‘They say it runs nearby. It’s extraordinary that a place like this coujd create a myth of Heaven, even such a miserable one as the Swamp King’s palace. Gray-haired swamp girls don’t sound very attractive to me.’ She let her eyes contact Jocundra’s, her lips twitching upward. ‘Clothilde wrote me a letter about Bayou Vert, or partially about it. Of course she died long before I was born, but she addressed it to her grandchild. The lawyer brought it to me when I was sixteen. She said she hoped I would be a girl because girls are so much more adept at pleasure than boys. They have, in her phrase, “more surfaces with which to touch the world.” She instructed me in the use of… my surfaces, and confessed page after page of her misdeeds. Mutilations, murders, perversions.’ Otille crossed to the railing and gazed out over the water. ‘She said that she had fertilized the myth of Bayou Vert - it had been old even in Valcours’ day - by spreading rumors of sightings, new tales of its wonders, tales about the Swamp King’s black sternwheeler that conveyed the lucky souls to his palace. Then she poured barrels of green dye into the water, sending swirls of color down into the marshes, and waited. Almost every time, she said, some fool, a trapper, a fortune hunter, would come paddling up to the boat, and there he’d find Clothilde, naked, gray wig in place, the handmaiden of Paradise.’ Otille ran her hand over the top of a piling and inspected the flecks of creosote adhering to her palm. ‘They must have had a moment of glory on seeing her because they could never say anything. They just looked disbelieving. Happy. She’d make love with them until they slept, and they slept deeply, very, very deeply, because she gave them drugged liquor. And after they woke, too groggy yet to feel anything, she said they always had the most puzzled frowns when they looked down and saw what she had done with her knife.’
The clouds were breaking up, the sun appearing intermittently, and the beer cans on the bank winked bright and dulled, as if their batteries were running low.
‘Come on,’ said Otille sadly. ‘There’s lots more to see.’
July 29 - August 14, 1987
Those first weeks at Maravillosa, Jocundra had time on her hands. She wandered the corridors, poking into the cartons and crates that were stacked everywhere, exploring the various rooms. The motif of ebony faces and limbs emerging from the walls was carried out all through the house, but in the downstairs rooms most of the faces had been painted over or disfigured, and it was common to see nylons fitted over a wooden leg, coffee cups hooked to fingers, a black palm holding a soiled condom. The furniture was wreckage. Footless sofas, stained mattrsses, cushionless chairs, everything embedded in a litter of beer cans and wine bottles. And here Otille’s ‘friends’ could be found at any hour of the day or night. Drinking, making love, arguing. Many of the arguments she overheard involved the virtues of religious cults and gurus; they were uninformed, usually degenerating into shoving matches, and their most frequent resolution was the use of sentences beginning with, ‘Otille said…’ It soon became clear that this interest in religion only mirrored Otille’s interest, and that the ‘friends’ hoped by arguing to gain some tidbit of knowledge with which to intrigue her.
To pass the time further, Jocundra decided to put together an ethnography of the estate and went about securing an informant. Danni (‘It’s really Danielle, but there’s so many Danielles who’s actresses already, so I dropped the endin’, you know, just said “to ‘elle with it,” kept the i and accented it. I think it sounds kinda perky, don’t you?’) was typical of the women. Pretty, though ill-kempt; blond and busty; accustomed to wearing designer T-shirts and jogging shorts; an aspiring actress in her mid-twenties. She had come to Maravillosa in hopes that Otille would ‘do something’ for her career. ‘You see what she’s done for Downey, don’t you? I mean he’s almost a star!’ She identified the other ‘friends’ as gamblers in need of a stake, poets looking for a patroness, coke dealers with a plan, actors, singers, dancers, musicians and con artists. All young and good-looking, all experts on Otille’s past and personality, all hopeful of having something done.
‘But what do you do for her?’ asked Jocundra one day. ‘I understand you provide her with companionship, an audience, and she gives you room and board…’
‘And actin’ classes,’ Danni interrupted. ‘I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the classes.’
‘Yes, but knowing Otille, it seems she’d expect more for her money.’
