by Belva Plain
Ferdinand walked to the end of the room. His fists were clenched at his sides, his head bent. Reaching the fireplace, he studied the bronze mantel clock as if it might hold the answer to his perplexity. When suddenly, on the half hour, it chimed its treble note, he started as if indeed an answer had been given.
“Yes, by God, I think it will be better. Maybe you’ll get some sense in your head so I can leave you my money when I die and not have it squandered in some crazy renegade cause.”
“I don’t want your money when you die. I don’t even want it now,” David said stiffly. “I told you I can take care of myself.”
Up past Ferdinand’s collar the flesh turned red. “Don’t want my money? You’ll take my money and like it! And you’ll make something of yourself. When you’re away from here maybe you’ll come to appreciate what you’ve got here and come back and shut your mouth and let people who know more than you do run things! Yes,” he shouted furiously as David fled from the room, “yes, run! You don’t want to hear me now, but the time will come when you’ll remember what I’ve said. A mule!” he cried to Sylvain. “A Goddamned mule! And only God knows what will become of him!”
The carriage which was to take David to the train waited beneath Miriam’s window. When the child drew the curtains back, she could see the hot glisten of the leather seat, which would be broiling to the touch. Maxim’s round black head was turned toward the front door. In another second or two David would emerge from it; his hurrying feet were almost at the bottom of the staircase now. There was such heavy sorrow in her small chest! All morning she had been pleading.
“Take me with you, David! I won’t be any trouble. I’ll go to school, I’ll be quiet while you study, please—”
Her hands, her whole body, had implored him. But his hands had only stroked the hair from her forehead.
“No, no, Liebchen. You stay here. It will be much better for you.”
“But why?” she had cried. “Why will it?”
“Because. Listen to me. You’re a woman, a little woman, and women need to be cared for. Here you’ll have everything. You’ll be safe.”
And then he had kneeled down to her level so that she could see into his eyes where green-gold flecks swam through the brown, and could also see the thickening black fuzz on his cheeks. Suddenly he had become older and determined, someone different from her familiar brother.
“You’ll go to school and learn lovely things, music and poetry, and you’ll learn to keep a house so that you can marry and have children and take good care of them.” Then he had stood up. His voice had changed. Something had come into it that was perhaps like laughter, a queer sort of laughter with a little twist of anger. “Someday, heaven knows when, women will know more and do more. Maybe then I’ll even send for you .… But it’s not time yet, and this is best right now.” So he had kissed her and left her.
She watched him walk to the carriage. She saw Maxim reach for the portmanteau, saw David refuse the service, bringing the heavy case up by himself. Then Maxim mounted to the box and the horses moved away. The street was still with the sultry quiet of late morning so that the slow clop of the horse rang clearly. At the far end of Conti Street a passing vendor cried once, “Melons! Sweet melons!” and subsided. Two agitated sparrows attacked each other on the piazza railing. Dropping the curtains, the child let them fall back to dim the room and put her head on the sill—not crying anymore, just very tired and empty. The dog plucked at her skirt with a questioning paw, but receiving no answer, curled up on the floor and went to sleep.
For long minutes Miriam knelt there until something buzzed in the room, circling, angrily buzzing. And she knew it was one of those swollen blue-green flies that cluster in horse droppings on the street. Shuddering, she raised her head. Fanny had swooped on the fly with the swatter. For a moment the two girls stood facing each other; then Fanny’s arms opened and Miriam came to rest on a knobby young shoulder that smelted of freshly laundered gingham.
“I know, mam’selle, I know. I was sad, too, when I came to this strange new place. But I’m over it, and you’ll get over it, too. You haven’t even been here a month.”
“You think so, Fanny?”
“Of course, I do. You’ll go to school and have friends and parties and dresses. You’ll have everything a young lady like you is supposed to have. Oh, you’ll like it here! Maxim was telling Blaise and me how nice it is. It’s really very nice .…”
5
On Miriam’s eleventh birthday they gave her a diary bound in white satin with gilded edges. For every day there was a page, and in the corner of each page a flower, an orange blossom, violet, or rose, along with a verse appropriate for young ladies.
May! Queen of blossoms,
And fulfilling flowers,
With what pretty music
Shall we charm the hours?
Every day after school she sat down at her rosewood desk while Fanny moved on sliding slippers, putting clothes in the wardrobe, folding petticoats, drawing the blinds against the western glare, and with small thuds, stacking the school books on the shelf.
Miriam’s pen ran over the silky paper in the round American script which now replaced the pointed script she had learned in her earlier life, inscribing her dutiful daily Unes.
Years later she would read her words with a certain wistful amusement at the simple sentences, often trivial and sometimes charming, those intimations of a life turning from childhood into girlhood as gradually as morning slides toward noon. And through the words she would recall the event: Yes, that was the summer we went to Pelagie’s, that was the day I won the elocution prize. But the real life, the true life of the moment when the hand was stayed on the pen and the mind went spinning, would not be found upon the paper.
“It is two years today since David went away. It seems much longer, and much longer since we crossed the ocean.
“When they wrote that Opa was dead, I tried to remember his face. His beard was thin and gray; veins crawled on his bare head and on the backs of his hands. I squeezed my eyes shut, but that was all I saw; I didn’t see him at all.
“I tried to remember the place where we lived. Here in this city the yellow sunshine covers everything like paint; over there the world was gray and brown or in summer a dark, wet green. I know it was like that but I can’t really see it.”
“David and Papa don’t write to each other, not any more than Papa’s sending money, and David’s sending thanks.
“In the beginning Papa said angry things about David, but I think he was really more sad than angry. I think he is a man who doesn’t like being angry. He never is for very long. Aunt Emma says that’s why people take advantage of him. Papa hardly ever mentions David anymore.
“Aunt Emma says I am doing very well at school. I heard her talking downstairs, having coffee in the afternoon.
“Aunt Emma’s voice is rich and satisfied. ‘All Miriam’s French is perfect,’ she says. ‘All children learn languages with no trouble at all. She doesn’t do badly at the piano, either, or at flower painting,’ she says. ‘Only her needlework—well, she will never be like my Eulalie, that’s certain.’
“I hate Eulalie. She is never without some kind of needle in her hand, crocheting, tatting, embroidering baby clothes for Pelagie’s children.
“Aunt Emma always says: ‘Poor Eulalie! Unfortunate girl! She has so many virtues. It’s so hard that her younger sister should have everything. Just yesterday it seems we had Pelagie’s wedding, and to think she’s expecting her third in another month. How fast the years go. Why, I was saying to Mr. Raphael only the other day, sooner than we think it will be time to find a husband for his Miriam. She’s already going on twelve.’
“Grown-up women say such stupid things!”
“I had a letter from David yesterday. He has finally had a long letter from Papa, who sent him a lot of money to buy books. I am so glad.
“Today Papa sounded a little hopeful, even a little proud of David. At least he spends
for books, Papa says. He’s no wastrel like so many of them, away at school, spending too much and drinking too much. Columbia, Aunt Emma says, is in a fine neighborhood. The best families, she saw once when she was in New York, live on Chambers and Murray streets. They will be a good influence. She says he will grow out of his foolishness and come home. When he is finished at the medical college, he will come home, you will see, she says. And Papa says yes, perhaps so.
“I do not think so.”
“David wrote that he is happy I visit Rosa’s house every week. It is a Jewish home.
“‘What,’ Emma says, ‘You do not call her “Mrs. de Rivera” or at least “Aunt Rosa”?’ She is shocked. But Rosa asked me to, although I do call her husband Uncle Henry. Aunt Emma does not understand that Rosa is like that; she doesn’t care much about rules. The house is jolly. The boys are such pretty little boys; they break everything, but it doesn’t seem to bother Rosa. She scatters things around, too. I laugh a lot when I am there. People laugh in their house. The boys are named after their father and their uncle. Jews aren’t supposed to name after the living, but the de Riveras are Sephardic, and that’s different. The family takes me to the synagogue, the Gates of Mercy. Sometimes when Marie Claire is in the city visiting, we take her, too.
“I wish I had a talent like Marie Claire’s. Uncle Sisyphus says she might sing at the opera someday. She is surely not pretty except when she is singing. Then she is almost beautiful. I have quite a silly thought about her, that we will be connected in some way when we are grown up. I don’t know why that should be, we hardly know each other.”
“The Scroll of the Law is full of holes; this synagogue is a poor place, but it is better than nothing, Uncle Henry says.
“I wish Papa would go with us, but he will not. It is too bad. Aunt Emma says that he is pleased that the de Riveras take me, they are a fine family. They are rich, that is what she and Papa mean. I am beginning to understand things that people don’t think I understand.
“Sometimes I sit at the services half asleep because it can be very boring, but I don’t mind, because I know my mother is glad I’m there. I feel her warm breath on my neck. Her shoulder touches mine. She is wearing the plaid shawl that she always wears when I think of her. I remember her death and I know for her sake I will never be led away from what I am. Never. I am what I am. New Orleans is a mixed-up place.”
“What a good thing it was that Papa was not with us last week on Yom Kippur. Manis Jacobs, who isn’t really a rabbi anyway, said right out in the middle of the service that he was going home to eat and we should all go home, too, and eat, because fasting was ridiculous. And now this morning he is dead. I said to Papa that was perhaps God’s punishment and Papa said that was superstitious nonsense. He said it kindly, though.
“Now we shall have Rowley Marks to lead the congregation, and I think he knows even less than Manis Jacobs knew. Rosa says he got his name because he plays old Rowley in The School for Scandal. He is a part-time actor and also a captain in the fire engine company.
“But he doesn’t pretend to be a scholar of religion, Uncle Henry says, and he keeps saying it will all come right in time, you have to give credit where it’s due. These men are trying to keep our people together in the absence of anything better. At least they are not turning their backs on their own people. Like Papa, he means, and so many others.”
“I wrote to David and asked him why he can’t study medicine here next year. But he doesn’t want to. He says he cannot live in a place where human beings treat other human beings so cruelly.
“One would think that people here sat around thinking up ways to torture their servants! Aunt Emma and Papa are always so kind. They gave a wedding for the cook’s daughter last month, with a white veil and a big cake. All the people in the house are very fond of them. They buy beautiful new clothes for Maxim and Chanute, who are always joking with each other. If they were so miserably treated, would they always be joking?
“I asked Fanny whether she was happy and she said she certainly was. She likes the dances in New Orleans. You know, colored people love to dance, she said. And she was so pleased with the hat Aunt Emma gave her for Easter. I asked her whether there was any place she would rather be and she was quite alarmed. ‘You’re not going to send me away?’ she asked. ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘I am going to teach you to read.’ I go over my own lessons with her on the upper piazza after school. She is learning quickly, she is very smart, I think.”
“I got a letter from David in which he says he met Gabriel Carvalho.
New York, November, 1841
Dearest Sister,
I do not know why you have been in my mind more than ever today. I am sitting here in front of my lamp and a pile of textbooks, three big, fat ones, to be exact, and I cannot open them without first writing this to you.
Oh, I do know why you’ve haunted me all day! Last night I met Gabriel Carvalho—we don’t see each other much—the law school and the medical school are on different planets—but when we do, it’s always so good. We have some gay times in New York, theater, dancing, interesting people. Last night we went visiting on Washington Square. That’s where “old” New York lives, very elegant, a little bit like your Place d’Armes, but not much. The houses all have “stoops,” a high flight of steps up to the front door. Gas lights, of course, and fires in every fireplace—it’s terribly cold here, the way it was in Europe. Can you still remember how we shivered?
Anyway—I’m wandering, it’s past midnight and my half-sleepy thoughts come crowding—anyway, there was a young girl in the house who looked so much like you, or the way I imagine you must look now that you’re almost fourteen, and it’s because of seeing her that I’ve been missing you all day. Gabriel, too, remarked on the resemblance. I was surprised that he remembered you so clearly after all this time, but he did, and we talked about the day Gretel fell overboard and how you cried and thanked him so prettily.
Sometimes it seems as if all that was yesterday, so I must remind myself that you are no longer that eager little girl. I suppose they will soon be getting you ready for marriage. Whoever the man may be, I hope he will be exactly right for you, a kind man with the right thoughts.
You will at once interpret that as meaning the “right politics,” I’m sure, but believe me, I am realistic enough to know that would be expecting too much, living as you do, where you are. So I’ll merely hope you will love each other well, and let it go at that.
As to politics, you would be astounded—at least I always am, although I should be used to things here by now—at the number of people who talk like southern planters and have never been in the South at all. One finds them mostly among the Washington Square and the stock market crowd. In the medical school there’s a mixture of opinions, ranging all the way to fiery New England abolitionism, with which, you must know, I find myself most at home.
Funny thing—when I’m with Gabriel, I hold my tongue about politics most of the time, and he does the same, because we don’t want anything to come between us. I hope nothing ever will, but I don’t know. In my dark moments I seem to see the country sliding toward conflict. God knows, I hope not.
Oh, why do I bother you with all this? It’s only my middle-of-the-night mood, and missing you.
Besides, I’d better get to the books. It seems there’s no end to what you have to memorize to become a doctor. But I still love what I’m doing and can’t see myself being anything but a doctor.
Write and tell me everything about yourself, about school and the holidays and even your new dresses, everything.
Your loving brother,
David
“And Rosa got a letter the same day from Gabriel telling how he had met David. Rosa is very proud of her brother. ‘He is the spiritual one in the family,’ she says, ‘not like me.’
“And then she said, ‘Do you know he would make a fine husband for you?’ Which was very embarrassing because of the way she looked at me, as if she were measuring
me like yard goods. After all, I am only thirteen—well, almost fourteen. Papa, I’m sure, would be very pleased if I were to tell him. The Sephardim set the standard with their culture, he says, in spite of being a trifle haughty. But Rosa is not haughty. And Gabriel wasn’t, either. I liked him. He wasn’t fun to talk to, the way David is, though. He was too quiet, I thought. Papa said he will be a handsome man when he’s grown up. Anyway, I think it was very silly of Rosa to talk like that.”
“We are all going up the river by sidewheeler to stay at Plaisance for the christening of Pelagie’s new baby, her first boy. Just think, she had no children when I first saw her, and now she has four!
“Aunt Emma says it is the duty of a wife to have a large family, as many children as she can. Rosa says Aunt Emma is the typical Creole. ‘Make no mistake,’ Rosa says, ‘these women may not appear to, but they really run things. They are the matriarchs. It is the secret power of women.’ Rosa tells me interesting things about the world, but I do not always agree with them. I think, from what I see, having all those babies cannot mean you run things. What secret power is that?
“So many of them die! What can be the joy of that? One of Aunt Emma’s children died when it was just a week old, three of them died in the fever epidemic, one was bitten by a rattlesnake. How horrible! And some others died of second-summer sickness. It is such a dangerous time, the second summer. Oh, I should feel terrible if any of Pelagie’s babies died! I don’t know how Pelagie would bear it, she is so tender. She cries so easily. Over nothing, sometimes.”
“The house at Plaisance looks like that engraving of the Parthenon that hangs in the upstairs hall outside Papa’s room. It belongs to Pelagie’s father-in-law, Mr. Lambert Labouisse.