But they vanish with the treating
As everything must end!
Loveliest of cities! On your graves
I’ll build my little house,
Quiet in the warm summer nights
Look on your empty streets.
I’ll count the coaches
That follow the beloved dead—
Then tired out, from bar to bar
Pay out all my piddling money.
Until they take me from my cottage
To those graves
Where one must lie so still
And drink only stagnant water.
At the great bar where
Decay is the keeper
And whoever goes in
Never leaves that bar again.
The bacchanals and gross orgies lasted into early morning. The dancers, male and female, lay scattered about the carpets and ottomans, alone, intertwined, or joined together. Even Madame Brulard had forgotten her dignity in the general intermingling: stretched out on the floor in an indecent position, she snored like a locomotive in distress.
Chapter 9
THE SOUTHERN CROSS
The Negro cannon, fired at eight o’clock during the winter months, signaling the white race’s monopoly of the streets of New Orleans from this hour on, had always ordered home all slaves who did not have written permission from their master to remain away. Only occasionally was one seen rushing through the streets with rapid step, intending to make up for tardiness by creeping quietly, if late, into a master’s home.
This evening closed a cheerless, sad day.
In a few minutes ceaseless torrents of rain had put streets and sidewalks of the lower portion of the city underwater. After the clouds parted in the afternoon and the water drained away near evening, the barrooms and cigar shops in the immediate vicinity of the St. Charles Hotel bustled with speculating loafers, shop salesmen, clerks of cotton brokers and money-changers, newly arrived foreigners, and the notorious dandies of New Orleans.
In those days the St. Charles Hotel still bore the splendid monopteros on its majestic cupola, which bestowed an extremely striking exterior on the building.26 This is the crucible of speculation and politics of the American portion of our population. Here plans are spun to build railroads or dig canals, and often quite remarkable stock arrangements are made after several cocktails and brandies, confirmed at the bar with filled glasses. Never mind that the sources of these arrangements often change their minds by the time their throats are dry once more. The neighborhood of the nearby Veranda Hotel contributes to this process, being a place where there is always lively hustle and bustle even after the rest of the city has gone to sleep.27 Right after eight o’clock, when the nearby streets, especially Camp Street, Magazine Street, and Carondelet Street, are almost empty, everyone with healthy legs and a fondness for good cheer is concentrated in the territory described. For a dandy, whether a loafer or one of the city’s top ten, a cigar doesn’t taste good unless smoked while leaning against a column of the St. Charles Hotel, inspecting the undulating crowd of people, where one can occasionally throw smouldering butts in the face of a cabdriver whipping his horse.
There is nothing here for the romantic, who must direct his steps to the streets of the French District, where people play Domino à la poudre and where the color line is not so strictly observed.
But now we are turning into nearby Magazine Street.
With the approach of darkness and the glimmer of gaslight, not just buildings of some importance but even run-down ruins take on a physiognomy of their own that is entirely at odds with what is to be seen in broad daylight. This is particularly the case if some sort of dark characteristic or historical reminiscence is tied to it.
Of all the buildings in New Orleans, with the sole exceptions of the old cloister of the Ursulines and the home of the free Negresse Parasina Abigail Brulard, none loomed in the night with such an ominous and mysterious exterior as the Atchafalaya Bank, opposite Bank’s Arcade.28
Anyone who has dealt in any degree with the commercial relationships of New Orleans knows the story of the rise of this building, as well as the activities of its former directors.
At the time we present this building to the readers, it has already been empty and abandoned for some time, and the wind blows through the broken windowpanes, music for the rats and mice secure there.
The columns that decorate the façade had been so torn by wind and rain and their capitals so broken and dilapidated that even an architect would have been unable to tell what order they had been designed after.
The whims of storm had caused deep furrows in the gabled roof, which had long been formless but which on stormy nights suddenly acquired the form of a cross.
On the right of the main entrance is a stairway leading into the upper floor, and from there another stairway, heading without landings to a number of attic rooms. In the days when the bank still functioned, these attic rooms had been closed off from the upper story by a trapdoor, and it could be opened only by the keys of particular bank officials.
Now this trapdoor is open, and a heavy iron bar has been jammed in to keep it from falling. Several of the steps in the staircase have fallen through, and they have been repaired with old chair legs.
Before climbing half the staircase, one passes a window through which the rear building on the other side of the filthy back courtyard can easily be seen. For several months a Negro family has been living there, consisting of a gray-haired man, two women, and several children between six and twelve years of age. A booth, to which a long chain is fastened, its links half-buried in the dirt, shows that it was once thought necessary to keep a night watchman.
It was generally known that a Negro family lived in the structures in the courtyard, although it was not known precisely why they were there. Things were different with the room in the upper story. No one suspected that anyone was living there.
There is a dark blue satin tapestry over the two windows of this garret room, covering them completely so that not a ray of light can enter, requiring the use of artificial light even during the day. The originally raw walls are covered with the same material, embroidered with innumerable vignettes.
The floor of this room is covered with costly carpets. The room itself is divided into two, by screens set with doorways.
Cushions, ottomans, love seats, a tapestry of rose-red velvet, a divan of great width enclosed with the finest of curtains, a mirror held by two amoretti, and a silver candelabra with twelve arms, in rococo style, as well as many other luxurious objects, decorated one of the two chambers.
It is beyond imagination how these objects could have come here without the neighbors finding out. For it is certain that no one had even the slightest inkling that people were living in the main building, let alone that both splendor and comfort had taken their residence in the upper story.
Where everyone assumed there were rats and bats, the fairy-tale aura of sybaritic splendor prevailed.
Two persons were reclining on the soft pillows of the divan.
One is a young man, barely twenty-five, with beautiful long blond hair and large, heavenly blue eyes, half-veiled by long lashes. His glowing cheeks have attached themselves to another’s bare neck, and with the fingers of his right hand he is fondling a luxurient forest of raven-dark hair.
He is naked except for a short blouse of white silk and a silver belt made up of innumerable fine rings.
At his side, with her right arm woven around his body, is the figure of a woman, her swelling breasts covered in ruby-red silk. She is looking into his blue eyes with such intensity and profound desire that it seemed she wanted to live in them and never depart.
“Five weeks have passed since the time I dressed up in your clothes on a whim? And yet it is as if only a few hours had passed—” she added to a conversation that had been interrupted for several minutes by fondling.
“We shall receive information today,” the young man replied, “he promised us t
hat.”
“If he returns, we must ask him at once,” she continued.
“Who would have thought!—When I let myself down from the window and was grasped by an arm!”
“Be still, my heart—I believe he is coming up the stairs right now—it is not yet time for him”
They remained intertwined as they listened.
They were not disappointed.
The rotting stairs of the narrow staircase groaned, and from the abandoned rooms on the lower story the one they longed for appeared through the opening of the trapdoor into the warmth of the luxurious chamber.
Both of them rose from their bed, expressing an attitude of veneration and love.
“May Venus Urania protect you!” they welcomed the one who entered, approached the two, and kissed their foreheads.
He was a gaunt, long-limbed figure, his torso somewhat bent and his snow-white hair hidden under a fur cap, which he had pulled down to his eyebrows.
His face was the portrait of unspeakable care and sorrow, and despite the goodness of his heart, expressed in his manner, at first glance he was horrifying.
Four generations had passed by his skull, and yet on earth he still bore with him a hope he would probably take to his grave.
His immense wealth dated from the year 1788. He had journeyed from Lake Itaska to the thundering waves of the Gulf, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and he had returned to his native city as a savior.
He had opened the gold veins of California and Australia, years before the argonauts took their ship to rob the golden fleece there.
Now he stood in simpler clothing; more than a hundred years had beaten at his brow—and yet he still had not given up on fulfilling the dream that had accompanied him since his earliest youth.
Now he was making his last try, and if this failed, then his white hair would certainly draw him into the grave.
Lucy and Emil bowed involuntarily as he sat down between him. The old man began to speak.
Chapter 10
MANTIS RELIGIOSA
“Do not wonder why all the events of the last few weeks have vanished from your memory. If you want to accuse me as the cause of your forget-fulness, I cannot blame you. I cut off relationships that seemed beyond severing to you, and so you have been removed from the deceptive sphere of life that would soon have sucked dry the marrow of your souls.”
Emil and Lucy hung on his every word as if under a spell.
The old man continued:
“You will find in these papers I’m giving you an account of everything that has happened since the night when your double masquerade led to a development you could never have imagined,” the old man said as he handed Emil a red velvet valise containing several rolls of paper. “You may look at them only after I have departed. You will then leave these rooms and never return—I will leave with you half of my wealth, more than enough to support the lifestyle of an oriental potentate. With these treasures you shall return to the meanness and underhandedness of human beings, but you will no longer be compelled by need to sully the gleaming beauty of your bodies with dubious undertakings.”
“But that night, when I let myself down and …” Emil did not say it, for Lucy threw him a warning glance.
“When you were grasped by the policeman’s raw hands, I was nearby; I could not permit a policeman’s coarse hands to injure the beauty which could only be prevented from spreading its warming glow everywhere by such mishandling,” the old man joined in with enthusiasm. Then he spoke after breathing deeply:
“After you read through these papers, you will recall all the events that have escaped your memory.” He turned to Emil, saying, “You will once more recognize the names of Jenny, Frida, Albert, and Karl as those of acquaintances.”
On naming these names, Emil struck his forehead with his hand as if he had just awakened from a deep dream. It was at once as if all that had taken place had been only illusion and trickery—as if he needed only to awaken.
The old man understood this.
He grasped Emil’s right hand and told him in a tone that communicated conviction and stilled all doubt:
“You are wrong if you think you were dreaming here, that you had fallen into the hands of a Cagliostro or some other black magician. I believe that the times are past in which people still believe in such conjuring and witchery. An enlightened century has cast all this dark nonsense away and understands only the laws and phenomena of nature. Man no longer needs to drink forgetfulness from Lethe’s stream; we have in our grasp the means to lose our memories in happy dreams. It is not opium that weakens the nerves and numbs the power of human thought, and that brings death when used in excess. It is not incense, whose waving smoke makes one forget cares only for a moment, raising the most lurid images to the agitated senses and poisoning the organism in the same way as Aqua toffana. It is a modest plant at the source of the Red River that is not yet known to you nor to the entire civilized world:* It is the Mantis religiosa.
“A good twenty years before the first expedition under the first French consul,29 I came to know the source of the Red River, and its discovery would have been announced to the scientific world if I had not found this plant in the mesa that surrounds this source like a yawning grave. The plant, hitherto known only to buffalo, panthers, and jaguar, contains the most valuable, but also most fearsome, gift of nature.”
The old man released Emil’s hand, which he had been holding, and he quickly passed through the opening of the trapdoor.
In a few seconds he stood once more before Emil and Lucy.
They looked at each other with astonishment. It was as if they were in the presence of a being of a higher nature, one who could steer their destiny.
The old man drew out a capsule, opened it, and displayed it to the amazed couple.
They saw, on closer examination, that it was filled with many small translucient grains, each one containing in its center a tiny black point.
“Is that the seed of the Mantis religiosa?” Lucy asked with a lowered voice, anxiously looking into the old man’s face.
“The Mantis religiosa?” Emil seemed to want to ask, but his lips remained sealed, and he withdrew the question, keeping it in his heart.
“Yes,” the old man interrupted the silence, “from this grain grows the rosy red bloom of the Mantis religiosa, whose aroma led you into the realm of forgetfulness. I myself tested its effect in my earlier years, but I am now too old; their perfumes are wasted on me—now all my memories, whose cares I had laid to rest, rise up from the depths of my brain without being summoned.”
With these words, a tear formed in his eye. He then continued with a forced voice:
“Not only does this plant contain that analgesic property, but it also contains the germ of destruction—of a dreadful plague.”
“Of yellow fever?” Emil and Lucy responded as one.
“Yes! I use it as a means of revenge!” the old man raised his voice in solemnity and pathos, which caused both to shudder.
“It is yours to forestall a further visitation. I am leaving you today, and if you survive the trial by fire and keep your beauty from harm by using the wealth that I leave you, I shall reappear and lead you into a place where you will become immortal unto all generations. For know this: there are chains to be broken here—and only beauty has the right to break them and to place itself at the head of a movement, long desired by me, whose time has at last come. The motivation for cleansing our soil of the shame that has been committed against a portion of mankind should not be self-seeking, vanity, or mere profit. You shall be the representatives of a breaking dawn!”
The eyes of Lucy and Emil, which had been weighed down with petty interests and episodes of an ordinary life until a few weeks ago, now flamed like lightning for the high mission they were to fulfill for a portion of mankind.
The old man left them that evening.
Emil unrolled the pages he had left them, and Lucy snuggled next to him and listened intensely to a dec
oding of their most recent past.
Chapter 11
THE NEGRO FAMILY
Almost at the same moment that the old man sat down between Emil and Lucy to acquaint them with a mysterious plant, the members of the Negro family, which the reader knows lived in the courtyard of the Atchafalaya Bank, were engaged in a conversation that is all the more important because it sheds light on dark matters and will prove to be a thread of Ariadne through the labyrinth of later events and misfortunes.
The entire family was gathered about the fireplace in the kitchen, with the exception of a young girl who sat groaning in the corner, her right arm supported on a chair back.
The head of the family, a gray-headed Negro, had settled in an armchair and was warming his feet. Next to him on each side sat two women in their middle years, eating the remants of a frugal supper. Another woman, rather further along in years, held the wooly heads of two children under seven years of age in her lap as they quietly slept.
They were all simply but cleanly dressed. The women wore bright checkered cloths about their heads and snow-white long dresses without waists, in dramatic contrast to their black skin color.
“Thanks be to the noble stranger,” the grayhead began, after lighting a short clay pipe, “who freed all of us from the grasp of our master. What would have become of all of us? You, Sarah, would probably have gone to the plantation at Derbigny and Breton, since you’re a good washerwoman and seamstress. With you, Abigail,” he turned to the other young woman, “they would have taken you to the St. Charles Hotel, where you would have had to work night and day. Old Master would have taken the two children to Mobile, so that all of us would have been separated from one another. And how did they treat you, Sarah and Abigail, in the auction halls? I have experienced much, and I’ve seen those situations, but never treatment such as you endured at Talbot’s, even with—niggers,” he added bitterly. “The blood ran to my old head when they stripped you so rudely and fondled you from top to bottom, and you had to put up with this not once or twice, but five or six times. Anyone who acted like he was ready to give a few thousand dollars for you grabbed and probed you. How many were there who didn’t have a cent in their pockets, just came out of curiosity? Took the clothes off your body—if I had been ten years younger, I know what I would have done—but instead I am an old, worn-out, and tormented nigger, who hasn’t a tooth in his head—ha, ha,—half I lost, half were beaten out of me—but that doesn’t matter, I am and remain a nigger, a head of cattle! ha! ha! ha! …”
The Mysteries of New Orleans (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures) Page 12
