his shrill tone and sinking his eyes to the ground; then he popped up into the air as if possessed and howled like old Ahriman or raging Roland—all in the course of a few moments! And what enthused this holy man? What would enthuse any one of us under certain conditions and make him a Garrick in the pulpit?—a neat shot of cognac.
We will let him preach on, and we do not want to disturb the devotions of the worshippers. We will only note that the sermon took two hours, and that the enthused preacher closed with a powerful anathema sit against all heretics.23
On the evening of the same day, Monsieur Dubreuil mounted a cab near the Pontalba Building and headed for the Third Municipality.24
The dial on the cathedral showed eight o’clock.
The silver sickle of the moon swam cheerfully and happily in the star-studded heavens.
Monsieur Debreuil was dressed today in a long, brown paletot and wore a gray cap that was pulled over his ears. He frequently looked out of the carriage and then pulled himself back, putting his feet on the seat and pulling his legs up to his chest. “That damned moon again!” he mumbled in this cowering position. “This scoundrel always appears at the wrong time … a meddlesome fellow! … a troublesome observer!… sacre nom de Dieu!… I’ll go back! … Hey boy, garçon, boy, hey!” he suddenly called to the young coachman, pushing back the window and leaning out of the coach: “Go back to Pontalba’s!”
“What do you talk about? D’mned my bloody soul be d——back again?” the whisky-befogged Irishman argued, driving his horses even harder.
“Sacre nom de Dieu!” the other cursed again, “hey, hey garçon, boy, boy, attendez un peu!… je vous donnerais deux Louis!… hé, hé garçon … sacre nom de Dieu… I want to get out!”
But the coachman appeared not to pay any heed to the little man’s raving curses. He traveled on, driving his horses, until they arrived at the place Monsieur Dubreuil had designated.
Now the cab had halted.
“And here is where the cleaning lady Boncoeur lives, gentleman,” declared the suddenly courteous Patrick, pointing to a two-story frame house whose windows were all illuminated, “and over here lives Madame Brulard—or Hotchkiss, as you will … I should take you through the little door in the wall,” he remarked with a roguish chuckle. “She has damned pretty girls, this Madame Brulard. Hey, gentleman, how would it be if you would be so good as to treat me such a black or brown angel … oh, and a little mestiza is there, the prettiest child in the whole parish of New Orleans anyhow … and that Semiramis! She is as black as the child of the Mother of God in Altötting … in all Ireland I have never seen such pretty black flesh … by Saint Patrick, gentleman, if I could buy Semiramis, I would give my holy patron saint for it…”
Monsieur Dubreuil bit his lip in anger, for the Irish coachman was talking so loudly that the residents of the cleaning lady’s house had opened their windows to look for the troublemakers expressing their desires so openly. To avoid inconvenience and compromising têtes-à-têtes, he threw his wallet to the talkative Irishman and vanished into the nearby alley.
The overjoyed coachman wrapped his horses’ bridle around an isolated fire rail and, with the full wallet, lurched into the aforementioned house, whose inhabitants greeted him with howling laughter and closed the door behind him.
We shall leave him in the company of these goddesses, who were not entirely unknown to him, and return to Monsieur Dubreuil, who had voluntarily surrendered his wallet with at least fifty dollars inside it.
The little man had hidden himself among the stacked boards of a lumberyard adjoining the alley, and he intended to wait there until the accursed Irishman and his cab had left the street. He listened carefully in the direction where the cab stood, but he continued to hear the impatient stamping and snorting of the horses. He would gladly have crossed from his hiding place to Madame Brulard’s, but he was afraid of being seen and accosted. Besides, it was altogether too daring for a preacher respected and loved by the whole city to encounter many people in such a disreputable place, lest he be recognized. His attempt to sneak the length of the alley, in order to reach Madame Brulard’s by a detour, failed at the very outset. The alley’s exit was blocked by a board fence, and when he attempted to climb over it to reach his goal, several dogs began barking, causing him to retreat.
So he had to wait a full hour in nervous expectation until he heard repeated “good bye, good bye,” followed by the rumble of a departing coach. At the same moment, the boisterous music of a wild bacchanalian dance sounded through the still night as he crept across the street, anxiously looking about. He was utterly astounded to discover that the music came from Parasina’s house.
“What could be going on in there?” he mumbled. “She did not say a word about it this morning … and what could have happened to Pharis? Dancing and raving so that a person could go quite deaf… perhaps that rich fool from Buenos Aires has arrived, that windbag and gaucho. I can’t stand these South Americans … a rude, miserable people.”
Like a tomcat seeking his mate in heat, slinking then suddenly taking great leaps, so Monsieur Dubreuil crept along the building before springing with one leap up the step that led to the small door in the wall. Quickly but quietly he turned the key, opening and closing the door in an instant. He did not linger in the hallway, which led on the right to the great dormitory and on the left up the stairs to Madame Brulard’s bedroom, as well as to the chamber where Pharis had been imprisoned since seven the previous morning. He was little interested in the swift flight of dancing couples or the intoxicating tune of a luxuriant saraband. He did not leave the key to the chamber resting in his pocket—he quickly rushed up the narrow, delapidated stairway and opened the door.
Pharis stood naked, with her hands bound behind her, just as he had left her, next to the open window. She bowed her head as Dubreuil entered.
There was no light in the chamber.
The moon lay like the ghost of a departed soul on the inclined roof of the great barracks of sin, and its chaste glow illuminated the unhappy girl. As Monsieur Dubreuil approached her, she closed her eyes and stammered a moving “Mercy! Mercy!”…………………………..25
By the time the hour of ten sounded from the tower of the Catholic church, the dreadful crime had already been accomplished, and the moon was illuminating a sin that cried to heaven.
But the guardian angel of mankind wept and hid his face in sorrow.
We encounter Monsieur Dubreuil on the ground floor in the dormitory, now transformed into a dance hall. The occasion of the extraordinary festivities and intoxicating lust was Parasina’s birthday, the 31st of January.
With stunning speed the enormous dormitory, where only this morning hundreds of matresses had rested on bare boards, had been transformed into an arena for the fairies, with golden mirrors, silk curtains, pallets for odalisques, lovers’ sofas, special chairs, tapestries hung with satin, contre-deux, joli-jolies. Here the terpsichoreans with loosened garments, Venus vulgativa, wine-besotted Bacchus, indecent fauns and satyrs in modern form, blasé flaneurs, and fashionable knights of calomel fraternized with one another.
Dubr
euil was relaxed and lusty. He played the guitar and tambourine like a virtuoso and was gifted with a splendid tenor; he often had the opportunity to display these talents between episodes, and he had earned the name of “troubadour,” bestowed on him by his coterie.
Among other things, Parasina asked him to sing a vaudeville, whose verses of intermingled French and American idiom we render here. After a brief introduction, Elma accompanied him on the guitar, and a plump, fresh Negro girl rattled and drummed the tambourine:
New Orleans, on your porches
Sit the ladies white as chalk,
Not concerned about their make-up,
Calomel drives away their sweat.
Slender Negroes stand at attention,
With fans in their fat hands;
Here in this street
All the houses are for rent.
Summer is at the door
And the heat makes for concern,
Yet the old vice slips in
Surreptiously on dusty paths.
Instead of lovely blossoms,
Chewing tobacco grows in all gardens,
And the loveliest lady takes
Chewing tobacco as her companion.
When she wants to kiss her lover,
She kisses only chewing tobacco—
Whisky then, and julep drips
Off his black Yankee coat.
The tears are ice and soda
Which are wept for the dead
And the pocket book is the love
That unites a Yankee couple.
In the bar there is friendliness,
Handshaking and brotherly kiss
The Mysteries of New Orleans (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures) Page 11
