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

by Baron Ludwigvon Reizenstein

  “Come on, fatty,” one of the sailors protested, taking hold of a rather plump man wearing a black frock coat, with more than half of his white batiste-handkerchief hanging out of the left pocket of his red satin vest. “Do you want to risk a dance? You damned landlubbers don’t have any fire in your bodies—here, try it with Mary—halloo, Mary, hey, fatso, now up, now down! Now to me, then to you!”

  The Cocker—for the fat man with the black frock coat and the fine batiste-handkerchief was no other—glared at the son of the sea with large eyes, despite the fat bearing down on his eyelids, and mused over a suitable answer. He had rushed straight from Orleana’s dining room to the Louisiana Ball, in order to revive his spirits and to free himself—at least for this evening—from the silly melancholy into which his compatriot had dumped him.

  “Well, you damned landlubber, get going!” the sailor roared when he saw that the Cocker was not joining the sevens’ dance by tossing black-eyed Mary into the air.

  It was the Cocker’s misfortune that this son of the sea was a German, for, since the Cocker spoke only German, he could understand him. He could not ignore the man’s words, delivered as they were in a true sailor’s style.

  “Sailor,” the Cocker finally replied, carefully taking his long coattails under his arm for protection, “Dance with Shellroad Mary yourself—sailor, I have foresworn dancing for tonight.”

  If the Cocker ever told a lie in his life, he did it this time, for he had come to the Ball to dance, to drown his love-pangs in the arms of the daughters of Terpsichore.

  “Damned landlubber, you will renounce nothing here!” the sailor roared even louder, kicking the Cocker into the middle of the sevens’ dance with his knee. “You’re not going to waste time here, fatso! Halloo, hey, fatso, now to me and then to you, now to you and then to me!”

  “But sailor,” stammered the shaken Cocker, “haven’t you considered that I cannot do your worthy dance without having practiced a bit at home?”

  “Oh, it’s you, Gasper!” Shellroad Mary shrieked, finally recognizing the old acquaintance from earlier days—naturally only as a bystander, since the Cocker had played a non-speaking role when he met her on expeditions with friends to Cassidy’s, knowing not a word of English, and, despite seven years in New Orleans, not a word of French either.

  “You’re here, my sweetheart Gasper?”

  “Virgin Mary, you see that I am not prepared …”

  Now he received a push from the sailor which made both his ears ring. “But sailor, you’re a compatriot…”

  “Halloo, hey, fatso,” the sailor interrupted him once more as he attempted to hoist the Cocker into the air.

  “Lout, thief, scoundrel!—Sacre nom de dieu, thieving lout, where did you get this handkerchief?” a foreign voice suddenly thundered out of the confusion that engulfed the Cocker. At the same instant a hand groped in his vest-pocket, seizing the handkerchief with the lovely lace. “Thief, thief, gallows-bait! Where did you steal this handkerchief?”

  Once the Cocker got a better look at the man whose lips poured out this flood of abuse, he recognized to his dread the same Frenchman who had dealt with him so violently during his serenade and had driven him away from Orleana’s house.

  The Frenchman had noted the Cocker from the moment he entered the ball and had not let him out of his sight, and he did not fail to see the lacy handkerchief. When he stood directly by the Cocker, he could see the name Orleana embellished on the end of the handkerchief, precisely as his sister had embroidered for Orleana. Even without the least interest in the fashion of “the Moor of Venice” (though the beautiful Creole was not his Desdemona), the Frenchman was still profoundly offended that this priceless valuable had somehow ended up in the Cocker’s possession. He had oft considered speaking with the unfortunate serenader on this matter, but the proper moment had never presented itself.

  Now, when he saw the poor Cocker so beset by the sailor from the Isaac Newton and the dancers, he suddenly let loose, bestowing the insults already listed, delivering them with blind fury.

  The sailor’s attention suddenly shifted from the Cocker to the cursing Frenchman. Through a strange chain of thought, the drunken seaman now decided to make the Frenchman the object of his brutality and raw humor. He not only forced the Frenchman to return the batiste handkerchief, but he also ordered him to fall on his knees and beg forgiveness. The Frenchman thought that was asking too much, so he drew a derringer from his coat sleeve and advanced on his tormenter in a martial stance. The bouncers, who wanted to step in to pacify the situation, were not heeded but instead were harassed and mistreated to an extreme by several sailors and high-skirted ladies.

  The Cocker seized the opportunity to rush to the stairs and shriek “Watch! Watch!” at the top of his lungs. Then he lunged down the stairs and into the street without paying attention to Dufleur, who was advancing on him.

  If he had remained in the Ballroom for a few more minutes, he would have seen that he had no need to call for help. The night watch had been there in the Ballroom all evening, four men strong who were mingling with the dancers.*

  The Frenchman, who had been brought into high indignation by an excess of alcohol, defended himself against the watchmen, who descended on him with the rage of a beast. After vain struggling and bumping, he finally had to submit to overwhelming force. The sailors and girls surrounded him on all sides, ripping out his hair and kicking him in the shins—even kicking him in his belly, which (among others) Shellroad Mary herself did, until the night watch put an end to their game. Two of the watch finally took the Frenchman between them to Golgotha, the calaboose, where, as fate would have it, he was thrown on the same horse blanket where a short time before the Cocker had embraced his broken guitar.

  The merry company led by Albert had joined the fandango, which was supposed to close out the Ball’s evening’s program.

  A kingdom for a fandango! You’ve already danced yourself half-mad, your eyes are dim, your feet are asleep, you are hanging on the breast of a pretty, young dancing girl, and, without recalling that there is a dancing girl there, you grope, grope—in my case you grope for thin air—without a thought left, you mechanically grope in your vest and pants’ pockets to see if there is still any money there. The musicians stare indifferently, gathered at the bar and with no desire to do another round. Your eyes are swimming, your nose bobs, and your tongue lolls, but your feet and hands no longer work—you let your dancing partner do things in front of everyone, as if you were not a man at all, but rather a milkmaid or a midwife. You lurch, your slack thighs flail, your back wouldn’t hurt if a hundred fists were to bounce off it—you don’t care whether the woman next to you raises her dress above her knee to look for the bruise she got from falling during the last dance. Then the god of music and his disciples mount the platform for the last time—an overture! Listen, the fandango is calling, wake up! wake up! Before the finale surprises you and you’ve been had.

  Albert was certainly not a practiced dancer—he didn’t even know quite when to enter the dance and when to cross over—but when the notes of the fandango sounded in his ears, he rose up, bowed, and moved about just like a full-blooded Castillian, he snarled and snorted like a gaucho, and he pressed and rubbed like the sphinx Atropos, who grew as thin and sinuous as a water-nymph in the throes of love.

  That’s what a fandango will do!

  Look, just look at Albert, how changed he is! How he throws a green net over Shellroad Mary’s shoulders, how he goes back, how she goes forward to him, how they both come together! These rounded elbows, these eyes—this bacchantic everything!

  Bestow your lyre on Albert at this moment, my dear convalescent in the Rue Amsterdam,15 you would get it back right away:

  All the gods of love rejoice

  In my heart, and fanfares

  They blow and call out: “Hail!

  Hail to Queen Pomare!”

  She dances. How her little body moves!

  How every member bends so s
upinely!

  There is a fluttering and a swinging

  Which seems to want to leap right out of her skin.

  She dances. When she turns about

  On one foot, and stands still

  At the end with extended arms,

  May God pity my reason!

  So she dances—and blow

  The gods of love a fanfare

  In my heart, calling: Hail!

  Hail Queen Pomare!

  The fandango was at an end.

  Some of the band members had packed their instruments away in cases, others had tucked theirs in their coats. They yawned, shrugged, and looked at one another with sleepy eyes.

  All the dancing girls except Shellroad Mary had left the ballroom.

  The manager’s helpers had enough to do getting the sailors who were lying about on their feet and on their way. So they kicked many a backside, clubbing them on the head mercilessly with their billies, wherever they happened to be lying.

  Albert’s merry company was still here. They had sobered up a bit and appeared not even to be tired anymore.

  Albert mounted the bandstand with Shellroad Mary, who drove him crazy, and from there he preached a sermon concerning the importance and meaning of a ball.

  Shellroad Mary stood right behind him, resting her head on his shoulder.

  She was a large woman with a marvelously long, extended waist and full, soft hips—with the feet of a Bettina von Arnim and hands such as no god could make for an angel.16

  Despite her bacchantic looseness, if a special occasion called for it, her features could express a sensual earnestness that attracted all the more, since the contrast of earnestness and sensuality so often serves to cover virtue and innocence.

  It was this combination which drew Napoleon to Mademoiselle von Teba. It was that earnestness which earned her the imperial diadem.

  If fate had made Shellroad Mary the child of a prince, had she been born on the shore of the Seine instead of that of the Mississippi, she would have done as much grace to lilies and purple as to the golden bees of the Merovingians. She would not have been an embarrassment to any Bourbon, Orléans or Napoleonic. But instead of Your Imperial Majesty, she was just Shellroad Mary. Wasn’t Mary Stuart, in her own way, when her husband Francis II addressed her, nothing but Shellroad Mary? Brantone, who preserves her depressing farewell song for us,* would certainly have been able to sing similar verses for Shellroad Mary, had he laid eyes on her. No estate or office protects a person from this dilemma.

  It is characteristic of the cretinous prudishness of the Cocker that he was not infatuated with her.

  With his more elevated sensitivities, Albert was enthralled by Shellroad Mary’s “eternal feminine” aura.

  To protect herself from a chill, immediately after the fandango she had clothed herself in what is called a “monkey jacket” of dark green silk, with three rows of yellow buttons. Her light chestnut hair lay loose on her neck and bosom, and she had pinned a decoration, a bright green crown of fine metal leaves woven with freshwater pearls, forward in her hair, where her widow’s peak met her forehead.

  She had placed her head on Albert’s shoulder as if musing, and she half-listened to the words he addressed in French to the merry company and the few remaining guests.

  Albert was heard saying the following: “Messieurs, and you my dear dancing girl”—he gave Shellroad Mary a pat—“before you depart for home, allow me to direct to you a few words of encouragement and consideration. All of you now present have had to earn a few dollars during the week, with great effort and with unspeakable torment and martyrdom, which you have now sacrificed in a single night. Will you regret this? Will you become irritated when you reach into your pockets and find them empty? After such dissipation, has such a repressed idea ever occurred to you, so that you make a sour face instead of smiling at the transitoriness of the joys of this world? I tell you now that you are committing a serious injustice if you allow such nonsense to arise. The charm of gold, messieurs, does not consist in picking it up and putting it down again, but in paying it out. Whoever does not pay out has no money, even if he is as rich as Croesus. The worker who sacrifices a few dollars to have some fun is richer than McDonogh or Judah Touro,17 who invest their sums in cotton and building lots. I certainly would not want to deny these gentlemen any possible enjoyment, but they would be upset if they thought of possible and probable use for the same money in speculation. But in order that my assertions can have a semblance of truth, it is absolutely necessary for one to be unmarried, since the crying and whimpering of babies robs one of enjoyment as completely as the rustling and squeaking of drays and the study of a boat manifest. Messieurs, if you here present are not married, take my advice and avoid this farce and remain bachelors for life. Don’t let yourselves be misled by the abusive term dried up, for I can assure you that this phrase is only a revenge on the part of professional married men. Jaundiced married men invented this phrase to impart irritation and distress into the butterfly life of a bachelor. Since a heavy mountain lies on their hearts, they insist that everyone be visited with the same curse. Since they are unable to accomplish this in the ordinary course of events, they have their revenge by smuggling such a title into human society.”

  Thunderous applause told Albert that he had not spoken in vain. Certainly the merry company made the most noise, but even the married employees of the manager beat their billies on the planks of the dancing floor to show their undivided approval.

  Albert and his merry company were the only stragglers capable of making their way home with reasonably steady steps. They had passed their crisis of exhaustion after the fandango, and they felt as sober in the fresh air as if they had never had anything to drink. Only now and then did one of them place a hand on his forehead or moisten lips with a tongue.

  Shellroad Mary parted from them a couple blocks from the Louisiana Ballroom, since she had promised to spend the night with a woman friend in this area.

  Kisses flew back and forth—and Shellroad Mary finally tore herself from Albert’s embrace. As a sign of her unlimited attachment she took with her a couple of hairs bitten from his black moustache.

  Once they arrived on Royal Street, the merry company scattered to the various quarters of the city, and Albert went on alone until he turned onto St. Louis Street in order to go straight home, to sleep for once in his own bed.

  When Albert passed the Rue des Ramparts, he noted two men a short distance away, one trying to dispute by coarsely gesticulating at the other, who held a watchman’s billy in his hand. When the second man grabbed the other’s arm, Albert heard the following words, which caused him to smile:

  “But watchman, I can assure you that I was not the one who smashed in Victor’s shopwindow, although he has thoroughly earned it from me, but I am not about to settle my accounts with him right now—for I am forgetting nothing. I have never been a friend of public scandal, least of all of kicking in windows or wrecking shops. Let me go, watchman, I have had such a lousy day, my compatriot, the Frenchman in the Louisiana Ballroom—oh, if you only knew, you would give me some sympathy rather than be so mean as to stick me back in the calaboose, and beyond that you are my compatriot—another German, watchman—consider what that means!”

  “Stick you in the calaboose again? If you have already been in the hole, then you’re not too good to try it again,” the nightwatch responded, laughing. “Compatriot or not doesn’t concern me, old loafer—march, march with me to the hole!”

  Albert, who knew the “old boy” as well as one of his own merry company, went up to the two and whispered a few words into the watchman’s ear. The watchman then released his hand from the arm of the Cocker, who, without thanking his benefactor, ran away.

  “Charley, whatever caused you to seize the poor man so that his few remaining cents would have been taken in front of the recorder tomorrow? There are enough rich loafers in the city who have earned being locked up a hundred times over—you do it like everybody e
lse, those fellows remain unmolested because they can put a few eagles in your hand. This poor fellow can’t do that, so he has to rot, and only because he is supposed to have kicked in somebody’s shopwindow—here—there are five dollars for you—that’s all I have.”

  “Not bad,” the watchman responded, sticking the money into his pocket with pleasure as he pounded his weighted billy three times on the sidewalk with such official dignity, as if he had done no injury to his duty as a savior of his country.

  Albert made the rest of his way home in thought. When he passed a graveyard near Claiborne Street, he paused a few moments, took off his hat, and let the Gulf breeze cool his heated brow. It was a night similar to that on which he had walked with Claudine near this graveyard, when his mounting dissatisfaction had forced him to fight with her. As bright as it had been then, the silver crescent of the moon steered its way through the deep blue ocean of the sky, the gold-embroidered mantle gleaming over the City of the Gulf. Had Albert felt happiness then? Did he feel it now? “You remain a puzzle to people,” he whispered to himself, placing his right hand on his heart, “Who is able to understand you—you human heart?—If you are heaven, why did you expel your most beloved angel, who climbed up to you on a ladder of desire and love? If you are a hell, why do you praise innocence, love, and fidelity in your heart? If you are a lamb, why were you cruel as a hyena when you tore up the grave of unhappy love in order to drench yourself with heart-blood? If you are a tiger, why don’t you take refuge in a virgin’s bosom before she suspects that there is such a thing as love? You are giving me no answers, my words are echoing in vain; you are so calm, my heart, so gentle—who knows whether you will not breed snakes in a few hours? Heart, my heart, you are the creation of a cruel divinity, who cannot bear to have other beings happy—or you are this cruel, perverse divinity itself, who gives something only to tear it away, who soothes pain only to call it down all the more throbbingly? In any case, whoever and whatever you are, we are all damned to carry you around for life, and we cannot do without you, unless we pay for it with our lives …”