Crescent City

by Belva Plain

  “My shoes,” she said after a while, glancing at her kid slippers. “They’re all worn out. My last pair, too.”

  “Simeon’s brother makes shoes. Leather uppers on a wooden sole. He made some for me.”

  “He must make some for all of us, then.”

  “I’ll tell him. He’s down back of the stables. They’re burying the mule.”

  “The mule! Oh, no!”

  “Yes, those men today found one of them and shot it.”

  This was the last blow, the last senseless blow.

  “Now, in heaven’s name, why would they do that? Steal the poor creature if you must, but why kill it?”

  “They were drunk.”

  “As my father says, ‘Our own people!’”

  Fanny did not comment on that. She said instead, “There’s a gang of the men who ran away when the Federals came. They’ve come back. Brought their women and children back.”

  It was Miriam’s turn to have no comment. Any words she could have spoken would have been inappropriate before Fanny, unthinkable before her. They would have been too angry, too hot with resentment. Now that the “Secesh” have returned, she was thinking, and these people have no other place to go, they come back here to be fed and cared for. I wish to God they would all run away, the lot of them! We’ve not food enough for the ones who stayed, and now we have to share with these others.

  “I’m going in to clean up,” Fanny said. “Those pigs spat tobacco all over the dining-room floor. Oh, someone’s coming!”

  Oh, not more of them! Was this the crossroads of the world? Once it had seemed so remote, too remote, on those long days, those monotonous afternoons when only the occasional caw of a crow had broken into the stillness, when, almost frantic with need of a new voice or something new to see, she had walked to the end of the lane and scanned the meandering empty road where weeds grew between the ruts.

  “What can it be now?” she cried despairingly.

  Fanny stood tall and shielded her eyes. “A rider with a wagon following.”

  Miriam was too tired to get up. “Can you tell who?”

  Fanny strained to see. “Miss Miriam! Miss Miriam—I do believe it’s that Mr. Perrin!”

  A fearful drumming began in Miriam’s head. “It can’t be!”

  He’s in Europe. He’s dead. He would never come back, because of Eugene. He—

  “But it is Mr. Perrin! Yes, Miss Miriam, it is.”

  She wore her joy and her desire like a cloak. It seemed to her as they sat after the evening meal in the sunny circle of wan firelight that surely it must be visible to all, this cloak of scarlet silk which had been laid upon her, so that she felt the glow of its color. Wearing it, she was content to sit quite still, just watching and listening.

  The others had taken possession of André with their eager questions. Rosa wanted to know whether by any chance he had heard anything about her son Henry, from whom no letter had been had in months. No, he had not. Emma wanted to know the same about her grandsons. No, he had not.

  “My brother, Gabriel de Rivera, is with the Tenth Louisiana. If you ever come in contact with them, please tell him that I, that we—” The words choked her. “You’ll not forget?”

  “I’ll not forget.”

  Then Emma asked how dear Marie Claire was doing, and how recently he had seen her. She was doing well, as far as André knew, but he had not been in France for months.

  What could that mean? Surely if there had been any great change in his life, he would have gotten the news to her. A chill draft penetrated the scarlet cloak.

  “Are you sure you’re not tired of all my tales?” André had asked a few minutes earlier.

  “We here know almost nothing about what’s going on in the outside world,” Ferdinand had replied. “We’ve had no papers since the Federals came. Anything you tell us is bound to be news, especially about yourself.”

  Now André threw up his hands, continuing, “Well, as you know, diplomacy failed. It was a sorry failure, although God knows we tried everything. I was with Slidell when he offered Louis Napoleon a present of cotton worth a hundred million francs in return for recognizing the Confederacy. The Frenchman was tempted, all right, but too afraid that the Union would win. So when I saw that diplomacy wasn’t going to work, I decided to make a practical contribution to the war. I’ve been doing blockade runs. Oh, I’m not a seaman, I just get the goods assembled and ride along for the adventure.”

  “Dangerous adventures,” Ferdinand observed.

  “Oh, not for the fainthearted, that’s true.”

  Always there was that brightness about him! Some children have it, although not all of them; even some old people have it, for it has nothing to do with age, Miriam thought. It’s something inside that shines through, something bold, a delight and cheer to the listener and watcher. All were enthralled: the two women, Eugene, Angelique, and, most of all, Ferdinand, who was very likely recalling his youth, living again his bravest moments.

  “You ought to see the waterfront at Nassau! Cotton higher than your head piled on the docks. Then in comes the blockade runner, an ugly dark beast of a ship, but fast. They’re built mostly in England or Nova Scotia, and made with a convex deck to go through heavy seas. You can stand at your window in the Royal Victoria Hotel and see the harbor crowded with them. You don’t sleep much the night before you get on board, I can tell you that. But the trip over is a whole lot safer than the trip back, when you’re loaded with ammunition.”

  “You must have had some narrow escapes,” Eugene said with awe.

  And André, understanding the boy’s eagerness, smiled and went on, enjoying the telling.

  “Oh, narrow, yes! We travel with great care, heading for Charleston or Wilmington on the return; they’re the only ports left to us. We try for the dark of the moon and high tide. Otherwise, when the tide’s low, you can’t get through the inlets to hide. And of course, no lights! It’s death, and I mean death, for anybody who shows a light. No talking, either.”

  Eugene nodded wisely. “Because voices carry over the water.”

  “Right. Oh, it’s pretty tense sneaking past the blockading fleet.”

  “Have you ever been chased?” Ferdinand wanted to know.

  “Certainly have. There was one time when a U.S. Navy steam frigate chased us all one afternoon. Believe me, we prayed hard. Raced to keep ahead until almost dark, when we put out a smokescreen, thick, black smoke, low to the water. We made it, too, by the skin of our teeth.”

  Ferdinand gave a long sigh. “I admit I’m envious! Here I sit doing nothing.” Then he remembered something. “We had an interesting visitor, a Dr. Zacharie. Have you by any chance ever heard of him? He talks as if everybody ought to know him.”

  “Oh, he’s very well known! Lately, he’s represented Lincoln in Richmond, trying to negotiate a peace. Spoke with Benjamin and others in the Cabinet. Lincoln was pleased, but nothing came of it. The Cabinet in Washington would have none of it. The radicals in the North want to destroy the South first before they make peace. At least, so goes the talk in Washington.”

  “How do you know so much about what’s going on in Washington?” asked Rosa. “I thought it was almost impossible to get through the lines. Except for spies,” she added sardonically.

  André shrugged. “One picks up information of all sorts, here and there.”

  “I wish,” Miriam said, “someone could pick up information about my brother.” This was the first time she had spoken directly to André all evening. “We haven’t heard from him since Dr. Zacharie brought us word.”

  “I shouldn’t wish to hear about him if he were my brother,” Emma said, sounding, to everyone’s abrupt astonishment, more like her daughter Eulalie than like herself.

  Nerves at this point in the long war could be expected to fray, and Miriam controlled herself enough to respond with nothing more than a cold question. “And why so, Aunt Emma?”

  André interrupted to prevent Emma’s reply. He spoke gently
.

  “The saddest thing about this war, ma’am, is the way it has split families apart. Do you know that three of Henry Clay’s grandsons are fighting for us, while another three of them are in the Union army? And Mrs. Lincoln’s brothers have been killed, fighting for the South.”

  At that Emma fell silent and Ferdinand—poor man, always in the middle, thought Miriam—addressed André.

  “I hope you’ll stay and rest with us, for a few days at least.”

  “I thank you, but I must leave before noon tomorrow. I’m on the Texas route. The cotton comes down from Vicksburg, that’s how I happen to be here. Then over to Brownsville and across the Rio Grande to Matamoros. We ship overseas from there.”

  “Then you’ve a long road, and you’ll want to rest. Come.” At Ferdinand’s signal everyone stood up. “It’s time to sleep, anyway.”

  “I’m not tired.” André glanced at Miriam. “Or rather, I suppose, I’m too tired to sleep just yet. I think I’ll take a walk or sit outside for a while to admire the warm night.”

  It was nine o’clock. In another half hour they would surely all be asleep. She felt the leap of her blood as she went upstairs, following her shadow, which shook on the wall as the candle shook in her hand.

  Fanny was in Miriam’s room, where she had unpacked the boxes André had brought. Piles of cloth and clothing lay on the bed.

  “There wasn’t room in here for that whole wagonload. I put the men’s things in Mr. Ferdinand’s room. Maybe this is for Master Eugene.” Fanny displayed a brown sack coat bearing a British label, a silk cravat, and a red velvet waistcoat.

  “They will be fine for him if we ever get New Orleans back so we can go home.”

  “And what a beautiful hat!” Fanny said of a shallow plate heaped with lilies of the valley.

  “A Watteau hat. I seem to remember seeing it in a fashion magazine”—Miriam was about to say, “a hundred years ago,” but said instead, “It will be quite a change from our palmetto hats, don’t you think?” She giggled, thinking, I am being hysterically silly. “Shall I wear it on my next visit to the stables?”

  “All these clothes! Look at this blue broadcloth, it would make a fine coat for you, Miss Miriam! And this yellow taffeta! Wait till you see what’s in the pantry, too. Meats and wines and brandy, just like old times. He’s a grand gentleman, that Mr. Perrin.”

  “In the morning we will go over everything and find some clothes for you, Fanny.”

  A pair of kid gloves slipped through Miriam’s hands like satin. However had he managed to find all these fine things? The newness, the richness, the freshness of them seemed suddenly unnatural, as if she were not entitled to them at all; they were now so out of place, out of another world and another life. And at the same time she was perplexed by this feeling.

  Fanny was looking closely at her with a strange, enigmatic smile, that twist of the lips that she sometimes wore when she was hiding her true thoughts.

  Why is she smiling? Does she know about me and André? Sudden anger surged in Miriam.

  “You can go to bed, Fanny. I don’t need you,” she said sharply.

  She knows, she knows.

  When the house was quiet Miriam went down the stairs and outside. He would be waiting in the summer house, on the bench behind the wooden-lace grille. Her feet danced over the lawn. Light as her footsteps were, he had heard her; dim as the night was, he had seen her. She had gone only half the distance when he met her, caught her, lifting her light feet from the ground, kissing her, over and over, sweetly, over and over.

  She told herself: I have come home. “I had to see you. I’ve ridden ninety miles out of my way, but I had to.”

  “You didn’t know Eugene was dead and you came anyway!”

  He laughed. “I took a chance. I thought if I came with my hands full, he would admit me. Greeks bearing gifts … Tell me, was he in the maddest rage about us? He was that morning when he sent me away.”

  “Not mad. Rather more reasonable than I expected.”

  And she was still, recalled to the shameful sting of Eugene’s scorn, and sorrowing now over the abrupt intrusion of such a memory into this moment which should have been perfect.

  There were no sounds except the soft thud of ripe walnuts dropping from the old tree. Then she spoke.

  “It was a terrible death, André.”

  “It’s all terrible, all the devastation. When I sat in there tonight and saw what had been done to this house and the torn shoes on your poor feet—but I’ll be back, and I’m going to see that you have what you need, or as much of it as I can.”

  She heard nothing except the words “I’ll be back.”

  “When will you be back?”

  He led her to the summer house. The quarter moon came out from behind the clouds, so that she could see him in delicate detail, the thick blond lashes, the amber skin, and the crisp molding of the beautiful lips.

  “When will you be back?”

  “It’s hard to say. I’ve got a partner, an Englishman. We bought a ship in his name. British registry, neutral, so they won’t stop us at sea.”

  She didn’t want to hear about affairs and ships, she wanted only his promise to return.

  “It’s a small boat with shallow draft; we can operate where the Union’s deepwater ships can’t go. But you don’t want to hear about that, do you?”

  “No, I want to hear about you.”

  “Let’s go to your room, then.”

  She hesitated.

  “I want to, but …”

  “But what?”

  Pressed together from shoulder to knee, it was unbearable not to go farther.

  “I want to,” she repeated.

  “Can’t we? What is it?”

  “My daughter’s room is next to mine. My father’s and Emma’s is across the hall.”

  Fanny’s shrewd eyes, the innocence of Angelique, my son’s respect, my father’s dismay and Rosa’s disdain, all flashed into her vision.

  André groaned. “When, then? This is cruel.”

  “I don’t know.”

  She put her head on his shoulder and thought of the room in the Pontalba, that high white room with the damp breeze flowing, the smells of heat, and voices calling in the square below. She gave a little sob of longing and disappointment.

  “Ah, don’t cry. If it can’t be, it can’t. It is possible,” he began slowly, “it is possible that Marie Claire will get a divorce .…”

  Against her ears she heard the slow beat of his heart.

  “It is not as scandalous in Europe as it would be here, you see. And so then we, you and I—”

  “And you want that, André? You’re sure you do?”

  “My dearest, how can you ask? You know I do.”

  “Oh!” she cried. “You don’t know, all this time, so much time! And I felt there was nothing more to expect in my life. My children, yes, God knows they come first, long before myself, but one is human, too, one wants something for oneself, and I’ve been thinking there would never be anything, that you and I would never—and now, now you give me everything to hope for!”

  He turned her face up into the light, now almost vanished as clouds rolled back over the sky.

  “Lovely, lovely. Such eyes! Never, never such eyes!” He kissed her eyelids.

  “Seeing you like this and not having you is worse than not seeing you at all,” he said.

  They turned back to the house. The bayou shone like dark glass, and last year’s dried stalks stood stiffly on the lily pads. Beneath the cedars lay a spongy carpet, a century’s wealth of needles. Suddenly she felt like talking, like confiding.

  “Cedars. Did you know the Negroes won’t ever cut them because they say each represents a human life? I often think of that when I walk past here.”

  “You think too much.”

  “Are you impatient with me?”

  “No, of course not. But for your own good you shouldn’t be so serious.”

  “When the war’s over, when the ki
lling’s over, I shall laugh. I shall be very, very happy and blissful, I promise you.”

  “And so you should be.”

  “Right now I can’t help thinking of all the young fives, of your life, André.”

  “Don’t I always tell you I’ll be all right? I know what I’m doing. I lead a charmed existence, don’t you know that?”

  “I hope so. When I’m with you, I believe whatever you say. You make me feel safe, you always have.”

  “Happy is what I want to make you feel. Life’s too short. The first time I saw you … you were so beautiful and so sad, That’s what lured me, I think, your sadness. I wanted to do away with it. I brought you that yellow silk; have it made up right away. I want to think of you in yellow, the color of sunshine and laughter.”

  A sudden gust of wind shook the trees, chilling the air; a gray mist rose and colored the night as if to say, The time of sunshine and laughter is not yet.

  But he wanted sunshine, so she smiled.

  “We’ll say good-bye now, shall we? It’s easier than it would be tomorrow with everyone standing around.”

  “Not good-bye. Try again.”

  “Au revoir? Is that better?”

  “Much better. Au revoir, my Miriam.”

  26

  Just past Vicksburg Plaisance had stood by the river in its pristine grandeur, a white wooden Parthenon on a green rise, sloping up from its private dock at which servants bearing torches had brightened the way for guests arriving by steamboat Between the house and the wide curve of the woods at its back, topiary trees, shaped by the skillful hands of a French landscape gardener, still skirted the long parterre. In the octagonal conservatory, pineapples flourished. Peacocks fanned their tails and paraded on the lawns, pausing to startle the afternoon with their raucous cries. And on the pond a pair of swans drowsed, floating through a paradise of summer.

  “As long as we hold Vicksburg,” André had said, “well be all right.”

  But Vicksburg fell and the refugees arrived. Two carriages drawn by weary horses held the family, Pelagie with her two youngest children, Eulalie, and Mr. Lambert Labouisse. Two wagons held the household servants, along with a sorry load of random salvaged household goods. After six days on the road they were all equally exhausted, hungry, and despairing.