Crescent City (28 page)

“Do you suppose, Miriam my dear,” Emma inquired now, “that you could persuade your cook to make
bière douce
sometime? My Serafina used to do it for your father. He loves it and it’s quite simple, really, just a few pineapple peelings, brown sugar, cloves, and rice.”

“I’ll tell her, Aunt Emma.”

“Thank you, my dear. Oh, my, listen to this! My cousin Grace writes about that awful Tremont business. The old lady was a cousin of Grace’s on the other side, you remember. Murdered in her bed! By a crowd of savages whom she’d raised and fed from childhood!”

“It’s said, though, that her son was a cruel man. He sold them away without heart and they were badly fed,” Miriam began, but was stopped by a snort from Eugene.

“Rubbish! That’s what they always say. Abolitionist rubbish!”

“Oh, see,” Emma said, “here’s a letter from Marie Claire. My goodness, she’s given a lieder recital. Had a fine reception. Her teacher predicts increasing success. Isn’t that amazing! I always knew she could sing, but I really never thought she would … oh, they have made some fine contacts in Paris .… The Baroness Pontalba … you knew she’s from New Orleans, didn’t you, Miriam? Yes, it was her father who built the cathedral, the
cabildo,
and the
presbytère.
They married her off to Pontalba when he came here from France, and it never worked out. It’s just all wrong, I always say, forcing or coaxing a marriage—they’re both the same when you come down to it—it doesn’t work out.”

“No,” Miriam assented faintly. It was hard to believe what she was hearing from the same Emma who had—well, no matter now.

“There was such a scandal. Quarrels over money, you know. Her father-in-law, the old baron, tried to kill her, then shot himself. My word, Marie Claire writes that the baroness is coming back here to build on her property in the Place d’Armes. The Perrins may eventually buy an apartment there when they’re finished. Goodness! They’re planning to sell their house!”

“Who is? What house?” Miriam asked in the same faint voice.

“Why, the new house that they’ve never lived in. How strange!”

“Do they say when they’re coming back?”

“Let’s see. No. They are planning to stay abroad a while longer because of her progress .… Oh, but André must be disappointed .… To think he planned that wonderful house himself .… Well, if
they move to the Place d’Armes, I know Pelagie will be pleased. They’ll be around the corner. Pelagie was always rather fond of Marie Claire, odd as she is. And André is so agreeable, don’t you think so, Miriam?”

“Oh, yes, most agreeable.”

“The whole thing’s disgraceful,” Eugene said contemptuously. “Singing. I don’t know why he puts up with it.”

Eulalie nodded agreement, and then remembering that Eugene could not see the nod, repeated, “Disgraceful.”

Eulalie, who had been staying in her sister’s town house, had been spending most of her days with Eugene, reading aloud to him and waiting on him, moving his chair from sun to shade. A curious relationship had developed. Eugene is a Jew, but she overlooks that, Miriam thought, because he allows her to serve him. He accepts her and no other man ever has. They made an odd contrast, he with his lavish beard and she with her scanty hair, too thin even to hold her combs.

“Where’s my son?” the father asked now. “I haven’t seen him since this morning.”

Eulalie stood up. “I’ll fetch him for you.”

The children, especially the boy—or could it, Miriam thought bitterly, perhaps be “boys,” to include that other one?—were all Eugene still cared about. Except for them he had removed himself from everything that had once filled his life. He was a crumbling castle, falling into ruin. His long silences were almost more disturbing than his tempers had been. She tried to comfort him, to reach out to him in his disaster, to tell him he was not alone.

“Don’t,” he would say. “You don’t mean it. We don’t mean it.”

She protested. “I do mean it, Eugene. What kind of a human being do you think I am?” She had suggested
a club, the Pelican Club, where doctors and lawyers, bankers and brokers, met to play brag and eat dinners prepared by a superb French chef.

“The finest people in the city belong,” she said, appealing to his snobbishness.

And he had retorted, “I already know the finest people in the city. Clubs are all right for Anglo-Saxons. I’m a Creole and we don’t need clubs.”

You’re a Jew, she thought, not a Creole, but of course a Jew could align himself with whatever forces he wished. Very well, Eugene had chosen to consider himself a Creole.

She had suggested that he be driven to the office every morning. Someone there could read reports to him and he would make decisions as before.

He had refused that, too. “No, Scofield is a good enough manager. I’ll leave things in his hands.”

Miriam wasn’t so sure. Last month Scofield had brought a note to be signed.

“What’s this?” Eugene had inquired after his listless hand had been guided to write his signature.

“Nothing of any great importance,” Scofield had told him. “I had to borrow from the bank. Just temporarily to tide us over the month until they pay for the last London shipment.”

As he was leaving, Miriam had stopped the man in the hall. “Why do we have to borrow, Mr. Scofield? We never had to before, did we?”

And he had looked at her with insolence in his eyes, while giving a courteous answer. “Nothing to worry about at all, ma’am. A common business practice. A lady shouldn’t have to worry herself with such things.”

But she had burned with anger.

Now she tried to put these thoughts at the back of
her mind. “Shall you be coming this afternoon to the temple dedication, Eugene?”

“No. I can’t see it, so why should I go?”

She had expected the refusal, for he had a dread of showing his infirmity in public places. She understood that.

When at certain angles the light struck his glasses, one could see the shriveled, dead-white eyes. Scorched flesh shone hideously pink from forehead to cheek.

She had a mixture of feelings: first pity, then shuddering horror, then shame, a shame all the more painful because Eugene had never with the slightest word alluded to her father’s part in his disaster.

Spring sunshine fell on the crowd at the corner of Canal and Bourbon streets. It whitened six tall Ionic columns under the splendid entablature of what had once been Christ Church Episcopal and was now, through the beneficence of Judah Touro, becoming the Nefutzoth Yehudah Synagogue. The splendid organ was still pealing after the service while a crowd of the rich and famous, Jew and non-Jew alike, in flowered bonnets and silk hats, lingered on the sidewalk to watch the dignitaries.

“The choir was magnificent,” said Rosa. Her eyes fell fondly on her sons. “Your father would have been in his glory today. Look, there’s Isaac Leeser, come all the way from Philadelphia.”

“He’s staying at Kursheedt’s house. He must have had a dozen invitations, but he wanted a kosher home,” David said meaningfully.

“Isn’t that Touro?” Miriam asked.

Encircled by admirers in rainbow colors, Touro stood starkly in his somber black suit. His deep eyes were black and the furrows running to the corners of his stern mouth were dark.

The conversation on the homeward walk made much of him, as they passed the arcaded Touro Block and the bark
Judah Touro
on the riverfront, ready for departure.

“Astonishing,” Gabriel remarked. “He has even become a Sabbath observer. Turned his life upside down at his age. After that, nothing seems impossible.”

And Miriam remembered that he was one of the people who had made it possible. Suddenly she wanted to tell him of the fear which had been nagging at her for weeks. He was the family’s lawyer, after all.

So when Rosa, with David and her sons, walked ahead on the narrow banquette, she began, “I am worried. It’s about my husband’s business affairs.” She related the incident of the note and the encounter with Scofield. “I fear for us, for my children. Of course, I know nothing about business. I try to talk to Eugene, but he has lost interest He has lost more than his eyes. He has lost his will.”

“I know that,” Gabriel said quietly.

“I daresay it’s unbecoming of me.” She heard herself apologizing. “I’m certain Mr. Scofield is an honest man, but—”

“Are you? One can never be certain about anyone.”

“Well, then, I don’t know what is to be done.”

“I’m only your husband’s lawyer. I have no power to examine his books without his permission. I’ve tried to speak to him, too, but as you say, he’s lost interest. He has affairs in Memphis, cotton and lumber, which should be looked to.”

Miriam felt suddenly lost, as if a chill wind had blown through the warm afternoon.

And she repeated, “It’s as if he doesn’t want to think anymore.”

“Then someone must think for him.”

“But there is no one! Surely not my father! And
David knows less than nothing about business affairs. My children will have no one to protect them.”

“They have you.”

“I? What can I do? I’m a woman.”

Gabriel stopped and looked down at her.

“You can learn,” he said sternly.

“Who will teach me?”

“I will. But you must get Eugene’s permission to act in his stead.”

Eugene would not grant it. “What! You to sit in an office and deal with men? No, I’m hardly such a fool as that! Not yet. I will take Scofield over you any day.”

In spite of herself Miriam was relieved. Eugene was right: How was she to sit in an office and deal with men?

Yet she was troubled all that summer. In the autumn Scofield came again to the house with papers for Eugene’s signature. Again, having glimpsed a bank’s letterhead, she was certain that they were loans. This time Scofield avoided her, almost running in the hall on his way out. Standing in the doorway, watching hum rush down the front walk and slip out of sight around the corner, it seemed to her that she was being given forewarning of disaster. She had lived long enough in New Orleans to know that fortunes are lost far more quickly than they are made. And she kept standing there, staring into the street, seeing not the child rolling a hoop, not the fruit cart, not the two old women chatting on the walk, seeing only that specter of disaster.

That night Angelique had a bad dream. Her cry woke Miriam out of the heavy sleep in which an aching mind seeks relief from its pressures.

The child was standing up in bed holding a doll. The beam from the candle made black pits of her eyes.

“There’s no place to go,” she whispered, “no place.”

Miriam saw that she was terrified. She sat on the bed, drawing her daughter down onto her lap.

“No place to go? Tell me what you mean, darling. Tell me.”

“I thought I was standing in the street all alone and I didn’t know where to go.”

“No, no, you’re right here in your pretty bed, with the pink quilt that Aunt Emma gave you, and your dolls, and your brother in the next room, and Papa’s down the hall, and we’re—”

“But Papa had no place to go! They took his table away!”

Puzzled for a moment, Miriam remembered then how Emma had mourned the loss of her furniture at the sheriff’s sale, especially the loss of the grand mahogany dining table at which twenty-four had been able to sit in comfort. Much as they had tried to conceal the disaster from the children, apparently the children had felt its impact, after all. Poor little beings!

The chilly hand of foreboding passed over her flesh and the voice of fear whispered. There’ll be no one to shelter all of you as we did Papa.

“You were dreaming, darling. It was a bad, silly dream. We’re never going to leave this house. It’s ours, with everything in it.”

“But Papa—”

“Papa’s here, too, quite safe with us.” Her fingers moved in Angelique’s hair and smoothed the ruffles around the small neck. “Anyway, you mustn’t think of all that. That was different, Angelique.”

“Why was it?” the child persisted.

“Because it just was. It’s too hard to explain. You have to believe me. I never fib to you, do I?”

“No.”

“Well, then. Go back to sleep, dear. Everything’s really all right.”

Back in her own bed, she scolded herself for having caught the child’s fright.

“That was different, Angelique,” she had said.

How could she be sure it was?

Oh, stop this, Miriam! Things are always worse in the middle of the night, you ought to know that. You’re behaving like a child yourself. There may be nothing wrong at all. This is your morbid imagination.

Or maybe not.

So early one evening, having got the office keys from Eugene’s desk, she went downtown to look over the books. The figures in columns and rows were absolutely meaningless to her, but a letter in Scofield’s top drawer was very clear. It was a peremptory demand and warning from the Bank of New Orleans, about an overdue note. The thing shook in her hand.

And she walked home slowly, reluctant to face Eugene with a crisis which he was not ready to confront. At the same time, who was ready to confront it?

In the Place d’Armes, although it was almost dusk, workmen were still clambering and clattering on the Pontalba Building. Low light touched the bricks with rose and, lying on ornamental black iron scrollwork, turned it shiny as licorice. The best of everything was going into these houses for the most fashionable families in the city. Hadn’t Emma said André and Marie Claire were planning to move here? Miriam stood still. Strange that she no longer
felt
the old pain, yet could so sharply recall that she had once felt it. She wondered whether it would come back when he returned. She hoped, almost, that he would not return, certainly not to live here. And at the same time she scanned the building as if to guess which of the windows would be his.

On a second-floor balcony a woman was kneeling to examine a window frame. That must be the baroness! She had been the talk of the city since she had returned from Europe to keep an eye on her property, climbing ladders in her pantaloons. Extraordinary woman! One couldn’t help but wonder at the drive and daring of such a woman, who obviously had no care for “what people thought.” Extraordinary!