All Other Nights

by Dara Horn

  This was almost childishly simple, nothing that anyone who had ever engaged in the most rudimentary sort of business wouldn’t know. But Benjamin had been immersed in quite a different world, with far more urgent problems, and at this point there was apparently little room available in his intellect to devote to this sort of minutiae. He drew his dark eyebrows together. “I see,” he said, rubbing at his beard. “Rappaport, are you expected back in New York?”

  Jacob saw his opportunity, and seized it. “Not particularly,” he said. “My parents have quite given up on expecting me, I’m sorry to say. They—they did not approve of my late wife, and even now there is considerable discord between us.” The lies were becoming easier to tell, and harder to distinguish from the truth, even for Jacob himself. “I had intended to return only as Edwin’s replacement.”

  “Well, that will no longer be necessary,” Benjamin said. He clearly had no interest in Jacob’s alleged personal troubles, and for that Jacob was grateful. Benjamin rubbed at his beard again, and Jacob wondered whether this sort of rubbing was precisely what had thinned it: a physical worrying, anxiety deflected from his demeanor onto his cheeks. “You would be far more useful to us in handling disbursements from here,” Benjamin said. “Tell me honestly: would that be of interest to you? You would receive a commission for your services, of course.”

  This seemed almost too easy. Surely this was how Timothy Webster had felt after receiving an offer just as promising, unable to conceive of his own success. But he was hanged six months later. Was it possible that Benjamin was as gullible as he seemed? Or perhaps Jacob was the gullible one. But he remembered his promise to Philip, and understood how limited his options were. He had to risk everything.

  “It would be a privilege to serve you, and the cause,” he said.

  Benjamin’s bearded face parted into an enormous grin as he shook Jacob’s hand. “Rappaport, I cannot even express to you how useful your services would be. These disbursements have generally been my sole responsibility, but I trust that you would be able to execute them with requisite discretion.”

  Jacob nodded, trying his best to smile. “I would.”

  “And I would be forever grateful for your assistance. I have far too many other matters occupying me, and I’ve already taken on too much. Mr. Davis is unavailable all too frequently, I’m sorry to say. He suffers from neuralgia, and lately he has had bouts where he has been incapacitated for days. I have had to extend myself quite beyond reasonable limits to compensate for his absences.” This was new information to Jacob. He wondered how many people in Washington were aware of it. “The new plan’s odds of success may not be terribly high, but the reward would be priceless. It is calculated to end the war, on favorable terms.”

  This was almost inconceivable. What sort of plan? He knew Benjamin would tell him nothing further, at least not yet. But he couldn’t help prodding him. “I must say that the common perception from New York is that our prospects are rather bleak,” he said.

  Benjamin pressed his palms against his knees, his face animated with sudden energy. “The naysayers are fond of telling me that we are doomed. But Mr. Davis and I believe that if we were as doomed as they claim, then we would surely have met our demise long ago. Think of the resources at the Union’s disposal. The fact that our country still exists at all ought to boggle the mind. They should have beaten us in ’61, and easily at that. They haven’t the slightest notion of what we are capable of enduring.”

  This hardly seemed optimistic to Jacob. He was reminded of the witticism that his father claimed his grandfather had coined during a string of anti-Semitic riots he had survived in the German states: “God forbid that this should last as long as we are capable of enduring it.”

  Benjamin took another bite of cake, swallowing before he continued. “Our prospects may appear a bit grim at this point, but we are by no means exhausted. Many more strategies are possible, most of which I cannot share with you. Be assured that the current plan is merely one of many. I have also been working on an emancipation proclamation.”

  Jacob gagged on a piece of cake, which he only succeeded in dislodging from his gullet after an embarrassingly long series of coughs. Benjamin, ever the master of equanimity, dabbed at his mouth and glanced away.

  “Pardon?” Jacob asked.

  “It’s a very innovative plan,” Benjamin said cheerfully. “The idea is that we shall offer freedom to any slave who agrees to join the army.”

  Surely this was some sort of joke. Jacob smiled, waiting for Benjamin to laugh.

  “The Yankees appear to have endless manpower,” Benjamin said, launching into a speech. “But the truth is that whenever we kill too many of them, they simply import more Irishmen to send down into the trenches. They actually pay the Irish five hundred dollars a head for the privilege of dying. Those are the slaves the Union has bought for itself.” He drummed his stubby fingers once on the arm of his chair. “I’ve tried to lure the Irish here the same way, but Britain has not been particularly cooperative. It’s quite a complicated situation, you see.” He smiled at Jacob, his eternally inappropriate smile, and continued. “We appear to suffer from a shortage of means, but it is a false shortage. We simply haven’t been using all of the means at our disposal. This emancipation plan ought to increase our ranks by fifteen percent or more.”

  The absurdity of this suggestion caught Jacob off guard. He thought of the slave woman who murdered Jeannie’s mother, and of Caleb Johnson and his laundry-hanging wife in General Longstreet’s headquarters, and of the entire Legal League, and marveled. The idea was so idiotic that only a genius could have thought of it.

  “You want to arm the slaves,” Jacob said carefully.

  “Well, they wouldn’t be slaves anymore, you understand,” Benjamin retorted. “They would simply be free Rebels.” The man was a lawyer through and through.

  “Does this—does this idea have any support?”

  “The men in the trenches are practically begging us for it,” he replied. This did not impress Jacob; it seemed clear to him that men in the trenches would beg for just about anything that might delay their inevitable deaths. But Benjamin was undeterred. “Mr. Davis agrees with me in theory, but not in his heart. It’s going to be a hard battle to convince the Congress that I’m right.”

  Jacob tried his best to summon his acting skills, but he was at a loss. Wasn’t this, at the end of all the arguments, the reason everyone had gone to war? If the Rebels were to free the slaves themselves, then what cause had there been for Jacob murdering his uncle, or for Jacob’s crippling, or for the deaths of hundreds of thousands on either side? Was any of it necessary? Later Jacob would be able to think of many answers, many explanations, many comforts to aid him through the wreckage left behind. But now he could think of only one cause, the smallest and most private. Both Jacob and Benjamin were preoccupied, haunted by the desperation of their loves.

  “There are few people to whom I can say this frankly, Rappaport, but perhaps you are one of them,” Benjamin said, his hands on his knees. “I shall say it directly: These men are fools. They would honestly prefer to lose the entire war, as long as they can lose ‘honorably.’ Their idea of ‘honor’ is absurd, but they won’t hear it. They would rather keep their slaves, maintain the principle—even though, if they lose this war, they will become slaves themselves. But Rappaport, you understand this. You may be young, you may have been born in America, but you are still a Hebrew. You know what it means to lose.”

  Benjamin ate the last remaining bite of cake. “All Hebrews know that there is nothing honorable about subjugation and defeat,” he said. “History does not care whether one had the foresight to lose with style. No one is ever forgiven for losing a war.”

  They sat for a moment in silence, each contemplating the other, the weight of thousands of years of losses burdening the air between them. Then the room reverberated as the deafening peals of church bells flowed through the walls, the happy triumphant music of those accusto
med to victory. The magical hour was up.

  Benjamin rose from his seat. “I am sorry to end our conversation, but I am expected at the Davises’ for Sunday dinner,” he said, with unmistakable pride. “I shall see you in my office tomorrow morning at nine. It’s the building just across from the Capitol. First floor, the last door on the left. Thank you, Rappaport.”

  “And thank you, Secretary,” Jacob said.

  He left Benjamin’s home in a daze, with the sound of church bells around the city resonating through his damaged head, wondering whether he would win.

  3.

  BENJAMIN’S OFFICE, IN A LARGE STONE GOVERNMENT BUILDING on Capitol Square, was even more neatly organized than the study in his home, and even more impersonal. Two walls of the room were occupied by bookshelves, full of bound volumes and bundled papers. The mantel above the fireplace held another bronze bust, this time of George Washington. The last wall, behind his desk, was occupied by a large window looking out onto Capitol Square. Beside the window hung a floor-to-ceiling map of the Confederacy, with thousands of blue and gray painted pins stuck into it. Jacob had never before seen the war laid out in such a large format, and it was impossible not to notice how unforgiving the Northern stranglehold had become: blue pins ran along all the coasts and half the rivers, up and down the Mississippi and the Atlantic and the Potomac and the Gulf, and now more blue pins had encroached inland, a long deadly parade of them all across the country, straight through Georgia and now progressing up into South Carolina. The entire South dangled over Benjamin’s desk like a tortured voodoo doll, pricked by blue pins everywhere it bled. This bleak image hovered just over his shoulder as he sat at his impeccable desk, which had nothing on it but a single sheet of paper. Benjamin, as always, was smiling.

  “I am quite grateful to have you here, Rappaport,” he said. “As you must be aware, the age for impressments has been lowered to seventeen and raised to sixty-five. It is almost impossible to find men to fulfill even the most basic duties in the office, let alone men of competence. We are forced to make do with old men and boys, or the occasional wounded soldier, most of whom are considerably less literate than you. I do have a clerk of my own, but he is quite ill this week. Thus I apologize if some purely clerical work is involved in the tasks I assign to you today.”

  Jacob nodded as his remaining eye burned. “No apologies are necessary,” he announced, trying to keep his voice cheerful, nonchalant.

  “You may use the clerk’s room immediately to the left of this one. There is an empty desk there for you,” Benjamin said. “But first let me give you everything you will need.” He stood and turned to his left, scanning the shelves. “Here are the account books with records of the available funds for this project,” he told him, pulling two ledger books off a shelf along the wall. “And here are the names of the six agents whom we would like to engage at present,” he said. He lifted the single page on his desk, and handed it to Jacob. Jacob took it in his free hand as he leaned on his cane. It couldn’t possibly be this simple, could it? Benjamin turned to another shelf and removed a large bundle of papers. “This file has their current addresses and other information that the courier will require for each of them in order to deliver the funds. Some are still in Canada, but some are already in Maryland and Washington. They move quite frequently, as you can imagine, and unfortunately I haven’t had time to sort out their current addresses on my own, but I assure you that they are all here in these papers. You must look through them yourself to ascertain each person’s whereabouts, I’m afraid.”

  “I would be pleased to do so,” Jacob said. He meant it. It was all he could do to stop himself from drooling.

  “Your first task shall be to devise the payment schedule as you proposed to me, based on the finances recorded in these books. You will see in the records that we have some credit pending from private sources in Europe, so you will have to calibrate at least some of the payments based on when the funds become available to us here. And keep in mind that there will be perhaps two score more agents whose services we may need to engage in the future.” Two score? “So do be certain to reserve resources accordingly.” Jacob eyed the documents and ledger books in his arms. How many lives could be saved by the briefest glance at the contents of those papers, with his single eye?

  “Once you have devised the payment schedule, I would like you to draw up a letter for each agent describing the payment options, along with indications of where he will be able to draw future payments in liquid. You may sign the letters yourself, on my behalf. There is also information in these papers about which banks and other locations can be used for deposits. Those currently in Canada will draw from the Washington banks when they arrive. For those already in Maryland, you can correlate the deposit points to their addresses, based on these maps,” he said, and removed some rolled-up maps from a drawer before turning back to Jacob, the little smile still lingering on his lips. “At five o’clock, the courier will come by for the gold. The gold is in this safe.”

  Benjamin opened a wooden cabinet below the window to reveal a thick iron strongbox, padlocked shut. Jacob knew, somewhere deep in his addled brain, that it was impossible that Benjamin was doing this, that something must be horribly wrong. But he was enraptured, hypnotized. Without intending to, he returned Benjamin’s smile.

  “I shall only be here in my office today at intervals, I’m afraid,” Benjamin said. “I must meet with Mr. Davis upstairs, and we must not be disturbed. Should I be absent when the courier arrives, I shall entrust the key to the safe beneath the bosom of our founding father,” he said, pointing to the bust on the mantel. Jacob nodded, his head bobbling as though he were drunk. “I’ve sent the courier a note to expect you, in the event that I am otherwise engaged. I trust that you will handle this additional responsibility with equal discretion.”

  “Of—of course,” Jacob stammered. It occurred to him that someone else might have immediately begun planning a robbery. But now he had just one reason for living, and that reason might be in this city somewhere, if he could stay long enough to find her. The only way he could possibly hope to stay was to do exactly what Judah Benjamin told him to do. Benjamin kept smiling at him as he pressed the cabinet closed.

  “The courier’s name is Little Johnny. He should receive fifteen dollars gold for his services. Give him his fee along with the letters and the gold for each agent, and send him on his way. For today, that ought to be all. Is everything clear?”

  “Yes,” Jacob replied.

  “Good, then. Here is your desk.”

  He took Jacob by the elbow, steering him out of his impeccable office and into a rather ramshackle clerk’s room down the corridor. The room consisted of two bare, scratched desks with nothing but inkwells and empty ledger books on them, and many bundles of documents stacked on shelves around the room. Benjamin placed the books and bundled papers on the desk, then turned back to Jacob. “Thank you for all of your assistance, Rappaport. I greatly appreciate it,” he said. “And now I must be off to Mr. Davis upstairs. If I do not see you earlier, I shall stop by before the end of the day. Until then.” And with that, he patted Jacob’s shoulder as if Jacob were his young son, ambled delicately around Jacob’s crippled body, and hurried out the door.

  Alone at last, Jacob breathed, dropping down into the chair of the closer desk. The officers were right; he was exhausted, and not merely from standing for so long as Benjamin delivered his instructions. His heart was pounding, a cloud of anxiety hovering above his head. But now some of his anxiety took the form of excitement, a terrifying thrill at what he held in his hands. Surely it couldn’t be this simple. Or could it?

  He touched the papers on the desk. First he examined the handwritten list of names. These, he knew, he had to report immediately, whoever they might be. He was too frightened to write them down, aware that Benjamin might return unannounced at any moment. Instead he committed them to memory, reading them again and again: Sgt. Thomas Harney, Rev. Kensey Stewart, Chaplain Thomas C
onrad, Mr. David Herold, Mr. Lewis Powell, Mr. T. F. Macduff. None of these names meant anything to him.

  Then he untied the bundle of papers that Benjamin had given him and began to look through it. It was a large packet stuffed with hundreds of pages’ worth of documents. He could see why Benjamin hadn’t bothered to find the agents’ addresses himself. If they were indeed buried in this packet of papers, it was going to take a great deal of time to find them. The documents inside were assorted: a group of messages from Canada, a list of banks in Maryland, a topographic map of a hilly area that Jacob couldn’t identify, an unlabeled photograph of an old man. Many of the papers were receipts for laughably small shipments of quinine, which was apparently being smuggled into the Confederacy from Canada. The thought of it unexpectedly moved Jacob, a swell of sympathy rising in his chest for those poor boys whose suffering could easily be cured but for the stubbornness of others. As for the letters in the file, they were mostly requests for money, some for astonishingly large sums, and written in language that suggested the correspondents’ confidence in receiving them—though perhaps that was merely a symptom of the quintessential Southern illness, delusional optimism. The messages that didn’t deal with money were maddeningly unrevealing: “Secretary: Dr. Blackburn is in place in New York with materials from Bermuda,” or “Secretary: A farmhouse has been secured in Dent’s Meadow, with assist. of Rev. Stewart,” or “Secretary: I have arrived in Washington, and have placed a classified advertisement in the Washington Daily Chronicle informing J. Wilkes of same.” Many times he resisted the temptation to copy anything down. Instead he read each page several times as he worked for his two masters, memorizing what he could for the command, and recording addresses and bank information for each of the names on the list for Benjamin. It took hours. But as he reached the end of the packet for the sixth time, he looked down at the list of addresses he had compiled and could no longer deny what had become obvious. No matter how many times he read through the documents, he could not find a single mention of a Mr. T. F. Macduff.