Waltz Into Darkness (14 page)

Her
escort leaves her side for a moment, to see what the delay is in
locating their carriage, and suddenly, from out of nowhere, a man is
beside her, peering at her closely. She turns her head away, draws
the scarf even closer, and edges a step or two aside in trepidation.

He
is bending forward now, craning openly, so that he is all but
crouched under her lace-blurred face, staring intently up into it..

She
gives a cry of alarm and cowers back.

"Julia
?" he whispers questioningly.

She
turns in fright the other way, giving him her back.

He
comes around before her again.

"Madam,
will you lower your scarf?"

"Let
me be, or I'll call for help."

He
reaches up and flings it aside.

A
pair of terrified blue eyes, stranger's eyes, are staring taut at
him, aghast.

Her
escort comes back at a run, raises his stick threateningly. "Here,
sir!" Brings it down once or twice, then discarding it as
unsatisfactory, strikes out savagely with his unaided arm.

Durand
goes staggering back and sprawls upon the sidewalk.

He
makes no move to resist, nor to rise again and retaliate. He lies
there extended, on the point of one elbow, passive, spent, dejected.
The wild look dies out of his face.

"Forgive
me," he sighs. "I thought you were-someone else."

"Come
away, Dan. The man must be a little mad."

"No,
I'm not mad, madam," he answers her with frigid dignity. "I'm
perfectly sane. Too sane."

22

In
the front parlor of Madame Jessica's house on Toulouse Street, there
was a vivacious evening party going on. Madame Jessica's parlor was
both expansive and expensively furnished. The furniture was
ivory-white, touched with gold, in the Empire style; the upholstery
was crimson damask brocade. Brussels carpeting covered the parquetry
floor, and the flickering gas tongues above, in nests of crystal,
were like an aurora borealis.

A
glossy haired young man sat at the rosewood piano, running over
Chopin's "Minute Waltz" with a light but competent touch.
One couple were slowly pivoting about in the center of the room, but
more absorbed in one another's conversation than in dancing. Two
others were on the sofa together, sipping champagne and engaged in
sprightly chat. Still a third couple stood together, near the door,
likewise lost to their surroundings. Always two by two. The young
ladies were all in evening dress. The men were not, but at least all
were well groomed and gentlemanly in aspect.

All
was decorum, all was elegance and propriety. Madame was strict that
way. No voices too loud, no laughter too blaring. None left the room
without excusing themselves to the rest of the company.

A
colored maid, whose duty it was to announce new arrivals, opened one
of the two opposite pairs of parlor-doors and announced: "Mr.
Smith." No one smiled, or appeared to pay any attention.

Durand
came in, and Madame Jessica crossed the room to greet him cordially
in person, arm extended, her sequins winking as she went.

"Good
evening, sir. How nice of you to come to see us. May I introduce you
to someone?"

"Yes,"
Durand said quietly.

Madame
fluttered her willow fan, put a finger to the corner of her mouth,
surveyed the room speculatively, like a good hostess seeking to pair
off only those among her guests with the greatest affinity.

"Miss
Margot is taken up for the moment--" she said, eying the sofa in
passing. "How about Miss Fleurette? She's unescorted." She
indicated the opposite pair of doors, leading deeper into the house,
which had partially and unobtrusively drawn apart. A tall brunette
was standing there, as if casually, in passing by.

"No."

Madame
did something with her fan, and the brunette turned and disappeared.
A more buxom, titian-haired young woman took her place in the
opening.

"Miss
Roseanne, then?" Madame suggested enticingly.

He
shook his head.

Madame
flickered her fan and the opening fell empty.

"You're
difficult to please, sir," she said with an uncertain smile.

"Is
that--all? Is there--no one else?"

"Not
quite. There's our Miss Juliette. I believe she's having a
tête-a-tête. If you'd care to wait a few minutes--"

He
sat down alone, in a large chair in the corner.

"May
I send you over some refreshments ?" Madame asked, bending
attentively over him.

He
opened his money-fold, passed some money to her.

"Champagne
for everyone else. Don't send any over to me."

A
colored butler moved among the guests, refilling glasses. The other
young men turned, one by one, saluted with their glasses, and bowed
an acknowledgement to him. He gravely bowed in return.

Madame
must have been favorably impressed, she evidently decided to hasten
Miss Juliette's arrival, in some unknown behind-the. scenes manner.

She
came back presently to promise: "She'll be down directly. I've
sent up word there's a young man down here asking for her."

She
left him, then returned to say: "Here she is now. Isn't she just
lovely? Everyone's simply mad about her, I declare!"

He
saw her in the doorway. She stood for a moment, looking around,
trying to identify him.

She
was blonde.

She
was beautiful.

She
was about seventeen.

She
was someone else.

Madame
bustled over, led her forward through the room, an arm affectionately
about her waist.

"Right
this way, honey. May I present--"

She
gasped. The beautiful creature's eyes opened wide, at the first
rebuff she had ever received in her short but crowded life. A puzzled
silence momentarily fell upon the animated room.

His
chair was empty. The adjacent door, the door leading out, was just
closing.

23

Mardi
Gras. A city gone mad. A fever that seizes the town every year, on
the last Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. "Fat Tuesday." Over
and over, for fifty-three years now, since 1827, when the first such
celebration started spontaneously, no one knows how. A last fling
before the austerities of Lent begin, as though the world of human
frailty were ending, never to renew itself. Bacchanalia before
recantation, as if to give penance a good hearty cause.

There
is no night and there is no day. The lurid glare of flambeaux and of
lanterns along Canal and Royal and the other downtown streets makes
ruddy sunlight at midnight; and in the daytime the shops are closed,
nothing is bought and nothing is sold. Nothing but joy, and that's to
be had free. For eight years past, the day has already been a legal
holiday, and since that same year, 1872, the Legislature has
sanctioned the wearing of masks on the streets this one day.

There
is always music sounding somewhere, near or far; as the strains of
one street band fade away, in one direction, the strains of another
approach, from somewhere else. There are always shouts and laughter
to be heard, though they may be out of sight for a moment, around
some corner or behind the open windows of some house. Though there
may be a lull, along some given street, at some given moment, the
Mardi Gras is going on just as surely somewhere else just then; it
never stops.

It
was during such a momentary lull that the motionless figure stood in
a doorway sheltered beneath a gallery, along upper Canal Street. The
air was still hazy and pungent with smoky pitch-fumes, the ground was
littered with confetti, paper serpentines, shredded balloon skins
looking like oddly colored fruit-peelings, a crushed tin horn or two;
even a woman's slipper with the heel broken off. The feet of an
inebriate protruded perpendicularly from a doorway, the rest of him
hidden inside it. Someone had tossed a wreath of flowers, as a
funereal offering is placed at the foot of a bier, and deftly looped
it about his upturned toes.

But
this other figure, in its own particular doorway, was sober, erect.
It had donned a papier-mâché false face, out of
concession to the carnival spirit; otherwise it was in ordinary men's
suiting. The false face was grotesque, a frozen grimace of unholy
glee, doubly grotesque in conjunction with the wearied, forlorn,
spent posture of the figure beneath it.

A
distant din that had been threatening for several moments suddenly
burst into full volume, as it came around a corner, and a long chain,
a snake dance, of celebrants came wriggling into view, each member
gripping waist or shoulders of the person before him. The Mardi Gras
was back; the pause, the breathing space, was over.

Torches
came with them, and kettle drums and cymbals. The Street lighted up
again, as though it had caught fire. Wavering giant-size shadows
slithered across the orange faces of the buildings. At once people
came back to the windows again on either side of the way. Confetti
once more began to snow down, turning rainbowhued as it drifted
through varying zones of light; pink, lavender, pale green.

The
central procession, the backbone, of dancers was flanked by detached
auxiliaries on both sides, singly and in couples, trios, quartettes,
who went along with it without being integrated into it. The chain
was lengthening every moment, picking up strays, though no one could
tell where it was going, and no one cared. Its head had already
turned a second corner and passed from sight, before its tail had
finished coming around the first. The original lockstep it had
probably started with had long been discarded because of its unwieldy
length, and now it 'Was a potpourri. Some were doing a cakewalk,
prancing with knees raised high before them, others simply shuffling
along barely raising feet from the ground, still others jigging,
cavorting and kicking up their heels from side to side, like
jack-in-the-boxes.

The
false face kept switching feverishly, to and fro, forward and back,
while the body beneath it remained fixed; centering its ogling eyes
on each second successive figure as it passed, following that a
moment or two, then dropping that to go back and take up the next but
one. The women only, skipping over the clowns, the pirates, the
Spanish smugglers, interspersed between.

Ogling,
bulging, white-painted eyes, that promised buffoonery and horseplay,
ludicrous flirtation and comic impassionment. Anything, but not
latent death.

Many
saw it, and some waved, and some dlled out in gay invitation, and one
or two threw flowers that hit it on the nose. Roman empresses, harem
beauties, gypsies, Crusaders' ladies in dunce caps. And a nursemaid
in starched apron wheeling a full-grown man before her in a baby's
perambulator, his hairy legs dragging out at the sides of it and
occasionally taking steps of their own.

Then
suddenly the comic popeyes remained fixed, the whole false face and
the neck supporting it craned forward, unbearably intent, taut.

She
wore a domino-suit, a shapeless bifurcated garb fastened only at the
wrists, the ankles and the neck. A cowl covered her head. She wore an
eye-mask of light blue silk, but beneath it her mouth was like an
unopened bud.

She
was no more than five feet two or three, and her step was dainty and
graceful. She was not in the cavalcade, she was part of the footloose
flotsam coursing along beside it. She was on the far side of it from
him, it was between the two of them. She was passing from man to man,
dancing a few steps in the arms of each, then quitting him and on to
someone else. Thus progressing, with not a step, not a turn, wasted
uncompanioned. She was a sprite of sheer gayety.

Just
then her hood was dislodged, thrown back for a moment, and before she
could recover and hastily return it, he had glimpsed the golden hair
topping the blue mask.

He
threw up his arm and shouted "Julia!" He launched himself
from the door niche and three times dashed himself against the
impeding chain, trying to get through to her side, and three times
was thrown back by its unexpected resiliency.

"No
one breaks through us," they told him mockingly. "Go all
the way back to the end, and around, if you must cross over."