Obscurity

Chapter 3

Where the great river met the land, the water struggled to seep through the murk that was determined to stall it. Only a pole sent into its depths could row them toward their idling destination, the flat-bottomed boat heaped high with trunks of personal effects, large quantities of Rhum Agricole, and one portrait of the Virgin Mary weeping.

The land was strange and wild, just as the captain had foretold. Large overgrowths of trees and roots sunk into the mud as if summoned by it. Wild ferns and palms crawled over one another in a gnarled attempt to reach the sun. The air was humid and thick and the insects that swam in it so large they might have crawled over the corpses in the valley of Gehenna.

Tropical rainstorms poured down upon them, giving the impression that they were swimming their way to the city more so than rowing to it and dark scaly creatures blinked their eyes above the surface as if waiting for one of those precarious rafts to overturn. Indeed, Séverine had the creeping feeling their small party was navigating the river Styx, avoiding at every turn the lures of the underworld.

At long last, they made it to la Nouvelle-Orléans, a strange and beautiful place with cobbled streets, wooden sidewalks, and two and three-story buildings built in the Spanish Style. Though tropical groves reached out to meet it, the city rose up in fortitude against the nature that would attempt to swallow it — with buildings leaning to one side or the other, depending on the inclinations of the wind, and ferns clinging to the balconies in spilling piles of leaves.

If we were to compare the city in those times, we might have recalled the ruins of a forgotten Mediterranean isle, ever haunted by the ghosts of its French past, and yet overcome by its Caribbean present — and it is here that we shall see the widow settled at last, and entering into a society as unruly as the tropical landscape they lived in.

For a time, it might do us good to remember, France sent only her discards to the city. Prostitutes, hedonists, sodomizers, gamblers, opium dealers, and all other manner of the morally depraved were sentenced to a life of harsh realities. Wooden cabins became their lot and freedom their intoxicant — and then there were the Catholics.

As the city ravaged itself into ruin, France placed amidst it a small contingent of nuns. It was the country's hope that such morality would influence the land's depravity, and thus, crowning the edge of that town stood a convent both enriching and imposing. A living testament to the beauty of Divine Providence amidst the treachery of men.

Séverine eyed that sanctuary with longing. How simple the life of a nun must be, she thought — as we all do when the burdens of life become too difficult to bear — how wonderful it must be to spend decades perfecting their voices only for the joy of lifting them up. More than anything else, however, she longed for their innocence, for an innocence that might never be returned to her; and what a beautiful thing that innocence had been.

Their destination thus achieved, the captain and his men heaved their baggage onto the wooden banquets as the ménagère saw to all the particulars. As he settled about securing shipments of Rhum St. Vincent from the plantation she secured its mean of distribution, purchasing an abandoned hotel in the Vieux Carre where the widow established a cabaret on the first floor and a private residence on the second and third.

The Cabaret St. Vincent was furnished with seclusion in mind, harkening the attendant to a particular establishment in Paris where secrecy was spent as currency and a lover's touch spoken as its native language. The apartment above was adorned in much the same taste, its darkened interior crusted with all the finery of black marble, brass fittings, and crystal chandeliers, and most harrowing among its effects, one portrait of the Virgin Mary weeping, installed above the mantle where she would forever mourn the mistress who beheld her.