Nocturnes (5 page)

Chapter Four

I
t was a short, pleasant drive from the Louisiana state capital to the good-times capital of the country. He had rented a car and, with the top and windows down, was pushing the speed limit through the glossy wetlands of the nation’s
delta.

The sunlight danced across Lake Pontchartrain, to the east, and all the way back, skipping off his windshield and diving out over the marshes to the west. Sprites and nymphs and laughing eudemons could be guessed at out there among the cypress roots and the Spanish moss. There was the fragrant knowledge of persuasive moons and eager, swollen waters. There was the pungent, olfactory reasonings of ancient decay.

A flight of herons dipped heavy blue wings along the silver surfaces and rose as one above the spillway, tacking along the brackish breezes in the direction of Good
Hope.

Isaac was already falling victim to the spell that New Orleans casts well out beyond her suburban sprawl. It’s forgotten now, but New Orleans was once much more than the Vieux Carre and the hard, tangled edges of Old Algiers. Her people brought things to her, to her center, from the darkly quiet places and the weathered faces of the delta. New Orleans was nothing less than a sassy, hungry, angel-whore spider that sat waiting at the sensitive, twitching middle of her web. Waiting for the edges to alert her to some new, old thing. When it arrived, she assimilated it right into her DNA. And there it mingled with all that is juicy...with all that is the very marrow of life. Like the blind, people wander towards her from all over, their arms outstretched and fingers splayed, reaching and yearning and longing for that mysterious and mystical essence.

He drove on, tripping the wires of Kenner and Metairie, then veered toward the river so that he could approach her heart from the oak-shaded avenues of the Garden District. Anticipation crackled in the wires above the clanging street cars and drifted on the sweet, high energy of the uniformed children who lined the tracks. Catholic kids, waiting for their school bus-trolleys, blowing the same sad-laughing notes that the city’s children had blown since slavery.

Isaac caught the strains of music when he passed beyond the boundaries of industrial Baton Rouge. They grew more complex and inviting as he neared his destination. Jazz was the city’s Siren Song, impossible to ignore. It issued and oozed and seeped from even—and especially—the poorest corners, from the most unlikely sources of sad, black passion. Subterranean longings moved her people along the streets and through the pot-holed mazes of ordinary life, pulsing like a rhythm, bringing roots up through the surface of the creative soils again and again, generation after generation. Jazz was the fermented fruit, the ever-fragrant flower that perpetuated itself from the moist, mossy earth of the city’s dreams and disappointments.

It was Isaac’s third encounter with New Orleans. He could not have prepared himself for what was to be revealed there.

His hotel was touristy, full of newlyweds and Midwesterners come south for a go-cup full of the taboo…something spicy to add to the doldrums of later and less-enthralling recollections. Isaac didn’t bother to unpack before he was out again among the joyful crowds and hawking hustlers of the Big
Easy.

He avoided Bourbon Street, savvy enough to save that experience for the perspective of the night. Instead, he wandered the consumer-Casbah of Royal St. Peering from the sidewalk into the dim shadows where stuffed gator heads and vintage Mardi Gras masks grinned back at him.

He enjoyed the blatant show-offiness of the place, and the inevitable sidewalk artists around Jackson Square. The shirtsleeved crowds flowed around him, and shared his mood. It was a highly probable
day.

In an hour he was among the Third World flavors and aromas of the French Market. A frown had lifted from his face somewhere back on St. Charles Avenue. Seeing the red and green awnings flapping in the lazy river breezes, and the way the merchants shared big, contagious smiles as they offered their savory peppers and sweet pralines, Isaac felt a bond with the species that he hadn’t experienced in decades.

*

He had the desk reserve a table at Antoine’s and dressed impeccably for dinner. A dove-gray suit, white broadcloth shirt, his favorite silk tie. Here was yet another reason to love this multicultural adventure of a city: people actually dressed for dinner. A gypsy-camp of locals would board the streetcars uptown, travel merrily along to Canal and walk (some would say sashay), from there into the Quarter. There would be strolling cocktails and random meanderings into music bars. Much later, they would stand in line outside of Irene’s Cuisine, or the Napoleon House, or dozens of other exquisite culinary options, and the sidewalk party would commence until the maître d emerged to wave you in, like you had just won the gold ticket at Willy Wonka’s. The others in line would smile like they were actually thrilled for you, and in a way they were, but they were equally envious and would down a couple more Sazeracs to mask their disappointment.

Isaac walked the few blocks from his hotel to St. Ann and entered the classic mirrored dining rooms of Antoine’s. Antoine’s had once been a destination for the disgraced Napoleon himself. But at the last hour the plans had fallen apart. The secret room at Antoine’s remained vacant and Napoleon died in exile, never having tasted the excellent catfish coubillion that waited there, one full-sail ship’s voyage away. To have died in exile AND to have missed out on Antoine’s could only be considered a kind of double Hell, really.

Isaac dined on boudin and etouffee and washed it all down with a chilled Vouvray. By nine he was ready for the smorgasbord of dandy-shenanigans that New Orleans serves up on a nightly basis to her fortunate guests. In her warm embrace, every guest is a guest of honor.

He stood outside the cramped, packed confines of Preservation Hall and let the brass wash over him like a baptism. It was blatantly arousing. People jumped like startled voodoo-victims, slapping at the air, kicking at curbs, crying out the names of gods and strangers. Several of the tourists could be seen glancing furtively over their shoulders, like fugitives from monotony, half-expecting the authorities to arrive with bullhorns and rubber bullets and drag them, kicking and screaming, from the scene of excessive fun. The night was damp with sexy insinuation.

He had learned quickly that this was a city of perspectives. One was either observer or observed. Isaac knew that he would pay dearly in the morning, but he had jumped on the side of the fence where the grass was uncut, slightly littered, but oh-so-much greener.

At a couple ticks past two in the morning he glanced at his watch. Startled by the lateness of the hour, he headed off in the direction of the Café du Monde for some coffee and beignets before retiring. Great flowing crowds of curiosity still roamed the streets, with no sign of quitting them anytime soon. It reminded him of Barcelona, another passionate city where the adults felt blessed by fate and circumstance to have become characters in such an extraordinary, vibrant poem. The café was awash in Mississippi moonlight and the harmonies of several languages being spoken at once.

Cafe du Monde was a jovial catastrophe. The waitstaff was hopelessly outdone by the intoxicated revelry of the patrons. Men and woman in discolored aprons scurried about, refilling empty mugs and swiping at the collected confections that lay in snow-like drifts upon the tiny
tables.

Isaac found a vacant chair at a table with three young women from the medical college of Tulane University. He knew this because they immediately introduced themselves as such. They too were showing the effects of a four-hurricane season. The women were taken with his manners, his attire, and his subtle accent, and decided to flirt with the elegant old man for fun. A well-groomed blonde in her mid-twenties reached across the table and touched his left
hand.

“That is a beautiful ring. May I ask where you got
it?”

Isaac, always suspicious of the motives of strangers, looked at her closely. She was strikingly attractive and obviously accustomed to the attentive responses of men. There was a corruption of cynicism in the deep pools of her emerald
eyes.

“Certainly,” Isaac said, smiling. “It was given to me by my wife on the day that I gave her its twin.”

The blonde snorted and smiled back at him. “I assumed that it was a wedding ring. But you misunderstood my question. I meant, where was it
purchased.”

Isaac was already bored with the woman. But he was in the best spirits that he had enjoyed in years, so he humored her.

“It isn’t from America. It was designed in Poland by my wife’s
father.”

“It really is gorgeous. Would you mind if I looked at
it?”

“I’m afraid that I don’t remove it…” Isaac stated as he stretched his hand across the table for her
inspection.

“Ooohh, not even for me? Not even for a minute?” she asked,
winking.

He winked back at her. “Not even for a minute. But may I offer you another cup of
coffee?”

The blonde stared coldly past his shoulder. One of the other women, a short, round, matronly girl with kind eyes, sensed the awkwardness of her friend’s failed jibing and tried to change the
mood.

“You have a little bit of an accent. Is Poland your
home?”

Isaac swung his gaze to her question and smiled
again.

“Yes. Poland was my home. I lived there until I was about your age. I was married in Warsaw. But I have been in America many years
now.”

“Have you ever been back?” the girl continued, trying to steer the conversation back to friendly ground.

“No. I have never been
back.”

There was something in the way he answered that touched a sobering chord in all of them. Their table assumed a silent thoughtfulness. Isaac felt his previous enchantment drain away from him. He raised his hand to signal the waiter. When he did, the blonde noticed the tattooed number on his
wrist.

She knew what the number implied, and she wondered how much he would be willing to talk about. It wasn’t every day that one had coffee with an honest-to-god Holocaust survivor. She smiled at him again and her voice took on sweet molasses tones.

“Excuse me, Mr.,
uh…”

“Please, call me
Isaac.”

“Excuse me, Isaac, but is your wife from Poland,
too?”

“Yes, she was…waiter! May I have the check for this table,
please?”

“Is she here in New Orleans with
you?”

He glanced sharply at her poker composure. “No. She died in
Poland.”

“Was it very long ago?” The blonde refused to let the matter drop. Her friends began to fidget nervously.

“Not very long ago at all. About fifty years.
Waiter!”

“Did she die in the camp that you were
in?”

To the four of them, the entire city seemed to inhale sharply. No one dared even look at him except the woman who had asked the question. And she herself would have said later that the question seemed to come from someone else’s mouth. Isaac stared at her for several agonizing moments as the three women writhed in shameful agony. Then he spoke with pointed
iciness.

“Yes. My dear wife perished in Auschwitz. I assume that you have heard of the place? Perhaps you have read about the numbers of people who were murdered there? But I would wager that you have never given more than a curious piece of your attention to the matter. It is a luxury for your generation that you can look back upon the Holocaust with indifference. The subject is entertaining, at best. Like reading about the Titanic or the Hindenburg explosion. And now I sit before you, living history. The intellectual drama that this fact creates in you causes you to lose your dignity while insulting mine. Well, ladies, I pray that you never experience such horror except through your callous questioning. But if you would mature your spirit, if it is important for you to become human, then may I suggest you ponder on the meaning of the word
‘empathy’.”