Crescent City

by Belva Plain

  “‘I have seen a hospital camp abandoned to the enemy because we had to retreat and save ourselves. We left our own to die as prisoners or, perhaps worse, to suffer without anesthesia.

  “ Oh, God, why do I write all this? Maybe in the morning I will not send it to you after all. But now as I write by candlelight, I feel as if the ghosts of all I have seen are looking over my shoulder and telling me that I must put this down.

  “‘I remember the look of these deaths, so unlike the white and quiet deaths of our grandparents. These deaths are red and raw. But hear what I dread: It is that I am becoming used to them. I glance at a dead boy lying twisted among his poor belongings, his tin cup, his pistol and frying pan, his knapsack with its scattered photographs and letters from home. I glance and pass on.

  “‘What is to become of me? What kind of man will I be when this is over?’”

  Rosa put the letter back into her reticule. There was a silence, neither woman speaking until Rosa took the letter out again.

  “I almost forgot. There is a postscript. It says: ‘Remember me to Miriam. I hope she is well.’”

  Erect as a general, Ferdinand stood in front of the map which had been pinned on the wall of the back parlor, reading dispatches aloud to Eugene. The two men, with Emma and her daughters and young Eugene, were all following the war. They had rejoiced and argued over Manassas, railing at Jeff Davis.

  “We should have and could have walked into Washington,” declared Ferdinand. “They couldn’t have stopped us.”

  The exhilaration which had revived Eugene’s spirits at the war’s beginning was gradually dissipating itself. “No, no,” he answered. “That victory came too early to do any real good. It has made us think we’re unbeatable.”

  Ferdinand, on the other hand, clung to cheer, and Miriam reflected on the contradiction. Papa had denied the very possibility of war, but accepting it now, he played it like a great, stimulating game, a complex exercise.

  “I never thought,” Eugene observed gloomily, “that Grant would whip Johnston and Beauregard at Shiloh. The Mississippi is open now as far down as Vicksburg.”

  Yesterday General Johnston’s funeral cortege had passed up St. Charles Street in visible proof of the terrible defeat. At the mouth of the river, one hundred fifty miles south of the city, lay the Union fleet, waiting for their cautious, deliberate push toward the forts. In command was Admiral Farragut, bitterly referred to as a son of New Orleans. Strange and stranger, Miriam thought, these interwoven, contradictory allegiances.

  Pelagie’s Alexandre, a messenger on Lovell’s staff, brought daily news to the back-parlor strategists. His pink cheeks were moist with perspiration and the breathless importance of his tidings.

  “The forts and the city are positively safe! You can’t believe what’s being done! We’ve got dismasted schooners, eight of them, loaded with logs, they’re fastened together with cable and laid in a row across the river. Absolutely impassable! And in the bayous we’ve driven piles, sunk live oak trees, still green, whole bands of them, forty-five feet wide. You couldn’t possibly get through them, either! And on the river we’ve got fifty fire rafts heaped with wood and tar oil and cotton; one wouldn’t want to come up against one of those when it’s burning, I can tell you! And on the riverbanks below the fort, General Lovell’s setting troops of sharpshooters.”

  A few days later he came rushing to report that the bombardment of the forts had begun. This time there shone through his description the beginnings of disbelief, as if what he had seen were something that neither he nor anyone else could possibly have conceived of.

  “The air is so hot from all the firing that bees come swarming, trying to get away. And the river is full of dead fish. They say it’s the detonation of the guns that kills them, I don’t know. You can’t imagine …” His arms were spread on the table, where he leaned to rest, and his thoughtless young face was crossed for an instant by a shadow of thought. “You should have seen the smoke when the fire rafts came rolling down the river! From the turpentine and burning tar, you know. I had to watch very closely to bring reports back. Oh, it was like, like—the way one thinks of hell, the smoke so thick we could hardly see, and then the yellow flames when the ships exploded. They say dozens of men were drowned; first scorched, and scalded from the boilers, then drowned … Union men, mostly …” And he broke off, his eyes stretched wide, as if in just that moment he had understood that these were men, flesh like himself, scorched, scalded, and drowned.

  “Rosa’s Herbert is out there on the river,” was all Miriam said.

  The alarm bell sounded just after they had risen from the breakfast table on the morning of the twenty-fourth. Twelve bronze notes tolling from a church tower, and four times repeated, made a vibration that went through to the bones and caused everyone to stop in place, Sisyphus with a laden tray of dishes, Angelique halfway up the stairs, tilting her head with an unspoken question, the dog running to whimper under a chair.

  Emma quavered. “The alarm?” Her eyes begged for denial.

  “The alarm. Send Maxim down to the newspaper office,” Eugene ordered with a spark of his old command. “He can read the bulletin.”

  In half an hour Maxim was back, gay with the importance of carrying a report. “They have passed the forts. The forts have held, but the gunboats are coming up the river toward the city.”

  “Then they will be here by tomorrow,” Eugene said.

  Emma’s hand flew to her mouth, stifling what would undoubtedly have emerged as a wail. Young Eugene was exhilarated: Something different was about to happen!

  And I, Miriam thought, what do I feel? Fear? Yes, of course. Hope that now, maybe, the war will end? But no, wars do not end so quickly. Then, her thoughts turning to the immediate: Shall we be occupied or will they destroy the city first?

  Late in the afternoon Alexandre appeared. Having gone first to say good-bye to his mother, he had been asked by her to bear the latest news to the Mendes house.

  “I’m going with General Lovell to Camp Moore. The general has decided to leave the city without defense so the enemy will have no reason to bombard it.”

  The young man’s dash and vigor did wonders for Emma’s morale.

  “He does us proud,” she cried as her grandson went swinging down the steps. “He does us all proud. With men like him, we can’t be beaten.”

  Still, in spite of such sentiments, panic struck and hysteria ran through the streets. People walked up and down, back and forth, to the riverfront, to the evacúation trains, everywhere, without aim. Serafina left the roast burning in the kitchen fireplace. Even Sisyphus, the most dependable of all, forgot to close the front door when he went out. Emma went to Pelagie’s house, from which there was a view of the river. Rosa came looking for assurance—and was given assurance—that no news of her sons was bound to be good news.

  Ferdinand, unable to sit still, suggested taking young Eugene and Angelique downtown with Blaise to see what was going on.

  “What are they wearing?” Eugene inquired.

  The question puzzled Miriam. “Wearing?” she repeated.

  “Yes, I want them to dress up. Show pride. Even if we do lose the city, it’s not the end for us. We mustn’t look beaten. Wear your best clothes. Blaise, too, if he’s going. Have you got a new uniform, Blaise?”

  “Yes, sir.” A faint shadow crossed Blaise’s mouth and fled.

  “Have you got it on?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then put it on. Hurry.”

  “He hates his new uniform,” Angelique said when Blaise had gone. “Fanny told me he thinks it makes him look like the organ grinder’s monkey.”

  “Nonsense!” Ferdinand was indignant. “I saw to it myself, the finest quality broadcloth.”

  “It’s the color he hates. Purple. And the brass buttons. I don’t blame him. I shouldn’t want to be made to wear something I don’t like,” Angelique protested,

  “You are you, but Blaise is a servant. He can consider himse
lf fortunate that he’s here at all,” her father retorted, “instead of complaining about his clothes.”

  The child feels, however vaguely, what the father rejects, Miriam thought as she watched the little group go down the street All was changing, all in motion toward the time when Blaise would throw his servile uniform away. Eugene didn’t, or couldn’t, see it coming. And she remembered the morning when she had pleaded with him not to sell Blaise out of the house.

  When Ferdinand came back, his anguish at the city’s plight contradicted his uncontrollable excitement at the drama of events.

  “Fifteen thousand bales of cotton burning!” he cried. “Cotton ships, too. And steamboats, the docks, everything! Sugar and molasses poured out onto the street, people are scooping up what they can—”

  “Burning cotton!” Eugene was horrified. “Damn fools! We shall be needing it! Don’t they know that?”

  “Those are the orders. Smash machinery and anything the enemy might use. Thousands of people are down at the docks.”

  Miriam stood on the verandah watching black smoke rise and swirl over the levee. A crowd of women passed at the bottom of the street, poor shabby women, and others in silk, followed by a taggle of little black children who probably thought this was another sort of carnival.

  “Burn the city!” shrieked the women. “Don’t let them take it! Set it all on fire!” Some of them brandishing pistols. Miriam was almost sure she recognized Eulalie. The world had gone mad. It is enough to make one go mad, she thought.

  Night came. As darkness plunged, so quiet came, as if the city had exhausted itself with the day. The household went early to bed. Miriam alone was still downstairs when Fanny appeared at the parlor door.

  “Shall you be wanting anything, Miss Miriam?” she inquired after the nightly ritual.

  “No, thank you, Fanny, you may go to bed.”

  “You’re not going?” The keen face expressed concern.

  “Not just yet, Fanny.”

  The door closed quietly. And Miriam had an ugly, fleeting thought that the concern might be nothing more perhaps than a clever mask. One would like to ask: What do you think of all this, Fanny? Since this is a war—at least in part—for your liberation, are you rejoicing tonight that this city may fall, or are you perhaps a little saddened by the thought of its destruction? This was the first time there had been a barrier between them, something they could not cross with honest speech. No, that was not quite true. The central question of their relationship, of ownership, had never been spoken of, either; it had been tacitly forbidden on both their parts, so this was not the first time.

  Can Fanny possibly have any intimation of how I really feel about what is happening in the South? Probably not, since I have had to keep my feelings hidden. Still, there are subtleties of voice and manner, things not said as much as things said; Fanny’s brisk cheer, on which I daily rely, must surely conceal many things; in repose, when she thinks herself unobserved, a thoughtful expression, almost melancholic, settles over her face, but on hearing her name called, it is on the instant wiped away.

  So Miriam’s own thoughts ran on this night of fear and change.

  The tall clock in the hall coughed like the old thing it was and sounded once: Bong! Half past midnight. She took a book from the shelves, and finding that the words made no sense, replaced it to stand and contemplate the pleasant rows of leather bindings, of George Eliot, Dickens, Cooper, the Contes and Nouvelles of de Musset, the recollection of smooth pages and smooth words, rich images, making a delicious taste on the tongue and glimmering before the eyes. Civilized.

  She walked around the room. Finding some candy left in a silver dish on the table, she finished it. Then in the dining room she took a peach from the bowl on the sideboard, eating too much and still hungry. Back in the parlor she stood and stared at the piano. It was square and made of rosewood. It had been built in Boston. There was a chip on one of the legs where once little Eugene had hit it with his drumstick. She ran her fingers lightly over the keys; their trill and tinkle, although barely touched, were too loud in the dead stillness of the house.

  The dog stood whining to go out. She picked it up. Warm little creature, not understanding a word, yet sure to respond to human need. Listen to me, Gretel, I’m all alone, there is no one I can tell how I feel. And do you know, I’m not even sure how I really do feel?

  In deepest stillness the earth waited. Against the milky sky the date palms drooped black as funeral plumes. Suddenly, the echoing, hasty footsteps of someone passing unseen sent Miriam racing back into the house, closing the door so hard that the crystal balls on the hall candelabra jangled in distress. She leaned against the door with her hand on her pounding heart. Then, ashamed of her terror, she remembered the night-latch and slid it all the way, that great stout iron bar, five feet long, bolted to the wall. Still, if they wanted to get in, they could do so, couldn’t they? They could batter down the top half of the door and climb in, or they could smash the windows .…

  Upstairs a stripe of light fell across the bed where Angelique was asleep. She looked like a woman, with her long legs extended almost to the foot, and her hair sprayed out upon the pillow. The little girl who had slept with each arm curled around a doll was poised now on the farthest edge of childhood.

  Across the hall a candle was hastily snuffed out as Miriam passed the door. Let the boy think she didn’t know he read half the night against his father’s orders! And she had a quick recollection of David, in that dark village so many years ago, borrowing every book he could lay his hands on.

  Oh, what would the war—the victory or the defeat, depending on which side one stood—what would it do to these young lives? To all of us in this house, in this city? To André?

  There was not a ray of light that could begin to penetrate the future.

  “I want to go to the levee,” Eugene said in the morning, meaning, Miriam knew, but not finding himself able to say: I want to see the Federal ships arrive.

  And Miriam, because of her own turmoil, both wanting and not wanting to see them, looked overhead, where dark clouds were swirling and the first drops raining, and sought excuse. “It’s going to storm.”

  “I am quite able to go without you,” he retorted, so that she felt foolish, for surely he had always gone everywhere without her.

  “I’ll be ready in a minute,” she said.

  The streets, too crowded for a carriage, were filling with a defiant mob, pushing on foot toward the waterfront, oblivious to the rain. At the levee, over the heads of the crowd, the gunboats were plainly to be seen, for the river had crested and the ships could ride high, their guns reminding Miriam, as always, of threatening beast-mouths, pointed down upon the city.

  Impatiently, Eugene demanded a description of events.

  “Some ships are still coming round the bend.” Miriam wet dry lips. “Six altogether. No, seven, eight. They’re filled with men, all armed.” Her voice began to tremble. She did not say that the Stars and Stripes were flying and that all around them on the levee Confederate banners waved.

  “Down with the Stars and Stripes!” a man cried out.

  The cry was taken up by hundreds of voices, including those of Miriam’s son and daughter. Women wept. A man with a fife joined in, piping “Dixie,” and the crowd began to sing, Emma with profound conviction, as though she were singing a hymn. In spite of all reason this unified outpouring of emotion stirred Miriam to the heart.

  A small boat put off from the Hartford, and three officers came to land.

  Eugene was more frustrated than ever. “What are they doing now? Do you mind telling me what’s happening?”

  “Some officers are landing. There are sailors. They have guns and bayonets, too.”

  They passed, the strangers—almost shocking herself, Miriam had thought of the word “invaders”—in dark blue, with their gilt eagles and their severe faces, ignoring the crowd. But they were frightened; of course they must be terrified of this menacing mob; they were so you
ng, like David, who wore their uniform. Miriam stood staring as the strangers swung away in step down the street.

  “They’ll be going to the city hall,” someone said.

  The crowd surged after them, behind them, alongside of them, restrained by the sight of guns and bayonets, but giving voice all the way.

  “Go home, damned Yankees!”

  Then the heavens opened. The steady rain mounted into flood. Yellow clouds roiled furiously, snaking and twining through the black. The rain pocked the river, splashing upward from the pavement, slashed at the trees, and drenched the group still standing at the levee. Savagely, the rain attacked as though the fall of the city were not grief enough for one day.

  “It is all over,” Eugene said. There were tears in his blind eyes.

  Ferdinand remonstrated with him. “Don’t say that. The forts haven’t fallen.”

  “What difference? They’ve passed the forts. And the forts will surrender. They’re loaded with northern men. Come, let’s go home.”

  And all the way back to the house he muttered, “The cable wasn’t put in the right place. It was a good idea, but it should have been placed above Fort St. Philip, where there’s a fierce current, instead of below Jackson, where they could creep in practically undetected and dismantle it. Fools, fools,” he repeated. “And this is only the beginning. In a few days Butler will land with his troops, and then we shall see something.”

  At the front door Sisyphus stood looking up the street. When he saw them he hurried down the steps. His old face was solemn with the message he had to give.

  “They sent a boy from Madam de Rivera’s. News of her son. He was killed in the fighting on the river.”

  “My God!” cried Miriam. “Which son was it, did they say?”

  “Mr. Herbert. She asks you please to come.”

  Emma crossed herself. “God’s will. We have neglected him, and now he is punishing our righteous cause. We must pray all the harder.”

  Scalded. Drowned. He was a baby, not yet walking when I first came to Rosa’s house. Now he is—was—a young man with a young wife and a baby of his own. Scalded. Drowned.