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

by Baron Ludwigvon Reizenstein

  The two sisters, Jenny and Frida, had just entered the open garden gate and, after giving Tiberius some duties and orders for the house and kitchen, they passed to the upper story via a narrow but quite elegant stairway whose steps were covered with carpet worked in green and red—the standard decoration for steps of fashionable homes. The side walls and the stairwell were covered with pale green tapestry. On arriving above, the sisters were greeted by their emerald green parrot, who hopped from ring to ring in his massive, palatial cage, energetic and happy. “Estrella mia—guerida mia, ho, ho, ho—Señor Caballero, ho, ho, ho!—ho, ho, no understand!” Then he squawked and twisted his tongue, as if wanting to laugh.

  “Just you wait, Papchen!” the sisters cried out, as they stepped up to the bird’s cage almost at the same instant, threatening him with their fingers. The loudmouth must have understood, fearing a severe lesson, since he rubbed his head on the bars, bowed his body, and shrieked, “Good morning, lovely ladies! How are Jenny and Frida today?”

  “That’s right, Papchen,” both of them chattered away with the bird, “You shouldn’t speak Spanish anymore!” As they said this, each stuck a little finger through the brass bars and let him chew at them, which was no small repayment to the parrot and must have been stimulating to the ladies as well.

  “But the sun is shining in Papchen’s face,” Frida, the blonde, began, “I’ll put the shawl around his cage—there, there—that’s right—now you can sleep a bit, little parrot.”

  “Sleep—good night!” the little parrot squawked. “Ho, ho, ho—Señor Caballero, ho, ho, ho!” he screamed once more after the sisters, though they had already reached the drawing room.

  “Was Emil here?” Jenny began with bated breath, looking at her sister, “Papchen chatters too much today about a señor”

  “How could you even think that?” Frida responded with an emphatic tone she did not believe herself, “What would he be doing here? And—besides, he would not dare come here, since he knows I’m here, and he would be afraid of my reproaches. If only that bird could quit saying Señor! It continually reminds me of the silly obsession your husband had about playing the Spaniard, yet—let’s not talk about that—what, Jenny? You’re weeping again? Jenny, come and kiss me, but don’t cry!”

  With tears of concern in her eyes, Frida approached her sister, who had sunk down into a rocking chair. She stroked Jenny’s somewhat loosened hair back from her pure forehead and planted a kiss there. “You are too concerned about it, dear sister,” she continued. “Come and sit down at the piano and sing me the pretty little song you learned from little Elise. I like it all too much, although I usually cannot stand to listen to English. This fits our current mood so well—and you sing it so beautifully!” she added as a compliment. “Good sister, do it to please me, please?”

  “Out of love for you I shall sing it, although I would rather weep,” Jenny declared, raising herself with charming effort and stepping to the open piano. Frida sat with her sister, rolling over a small chair.

  The sister now sang with profound feeling, with the enchanting purity of a developed voice:

  Bring back the days, the sunny hours,

  Of girlhood’s thoughtless glee;

  The placid stream, the opening flowers—

  Oh! bring them back to me,

  The noontide walks, the hallowed eve,

  The loved, the lost—That brow

  On which love sat like sunset’s leave …

  Oh! bring them to me now.

  Where is my home … my girlhood’s home

  Of sweetness? Has it fled!

  Alas! ‘tis gone! The …

  Here the unhappy singer broke into tears and fell on Frida’s neck. After she had calmed herself somewhat, her sister asked her to finish the song. After some resistance, she resumed the interrupted verse, repeating the last lines with determined voice:

  Alas! ‘tis gone! The joyous tone

  Of its lost cadence dead.

  Bring me the happy scenes, which there

  Passed like a summer’s dream …

  The soft’ning tints of memory,

  Ere sorrowing o’er me came.

  O, let me dream I see it still,

  With bird and sun and flower;

  ’T will serve to soothe a treasured will

  In this and trying hour.

  Home of my youth … farewell … farewell!

  Once did I hail your glee;

  Painful as in the bosom’s swell…

  Oh! bring it still to me!

  When she had completed these verses, the two sisters sank into each other’s arms, kissing with stormy enthusiasm. They loved each other so much, and when one did something pleasing, the other sister always had a garland for the other’s brow. Each doted on the other’s beauty: while Frida admired her sister’s dark eyes, Jenny forgot her unhappy fate and her trying plaints over a faithless husband with a glance at Frida’s bright eyes, from which shone a whole heaven of blessedness. In short—the two were totally crazy about each other, as people were accustomed to saying.

  Seeing them at this instant, bathed in the green shimmer of light created by the blinds, on whose linen surface was painted a dark, primeval forest with a Turkish city in the foreground, from which numberless minarets of mosques peeked, one would be forced to think of the charming sisters Scheherazade once described in the sultan’s bed in A Thousand and One Nights.

  On a round table that stood in the middle of the room lay an album with a chrysalis-green binding of Moroccan leather, open to reveal a water-color landscape of southern Germany, a castle built in Renaissance style on a high cliff, about whose base sprang a dark evergreen forest through which ran a small river, threading through a lovely valley of lush meadows and ripe grain. To one side of a small bridge could be seen a weathered stone cross on which hung a wreath of colorful wildflowers. The entire landscape was permeated with a gentle rose-colored mist, which could hold a connoisseur’s gaze for hours. At the bottom on the right, in the dark shadow of a copse of trees, the name Frida with the year 1845 could be read.

  Next to this album, several butterflies were pinned to a red satin pillow with great care, including two “argonauts,” splendidly gleaming in the deepest lapis lazuli blue. Next to these was a jar with bugs who had found their death in the alcohol it contained. On the stopper of the jar was pinned a mass of small neuroptera and many-colored flies. The sight of these creatures would be enough to convince anyone that the lovely inhabitants of this house were entomologists. This was not true. These insects had been gathered for Prince Paul of Württemberg, who was wont to visit Algiers from New Orleans to receive them from the charming hands of these collectors when he returned from his hunts for flora and fauna. Since Citizen Paul had not visited for some time, the collection had grown significantly.

  The sun rose ever higher and higher in the eastern heaven, and now it bore down on the cottage with its full force. Outside in the garden, hundreds of grasshoppers and cicadas chirped and shrieked. When this was added to the monotonous droning of flies at the window who had lost themselves in the curtains and could not find their way out, it lulled the two sisters to sleep. They had made the long trip to the French Market and back, and they had not been able to recover adequately at the piano. Frida with her head pressed into her sister’s lap, Jenny with her lips on Frida’s full neck—thus they had fallen asleep. Repeated knocking on the door soon awoke them from their slumber.

  They shrank back in shock.

  Chapter 4

  A NIGHT AFTER THE HONEYMOON

  Before we allow the person who knocked on the drawing room door and disturbed the two sisters’ sweet slumber to enter, we must present to the reader’s intellectual eye a domestic scene that took place on one of the most distant streets the night before, across the river from Algiers in New Orleans. We bring the reader to that part of the town which happens to be the place of residence and nursery for thousands of goats, who wander about undisturbed, taking their sparse
meals on the edge of streets and in the scattered green squares. This quarter, which seems dedicated to Esmeralda, supplies the entire city with the milk of these particular beasts. Led by a lady or a small girl, they are brought to the doorsteps of their customers so that everyone receives his specific ration milked directly into a vessel made for that purpose. This way, the customers receive their milk pure and unadulterated, and none need fear that they have been cheated. This goat district lies in the First Municipality, and it reaches from Claiborne Street west to the furthest two streets parallel to it, limited by Bienville and Conti Streets.

  It was one of those magnificent nights normally found only in the tropics, when the moon shines in full, majestic clarity in the sky, so that the night is made almost into day, and the stars, the moon’s silent companions, enchant the heart with unending longing through their planetary glow. A warm zephyr blowing from the Gulf, causing one to forget what time of year it was, played in the rows of trees that pass down Claiborne Street, slipping over the wall of the nearby churchyards and kissing the tops of the lilacs and cypresses there. It was one of those nights when the loving heart feels so happy that it flees its restrictive home and flies out into the great pure arch of the heavens in order to struggle against its own inclinations, far from vanity and distraction, to reveal its secret desires to a nature unde-filed. Along the wall of one of the churchyards there slowly walked a slim female figure of medium height who presented an enchanting sight in the full glow of the moon. Under her snow white bonnet, whose two ties swayed back and forth in the gentle breeze, one could see a finely carved face of the most beautiful proportions, whose pure paleness reminded one of an ancient cameo. Her dark blonde hair, braided à la Fleur-de-Marie,8 compensated somewhat for the moderate thinness of her face, insofar as it provided a frame a good two inches wide, making her face appear fuller than it in fact was. In one hand she held a simple palmetto fan, covering her face with it from time to time to hide from passers-by the tears streaming from her large, bright blue eyes. About her shoulders was draped a gray silk mantilla, which she mechanically held in place with her left hand.

  A man was walking several paces ahead of her, now and then murmuring a word and blowing out long plumes of blue smoke from his Havana into the warm night. A small Panama hat with a black silk band sat far back on his neck, showing his high forehead, over which he frequently passed a hand, witnessing to his considerable vanity. His total ensemble consisted of a cravat loosely thrown about his collar, a light brown coat, and broad trousers of the same material. A full, tanned face with short black waxed mustache, an open shirt that revealed almost half his naked chest, and long hair in a disorder that seemed intentional all gave him a free and unbounded appearance. Every time he removed his cigar from his mouth, replaced it, or flicked off ash with his index finger, he gazed at his own fingers with obvious self-satisfaction.

  The two had probably been walking this far apart for a good quarter hour without exchanging a word between them. It was obvious that they knew each other and must not be mutually indifferent. They were a pair of lovers who were upset with each other, for whatever reason. The tears in the woman’s eyes allowed the conclusion that there had been a quarrel, which the young man’s affected behavior only confirmed all the more. Any doubt that they belonged together disappeared at once when the young man suddenly stopped and allowed the woman to catch up with him.

  “But Claudine,” he began in an irritated tone, “you are going so slowly that we will need another hour to get home. I should long since have been at my work, since it is supposed to be completed tomorrow at noon, and besides that I made the most precise promise to the two ladies in Algiers—I see already that I must once more give you my arm, otherwise we will never get underway.” At these words, he drew out his watch, looked at it, and impatiently put it away.

  The young lady silently hung on the arm of her companion, who rushed forward without paying attention to her own smaller steps.

  So they went for several hundred more steps, until they reached the block where their home was located. The house, which also contained another family, of Irish origin, lay all the way at the back of a courtyard whose entrance was blocked by a large gate made of pickets. On the inner side of the gate was a bar as thick as an arm, which was usually placed there at eleven to block the entrance. People must not have noticed the couple was gone and thought they were sleeping, as they found the door blocked. After the young man kicked the gate several times with his foot and rattled it with his hands, several dogs began barking and ran to the gate. Their alarm was stilled the instant they recognized the new arrivals. A light could be seen in the room of the landlord, a bachelor who lived in the building, and soon they were able to enter and cross the courtyard into their own home. On the stairway they met a little girl who had fallen asleep in their absence, and she apologized for not having lit any lamps, since she had misplaced the matches. Soon they were able to find what was necessary, and the young married couple sat at a table that had been set for them three hours before, on which was placed a tea maker that soon brought its water to a boil with a spirit lamp. In a silver basket there were some cut pieces of a cake the wife had baked herself yesterday—and on top of it was the young woman’s embroidery.

  “Claudine, take that embroidery out of the basket; it doesn’t belong there. I’ve often told you I cannot stand this sort of disorder,” the young man said, interrupting the silence.

  “Albert,” the young woman responded, “don’t be so irritable, and don’t get upset over such unimportant matters. You only started to be quite unpleasant to me again today, while we were on our walk; if that’s how you are going to act, then I’ll never go out with you again—be sure of it!” As she spoke, she took on a threatening manner, a pose that happened to be her very favorite.

  “You are talking,” Albert responded, forcing a smile, “as if I had to convince you to go out. Wasn’t the truth that you would not leave me in peace until I put all my work aside in order to comply with your pressing wishes? Look how clever you are! Now you want to turn the matter into its opposite.”

  The young woman, who could be described as genuinely beautiful—for no one had a more lovely or charming mouth, no one had smaller or more gleaming teeth, no one a whiter or more truly aristocratic hand—fell silent for a moment, then responded in a depressed tone, looking her husband directly in the face:

  “For several days now, I no longer understand you, my dear Albert; so cold, so rejecting, always an ironic smile on your lips, no more hearty acceptance, not the slightest sign of the attentions with which you showered me before—everything has vanished! May God grant that it is only a transitory mood, since otherwise I am in despair! If I seek even a small kindness, you are both irritated and hostile. Once, when you were on your way out, you first gave me a kiss; when you returned home, you overwhelmed me with tenderness and could not kiss me often enough. And now—now you barely tell me goodbye and often stay out late into the night and are irritated when you still find me out of bed.”

  “You know, of course,” her spouse remarked lightly as he stood and selected a cigar from the mantel, “marriage is the grave of love. I will bring you my favorites, Saphir and Oettinger, from Schwarz’s lending-library tomorrow and read you a chapter on this subject.9 Are you satisfied, little Claudia?”

  That was simply more than this good-natured woman, who had been utterly committed to her husband up to that time, could bear.

  Such phrases as these could easily be used in the course of a delicately managed conversation in a completely harmonious mood, but when they are suddenly blurted out without any preparation, and at a moment when it had still been possible to turn the mutual disharmony of their feelings into something tender, they will injure a sensitive soul. In fact, the memory of something like this can linger for a lifetime. In any case, it was not meant all that seriously, but it still demonstrated a great deal of indifference and coarseness on her spouse’s part. In fact, if we assume it
was not on purpose, it showed a complete ignorance of the female heart.

  We will later see what momentous results this blurted-out “truth” would have on the domestic life of this married couple. In critical moments, nothing injures so much as the truth, for it hurts more severely than a lie. One can easily imagine this woman’s position, who, out of her concern for her husband’s indifference, consoles herself with the hope that his attitude is only a passing phase, and that his earlier affection and intimacy would return. Now she sees cold words resolving the riddle of marriage and love. She would not have been more fatally wounded by an Indian’s poisoned arrow.

  Albert was, on the whole, an ambitious and hard-working man who took care of a husband’s financial obligations faithfully, and he sat night after night at his architectural plans and other sketches. But that was all. He had been spoiled in early youth and was a roué in the extreme, so as soon as the magic of the honeymoon had dissipated, he returned to his old phlegmatic state, from which only a fresh beauty could rouse him. Perhaps he already bore another’s image in his heart, and so he played the tormenting and exhausting role of an adulterer of the spirit. Although honorable of character, strong, and experienced in carrying out his plans, in erotic matters he was one of those protean types of which there are thousands in the effeminate classes of Europe’s aristocracy. His energy and iron persistence in matters of business had thus far saved him from the moral abyss into which unemployed roués unfailingly fall. His restless activity, supported by his robust health, protected him from shortage of money, so that he had never had occasion to enter into a dishonorable business arrangement. But we will soon see him in a situation profoundly different from his present one, and he will be almost beyond recognition.