A Savage Wisdom

by Norman German

  Annie tried to put him out of her mind. She wrote her mother for the first time in a month. She still hadn’t disclosed the extent of her romance with Nevers, and now she was glad.

  She went out with Nausica several times. Trying to divert her affections from Herald, she devised new ways to help the constant stream of drifters who knocked at her door asking for work when what they really wanted was food.

  Twice, Arkie dropped by to see how she was faring. She tried to imagine what it would be like to kiss him. His face wasn’t as handsome as Herald’s. It was more round and his receding hairlines had retreated even farther in the short time she had known him. But that wasn’t it. He was pleasant enough. There just wasn’t any spark there.

  For a week, Annie was fine. Then she ran out of diversions. She was lying to herself and she knew it. Boredom was no ally. She rang Herald’s house several times that Friday. Then she called his favorite haunts and left messages. Saturday morning, she awoke with him standing over her. He sat on the bed and held her hand without speaking. The familiar odor of his cologne was comforting. He looked almost contrite. Maybe he was right about the escorts, she thought. Nausica’s warning politely intruded on her reverie. She would be careful, she said to herself.

  Nevers coughed. She knew immediately it could not have been counterfeited. It was a shallow cough from the bottom of his throat, but it sounded rougher than a week ago.

  She spoke softly. “You been taking care of yourself?”

  “Me? Don’t worry about me. How are you doing?”

  “Same,” Annie said. She looked at the scar on his nose, then into his eyes. “Missing you.” Nevers lifted his head in half a nod, then turned and coughed. Annie sat up in bed. “Say.”

  “It’s nothing,” Nevers said, reaching into his coat and producing a bottle of cough syrup. He unscrewed the cap and lifted the bottle. “Cheers.” He took a long swallow. “I’ll be better in no time.”

  Annie tasted the cough syrup the whole time they were making love.

  * * *

  Annie spent the three days before Christmas with her mother. They worked puzzles and listened to the radio. On the morning she left, her Aunt Faye prepared a holiday meal for her and her mother. When Herald picked her up at the train station that evening, he presented her with three new dresses, four hats, two purses, a pair of gloves, and a bottle of perfume. She spent Christmas Eve at his house.

  On Christmas morning, the two lay in bed listening to the radio. The weatherman forecast temperatures in the mid-­eighties by noon. Throwing the sheets off, Nevers walked to the window and peeled down a corner of foil.

  “Did you hear Santa Claus coming down the chimney last night?”

  “Santa Claus was in bed with me last night,” Annie said. “He was too tired from giving me all those presents the night before and had to rest awhile.”

  “Couldn’t have been,” Herald said. He coughed.

  “Will you get off that floor in your bare feet. You’ll never get over that cold if you run around half naked.”

  Nevers chuckled. “Worst that could happen to me today is I could die of a heat stroke.”

  Annie giggled. “Get back in bed.”

  “Get out of bed,” Herald said. “And come see what Santa brought to good little girls.”

  Annie leapt out of bed and ran to the window. Squinting her eyes against the bright sun, she saw a new Plymouth convertible, powder blue, parked on the street. Now she knew why Nevers had been making her practice driving his Packard until they got into city traffic. She admired the automobile, then gazed into his twinkling eyes and hugged him.

  “You do love me,” she said.

  “Like nobody else,” he promised.

  Chapter 13

  January–March 1939

  Three weeks into the new year, Annie discovered she was pregnant. After crying through long arguments, she found herself in the elevator at the back of the Maison Blanche building, rising with a nauseous feeling in her stomach. Nevers held her as she concentrated on holding her illness down. They had an appointment with a doctor he knew.

  For days, a single, forceful statement had been ringing in her head: “You will not be a breeder.” After Nevers had tired of reasoning with Annie, he simply shouted the line at her over and over until one of his coughing fits gave her respite from the onslaught of cruelty.

  In February, Mayor Maestri began his annual Roach Roundup. A few weeks before Mardi Gras each year, the mayor made a show of exterminating the city’s human vermin so tourists would come to Carnival. Locked behind bars for the duration of the festival were all suspected racketeers, pickpockets, pimps, thieves, and miscellaneous miscreants. Maestri’s men easily located most of the prostitutes, since it was largely through his auspices they operated. The Mayor bragged of his deed in the headlines of the Times-Picayune: “NEW ORLEANS GIVES UP CRIME FOR LENT!”

  After a short period of bed rest, Annie returned to her normal routine of weekday work and Saturday nights on the town with Herald. Nevers had been especially kind to Annie for over a month, and the details of the abortion grew dimmer every day. While having drinks one evening at the Roosevelt Hotel, he said to her casually, “I want you to meet someone.”

  “Sure,” Annie said.

  With two fingers, Nevers signaled the man over.

  “Frank Webster, this is Annie Beatrice. Annie, Mr. Webster’s a banker, one of the most powerful in the city.”

  Annie extended her gloved hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Webster.” The man dislodged a black cigar from the corner of his mouth and smiled as he took her hand. The two incisors on the upper right side of his mouth were partially gold. Even as Webster spoke to Nevers about his cough, he continued staring at Annie.

  “Better take care of that cough, you hear?”

  “It’s nothing. Just getting over a bout with the flu. Those things seem to linger forever.”

  “They do,” Webster said. “That they do.”

  Until later that night, Annie thought Webster was just another of Herald’s mysterious friends in high places.

  “Annie,” Nevers said to her after making love.

  “Mmm?”

  Annie turned to him. The light from the bathroom put half his face in darkness.

  “Are you my sweet Beastie?”

  She touched his face.

  “You know I am. Are you my big lion?”

  Nevers laughed.

  “Will you do your big lion a little favor?”

  “Only a little one.”

  “I’d like you to go out with Frank Webster.”

  Annie went limp on the bed. “Herald, please,” she said, her heart sinking. “I thought we had been through all that.”

  “I thought we had, too. And I thought it was settled. All he wants to do is look good at a Mardi Gras ball, and he said he likes the way you carry yourself.”

  “Herald, you’re breaking my heart. I love you, don’t you understand that? I don’t want to go out with anyone else.”

  “If you love me, then do this for me. Webster’s a good fellow. He gave me some work when I was younger and helped me get back on my feet.”

  “And you owe him.”

  “Something like that.”

  “You owe him me? Did you see the way he was staring at me? He looked like he was about to gobble me up.”

  Nevers laughed. “He’s harmless. I give you my word.”

  Annie lay in bed for a long while. She thought going out with Webster one time might be easier than dealing with Herald’s snubbing coldness for a week. She was almost asleep when Nevers coughed several times and reached for the bottle of syrup that now had its own place on his nightstand.

  “When’s this ball supposed to take place?”

  Nevers took a long pull at the cough syrup and replaced the cap.

  “Next Saturday night.”

  * * *

  That Saturday afternoon, Annie and Herald attended a parade downtown. While walking her back to a stop on the St. Char
les streetcar route, he told her where the banker would meet her and what to wear. At the stop, he spoke casually, as if he had forgotten to wear dark blue instead of black.

  “Oh, and Annie.”

  “Hm?” She was searching down the line for the streetcar.

  “Webster likes his women a little trashy, but they’re all locked up at the moment, so if you don’t mind, I’d like for you to tart up a bit for him.”

  Annie’s throat constricted, making it difficult for her to speak. Finally, she managed a single, anguished word.

  “Why?”

  “There you go again,” Nevers said good-naturedly. He slapped the back of one hand into the palm of the other. “Listen. It’s like this. Some men like their women to look flashy. It makes them feel rich. Some like them plain. It makes them feel secure. Anyway, it’s a Mardi Gras ball.

  There’ll be people in such outlandish costumes, you’ll look like the only normal person in the crowd.”

  “I hate this, Herald.” The wind made the tear on her cheek feel icy. The streetcar appeared around a distant corner.

  “Look,” Nevers said impatiently, trying to squeeze her arm firmly through her heavy coat. “We can talk about this more later. Right now, I’ve got to meet someone. I’ll pick you up at noon tomorrow. By then, you’ll see how silly you were about this whole thing.” Nevers started to move away. “And you’ll be fifty dollars richer.”

  As he disappeared, Annie heard him coughing uncontrollably. She wondered if he were meeting another girl, maybe the waitress from the St. Regis cafeteria. Trying not to make a spectacle of her grief, she swallowed hard as the streetcar came on with the sound of an approaching migraine.

  * * *

  Annie sat on her vanity bench that evening, staring at the mirror. She had put on her usual makeup, then added extra eyeliner, shadow, and rouge. She had just circled her lips a second time to make them fuller. Holding the gold cylinder in her hand, Annie knew she had still not achieved the look Nevers had ordered. “Tart up a bit.” The line had broken her spirit.

  Annie finally realized Nausica was right. Herald Nevers had a kind of power over her. She was helplessly in love with him and would do almost anything for him. “Almost,” she reminded herself. Hoping he would never ask more of her than tonight, she picked up the compact for the third time and added more rouge.

  That night, Frank Webster introduced his beauty to all his friends. Some wore costumes. Others dressed in hats and tails, their bejeweled women showing off expensive gowns. Politicians, businessmen, socialites—they were all nice to Annie. Webster, too, was as well-mannered as a prom date. Somehow, though, Annie felt invisible, like she mattered to no one talking with her. Certainly, they meant nothing to her. She merely went through the motions in order to reach the other side of the evening and be with Nevers the following day.

  Early the next afternoon, hung over from bracing herself with so many drinks the previous night, Annie studied her natural face in the looking glass. Compared to the mask she had taken off in the small hours of the morning, it seemed washed out. She was to meet Nevers at his house that afternoon. He had called and said he was too sick to pick her up. As she topped off her outfit with one of the Christmas hats and looked in the mirror, she noticed she had put on more makeup than usual, but it was too late to tone it down.

  Annie was glad to have her own automobile. Without having to exchange pleasantries with streetcar passengers, she could let her thoughts unravel as they pleased. After stepping up from waitress to manager, she had come to realize how much she detested being cheerful for people she otherwise had no reason to smile at.

  She knocked on Herald’s door several times before a stranger’s voice from upstairs commanded her to enter. The man at the head of the stairs was Herald, but Annie had never seen him like this. He talked in a raspy croak, and he was in a bad mood, clearly irritated by the vocal debility.

  “How’d it go?” he asked, conserving his words. The effort of speaking visibly strained him. Nevers, leaning on the banister, stared at her with baggy eyes.

  “Better than I expected,” Annie said. She was careful to tell him what he wanted to hear.

  “Good.” He turned and shuffled into the bedroom. In the half light, Annie saw several spent cough-syrup bottles lying on their sides on the night table.

  “Are you all right, Herald?” Annie touched him on the sleeve of his robe. He slung her arm away. His lips encrusted with pink and white, he sat on the bed and drained the last standing bottle. She stepped to the bathroom for a washcloth. There were two empty bottles in the trash can and another half full on the back of the toilet. Viscous drops of red liquid spotted the sink and floor. Some of them looked like blood.

  Returning with the damp cloth, Annie asked Nevers if he wanted her to call a doctor. An angry wave of his hand told her what he thought of the idea. Annie felt the muscles clench all over her body. She didn’t want to say anything to upset him again. She put the cloth on the bedside table where he could reach it. She sat on the far end of the bed and waited. Nevers picked up the facecloth and worked it across his mouth, then flopped it on the nightstand. His head turned as his eyes scanned the room. They fell briefly on Annie, then moved towards the bathroom. He reminded her of a sleepwalker. Without looking at her, Nevers spoke in a raw whisper.

  “The banker wants a hundred-dollar night and I need the money.” With almost no light of recognition in them, Nevers turned his vacant, emotionless eyes on Annie.

  “Ante up, Annie. It’s time to Annie-up.”

  Annie’s heart hammered with fear. She would never do what he wanted, but if she didn’t, he would reject her. She knew that.

  In a grieving voice, she said, “Herald, you’re killing me. Don’t you realize that? I can’t do that, and I can’t live without you.”

  Nevers had no intentions of arguing with her. His voice was almost gone.

  “Ten times your old salary.” He swallowed. “That’s what I said a year ago.” He coughed. “Well. Here you are.”

  Annie leaned her face into her hands and sobbed.

  “Please, don’t do this to me. You know I won’t do it.”

  Nevers hated the girl for her weakness. He looked at her with disgust.

  “You think this is the worst I can do to you?” He paused as if concocting an especially potent dose of venom. “You sniveling little wench, I’ve only brought you half way.”

  Annie’s sobbing transformed to a long wail of pain.

  “I won’t do it,” she cried. “I won’t do it.”

  Annie ran from the bedroom, down the stairs, and out the door onto the sunlit lawn.

  * * *

  “Have you talked with him?” she sobbed into the phone.

  “Yes,” Burk said. “He’s sick.”

  “He’s more than sick. He looks like death.”

  “Annie, don’t you understand what’s happened?”

  Annie was trying to blow her nose. “Dno,” she said.

  “He fell off the wagon. He’s gotten addicted to the alcohol in the cough syrup.”

  “Oh, God,” Annie said. It had never occurred to her. “What can we do to help him?”

  “We can’t do anything,” Burk said. “You need to do several things.”

  “Tell me.” She was willing to do anything to help Nevers.

  “First, you need to stop drinking. You’re not helping yourself by staying half drunk most of the time.”

  Annie interrupted him. “I can’t stand it otherwise.”

  “Listen to me,” Burk said. “The second thing you need to do is leave New Orleans as fast as you can. Tonight, if possible.”

  “I can’t do that, Arkie. Herald needs me. I’ve got the restaurant—.”

  Burk lost his patience. “To hell with the restaurant! Don’t you understand? Herald is sick. He’s going down, Annie. And he’ll bring you down with him if you don’t clear out. You can’t help him at this point. You need to save yourself.”

  Chapter 14
>
  April 1939

  Burk promised Annie he would check on Nevers. From Herald’s house, Burk drove straight to Terra Incognita.

  “Can you take care of things for a minute, Djurgis?”

  The chef lifted his spatula.

  “Jes, Miss Annie. Sure ting.”

  Annie and Burk stepped out onto the walk skirting the lake side of the restaurant. To the east, men at Pontchartrain Beach were working in a last flurry before its grand opening the next day.

  “It’s worse than I thought,” Arkie said, gazing out over the choppy water. “He won’t even admit he’s hooked again. He just keeps buying those idiotic bottles of cough syrup.” He turned and faced Annie. “He’s near the bottom. It won’t be pretty when he hits.”

  * * *

  Annie’s days were filled with pandemonium for a week after the Pontchartrain Amusement Park opened. The restaurant teemed with tourist traffic. In a single day, receipts increased ten-fold. Terra Incognita was no longer unknown territory.

  Annie called Herald several times during the week to share with him the success of his business venture. Because of his voice, Annie assumed, Nevers didn’t answer the phone. By Friday, she worried that he was unable to answer it. Anticipating the flood of new customers, Annie had hired five new waitresses, an assistant chef, and a fulltime cashier. Friday, she turned the reins over to the evening crew and drove to Herald’s.

  From the curb, Annie observed the house. The second-­story windows were dark. On the front porch by the door sat three grocery bags of empty cough syrup bottles. A dog had gotten into one and scattered its contents across the boards.

  Annie was about to knock when she noticed the door ajar. She heard a fluttering sound at her feet and glanced down. A large cockroach working its way out of the neck of a bottle finally freed itself. It stopped and casually cleaned one feeler, then the other. Then, as if late for an important appointment, it scurried across the threshold into the house.