Crescent City

by Belva Plain

  Simeon was prepared to leave, but his wife Chloe, so Fanny reported, had told him he would first have to get himself a job and her a house. Until then she would stay where she had a roof over her head. They had had a violent quarrel, and Simeon had departed, picked up a knapsack and stalked off down the road.

  So it had gone since daybreak.

  Having seen all this, Miriam’s mouth went dry with apprehension. Yet it was necessary to face the people and get it over with. She went outside to stand on the verandah, looking down upon them, trying again to imagine herself in their places. Unable to do that, she decided simply to tell the forthright truth.

  “Today there are no more masters, as you know. Today you’re free to go wherever you wish. Perhaps some of you already know where you want to go, and if that’s so, I will say good-bye and wish you good luck. But others of you may have no place, and if you want to stay here, if you feel this is your home, you may stay. I’ll tell you what I will do. I will pay you wages. But you will have to work, to make a crop that I can sell. Otherwise, I’ll have no money to pay wages, you understand that, don’t you?”

  Some nodded, while others looked perplexed. One young fellow stepped forward.

  “How much, missis? How much will you pay?”

  “Ten dollars a month,” she said, and as a low grumble began to rise from the back rows, she said quickly, “You forget, you have a house and food and medicine when you’re sick. You’ll have everything you need, as you always have had. And money besides, if you work well. But if you don’t work well,” she said more boldly now, “I’ll hire somebody else and tell you to leave. That’s the way it will be from now on. That’s all I have to tell you, except that—well, I should like you to remember that we, my husband and I, always treated you well. Some others didn’t, but we always did. I should just like you to remember that. And now I’ll wait here on the verandah while you decide, and come and tell me, each of you, whether you go or stay.”

  There was then a general movement on the lawn, a milling and clustering, a hubbub of palaver. Maxim and Chanute were engaged in what appeared to be a fiery quarrel under Eugene’s giant beech tree.

  Presently Maxim came to Miriam and, removing his cap as he always had, declared, “Missis, Chanute and I, we’ve had a big fight. I think Chanute’s gone crazy. All that big talk about gold, when anybody can see this whole country close to starving. Where’s the gold coming from? So he can go if he wants, but I stay. I stay and keep this place for you. Then maybe after a while you’ll raise my wages.”

  She had a swift picture of the two, as alike as twins in their lace-cuffed jackets, bizarre in their blackness as though they had come to the German village from another world, which indeed they had.

  “You’ve never been apart, you and Chanute.”

  Maxim looked as though he were going to cry. “I know. Everything’s gone crazy. But I’m not going to go crazy.”

  When Sisyphus appeared, he actually was crying.

  “I stay, Miss Miriam. Didn’t you know I would? I was born to Miss Emma’s people, I came with her when she married Mr. Ferdinand, and I laid Miss Emma to rest in the tomb. Where would I go? This is my home.”

  One by one they kept coming, either to announce with timid relief that they would stay, or with a kind of defiance that they would go. Some even left in anger without a word.

  When at last it was over, Miriam thought that this was the hardest day’s work she had done in her life.

  “Do you think this wage arrangement will work?” asked Ferdinand.

  “Never,” asserted Eulalie.

  But Rosa had another opinion.

  “I’ve heard that in New Orleans, under Union control, they found that free labor produced a hogshead and a half more sugar in a day than slaves produce.”

  “We shall see” was Miriam’s only reply.

  The hardest was yet to come. In the morning, when Fanny brought a basin of hot water to Miriam’s room, she did not set it down and leave as usual, but paused instead with one hand on the doorjamb. Her dark eyes roved about the room as if she were searching or memorizing.

  “What is it, Fanny? You want to tell me something?”

  “I do. And I can’t bring myself to do it.”

  “Say it. I won’t be angry even if it’s something bad. Is it something bad?”

  Fanny’s mouth trembled into the square, ugly shape of sorrow. “I don’t know whether you’ll call it bad or not.”

  All at once Miriam knew. She was stunned; others would leave, she had expected them to, but it had not entered her mind that Fanny might, any more than she could imagine Angelique saying, Mama, I don’t want to be your daughter anymore.

  She raised her head in a gesture of proud acceptance: “You’re going away, that’s it, isn’t it?”

  Fanny nodded. Her pleading eyes did nothing to assuage the hurt that lumped itself in Miriam’s throat. She wanted to say, We were children together, does that mean so little to you? I thought you were contented here, happy here.

  And suddenly words poured from Fanny.

  “Miss Miriam, I have to go! I don’t want to, but I have to. There’s a part of me that says one way and a part that says the other. Blaise says we’ve never done anything, we don’t know anything, and now we’ve got our chance. You can see he’s right, can’t you?”

  I suppose I can see, but I don’t want to, Miriam thought.

  “I’ve a pain right here.” Fanny put her hand on her heart, “A pain.”

  Miriam smiled sadly. “And in your head. It aches with thinking about what you’ll do with your life, I know. You said that to me once, on a very hard day.”

  Fanny’s eyes pleaded still. Like the eyes of an intelligent child asking mutely to be understood, they widened and shone. Suddenly the lump, the wound, in Miriam’s throat, dissolved. She could have said, You will never again be as comfortable as you have been in this house, but she did not say it. Instead, she held out her arms.

  “Of course you must go, it’s the only way, and God bless you, Fanny, wherever you go.”

  “I never thought, after all Lincoln did to us, that I could feel sorry about his death,” Pelagie said. “But now that he’s been murdered one thinks how good he really was. And our southern papers call the crime ‘barbaric,’ too.” She held the newspaper up to the light of the terrabene lamp. “They call him a generous man. They say Johnson won’t be like him, either.”

  Ferdinand sighed. “Read David’s letter again. Read what he says about Lincoln.”

  “‘As you know,’” Miriam began, “‘the assassination came on the fifth day of Passover. Everyone went into mourning. Here in New York the temple was draped in black. What a debt we as Jews, let alone as citizens, owe to that man! At the memorial exercises fifteen lodges of B’nai Brith were in the march. I carried a banner myself. It was heavy for me, I’m still not back to hundred-percent strength, but getting closer to it every day, and so grateful to be alive, to know that you’re well and that the war, and the slaughter, are over, that I’d have gone twice the distance if I’d had to. So there was thankfulness, in the midst of the deepest grief.’”

  “That was New York,” Eulalie said. “There are plenty of people in this country who are not mourning that man’s death, I assure you. And as for the war being over, the South was beaten only because of greater numbers and nothing else. The spirit was here and it still is, and what’s more, always will be.”

  Ferdinand made haste to keep peace in the room.

  “Courage! We have a new fight now, the fight with poverty.” He smiled ruefully. “I feel as if I’ve been here before. Well, I was, back in Europe when I was much younger than any of you, and Napoleon had laid the continent to waste.” He looked at Miriam, adding with some of his old jaunty confidence, “We’ll manage. I did once. We’ll do it again.”

  The confidence was pathetic. In reality Ferdinand was as helpless before this turn of events as someone whose boat is caught at the crest of a flood. But who has to
appear able to keep it from capsizing. And in so appearing, Ferdinand was most touchingly brave.

  In the very early morning a shredded mist hung like spiders’ webs in the trees. Raccoons were still scuttling in the scrub swamp and birds were just waking up; the red sun was barely risen when Miriam went outside. Each morning, it seemed, she awoke earlier than on the day before, for sleep came hard. Where was life taking her? To stifle an anxiety like that, one got up early and filled one’s hours with other problems.

  Of these there were more than enough. Sunflowers, those great, gawky, hot-looking things, had spread themselves over into what should have been a flourishing vegetable patch and was not. The help were neglecting the work most disgracefully. The stables were never properly cleaned. Right now cows were moaning in the barn; it was long past milking time. Yards and yards of fence had not yet been mended. The big house needed paint. She sighed. The whole place probably wouldn’t fetch more than ten thousand dollars, if one could find somebody to buy it.

  A door slammed as Eugene and Angelique came out of the house.

  “Go do something,” their mother commanded. “Maybe you can set an example. One of you feed the chickens and the other bring some eggs to the kitchen.”

  She watched them as in their clumsy, wood-soled shoes they walked toward the chicken house, and saw them disappear inside. When they reappeared, Eugene was carrying the tub of grain. It pleased her that he took the heavy work for himself without being told. There was something protective in his manner toward Angelique now that they were fairly past the age of childish squabbles, something that reminded Miriam of herself and David.

  Oh, be fair! There’s much of their father in them, too! David’s scowls don’t cross young Eugene’s forehead. Quite possibly the scowl is just not natural to him, but if it were, his father would not have allowed it. Disciplined according to their place and their social class, these two are dutiful and compliant. Eugene is affable and Angelique, in her dawning vanity, is charming. She wants some proper clothes, and I wish she had some. But if she had them, where would she wear them, the way things are now?

  The hens made a circular cluster at their feet, cackling under the dusty shower of grain. A wry little smile crossed Miriam’s lips. What would their father have said of such a rural vignette? Of his son, his daughter, the Mendes’ heir and heiress, in a chicken yard? No matter, she told herself. Work won’t hurt them. They’re lucky to have it, to have anything in these times, to be alive at all.

  And staring across dry, sallow fields on which the morning’s heat had already begun to quiver, she saw through the white dazzle long rows of bloodied men lying on the floor in Richmond, saw again the woman whose begging hands had reached out for milk—

  “What now, Mama?” asked Angelique.

  “Find out from Maxim whether he needs you for something. He’s overworked, and he never asks for any help.”

  “Sisyphus, too,” Eugene said. “He was down at the barn yesterday helping to lift a wagon while they fixed a wheel. He’s too old. I made him stop and took his place.”

  “Tell me,” Miriam said suddenly, “what changed you, Eugene? When did you change sides in this war? It’s still not clear to me.”

  He answered, “I don’t think I did quite that. I’ve not been a traitor.”

  “I don’t mean you are. I mean your thoughts.”

  “About the system? I don’t know exactly. It just came to me, when I had to work to keep things going here, and I saw more of the way life was, how hard. It just came to me.”

  A basic kindness, she thought gladly. A basic decency, that’s all it was. But she wondered whether he could have changed direction if his father had lived to keep the old, strong hold upon him. Had that gruesome death perhaps released the son to become what he was?

  She said only, “Here’s Maxim. Maxim, these helpers want to know whether you need them for anything.”

  “No, ma’am, I’m doing fine. Shouldn’t they be at their books this morning?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt. Why don’t you get to your German grammar, both of you? I’ll test you on it later.”

  A pity she hadn’t had more of an education herself with which to help them through these lost years! German was about all she knew enough of to teach. Still, it was better than nothing.

  Maxim reflected, as they walked away, “Seems like last week they were born in this house.”

  Last week, and a hundred years ago! So sweetly they had lain in their baskets .… David had come home to stay .… The river boat had whistled, landing guests and gifts … fruit and flowers, music and wine .… Gabriel had come home .…

  “They’re a real credit to you,” Maxim was saying. “Kind young folks. Quality. Real quality.”

  “A credit to you, too, and to Blaise and Fanny and Sisyphus, remember. You all helped raise them.”

  A field hand, hearing Miriam’s voice, came around the corner of the barn.

  “Morning, missis. You’re out early.”

  “I’m always out early. There’s work to be done.”

  “I was thinking, missis, maybe we should shoot that old Pepper there. That used to be one feisty mule, but there’s sure no pepper left in him now.”

  The old mule’s tail swished casually, as with head hung over the fence, he crunched a sheaf of grass between his long yellow teeth. His wary, melancholy eyes regarded Miriam.

  All of life’s pathos was concentrated in the mule.

  “Leave him alone. There’ll be no more shooting,” she said, and tearing another handful of grass, she thrust it into the soft, snuffling mouth.

  “And listen,” she commanded, “I want pine straw in the cattle barn this morning. Cows get sick lying in the wet.”

  “Yes, missis. Right away, missis.”

  No one had ever taught her how to care for cattle, but most things were only a matter of common sense, anyway.

  She went back to the house to polish what was left of the silver. Only the week before she had gone with Rosa to retrieve the silver they had once so carefully hidden, and found half of it missing. The service that Eugene had given Miriam when they were married was safe in its place, but Emma’s, buried with equal discretion, or so they had thought, was gone. Someone must have been watching them that night. Too bad it was Emma’s! Miriam wouldn’t have minded the loss of her own as much as the loss of Papa’s; things meant so much to him.

  In the dining room the coffee service waited on the table. Miriam sat down to work with the polishing rag. There was a certain satisfaction in making things clean, in bringing order with one’s own hands, even though Sisyphus was still horrified to see the lady of the house at such labor.

  Ferdinand came in to watch her. For a few minutes he waited without speaking. Then suddenly he interrupted the regular tick of the clock.

  “You’re getting to look like your mother.”

  “I never thought I did.”

  He had startled her. She couldn’t even remember when he had last spoken of her mother.

  “I’ve been seeing her lately. I hadn’t in years,” Ferdinand said. He mused. “She wore a plaid shawl the first time I laid eyes on her.”

  But that’s the way I always see her! Miriam cried silently. Why do I always see her in a plaid shawl? I’m sure he never told me this before. Did anyone else ever tell me? She could not remember.

  “She was lovely. She had an oval face, quiet and grave.”

  As he rocked, his chair creaked, blending with his even voice in a dreamy rhythm.

  “Curious, the way a life unwinds. If it hadn’t been for a stone thrown by a hate-crazed lout, we’d all perhaps still be in the German village. Angelique and Eugene wouldn’t have been born. Yes, you remind me of her, but David has her eyes. Exactly her eyes. I wish I could see David again. He made me so angry, but he’s a good man, I know he is. I’d like to see him,”

  “Now that the war is over, he’ll surely come to see you, Papa. I know he will.”

  She looked over at her father
. He had started a beard, since it was the fashion again, but his beard made him look not fashionable, only like a patriarchal Jew, the Opa whom she could still see in her mind, rocking, rocking and creaking. The hair that had once been a crown of chestnut waves had turned quite gray. Oh, she thought, was it just today or was it last week that I saw he was old? Age comes like that; suddenly one day a person is old.

  Ferdinand was staring out of the window.

  “There goes Eulalie. She’s got a bucket of water for the chicken yard. I can’t get over the change in her.”

  “Maybe she feels important for the first time in her life.”

  “What? Tending chickens? From a family like hers?”

  “That and all the rest she does. I never realized she knew so much. It’s true she’s sour, but we’d have managed here a lot less well without her. None of us knew how to preserve or sew or do anything properly until she showed us how.” Something drove Miriam to talk, not so much in defense of Eulalie as out of a sense of fairness and personal indignation. “All her life she’s been a failure because she wasn’t good at the one thing you men expect us to be good at: being ornamental. I don’t know how it is, but a man can be fat, bald, or buck-toothed, and it doesn’t matter, but let a woman be even mildly plain and she goes into the discard. Heaven help her, if she’s not married, she can only cringe in shame. I don’t want my daughter to be like that!” she finished sharply.

  “Don’t worry about Angelique.” Ferdinand chuckled. “She’s a beauty already.”

  Miriam started to say: That’s not what I meant at all but stopped. What was the use? He would never understand.

  Gabriel would. It flashed across her mind that Gabriel had always understood, but she was kept from further thought by her father’s next remark.