The abbé unbuttoned his cravat and rocked his chair on its legs.
“That’s amazing enough,” he said.
“I will obey,” Lombardi responded, adding quietly, “if it is true that the dead have returned.”
“Lombardi! Even if that wasn’t true, I will command, period!”
“Well, then I’ll obey,” the Italian said in utter confusion.
“And when you are ready, I will take your gun,” the abbé remarked, still skeptical about the resurrection story.
“A gun is too good for you, abbé—rosaries for nooses, those are the weapons of a priest!”
This sudden transformation of the Hungarian passed just as quickly as the dissatisfaction, the amazement, and the pure disgust broke against his stubborn, cold heart. The roaring hurricane had to give way to stillness, and the vessel that had been pitched back and forth, whose pilot had wanted to command the winds, once more rode over the yawning grave of the ocean, that implacable strangler. Once the stillness came, no star illuminated the night; only lightning bugs whirred about the mast and sails, decorating the majestic, eternal darkness without illuminating it. These lightning bugs had stirred a corpse back to life once upon a time, and they had set him on the path that would lead him to his ruin.
The Hungarian had not been overcome by fear when he listened to Lombardi telling his fatal story—the large, cold drops of sweat that rose on his forehead and breast were not the offsprings of an anxious spirit, and his haunted eyes did not look away because his inner voice had told him that the dead would have their revenge. No—he already sensed that he had to get the peddler and Lydia out of his way before he could leave New Orleans untouched.
Deadly peril caused him to boil with a desire to hunt, leading him to gnash his teeth like a predator until he forced his rage down under his bloodthirsty tongue with the instinct of a hyena.
The Hungarian took up the great Book of the Mill once more, turning the pages with a calm and certain hand to the notes he sought.
This book, called The Club Book of the Hamburg Mill, was approximately in the format of a ledger, with a heavy binding trimmed and clasped in silver. It was dark red, with the notorious motto “Death or Merlina!” printed in every important place, in full, dark letters. The notes of the book, together with the entire narrative, were composed in French and made incomprehensible in spots through a special jargon used in the club, further degenerating in places to impenetrable hieroglyphs that only the sphinx Merlina or the clubmen of the 99th and 100th degree could explain.
The short, stubby key that opened the lock of this book normally hung on a red silk cord shot with black, which was wound about the book in a threefold tie and bound with a special knot after the settlement of business. The noose created by this knot resembled the initials of the Lady Merlina.
Opening and closing this book demanded no small talent.
Until this time, Lombardi had had first access to the book, and he had always handled it in a manner that did not please the Hungarian at all.
As Lajos grasped the book, paying no attention to the prerogative of the former Pontifex Maximus, Dubreuil shot a sideways glance at the Italian, whose momentary subordination he had noted, even sensing a similar reticence in himself. He could still not explain how and when such conduct could be peacefully justified when conflict broke out among the very directors of the mill.
Lombardi was shocked.
The abbé no less.
Lombardi perhaps quietly hoped for Merlina, and the abbé constructed strategies of defense, coordinating them with what he had already seen.
Dubreuil could see only too well that the strange episode with Cleveland the peddler had only been the occasion for the Hungarian’s declaration of independence, and that Lajos had long been harboring the desire to free himself from the irritating restrictions of some of the club’s norms. He wanted to enjoy the advantages without paying any attention to the duties connected with them.
“Death or Merlina!” the Hungarian cried, taking up the Book of the Mill.
“Death or Merlina!” Dubreuil and Lombardi responded at the same instant.
Lajos began: “A balance of five hundred dollars is due from the St. Charles Hotel—if the rascals do not pay up tomorrow, take the usual measures. Dubreuil, take that to Mr. A*, of the 97th degree.”
The abbé departed his present club chamber in an instant to fulfill his duty in room 97.
A pair of pale mestizas who rustled past him as the door to 97 was opened delayed his return longer than usual.
“In the future, the arson money will be collected before the fire is set.”
“Good,” said Lombardi and Dubreuil.
“Here is the application, letters A. F. H. P.—he wishes to have his two houses on Tchoupitoulas Street, which are in poor condition but heavily insured, burned down. For its services he is paying the mill twenty-five hundred dollars—further, we can claim from him the sum of a thousand dollars for that house in Algiers that belongs to the broker. We do not know why that is to be burned down.”
“Good,” Lombardi and Dubreuil responded.
“Received from Julia Street, first payment six hundred dollars, second payment fifteen hundred dollars, then third the balance of nine hundred dollars due.
“Received from Camp Street, seventeen hundred dollars for entry and theft, letter Z.
“Received $575 from St. Louis for a local trading house—the commissioner will pay double.”
“The percentages are included,” Lombardi remarked.
“Naturally,” the Hungarian said, “we will proceed as usual. For the Christmas term, seven hundred dollars from the cotton press—the agent pays nine hundred dollars to the company.”
“It is better to reduce his take by two hundred—the scoundrel can’t be trusted.”
“Keep it as it is—if Gabor doesn’t meddle in an improper manner, nothing is to be feared.”
“It’s impossible to know,” remarked the abbé.
“If anything is missing, we can make the cotton press pay a second time and drive them into a corner with threat of a suit.”
“Yes, they will have to give in,” Lombardi agreed.
“Here’s a little job … the lumberyard office in Magazine Street is to be broken into and the large iron money chest broken open—Mill gets forty dollars.”
“The rascal is an infamous cheapskate, he could pay double. We will skip it unless he pays at least eighty,” Lombardi interjected.
“And the money the clubman finds there … ?” Dubreuil began, questioning sarcastically.
“Five hundred dollars are supposed to have been stolen, but it will not be in the box. The fellow at the lumberyard probably wants to cheat his partner with a fake robbery.”
“Leave it be, then,” Lombardi said, “forty is enough for a mere five hundred dollars.”
Lajos now signed a slip with six corners, pressed a yellow seal on it, and handed it to Dubreuil with the words:
“Take this to Mr. A*, clubman of the 97th degree. He is supposed to collect half of the forty dollars the day before the break-in.”
The abbé left chambers 99 and 100 and went to 97.
When he returned, he asked for a brief intermission.
The Hungarian conceded it. Lombardi nodded his approval as well.
“Mr. A*,” the abbé began, “asked the clubmen of the 99th and 100th degree to pay special attention to him in the next distribution of tasks—he has heaps of debts and a wife with twelve living children.”
“It is not our fault that he has so many brats. No one ordered him to bring such a regiment of weeds into the world,” Lajos remarked.
Then he added: “Tell the clubman of the 97th degree that from now on he should not be indifferent to our lady’s zambo cholas twice a week. Then his productivity would make us a profit rather than eat into his capital.”
“Only five zambo cholas are left in the mill, and three of them are already in an interesting condition,”19 the
Italian Lombardi remarked. “It would be hard for him to win the same interest from the remaining two—but the clubman could favor that dark mulatto, Hyderilla, or Pharis and Elma.”
“It is probably too early for Pharis—she is still suffering from her time with Parasina Brulard,” Dubreuil responded.
“You still have the tongs, brushes, and chin-nails with you, abbé?” Lajos asked.
“For what purpose?” the abbé declared, “if we are concerned with raising a new generation at the mill?”
“Before you come to the mill tomorrow, go to Madame Brulard and fetch these tools—just so we can have an argumentum ad hominem with you once in a while,” the Hungarian responded.
“Good!” the abbé said.
“Red Rubric—the empty warehouse on Religious Street is safest before twelve o’clock—one may enter from the alley into the annex. It will be most easily burned down if the carpenter’s shop is done first——that would be today.” The Hungarian gazed at his watch and turned to Dubreuil: “Which clubman has it?”
The Hungarian had barely posed this question to the abbé when they heard the pounding of the fire bell, which sounded all the louder in their ears because the wind propelled the full tones to the windows of the mill. At the same instant the night watch shouted out loud their “Fire! Fire!” and sounded their rattles. The rattle and jingle of the engines, mingled with the cries and tumult of the firemen told of great peril.
“The clubman is punctual,” the Hungarian interrupted the momentary silence, “’tis just five minutes before twelve o’clock.”
“Religious Street—right?” Dubreuil asked.
“That’s to be expected, abbé—if you haven’t just drifted off to sleep,” the Hungarian said in a malicious tone. “One can see that you are still a neophyte in the 99th and 100th degree. I expect more precise orientation from now on!”
“Good!” the abbé said, coughing harshly and pinching his thin lips.
Lajos now opened the mill book at the beginning, marked a number of places with red ink, and read the general balance after taking a precise review.
“Money paid in: the mill’s gross for the half-year, $75,000; carried over, $16,000; transferred to the clubmen’s fund, $14,300; remaining to the mill, $45,000—of which $25,000 goes for the grant in Texas—leaves a net sum in cash of $20,000 for the mill.”
“This half-year is pretty thin,” Lombardi groaned, who was hard put to endure the orders of the usurper.
“The Scotswoman will fatten our thin goose again,” the abbé remarked, but he suppressed a smirk of triumph.
“We’ll see,” the Italian said.
“Cuban Matters”, Lajos continued: “Gabor’s report of the 25th—two thousand dollars received from the Spanish ambassador …”
“For what?” asked the abbé, who had not learned everything as a clubman of the 98th degree.
“It’s good you reminded me of that, abbé, it is our responsibility to tell you about everything you did not need to know when you were still in the lower ranks.”
“Very nice of you,” the abbé responded, “I am proud of all this attention.”
Lajos responded, “Gabor received that sum from Washington on the pretext that he had been initiated into the secrets of the invasion of Cuba.”
“That lout makes money with his genius at swindling—but let’s drop him, he’s fired.”
“Extremely unwise,” the Italian grumbled into his greasy beard, which had just received a plug of chewing tobacco.
“The Pampero left New Orleans on the second of August, with General Lopez on board.20 The Royalist junta offered a very noble reward if we could agree to place two clubmen aboard as spies. They were to report to Governor-General Concha as soon as they landed. Just so that their lives would not be at risk in some disastrous landing by the filibusters, each was to carry a gold cross on their breasts with a portrait of Queen Isabella.21 They would be able to prove they were good royalists with this sign—it is the sign of the Royalist junta of New Orleans and its branches in Louisiana. They were also to carry their club cards with them.”
“Quite good,” Lombardi and Dubreuil remarked, almost at the same instant.
“I believe we are choosing Campo and the Dutchman from Galveston.”
“Agreed!”
“Both of them are trained blacklegs—they’re the best there is,” the Hungarian intoned.
Now Lajos closed the book and wove the key around it.
“Death or Merlina!” he called out. Lombardi and Dubreuil repeated the motto.
The clubmen were distracted by a second fire alarm. They clearly heard a watchman in the street, who called to another: “Over at Parasina Brulard’s—the fire broke out at the laundress’s, Boncoeur.”
When Dubreuil heard this, he began to get up to leave.
“Abbé,” the Hungarian called to him in a commanding voice, “you are forgetting your rank!”
Dubreuil sat down at his place again, disgruntled.
The Hungarian’s arrogance irritated the Italian even more than before. But he said nothing.
“Then go,” Lajos said to the abbé, having made him aware of his plenitude of power by holding him back for a moment.
Perhaps Lajos wanted to test the abbé’s patience.
As the abbé left the club chamber and passed through the grand salon of the mill in order to take the passageway down, a long shadow followed on his heels, vanishing only when the abbé left the lighted area.
He rushed toward the place that was burning.
Once Dubreuil had left the chamber, Lajos turned to the Italian with a calm and sure voice: “Admit something, Lombardi.”
“What, then?”
“The priest,” Lajos continued, “is a scoundrel—what do you say to that?”
“I think so too—he is perhaps as big of one as I and you.”
“You should say, ‘as you and I,’” the Hungarian responded.
“Nonsense!” the Italian said.
“A matter of indifference!” the Hungarian retorted, “You should be glad that I took the dictatorship away from you.”
“If I had cared about it, your attempt to take it would have been in vain. I let it happen in order not to cause an abrupt break among the clubmen—by the way, I am quite happy that no one did me any significant harm.”
“Lombardi, did you think it a great injury when I took away your office of Pontifex Maximus—or did you give it to me voluntarily?”
“Yes—but it was an injury I am always able to make good.”
“I have no idea how you would be in the position to do this—or are you spinning some sort of plan?”
“I know what you are trying to say, Lajos—but you’re dead wrong—that would injure me as well,” the Italian interrupted the Hungarian.
“You are really to be feared, Lombardi—you are so capable of reading the innermost thoughts of your fellow man—I envy you that advantage.”
Lombardi fell silent, appearing irritated.
“Look, Lombardi,” the Hungarian continued, “I was forced to take command here.”
“Who compelled you?—Certainly not I,” the Italian responded, forming his mouth into a forced smile.
“The situation compelled me to do something I would never have done otherwise, or only with great reluctance. It is the situation of the mill: its income is dropping day by day, and its payments are rising—the two watch officers are demanding all of twelve hundred dollars more for their silence and occasional assistance.”
“I know,” Lombardi responded. “The rascals are starting to make extreme demands of us. If it continues like this, we will hardly have enough next half-year to cover living expenses.”
“Your needs are easy to satisfy, Lombardi, but I have five times the obligations.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes indeed. First of all, I have to take care of myself, and that is always the most important thing—you concede that, don’t you, Lombardi?”
“And secondly?”
“The mill.”
“You don’t have to concern yourself with the mill. If nothing comes in, it gets nothing.”
“Quite correct,” the Hungarian remarked, “but that isn’t the way a good clubman talks!”
“Thirdly for your wife, isn’t that right?” the Italian asked.
“Yes, for my blonde cat Frida,” Lajos answered, almost smiling.
“Fourthly?”
“Fourthly, for my sister-in-law, Jenny the green widow.”
It was part of the Hungarian’s commonness that he named these persons by their first names in such a locale. By doing this, he put them in the same category with the Lady Merlina’s courtesans.
“Fifthly,” he continued, “for my child.”
“A new offspring of the House of the Counts of Est… ?”
The Italian did not pronounce the name, for the Hungarian’s glance caused him to hold his tongue. Then the Hungarian spoke: “I forbid you, Lombardi, to give my family name again—think what you will of it—but the tobacco chew in your mouth shall not soil it.”
The Italian grimaced, flaring his nostrils.
The Hungarian added, “The watch officers are not to receive that twelve hundred dollars extra—they are to be satisfied with the two thousand dollars they receive already.”
“Such a thing is not advisable, the scoundrels are possessed of the devil,” Lombardi responded.
“Even if every hair on their bodies is a devil, they shall not receive any more! That Spanish ruffian will drop his demand to five hundred if I press him hard. The other watch officer knows why he should keep his mouth shut. I once helped him drown his mistress’s child in the canal—and since he has a wife and three children, he, too, would stay in service with us for five hundred. On top of that, the beast drinks like a broom-maker, and his crummy salary as a watchman does not cover the half of it.”
The Mysteries of New Orleans (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures) Page 38