The Circe Spell

by Joe Andriano

114.







17. A Life Cut Short

Based on Paolo Culotta's journal and historical documents, with added speculation

New Orleans, March 1891

Paolo reached Decatur Street and decided to walk through the French market which he'd been told had been transformed by Sicilians into their own mercato. As he passed through the mildewed pink pillars, he was assaulted by the stench of rancid fish and hanging meat. He’d hoped for an aroma of garlic and oregano that might transport him to Italy. The cold distrustful stares he was getting from most of the people did not surprise him. I am not their paesan', and never was. He walked the whole length of the market, finally free of the stench, and saw across the street the oyster bar where his brothers were waiting for him.

They were sitting at a small round table with a well-dressed one-legged man in a wheelchair whom they introduced as Antonio Mantranga, their boss. From the sycophantic tone of their polite introductions it was clear how much Paolo’s brothers were, as Regina had said, owned by this man. "Your brothers," said Mantranga peering at Paolo, "net more oysters than anybody else in the city. They work hard, like all good Sicilians." He's insinuating that I am not in that category. "Enjoy your visit, signore. But be careful. You have come at a bad time. The Americans are looking to ‘put us in our place’." The boss wheeled himself away toward a room behind the bar.

"What happened to his leg?" Paolo asked.

"The Provenzanos happened to it," said Vincenzo.

Together his brothers told him the whole sordid tale. The padrone named Mantranga (whom the Madonna had supposedly sent to them in answer to Vincenzo's prayer) had done well for them—not only sponsoring their trip and securing labor for them at the sugar plantation, where they had lived for months in a rotting shack, but also connecting them with his boss, Joe Macheca, who was especially interested in their background as banditi. He had just transferred his stevedore business from the Provenzano family to the Mantrangas, and was worried about reprisals. So once again my brothers are thugs.

      Macheca lent them enough money to move to New Orleans and work as oyster fishermen and stevedores, with occasional special jobs bodyguarding and collecting debts. Eventually their own debts were paid off and they had enough money to send for their families. At first they all lived in a half-collapsed, roach-infested tenement with several other Sicilian families. The place was so disgusting it only made them work harder, until they were finally able to move out of the waterfront ghetto, renting from Mantranga, of course, but at least they had an apartment all to themselves. Except for Mama's illness and Regina's “old-maid bitching,” all was going well. They were rising in the world, as you could only in America.




115.

"But one night last May we were ambushed," said Domenico, "as we were riding in a wagon from the dock with the Mantrangas. Those Provenzano cowards shot at us and ran. By the time we got our guns out they were gone. You saw what happened to Don Antonio's leg. He was the only one hit, they were such bad shots. When the police arrested a dozen of the Provenzanos we were not satisfied. You remember the old Sicilian saying, Paolo, it is a fool who keeps his eye on the scorpion and the serpent, but overlooks the centipede. Police Chief Hennessy was actually a compa' of the Provenzanos, hai capito? He owned a whorehouse with them, the Red Lantern Club. So we planned a little retaliation of our own, just in case the chief got them off. At first it looked like justice was being served. The first six ambushers were found guilty and got life. Their lawyers thought that was a little stiff—since nobody got killed—and pushed for a new trial, also on account of jury tampering."

"Bello scherzo!" cried Vincenzo. "The only tampering going on was in favor of the Provenzanos, and it was coming from the cops." He seemed too incensed to tell the story, so the oldest brother resumed.

"But the new trial was granted, and everybody said Chief Hennessy would testify in favor of the Provenzanos, that he had evidence they were innocent. He was shot and killed exactly one week before the new trial was supposed to begin. So of course everybody thinks the Mantrangas killed him to prevent him from testifying. When the trial finally came, the Provenzanos were found innocent based on the same evidence that convicted them in the first place.

"But now we were in no position to retaliate. We were arrested when the chief was killed, along with a couple hundred other Sicilians, but there was no evidence against us other than that we work for Tony Mantranga, so they let us go. But our friends are on trial right now, Paolo, and we're afraid they're gonna be scapegoats. The funny thing is, there was plenty of talk about killing that son of a bitch Hennesey. But Mantranga and Macheca decided it was too risky. So now they're being framed for it."

"So you're saying the real killers were probably Americans who orchestrated the whole thing to make it appear a mafia vendetta."

       "Esatto," said Vincenzo. "He's very smart, our little brother, college-educated. They want to make everyone hate us, Paolo, because we never became their new slaves. They never expected us to work our way out of their miserable muck, but we did. So now we pay. Now they make everybody think we're all scum. Scum is scum, don't matter what country it's from, hai capito? Hennessy was scum. A murdering whoring bastard. He gunned down a rival cop about ten years ago, shot him in the head at point-blank range and got away with it, pretended it was self defense.  And now this thug is a hero, a martyr. An excuse to beat us back, make us pay for invading their city, making it our city—making it rich with our work, but they can't admit that."

By the time Paolo was walking back to his room that evening, he understood that he had indeed come at a bad time. It didn't matter who had killed the chief of police. It could have been friends of the political rival he'd murdered years before, or other rivals he had now among the corrupt polizia, or more likely yet it could have been someone hired by the mayor himself, whose name Paolo had to laugh at: Shakspeare. Unlike his great namesake, he hated Italians—almost as much as Africans. And he feared that the "dagos" were taking over the fruit, oyster, and fish businesses in his precious city. No matter who had gunned Hennessy down in front of his own house where he had lived with his mother, conveniently close to the whorehouse he part-owned, and no matter what the verdict would be, Mayor Shakspeare would galvanize the city against the foreigners. Paolo worried for his brothers' lives. Guilt by association. They might be next, after the nineteen on trial were convicted. He never thought he would admit it, but now he was happy Regina was safe in a convent.





116.

When he unlocked the door to his room, he stumbled about in the dark, already sensing that he was not alone. As soon as he found the lamp and turned it on, he saw Poe on the chair next to the bed, caressing Circe in his lap. The man looked drunk and disheveled, his broad square forehead gleaming with sweat. Mama would have called this a bad omen. A drunken ghost with a black cat. Disaster looming.

"You know better, Paolo. Our presence is not an omen."

"You can't be real. I'm suffering from a lack of sleep, that's all. I'm hallucinating."

"No, Paolo, you are not."

"But if you actually exist outside my own mind, wouldn't that justify superstition?"

"Spirits exist, and souls persist," Poe jingled, slurring his words, "at best they rise as one, at worst they split undone. There are laws of motion no scientist knows, as my book Eureka! surely shows, but that doesn't mean anything goes."

"Give me an example of something delusional, then. And stop rhyming, please, it’s very annoying."

"Malocchio. All that folklore about the evil eye. It's all rubbish, Paolo."

"Now let me get this straight. You can only find me by following Circe. Why is that?"

"She is a soul-tracker. She leads me to you. She and I exist in the same set of dimensions. You and I do not."

"How can I see you then?"

"You can't always. Only when the dimensions are angled right, and then only when I have the energy."

"Now that's rubbish. I need to unpack my bag and get to sleep. If you don't mind." Paolo began to unpack his valise, throwing things into a chest of drawers until he got to his chemise and petticoat.

"Did you bring a wig? You will look ridiculous without one."

           "Don't look, then. I need this. Call it catharsis." He stripped, and as he slipped on the clothes he saw Poe shake his head and turn away. Paolo extinguished the lamp and got under the covers. I have to get up early, so please, leave me alone. I've got to meet the dean in the morning, get my lecture schedule. Then go with Regina to Mama's grave. Mama, buried in the New World. What an irony. Even though she disguised me as a girl, which her father viewed as a violation of the old way, she had been as Old World as a woman could get. She did it to save my life. She was being a good mother. I would have perished, there's no doubt of that. I just wish she hadn't turned on me. Be a girl, then don't be a girl. If I ever catch you being a girl again I'll have your grandfather make you black and blue. Regina says Mama was sorry she did that, let him beat me up. Would she have apologized on her deathbed, if I'd made it here before she died? Or was she already too far gone, all doped up and delirious?

"The spirits she saw are real, Paolo." Poe didn't sound drunk anymore. "The tortured blacks in the house. Poor things, they're worse off than me. And to think I supported the peculiar institution, when I was the body this phantasm now mimics."

"So now you're saying you're nothing more than a phantasm?"

"No, you numbskull. I'm a loose spirit; the image you see is the phantasm I generate out of the little excess energy I have. Most of it goes into keeping myself together, fighting off dissolution."

"Don't let me stop you from dissolving."

Paolo wrapped his head in the pillow and rolled up fetally facing the wall. His penis stiffened under the satin petticoat, and fighting off the haunt he conjured his latest fantasy-man—Henry James because he had all of Tomaso's physical bearing and none of his boorish insensitivity—but before Paolo could get too involved in his fantasy he drifted off to a hollow world of nameless dread. Poe's voice echoed from what seemed a cave.

            You see how treacherous is the Land of Dreams, the Real World. One second it is sweet, you're in paradise, a delightful sunny lea or a lovely seaside strand; you blink and suddenly it's a dark and dismal tarn, you’re stranded on the Night's Plutonian Shore . . . .




117.

No sign of Poe in the morning. Good night's sleep works wonders, he thought. Circe was still there, however, curled up on the bed.

Breakfast with his hosts went well; they seemed eager to prove to him that New Orleans was a city of high culture. They assured him that his lectures would be well-attended by students interested not only in Poe's growing stature in Europe, but also in Paolo's stories about Swinburne, James, and Wilde—all of whom he had met. Of course, he could not tell them the best stories; he was not there to confront his hosts with tales of broken taboos, lore of the love that dare not speak its name. Today was Saturday; his duties did not start until Monday. He was grateful for the opportunity to spend some more time with Regina, even though it would be at the cemetery. When his hosts offered to give him a tour of the new campus under construction uptown, he reminded them that he had family in town, with whom he would like to spend the day. The dean and the literature chair, exchanging bearded frowns, expressed their surprise and concern that, with family in town, he might be Sicilian. He took some pleasure in disabusing them of the notion that he was from Padua.

"I am a southerner, like yourselves," he smiled. Their frowns only grew. For them, Southern Italian and Southern American were two different species, the latter of course being more highly evolved. The dean asked him if he knew of the Hennessy murder trial. "Sì, signore. I just heard about it."

"Well, they were just acquitted. And today will not be a good day for you to be walking around town." He showed Paolo the morning paper, pointing to a notice that called for a "mass meeting": All good citizens are invited to attend . . . on Saturday, March 14, at 10 o'clock A.M., at Clay Statue, to take steps to remedy the failure of justice in the Hennessey case. So much for high culture, Paolo thought as he reminded them that neither outwardly nor inwardly did he much resemble his paesani, that no one on the street would regard him as anything but a gentleman, perhaps a foppish Frenchman. The dean agreed, perhaps too readily, adding that the only other Sicilians one might see sporting fancy frock coats with silk facings were the padroni. Paolo knew about them from Regina's letters, how they pretended not to have a clue that their newfound wealth had come from the blood and sweat of their own countrymen, now their slaves.

       Paolo decided against mentioning his brothers. "I must meet my sister at Mother Cabrini's convent-school on Chartres Street, and go with her to visit my mother's grave. She died not long before I arrived." Obviously they could not argue him out of such an obligation. They offered to hire him a cab, but he insisted on walking; it wasn't far to the Vieux Carré from the university on Common Street. They urged him to avoid the corner of Canal and Royal, where the "meeting" was taking place. He was glad his brothers were out fishing in their lugger today. Before leaving, he went back to his room to let Circe out. She was still  on his bed, now under the covers. He gave her some meat scraps he had surreptitiously taken from breakfast, then carried her inside his coat and put her in the little courtyard, where he assumed she would stay hiding under the bushes. Since no one was around, he tarried to stroke her silky black fur for a full minute, enjoying her purrs, licks, and nibbles.

As he walked down Common Street, Paolo felt privileged to have been chosen—not by his hosts here, who (he felt certain now) would never have invited him had they known he was a southerner (didn't they see the irony in that?)—but by Circe, who for reasons surely not of her own devising, and through doors only she could open, followed him everywhere he went. But as soon as the wet tickle of her tongue faded from his fingers, the feeling changed to dread. Maybe his superstitious mother was right, black cats are witches, or demons, it is a demon that pursues me. But what a lovable demon! Sì, Sì, a spirit, not a demon. . . .

          Completely lost in thought now, Paolo did not immediately hear the distant angry voices, amplified by megaphone and carried by the gentle March morning breeze. He was thinking instead of the demon, not Circe but Poe. He was certain his own mind had conjured him, certain it was not Poe's ghost that haunted him but his own tortured spirit. What else can it be? But I never know when Poe might appear, never have a clue what Poe is about to say, so he must be real, objectively real. If not, then Paolo would have to admit that he was at least as insane as one of Poe's own narrators. Where is he now? Imp of the perverse, only comes when I don't want him to.




118.

As he neared the corner of Common and St. Charles, the voices were so loud he could no longer ignore them. People were shouting in megaphones, a mob was roaring back. He could see the crowd now, a block away. There were thousands standing and shouting around a pedestaled statue of a statesman named Clay about whom he knew nothing, but he couldn't shake a feeling of déjà-vu as he remembered the day with Swinburne in Rome on the Campo dei Fiori. Cowled Bruno's brooding cross-armed pose, as he stood over the tumultuous crowd on his pedestal a stubborn symbol of free-thought, seemed in stark contrast to this bronze figure whose forearms were slightly outstretched, his hands gently pointing outward in a spirit of compromise that was completely lost on the growing mob.


He saw three men climbing the pedestal and calling for silence. The tallest one spoke. His head was right in front of the statue's crotch. Paolo couldn't hear every word, but he got the idea very quickly. "When courts fail, people must act! Can anyone deny that our beloved chief of police was assassinated by the Mafia?"

The mob roared NO!

"You've seen how they've taken over Decatur Street. Soon it will be the whole city! Are you going to let it continue?"

Again the mob roared no! and Paolo decided to walk another block down Common to Camp, where he would turn toward Canal and skirt the crowd. He was thinking, since he had plenty of time before meeting his sister, that he should stop by his brothers' house to make sure their families were safe and sound there. As he crossed Canal Street, watching the mob shake their hats in their hands and shout their hate, he heard more of the pedestaled vigilante's rant.

            "Are there men enough here to set aside the verdict of that infamous jury?" Now the Yeas had it. "Men and women of New Orleans, do you accept me as your leader?" Yea again.  "Then follow me!"




119.

Walking up Bienville Street, Paolo had no idea where the crowd was going. At the corner he saw the three men leading the huge mob up Royal. The men's bowler hats seemed like the bulbous skin of some writhing monstrous beast. His brothers' house was several blocks away, so he started running ahead of the mob. Another group of men, about a hundred of them armed with rifles and shotguns, seemed to appear out of nowhere ahead of him, and were running in his direction to join the mob. "Here they are!" cried one of the leaders. "The execution squad!"

Realizing he had made the wrong decision, Paolo saw the Bank of the U.S. building just up ahead, he thought he could duck into the lobby there, and wait for the mob to pass by. But the bank was closed. He stood his ground, leaning against the door, but the mob was swelling up past the sidewalk. He either had to be swept along with them or be trampled where he stood. Just as he decided to go along with them, he saw out of the corner of his eye a rifle handle rocketing in his direction. Tremendous pain suddenly hit his temple, spreading around his head like a clamp. "Oh my God! Sorry Sir, I didn't see you there." Those were the last words he heard as he fell. He did not feel the force of all those boots. No one would or could stop to get him out of harm's way. . . .

The ten-thousand-strong mob headed for Congo Square and the prison across from it, where they would urge on the "execution squad," one of whom had just accidentally cracked Paolo's skull, to do their grisly business. Break into the prison, hunt down the hiding Sicilians, shoot them all repeatedly, blow one man's head clear off, spatter the prison walls with dark blood—and give two of the wounded ones up to the hungry mob to be hanged. The first was tossed above the heads of the mob for a whole city block until he reached the corner of St. Ann Street, where a rope was thrown over the top bar of a streetlamp, and he was strung up. As he tried to pull himself up to avoid the inevitable, people started taking potshots at him from below. They lynched another one from the limb of a tree, and used his hanging body for target practice. These two men were left hanging for two hours in Congo Square. When the dust had settled, genteel ladies came and dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood for souvenirs.

But there was one sight that history does not record. No one saw the bedraggled figure sitting on the sidewalk back on Royal Street, next to the twisted corpse of Paolo Culotta. No one saw the black cat on Paolo’s chest howling as the disheveled derelict got up and detached her from the body. He let the cat lick his stubbly chin, then turned from the corpse and set Circe down. She started climbing the bank building and Poe’s spirit rose up with her like black smoke until they were on the roof.

           No one saw them disappear.








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