So despite their rivalry and self-deception, these men had entered into a close fraternity, and for all too long they had been disposing of the lives and properties of the residents of New Orleans with horrifying energy.
Lombardi, the filthy, slimy one, who had been exploited by Merlina from the outset of her new arrangement, had ceased to be the soul of the mill since the Hungarian had joined. But since he was irreplaceable for many things, Lajos was smart enough not to make him feel that he had a secondary role.
Dubreuil saw right through the Hungarian’s prudent attitude toward the former Pontifex Maximus of the Hamburg Mill, and, in doing so, he understood the tendencies of both with utter clarity.
Lombardi’s appearance at this moment leads us to a more detailed description of his personality.
There is a particular sort of traveling merchant in the larger towns of Italy, particularly in Florence and the States of the Church, who might put in at an inn for the night and decide to take a perfectly innocent promenade when the stars are blazing, freed from the burdens of their travel and jostle for sales. These merchants, nursed at the breasts of song-girls and raised in brothels, are called gli pipi in courtesans’ jargon, one of those coterie terms that the Italians mint by the thousands and are to be found in no dictionary. Such expressions eventually get citizenship and become stereotypes of the locality where they originated. The pipi appear to fall in the category of lazeroni, though they always have money despite their filthy and dubious appearance. A lazerone will hate pipi and will often even persecute them with the greatest bitterness. They know perfectly well that pipi always have money in their stocking and that they only wander about with such freedom because they enjoy the privileges of a lazarone. Despite the freebooting they themselves do when they are abroad, they feel themselves to be secure. Hardly a week passes without one of the pipi being pulled dead from the sewers, and the police know perfectly well why they have to search for the culprit among the lazaroni. These pipi took over the positions once held by court jesters at some of the earlier Italian courts, and they have precipitated the most astonishing scandals.* They usually soon depart from the place of their activity and earning and then play the great men in provincial towns. In place of their earlier cynicism comes elegance and fashionable clothing, so far as the treasure they have gathered permits. Lombardi was such a pipo in his homeland. From his fourteenth to his nineteenth year, he had loyally followed this way of life, but then, tirelessly pursued by lazeroni, he decided to leave Italy. After only half a year in New Orleans, a serious misdeed on his part sent him to Baton Rouge with a sentence for life. We have already mentioned his pardon from the governor, as well as his partnership in the Hamburg Mill.
Lombardi, who was a bit over thirty-five years of age, was less than average height. His originally compact physique had developed tremendous muscular power, which even the dubious life of a pipo could not weaken, but his continuous excesses in all sorts of debauchery managed to give him that paunchy, yellowed appearance that elicits no admiration and fills any healthy, strong man with contempt and disgust. Such persons are perfectly at peace with being half-corpses, yet they also seek to revenge themselves on nature by sapping any signs of vitality and turning other people’s cup of life into a drink of poison. The Italian’s back displayed tabes dorsalis, and whoever looked into his dripping eyes was shocked at their lack of human spirit. Those eyes—well—those eyes! If a person describes them, he is risking sullying his own hand by using the pen to do it.
Whoever ate fruit from Lombardi’s fruit store or was able to drink its mead and soda was either a superficial observer of human distress or a hungry, thirsty nigger. The Italian’s sole foot cover consisted of a pair of sandals that he had fished out of the road, half-flattened from being trod on and which he had not removed from his feet for several months. He had not done this out of miserliness but simply because he had a peculiar hostility toward any sort of fresh new object touching him. For that reason, he also wore the same coarse red undershirt summer and winter, over which he never put any white shirt. He took it off only to turn the greasy, dirty side to the inside, until the addition of more dirt made it necessary to repeat the maneuver. He had not been able to tolerate smoking for a long time, and, since he routinely vomited when he tried, he restricted himself to taking snuff and chewing. The latter had so much become his habit that he did not even cease it in his sleep. On top of that, he loved keeping the brown juice of chewing tobacco in the corner of his mouth, letting it run down into his black chin whiskers. Whoever came by his fruit store and saw the man early in the morning could lose his appetite for the whole day. Such were the charms of Lombardi the fruitmonger.
The Hungarian, the abbé, and Merlina pulled their armchairs several feet away from him as he sat down among them.
Lombardi, who always thought this was a sign of the respect they harbored for him, made no attempt to approach them; he was accustomed to the situation and appeared quite satisfied with it.
He declined a cigar the Hungarian courteously offered to him, since—as he said—he had completely given up smoking.
“Lombardi, now you don’t smoke at all, and yet you did it with a passion before?” the abbé asked.
“Smoking just costs money—it is otherwise of no use,” the Italian responded, pushing a chunk of chewing tobacco to the other side of his mouth with his tongue.
“You are right, Lombardi,” the abbé declared, “the money one pays out for cigars could be spent for something better, and it is injurious to the health—it lodges in the chest if one does not watch out.”
“And stimulates one to sin, abbé,” the Hungarian said with irony.
“That too,” Dubreuil responded, “but the chest is more important.”
The Hungarian pulled his shirt even further back from his naked chest, pounding it two strong blows with his fists, and said, “Look, abbé, how smoking attacks the chest!”
“There is no rule without an exception,” he answered.
“Two exceptions out of four!” Merlina cried out, opening the top of her dress to the side. “I smoke too!” Then she asked for one of the cigars the Hungarian had offered and proceeded to puff away.
“You certainly have made this a holiday, Lombardi—I wanted to bring you some notices—but I couldn’t find you in your fruit store the entire day.” the Hungarian said, turning to the Italian.
“I was nailed to the posts at the Metairie Race Course,” he answered.
“To the devil with the Metairie Race Course and the whole of Metairie Ridge,” the Hungarian responded, “if a person wants to waste his time, he can always go there. Horse racing doesn’t interest me anymore—I prefer to see men racing.”
“You have to prefer animals when there are no people to be seen,” the Italian said, pressing his index finger to the right corner of his mouth.
“Was there a big purse?” the Hungarian asked indifferently.
“The first race drew little, the second took two thousand dollars—two-mile heats!” the Italian responded.
“Two-mile heats!” Lajos repeated, “the beasts must have sweated mightily!”
“And bled as well,” Lombardi added, “the Jockey Club has sharp spurs.”
“Only children need spurs,” the Hungarian remarked. “Thighs are what tell a horse to fly.”
“Yes, if they have thighs like you Hungarians,” the abbé contributed.
“No—if one has been an officer of hussars,” Lajos intoned, taking the stance of a rider without difficulty.
“One cannot find an officer of hussars in the current Jockey Club—they prefer horse-traders,” the Italian responded as he bit into a new piece of chewing tobacco, having spit the previous piece into a red and blue checkered handkerchief.
“What were the beasts’ names?” the Hungarian asked.
“Atalia Taylor, Mary Bourbonet, Conrad the Corsair, and Lydia Prairiefire,” the Italian answered.
As Lombardi recited the racehorses’ names,
the Hungarian’s pupils seemed to enlarge and seek a focus on the opposite wall. He drew his cigar halfway into his mouth and bit into it.
He seemed to brood over it.
“Which was the most successful among these beasts?” he asked, without letting on that this question was motivated by more than simple curiosity.
“Lydia Prairiefire—rider’s dress, red, white, and green,” the Italian answered, adding the colors like a professional.
“Red, white, and green!” the Hungarian repeated. “Fortune has brought together the Hungarian national colors—a malicious coincidence if it is a Hungarian horse.* Then we would have to seek the fines regni on Metairie Ridge.†
“Those are our colors, too,” the Italian protested.
“In more recent times, to be sure,” the Hungarian said, “the difference is only in how they are put together.”
“That’s quite possible,” the Italian remarked, not having noticed the ambiguous meaning of the words.
“And who was the winner?” Lajos asked in a drawn-out tone, as if he were not much interested in the response.
“So far as I know, Lydia Prairiefire, who belongs to Mister Cleveland, a farmer from Illinois,” Lombardi the Italian answered.
“Has he been here a long time?” the Hungarian asked—with bated breath, holding his hand in front of his face and coughing.
“Well, as I heard—several weeks. The fellow is, by the way, a big hum-bugger and knows how to make himself interesting.”
“How so?” the Hungarian commented.
“He claims to have been assaulted once and lain for three days in the middle of the prairie. The prairie had been set ablaze, and the flames had passed over him, but without touching his body in the slightest.” Large drops of sweat formed on the Hungarian, running over his face down to his hairy chest. He threw his head back on the back of the chair and stared at the ceiling with a ghastly look.
Lombardi and Merlina looked at him in amazement.
The abbé moved his armchair away from the table, as if he was afraid.
The Hungarian spread his arms wide, as if he were trying to ward off something. Then he seemed to return to himself, calling out in fearful mockery: “Thunder and lightning—if that ruined carrion is back on his feet, it is not certain whether I am a dead man myself.” And without pressing for any further description from the Italian, he sprang from his armchair and shouted like a madman: “While New Orleans sleeps, the Mill is awake—the members of the 99th and 100th degree bring death and destruction!”
Then he turned to the Italian and said: “Lombardi, let’s go into number 100—the abbé may accompany us.” Then he turned his distorted face to the zambo negresse and whispered, “Merlina, my panther, I shall see you tonight.”
She stared at the Hungarian.
“Death or Merlina!” Merlina’s triumvirate thundered as they rushed to the club room.
At the same instant, a man of very dark coloration left his post on the outside of the salon door and slipped into the wood bin that adjoined the clubrooms in various directions. Once the club members had closed the door behind themselves, he left his hiding place as carefully as before, went to the double dormitory where, as we know, a pale chino zambo chola was in control, and knocked at Merlina’s room.
“Be careful, Sulla!” someone said to him, “the Hungarian would kill you if he saw you.”
Chapter 8
CLUBMEN OF THE 99TH AND 100TH DEGREE
Behold! You richest and most esteemed of your citizens tremble before me, great city! They hold the highest offices and compete in great dignity for the favor of the people, and yet they are scoundrels as great as we are—for they shake our hands in friendship in the darkness—and on the street they do not even know us. Thus Don Luis, el gran desperado, sends down his anathema on you, o great city!
[Old Spanish Drama]
Le Sage’s limping devil understood the rare art of lifting the roofs from houses,18 revealing things to his favorites that gave them more experience and wisdom in a matter of minutes than Doctor Faustus and his guide learned through deep contemplation on the Logos and the homunculus. The limping devil then flew from Paris to the Pyrenees. After he had washed his sinful member clean once more in the baths there, he flew to Gibraltar. From there, expelled by the English, he swept over the pillars of Hercules and landed on the highest peak of the Atlas. Then he tapped the tops of the palms of Bileduldgerib and sank to his knees in Liberia. There he fell in love with a beautiful daughter of Nigritia, to whom he made proposals. After having courted her for several weeks and not advanced an inch beyond his starting point, he turned to the slave sale as a means to reach his goal more easily. When he was told that no black human flesh was being offered for sale, he became so weary of Liberia that he quickly flew away, not stopping until he had reached the Southwest Pass and cleared his throat and sneezed at the sight of New Orleans.
The limping devil no longer gave a damn about his former beloved in Liberia, since he now had plenty in New Orleans. It also gave him great pleasure to teach moral philosophy, since in this way he raised both roofs and petticoats. He did so once at the Hamburg Mill, where he encountered the wildcat Merlina.
Although all the clubrooms of the Hamburg Mill were locked, the Pontifex Maximus, the Italian Lombardi, had received the prerogative, unlike all the other clubmen, to enter any one of them to check their contents.
The rooms marked with the numbers 97 and 98 were occupied by subordinate members, who had the same rights as members of the higher grades but a reduced claim on profits. These subordinates received more a stipend than a solid portion of the booty. Whoever stood out in prowess by performing various crimes would advance to the next higher number. We have already seen, with Dominique Dubreuil, the sort of ordeal one had to survive to win this sort of advantageous advancement. The clubmen of the 97th and 98th degree were the tools and obedient servants of the mill, and they were as necessary to it as wheels to a wagon. They were placed in the most difficult positions and told to carry out the boldest of deeds. Their pasts were enclosed, as if by a more or less imposing frame whose gilding became progressively worn and soiled by their time in service, until they were fit for nothing but being tossed into storage. While trappers are recruited from the most loathed of human society, notorious criminals, convicts, and the like, in contrast, the clubmen of the mill were able to mingle with the great, and they were all the more dangerous because they were able to harvest the greatest respect from their fellow citizens because of their apparent prosperity and respectability.
The clubrooms of the 97th and 98th degree were rather spacious, with simple but comfortable furnishings.
Here members awaited the commands of the 99th and 100th degree as they discussed ways and means of carrying out their crimes.
We shall soon see what these consisted of.
If there was nothing to do, or if an enterprise was too perilous, they simply drank the whole night through and drowned their fantasies in the embrace of the pale mestizas or wild zambas.
That was the tax by which these subordinate clubmen’s income was siphoned to Merlina’s advantage.
Merlina, who visited this part of the club seldom or never, still kept it under the strictest control.
This was easy for her to do, since Lajos had given direction and spirit to the Italian’s management through his touch of genius.
But let us return to the chamber of the 99th and 100th degree, whither Lombardi, Lajos, and Dubreuil have rushed from the mill’s salon.
These club chambers, despite having separate doors outside, were divided only by a light curtain, which could be moved to make entrance and exit from one of the chambers an easy matter.
The Spaniard Viala had left the tapestry curtains to the pretty lady from Hamburg, who had used them for many a maneuver in her bedroom.
On her departure from the mill, Mrs. V*, later known as the laundress Boncoeur, had left the curtains behind, and they fell into the hands of the clubm
en, who were smart enough to use them at this precise place.
It was now after eleven o’clock.
Abbé Dubreuil and Lombardi, who could not understand the Hungarian’s strange conduct, followed his commands mechanically. If the Italian had never before understood that he was being dominated by the Hungarian’s coarse character, he could sense it now, since Lajos revealed his full force without stint on this night.
The news that the peddler from Illinois, with whom he had taken his tour through the tall grass of Looking-Glass Prairie about a year before, was not dead after all had worked such a transformation on Lajos’s usually deceptive treatment of the filthy Italian that he threw off his usual care like so much irritating ballast. For the first time he revealed himself to the Italian as a dictator.
He did not consider the risks—he desired, and that was enough.
The abbé coughed for a good spell, while Lajos leafed through the Book of the Mill several times, then shut it in distress.
“Lombardi!” he interrupted the silence, looking at the Italian with a gaze cold as marble.
“You are acting strangely, Lajos—” Lombardi responded, reaching for the book.
“Lombardi!” the Hungarian called out once again, “I am sick and tired of treating you courteously, as you have grown accustomed to being treated by me. You can shriek and howl like a hungry wolf—but I shall command and you shall obey!”
“Obey whom?” the Italian asked, browbeaten and uncertain how he should act in response to such conduct from the Hungarian.
“The Pontifex Maximus of the Hamburg Mill!” Lajos intoned with a sharp accent.
“Then I would have to obey myself,” the Italian said in confusion, sensing the tremendous force the Hungarian was unleashing on him.
The abbé continued to cough, appearing neutral in this conflict.
“You obey and I shall command! You, the abbé, and all of you in the mill! What are you cheats and sneaks, thieves and arsonists compared to Lajos, clubman of the 100th degree, who must arm himself against the asp that has poisoned our very air? Which of you has ever raised a dead man? Which of you has gone into competition with a corpse? Which of you would not have fainted when you heard that someone you had murdered was racing for a purse? Which of you has ever seen a corpse riding a horse, and who has seen a drowned, charred horse win a prize? You marvel at me, Lombardi? You saw that silly ass Cleveland but not the peddler’s corpse! Don’t look at me with so much pity, Lombardi. Don’t you understand me? I left Mr. Cleveland from Illinois lying dead in the middle of a prairie fire a year ago, and now he comes here and joins his mare with the racehorses.”
The Mysteries of New Orleans (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures) Page 37