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

by Baron Ludwigvon Reizenstein

  • • •

  I was there; I have never seen such a night.

  There were no stars to be seen in the heavens, sir, it was gold-dust. The sea was so placid and lightly rippled that one could wish nothing additional to be in paradise.

  That was not all. The ship seemed to set fire to the waves when it parted them.

  There was nothing to do. The ship went forward with all sails up, topmast and side-sails in the wind, like a young maiden going to mass on a Sunday morning.

  I stretched myself over the bulkhead and gazed into the water.

  [Thousand and One Spirits]

  The well-coppered three-master Gutenberg left its anchoring place. A favorable breeze soon drove it up the channel that divides the high-towering chalk cliffs of proud Albion from blooming Normandy.

  By the time it swam on the roads of Lisbon, two whole days had not passed since weighing anchor.

  The captain rubbed his hands with glee, for this was the Gutenberg’s first journey to New Orleans.

  The crew was enjoying the fine day. Some of them lay in half-elevated positions in the lifeboats, weaving or tying cable; others were smoking short clay pipes filled with cut shag. Some chatted with pretty little peasant girls, dandling their long braids and inspecting the stiff linen and the silver chains beset with coins with which they were arrayed.

  The son of the second mate, a boy of eight, sat on the neck of Gutenberg himself, well carved with book in hand, decorating the prow of the emigrant ship, his face turned to the west.

  A colorful freebooter from the Schleswig-Holstein wars, wearing a blue blouse with a high collar of black, red, and gold, threw a hook as thick as his finger at the dolphins circling the ship. Several children, boys and girls, sat on the edge of the stern and clapped their hands whenever a flight of flying fish rose above the surface of the ocean only to vanish again in the glittering silver waves.

  From the cables and lines hung the shirts and stockings of the steerage passengers, yellow from the saltwater, swinging in the splendid breeze. From a cloudless sky the sun burned down, melting the tar coatings on the tackle and the planks of the deck. But the rays did not injure anything, for the wind that filled the sails also cooled sunburned and tanned faces.

  So it was for days, weeks. The trade winds had been blowing at the backs of the sailors stationed at the wheel for a long time—ever and ever still the right and proper direction.

  Mysterious weeds, without a home, driven by wave and wind, swam on the surface of the Sargasso Sea …

  The ship’s fortune suddenly shifted when they entered the Windward Channel, as the wind ceased to blow into the sails and the air became motionless.

  At Cape Henry, the keel of the boat stood still in the ocean.

  In the same way, doldrums often prevail in the heart of people, after a period of haste and rushing forward on the flood of desires and hopes and before throwing down an anchor in the harbor of happiness.

  When perverse winds forced a ship to tack, passengers share in a bad mood that banishes all high spirits and every good word. This is doubly the case with the doldrums. Whoever has been to sea before can recall the uncomfortable impression the dead silence, often lasting weeks, makes on those in the midst of doldrums.

  When tacking, the movement of the ship still imparts a certain elasticity to our spirit. Stuck in the doldrums, a person is dead within a living body.

  The deck passengers of the Gutenberg felt just such a distressingly bad mood. They lounged about and camped everywhere; they stood up only to sit down again; then they threw another disconsolate glance at the still sea, gaped at the sky, crept into their shelters, or cursed sailors who had taken some utensil or a bit of scarce food. There was only some life in these good people early in the morning, at midday, or evening, when they bustled about with their wooden platters and tin coffeepots in the galley, jostling one another.

  The cabins afforded an entirely different vista.

  Here accident had thrown together a company of the most select sort, a rarity worth some remark.

  Save for the captain, the two mates, and the ship’s steward, there were only six persons in the cabins. There was a Hungarian officer who had recently served with a regiment of hussars in Esseck, a German architect, a German cavalry officer, a student of law, and one without a profession but with no small knowledge and so pleasant that he had no problem making himself loved and irreplaceable by the entire company.

  Besides these, there were also two ladies whose endearing, lovable manners poured out a certain charm over the entire company, just as the moon bestows a certain magic on a landscape without any special beauty.

  They were Jenny and Frida, on their way to America three years ago.

  Emil sat at Jenny’s side. Frida was placed between his brother and their young cousin. The architect, who was called by his name of Albert in the frivolity, responded in brotherly revenge by addressing him as Karl.

  We have encountered Karl in Algiers in later years, and we have already seen how tenderly the two sisters regarded this cheerful man, with his friendly eyes. He had decided to emigrate to the New World with his two cousins.

  We already know what became of Albert, and what distresses his marital relationship with Claudine caused him.

  Albert, who never left Jenny’s side, and Karl, who never ignored Frida on the Gutenberg, brought their own motivations with them to America, and the unfolding of their stories, once they parted company, properly belongs to the telling of their future lives.

  Frida did not hide her attraction to the young officer of hussars, although she was also being encouraged to intimacy by Emil’s brother. The officer pressed for a commitment, which was actually brought to pass a few weeks after their arrival in the New World.

  Here, in sight of the uncanny cliff formations of the isle of Haiti, Jenny had the fateful dream that has already been fulfilled in part in this story, if we call Hiram to mind, and part of which will perhaps yet receive its full significance in later years.

  It was one of those windless nights aboard the Gutenberg, as Jenny awoke from sleep with a shock, reaching her hand out to her husband and suddenly embracing him in her arms. Emil, utterly surprised, sealed his wife’s lips with a thousand kisses. Hot tears flowed from Jenny’s eyes and down her cheeks, bringing him into painful distress until the terrified sleeper told him her dream.

  Afterwards, when it had dawned and they could sit together on the deck, they both laughed over her childish terror and superstitious heart.

  Emil did not yet have the slightest suspicion—a separation from his Jenny seemed utterly impossible. But Jenny thought often about it, and as time went on and she had moments to reflect, she ruminated over the strange dream.

  We take the following moving portrayal from Jenny’s diary:

  Now that a depraved woman has stolen my Emil, when I look back over the past days of love and peaceful life together, there continually arises from my soul that dream I had several years ago as our ship lay motionless among the Antilles. It caused me great terror. Sailboat from beloved Germany, if only the storms had smashed you then! Oh, that you could have run on a sharp reef, and had the lightning written on our hearts: “They loved each other until death.”

  Emil! Emil! It is very late for me to write these lines. Frida has already been sleeping for an hour; perhaps she is dreaming of you as well, about our sunken love and our past happiness. Do you still think of the night when you pressed your terrified Jenny to tell you that dreadful dream? No—you’ve certainly forgotten long ago—are you lying in the arms of passion at this very moment? So look once more on this portentous dream, and if these pages ever come to you, may they gather your tears.

  We remained on the cabin deck with each other until after midnight. Karl charmed us with his fresh humor and spun the plans he would carry out in the New World, plans which went years into the future. Castles were built in the air and torn down again only to be built anew in another place. Domestic happiness
was described and relationships established. Emil’s brother, the usually decorous cavalry officer, massacred thousands of Mexicans and saw his name shine among the heroes of the Republic. Albert, the architect, presented the finest projects for a cenotaph for Washington, and he heard his name mentioned in honor at the White House. The Hungarian raved for Frida, that is to say, he sat the whole night through beside her and said not one word. My Emil, who had studied law, chose the career of an attorney and saw himself rising to Senator or at least to the House of Representatives. Me? I participated heartily, but I quietly suppressed ambition and saw myself in the quiet idyll of a plantation. We left the deck with the captain’s wishes that we sleep well and awaken fresh and cheerful in the morning.

  Emil went to sleep right away. I remained wakeful for at least an hour. Then sleep descended on my eyelids to bestow on me the unspeakable happiness of glimpsing the dark shadows of the dream world, something I very much enjoyed.

  I found myself alone on the ship. There was not a living soul. Black clouds hung in the sky, almost touching the masts. I ran about in my agitation, calling for Emil—but he did not hear me. My anxiety exceeded all bounds. I climbed the mast and called out the precious name of Emil to the broad ocean. But the old ocean appeared to mock me, I heard only its murmur, and I felt a heavy breathing. I saw no waves—it was so dark!—As I cried and climbed one mast after another, one rope ladder after another, I suddenly looked in the direction from which the isle of Haiti loomed out of the eternal flood. I perceived a gigantic figure with a pale, pale face, with gray, tousled hair and thin, wrinkled hands, first pressed cramped together and then spreading its fingers to fearsome length. Then the hands raised endless chains that lay at fingertip and dashed them against the rock of the cliffs. I heard them rattling—so loud that it seemed they were falling off of me. Descending from the cliffs I saw—oh, my senses still swim when I think of it today—Emil, my Emil, holding the hand of a beautiful young woman with long, black hair and great sparkling eyes. They approached the giant figure and bowed to it. He spread his hands over them in blessing and guided their heads together in a mutual kiss. It was so dark around me, and yet I could see everything. I saw the black, sparkling eyes of the woman and the sparkling heavenly blue eyes of my Emil, who hung joyfully on her mouth … then this painting vanished. A streak of fire swept across the island, illuminating millions of black men—they streamed in long columns, whose ends could not be seen, behind flowing, blood-red flags, rushing like spouts of fresh blood, and above these troops I saw that fatal woman along with Emil, and the gaunt giant figure strode before them, with an enormous balance in his bony hand—then once more I heard the rattling and grating of chains—then—oh, I really believed I could see for hundreds of miles, and that they were even drawing up on our coast—then loud screaming sounded, and I heard intoxicating, wild song, as if from the throats of the victors in a great battle. Then—oh the end of this dream is so distressing—my pen is weeping—Emil was separated from me forever! Is it really so? And yet it was but a dream! …

  More pages from Jenny’s diary lie scattered before us. Many have been lost, and we must sincerely regret that those lost are precisely the ones that come from her period of happiness and loving commitment.

  Among those before us, we can find an incomplete sketch of the rest of the voyage until her arrival in New Orleans and the first efforts and accomplishments of the friends. We can find there that Jenny stayed with her spouse and Frida in the St. Charles Hotel for the first three months, and then she moved into a charming little house on Apollo Street that Emil had bought at auction for three thousand dollars.3

  The friends from the Gutenberg sought to overcome the difficulty of alien conditions and new associations through mutual social visits and harmonious cooperation, and they became indispensable to one another. Frida, who had married the Hungarian hussar officer in a civil ceremony, over Jenny’s and Karl’s objections, remained almost every day with her sister, since her husband was usually occupied during the day in a cigar factory. At first Frida seemed happy and satisfied. But Jenny, who knew how to read Frida’s eyes and who did not miss the slightest mood of her beloved sister, soon perceived that, for Frida, marriage was not a heavenly ladder upon which she could ascend to happiness.

  Cousin Karl was able to get a position right away as clerk on a Mobile boat, partly due to his accidental acquaintance with the owner and partly due to his excellent English, already learned in Germany. He received the sum of a hundred dollars a month, a great deal for a novice in a foreign country. Whenever his boat was in town, he did not neglect Jenny and Frida, regularly visiting their houses in turn.

  Albert, the young architect, had some initial difficulties but managed to win a position as a draftsman on the construction of an important building in New Orleans. Despite his restless activity, he still had enough time left over to taste forbidden fruit, and so it came about that on one of his romantic escapades he made the acquaintance of the lovable Claudine de Lesuire, who had been coddled and spoiled by her elderly aunt. Yet he never failed to make his regular visits to the cottage in Apollo Street.

  So passed a year. Emil, who had been entrusted with the significant funds still at his disposal, with Jenny’s concurrence and in keeping with plans made in Germany, was supposed to buy a small plantation. But after putting his wife off month after month, he proved untrue to his commitments and wasted much of the money through wild revelry with his brother and the Hungarian, who was already bankrupt. The good Jenny, who was not sheltered from her husband’s conduct, tried everything possible to bring him back to the proper path. Whenever she corrected him, which she always did in the gentlest manner possible, it seemed for a time that Emil had indeed returned to his obligations. He swore it to her, indeed he wept whole nights on her shoulder.

  But what was he weeping over? He was weeping because he could not love his wife as much as he once had; he wept because he did not have the strength to tell her.

  It was already too late for him, and for Jenny.

  Lucy Wilson had already caught him in her net.

  So he soon sold the cottage in Apollo Street, since Lucy’s expenses and the costs of the Mulattoes’ Settlement were on the rise, and a house could be had in Algiers for less than half the price.

  About this time, the Hungarian repaid Emil’s generosity by suddenly vanishing from New Orleans, abandoning poor Frida to her fate.

  Just as usually happens in life, where one misfortune is quickly followed by a second and a third, such is the case here.

  During a gross orgy in the Mulattoes’ Settlement, Emil’s brother fell into a wild dispute with a Mexican desperado over a charming quadroon girl and was stabbed to death. For a brief while this episode brought Emil down from his usual excesses, and, after he received a letter from Germany informing him that his parents had decided to leave their homeland owing to repeated warnings of impending revolution, he seemed inclined to put his affairs with Jenny back in order and surrender his tie with Lucy.

  He did not tell his wife about the letter.

  But the glowing sensual intoxication with which Lucy held him captive was all too well calculated to make Emil a renegade against his own feelings and resolutions.

  After much shifting back and forth, he finally avoided Jenny entirely, and he did not cross over to Algiers again.

  But Jenny’s loving heart would not give him up.

  Who has ever listened to the secret heartbeat of a loving woman? Trivial public opinion accuses poor women who act as Jenny did of weakness and lack of character.

  Yes, Jenny knew that Emil took his passion with him to bed, that he poured out his love to another woman’s embrace, and yet she longed for him; she still loved him.

  Was this weakness or a disgrace to her femininity?

  Those who stand outside her heart cannot judge her!

  What heroism, and also what endless love—in her abandonment to long for the lava-streams which singed the fancy pillows of her com
petitor’s bed!

  Jenny was ceaseless in her efforts to lead Emil back to her arms. She quickly discovered where he was living in New Orleans, and on the very day Emil dressed to go to Lucy’s he had received a note from his wife that was so warm, so forgiving, so stormy and yet so committed and beseeching, that he gave a few lines to the messenger in which he promised that he would visit her in Algiers.

  That is how to explain the words he directed at Lucy on the gallery of her house: “I still have one obligation to fulfill today!”

  But as we know, Emil neglected to make his marital visit.

  Was it his free will?

  Let us recall Hiram.

  Fate had intended another path for Emil than warming his feet on his home hearth.

  Even Jenny’s last attempt failed miserably. Nothing was to come of the letter little Tiberius took to the Rue d’Amour.

  “Where is my Emil?” Jenny shouted into the dark night, once she had lost all track of him. What is happening in her soul now?

  She weeps and thinks of her dream among the Antilles.

  Chapter 2

  FAR AWAY

  Things were already beginning to quicken at Mr. Watsons farm.

  The reflection of the rising sun glittered on the terraces of St. Louis, opposite the farm, vanishing in the darkness of the heights running along Hyde Park to Colonel O’Fallon’s properties.

  Mr. Watson’s farm was the most important on Bissell’s Island,4 and the vegetables he grew there were the most prized in the St. Louis markets. He raised the best melons, the finest and rarest vegetables; his small tree nursery was in the most excellent shape—due, by the way, to the efforts of a German gardener.