Crescent City

by Belva Plain

  She spurred herself. “At once. I’ll go at once.” But what comfort could she bring, what words?

  “I will go to her,” she repeated, as the others stood watching.

  Ferdinand was stricken. She could read her father’s mind: I thought I had left all this behind in Europe, he was thinking, as he looked back toward the river and the guns.

  Once, as a child, she had watched where some peasants at the edge of a pond had spread a huge net to catch migrating birds. And she had never forgotten the cries and the struggle, the beating wings and limp, broken necks. Now it seemed as though the city, the whole country, were caught in such a net.

  22

  Sharp voices came from the hall below, and Miriam hurried downstairs in time to see the front door closing on a blue-clad soldier and Eugene disappearing into the parlor. Maxim had a letter in his hand.

  “A Union officer, Miss Miriam. He brought this from your brother. He say a friend of his, he asked him specially to deliver this. Mr. Eugene say no Union man to set foot in this house.”

  “Thank you, Maxim.” And taking the letter, she went upstairs to read it in private.

  So long since she had heard from David! Spreading the sheets cm her lap, she thought, My brother’s hands were on this paper. Her eyes skimmed rapidly.

  Dear Sister, I write this in August. It may take weeks to reach you. I was at the battle of Antietam Creek. More than twenty thousand men, counting both sides, were killed or wounded. I hope never to see anything like it again. Yet I know I will before this is all over. Where armies go, horror is not confined to the battlefield. I hope you in New Orleans will be spared what has happened here .… People turned out of their homes, the abuse of young girls, the Rebels pillaging. That I should be in the midst of this, I who have hated violence all my life. I find hard to believe, as hard to believe as the fact that I should be cursed with the memory of the life I took. I can still see Sylvain, a man I never liked, but still I see his living face accusing me. I remember his delicate, trusting wife.

  But enough of that. One good thing has come out of our victory at Antietam, because now neither France nor England will recognize the Confederacy. They see the handwriting on the wall.

  But André, Miriam thought, André is there, and his mission will fail. There is a hollow ache in my head when I think of it all.

  Once again the High Holy Days have come and gone. Our separation is always saddest for me then. I spent the New Year and the Day of Atonement with a Jewish family—and this will surprise you—southern sympathizers in Maryland, just outside of Washington. They were kind and hospitable, putting out a feast for me both nights, although they were not at all well off. We had some friendly arguments, but I wasn’t able to bring them over to my side!

  You may be interested in knowing what I was doing in Washington. I don’t know whether your papers have printed anything about the chaplaincy scandal, the decree that only Christian denominations are allowed to have chaplains in the army. (Interestingly enough, there’s no such rule in the Confederacy!) There’s been quite a storm over that, as you can imagine, and I was in the forefront of it.

  Still carrying the banners, Miriam thought, smiling to herself. A stubborn fellow, Opa had said. When he thinks he’s right, he will never give up.

  Well, when we finally got to the President, who had known nothing about the matter, he corrected the situation at once. So the struggle did have a happy outcome, but it was quite a battle against bigotry, let me tell you.

  Sometimes, when I can’t sleep and get to feeling philosophical in the middle of the night, it seems as if living is nothing more than going from one struggle to the next. Maybe, in a way, that’s good for us, I don’t know. But I would like a little longer rest in between! I’d like to sit through a summer evening with a pretty girl and nothing to worry about I’d like to be with you and your children again, on a cool beach or a boat, or in front of a fire on a winter night. I’d like to have a long walk and talk with Gabriel, the way we used to. But I am wearing blue, while he’s in gray .…

  Dear Miriam, I understand at last why it was impossible for you to leave your people and your home when I wanted to take you with me the night I fled. But at least I hope, now that your city is in Union hands, that you will take the oath of loyalty. I hope Eugene will see it that way, poor helpless man that he is now. Surely you all must know, apart from convictions or any question of right or wrong, that the cause is lost, that the South is doomed? Save yourselves, think of yourselves, my dear—

  “You had a letter from your brother.” Ferdinand spoke from the open door. “Eugene told me it was delivered.”

  “Yes.”

  “You weren’t going to tell me. You hid yourself up here to read it?”

  “I didn’t think you would want to see it, Papa.”

  There was a silence. Half in and half out of the room, Ferdinand stood undecided.

  “Shall I read it, Papa?”

  “Well, yes. Go on.”

  “‘Dear Sister,’” she began, and looking up saw a muscle twitch in her father’s cheek. She read on rapidly. “‘I hope you in New Orleans will be spared what has happened here: people turned out of their homes, the abuse of young girls, the Rebels pillaging—’”

  “No more!” Ferdinand cried out. “No more! I don’t want to hear any more from my son! He writes—he says such things—while we are conquered, our home—” And the old man finished, choking on his own words.

  The city writhed in defeat like a sufferer turning on a sickbed. As the bulletins fly out of a sickroom, rumors were passed and whispered. It was said that General Butler had declared that with one wave of the hand from where he stood on the balcony of the St. Charles Hotel, he could have made—and still could make—the streets run with blood.

  “What irony!” Eugene exclaimed. “To think that Butler’s father served with Andrew Jackson to save this city!”

  The beloved Pierre Soulé was sent to prison at Fort Warren in Boston; he had been the very symbol of secession. Two of the city’s most influential and fashionable clergymen were sent to prison in New York, the one for preaching a secessionist sermon and the other for omitting a prayer for the President of the United States.

  Emma wrung her hands. “In God’s name, who will be next?”

  “For this—this stupidity, I’ve lost my son!” Rosa cried, her voice cracking like an old woman’s.

  And indeed, she had aged; on the morning after the news of Herbert’s terrible death, she had awakened as an old woman. It was queer, Miriam thought, pitiable and queer, to see her like this without her quick tongue, her bracelets, and witty advice. Queer, too, to hear her in agreement with, of all people, Eulalie.

  “Oh, I hate them!” Rosa repeated. “Hate them! I could kill Butler and every man in that rotten blue uniform that I pass on the street!”

  “There are plenty more to be despised on our own side,” Eulalie said darkly. “People like Judah Benjamin and his—his ilk. Was he not to blame for our disaster at Roanoke Island? And now they have made him secretary of state! People like him and—and his ilk!”

  His “ilk,” Miriam thought. He is a Jew, although not much of one, it’s true, but that’s what his “ilk” is. You want to say so, only you don’t dare in front of Eugene. And I don’t dare say to you what I’d like to say and once would have said.

  Emma steered the subject away from Benjamin.

  “I saw a nasty thing yesterday on Royal Street. Two ladies wearing our flag had held their noses when a Union officer went by. Well, you know that happens all the time, we all do it. But this officer chose to take offense, and he followed them across the street, at which”—she giggled—“they pretended to vomit! I was on the other side of the street and stopped to watch. The man was really furious and threatened: ‘We have had enough of this! Don’t let it happen again, I warn you!’—at which they were scared to death and hurried away.”

  “You must warn Angelique,” Eugene said, frowning. “She must do
nothing to attract attention to herself. She is no longer a child to be ignored.”

  “If Angelique is like her mother,” Eulalie remarked with some daring, “she will not insult a Union officer.”

  “What do you mean?” Miriam was hot with anger. “What can you mean?”

  “Well, you have taken our flag off your dress.”

  “Certainly I have. I don’t wish to end like Mrs. Phillips.”

  “What a terrible thing!” Emma said. “I knew her slightly. From one of the best families in Alabama. They claim that she laughed when the funeral procession of a Federal officer passed her house! Have you ever heard of anything so outrageous? Is this a sample of freedom under the Union? That a woman is not free to laugh? And prison on Ship Island! They say she has had a nervous collapse, and no wonder!”

  “Butler is known to despise Jews,” Eugene said. “That’s why he gave her so hard a sentence.”

  “Oh, yes,” Miriam said, her remark being not addressed to, but meant for Eulalie, “the North blames Jews for running the blockade and being loyal to the South, while some southerners do not find us loyal enough. Strange, is it not?”

  Eugene spoke with contempt. “Butler! How righteously he can speak while he lets his brother milk the city and pocket a fortune for them both!”

  Ferdinand looked personally humiliated, “Hard to believe. Hard to believe,” he muttered.

  Gloom stifled the house. With the blinds half drawn, its inhabitants moved through the long, dim hours. No one went out to the garden anymore, for it was too exposed. The out-of-doors felt less secure, though there was really no sense in that; it was just a better feeling to stay behind walls.

  Even Eugene, Miriam realized suddenly one day, had not been out of the house for weeks, not even to make what she euphemistically thought of as his “visits.” And, unashamedly, she asked Fanny what she knew about that. Fanny, equally unashamedly, told her: “Queen has been entertained at that Union major’s who took the house, you know the one down from General Twigg’s, that Butler took for hisself? They say Queen gave a dinner for a dozen officers, and the plates were solid silver.”

  So Queen had gone with the winners! Poor Eugene! Even the servants had been more loyal, although goodness knew why.

  Miriam was reflecting on these things while her knitting needles moved through skein after skein of gray yarn, when young Eugene asked, “Are you going to take the oath, Papa? My friend Bartlett’s father says he’s going to. It’s only words, he says, and he plans to take it without meaning it.”

  “Does he indeed? Your friend Bartlett’s father is a low-class scoundrel and you are free to repeat those words.”

  “They say,” Miriam ventured, “that eleven thousand people have taken it already.”

  “Let them! No decent citizen will have anything to do with anyone who takes it, mark my words.”

  I hope, David had written, that you will at least take the oath. The South is doomed.

  “It’s confiscation, unless you do,” Miriam said again, making her tone sound flat—without urgency.

  “Confiscation!” Ferdinand echoed bleakly. “That means the house.”

  That means, Miriam thought, the second dispossession for you.

  “Read the oath,” Eugene commanded.

  She picked up the paper. “‘I do solemnly swear that I will render true faith and allegiance to the Government of the United States, that I will not take up arms … or encourage others to do so … will use my utmost influence … to put down the rebellion .… This I do as I expect to answer to God. Sworn to and—’”

  “Get my notebook!” Eugene cried. “I want to make a list. I want you to copy down the names of everyone you hear of who takes that disgraceful oath!”

  Ferdinand looked dubious. He would take it if he dared, if it were not for Eugene. At this point in his life he wanted only peace and comfort; all the early fire had gone out of him. And he stood there looking quite defeated, in his hands the head of a china doll, which he had been trying to mend for Angelique.

  “One thing is certain, no one in my family will ever take that oath,” Emma declared. “No one of the old French stock could bear to shame himself like that.”

  Miriam said quietly, “It is not only the old French stock. Our Rabbi Gutheim will not do it, either, and he is hardly French. Nor half, or more than half of our congregation,” she finished positively.

  But why the defiance, why the need to defend the wrong side yet again? And she wondered about Gutheim, a German immigrant only eleven years in the city; choosing such loyalty to the southern cause. Probably it was the influence of his wife, a lady from an old Alabama family, that moved him. Loving her, he had been persuaded. If I were married to André …

  “At any rate, we have until October first,” Ferdinand was saying. Hopefully, he added, “There might well be some changes by then.”

  “This is September thirtieth,” Miriam said. “You will have to make up your mind today, Eugene.”

  “I have already made it.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Read the damned thing to me again!”

  “‘ … all persons who have not renewed their allegiance … are ordered to present themselves … to the nearest provost marshal with a descriptive list of all their property … and each shall receive a certificate from the marshal … claiming to be an enemy of the United States.’” She put the paper down, thinking, I cannot bear it.

  “Go on,” Eugene said impatiently.

  “‘ … Any persons neglecting so to register themselves shall be subject to fine, imprisonment at hard labor …’” She flung the paper down.

  A blind man, stubborn, immovable; Emma and Ferdinand, equally helpless, and two children; all of them I must care for. Yes, and Rosa, too, who has also refused to take the oath and will be turned out of her house. I gave my word to Gabriel that I would look out for her.

  Ferdinand stood in the hall looking around at the house he had come to think of as home. His expression was tinged not so much by grief and apprehension as by astonishment. It was the look he had worn on the day of his bankruptcy, a disbelief that things could tumble and he with them.

  “Hurry, Papa,” Miriam said gently. “They’ve given us only until noon to leave.”

  “I should like to take that picture,” he said, as if he had not heard her.

  She followed his gaze into the front parlor, where the rugs had already been rolled up for the summer and sprinkled with tobacco leaves to keep out insects. Over the mantel hung a portrait, made in earliest childhood, of little Eugene and Angelique. The boy, wearing a sailor suit with long white duck trousers and broad-brimmed black hat, stood next to the seated girl, whose little hands were decorously folded as she had been taught to fold them, on the lap of her green silk apron.

  “We’re not allowed to take anything of value,” Miriam said doubtfully, feeling the weight of the gold coins sewn in a belt under her hoops, “although I don’t suppose that has value to anyone but us. Yes, have Sisyphus wrap it and put it with the servants’ things. They’ll be less likely to look there. And I shall manage to take some books along. We’ll be away a long time.”

  “Oh, do you think so?” Ferdinand responded.

  The little parade of carriages formed on the street in front of the house. The garden gate was ajar, so that Aphrodite was in full view with her calm gaze fixed upon the ripe pears espaliered on the wall. The double fountain poured, stone doves pecked at the ground, and nothing in that circle of sunlit peace was changed. Miriam felt a profound and unexpected sadness, which must be nothing compared with Eugene’s, whose true home and pride this was. Then Maxim, on the box, having received the order from Eugene, started the horses and the carriages rolled away. At the rear came Rosa’s.

  At Pelagie’s house on the corner the windows were closed and tibe blinds drawn; with Eulalie and her children she had left some weeks earlier for the Labouisse place in the country.

  Ferdinand was murmuring something
to Emma about the first time he had laid eyes on the city and then something about the first time he had laid eyes on her. Fearing to intrude on his privacy, Miriam turned away and put her arm around Angelique’s shoulder. The girl looked up, giving her mother a smile of such sweetness and encouragement that Miriam felt a quick, piercing pride in the bravery of this child.

  They passed the corner of the street where Eugene had met his tragedy, the street where Queen lived. Able to gauge the distance, having traveled it so often, he must have sensed where they were, for his fingers drummed on the side of the carriage and he lowered his head. What memories—regrets or joyous recollections—were in that head at this moment only he could know.

  One after one they passed the homes of people who had been part of their Uves. They crossed Canal Street, where, over the tops of the young trees that ran down the middle of the street, Miriam could see the windows of the Custom House from which “Beast” Butler ruled the city. They rode through the garden district, past the street where André had built his fine house. She closed her eyes to shut out the recollection, but it would not go away.

  At the city limits they showed their passes and emerged into a countryside where any soldiers one might now meet would be wearing gray. In a long line the carriages jolted over the furrowed road under the mild autumn sky. No one spoke very much except once when Eugene said, “You wanted to sell the place. What would we have done without it now?”

  She might have answered, “We could have taken the oath,” but of course did not, and nothing more was said.

  Even the children were still; Angelique slept, her head sharing her mother’s lap with the dog. Young Eugene wore a thoughtful frown; perhaps it was the finality of this departure that made him seem suddenly so much older than the boy who had, not so long ago, gone about the city cheering and waving a flag. Now he had nothing to say, only stared straight ahead at the road.