by Belva Plain
Now, leaning over the rail, Miriam pressed the dog to her chest. “Ah, Gretel, little Gretel, you and I—Gretel! Gretel! Oh, God!” she screamed.
The scream tore the air. All faces turned to her, all feet rushed to her, not knowing, not understanding, until she pointed.
Far, far below, the dog’s head bobbed in the water.
“David!” It was to him, not to her father, that she turned. “She only wiggled a little, slipped away! Oh, David!”
“Good God!” Ferdinand cried. “The boy’s gone mad!”
For David had on the instant stripped off his jacket, climbed over the rail, and, feet first, plunged overboard. Sailors shouted from the rigging as, helplessly, the boy thrashed in the swelling sea. And with sudden comprehension, Ferdinand screamed in horror.
“He can’t swim!”
Two sailors raced down the deck with a rope ladder and began to climb down, but before they had gone a quarter of the way, young Gabriel had also gone over the side, diving in an expert arc to where, only a few feet away, David’s head had already gone under. The cheering, frightened, fascinated watchers on the deck saw the boy grasp David’s shirt, saw the sailors pulling, hoisting David up the ladder, and saw Gabriel pluck the dog up to safety.
It had all taken no longer than five minutes. Of such minutes eternities are made.
Retching and gasping, David lay stretched on the deck. Whirling through his descent, he had fallen flat upon the water and his belly was tight with pain. He lay unspeaking. Nobody expected him to speak. From his supine position he could see Miriam clutching the bedraggled dog. Legs loomed above him, his father’s and Dr. Carvalho’s on either side. The nuns in their heavy black skirts glided past as if there were no legs inside the skirts. The French ladies were chirping admiration at Gabriel, heroic Gabriel.
The only difference between him and me is that he knows how to swim. I look like an idiot.
After a while he was able to sit up, and Ferdinand, immensely relieved, attacked him at once.
“You fool, David! What did you think you could do down there? And this warm ocean full of sharks, too! Don’t you ever think before you speak or act? Don’t you ever think?”
“She loves the dog,” David muttered stubbornly.
“She may love it, but is a dog worth your life? I don’t understand you. And your friend, young Carvalho, he risked his life for you. He’s a hero. At least he can swim, and he was risking himself for a human life, not a dog’s.”
David was silent. Ferdinand paced up and down. When again he stood over David, he had calmed himself.
“Yes, it was good of you to think of your sister. I shall try to look at it that way. A big, impulsive heart. Not a bad thing to have.” He tried to smile. “But, my God, you would have died if it weren’t for Gabriel. The sailors were too slow and Maxim and Chanute were belowdecks.”
The incident had darkened the afternoon. Quietly, as if chastened, people stood like the wooden lady on the prow, looking out to the west.
Someone brought a stool for Miriam, and there she sat, facing westward like the rest, with Gretel, now fastened by a chain, beside her. Shock silenced her. David had almost died. And the other boy, too. How brave they had been, both of them. And Gabriel only a stranger.
He had gone to sit with David. Catching her look, he waved to her. Had she thanked him enough? Could one thank him enough? He looked so nice like that with his hands clasped around his knees and his hair ruffled in the wind. She wished David would be quiet like him; not that David wasn’t gentle and sometimes quite silent; but when he had an idea, he was so excited, he wouldn’t be still, would just go on arguing and never give up! He had been like that at home with Opa and it was plain he would go right on being like that with Papa.
“Your father doesn’t get angry at you the way mine does,” David was saying to Gabriel.
“Today, you mean? Well, he did scold me a little in the cabin when I was changing my clothes. But he was proud of me all the same.” Gabriel spoke almost shyly.
“When I think about it, I see that it was wrong of me, but I would nevar admit that to my father. Never. And do you know why?”
“Tell me.”
“Because I don’t like the way he talks to me about—about things. It’s because he doesn’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
David hesitated. “I just feel that he is too different from me, and I from him.”
“But you hardly know each other. Why don’t you wait to find out more?” Gabriel asked.
David leaned over and whispered. “In the morning, when I take out the phylacteries, he looks scornful and walks away. Do you think that’s right?”
“Well, no,” Gabriel answered doubtfully. “But then, I don’t know much about—”
“I forgot. You don’t do it, either.”
“But we are Jews as much as you are. Our customs are only—well, newer, that’s all.”
David thought, The “customs,” which is what he called the Laws, have been fixed once and forever. It is absolutely forbidden to change .… And his indignation simmered.
“Newer? So you must find the older ridiculous?”
“Not at all. If you believe in something, you have to follow it all the way, with all your heart.”
Gabriel’s frank sympathy made David ashamed of his momentary indignation.
“My trouble is, and I know it, that I’m not patient, Gabriel. Anyway, regardless of anything else, I owe you a debt for my life. And my sister owes you for her dog.”
“She’s a pretty little girl.”
“You think so? Her nose is too big,” David said affectionately.
“My father says she has the look of an aristocrat.”
“Oho! She can be a nuisance. Anyone who has a younger sister can tell you that.”
“I don’t know. My sister’s so much older. You’ll probably get to know her in New Orleans.”
“Is New Orleans as wonderful as my father says?”
“Of course. Why do you doubt it?”
“Because he exaggerates things.”
“Oh, you will have to stop suspecting him all the time, David.”
“Do you know, I think you’re probably a very good influence for me. I wish you were going to live in New Orleans.”
“But I’ll see you. We’ll stay Mends. I’m sure to visit my sister again. And in the meantime we’ll write to each other. You’ll write in French.” Gabriel laughed. “And I’ll send back the corrections.”
“I’ll write in English, too. No matter what my father says, I plan to learn English.”
So they talked with the simple honesty of the young who have not yet learned to choose friends for advantage, prestige, or any reason but honest liking, one for the other.
From across the deck Ferdinand was observing his children. The girl was very quiet, clutching her dog. Poor little thing! And he understood that the animal was a link between the unknown and all she had ever known. However, she was a cheerful soul. There would be no trouble with her, and a good deal of pleasure, he was certain. Yes, he thought, Miriam will be a brightness in the house, which has had no child.
Ah, but David! David is another story. So righteous, with those penetrating eyes, as if he were examining me, looking inside my head! If one were to judge him by his righteous talk, one would have to say he was an obnoxious young prig. But prigs don’t do the things he does, bringing food belowdecks, making himself a part of the misery down there, and God knows, and I should know, how miserable it is! Oh, a kind boy, yes, but still, it’s not his business to interfere with those poor people. There’s nothing we can do about them, nothing. A few oranges don’t help their wretchedness; they may only make it seem worse. He wouldn’t understand that. Such indignation in him, as if he were ready to explode! That frown: two deep-cut lines across the forehead, and the Adam’s apple bobbing in his skinny neck. He’s got down on his upper Up, feels himself a man, no doubt. It’s not going to be easy living with him. I ho
pe he won’t make too great a difference in our lives, poor fellow. I hope he won’t talk this way around my wife. She won’t like it. There’s no grace in the way he looks, either. All those new clothes I bought for him before we sailed! And yet he’s always rumpled, he looks as if he’d slept in them! Oh, I should have taken him with me when his mother died and taught him my ways. But he was too young. I never could have survived or done what I did with him along. I had to keep him safe until I had something to offer him, didn’t I?
Well, now I’ve got something to offer. What would he be in Europe? A peddler, probably. A peddler till he got too old to drag himself from place to place. In Europe peddlers don’t turn themselves into commission merchants. Now he can be a doctor or anything he wants. He’ll have everything young Carvalho has.
And a smile of satisfaction touched Ferdinand’s soft mouth. David was smiling, too, now, talking to his friend, the Sephardic aristocrat. My son has a beautiful smile. If he would just learn to use it more! One thing—he’s not like other people.
An evening wind roughened the sea and began to chill the air. Ferdinand moved away from the rail to seek shelter inside. He would remember this day. When this voyage was far in the past, this one day would stand out. It was always so. Out of long forgotten years, here and there, a single day blazes, a day on which portents are given, unrecognized at the time, but clear and undeniable when, years afterward, one looks back.
The air was tropical, clinging like damp silk to the skin. In the Gulf dolphins reappeared, racing with the ship, rising and plunging in some vigorous aquatic game. The southern sunset came abruptly; with a sweep of a dark brush, all pink, all gold and violet, were wiped out of the sky and the thick night came down.
Now that the voyage was almost over, the passengers, both eager to arrive and already regretting the end of their easy days, began to feel a troubling restlessness. The Carvalhos having left the ship in Charleston, Miriam and David were surrounded by adults and feeling the same restlessness. The nuns, who throughout the voyage had seldom looked up from their murmured prayers as they paced and told their beads, now scanned the west as if they, too, were anxious about what awaited them. Even the bankers and their vivacious wives grew quiet.
But Ferdinand exulted. “Home!” he cried every morning as he emerged on deck. “Home! It won’t be long now.”
And so, on one of these mornings, they came at last to the mouth of the great river. Everyone came early on deck to look.
“See there,” Ferdinand said, “how the water changes color. It’s the river mingling with the Gulf.”
A long brown ribbon ran, wavering and blurring, into blue. In the river’s open mouth a hundred tiny islands had been scattered. Taming and curving among them, the Mirabelle began to move upstream.
Bayous and creeks led into darkness; uprooted trees lay crumbling in the swamps, where shredded moss hung from standing cypress; water stood motionless on land. And over all lay an intense and gloomy silence. David strained to hear and see. Yes, it was as his father had said, primeval and wild; nowhere in the farthest countryside of Europe was there anything like this.
“Oh, look! Oh, look!” Miriam whispered.
A great white bird with a swan neck stood on one long leg in a patch of sunlight between the trees.
“That’s a heron,” Ferdinand told the child.
“Oh, the beautiful thing!” she cried.
They passed lakes and a pale sandy beach. In the cypress swamp an ibis with a beak like a red scimitar fed on fish. Then came more bayous, more lakes, and finally a stretch of wide water.
“See there, that’s a pelicans’ nest. There’s the male bird .… This is Barataria Sound,” said Ferdinand. He put his arm around David’s shoulder, speaking rapidly in his excitement. “That island’s Grande Terre. We’ve only ninety miles more now. Over there in the cove—you can’t see it from where we are—there’s a whole town! I went there once out of curiosity. Neat little houses with gardens and flowers. You’d never believe it was a pirates’ town.”
David drew in his breath. “Pirates!”
There’s the child in him again, Ferdinand thought, pleased to see enthusiasm for the things that one might normally expect to interest a boy.
“Yes, Jean Lafitte was one of the deadliest pirates in the West Indies or the Gulf. He had a sumptuous house, all furnished with stuff stolen from the ships he waylaid. But let me tell you something you’d not expect. About twenty-five years ago there was a war between the United States and England and the British sent a fleet of fifty warships to capture New Orleans. They offered Lafitte thirty thousand pounds—that’s English money and a huge amount—if he would guide their troops up to the city.” Now Ferdinand pointed to the swamps. “You can imagine one might need some guidance to get through there! Well, Lafitte pretended to accept the offer, but actually he went to the other side and guided the Americans so they could surprise the British. For that the President of the United States pardoned his piracy.”
David was fascinated. “What happened to him then?”
“Oh, he opened a fine shop on Royal Street.” Ferdinand laughed. “But I don’t think he gave up piracy even then.”
Hour after hour the ship plowed northward. The swamps and the waterlogged forest slid behind it; on either side the cleared land bloomed in white.
“Cotton,” said Ferdinand.
“Like snow,” said Miriam.
After a while Ferdinand gave orders. “Go change your clothes. We’ll be there soon and you must make a fine first impression.” Fondly he regarded his daughter. “Wear the lavender dress with the lace collar. And take your parasol, the one that matches. It will be terribly hot when we land, as soon as we leave the river breeze. You will get used to carrying a parasol. All the ladies do.”
Among the gathering traffic of steamships and cotton ships coming and going, the Mirabelle slid toward the city.
“You know,” Ferdinand said, “the city is five feet below sea level. The levees are twenty-six feet above. And that’s cotton in those bales on the levee. Could you ever have imagined so much of it? Miles and miles of it, enough to supply the world, which it pretty nearly does,” he said with satisfaction. “And over there in those hogsheads, that’s sugar. We almost do supply the world with that, too. Well, not quite. But we could if we had to. See all these wharves, all those market boats? The commerce of the world passes here. Tobacco, whiskey, hemp, anything and everything. There’s only one city in America that’s got more shipping, and that’s New York. See that brigantine? That’s Captain Ramsay’s Gloucester Breeze. He’s probably got a shipment for me. Comes twice a year from Liverpool …”
David took Miriam’s hand. The long dream of the voyage was over. Now feet were about to touch land. It came to David, sobering his excitement, that they were about to touch reality.
The father’s voice struggled against the rising din and scream of whistles and bells. “Look there, that’s a load of furs from way upriver arriving for export. Over there on the right, that’s the village of Algiers, right across from the French Market. Ah, it’s good to be home!” he cried, standing on the tips of his toes, waving and pointing. “Look there! That’s the Cabildo, the Spanish built that, and the Presbytère, that was a priests’ residence, there on the other side of the cathedral. They built the St. Louis Cathedral over a hundred years ago, you know, but a fire wrecked it and they had to build another .… Can you see, Miriam? Want me to raise you up? Beautiful, isn’t it? Named after the patron saint, Louis IX—”
“Where is the synagogue?” David asked quietly.
“Oh, it’s on Franklin Street, a small place. You can’t see it from here.” Ferdinand took a deep breath. “Smell the sweet air! I always think I’m smelling sugar in the air, though probably I’m not. You know, I’m a city man. I survived the wilderness, I’ll survive anywhere you put me, but I’m a city man at heart.” He drew himself up. Not a tall man, he could make himself appear taller than he was. “Yes, a city man, a New Or
leans man.”
The ship nosed into the wharf with a shudder and thump. There were a rattle of ropes and shouting from the dock. The gangplank clattered into place.
From the height where they stood at the prow, the passengers looked down on a jumbled, animated bustle: drays, carts, wheelbarrows, crates and boxes, stray dogs, children, workmen, horses, carriages, coachmen, parasols, and high silk hats all moved among an astonishing mass of black faces. Ferdinand searched the crowd.
“There!” he cried out. “There they are! On the banquette, on the other side, standing by the two white horses. See them? I see them!”
“Banquette?” asked David.
“Where you walk, at the side of the street. That’s Emma in the yellow dress and Pelagie’s with her. Her husband’s come, too—how good of him! A nice chap, Sylvain is. And there’s—oh! they see us.” Ferdinand waved his hat. “The gangplank’s up! Let’s go!”
3
Had the house been encountered on another planet, or spinning in the void of a dream, it could not have seemed much stranger to David Raphael, when he first entered it. Now, a week later, it was only a trifle more comprehensible.
The double doors of the dining room had been flung open against the wall; above their wide mahogany lintel hung a gilded crucifix. David’s eyes kept returning to that each time he forced them away. Every room in this house displayed the tortured figure, hanging from the cross, with the head bent limply toward the shoulder and the feet nailed, one over the other, at the ankles. There had even been one in the room where David slept, but it had considerately been removed.
A Catholic household. My father’s house.
Your wife—this family—is Catholic, Papa?
Yes, yes it is.
But what will they think of me, of my sister and me?
I’ve told you, it doesn’t matter. It’s not like Europe, you know. You can do what you want here. Nobody minds what anybody else is.
Rocks in Europe. Whips in Europe. But not here.
