Crescent City

by Belva Plain

  A man like you doesn’t pull a pistol out of a holster without even thinking. Why, you’ve never even held one in your hand before! And was that really Sylvain Labouisse, and did you shoot him? Kill him, perhaps? God forbid! But he wanted to kill you! Why should he want to kill you? You’ve never harmed him, never harmed anyone! Not you, who care so much about the world. Maybe, though, it’s a little bit crazy to care so much about the world. Maybe you should mind your own affairs. Who do you think you are? The Messiah?

  “Oh, my God,” he said aloud.

  And before his horrified eyes, hanging in the air between the laid-back ears of the racing horse, was the grieving, uncomprehending sweet face of Pelagie.

  When the door opened, the draft caught the remains of the burning papers and sent a flurry of scorched fragments over the floor.

  “There’s no time to bother with that. Leave it,” Lucien said.

  “I’m ready.” David picked up his traveling bag. Dressed in a topcoat with a dark woolen shawl over his shoulders, he looked like any gentleman about to go on a journey. “I’ve burned MacKenzie’s lists so no one will get into trouble.” Almost lovingly he looked about the drab little room. “My books. I hate to leave my books.”

  “I’ll send them to you,” Miriam said, “as soon as I know Where you’ll be.” And she rearranged the shawl, which did not need rearranging.

  “Don’t linger, David. Every second counts.” Gabriel nodded toward Miriam. “She’s in terrible danger here!”

  As if suddenly inspired, David grasped his sister’s shoulders. “Listen—you shouldn’t have come … but now that you’re here, listen, you used to talk about getting away .… You could .… Lucien could get young Eugene and Angelique … only another couple of minutes .… We could all go.”

  “No!” Gabriel cried vehemently. “No! You’re not thinking straight. How do you know you’ll make it to the boat, or that the boat won’t be intercepted? You can’t possibly want to risk her any more than you already have.”

  “You’re right, of course, you’re right. But still—”

  “I couldn’t anyway,” Miriam said. “How could I leave Papa now? And Eugene, blind? I’m just now putting things in order.”

  David put his arms around his sister. “So, again I leave you. When you need me, when I should be here at your right hand, I leave you.” He mourned; his eyes, his voice, and his own right hand, as it stroked her hair, all mourned.

  “Dear David, don’t worry about me. It’s only you we should be thinking of right now. Oh, take care of yourself! Don’t, don’t, do any more foolish awful things! I mean—oh, I don’t know what I mean! Just take care of yourself, my dear.”

  Lucien pulled David’s sleeve. “They’ll be coming for you.”

  “When you get where you’re going, you’ll let me know,” Gabriel said. “I’ll send whatever you need to start up again. You’ve got enough money for now. The skiff is marked Elsie Ann. You’re sure you know how to sail, Lucien?”

  “Yes, yes, I know.” Lucien was already out the door.

  “Very well. Once you’re over the state line in Mississippi, you’ll manage.” Taking David’s hand, Gabriel propelled him to the door. “Good God, what a rotten business! But God bless you anyway. Now, go! Go, will you?”

  When the hurrying steps had died away, Gabriel sighed. “What a rotten business,” he repeated. “Now give me the key. We’ll lock the house and I’ll see you home. Does anyone know Lucien came to your house?”

  “Only Fanny, and she doesn’t know why. Besides, I trust her.”

  “You can’t trust anyone. You shouldn’t have been mixed up in this at all.”

  “You are, and you aren’t his brother.”

  “One has one’s reasons. Complicated reasons, sometimes,” Gabriel said gently.

  “This is the second time you rescued him, do you realize that?”

  Gabriel smiled. How rare his smile is, Miriam thought; it spreads so slowly as if his face were astonished at the sweetness of its own smile.

  The stillness was absolute. Not a leaf moved through the heavy air. And they stood a moment, savoring the silence, relieving the tension of the past half hour. Suddenly Gabriel flung his arm up.

  “Listen. Do you hear anything?”

  “No, nothing. Yes, yes, I do.”

  “Shh. It’s horses. Coming this way. Down Royal Street, I think.”

  The beat and clatter of hooves grew nearer and clearer.

  “Get back into the house. There’s no time to get home now. They’re coming for him here. Hide here. No, wait. Wait a moment.”

  From a roll of bandage on the shelf he ripped off a piece. “Tie this around my head, over my ear. Make a big wad, tight. That’s it.”

  Wonderingly, her heart racing, her mouth dry with fear, Miriam obeyed.

  “Now, outside. Get out in the courtyard.”

  “Where? Where?” she cried, in panic now.

  The horses had turned into the street and voices were heard, men calling to one another.

  “Anywhere. Don’t make a sound, no matter what happens.”

  In the bushes behind the necessary Miriam crouched, huddling in her skirts. Gabriel had lit a candle. Through the window she could see him sitting with his bandaged head resting on the back of the chair. She could hear the pounding on the front door, could see him get up and admit three disheveled, frantic men.

  “Where’s the doctor?”

  “I wish I knew. I’m waiting for him,” Gabriel complained. “I’ve got the devil of an earache.”

  “Don’t I know you? You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Carvalho. Gabriel Carvalho. And you?”

  “Lloyd Morrissey. You been here long?”

  “About an hour. What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  “Plenty. Sylvain Labouisse has been shot. Raphael shot him.”

  “Dr. Raphael did? Why, I never knew him even to carry a gun. A very gentle man, he—”

  “It was Raphael, all right. Shot Labouisse out of the saddle.”

  “I can’t believe it. Is Labouisse hurt badly?”

  “Badly? He’s dead.”

  “But the servant who let me in,” Gabriel persisted, “told me the doctor had been out for hours. A woman giving birth, he said, a bad case. I think he said it was on North Rampart Street, though I didn’t pay much attention, my ear hurts so.”

  “The servant lied to you. He’s not out on a call, he’s getting out of town.”

  Someone called. “Come on, Morrissey, for Christ’s sake, let’s spread out, one of us is bound to get hold of him.”

  The door crashed shut and the silence rushed back. Miriam waited for some minutes until she heard Gabriel’s low call.

  “Come quickly. They’ll be hunting up and down the city. Follow me, stay close to the building line.”

  Shreds of cloud sailed across the moon, darkening the street, and drifting past the moon, released bright silver to illumine the banquette.

  “You mustn’t be seen,” Gabriel whispered over her shoulder. “Walk as fast and lightly as you can. You never know who might be awake even at this hour. Plots and deaths,” she heard him mutter as they crept through the streets.

  Stooping a little, unconsciously trying to make himself smaller, he nevertheless cast a tall shadow. How he must hate all this! Miriam thought. It’s against everything in his nature. And it crossed her mind, frightened and tense as she was, that, although David’s emergency, with its revelation of what he had been doing during the past few years, had come as a shock, it had, on reflection, not been a surprise, for it was in keeping with the character of David. But one could never imagine Gabriel doing anything so incautious, so imprudent! Yet here he was, forceful and strong in this moment of crisis; she knew, following his rapid walk toward home, that he would get her there safely. He would come through for her, as surely he had just done for David.

  She heard his whisper as they turned the final corner.

  “David ought t
o be on the river by now. He had just enough minutes to spare, I’m fairly sure. And thank God for that.”

  From the State House to the cathedral the grave procession marched in respect to Sylvain Labouisse, acknowledging his civic benefactions. All was still. All was black. Six horses, blanketed and plumed in black, pulled the black funeral car; the canopy above the coffin was draped in black. Only the white chrysanthemums heaped on the coffin and the white dove perched on the canopy relieved the pall.

  “It reminds me,” Rosa whispered, “of the memorial service for Lafayette. That was in thirty-four. Only of course they had a bust of Lafayette instead of a coffin. But this is just as solemn.”

  Annoyed by her chatter, Miriam moved forward. Women—since women did not go to funerals—were standing outside the cathedral on the steps. Properly speaking, they ought not to have been even that near, but Rosa was curious, and Miriam had gone as far as possible with her father, to be there when he came out.

  The poor man was almost ill from shock. She had tried to ease the blow, in some way to counter his awful shame, much of which she felt herself.

  “Sylvain would have killed him, too, Papa. Remember that.”

  “It was David’s own doing! If he hadn’t been there, if he hadn’t got himself mixed up in these dirty affairs …”

  “Papa, try to think. This whole tragedy came out of David’s beliefs, his honest beliefs. It was not a dirty affair. You have to admit he acted honestly.”

  She had been met with a look of such outrage and agony that she had closed her mouth.

  How men were disappointed in their sons! Poor Papa! Once more to be brought to his knees, as if the financial crash had not been enough.

  Whether or not others, especially Emma, would censure him for David’s act—and except for Eulalie, who was in a savage rage, Miriam felt confident that they did not—Ferdinand felt that they did, and would probably feel so always.

  Now just past the open doors she could see her father in the back row. He had come in last to avoid being seen. And she wondered what he would say if he could know the part she had played in her brother’s escape.

  Steady, steady, she said to herself. Think of something else.

  Straight before her, far down the aisle, stood the jeweled glitter of the altar. Her eyes moved from gilded lettering on the arch. There on a mural St. Louis, king of France, proclaimed the start of the Seventh Crusade. Swords and blood! Burning Jews in their huddled streets as they marched across Europe.

  Enough! Enough blood spilled here, without remembering all the centuries.

  No, he had said that day at Beau Jardín when he first came back, no, a wife would not fit with what I intend to do in my life. And far back, long ago in Europe, their grandfather had said, with some pride and some vexation, How stubborn he is when he thinks a thing is right.

  Who is to know what is right?

  Flames tremble on the candle tips. The whole world trembles.

  “You’re taking it very hard,” Rosa said kindly. “No one blames it on you.”

  “It’s not that. I was thinking of Pelagie,” which was also true.

  Cascades of grief flowed from the organ. The coffin came first in the procession of men in mourning coats and tall hats. At the curb where Eugene and Ferdinand were getting into their carriage, Gabriel caught up with Miriam. His glance said: This knowledge we share. He spoke quietly.

  “Are you all right?”

  I must look like death, she thought, and said, “I’m going to see Pelagie.”

  “Catholic women here wait nine days before paying condolence calls,” Rosa reminded her.

  “I’m not Catholic and I have to see her.”

  Rosa laid a hand on Miriam’s arm. “She may not want to see you,” she said gently.

  “That is what I have to know.”

  She was eight years old again, standing in the upstairs bedroom and Pelagie was saying, “Oh, you’re going to be a beauty, darling, and your papa wül buy diamonds for your ears.”

  The front door was hung with gray crepe, and Miriam, sounding the knocker, remembered that for married people, unless they were old, colors of mourning were lavender or gray. In the center hung a wreath of black beads containing strands of Sylvain’s hair under a velvet bow. All these structures and customs, she thought. All of us keep them in our differing ways, to ease our sorrow. And do they ease it? How can I know? I have never had a sorrow like hers.

  Someone opened the door and left her. Uncertain where to go, she stood in the hall. It was dim. All the shades were drawn, and the enormous mirror was covered with a cloth. The clock under the stairs read nine fifteen; it had been stopped at the hour of Sylvain’s death. Nine fifteen in the night in a deserted swamp, my brother—She held her head up and walked into the parlor.

  Pelagie was sitting on the sofa between Emma and Eulalie. Under her black skirt another baby waited to be born, this one surely the last, for who would marry a widow with eight children?

  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 Barataría Bay, I decided to take a small chance and sent Lucien ashore to buy enough to last us through the long sail to Mississippi .… So we passed between Cat Island and Pass Christian, remembering how yon used to write about your summers at the Pass. I was afraid to put ashore 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 pass. 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 wül 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 documents, 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 André it was all clear, all vivid; one could imagine.

  “You were saying you had an idea.”