Dummy Love

In the night of this night, the people of the lost world emerge from the bayou weed patches and the four-bit flops, out of the jungles and from under the bridges, and come out into the electric evening, blinking and rubbing bloodshot eyes, waking from one nightmare into another, spreading like a tide through the side streets and downhill avenues in search of the things they need, and never get in sufficient quantity: a mouthful of food, a rag of clothing, a fresh supply of the particular poison that each requires in order to die each midnight the little death of forgetting — wine, a handful of capsules, bay rum, lighter fluid, paregoric, the white snow of Morpheus, the mad incense of cannabis indica.

Some stick to beer. Gashounds, they are called. To wash the intolerable world out of the mind with beer, you must drink oceans of it, and abstain from food. Some achieve this, and they are the aristocracy of skid row, even the intellectuals.

Etienne, as I recall, preferred beer. An ex-pug, he was, and a little punchy. I bought him beer in the Little Shamrock, and as he put down his glass a curious thing occurred.

A voice, very thin and small, seemed to emerge from the beer glass. It kept asking, “Ou ta ‘lez ce soir? Ou ta ‘lez ce soir?”

“You’re a very good ventriloquist,” I said. “I’ve never heard a man throw his voice in French before.”

Etienne grinned slyly. “That wasn’t French,” he said. “It was Cajun. In French, one would say, ‘Ou allez-vous ce soir?’ I don’t know why, but it’s easier to throw the voice in Cajun than in French.”

“Where did you learn ventriloquism?” I asked.
“I learned from a man in the vaudeville in
New Orleans,” said Etienne. “His name was D’Argent, and he had a girl dummy named Oo-La-La, that I had fell in love with.”

“You mean,” I said in astonishment, “that you fell in love with a ventriloquist’s dummy?”

He shrugged. “I was very young. Just a boy. I had just come to New Orleans from New Iberia. I was small for my age. Later, when I became a boxer, I always fought in the bantamweight class. Oo-La-La was a large dummy, just the right size for me.”

“Still,” I said, “she wasn’t human.”
“Yes, I found that out. I used to go to the theater every night to see D’Argent’s act. And soon I fell in love with this dummy. You must believe me, please, when I tell you that I really felt that she was alive. Remember that I was very young, and until I went to New Orleans, I had never been any farther from New Iberia than Lafayette.”

“Was Oo-La-La a blond or brunette?” I asked.
“She was a blond. Her hair was made of silk, and she had big blue eyes that opened and closed. One night when I was sitting in the front row, she winked at me.”

“And what did you do?”
“Well, after the show was over I went to the stage door, carrying a bouquet of cape jasmines, and asked to see Miss Oo-La-La. The man at the door laughed and laughed, but he took me to D’Argent’s dressing room. D’Argent didn’t even smile when I told him what I was there for. He went and got Oo-La-La and sat her on his knee, and I gave her the flowers.”

“What did she say?” I asked.
“She thanked me, very politely, in French, and winked at me again. So I asked her if D’Argent was her father, and she said no, he wasn’t. I didn’t like to see her sitting on his knee, and so I told D’Argent if he didn’t put her down I was going to knock his head off. I would have done it, too, although he was bigger than me, but he just laughed and took Oo-La-La’s head right off. I was too scared to fight, then. But it all turned out all right.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, D’Argent taught me to throw my voice and I became his assistant. But I soon got tired of that, and he took me to a gym, and they taught me to box. But, you know, I never have forgotten that little dummy. That’s one reason I never married. I never have met a girl as pretty as Oo-La-La …. Are you good for another beer, buddy?