by Dara Horn
Since it was Jacob’s great ambition, at nineteen years old, to achieve the kind of victory that Benjamin had purportedly achieved in becoming an American hero, he observed him across the table for the rest of the evening, looking for clues from the master. He watched him very carefully. And what he saw was that there was something odd about Benjamin, though he couldn’t quite place it. It was obvious that Benjamin was fiercely intelligent; everything he said was a sort of aphorism, though Jacob didn’t know whether or not the lines were original. When one of the guests asked him, rather jovially, what new plans Richmond had in terms of strategy, Jacob was disappointed and then frightened when Benjamin looked straight at him and said, as though quoting, “Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.” The company seemed to find this witty, and when everyone laughed, Jacob joined in, hiding his fear. For the rest of the meal Benjamin seemed friendly enough, always smiling. But despite his being a lifelong politician—a former United States senator, and now the second most powerful man in the entire Confederacy—Benjamin had a certain awkwardness about him. He answered questions put to him, but didn’t inspire anyone to continue the conversation. It was as if every word he said were carefully parsed out in his mind beforehand, after he had decided whether it was worth saying. While he was silent, he would smile—a strange smile, as if he were laughing at you without your knowing why.
But watching Benjamin was just a distraction for Jacob, an indulgent escape from the riveting personage of Harry Hyams seated before him. Jacob tried to concentrate on the story being told as they chanted the liturgy around the table, describing the anguish of their ancestors, slaves in Egypt, and the vast vindications wrought to liberate them—one of the few moments of Hebrew glory in all of history, perhaps even the only one. But now he imagined how terrible it must have been to live through: the tortures of slavery, and then the horrifying vindication of the angel of death, slaying the firstborn of Egypt so that the Israelites might be set free. And now he wondered: what had the Israelites felt as the great cry went up in Egypt, when there was not a single household where there was not one dead? Victory? Vengeance? Or astonishment at their sheer power, through the will of their God, of determining life and death? Did one of them feel, perhaps, that still, small fear that Jacob felt as he listened to Harry Hyams, with the poison in his pocket?
“In every generation,” Harry chanted from the book in his hands, “each person is obligated to see himself as if he personally had come out of Egypt.” Harry read with the alacrity and expression of someone who didn’t just recite the words, but felt and believed them.
“We ourselves shall come out of Egypt soon enough,” Benjamin said when Harry paused. “I have good word of it from Richmond.”
The company laughed aloud as the lame Negro—unnoticed by the other guests, glaringly present to Jacob—came to serve the small dishes used for the bitter herbs. “But I thought you said it was all a secret,” Elizabeth replied, with a playful air. It was even more painful for Jacob to look at her than it was to look at Harry.
“Victory is no secret, but an inevitability,” Benjamin said. “Otherwise we would have been vanquished months ago. It was true in the past, and it remains true now. Every time they rise up to destroy us, Providence rescues us from their hands.”
The people around the table cheered. There was something mad about this, Jacob saw, hypnotic. Every person in the company was in Benjamin’s power. Soon the meal was served, and the conversation consisted almost entirely of compliments to him, prodding questions about war strategy which he consistently refused to answer, and sad laughter as the women shared stories about their sons who were away, and, though Jacob was the only one at the table who could imagine it, quite possibly dead. The delusion was grand, glorious, and they were all part of it.
4.
THE SERVICE WOULD CONTINUE AFTER THE MEAL, BUT FOR THE time being the company had retired to the parlor, to relax and circulate before returning to the table. By then it was quite dark out; the crippled Negro had lit the lights, and a breeze coming through the windows lifted the burden of the day’s heavy heat. Jacob tried to chat casually with Elizabeth and some of the other guests, but he positioned himself with his back just in front of Harry. It was then that he noticed Harry moving aside to speak with Judah Benjamin. Jacob kept the small man in the periphery of his vision as he stood beside Elizabeth, letting her babble about her army boys while he listened to the conversation behind him.
“Judah, I know you have abandoned your fathers’ faith, but perhaps you would be willing to join me in the drawing room for a discussion about the meaning of freedom,” Jacob heard Harry say, his voice low.
Jacob could hear the grin in Benjamin’s voice as he replied. “In fact, a good pipe is what I’d prefer.”
Harry let out a puff of breath. “Alas, I must report that my wife is a bit more traditional than I, and will not tolerate smoking during the holiday.”
“It is only on the Hebrew festival of freedom that one feels more liberated after returning to everyday life,” Benjamin proclaimed. “An oppressive tradition if ever there was one. I suppose we shall have to retreat out of doors.”
“A brilliant idea.”
“Good, then.” Benjamin turned, and for a moment he stood looking at Jacob. His expression was a blank; it seemed he hadn’t thought he had been heard, or if he did, that he thought nothing of it. He clapped a hand on Jacob’s shoulder. “We have great admiration for you, young man,” he said. “It’s a rare man who sees his kinsman’s plight as you do, and comes to his aid. A true loyalty to one’s own.”
It was a hard compliment to accept, especially coming from Judah Benjamin, Jewish prince of the Confederacy, but Jacob thanked him and shook his hand. It was easier than looking Harry in the eye. Then the two of them excused themselves and headed for the back of the house. Jacob listened a bit more to Elizabeth’s pining for her boys and then excused himself in turn, even indulging a slight bow, leaving Elizabeth with three women who had been anxiously awaiting their turn to speak with her. With his curiosity overwhelming any sane sense of risk, he hurried through the halls to the back of the house, following in Harry’s footsteps.
THE MOON WAS round, as it always is on Passover, a coin resting on the moist black velvet of the spring night sky. Jacob waited by the house until Harry and Benjamin had rounded the corner of the latrine. Then he proceeded, softly, toward the latrine’s open door. It was easy to walk undetected on the soft ground. The drooping tree branches drifted idly in the wind as Jacob entered the latrine without a sound, securing the door behind him and then leaning over the cesspool against the shed’s back wall. Benjamin’s and Harry’s voices came through clearly, over the stink.
“So we’ve come to discuss the meaning of freedom, then?” Harry asked. Jacob could hear his smile. “I must admit, I find it hard to believe that I am the only reason you are here.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Benjamin spat. “Perhaps you haven’t heard that the delta is surrounded? All of New Orleans could fall in less than two weeks. Trust me, you are a very minor part of my business here.”
Jacob heard a match being struck, then struck again, and then silence. In the fetid shadows of the latrine, he imagined Benjamin’s face lit by the sudden flame, his dark eyebrows illuminated from below.
“So here I am, prepared to indulge you,” Benjamin added after a few breaths. “I’m afraid you will have to describe your idea in a bit more detail, since I found your previous messages rather shockingly inane.”
“I appreciate your attention,” Harry replied. At first Jacob assumed that Harry was being sarcastic. But when he spoke again, Jacob knew that he wasn’t. “The idea is neither more nor less than it appeared to be. One shot, and he’s dead. It’s really no more complicated than that.”
For the first time, Jacob understood that it actually was true. The bare ground in the latrine was soft, like all the ground in New Orleans. Harry’s entire house was built on a swamp.
&nbs
p; “Surely it is at least somewhat more complicated than that,” Benjamin said.
A pause. “You doubt me,” Harry said at last, his voice exacting and composed. “You shouldn’t. I’ve been supplying that camp over the Maryland border with all the rum they could dream of for the past six months, and I don’t have to tell you how much information I’ve collected in the meantime.” So he really was a spy, Jacob marveled. It still struck him as impossible to believe. “I shall return there again next week. He visits once or twice a month, and they hold a parade for him. They always warn me when he comes, to make sure I’m not intercepted with goods on hand. I’ve even gone to the parades, to see where he sits. It’s a public parade; the people from town crowd right up to him. Even the officers know me by sight. They’re thrilled to see me. They’re only concerned about the rum. I know every nineteen-year-old imbecile in that camp. No one will suspect me. For anyone else it would be a death mission.”
“And how would you do it, hypothetically?” Benjamin said. His voice was casual, languid, like an adult pretending to listen to a child recounting last night’s dream. Jacob thought again of his uncle, of how impressed he had always been by him, and was astonished once more to notice how small Harry had become, a tall man shrunken before the tiny dismissive giant of Judah Benjamin. “Thus far, the details are just as inane as I remember.”
Harry panted, eager. “I take my place alongside the seats they have for him. I wait for the part of the parade with the gun salute. I keep the revolver under my cloak even when I draw, and I time my shot to correspond with the salute,” he recited, like an obedient child. For a moment Jacob felt ashamed for him. And when he recognized how familiar that obedient voice sounded, he felt ashamed for himself. “No one hears where the shot came from, and before anyone even sees him fall, I slip out of the crowd. It’s truly that simple.”
The air beyond the wall hissed as one of them lit another match. Jacob breathed through his mouth to avoid inhaling the smell.
“And you genuinely believe that this would serve some sort of positive purpose,” Benjamin said, “rather than being a catastrophic miscalculation which we shall all have to pay for in blood.” His voice was flat, lifeless. “You actually believe that this would be, how did you put it? A public service.”
“I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country,” Harry quoted, with an unmistakably unctuous tone. At that moment, for the first time, Jacob hated him.
So did Benjamin, it seemed. “You aren’t the one who would be giving his life,” the Secretary snapped. “Or is there some obscure aspect of martyrdom to your proposal, the details of which have escaped my notice?”
The acid tone in Benjamin’s voice was unmistakable even through the wall of the latrine. But Harry Hyams apparently chose to ignore it. “If I should be caught,” Harry said, “it is something to consider.”
Jacob imagined the smoke rising between their faces as Benjamin spoke. “That consideration, Harry, is one of the many weaknesses of your idea,” he said. “And quite frankly, it is a weakness in yourself. You are looking for glory. You present this idea as though it were some sort of patriotic sacrifice on your part, but it’s clear to me that your motivations are entirely personal.”
Harry spoke quickly. “Oh, I’ll admit that it’s quite personal as well,” he said. “We can’t live like this anymore. You know that. The slaves all think they know what’s coming, and it’s dangerous. Elizabeth even told me that she heard them talking about finishing us off. She’s certain that they’re plotting something. She’s terrified.”
Was it true? Jacob thought of the old Negro who had answered the door, of the contempt in his eyes, and then he thought of Elizabeth. He tried to picture her, but he found that he could picture no one but his own mother. He pushed the thought aside as Benjamin spoke again.
“That may very well be the case, but it strikes me as a rather convenient excuse for your own quest for glory,” Benjamin said, and Jacob heard how his voice rose slightly, climbing into what must have been his attorney’s tone. “Glory isn’t for the Jews, Harry. Just think of me. If I am to be remembered at all, even if we are to triumph, it will be only as one who designed the plans that were heroically executed by someone else. We can be slaveowners, we can own whole plantations, but as far as everyone else is concerned, you and I will always be runaway slaves.”
Jacob was astonished to hear this from Benjamin, who, as much as Jacob detested him, had certainly appeared to be in a position of glory. But now he knew that what Benjamin said was true. And what was worse, he knew that it also applied to him. He listened as Benjamin continued. “American honor,” he said, in his aphoristic way, “the hard unseen labor that raises a country from dust—that can be yours, and you deserve it. But American glory, that belongs to someone else. So I suggest you abandon your expectations.”
Was Harry crushed, or defiant? Jacob listened, trying to imagine Harry’s boyish face in the fetid darkness, but it was impossible to tell. “I don’t expect anything from you,” Harry finally said, and now Jacob could hear the gleeful defiance in Harry’s voice, the eager, unstoppable boy emerging from the man’s clothing. “I don’t need your approval. That’s the beauty of it, you see. I don’t have to be part of your chain of command. I am a free man.”
Did he mean it? Surely he meant it, Jacob told himself, and thought of the packet of poison in his pocket. How could he say it without meaning it? He heard the general’s voice in his mind: You would never consider disgracing yourself by returning without success.
“If I actually believed that, Harry, I would have you locked up for good, to protect the rest of us from your grand ambitions,” Jacob heard Benjamin say. “But fortunately I know you better than that.” Jacob waited for Harry to speak, but his uncle said nothing as Benjamin continued. “Go have your last cup of wine, and save your dreams of glory for the world to come.”
The little packet of poison was burning into Jacob’s skin. He imagined Harry’s face, and his stomach reeled at he thought of his pathetic, diminished uncle. He pressed his palms against the damp wooden wall and bowed his head, sickened by the smallness of a grown man’s dreams and fears.
But now Harry’s voice rose with an anger that crept out of his clenched throat. “You have no right to underestimate me,” Harry hissed, and then his words escalated, exploding in the thick night air. “I am not confined by your meager expectations. I am a free man, and I will do what I know to be right. I am a free man!”
A loud croak emerged from a corner of the latrine.
Jacob jumped, then leaned back against the wooden wall. In the ink-black darkness, he heard a repulsive liquid noise as something moved across the muddy floor. He held still as the croak repeated, louder this time, and closer to his foot.
“Frogs,” he heard Harry mutter. “Can’t get rid of them. This year we’ve even had them in the house.”
Jacob heard the two smokers shifting position, settling into the mud, and knew he ought to leave while he could. He carefully stepped toward the latrine door as he heard Benjamin making some reply. When the frog croaked again, Jacob silently pushed open the door and hurried back, unnoticed, into the house. Once he saw that he was alone inside, he leaned against the wall in a foyer by the kitchen, breathing hard as he thought about the two men behind the latrine. The Harry he had observed that night was a completely different Harry from the one he had remembered, in no way related to the person he had last seen five years before. And Jacob imagined himself that night to be completely different too, in no way related to the person he once was: the person who had sat at his father’s table on that same night the previous year, the person whom the officers saw as inextricable from the calm, eloquent traitor smoking behind the latrine, the person whose uncle was Harry Hyams. I am a free man, he heard Harry repeat in his head. And he knew what he had to do.
While the other guests were still in the parlor, Jacob slipped back into the dining room and looked down at Harry’s place at the ta
ble. He tore open the packet of poison and poured it into Harry’s empty glass, which he then refilled from the decanter of wine, stirring it a bit with Harry’s spoon. He was surprised by how simple it was, how little of anything he felt at all. It was as though he were stirring sugar into Emma Jonas’s tea. As he replaced the glass, the crippled Negro entered the room. He looked at Jacob with a strange expression that Jacob couldn’t quite decipher, as though, perhaps, he were laughing at him. Then he picked up the decanter and began filling the other glasses around the table, humming one of the Hebrew tunes that the guests had been singing. Suddenly and excruciatingly horrified, Jacob retreated to the parlor, just in time for Harry to call the company to return to the dining-room table.
5.
THE SECOND HALF OF THE PASSOVER SEDER IS EITHER TEDIOUS or triumphal, depending on how much one has eaten compared with how much one has drunk. Most years, people drag themselves back to the table tired, sluggish, and ready for the whole evening to be done with. But that night in New Orleans was different. Food wasn’t yet scarce, but it had become harder to come by; liquor, on the other hand, had been laid up for years. Even at the genteel table of Harry Hyams, the drink had not quite been balanced by the food, and so the tone that night, after everyone made their way back to the table, was triumphal: most of the guests were more drunk than full, and it showed. The guests sang the grace after meals loudly, with great spirit, the older ones even singing aloud the parts usually chanted to oneself. Afterward, before Harry rose to read the next passage, some of the older guests began laughing about Elijah the prophet, messenger of the Messiah, for whom one opens the door at the end of the evening—joking that perhaps Elijah might arrive this year in the form of a swarm of mosquitoes full of Yankee blood.