Crescent City Part 7

"I heard somebody come up behind me and I jumped. It was a man, older than David-I compare everyone with David-but not old. He had on a fashionable straw hat with ribbon ends hanging down the back of his neck. He said his name was Eugene Mendes and he knew I was Ferdinand Raphael's daughter. 'How do you know? You don't know me,' I said. 'Because I saw you-I've just come from the party,' he said. He sat down next to me. 'I'm waiting for my servant to row me home,' he said. 'It's easier than going by road.' Then he wanted to know what I was doing here by myself. I told him I liked the stillness. 'You can hear the stillness,' I said. He asked me how old I was and I told him I will be sixteen next birthday. I did not want to say I had just turned fifteen last week. He said, 'Then the young men will come to the family box at the opera to be introduced.' He smiled. His teeth are square. He has watchful eyes, he never took them away from me. I'm not sure whether he was admiring me or not. It feels strange to have a man's eyes so close. When his skiff arrived and his servant hailed him, he stood up. He is so tall that he stoops a little. He seems very strong. Rosa would say he is handsome, I know her taste, and it is not for a slight, weak man like her husband, I know that much.

"'Don't sit here too long,' Mr. Mendes said. 'Alligators come out when it starts to grow dark.' I jumped up at that and quite suddenly he bent over my hand and kissed it. His lips were wet. When he raised his head he had that smile again. He has strange eyes, the color of tea. 'I'll see you at the opera,' he said, 'when you are sixteen.'

"Why do I write this down? I don't know why. I don't know what I want. When I am sixteen I shall be a woman and my life will really begin. I should be eager for it, they tell me, and sometimes I am. But I puzzle myself. I puzzle the family, too. Aunt Emma will never understand why I would rather read than pay calls with her. Those endless calls! A lifetime of that! Visiting cards and coffee and gossip and coffee, the roasted chicory fragrance as you come through the front door. 'Novels,' Aunt Emma says-she makes a little snort through her nose when she says it-'novels are quite indecent for young girls. Even the newspapers are better left alone, if you ask me.'

"What is there left? To be married, of course. Everyone knows that's what life is for a woman. Even the old-maid teachers at school know that. They are supposed to teach us how to be better wives and mothers. But how can an old maid possibly know?

"Rosa is wrong when she says that the power is in women. The power is in men. There is so little one knows about men. What are they like under their broadcloth and linen? I don't even know how they look. I shiver inside when I think about it and then I feel so warm. I'm ashamed of some of the things I imagine. Am I imagining crazy things, or are they true? If they are true, they must be wonderful. Still, I am so ashamed.

"I want to love somebody, that's what I want. Still I'm afraid. I don't want to be like Pelagie, I want to be free.

"I don't know what I want."

6.

"No, I don't like that fan. There's too much yellow, the dress, the bouquet, and the ribbons. I do think the ivory is much better. Besides," said Emma, "this is the one Pelagie carried when she made her first appearance at the opera, and she wants you to have it. She is so fond of you, Miriam, I hope you realize it."

The pier gla.s.s reflected four women grouped around a fifth in the foreground: Miriam, on this day becoming a woman; f.a.n.n.y, kneeling to fluff and perk six rustling petticoats; the hairdresser, Emma, and Eulalie. The latter had come in spite of herself to witness the preparations and stood now holding the bouquet of baby hyacinths and golden iris. Emma beamed. In a sense this evening was hers as subst.i.tute mother, and Miriam's triumph was to be her creation. So, wearing royal-blue satin and a pearl collar, Emma gave instructions.

"Yes, that's right, the fan must hang on its cord around your wrist. Open it from time to time after we are seated, flutter it gently, but remember not to hide your face behind it. Hold it like this. Oh, that dress is really a triumph, my dear, your father will be so proud."

Miriam's cheeks were hot. A dozen candles were blazing in the room. She stared at the stranger in the gla.s.s; the stranger who wore diamonds in her ears, whose naked white shoulders rose out of a foam of pastel ruffles.

"In your other hand you will carry your shoe bag, of course. You can change into the silk shoes when we arrive. I must say Scanlan's makes the most marvelous dresses! The work is as fine as French work any day. Your father says when the time comes for your trousseau we must order it from Paris, though for my part I have always been more than satisfied with Scanlan's or the Olympic."

Fat women couldn't wear French dresses. Aunt Emma, growing wider every year, had to be fitted at home.

"f.a.n.n.y! I do believe," Emma said impatiently, "you've got the petticoats reversed. The double taffeta goes underneath so it won't crush the muslin. Raise her skirt, that's it, and reverse them." Emma was mildly exasperated. "Oh, I do so miss my Monty! I had to part with him just before you came to us, Miriam. He was the most marvelous dressing maid, never made mistakes, understood clothes to perfection. Unfortunately, I couldn't keep him past fourteen, he got too old to wait upon a lady. Yes, that's it, f.a.n.n.y, that's it."

In the evenings, Miriam thought, young men will call. They will play cards with Papa, but they will have come for me. There'll be soirees on Sunday nights downstairs; we shall dance; like hens in a brooding house, the old ladies will sit in a row watching. Tonight at the opera in the family box, in the front row, people will look over, whispering, "Yes, that's the little Raphael girl, how charming she is, I wonder who will marry her ...."

And the world was radiant, revolving slowly to enchanting music in a dance of its own with Miriam at the center. Everyone was so kind, everyone loved her. Eulalie had admired her new earrings. No one need ever be angry at anyone else; people were good; really, one ought always to be happy.

"How nice for you that it's a premiere!" Emma cried. "And so fitting that it's Halevy's La Juive! My cousin saw it when it opened in Paris. Terribly dramatic, so sad-but then so many Jewish themes are sad."

This very night, maybe, he would see her and come to her. But who would he be? Suddenly Miriam veered to panic. What if no one came? What if there was no one at all, not tonight, not ever? It happened! You had only to look at Eulalie to know what can happen. Eulalie, of course, was homely; yet there were others-and mentally Miriam made count of the unmarried, the unwanted-Marcelle's sister, really not homely at all, or Amy's cousin, who lived with them, and all the school mistresses. Mam'selle Georges must have been lovely once with that red-gold hair, and what had become of her?

Then something of Ferdinand's optimism, her chief inheritance from him, submerged the panic. No, no, it was impossible, it wouldn't happen like that! And she had a vague antic.i.p.ation of glowing eyes, of a dark head bent over her hand and a fervent voice. But who was he? Who?

"There," Emma said. "That's perfect. Now hurry, your father is already waiting downstairs. Sisyphus will walk with us, he has been reading all about the opera and is so proud whenever there is an American premiere in New Orleans. It's astonishing what that man knows about music. Good heavens, it's begun to rain! Don't open the umbrella in the house! Miriam, it's terrible luck, do you want to bring disaster on us?"

They walked through a fine warm drizzle, picking their way toward dry spots. But Miriam walked through a silvery gauze curtain; it hung between her and what was to come; suddenly on this night the curtain would be drawn back and a dazzle would be revealed. These streets where she walked every day and the theater itself, which she so often pa.s.sed, where the crowds were now converging, where an old Negress was selling gumbo at the door, all of these were waiting for her. She was the star of some great play, the lines of which she had not yet studied, but which would somehow come clear.

She was aware of greeting and being greeted as she mounted the stairs between Ferdinand and Emma and took her seat in their box. Yes, all was falling into place; one had only to sit with head up, smiling, patient, and wait for the great thing to happen. She was conscious of the hard, steady thrust of her heart.

"Look," whispered Emma, "that's Louis Moreau Gottschalk's father. One of the best Jewish families in the city. The son's a musical genius, you know. He's been sent to Paris to study. And there are your friends, the de Riveras. She does manage always to look so smart, she must spend a fortune on her clothes."

Miriam asked about the screened boxes opposite, the inhabitants of which were invisible to the rest of the audience.

"Those are the loges grillees. Women in mourning and ladies who are-expecting-can see in privacy without being seen."

Ferdinand leaned across Emma. He winked at Miriam. He was proud of her, of her dress, and the diamond earrings which he had brought to her that afternoon in a black velvet box. And she was sure he was remembering, as all at once she remembered, that first night in Europe when he had sat by the stove and promised her great things. Now they were here.

"After the performance, of course, we'll go to Vincent's for pastry and chocolate," he said.

The curtain rises now on a stony square in front of the cathedral, far larger and more grand than the one on the Place d'Armes. The music rises with the shimmering of angelic voices; the man's throbs like the lowest notes of a cello, the woman's is firm and pure as birdsong. The story unfolds, an old story of love and hatred, of pogroms and death. There is a Pa.s.sover feast: O G.o.d, G.o.d of our fathers, they sing. So familiar and yet so strange and sad! How can they make an entertainment about death? And yet they can. The music soars and trembles, it thunders and weeps.

Miriam looks about in the darkness and wonders whether anyone beside herself is moved to tears. In the next box people are whispering, not hearing the music; they have come for other reasons, to see and be seen-which is why she's come, isn't it? But no more, not now. She is transported. Her heart breaks over the love, the pa.s.sion, the death.

During the intermission people come to the box and are introduced. She has barely had time to wipe her eyes, and hopes that her nose isn't red. She bows politely, but does not remember any names, she has forgotten why she is here.

"Rachel." A man's voice speaks. He seems to be speaking to her, but she does not understand.

Her father recalls her to reality. "Mr. Mendes called you, Rachel. He pays you a compliment. He thinks you resemble Halevy's heroine."

She comes back to the present and thanks the man. She knows she has seen him somewhere before.

"You don't remember me," he says.

The tea-colored eyes seem not to blink, so steady is the gaze. They are the most important feature of this face; they are what one would remember about it.

"I said I would see you again when you were sixteen, Miss Miriam." His voice has authority, it is intense and commanding, like his eyes.

She remembers the afternoon at the bayou and the look of him swinging down the bank, his hand raised in a slight wave as he moves off in the skiff.

"You have grown even more beautiful than I expected you would, Miss Miriam."

Of course she is pleased. It is the first time a man has spoken to her like this. Yet she finds his words extravagant. She has quite shrewdly a.n.a.lyzed herself: She is supple and graceful, her features are very pleasing, but she is not a beauty. One has only to look over at the adjoining box where the Frothingham sisters sit, they with their ma.s.ses of golden hair, their Valkyrie faces, to see beauty.

But she smiles in polite acknowledgment just as the curtain is about to rise again. Papa has barely time to remark, once Mr. Mendes is out of hearing, "A distinguished young man. He will go far."

f.a.n.n.y said, "If you count all the gray horses you see up to a hundred, you'll be sure to marry the first man you shake hands with after that."

Miriam laughed. "That's silly, f.a.n.n.y. Who told you such a thing?"

"Miss Eulalie told me, but everyone knows it anyway."

Beneath the window where the streetlamp threw a circle of fuzzy light into the spring mist stood an open carriage drawn by a gray horse.

"Can you count the same horse over and over or must it be a hundred different horses?"

"You laugh, but it's true," replied f.a.n.n.y, evading the question. "And he's so tall. I like a tall man."

Eugene Mendes had been coming to the house for two weeks past, ever since the night at the opera. In the front parlor he played dominoes and drank port with Papa. Or else, when there were other men present, they played cards. In the back parlor the women played bezique or did macrame. Then over coffee the two groups joined briefly and ended the evening.

"I had a tall boy once," f.a.n.n.y said. "I was only thirteen. But he was for me. Then I lost him."

"That must have been when you came here."

"Yes, they sold me away, me and Blaise. But I was glad to go, more glad than sorry." Suddenly f.a.n.n.y seemed compelled to talk. "My father was a white man, a bachelor, and my mother was a maid in the house. A grand house, too, all brick. But when my mother died my father married a lady, and she hated having me and Blaise around, so she made him sell us. But that was better for us because she was mean. That was one mean woman."

"Why haven't you ever told me all this before?" Miriam had thought she knew everything there was to be known of f.a.n.n.y's simple life. f.a.n.n.y was just always there, someone who was kind and to whom you were kind in return.

"Because. You were too young, too innocent. Innocent white child."

She felt now almost as she had felt at La Juive, a piercing sorrow over human pain.

"But that's so terribly sad, f.a.n.n.y. To leave your home and your father-"

"He never was a father and the house wasn't mine. How could it be, how could it be?" f.a.n.n.y frowned. Then she brightened. "Anyway, they were all Baptists there, and Baptists don't allow music, they have no dancing. It's much better for colored people to be Catholic. Blaise doesn't like being Catholic because the priests don't allow shouting in church, but I do. There, your hair's done. You'd better go downstairs. It's time."

As always, Miriam was to spend the first night of Pa.s.sover at the de Rivera house. Each year Ferdinand received his proper invitation, and each year he found a plausible reason to refuse. Tonight he had not had to stretch his imagination for an excuse, since it was Emma's birthday.

"Very kind of Mr. Mendes to be calling for you," he said now as he came upstairs. His eyes sped over his daughter from head to foot.

"Yes," she said. "Very kind."

"He's a religious man. A benefactor-to his fellow Jews."

She thought ironically, And you forgive him that?

Her father kissed her. "You're a lovely girl, Miriam. Always feel sure of that."

"Thank you, Papa."

"Enjoy yourself."

"I will, Papa."

A varied group encircled the table. Gershom Kursheedt, black bearded, with serious eyes, was a biblical figure, an ascetic prophet, if only in appearance. The red-haired Jewish merchant visiting from France with his fashionable, vivacious wife was a figure of worldly a.s.surance. The poor German Jew who taught Hebrew to little boys for a living wore a shabby jacket and an innocent smile. Two Catholics were neighbors and old friends. There were prosperous cousins and lonely strangers, invited because it is required that those who have share with those who have not: "Since we were strangers in the land of Egypt ..."

And there was Eugene Mendes, sharing with Kursheedt the center of attention. Miriam was relieved and also disappointed that he was at the other end of the table. It would be worrisome to make conversation with him all through dinner, holding the conversation exactly right, amusing and witty, yet not too much so. Emma always warned that men don't like prattling women. Of course, the married ones prattled all the time, but by then probably the man was used to it, or was perhaps so busy talking to other men that he didn't even hear. So that was a relief. On the other hand, had he not told her, was he not the first and only man who had said: "You are even more beautiful than I expected"?

The ceremony of the Seder moved in orderly progression, for Seder means order. The host's amiable face smiled on the company while candle flames made spots of light dance on his spectacles.

"We praise you, O Lord our G.o.d, King of the Universe," he prayed. "You have kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this season. Amen."

The blessings were chanted and everyone raised the first cup of wine. Always at this point came a feeling of warmth, of closeness and peace in this ancient community of Miriam's people. Thoughts of her mother were interwoven with thoughts of Eugene Mendes. An outstanding citizen ...

Rosa whispered, "I met your Aunt Emma on the street She mentioned that Eugene Mendes has been calling."

"He has been calling on Papa."

"But surely you must have talked to him. Do you find him agreeable?"

"I hardly know him." She took a sip of wine.

And the service proceeded. "Let all who are in want come and celebrate the Pa.s.sover with us."

Two candles stood tall in the old Spanish silver menorah. The Seder foods, the charoseth, the bitter herb, the shankbone, and the greens were set forth on silver.

Rosa whispered again. Like Aunt Emma she was unable to hold her tongue still for more than a minute.

"We are lucky to have Gershom Kursheedt and to have got rid of Rowley Marks. Such a disgrace. You know Kursheedt is a great admirer of Mr. Mendes. He has great respect for him."

She wished Rosa would stop whispering. Raising her eyes over the rim of her winegla.s.s, she met Eugene Mendes's glance. He was talking to the Frenchwoman who had also been looking at Miriam. What could they be saying about her? She looked down at her dress, to the red velvet neckline above her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. There was nothing wrong. She touched her earlobes where the little diamond b.u.t.tons were still safe. No, there was nothing wrong.

Little Herbert, the younger of the de Rivera boys, had now got safely through the Four Questions. The host broke off a piece of matzoh and held it up to lead the blessing. "We praise you, O Lord our G.o.d, King of the Universe. You have sanctified us through your commandment that ordained that we should eat unleavened bread."

Through the general murmur of prayer the voice of Eugene Mendes was distinct, not louder, but vibrant and full, a voice one would remember. And Miriam, taking another swallow of wine, felt her head grow light.

"Schulchen aruch. The table is set," Henry said. "Dinner is served."

Two servants brought in a great tureen and began to ladle out the soup.

Rosa had turned to people on her other side. "Yes, I came overland from Charleston as a bride. It took four weeks by carriage and horseback. Oh, it was a great change, coming here. My family founded the temple in Charleston, you know. I had so many friends, such deep roots," she sighed.

"And admirers," Henry said, overhearing.

"Only one that I ever cared about until you came along, Henry. But he was a Christian," she said frankly. "And of course I would not marry him. I am like Rebecca Gratz. Her closest companions all her life were in the Christian community and the man she loved was a Christian. But she always said that the members of a family should be of the same faith, and therefore she would not marry him. She remained an unhappy, spinster. As for me, I am glad I did not remain a spinster."

"Thank you, my dear," Henry said. "I am glad, too."

"Rebecca Gratz," Miriam said shyly, "isn't it said that she was the inspiration for Rebecca in Ivanhoe?"

Eugene Mendes caught her question. "Yes, Miss Miriam," he called out. "It was Washington Irving who told Sir Walter Scott how kindly she had nursed Irving's fiancee when she was ill." His smile praised Miriam. "And did you know that Rebecca Gratz warned her brother when he went to New Orleans that it was a G.o.dless city, that we Jews here had all lost our faith? But it wasn't quite true, as you see."

"Certainly not true of people like yourself, Mr. Mendes," Gershom Kursheedt affirmed.

Eugene replied, "You do me too much honor."

"I was referring to your valiant efforts to get Judah Touro to do something for our people, Mr. Mendes."

"They've not come to very much so far. But one tries. He's an interesting man, at any rate."

"He would be even more interesting," Kursheedt observed, "if he would return to his beginnings. You've all heard, I suppose, that he's bought the Christ Church rectory on Ca.n.a.l Street? Gave twenty-five thousand dollars for it, far more than it's worth. He might as well have made an outright contribution and been done with it. This in addition to the thousands he gives to the Presbyterians."

"And when you think," remarked Henry, "that when we were organizing Shanarai Cha.s.set, he gave practically nothing. And what was worse, didn't even join."

Like Papa, Miriam thought, feeling a flash of shame.