by Belva Plain
“Of course,” Aunt Emma said, “it would have been better to begin your association at first. That’s the custom and it’s very nice to have a servant who goes straight through life with you,” she explained to Miriam and David. “But still, you’re all young and you’ll have many good years together, I’m sure. Fanny, you will sleep on a quilt at Mam’selle Miriam’s door in case she should need you for anything during the night. But I’m sure you know that already.” Emma smiled encouragement. “And Blaise will do the same for you, David. As soon as you start school, he will go with you to carry your books and packages or do any errand you may have. Well, again, no need to go into that, Blaise knows what’s expected. Now, if ever you have need of extra help for any reason, David, your father will lend Maxim or Chanute. Otherwise, they already have plenty to do around the house. I’m told you are both very good-tempered, Blaise and Fanny, and I’m glad to know that, because that’s just what we want.” She paused, as if waiting for some comment or question, but since there was none, concluded the interview with “Well, I can’t think of anything else,” and started downstairs. Halfway down she called back, “They will be good for your French, David and Miriam, since they speak nothing else.”
The four young people now faced one another, none knowing how to begin. Then Fanny, somewhat bolder than her brother, smiled at Miriam. Blaise stood with downcast eyes, while David, flushed with embarrassment over his own awkwardness, as well as for other reasons not yet quite clear to him, struggled for something to say. But at that moment Pelagie came upstairs with Eulalie and dismissed the servants.
“We’ll call you when we’re ready to retire. The men are still playing dominoes,” she told David, “but I’m too tired. Shall we sit out on the balcony awhile?”
They passed through a series of bedrooms. “Mama must get a lit de repos for you, David, so you don’t ruin the bedspread when you take your afternoon nap.”
“But I never sleep in the afternoon!”
“You will here. Everyone does. Our afternoons are so languid,” Pelagie said, drawing out the syllables.
Unconsciously she smoothed a rising bulge above the circle of her skirt, and Miriam, observing the gesture, inquired directly, “When are you going to have your baby?”
Eulalie drew in her breath. “What can the child be saying?” she cried over Miriam’s head.
“Oh, I know Pelagie’s going to have a baby,” Miriam said wisely. “I can tell. I’ve seen that at home. When are you going to have the baby?”
“In November. I should like to talk about it,” Pelagie said softly. “I’m so happy. But my sister thinks it’s shocking to take notice of it. I’m sure I don’t know why, when Mama had nine after us, counting all the ones who died, that is.” And she went on in a kind of quiet defiance of her sister, who was already halfway out of the door. “My baby will be born right here in my room on the borning bed. The napping sofa has more than one use, you see.”
There was a gentle silence among the three until the young woman spoke again. “I hope you’re feeling a little bit better about being here, David.”
David flushed. “I feel fine, really I do.”
“You weren’t happy at all the first few days.” When he did not deny that, Pelagie continued, “You didn’t know this wasn’t a Jewish household. I understand.”
In the next bedroom through the open door, David could see the altar, or what the family referred to as the altar: a table covered with a lace cloth on which stood a vial of holy water and some small white plaster statues. His eyes traveled from these to the floor, which was covered with a summer matting of cool straw.
“I think your papa should have told you beforehand.”
He laughed shortly. “I’m just as glad he didn’t. Opa would have fought our coming here, and who knows, he might have won.”
“But on the voyage he should have said something—still, it’s over and done. But if there should be some questions you want to ask me …”
For a moment the awkwardness and the stammer came back. Yet for some reason David had to ask—not that the answer would make any difference now—but he had to ask: “How did my father marry your mother?”
“Where, do you mean? It was in the cathedral. The vicar general gave a dispensation because of the difference in religion. And Father Moni performed the ceremony. Oh, it was beautiful! I always love the cathedral anyway. Even a funeral is beautiful.” And Pelagie, rapt, made a pyramid of her fingers. “I was only a little girl when they held the memorial service for the Emperor Napoleon. Everything was draped in black, so solemn, and there was wonderful music, a French chorus. It was as if God Himself were there.”
It had gone quite dark outside. The three faces were blurred against the mild glow of the lamp in the adjoining room, so that one could only imagine the expression on Pelagie’s face as she half whispered, “But then, of course, God is everywhere, isn’t He? I always think it doesn’t matter which way you worship Him in your heart. I know some priests say our way is the only way, but I don’t think that can be true. If only you take Him seriously. Too many people in our city don’t, I’m sorry to say.”
“That’s what Mrs. de Rivera told me tonight,” David answered.
“Rosa? I’m very fond of Rosa. She tells me you met her brother on the voyage.”
“Oh, yes, and we liked each other. But he’s going to college in the North when the time comes, so I shall probably never see him again.”
“Yes, the Anglos send their sons to William and Mary or even Harvard. Of course, we Creoles send our sons to Paris, but maybe you’ll go north to college, too.”
To that David made no reply. The possibilities were confusing, almost alarming.
“Or perhaps you would like Paris, too? You and Miriam? I was at school in France for a while.”
“No,” David said. This was more alarming. “I don’t want to go back to Europe. And I don’t want Miriam to go, either,” he added firmly.
“Oh, Miriam can go to school here. It really doesn’t matter for a girl one way or the other. She’ll be married young, pretty girls always are. I was sixteen. I met Sylvain when I was fifteen, and we were married the next year. Oh,” Pelagie cried, “I only hope you’ll be as lucky as I am, Miriam. But you will be.” And taking the child by the shoulders, she turned her toward the lampglow. “Look at those eyes! You’ll put your hair up here, like this, with a curl over each ear. And I’m sure your papa will buy some diamonds for your ears, you have good little ears. Oh, yes, you’ll be a beauty, darling.”
She prattles like her mother, David thought; that is to say, like a silly child. But she’s good all the same. He liked the tender way her hands touched Miriam.
“You have to come see us in the country. We live with Sylvain’s father, but Sylvain has promised me to buy a house in town so that we can have a place of our own for the social season and the opera. I do so love the opera .…”
The prattle ceased when Sylvain appeared and took his wife off to their room.
Blaise got up from his pallet on the floor when David entered his own room.
“I’m sorry if I woke you, Blaise.”
“No, no, I’ve been waiting for you, M’sieu David.”
“You go back to sleep. I’ll come in a minute.”
“Where are you going, M’sieu David?”
“Call me just David, will you, Blaise? I’m going to the olla in the back hall for water.”
Blaise was dismayed. “Not that one! It hasn’t been clarified yet. Serafina put alum in it not an hour ago. Besides, I’m always supposed to get things for you, M’sieu David.”
“But I’m used to doing things for myself, Blaise.”
“Not here, M’sieu David. Not here.”
Blaise’s bare feet slapped the steps as he descended; his slender shadow wavered on the wall.
David went out to the rear gallery overlooking the courtyard. The moon had risen and in the luminous night he could see the ragged outlines of massed banana leaves;
a wind passed briefly and they rustled. He heard the purl and ripple of water, and remembered that there was a fountain at the end of the garden. A fresh fragrance, faintly tart, lay in the air; he remembered being told it was from those syringa bushes banked like snow against the farther wall. And a restless bird called out one startled, poignant note. Sweet night! Like no night the boy had ever seen. So sweet, so troubling!
Perhaps I came too late, he thought. Perhaps even fifteen is too late to make a change like this. I don’t know. I want to do right. I will do right. But I just don’t know about this place.
4
“Well, now you’ve seen the U.S. Mint,” Ferdinand said as they swung together past the foot of Esplanade Avenue. He put his arm around David’s shoulder. “You don’t know what it means to have my son here with me! My one regret—I can’t say it often enough—my one regret is that it took so long, that we’ve lost so much time. But enough of that. You’re here,” he said cheerfully, “so let’s get on with the present. What was I telling you? Oh, I was saying I do a great many other things beside merchandising, you know. It’s not enough to work for money. Once you’ve got it, you have to make it work for you! So you see, I’ve been branching out. I transact business all over the country. I hold a good many mortgages and I’m a broker for planters who need advances on their crops. It seems they always do need them, too. Well, they live high .… David, would you like to try a cala? They’re a kind of rice pancake, awfully good.”
In front of the cathedral a Negro woman in a starched white apron was cooking over a small fire. Ferdinand hailed her. “How are you, Sally? This is my son. I want to buy him a cala, but he’s not hungry. She makes the best in the city,” he said as they walked on. “Used to belong to a friend of mine, but she bought her freedom. You can always tell a free woman of color by the tignon, the handkerchief knotted on top of her head. Some of them are marvelous cooks. At night they come out with hot sweet-potato cakes. You’ll have to try one.”
And suddenly, as they rounded a corner, they came upon a bustle of life; never had David seen so much color in motion or such a crowd converging on one place. All his senses tingled. Voices swirled, flower-fragrance merged with river smells, and his eyes were dazzled by the burning light. He stood, astonished.
Ferdinand was delighted with this effect upon David.
“Surprised?” He laughed. “Yes, it’s quite a sight, the French Market.”
Nestled below the levee, the stalls were strung out in a long Une. Freshly watered vegetables were arranged like bouquets. In the fish stalls, on beds of ice, the fresh catch glistened silver, black, and mottled gray. Live crabs, green as new grass, crawled alongside lobsters. An aged Indian woman squatted behind a pile of leather goods. Ladies, protected by parasols and followed by maids, moved from stall to stall, or took their beignets and coffee at small tables under a shady roof.
Silent and marveling, David walked up and down, in and out, seeing and remembering as though he were a painter marking a preliminary sketch in his head.
“Like a café noir?” urged Ferdinand. “No? I suppose you’ve seen enough for today, then?”
They went out beyond the stalls. At the far end a dentist’s chair, surrounded by a band of loud musicians, stood on a platform. A small crowd lingered there, watching a hapless man having his teeth pulled while the band’s noise covered his cries.
“The fellow pulling teeth has a brother at the Medical College. Fills the chair of Materia Medica. I know him pretty well. I know plenty of others, too. In any case, you’d have no trouble being admitted. I’ll take you soon to visit, but there’s really no hurry. You have a few years’ work ahead of you first. The Americans—you know, I must give them credit—have really been agitating for education. I hear they’re bringing in a man who worked with somebody called Horace Mann up in Massachusetts—that’s way north of New York—setting up free schools. They say we’re going to have free schooling here in a few years. Well, it’ll be a good thing; Lord knows, I never had much schooling in Europe and I’ve felt the lack of it ever since. The lack of it makes a man feel a little shy at times, although I hate to admit it. Yet I’ve certainly done well enough without it, haven’t I?” He laughed. “But I want you to have all you can get, David. Fortunately, you won’t need free public schooling. People in our class here have private tutors or send their sons to private schools.”
David recalled the previous night’s talk with Pelagie. “What about Miriam?” he asked.
“Oh, there are plenty of little schools around here for girls, run by gentlewomen usually, women of good family, very refined, who need the money. I don’t know how much the girls learn, but they learn enough, all the niceties. What does a girl need, after all?”
Eager little Miriam, curious, quick and fanciful! Surely that mind was the equal of David’s own? It occurred to him that a girl’s mind might be wasted just as much by idle luxury as by the meager poverty of their European village. He was about to say so when his father resumed his explanations as they walked along the river’s edge.
“Yes, these ships are my lifeline to the world.” He looked around, lowering his voice so as not to reveal any private affairs to strangers. “Last year, David, we brought in thirty thousand dollars’ worth of specie from Mexico alone.”
Four and five deep, ships lay in tiers along the river. On foot and on horseback, in fashionable carriages and overloaded wagons, traffic surged through the streets. The city was fat and glossy with prosperity.
“You can see any type of humanity you can think of on this riverfront,” Ferdinand mused. “Every kind of confidence man and swindler. You will see a laborer shoot dice for a few cents and a rich man bet thousands on the boat races. On the river steamers, of course, you’ve got the professional gambler. You have to watch out for card sharps going up the river. Many a planter’s been fooled by one of those gentlemen. I’ve seen a man lose the profits of a whole year’s crop in one hour’s poker game. Thousands and thousands of dollars.”
They crossed to walk on the shady side of the street under triple tiers of iron-lace balconies. Someone above them, watering a pot of hanging ferns, sent an instant’s worth of pungent fragrance into the sultry air.
“That’s the Cotton Exchange, corner of Royal Street. Maybe I’ll take you there tomorrow and introduce you to some of my friends. Sure there’s nothing you want before we go home?”
David thought of something. “I’d like to buy some books in English.”
“Still insist on English? Well, all right, there’s a bookstore down this way. We’ve got about nine bookstores in the city, you know.”
At the back of a deep narrow shop sat an old man wearing a skullcap. He stood up when they came in.
“English books? Over here. Poetry, novels, history, grammar. All here.” He stood watching curiously while David examined the shelves. “If you want a grammar, young gentleman, I recommend this one.”
“I want to teach myself to speak English,” David explained, speaking in French.
“The grammar will not be enough, then. You should acquaint yourself with the literature. Then the language will come alive for you. Do you like poetry?”
“I’ve not read very much, and that in German. But yes, I like it.”
“Then try Lord Byron, a Romantic.” The word was savored and repeated. “Romantic. A young man’s poet. Not for me any longer, but certainly for you. And for novels, Sir Walter Scott. He’ll hold your interest. There’s nothing dry about him.”
“My son can have as many books as he wants,” Ferdinand said. “On education I don’t stint.”
The old man bowed. “And most wise of you, sir.”
When a pile had been assembled and paid for, the proprietor shuffled back to the shelves and handed David a thin leather-bound volume.
“When you have finished all these others, you will have learned enough of the language to appreciate Jonathan Swift, the greatest writer of them all. He was a satirist. You know what a satirist is, y
oung gentleman? No? I’ll tell you. He is a man with sharp eyes and a sharp tongue, or, I should say, pen. He sees the evils of the world. He ridicules and scolds.”
“I should imagine that sort of thing to be way over the head of a fifteen-year-old lad,” Ferdinand objected.
The old man shook his head. “Not this boy’s. I see by his eyes that he will understand. Here. Take it.”
After they left the shop, David asked why the old man had given him a present.
“That’s called lagniappe,” Ferdinand explained. “Merchants here always add something in proportion to what you buy. And we did buy a bundle. We should have sent Maxim or Blaise to carry them home.”
“Papa, I don’t need a servant to carry a few books. You know, I liked the man, didn’t you? He’s Jewish, isn’t he?”
“I believe so. Yes.”
“The People of the Book,” David said deliberately. He didn’t know what made him say it, what it was that made him keep leading his father back to the subject that only brought discomfiture to them both.
For a moment Ferdinand made no comment. Then he said, “You know, David, I understand you, even though you may not think I do. Your religious feelings are entirely natural at your age. At fifteen one likes to feel virtuous! Even I did, though I must say for a much shorter time than most.” He spoke with a kind of amused tolerance. “You’ll outgrow it, very likely, now that I’ve gotten you away from village life. But if you don’t, that will be your affair. If only for the sake of your mother of blessed memory, I shall never interfere.”
“I will not outgrow it.”
“Well, time will tell. As I believe I told you once before, Heine himself said that Judaism is a misfortune. Why do you think that in the last ten years alone under Friedrich Wilhelm III more than two thousand Jews were baptized? Because it’s the only road to survival under an oppressor, that’s why. Fortunately here it’s not necessary to convert, and as I’ve also told you, I never wanted to. All I want is to be let alone.”