Crescent City

by Belva Plain

  “I thought he was going to practice law in Charleston.”

  “He was, but when his sister’s husband died, he felt he had to come here to help rear her sons. A southern sense of duty, it seems.”

  “So he’s going to stay and you are, too! I can’t believe all this! But you know, Aunt Emma used to tell Papa you would come back, she was sure of it. What made you change your mind, David?”

  He got up and stood by the bed, taking her hand between both of his.

  “I’d been away from you far too long as it was. Whom else have I got but you?”

  “And Papa,” she corrected gently.

  He smiled at the correction. “You first, always. But Papa, too.”

  The old worry flared. “You’ve been talking nicely to him, I hope?”

  “Of course I have. Don’t worry, everything’s just fine. Does anger still upset you so? How it used to terrify you when you were a child!” David was silent for a minute. Then he reflected, “He’s been such a generous father. I owe him so much for my education, a whole future opening for me. And for you, too, Miriam. A generous father.”

  “He gave me more pearls to celebrate his first grandchildren. Gray pearls. They’re worth a fortune, Eugene says. He says Papa spends too much. Oh, but I still can’t believe you’ve come home to stay, David! How you hated everything here! You said such things, you wrote—”

  “Remember, I was very young when I quarreled with Papa. I’m older and wiser; at least I hope I’m wiser,” he said humorously, and as quickly turned serious. “I’ve learned that I can’t change the world, so I might as well get used to it the way it is.”

  Miriam said slowly, “That doesn’t sound like you. And it seems so odd that you’ve made your peace with the world we have here at the very time I have turned against it.”

  “Have you really?”

  “It’s not that I ever actually approved before, you know. It’s more that I just thought, when I thought at all, that there was nothing one could do about it. It was the way things were. But lately I’ve thought maybe there are things one could do, although I don’t know exactly what.”

  David took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. They looked tired. “There’s never much that any one person can do. Events take their own course.”

  “Oh, you astound me, David! It seems to me that’s an excuse for doing nothing! If I were a man I’m sure I’d think of something.” She hesitated. “It’s true that people like Papa and Emma are very kind to their slaves, but still it is not right for them to have such power over other human beings, no matter how kind they are.”

  “It’s risky to talk that way. You realize that, don’t you?”

  “Oh, I know that well enough. And to whom would I talk? Certainly not to Eugene. He belongs to a vigilance committee.”

  “Does he?”

  “Yes, he and Sylvain. They’re always at meetings in the city and upriver or downriver.”

  “Really! Well, people do what they want to do .… I’m much more interested in you, little sister. Not so little anymore, now that you’re the mother of these two people.” David regarded the sleeping infants, then turned to Miriam. “When I think of how you began life and I look at them here, and back at you—what a long, long way it’s been! And to see you so well cared for, so happy! You are happy, aren’t you, Miriam?”

  A rush of words filled her throat and stopped behind closed lips.

  Oh, my God, David, I have been so miserable … except for these babies, everything has gone wrong … a thousand times I’ve wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t put it on paper, I wouldn’t have known where to begin or how to explain, and I can’t even now .… I am so full of sadness.

  She said steadily, “Yes, yes, I’ve a good life, as you see.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad for you, so glad!”

  And if I were to tell you now, there would be nothing you or anyone could do about it …

  Now she assumed an air of gaiety. “Well, but tell me about yourself. You’re almost twenty-five! When are you going to be married?”

  He gave an equally lively reply. “Who would have me?”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m serious.”

  “All right, I’ll be serious, too. A wife wouldn’t fit in with what I intend to do with my life.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t please a woman. I’m restless. I want to work, I’m not domestic, and I wouldn’t have enough time to give to a wife and a house and babies.”

  Eugene was standing at the door. “You’ll change your mind. Bright eyes, a head of hair, and a narrow waist will change it.”

  “I don’t think so,” David said.

  “So, be that as it may, what do you think of my son?” Eugene inquired with a show of simple cordiality.

  “A strong fellow. He certainly fought his way into the world.”

  “Look at his fists,” Eugene boasted.

  “You don’t look at Angelique,” Miriam said.

  “Of course, of course I do. I’ve been going over some affairs with your friend Carvalho,” he told David. “I may let him do my legal work now that his brother-in-law is dead.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have no reason to regret your choice,” David said formally.

  “I could go to the top, to Pierre Soulé or Judah Benjamin. Carvalho’s very young, but he’s impressive, and he knows both languages as well as anyone does, which of course is essential if one is to practice in New Orleans.”

  “More important, he’s honorable.”

  “Certainly. A southern gentleman. Besides, as a beginner, his fees will undoubtedly be lower.” Eugene laughed. “There’s always something to be said for that.”

  David acknowledged that there was.

  “Come, join us downstairs. The house is filling up with relatives, mostly Emma’s from upriver. And the steamer’s just landed a while ago with a load of Madeira and pale ale, fresh from England. Come have a drink.”

  “David,” called Miriam, as they left the room, “remember me to Gabriel. Be sure to tell him I’m still grateful to him for rescuing my brother and my poor Gretel.”

  “Oh, that dog!” Eugene said. “Came to a terrible end.”

  “Gretel grew up with Miriam,” David reminded him.

  “Well, now she has a new son to think about. And a daughter. Come on down.”

  “How wonderful for you to have your brother again!” exclaimed Fanny, coming in with a tray.

  “Oh, yes, I’m glad. To think I’ll be able to see him whenever I want to! And yet, I don’t know why, I have a feeling that something’s not right, that some sort of trouble is waiting.”

  “Don’t you know what that is? Women are sad after birthing, that’s all it is. Lasts a few days and passes. Now eat your lunch. Get your strength back. You’ve been through a hard, hard time.”

  Sometimes Fanny said foolish things about witches flying over the treetops and such nonsense, yet she also had a lot of plain, good common sense. Eat your lunch and get your strength back. Obediently, Miriam ate the pudding.

  The babies stirred, waking each other with small grunting noises. They were hungry again, causing the mother’s breasts to tighten with a rush of milk. And she lay there watching the pink waving fists. These two new people were her own! The world must go its way; above all she must care for them. Vague intentions flitted through her mind: that the boy might have gentleness with his strength, that the girl might have strength with her gentleness—and that her life might be different from her mother’s.

  8

  From the tiny courtyard of the house on St. Peter Street, one could look back through tall French Windows into the office and the room beyond. The office contained a desk, a shelf of books, and a cabinet with medical supplies: dental instruments, pill containers, and amputation saws. The second room was almost bare of furnishings.

  Gabriel’s hand, holding a coffee cup, paused in midair. “Surely you’re not going to leave the place like this? You’ve been here for
months and it looks as though you’d moved in this morning or were about to move out.”

  “I’ve all I need. A bed, a table, a couple of chairs, and some bookshelves. What else do people want?”

  “Well, let’s see. People want carpets, curtains, sofas, pictures, mirrors, many things.”

  “You sound like my sister. Miriam is constantly after me to ‘fix up.’”

  “Eugene tells me your father can’t understand why you won’t let him set you up in a proper office. In short, you puzzle him. You puzzle us all, my friend.”

  “I do?”

  “You know you do. I still haven’t fathomed your change of heart. When we were in New York, you used to talk as if we were all poisonous snakes down here. You’d never go back, you said. You even used to talk about bringing Miriam up North.”

  “I was sixteen when I said that and she was all of nine,” David answered evasively.

  Something was being held back, Gabriel thought. Since long before they had both left the North, he had sensed something vaguely secretive under his friend’s familiar manner. Troubled and anxious now, he waited. Dust motes hovered in a bar of sunshine to settle in a fine soft film on the floor and on his shoes. And David’s eyes, cast down, also seemed to be following the dust motes. Suddenly he spoke.

  “I came back to change things.”

  “To change things!”

  “Yes. What use am I sitting up North and talking my heart out about the southern system? Talk is easy. Enough steam comes out of talk to drive a thousand machines. So it came to me that I must act instead.”

  “And how do you plan to act?”

  David understood that his friend’s calmness was only on the surface. So he said reassuringly, “Don’t worry. I won’t get anyone into trouble. You can depend on that.”

  “What about getting yourself into trouble?”

  “I’ll certainly try not to. But sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe in. Does that sound too noble?” He paused. “I just heard my own voice and I’m afraid it had a pompous ring. But I can’t help it, I’m only speaking the truth.” Lines of strain and agitation marked David’s face.

  “You’re deluding yourself, you know. You can’t change things, David. You are David, remember? They’re Goliath.”

  “Ah, but David slew Goliath. Remember?”

  “Well, all right. It was a poor comparison. But listen,” Gabriel said earnestly. “Remember when we were boys on the Mirabelle and we were in Bordeaux. There were rows of abandoned mansions and warehouses falling apart, all the grandeur and riches rotted away. Why? Because the slave trade had been outlawed. You will see the same here, David. Mark my words. It’s only a matter of time and patience. But the time’s not yet.”

  “And it won’t be for another century if it’s allowed to go at its own pace. The system’s too profitable. The cotton gin has increased the value of cotton a hundred times over. The steam engine and the sugar mills have doubled the value of Louisiana’s plantations. The upper South produces far more slaves than it needs to work the soil, while down here, and in Texas, where we’re expanding, we keep needing more slaves. Why, a trader can double his investment in a matter of days by buying in Virginia and selling in Louisiana! I read a study of that when I was in New York. I have the figures somewhere here to show you.”

  “So you want to hurry things up? How? With a bloody war? You’ve got to be out of your head if you want that.”

  “There’s a fascinating book,” David said. “I’ve got it here, hidden away, of course. It’s called The Partisan Leader, about southern states founding their own government and the war that results. Terrifying, and maybe accurate, God only knows. I’ll lend it to you if you want.”

  “No, thank you, I don’t want. And so you’re going to be a partisan leader, is that it?”

  David nodded. He sat up straighter in the chair.

  “Then you are out of your head. You’re mad.”

  “I know. You said that before.” David’s smile was almost affectionate.

  A young Negro man shook a broom out of the kitchen door and closed the door again.

  When the door had closed, Gabriel warned, “Servants talk. I hope you know enough at least to keep a good rein on your tongue.”

  “Lucien won’t talk. We’re on the same side. He helps me. That’s why I hired him.”

  “Hired him!”

  “Yes, he’s a free Negro. I pay him wages. Did you think I would own a slave?” And again David’s eyes flashed.

  A fever is burning in him, Gabriel thought. He asked cautiously, “Does anyone else know about this?”

  “If anyone did, do you think I would betray him?”

  “You answer all my questions with questions,” Gabriel said with some exasperation.

  The other laughed. “Don’t they always say that’s a Jewish habit?”

  “David, I’m very serious. Have you ever hinted at this business to your sister?”

  “Of course I haven’t. Do you honestly believe I would put Miriam in danger? The person who means more to me than the rest of the world put together?”

  “Questions again! I can only say I should hope you wouldn’t. There are people in that family who would—I can’t think what they would do!”

  “Believe me, I know that, Gabriel.”

  “They called a special grand jury here only a few years ago to investigate the abolitionist movement. Sylvain Labouisse was on it. They recommended a permanent military force to protect against an uprising. Sylvain’s in that, too. Oh, you’re playing with a terrible fire, David!”

  “I understand that.” David spoke gravely.

  “Let me tell you something eke. Your own brother-in-law, Eugene—I betray no confidence when I tell you this, because it’s a matter of public knowledge—is the head of a vigilance committee to combat sedition. He’s a man of great influence, make no mistake. He’s already a power in the Democratic party.”

  “They sicken me, all of them! You can’t know how they sicken me!” And David’s mouth puckered in disgust.

  Gabriel sighed. “I know. But we’re not all evil men here in the South, remember that, David. When I was in England I saw more suffering than you will ever see here. Hunger and rags in those cold tenements .… And in Massachusetts, all the young village girls in the mills—”

  “An accurate description, I’ve no doubt, but still irrelevant,” David interrupted.

  “You can’t deny we’re making progress, either. Take Dyson’s school for free Negroes—”

  “What do you know about Dyson?”

  There was an edge of sharpness in the question that surprised Gabriel. He answered, “Why, nothing that everyone doesn’t know! It’s a fine thing for a white man to be doing. You see,” he explained earnestly, “we are getting somewhere, but it has to be gradual, you can’t just turn everything around overnight. Take your own servant—”

  “Yes, take him! He had to buy his freedom! And even now he can’t vote or sit where he wants in a theater! Lucien Bonnet, decent, intelligent—”

  Gabriel threw up his hand. “Wait! I’m not arguing, I agree with you. I’m only saying, you’re in too much of a hurry, it won’t work.”

  There was nothing new in all this. Too often David had heard these apologies. Time was all you needed before these wrongs would right themselves. Why, not so long ago people in New York City had owned slaves! Why, in Virginia fifteen or twenty years ago even the Richmond Enquirer was writing articles in favor of emancipation! And what happened? The abolitionists came in, stirred up all kinds of fury, caused the Nat Turner insurrection, and there you were, with everything set back God knows how long, just because outsiders were in too much of a hurry.

  Yes, he had heard all that before, and now was silent.

  “So that’s not the way,” Gabriel said. “Oh, it’s easy enough for the North to condemn! Slaves don’t fit into the industrial economy! It’s easy for Garrison and his ilk to demand an immediate end to the system in the South,
but how to do it without ruining the economy here and creating chaos? The slaughter could be terrible, when you whip up passions among the ignorant! You of all people, with your family’s history, must understand what mobs are capable of doing.”

  “I do understand.”

  “Well, then! Only a few years ago they were plotting slave rebellions in Madison and Carroll parishes. Fortunately, they were found out in time.”

  “Rebellion is not my intention, Gabriel. Education is. Reasonable, political organization—”

  “But it won’t stop at that! You’ll have clandestine meetings, you’ll be found out, there will be terrible punishment, then violent retribution, and it will all come to nothing in the end. No, David, there is no way except to work slowly and patiently within the law. Time and the law will do it.”

  “Spoken like a lawyer.”

  “Well, I am a lawyer.”

  Abruptly David moved on to another subject. “Where are you off to this afternoon?”

  Gabriel accepted with grace. “A committee meeting with Gershom Kursheedt. We’ve come along very well with our new congregation—the Dispersed of Judah, it’s to be called. We’re going back from the Geman rite to the Portuguese.”

  “Too aristocratic to mingle with Germans? Sorry, nothing personal.” David smiled.

  “Of course it would be ideal if we were all the same. But we’re not. All people like to keep their familiar ways, that’s all. Especially now that the antisemitic laws in Europe are bringing in so many Germans. However, I must tell you,” Gabriel said enthusiastically, “Kursheedt has been doing wonders with Judah Touro. He’s got him to subscribe a lot of money for the synagogue and other charities. No one can figure out how he’s done it, unless it’s a question of timing. Touro’s getting old and afraid to die.”

  “There you are! The power of persuasion toward the right. Isn’t that what I’ve just been talking about today?”

  “Not quite, David. Not quite.”

  Now it was Gabriel who moved away from the subject. “Kursheedt is a sort of disciple of Isaac Leeser’s. Now, there’s a great man, Leeser. A prolific writer. You ought to read his Occident and American Jewish Advocate. It comes out every month, tells you what’s going on in Jewish life around the country. He keeps it up even though it loses money regularly. However, he’s a bachelor with few wants.”