Crescent City

by Belva Plain

  Blood sickened him. Yet if one wanted to be a doctor, one must be able to look at blood. But that was different. It was the violent blood that sickened him. For a period, only a year or two ago, he had discovered he could not swallow meat. It stuck in his throat. A slice of chicken on the plate took life again: flapping, fluttering, feathers, spread wings, squawking, running on skinny fragile legs from the slaughterer. That period had passed. He had willed it to pass, as he had willed himself into the longing to be a doctor.

  Downstairs now someone stirred and a chair scraped. Poor Opa, cranky, good old man! Surely he must know he was dying. Terrible to be old, to have no strength, to pass each day knowing that one was dying. Papa, now—he had strength, you couldn’t help but see that and admire it. To have done what he did, to have marched out into the world alone and made a place there for himself! Yes, you had to admire such vigor and will, even if he did boast about it.

  A piece of cracked mirror hung on the wall: He had found it in someone’s household discard. And David examined himself. No, there was no resemblance between his own habitual half-scowling face and his father’s pleasant twinkle. Only the dark curly hair was the same. Papa’s determination, though: That I have. I know I have it.

  How wonderful for Miriam to get away from bitter, mournful Dinah! He would send her to school, Papa said. She was a bright little thing. David had taught her to read and sometimes she even tried his books, borrowed from the rabbi, the “modern” rabbi, against whom Opa railed. Naturally, she wasn’t able to understand them, but she tried and, surprisingly, here and there caught on to a sentence. Curious, she was. Quick to laugh also, as well as quick to cry. Sometimes he felt almost fatherly toward her. Well, now her real father could take over and care for her in the proper way.

  He shut his eyes, swaying a little as one did in prayer. Then he opened them, wanting to keep in ear and eye this place that he was leaving, wanting to remember the risen light and a distant voice, and the hollow rumble of a farmer’s cart.

  In the other attic room the little girl was stroking the skirt of her new dress. It was her way to describe things to herself in terms of the natural world; so the material was soft as new grass, it was butterfly-blue, it was warm and light as goose down. She had no mirror, and it was only by craning over her shoulder that she could see a whirl at her back where the plump corded niching of the skirt swayed above her ankles. Holding her hand up, she let the fluted cuff fall back over her little wrist. What a wonderful dress! Better by far than Aunt Dinah’s synagogue dress. Better by far than any she had ever seen. And there were to be more like it, for Papa had said so. It was a pity they were going away so early this morning, for it would have been a fine thing to walk up and down the street in this dress and let everyone see it.

  She ran to the window. Nobody was out yet; there was no sign of life except for the caged bird hung outside the shuttered window of the shop across the way. The sight of this bird bothered the child; it always had. The cage was too small. The poor thing could not even spread its wings. Was it to hang there drooping, silent, every day and every night of its life?

  Opa had said once, “Your mother never could bear the sight of a caged bird, either.”

  Your mother. Miriam knew the story of her mother, had known it long before she was supposed to know it, having overheard the voices. She is so like Hannah. Think of it. A life going and another coming at the same time. Horrible. Horrible. And having heard this so many times, she had begun to feel a certain distinction, a certain importance about herself that other people, those born in the ordinary manner, could not have. On the other hand, the knowledge had also given her nightmares.

  Some said she ought never to have been told. But it was too late for that. Like her brother, she had made mental pictures, engravings not to be eradicated. In these pictures her mother was always wearing a plaid shawl: Why? No one had ever mentioned a shawl. And her hair would have been worn high, piled on her head. No one had ever told her that, either, and she had never asked.

  Now, taking her own two braids, she twisted them into a black silk coil on the top of her head, elongating her face by sucking in her cheeks, which produced a serious, adult expression—and immediately broke into laughter, flouncing the skirt and scooping up the little dog, which had been looking at her with a dog’s equivalent of amazement.

  “Gretel, we’re going to America, and you are, too. Did you think I would go without you?”

  She became sober again. “I shall miss Aunt Dinah. When she’s not scolding, she can sometimes be so nice. I think she will be lonesome without me. And my friends Lore and Ruth—but still it will be wonderful on the ship. And David will be there, so it won’t really be very strange. Besides, I like Papa, I love him already. He has such a good smile. The doll has golden hair, he said.”

  And it seemed to the child that the sun had never risen so brightly and with such sparkle as on this morning.

  They stood downstairs saying their good-byes. Ferdinand took out a purse. Smooth, fat coins, gold florins, slid into a puddled heap on the table.

  “This will do for now,” he said. “I have instructed my banker in Strasbourg to send you the same every month for as long as either one of you lives. And this bag here—this is a donation to the synagogue. Make it for me in Hannah’s memory.”

  The old man and the aging woman were overawed. There was something in their speechless awe, in the wetness of their eyes, that made David ashamed. That any human being should have to be so grateful to another was wrong somehow. It was humiliating.

  “And don’t worry about the children. They will have perfect care in my home. My wife Emma is the kindest woman. She is looking forward to them.”

  Aunt Dinah wiped her eyes. “David is too daring for his own good, too bold and careless. Headstrong. When he gets a thought in his head you can’t dig it out. So stubborn. But such a good boy all the same.” David looked at her in astonishment. Never, never once that he could remember had she called him a good boy.

  “Yes, he knows what the world should be and thinks he can change it. When you learn not to say the first thing that comes to mind, David, it will be better for you,” Dinah concluded.

  The old man had something to add. “Last year he got us into trouble with the neighbors. The father over there was beating his young son for stealing potatoes, and David shouted at the man: ‘That’s no way to train a child!’ he told him. ‘You ought to know better! The Torah instructs you to teach a child, not beat him.’ Imagine! A boy just past Bar Mitzvah telling a grown man how to rear his son! The man was angry, I can tell you that.”

  “But David was right,” Miriam remarked suddenly.

  “His shadow,” Dinah said, embracing the child. “She is her brother’s shadow. Anything he does is right in her eyes. Isn’t it, Miriam?”

  Ferdinand laughed. “Well, I can see my life will be more interesting from now on, anyway.”

  Now the moment had come, the hardest of all, the final moment when there is nothing more to say than a farewell, which must be said with some restraint and dignity lest the last memory be of total grief. There must be a severance, but not a ripping.

  David took Dinah’s hand and then the grandfather’s, kissed them, and without speaking turned away. Moved by the boy’s intuition, for in another moment the old man would have broken down in tears, Ferdinand took those same hands in his. Then with his arms upon the shoulders of his children, aware that the two left behind were closely watching, and that the sight of this affection would be a consolation to them, he led them down the alley to the yard of the Golden Bear, where the coach was already waiting to take them on the first leg of the long journey home.

  2

  Five weeks out of Le Havre the brig Mirabelle, carrying cotton goods, wine, and passengers, had left the iron-gray North Atlantic behind, had taken on fresh food and water in the Azores, and was now moving southwestward into summer. Between blue and blue it sailed, the dome of sky merging with the indigo swell of the
sea. Turquoise and lapis lazuli and azure, the waves raced with the ship. Where the wake followed, splitting the surface of the water at the stern, the blue was so pale as to quiver into silver. Caught by the trade winds the tall sails whipped and the ship gathered more speed; its festive pennants crackled and the carved, aristocratic lady on the prow stretched her long neck toward the western hemisphere as if she, too, were impatient to reach it.

  For Miriam, who had never traveled more than a few kilometers between identical villages in a horse and cart, who had never seen anything more impressive than the rather mediocre summer residence of the Graf von Weisshausen—and that only glimpsed from a distant road at the end of a long cypress allée—who had never seen anything more exotic than a traveling coach such as the one in which her father had arrived, the voyage was miraculous and would have been an end in itself had it led nowhere at all. For David, who had traveled in books across the world, it was miraculous, too, but in a different way. His eyes were alert. Nothing escaped him. He had great expectations.

  Having been told that French was the spoken language in New Orleans, he had immediately set himself and his sister to learning it. Among the small company of passengers—a pair of Paris bankers with their fashionable, vivacious wives, and a group of nuns on their way to a convent in New Orleans—were a father and son returning from a European trip to their home in Charleston. The father, Simon Carvalho, was a physician. Gabriel, the son, was David’s age. He was an attractive boy with even features and a reserved manner. Unlike David, he moved deliberately and slowly. Yet he had been friendly enough to suggest that he teach French to the Raphael pair. David was greatly in awe of him and his knowledge.

  “He knows so much. I’ll never catch up with all that Latin and science. And he’s six months younger than I am, too,” David complained to Ferdinand.

  “Well, with the advantages he’s had, no wonder. But you’ll catch up, I’m confident you will.”

  Ferdinand had found out about the family on the first day of the voyage, almost before they had left the harbor.

  “They’re Sephardic Jews. Came to South Carolina from Spain via Brazil generations ago. In 1697, I think the doctor said. He has a married daughter living in New Orleans, Rosa and Henry de Rivera. People of substance. Accustomed to wealth. Quiet in their tastes, although they own the best of everything,” he concluded with satisfaction.

  It pleased his father, David saw, to be acquainted with important people. This bothered David. He saw it as a sign of weakness, and he didn’t want to see weakness in his father. At the same time he was ashamed of his own disloyalty for having such a thought.

  “You’re making good progress with Gabriel, so I see, or rather, so I hear,” Dr. Carvalho remarked to David one day. “Pretty soon I won’t need to speak in German to you anymore. You seem to understand almost anything I say in French. Perhaps you could persuade my son to start you on English, too.”

  “Oh,” Ferdinand said, “they won’t need English in New Orleans. We’ve twice as many French speakers there as English speakers. It’s considered rude to speak English at home, even when you know how.”

  Dr. Carvalho replied, “That will change. It is already changing. My daughter tells me the city is fast filling up with Americans.”

  “I thought everybody there was an American!” David exclaimed.

  “That’s just an expression,” Ferdinand told him. “It refers to people from other parts of the United States. Creoles have French or Spanish ancestors. And, socially speaking, they’re the summit. A so-called ‘American’ of my acquaintance told me that the proudest day of his mother’s life was the first time she was invited into a Creole home.”

  Dr. Carvalho responded politely. “Is that so?”

  “Yes. She was invited for café noir one afternoon and she understood she was being honored. Creoles prefer to keep to themselves, among their own.”

  The other man smiled. “Artificial differences.”

  Again David felt the quick heat of embarrassment, as if the doctor’s remark, mild as it was, had been a reproof to Ferdinand. And, troubled, he looked away, out to the placid sea, which was at the moment barely moving, slowly tilting like liquid in a cup. The sight of it was soothing. The rigging hummed in the wind, vibrating like a violin.

  Ferdinand rubbed his hands together. “It won’t be long before you’ll be home in Charleston, Doctor. After that, it’s down the coast for us, into the Gulf and home.” He took a deep, audible breath. “Ah, glorious! Glorious! This freedom you feel on the ocean! Who could believe we left Europe way back there only a few weeks ago? It’s hard to remember that Europe exists at all!”

  From the lower deck came a babble and rumble of voices. Everyone looked down to where a mass of humanity had gathered on the open deck below. They were mostly young men—immigrants, with here and there a clustered family: restless children, fathers in peasant clothing, women carrying infants. They were taking their allotted daily hour of air. Those above watched in silent curiosity; those below did not once glance up.

  “Poor creatures! I hope,” remarked the doctor, “they don’t carelessly set fires with their cooking down there. I worry about that.”

  “It gets cold below,” David said. “Either that or hot as a stove. I could hardly breathe in the heat one day when I was there.”

  “You were down there?” Ferdinand asked sharply. “What were you doing?”

  “I brought them something to eat.”

  “To eat! They have food.”

  “It’s not fit to eat, Papa. Even their water smells foul. Last week their meat was maggoty and they had to throw it overboard. It’s not fair, you know! The captain promised these people decent food, but he makes them buy potatoes from him when they run out. They’re thirsty and hungry. Up here in the cabins we get fresh meat and oranges from the Azores. It’s not fair.”

  Dr. Carvalho murmured gently, “A great many things in this world aren’t and never will be.”

  In earnest protest the boy’s forehead wrinkled. “There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be!” he cried. “I asked one of the sailors how many people there were down there in that little space. Four hundred! They’re all crammed in. Two double rows of bunks, one above the other. There’s a narrow aisle between. You can hardly squeeze through. And the space is only five and a half feet high. If you’re tall like me, you have to stoop to walk.”

  Ferdinand interrupted. “You’re not to go down again, do you hear? They’ve got rats and dysentery. God knows what diseases you might have caught or given to the rest of us.”

  “Your father is right,” Dr. Carvalho said. “Where the air is fetid, fever breeds. That’s well known.”

  David was distressed. “But I promised to bring some oranges! I’ve had them every day; surely I can share a few, can’t I?”

  “Lower your voice before you bring disgrace on us,” Ferdinand said, for David’s voice had risen. The French bankers and their wives were staring.

  “I haven’t said anything disgraceful. I was only saying what I believed.”

  With conspicuous tact Dr. Carvalho moved away. And Ferdinand continued, “Your manners need mending. Jews especially need better manners, and it’s time you learned some, David.”

  Anger mounted; the father’s face flushed and his lips quivered; the son faced the father.

  “Jews? Why should we especially cringe?”

  “I’m not asking you to ‘cringe,’ as you put it. I’m only asking you not to make a spectacle of yourself and of us.”

  David persisted. Something in him wanted to avoid his father’s anger. Something else drove him to goading. “But why? Why should just Jews have better manners? You still haven’t told me.”

  “Because.” Ferdinand spoke in a low, agitated tone. “Because to be Jewish is to be judged, to be a victim. Heine—you’ve read Heine?”

  “Yes, I have. I’ve read his poems.”

  “Well. He himself said that to be a Jew is a misfortune. Heine said that. Read
it for yourself.”

  “And you agree with him, Papa?”

  “Certainly I agree. Look around you. It’s only common sense.”

  The boy felt as if he had been bruised. “Yet you gave money to the synagogue at home.”

  Ferdinand shrugged. “For old times’ sake. For your mother’s sake. I never go to the synagogue.”

  “You’re a Christian, then?”

  “Certainly not. I would never convert. What do you take me for? It’s simply that—it’s just that—none of it means that much to me. None of it. And least of all that foolishness of the dietary laws; you think God cares what you put in your stomach? That any man who eats pork is an evil man?”

  “I don’t think that at all, Papa. For myself, I obey because it’s a reminder of who I am. It’s hard to explain—”

  “Well, don’t try,” Ferdinand grumbled.

  David turned frowning into the western sun. He stood for a long time at the prow. A line of gulls which had been following the ship past Bermuda rode with the wind over the phosphorescent, gleaming sea. A flying fish sprang upward, flashing silver, then curved back into the water.

  God is a great strength, the boy thought. We move with Him. The gulls move through the air and the fish through water, but we move with Him. We feel large then; we feel proud.

  But his father had made him feel small and ashamed. Tears came to his eyes. He saw a chasm opening between himself and his father.

  Miriam, in her childish way, was troubled, too. She had heard it all. Oh, how shocked Opa would be to know what Papa had just said! Still, why did David make Papa angry? He couldn’t possibly win, so why start? This was like being home with Aunt Dinah’s complaining and Opa’s snapping at her to be quiet. One could hear their quarreling voices even with a wall between. She had such dread of angry voices. When they fought at home, she’d pick Gretel up and hold her close. The soft, licking tongue, the small warm life, were such comfort against angry voices.