Crescent City Part 24

At the sound of Miriam's entrance the three women looked up. The mother and the sister spoke to each other without words: Why has she come here?

For a long minute Miriam and Pelagie waited. Unsteadily then, Pelagie stood up and Miriam rushed to her, opening her arms. Touched by the warmth of living flesh, together they mourned the dead and forgave the living.

Even before she opened the envelope bearing David's script and a New York postmark, the fear, which for the past month had lain like a cold stone in Miriam, broke apart. No one was at home when the letter arrived, so she was spared both the angry silences and the angry words that followed any reference to David.

She could not turn the pages fast enough; from line to line her mind's eye saw between each, written tall in flaming letters, the one word: Safe! Safe!

"In the harbor we found a sailboat," he wrote discreetly.

For the first time in my life I had to take something that didn't belong to me. We cut the boat loose and turned downriver. Lucien is an excellent sailor and the wind was with us; but for all that, they would surely have caught me. Five minutes later would have been too late, and I would not be writing this to you. We were only a few yards out when we heard shouts on the levee. Torches flared. There is a terror in the sight of so many torches on a black night. There must have been a dozen men, to judge by the lights and the voices. They didn't see us. It was mercifully dark on the water and the harbor was crowded with ships at anchor. Still, it's a wonder they didn't hear the pounding of my heart ....

... and having neither food nor water, began to worry. Toward midmorning, coming into the old pirate lair on Barataria Bay, I decided to take a small chance and sent Lucien ash.o.r.e to buy enough to last us through the long sail to Mississippi .... So we pa.s.sed between Cat Island and Pa.s.s Christian, remembering how yon used to write about your summers at the Pa.s.s. I was afraid to put ash.o.r.e there, thinking I might encounter someone who knew me from New Orleans ....

... finally landed at Pascagoula, where Lucien got hold of some back issues of the New Orleans papers, and so learned that Sylvain was dead, which, although I had hoped he was only wounded, I had actually suspected from the first. I took my terrible sadness and guilt with me on the train to Mobile, where we changed cars for the North .... Lucien keeps telling me that a man who kills in self-defense need feel no guilt, which seems reasonable, and yet I do ....

So I am already back at work, having opened my little office yesterday. I hope my act hasn't brought too much trouble to the family. Our poor father! I seem doomed to keep hurting him. And you. I love you so and worry about you, who have troubles enough without my heaping more upon you. Forgive me. But I am the way I am ....

"I have a letter from David," Miriam told Emma later that day. "Perhaps you will tell my father that he's safe in New York. I can't talk about it anymore."

Later still Emma came to report. "He didn't say a word, but he looked very relieved. A father is a father, after all."

True. And the anger would pa.s.s. The pain might well last, but the anger would ease away. Ferdinand was not a man to hold on to it forever.

16.

Gabriel Carvalho closed the ledger with a smart thud and leaned back on the sofa. Often they went over the quarterly accounts of Mendes and Company in the comfort of Rosa's parlor, combining this business with Miriam's social visit to Rosa.

"So," he said, "a job nicely done. Mendes is solvent. Very much so, I should say."

"Only because of you."

"Not so. You have caught on wonderfully well."

It was true. Miriam had astonished herself. With Scofield replaced by an honorable, bright young manager who had no objection to working with a Mrs. instead of a Mr., she had "gone back to school," as it were, and found it exciting. Having learned from Ferdinand's failure and from Eugene's prior example, she had as soon as possible paid off the debts which Scofield had piled up. Recently she had even begun to invest in real estate, prime vacant land alongside the railroad. Railroads wul develop as the city grows; they are bound to, she had thought. And Sanderson the manager had agreed.

"I had an idea," she began now, and stopped.

It was far easier to express herself to Sanderson than to Gabriel. There was too much unspoken between herself and him: the affair with David, and Eugene's taunt, retracted, it was true, but not forgotten by her: He can't take his eyes away from you. Absurd! The truth was, he seldom looked at her at all; when his head wasn't bent over doc.u.ments, his eyes were directed at the wall behind her head. She was quite certain that this behavior was not due to any shyness; he was too positive to be shy; rather, he was austere, kind but austere. One wondered whether he and any woman would-her thoughts stumbled, ashamed of themselves-what he and a woman would ... But with Andre it was all clear, all vivid; one could imagine.

"You were saying you had an idea."

She retrieved the idea. "Yes, I was thinking, do you suppose we might offer Sanderson an interest in the business? He'd have more incentive than one can have with just a salary."

"And I was thinking of suggesting that myself. You're a step ahead of me. Soon I shall have to run to keep up with you."

"Oh, no, there's so much I don't understand! All that business about bank stocks, Sanderson was trying to explain."

"Why they're a sound investment? Because banks have to be exceptionally strong in this economy. Planters need big loans to keep themselves afloat between harvests."

"But why is it so hard to keep themselves afloat?"

"They have to modernize. It costs money to run a plantation. A cane-grinding engine alone costs five thousand dollars. Then there're all the slaves to be fed. And the owners live lavishly. They spend from crop to crop."

"Creoles are so extravagant!"

"Not so much anymore. It's not the Creoles, but the Americans, who have the real money now. Today's Creoles are tightening their belts. Very few can recall the days of places like Valcour Aime's Versailles."

"And a good thing, too. I was there once and it disgusted me. I remember how annoyed Eugene was because I wasn't impressed." Miriam paused, as if to make up her mind whether to speak or not. "I would like to sell Beau Jardin. I never liked it."

"Oh, no!" Rosa cried. She had been working quietly at an embroidery frame. "Not that beautiful place!"

"Yes. I would like to free all the slaves and be rid of it. Every time I go there I despise it more. I drive past the fields where the people are working and I think, 'That woman there with the infant on her back was bought for a thousand dollars; that man driving the mule wagon was bought for fifteen hundred dollars.' And I cannot stand it."

There was a silence in the room. Rosa's, Miriam knew, was disapproving. Gabriel's might also be disapproving, yet there was something about him that gave her full freedom to speak her mind. And she continued. "It's hard to reconcile that feeling with the people I know so well. Eugene, after all, is not a villain."

"No," said Gabriel, "he is not."

"He's only like everyone else. Living here, he does what everyone else does. I understand that."

From the street a voice cried through the tall open windows, "Artichokes! Figs! Cantaloupes!"

"The Green Sa.s.s Man," Rosa said. "Have you been buying figs from him, Miriam? They've been especially good this season."

"That old man," Miriam said, ignoring the question, "has been buying his freedom as long as I've known him. His master must make a good two or three thousand a year out of his sales. Oh, how I hate it the more I see of it!"

Gabriel asked, "What does Eugene say about selling Beau Jardin?"

"Of course he doesn't see things my way at all He won't hear of it. No one sees it my way except David, and even he writes to me now that we might need the place as a refuge when war comes. He's become more and more pessimistic in the two years since he left."

"When war comes!" Rosa cried.

With pity Miriam thought, Her sons will have to go.

"Yes," she said, "David believes there is no stopping it. He says it's only a question of when, not whether."

"Thanks to people like himself!" Rosa cried sharply. "How clever he was all the time he was here! Who could have had the slightest idea what he was doing?" Her words cut the air. "It's a wonder he got safely away."

"Feelings are very high. It's well to be cautious," Gabriel advised. And. Miriam understood that this was a warning for her. "The other night at our meeting, our Jewish widows and orphans relief, some of the men almost came to blows."

"We Jews should stay out of politics," Rosa p.r.o.nounced. "We have enough of our own affairs to keep us busy. Look at that mess in the Albany Temple in New York, with the Orthodox fighting Rabbi Wise over women's rights!" She was out of breath with indignation.

Miriam said, "I'm sorry, I can't agree."

"Agitators on both sides are whipping people up too high," Gabriel said soberly. "I go along with Isaac Leeser in the American Jewish Advocate. He thinks Jews ought to stay in the middle as peacemakers."

"It's very hard to remain in the middle when you have convictions," Miriam argued. "Have you read Uncle Tom's Cabin? David sent it to me from New York. It's sold over a million copies in the North."

"I glanced at it," Rosa said. "A sensational book, that's all. It's disgracefully exaggerated, and you must know that, Miriam."

"Probably so. Still, one often has to exaggerate to make a point."

Rosa's voice became shrill. "I should think you'd want to stay away from the miserable subject, Miriam. I understand you have convictions, but it seems to me you've had enough trouble and shouldn't want any more. If you don't mind my giving you some advice, I hope you don't talk this way in front of your stepmother's family. Frankly, I think it's wonderful that they've never humiliated you-not that it was your fault-but still, he is your brother, and just seeing you must be a constant reminder."

"Of course you must know I don't talk about these things except here," Miriam answered with some heat.

"Well, good," Rosa grunted. "We get all the blame for slavery, while the North raises tariffs and enjoys all the financial benefits from it."

"Benefits?" repeated Miriam.

"Benefits. Money."

Gabriel intervened. "All the talk in the world won't change the fact that the system is bound to end no matter who wins. I say that over and over."

"Then you take war for granted?" his sister cried.

"The handwriting's on the wall. The Republican party is being organized to oppose the extension of slavery into the territories. The next step is to eliminate it in the southern states."

Rosa was aghast. "And you think they have a right to do that?"

"No, I don't think the national government has a right in law to do it. It's meddling in business that belongs to the states."

"Then how," asked Miriam, "would you eliminate slavery?"

"The states must do it themselves. And intime they will do just that, if they're not interfered with."

"In time," Miriam repeated.

"Meanwhile," Gabriel said, "the law of the land is the law."

"Spoken, as David always used to say, like a lawyer." She smiled, wanting to quiet the charged atmosphere.

Gabriel did not return the smile. Instead he got up to stand with his hand on the back of a chair. He spoke softly, musing, as if to himself.

"Sometimes I wish I weren't a lawyer at all. I wish I were a musician or a mathematician, dealing in abstractions. Everything quite clear and clean. I'd erase"-he made a broad, harsh gesture-"I'd erase everything emotional. Just facts, just facts." He looked out of the window where a bee buzzed in the dangling wisteria. "And sometimes I think I'd like to strike out to California-not for gold, I'm not interested in that, just for something new. I'd take the Sea Witch around Cape Horn." A faraway smile fled across his face. He might have been feeling himself at the prow of the Sea Witch in high seas and gusting wind. "It set a record, you know: ninety-seven days from New York to San Francisco." He broke off to rest a hand on Rosa's shoulder; she had been looking anxious. "Don't worry, I shan't abandon you yet, not till I see your boys grown and on their way."

"Then let's talk of more cheerful things," Rosa responded.

"All right, my dear. You begin," said Gabriel.

"Well," she said brightly, "is either one of you planning to hear Le Roi David? I heard it once. Such lovely music! Imagine that boy, only fifteen years old! Louis Moreau Gottschalk. His grandfather was some sort of cousin to Henry's mother, I think."

Every prominent or prosperous Jew, no matter where from, turns out to be "some sort of cousin," Miriam thought with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"That's a cheerful subject. And I do plan to hear it. Now I shall leave you ladies to go on talking of cheerful things," Gabriel said as he left them.

"I like your hat," Rosa said by way of reconciliation. "I've given all my bonnets away. Only old ladies wear them anymore. Yes, the hat's becoming. But you look tired. Not bad, mind you, but I've seen you look better. If you ask me, you're working too hard."

It is the work that saves me, Miriam thought, not answering. If it were not for the work, I should be completely without use or purpose.

Rosa filled the teacups. "How do you like my new decorations? You haven't said."

On a trip to the Crystal Palace Exhibition in New York, she had fallen in love with the Belter style. She had refurbished the old parlor with plaster garlands on the ceiling and a flowered carpet. Sofas and chairs, covered in a pattern of golden bees on blue satin, stood around a large table topped with white marble. Carved flowers, grapes, and unicorns covered every inch of woodwork, and from the four sides of the room, tall mirrors reflected all this glory.

"You don't like it?" Rosa inquired, continuing before Miriam could reply, "You can be frank with me. No, you don't care for it, I see that. It's not your taste. Perhaps it is a bit show-offy, but I had to have it. I'm happy in this room."

"That's all that matters, then," Miriam said gently.

"After all, one has to have something. I live alone, don't I? My brother and my sons are wonderful to me, goodness knows, but still, I'm alone."

"Forgive me for asking, but I believe we've known each other long enough and well enough for me to ask you: How is it that a woman as lively as you doesn't marry again?"

Rosa set the teacup down with a click. She looked significantly at Miriam.

"For the same reason my brother doesn't."

"Why doesn't he?"

"We're all the same in our family. If we can't have what we want, we don't take second best. You remember, I told you once."

"Ah, yes. He wasn't Jewish."

"Wasn't. Isn't."

"He's still living, then?"

"Yes, and he would still have me. He's wonderful, but I can't do it. Of course, if I should find another man of my own faith, as good a man as Henry-but I haven't, and as I said, we don't take second best."

"And you say it's the same with Gabriel?"

"Not exactly the same. You mean you don't know? You can't see?"

"See what?"

"That he has never loved anyone but you." Rosa regarded her with a curiosity that was almost prurient. "He could never obligate himself to another woman while he felt like that about you."

Unlike that old fingering taunt of Eugene's, this apparently was fact, and it was stunning.

"Gabriel has told you this?" Miriam whispered.

"Let's say I wormed it out of him."