"Yes, and then?"
Scherezade in Porter's Magic
It never dawns in New Orleans
In medias res, and almost in an uninterrupted monologue technique, “Magic” opens up in the boudoir of Madame Blanchard with the the horror-account of Ninette’s story through the eyes of Madame Blanchard’s maid in a Scherezade-like nested story. The maid renders the narrative in a dissembling matter-of-fact way triggered by the hearsay of Madame Blanchard’s bewitched linens. The story arc of magic conjoins the frame narrative and the story told through a series of mirrored-reflective events that bring both the maid and Ninette together as well as Madame Blanchard and the Madam of the fancy house (brothel) against a backdrop or racism, abusive authority, exploitation and violence, with money at its core. Madame vs Madam (only an "-e" separates both names).
William L. Nance in “Katherine Porter and the Art of Rejection” quoted by Michael Hollister points that “Ninette is pathetically impotent to free herself. Since the reader knows her only as a victim, however, the emphasis of the story i n not only in sympathy but the horror of the situation. Source https://www.amerlit.com/sstory/SSTORY Porter, Katherine Anne Magic.pdf
Brushing and stroking Madame Blanchard’s hair, the maid recalls her times in the brothel where she encountered Ninette. Ninette will not easily yield to “Madam's” demands of handing back the money given by the clients. While “Madam” subtracts her brass cheques (“A brass check was the token purchased by a customer in a brothel and given to the woman of his choice”), she sneaks some money under her pillow. Violence ensues, and a terrible determinism frustrates her escape only to bring her back through magic spells.
Ninette rolls in blood to fall at the feet of our narrator and the two narratives collide in a room in a brothel in New Orleans:
“The madam began to shout, Where did you get all that, you …? and accused her robbing the men who came to visit her ...The girl, said, keep your hands off or I’ll brain you: and at that the madam took hold of her shoulders, and began to lift her knee and kick this girl most terribly in the stomack, and even in her most secret place ...and then she beat her in the face with a bottle, and the girl fell back again into her room where I was making clean” (page 40)
Madam's cook plays the cruel magic spell that brings Ninette back to an inescapable determinism: “For the cook in that place was a woman, colored like myself, like myself with much French blood just the same, like myself living always among people who worked spells” (41). The iterative use of "myself" in a threefold litany draws Madame Blanchard's maid and Ninette's story together: magic rituals, abuse, violence and exploitation knit both. "When she comes back she will be dirt under your feet," the cook pinpoints. Madame Blanchard’s maid hears the click of her mistress’ perfume right after as well as a dull: “Yes, and then?" The tale is thus concluded: "and after that she lived there quietly."
Ninette and Madame Blanchard's servant both remain locked in their own worlds, a spiritual rather than physical entrapment as William L. Nance suggests:
“Ninette’s imprisonment is not mere matter of locked doors and barred windows, but an enslavement of the spirit. The spell has added symbolic resonance to the young’s prostitute degradation.”
No story will grant our Scherezade her freedom.
