The window of my third floor walk-up in the French Quarter opens upon the shimmering slate rooftops and dormers of pastel-colored houses and the intricate lacework balconies, dripping from last night's rain. Beyond them rise the sun-bathed spires of a church, and beyond those, the blue shipping cranes on the Mississippi. From my little garret, I can hear the flourishes of a trumpet and the bellowing of a trombone, full-blooded jazz rhythms clamoring in the avenues below. From other rooms in the Vieux Carre, William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams listened too, tapping away at their typewriters.
It is Ash Wednesday. The sudden downpour in the small hours of the night, which swept the merrymakers of Mardi Gras into their hotels and rented apartments, pushed the jazz musicos and washboard-and-fiddle bohemians into little dry corners, and drenched the hell-fire of the prophets of Bourbon Street, seemed appropriate, if not biblical. (I myself much prefer rain to brimstone.) I descend my serpentine staircase and go outside. The streets are nearly deserted, but the fragments of a day-long bacchanalia are scattered everywhere. Under grey skies, I and the other survivors wade through the rubbish and mud puddles on our way to the cathedral for mass.
Mardi Gras had begun early. The narrow streets, thickening and panting with life, gave me the impression of being in Pamplona during the running of the bulls. Setting out for the Marigny, where the parades were to begin, I walked through a gauntlet of men and women clad in strange and spectacular costumes. Each seemed to be a defiant gesture against something and anything: sexual norms, social conventions, traditions of decency, legacies of oppression, hierarchies of value. Never had I seen so many satyrs and fauns, pirates, crossdressers, brightly painted faces and bodies, stilt walkers -- it was as though we had all escaped from a circus!
Carnivale is a great human drama, someone told me. We cast ourselves in it, take roles, and act in them with startling conviction. If one is asked why, one might respond, "Because it's Mardi Gras! That's what is done." For one short season, we overturn the social order with aplomb, in accord with some invisible script, and when it ends, as it must end -- abruptly -- we return painfully to our former lives, to offices, classrooms, silent homes, routines, responsibilities, insecurities.
On that somber Wednesday morning, people materialize in the streets with ashes on their forehead, the church bell tolling at the beginning of another mass. The sun begins to dispel the clouds, but a vague memory of the night before remains. Why did we come here? What happens now? The jazz starts up again, but more softly. Artists again hang their wares on gates, and fortune tellers again set up tables in Jackson Square. Weaving through the few open spaces, we pass each other, see the smudged cross over each others' brows, and exchange knowing glances. But what is it that we know? Is the drama over, or does it continue?
And if it continues, when does it end?
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