The Mysteries of New Orleans (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures)

by Baron Ludwigvon Reizenstein

  “Hm! hm! If that’s so—on my account, if you could make an arrangement to the mill’s advantage, we will be satisfied,” the Italian responded with a thoughtful shrug of the shoulders.

  “Now on another matter,” the Hungarian said. “Do you happen to know where the peddler Cleveland is staying, and where his mare is?”

  “I rode into town with him after the races—he sat on his racehorse and chattered away. The Irishman who keeps the grogshop outside accompanied us part of the way, then he left us, as he said, to pull the wool over the eyes of some damn’d Yankee, since he had been cheated while purchasing some land.”

  “Beside the point, Lombardi—I’m asking you whether you know where Cleveland is living and in which stall he is keeping his animal?”

  “I have no idea where he’s living, but his animal is fed and curried right there where I keep my own.”

  “I have no idea where you keep yours.”

  “In Oliver Dubois’s boarding place.”

  “That’s the livery stable across from the Liverpool and London Insurance Company on St. Charles Street?”

  “The very same,” the Italian responded.

  The Hungarian thought for a moment, then he asked Lombardi: “Do you know the animal precisely?”

  “Of course. One always pays attention to a racehorse, particularly when it has won a prize.”

  “But have you studied it closely? There are marks that are common to many horses, and it’s easy to make a mistake.”

  “The most certain marking that Lydia Prairiefire has is that her left ear is an inch shorter than the right.”

  “Quite correct,” the Hungarian remarked, adding, “and she has a divided mane, half combed to the left, half to the right.”

  “And the nostrils are filled with mucus, with a healthy overgrowth.”

  “Quite correct.”

  “A mare like that will not permit herself to be mounted by any stud.”

  “Horse doctor!” the Hungarian jested, “Lydia Prairiefire will soon be treated by you.”

  “I am no veterinarian, Lajos—I cure them with my elbows.”

  The Italian made a certain movement.

  The Hungarian stepped on his foot.

  “All right, horse doctor, this time you will try your art on Lydia Prairiefire. May Aesculapius and his hosts protect you!”

  “I told you before that I cure mares with my elbow—if it comes to that, I can settle our peddler’s miss with a powder. I’ve got nothing against that.”

  “Lombardi, where did you learn to prepare this powder?”

  “The horse-trainer of Count Quaglio taught me this in Florence—I was barely a youth, all of ten, and I already understood as well as anyone how to treat dogs and horses. There were three horses belonging to Count Farnese, three sisters—splendid, fine Isabelles. The assistant trainer only had to put the reins in my hands and show me their belly-bands—and there was the little imp Lombardi behind them whipping away. Old Farnese once found a pill in my cap and scolded me for it. I, a true pipo, gave him a gallant reply, so gallant indeed, that he winked and gave the little Lombardi a tip. The lazaroni would have tried to beat me to death if they had heard that.”

  “You would be perfectly ready to pass the whole night informing me of the high points of your youth,” the Hungarian interrupted the Italian, whose memories of early years caused him to shake off the filth acquired in the gutters of New Orleans, if even for a few moments. Even Lombardi the pipo was a fine fellow after all when compared to Lombardi the fruit merchant.

  Since we fear that those of our lovely lady readers who are not devotees of horseflesh or passionate riders will have no interest in this jockey talk, we will omit what followed, all the more so since the delicate passion for horses threatened to degenerate into the poetry of grooms in the mouths of these two clubmen. So don’t pelt me with gauntlets, ye amazons of New Orleans! The falcon was blind.

  The grudge the former hussar harbored for the mare of Cleveland the peddler was entirely in keeping with his character. A man such as Lajos, who loved horses much more than people, had to turn the full measure of his wrath against any horse that had done him a bad turn or had failed to submit to his command. He would have been perfectly ready to sacrifice his best friend for a good horse. Although he would have been happy to have put Lydia out of his way himself, he decided not to, for reasons known only to him. Instead, he gave Lombardi instructions. He also wanted the death of the peddler at any price, for he understood that the man would be very dangerous to him one day if allowed to live.

  Before the clubmen separated for the night, they summoned three more members of the 98th degree and ordered them not to let Gabor out of their sight, to note his every move, and to report everything faithfully to the college of those of the 99th and 100th degree.

  The reward for thorough compliance would be a payment of no small amount. In the same way, they were also instructed to keep a watchful eye on the prince of Württemberg, a dangerous opponent of Abbé Dubreuil, a clubman of the 99th degree.

  Lajos took on himself the task of keeping tabs on the abbé. The abbé’s plans to murder Miss Dudley Evans had raised his distrust and signaled him not to trust the priest’s word. His plan for murder seemed too gross even for such a degenerate Jesuit, and Lajos would have been happier if the priest had taken a less perilous path.

  Chapter 9

  UNDER THE BED

  Suddenly the canebreak rustles; with a roar

  The lion springs. What a steed! Did a finer mount

  Ever languish in the stables of a royal palace

  Than the pelt of the racer the King of Beasts now mounts?

  He strikes his teeth into the muscles of the neck

  The dark mane waves about the great horse’s stern.

  With the choked cry of pain it jumps and flies in torment.

  Look how swiftly a camel joins with the hide of the leopard.

  [“Löwenritt”]

  When we allowed the Negro family to disappear so utterly from the view of our esteemed lady readers, it was only to prevent too rapid an unravelling of the knot so carefully tied by that mysterious man during his time in the upper chambers of the Atchafalaya Bank. Here we will only remark that Sulla was prevented from carrying out the robbery he had planned together with his adopted daughter and that he left his supposed wife and adopted daughter after many trials and tribulations, finally finding a sure refuge only in the Hamburg Mill. Here we cannot assert with any certainty how he came here, but it is likely that Lajos met him in one of the many Negro cafés and brought him here as a useful tool. We have already noted that Sulla was the only black man in the mill, but we believe it is important to stress the fact that he was the only one would have significance.

  His duties in the mill were of various sorts, but they were so arranged that he was able to do what he wanted for half the day. Since the clubmen who did not actually spend the night in the mill only began arriving in the evening, the Negro normally only had to stand behind the bar in the grand salon near the door leading to the two dormitories from seven o’clock until ten or twelve o’clock. One should not assume that the bar of the Hamburg Mill’s salon was an ordinary one, where one doggedly sat or crowded about until one threw down his dime or picayune and then departed—no, the bar of the mill consisted of a complex of T* chairs and loveseats, in whose midst a display of the rarest and finest wines, arrak, and so on, arose. The center of this cascade was the black barkeeper himself, who distributed his blessings from there. When Lajos was in the mill, Lady Merlina herself ordered two dark mulattos to serve him his favorite drink, true Tokay.* On such evenings, the run-down Lombardi would knock back several quarts of peppermint brandy, which still rarely lifted him out of his malicious cynicism into the higher spheres. After he had had enough, he usually collapsed, quiet and dumb, to be hauled off to bed by some of the girls of the mill, holding his head and feet. Whenever the abbé was present, he would sing disgusting vaudevilles and allow himself
to be moved to give a sermon on the Seven Deadly Sins for the instruction of all.

  When Merlina had had a few glasses of the Hungarian’s Tokay, she was no longer recognizable. Her pulse raged, and the fire in her eyes seemed to singe her lashes and widen the hollows in which they sat. Her long, white dress grew too tight for her about the shoulders and bosom, and it peeled back to cling to her short waist. Then she seemed like a dark wolf, bedazzled by a rapid series of northern lights. When she was in such a rapture, she would reach for the Hungarian’s black hair, turning it in curls and placing her golden claw on his head. He simply sat next to her, cold and pale, smiling only when she kissed the scar on his cheek. No one ever saw him drunk: in fact, with every new glass he seemed to chill and petrify more. His eye only fixed now and then on the Negro Sulla, who often stole glances at Merlina. Sulla, who had developed a raging passion for Merlina, had sought to dampen the heated elements in his being through superhuman efforts, and he believed he had succeeded well enough to look Merlina in the face without betraying himself in the least.

  Merlina was certainly aware of Sulla’s passion, but instead of trying to reduce it she seemed to do her best to stoke it. She loved only the Hungarian, with a depth almost beyond explaining to a white person. Still, it gave her great pleasure to attract Sulla and then repel him, to appear to consent to what she punished him for a minute later. In fact, she often went so far as to order him to bring her something at night as she lay in bed, where she lounged half-dressed. When the Negro came, making the greatest effort to open the door as softly as possible, she would draw a pistol from under her pillow and threaten to gun him down if he did not withdraw immediately. At first Sulla did not know how to interpret the conduct of his esteemed mistress. And yet he fell into the trap a second and a third time, every time withdrawing as terrified and hopeless as before.

  Today he hoped and feared in equal measures.

  Sulla could hardly wait for the clubmen of the 99th and 100th degree to depart. Once they had withdrawn into their club chamber, he slipped quickly through the salon and through the dormitory to the door of Lady Merlina’s first room. When he opened the door, Merlina quietly called to him: “Look out, Sulla! The Hungarian would kill him if he saw you.”

  This time Sulla did not withdraw.

  He walked boldly in.

  Merlina left her room and rushed to the overseer in the bedroom, telling her to keep a sharp watch for when the clubmen left. She was to warn Merlina with three knocks on the door. She then closed the outer doors leading from the salon to the bedroom and from there went into her own apartment.

  Whoever thinks this strange should recall the words that the Hungarian had whispered to Merlina when he left the salon together with Lombardi and Dubreuil.

  The clubmen usually left their chamber around one o’clock, and it was only a few minutes after eleven when Sulla entered Merlina’s room.

  “Merlina, you are not frightening me this time, even with a pistol in your hand,” the Negro responded to his mistress’s warning, barring the door behind him.

  Merlina gave no protest, and she did not make the slightest hostile movement.

  She removed the golden claw from her coiffure, sticking it in a fat velvet pincushion. Then she loosened her long, woolly hair, allowing it to fall halfway down her broad forehead.

  The room in which Sulla now found himself with Merlina, besides containing two chaises longues of red velvet covered by sparkling white covers, was furnished with a so-called master bed, with tall legs as thick as an arm and a wide, elaborate base. The bed’s columns were of the finest, most refined construction, each ending in a broad snake’s head, whose eyes constituted the rings through which the frame for the mosquito-netting passed. About the top of this master bed ran marvelous decorations in the form of figures and leafwork such as was once encountered in the swan beds of the Incas. A long, green silk rope descending from the top to the bed level served as a bell-pull. This was one of Merlina’s inventions, and she had already driven several clubmen half-mad or left them half-dead with it. For when the nervous clubman believed his luck was at last assured, and that he was about to dip his burning member into the dark moistness of the zambo—without penalty!—Merlina would suddenly rise on high, cross her legs like a Chinese figurine, and yank on that fateful rope. The aroused Tantalus was always utterly unprepared for that maneuver, and he had no time for complaint or lamentation.

  But woe to the clubman who dared to protest or to tell anyone about the trickery of lady Merlina after departing the site of his torment. She would have revenged herself terribly. She would not have threatened him with a dagger or a pistol, no—in her arms he would have suffered the dreadful torment of having the whole organism destroyed and burned away before he was ready. A dreadful death indeed, when love shoots its arrows at the wrong target! A terrible torment when they are shot before love’s light wing can cool the burning cheek and glowing lips. Then, instead of the lovable cherubs of the wedding night, furies dance in the temple of Venus, and, in the place of cascading locks of hair, the snaky head of Medusa adorns the pillow of love, turning it into a deadly geyser.

  It would have been a lovely night—lovely, because the fire-bell had ushered in the nocturnal celebrations of Venus.

  The Negro placed himself sideways against the doorway, and, although he had already barred it, he even attempted to pull the chaise longue against it as well.

  This maneuver did not hinder Merlina.

  She let the Negro go on with what he was doing.

  After he had brought the chaise longue against the door, he still did not seem satisfied.

  He thought the best thing of all for his purposes would be the large, heavy washstand with a dark marble top that he had seen in the other room.

  He pulled the chaise longue back from the door and pushed the wash-stand against it. When he had brought it up to the door, he sat on the marble top and for a long time looked at Merlina, who had watched quietly throughout all his exertions at barricading.

  “Sulla, be careful! I will send a Hotooh after you,” the zambo negresse cried at him, as she settled in a half-reclining position on the bed.*

  “The Hotoohs should be glad I don’t attack them,” the Negro responded, his burning eyes fixed on Merlina.

  “The Hotoohs have sharp knives and broad claws—don’t come too near me, Sulla, or you will be out of the mill tomorrow.”

  The Negro set one foot on the carpet, the other was still raised.

  The zambo negresse did not move, but she kept all the closer a watch on his every move.

  The Negro did the same.

  When he set the other foot on the floor, Merlina called out repeatedly: “Be careful, Sulla, or I’ll put a bullet through your brain,” she reached under her pillow, drew out a pistol, and directed the barrel at the Negro.

  “Go ahead and shoot, Merlina, the bullet will just bounce off my hard head.”

  “If that’s the way it is, Sulla, then I won’t shoot,” the zambo negresse responded, putting the weapon back in its place.

  Sulla made a light movement and gradually let himself down from the marble top of the washstand.

  Now he was standing erect. His arms hung down insecurely, but his hands reached inquiringly for the master bed on which Merlina sat, three steps away.

  “Stay where you are, Sulla—but if you reach me with your arms, I will take this needle.”

  “Merlina, I will not remain here, even if I go to hell,” the aroused Sulla declared in a decisive tone.

  “Look, Sulla—I only have this needle, but if you come near me, I will poke out your eyes.”

  “I will not remain here, Merlina,” the Negro repeated, pulling his body back as if he feared to advance despite his declaration.

  His attention was drawn by a soft knock on the outside of the door.

  He looked behind himself.

  Merlina left the bed and went up to Sulla. He moved involuntarily to one side.

  “I’ll be
right back, Sulla,” she said, opening the door.

  The Negro grasped her hand, which was just turning the key, and stared in her eyes.

  “I will be right back, Sulla,” she repeated emphatically. “Sit down for a moment on that chaise longue. There are some cigars in that humidor.”

  “I don’t want to smoke. But if you are tormenting me in vain once more—who was that who knocked? When will you return?”

  “In a few minutes, Sulla, I did not remember this when I let you in.”

  “What didn’t you think about?”

  “For a moment I didn’t think that anyone needed me at this hour.”

  “Why are you taking the key, Merlina? Leave it in—that would be better.”

  “No, Sulla, it is better for me to lock the door from outside—it is possible that the Hungarian will come while I’m gone, and if he found you here

  “Yes, and what if he did find me here?”

  “He would kill you, Sulla.”

  “I will kill him,” the Negro responded with such a terrifying look that Merlina looked away from him and tried to rush out the door.

  “Leave the key here, Merlina, I can bar the door myself. When you come back, you only need to knock—I will open at once.”

  “If you don’t let me take the key, Sulla, I’m not coming back.”

  Sulla looked searchingly at the zambo negresse, and he tried to press a kiss on her forehead. But she put her fist against his mouth and said with furious scorn: “If you intend to be pressing, then you have no business being here!”

  “Then shut me in, Merlina, but I beseech you to come back quickly,” the Negro added.