No Good Deed 60

As the dancers, musicians and market traders left, the previously hidden white spectators appeared, in coveys of three, four, five or six persons: male and female, young and old. One would have thought that they would have congregated like-with-like to watch the spectacle, but perhaps the shamefaced looks exchanged on catching sight of cousins or neighbours accounted for that. A tall coffee-skinned woman in European style dress and a towering, parti-coloured headscarf was stopping at every group of embarrassed spectators. To a man or woman, everyone took a step backward at the approach of this figure. Her head-dress clearly achieved its aim, as even the tallest of men perforce had to look upward to take it in. As the woman worked her way around the crowd, it became clear that she affected greatly each person she encountered. Some men puffed out their chests, many women visibly shrank; among the last group she addressed, before approaching Gottschalk and myself, two men turned so white that I thought they might swoon. One of their much younger female companions did indeed fall to the ground in a faint. The mulatto woman laughed before bending down to minister to the young woman with a censer of smelling salts. I was most frustrated that the exchange which passed between the woman and the others took place at too great a distance for me to overhear a single word.

Gottschalk looked a little pale himself by the time she arrived to speak with us. I doubted very much whether I would hear his quaverous tenor for a while. There seemed little to fear – or admire – in the woman. The height of her head-dress was clearly an effort at creating an imposing figure from a woman of middling height. She was plain enough; although her eyes were striking, the whites as bright and shiny as mother of pearl, the irises so dark as to show no demarcation of the pupil within. However, her voice was deep, as deep as many a man's. Slow as treacle, it was a hypnotic sound. Even so I could find no reason to fear even this. As to what she said, I could not say. She addressed Gottschalk alone in something that was not quite French, which I took to be Creole. The musician seemed blessedly dumbstruck by the woman, merely nodding his head with a ferocity which denoted a slavish compliance with anything his interlocutor might require.

Finally, she turned to me. Her gaze proved that it was not her voice alone which had mesmeric qualities.

'Y'all come too. At 7 o'clock 1913 North Rampart Street.' She said, whereupon she passed a reptilian tongue across her lips. It was either the most repulsive or lascivious thing I had ever seen, or indeed, perhaps it was both. She departed, leaving a musky heady scent of menses and female ardour and I knew I would go to the address she had mentioned.

I looked at Gottschalk, who was now merely yellow, rather than alabaster-white.

'Who was she?'

He stumbled over his answer, 'L-laveau, M-marie Laveau.'