A religious ritual will take place in this rotting Southern city.
To New Orleans:
Riding on a sea of faces in an army of cars and buses—away from Chicago and the mortally bleeding streets (with stops in St. Louis and Dallas, again—briefly) and hanging in haggard busstations inevitably in the starless dawnhours....
Now at last in New Orleans, in the bright sun of this winter-warm city, I stand outside the Greyhound station where Ive left my bag, and I wonder where to go.
Canal Street lengthens before me—perhaps the widest street I have ever seen. The day was clear. I walked along that wide, store-crowded street, hearing the drawls of the people. The day became slowly grayer—the Southern pall of clouds enshrouding the sky.
I have to find a place to stay—alone—to separate myself when, predictably, the seething world will become intolerable: a place where I can find a lone symbolic Mirror.
I pass through the open door of one of the walls shutting in a courtyard—to ask about a room. The building, constructed like a tenement about the small square yard—which is paradoxically green with plants and trees—is all small balconies, like wooden hammocks sagging resignedly in the middle. The apartments huddle about the garden as if possessively claiming it from the gray streets.
The landlady wasnt in. I knocked at the neighboring door, which was open. A man is painting inside on an enormous canvas: color-smeared, savagely Red, yellow; swatches of black, inkily smeared at the edges, creating tentacles from a solidly dark body—a hungry giant insect groveling on a violent vortex of colors. “Y’ant gonna fine a place now,” he tells me. “Too close to Mardi Gras. Shoot, man, rents go up to fifty bucks a day. People sleepin in cars, on the streets. Better fine you someone to shack with,” he advises me. Aware that I was staring at the savage painting, he drawled: “This heres a picture of Nawleans.” ... And he slashed at the canvas in a purple, dripping stroke....
Now walking along that punctured area of old New Orleans, I see those famous hints of a world that disappeared long ago: depicted, sheltered like a precious memory, in books: a world that left merely the remnants of what may have been; a city scarred by memories of an elegance and gentility which may never have existed.
A ghost city.
The streets narrow, as if the ocean world of cities has now taken the slower, more sluggish avenues of a crooked river. Attempting futilely to hide beyond the closed doors of courtyards, beyond the grilled ironwork that still surrounds some balconies like rusted spiderwebs, houses drunkenly lopsided (leaning toward the streets as if, given half a chance, in a rubble of wood and stone and oxidated grillwork, they will topple vindictively over those on the other side) hover over the courtyard walls like grotesque, indomitable, painted old women peering into the streets.
Ugly dank places—the ones they call Enchanting in the travel folders; houses tenebrously rising in tiers of shuttered windows above shredded walls; the pallid historical buildings from a timepast of gilded elegance.... An almost Biblical feeling of Doom—of the city about to be destroyed, razed, toppled—assaults you. The odor of something stagnant permeates the winter-air of this summercity: not so much an odor that attacks the sense of smell as one that raids the mind. ... The invitation to dissipate is everywhere. And you wonder how this city has withstood so long the ravenous vermin—the rats, cockroaches which surely hibernate here even in winter. And you wonder how one single match or cigarette has failed to create that holocaust which will consume it to its very gutters....
About Jackson Square, portrait artists line the walks into Pirates Alley, imprisoning on paper the pastel smiles of tourists. General Jackson’s stone horse, in the center of the square, seems to balk at the sight.
“Let me draw you, honey,” a woman coaxed me. In a whisper she adds: “I’ll do it for free”—obviously because all the other portraitmakers are occupied, at $2, $5, and $7 a head, and she feels so Lonesome and Ugly—so lonesome and Unwanted. But I walk instead through the blocks of fish-redolent, color-splashed French Market nearby; along the docks—wondering exactly why I have come to this city.
This decaying city has a hypnotic aspect that leads me through its streets: this city in preparation—I think suddenly (and I stare at St Louis Cathedral, which looms like a gray fortress barricaded for War)—for the confessional ritual before Ash Wednesday.
Before a candy shop in a shabby district, a stuffed black-mammy has a punctured breast revealing very white cotton insides.
An ovaled man has been following me for about a block. I cross quickly, avoiding him. I feel genuinely indifferent to that scene right now. Im churning inside with the implied mysteries of this physically moribund city; and therefore feeling as vitally alive as a child pretending for a moment to be dead, my emotions seesawing from anticipation to revulsion.... Seeing that I was about to dodge him, the ovaled man walked faster until he caught up with me. “If yew come to muh house,” he says in a thick Southern drawl which I have a feeling he emphasizes purposely, “Ahll make it wuhth yuh while, suguh.”
I shrugged, but I went with him to a house on Esplanade. The ovaled man is a parody of The Degenerate Southern Woman. In the apartment, he came on quickly. Just as Im leaving, another youngman comes up the stairs. He appears very distraught when he sees me. He looked masculine, but he acts effeminate. Behind me, I hear him and the ovaled man shouting angrily at each other. The younger one ran back into the street, crying—almost bumped into me. The ovaled one came to where I was standing.
“Thay-at was muh lovuh!” he howls at me. “Ah didn think hed come bayack this aftuhnoon.” His hands flutter like an electric fan on “high.” “Oh, What Am Ah Going To Dew?—hes gawn—you heah?—he is gaw-on!—an for sure this time! Hes warned me—if Ah bring any tramps up, he’ll—... Ah don mean tramps, suguh—” mellowing “—Ah only may-ent —well, yew know—... Oh, please do come bay-ack into thuh house till Ah can com-pose muhself from this Or-dee-yall!”
I went back with him largely because he was yelling so loudly and insistently that I was afraid he’d begin to attract attention. Already, a fat woman sweeping the dirty walk before her house was leering at us with a browntoothed, hateful grin.
Back inside, the man whines: “See, suguh, when Ah first met him, he was re-al masculine—then he turns femme on me, jest lak thay-at: ovuhnight. An Ah think: Muh God, Muhciful Jaysus! What am Ah gonna do with a queen on muh hands! Yew know: He turns swish ovuhnight—jest the way yew saw him jest now—swishin like a ballerina. When Ah met him, he was hustlin the Quartuh too—the butchest, straightest numbuh y‘evuh laid yuh eyes on, Ah wanna tell yew. Now look at him,” he said in abject exasperation, “a walkin camp if th’evuh was one! An, hon, yewve been Around, Ah can tell—an yew know that the lay-ast thing in the world a queen wants is to make it with what turns out to be huh sistuh—why, it is lew-rid and un-nay-tural as well—it’s—well, Ah dont care what anybody says: It’s exayactly lak bumpin pussies an thay-ats what it is lak—period! ... So when he turned femme, Ah, nay-turally, yew know, started lookin aroun for othuh butch numbuhs —he was too effeyminate for me now—but Ah don want him to go away—completely. Ah guess Ah kinda got used to havin her around.” He stopped sobbing. “In a way, maybe, it’s bay-est all aroun—he can fine huhself a husband an let me fine muhself one—an yew know, too, we didn get along—...” He started to come on with me again. His teary cheeks are moistening my pants. I put him off.
He says: “Well, yew listen heuh, suguh, now that hes gawn, maybe yewd like to move in with me?” It was certainly, I want to tell you, short-lived remorse over the crushed romance.
“She’ll come back,” I said absently.
Wrong thing. “Well, yew dont have to rub it in an call her 'she’—Ah mean, call her 'him’—oh, day-am!—whatevuh the hell Ah mean: Ahm so Distracted Ahm outta muh fruit mind!”
“He’ll come back,” I corrected myself.
Still the wrong thing. He pouted. “Well, Ah jest wanna tell yew, honey, rought this minute,
Ah do certainly hope yew are very wrong indeed!”
As I went down the stairs into the street, I saw the masculine-looking, feminine-acting youngman walking sheepishly back toward the ovaled-one’s apartment. Then I heard the older one shout melodramatically:
“Honey, Ah jest cay-ant live without yew!”
“Youngman!”
I cant tell where the woman’s voice is coming from. Im not even sure Im being addressed.
“Yes, you! ... Youngman. I have an Important Message for you!”
I noticed a door slightly ajar, in a small house with a narrow porch. The door opens. A gaudily braceleted hand summons me to the porch. Swarthy-skinned, about 40, a gypsy woman stood there, a flowered bandanna around her head; dangling gleaming earrings, at least five bracelets tawdrily rainbowing each hand; rings—which she exhibits by holding her fingers open. “Come in.” I hesitated. Her eyes are so light they look impossible in the dark skin, as if whoever made her had used too much color on her face and had to compensate with the colorless eyes. “I have an Important Message for you,” she persisted.
“Youve got me confused with someone else.”
“No. It’s for You. Come in,” she coaxed.
Impulsively I walked into a littered room. Although the day is warm, a fire is burning in a sooty fireplace. The room is excessively hot, closed.
“Just got into town, didn’t you, boy?” she asked me.
I nodded.
“See!” she exclaimed proudly. “I know!”
There are several couches about the room—all upholstered noticeably amateurishly in bright flowered prints. On the dirty peeling wall was a spiritualist chart—the words LOVE, DEATH, DESIRE, HATE, WEALTH prominent in the beehive map of life. In the center of the room is a table, draped in a screamingly bright serape.
“I been waiting for you,” she said mysteriously, pressing her spangled hands to her forehead, posing at intense concentration. Now she takes my hand. I pulled it away instinctively.
“I aint gonna charge you nothin,” she says. She reaches again for my hand. “Whatsamatter? Afraid of The Unknown?” She fixes the bizarre eyes on me.
Feeling challenged, I relaxed my hand. Truthfully, she did frighten me, but I watch her coolly as she studies my palm.
“You can get Lost mighty bad,” she warned, staring into my hand. “I dont mean lost in the streets or in the Quarter. I mean: Lost deep down. Inside. In your Soul.... This is an evil city, boy.”
She smells rotten. The heat, the odor of stale food, imprisoned for days in this airless room, the closeness to this filthy woman, nauseate me.
An urchin-boy was standing by the door, picking pecans out of a sticky praline. Now he moves next to me, peering into my palm too. He smells like the woman—his mother, Im convinced: He has the same colorless eyes in the extravagantly brown face. With sugargrimy hands he took my palm. I feel the sticky substance gluing our hands together.
“Evil city, boy,” he echoes the woman.
And the woman: “He got Powers too. See, he know!”
“Thanks for warning me,” I said, forcing my hand away.
I walked to the door—the rancid air is choking me.
“You wanna stay here?” she asked me. “Lotsa space—see?” She indicates the cluttered room. She can tell Im not interested. “New Orleans is Evil, boy,” she warns me again coaxingly. “I got Powers. They can protect you. You wanna stay here?”
“Im staying with a friend,” I lied.
“Your palm says be careful,” she insisted, reaching again urgently for my hand. “See?—here it is.” With a long-nailed, heavily ringed finger, she outlined a sign on my hand.
The little boy repeats: “Evil city, boy.”
“I told you: Im staying with a friend,” I said.
“Wont do!” the woman said, shaking her head urgently.
“Ive got to go now,” I said.
“Look here,” she said, and her voice was no longer sinister; matter-of-fact now, almost business-like now. “I got a real good easy deal for you. Im gonna offer you a job.”
“Im not looking for a job,” I told her, regretting my words instantly, because shes looking at me knowingly, pegging me.
“Dont have to tell me that,” she said. “I know.... Im gonna make it easy for you, though. Gonna offer you a good job. ... Mardi Gras, thats the time to scoop up the money!” She snatched at the table to emphasize the promised ease.
“How?”
“Every way. We decide how. I’ll teach you. You grab em!” Thrusting out her hand, she grabbed me by the arm. Now the blank eyes nail me knowingly, and I resented it “Dont play innocent with me, boy!” she warned, her hand gripping my arm, the long nails almost piercing my flesh. “Save the act for them others,” she said contemptuously.
I thrust her arm away angrily.
“Innocence,” she whispered. “Innocence may be all right for those that got it. Us that lost it aint never gonna get it back.” For a long while she remained silent, staring into my eyes; then, bluntly, she said: “You bring em here. We score—one way or another.”
“If I wanted to do that,” I said cautiously, trying to keep from showing anger at her sureness, “I’d do it on my own.”
“Let me tell you something, smart boy,” she said. “I been in the Quarter for years. How long you been here—few hours?”
She threw back her head and laughed raucously. The laughter booms through the room. The earrings glittered crazily in the light from the fireplace, tiny dots stabbing at my eyes in the semidarkness.
“Smart, smart, smart dumb boy!” she chortled sinisterly.
I felt angry, but I smiled. “Youve got me all wrong, lady—despite your ... powers.”
“Go ahead—laugh,” she said. Then, narrowing the colorless eyes: almost vindictively, almost as if it were a curse aimed directly at me, she said:
“This is The Message, bright boy: Mardi Gras aint just any old carnival. Them others got it all wrong. Im gonna tell you The Real Truth: People wear masks three hundred and sixty-four days a year. Mardi Gras, they wear their own faces! What you think is masks is realty—... Themselves!” She seemed to be about to spring at me, her face mere inches from mine. “Witches!” she shouted at me. “Devils! Cannibals! Vampires! Clowns—tots of em.... And some—” she said, relenting slightly, “just some, mind you: some—... angels! ...”
Her strange sudden laughter followed me into the street.
SYLVIA: All My Saintly Children
1
IN THE MIDST OF THE FRENCH QUARTER, and above the trees of Jackson Square, the steeples of St Louis Cathedral, threatening Escape into Heaven, thrust crosses bravely into the sky, the highest a vague icy outline, the frozen ghosts of a cross from the distance—but slenderly erect overlooking with heavenly indifference—from that summery winter sky etched delicately with spider-grilled outlines from the city’s balconies —the sprawling casbah world of the French Quarter.
Even those of us who have just arrived sense it immediately—that invisible boundary enclosing a square area bordered, arbitrarily, by Canal and Esplanade on parallel sides, Burgundy and Decatur perpendicular to them.
The funereally tolling bells of the Cathedral reverberate insistently into the courtyards and the bars, the coffeehouses and the restaurants. Like the tolled warning to Judgment which Miss Destiny had imagined, they summon the inhabitants of the French Quarter into a constant jolting awareness of their grillcaged world.
Not far from the Cathedral—so that you can almost feel the vibrations of the pealing bells—there is a bar called The Rocking Times: a small square bar with two entrances: one from the street, the other from an alley leading through a bricked, potted courtyard into a narrow corridor (from which the head branches off, a dark cave with the ubiquitous sex-drawings, sexpleadings) and into the bar.
Only minutes earlier, walking through the Quarter in the yellowing afternoon (after I had luckily found a room at the Y in this already-jammed city, arriving there at the e
xact moment when someone was making a hurried, angry exit: a room to which I will return only periodically when the need to be alone recurs), I had seen a queen enter this bar; and I know it will be a hustling bar.
As my eyes adjusted to the muddy light—a draped door doubly sheltering it from the Outside, the first person I noticed—beyond the cursory recognition of the malehustlers, the queens, the scores—was a blackhaired woman sitting on a stool against the wall of the bar. She leaned toward me, but when I sat near her, wondering if perhaps she had recognized me, she turned her face away from me.
In the right light, she is an attractive woman, somewhere in her 40s. But as she bends toward the lighted bar to bring to her heavily painted mouth the glass shes drinking from, she looks hard, toughened like those women depicted in movies as the hanging-on ex-mistresses of bigtime gangsters.
With an inviting smile which in itself would have indicated that I have come to the right place, the chubby bartender (one of two working the bar this afternoon) set a complimentary Welcoming drink before me.... Occasionally, he will talk in confidential tones to the darkhaired woman, and with attempted but unsuccessful subtlety, he indicates by a look or a movement of his head someone in the bar. The woman listens without turning her face. They seem conspiratorially to be keeping track of the people here.
Looking about this bar (the hungry faces of the hunted and the hunting)—as familiar as the others in the nightcities I have left—I feel, recurring, a sense of something hugely ominous, intensified by the interlude earlier with the gypsy woman—then a heavy weariness, quickly replaced by the manic excitement.
Against the whining jukebox near me, a tall pale queen is snapping her long fingers rhythmically to the juke-rocking and twisting. Another queen, with faintly mascaraed eyes in anticipation of the actual day of Mardi Gras when they can legally “masquerade” as women, stormed in and insisted loudly nervously to the finger-snapping queen: