All Other Nights (12 page)

“You ought to go and get some sleep,” the old man replied, stifling a yawn. “You’ll want to be at your best tomorrow morning.”

Jacob agreed politely, and excused himself upstairs. He undressed with slow movements, his brain dulled by ale, and climbed into bed, feeling vaguely protected by the presence of old Isaacs downstairs, and by the ghosts of other worlds who accompanied him, lost with him in America. But many hours passed before Jacob fell asleep.

O
N THE MORNING OF HIS WEDDING JACOB WOKE TO THE SOUND
of rain. Through the warped glass of the bedroom window, he saw shivering ribbons of water spilling down from a lead sky, the grass and trees glowing the brilliant green of a wet summer day. He thought of the rain outside the windows of the officers’ headquarters, wondering for a moment where he was. Then he remembered, and he looked at the clock. It was late; if he were to escape, there was no time left but now. But as he rose from the bed, his body would only move slowly, as if in a trance. He stepped to the washbasin in the corner of the room and splashed water on his face, his skin still tender from the barber’s blade the day before. As he patted his cheeks dry, he glanced in the mirror and was surprised by his own expression. The man in the mirror appeared proud, confident: it was the Jacob Rappaport he had always imagined becoming. He grinned and ran a comb through his hair, amazed by how independent he was of past and future, a grown man’s satisfied smile reflecting back at him. Then he recognized the face in the mirror. He looked exactly like his father.

He spat in the basin and looked away, turning to the window. This time he saw a man under a canvas umbrella approaching the house. He panicked, thinking of William, until the man shifted the umbrella and he saw who it was: the rabbi. For a final instant he fantasized about running away. But he thought of Jeannie, remembering the evening on the veranda, her fingers on his neck, her words warm and alive in his ear. He dressed quickly, put on his top hat and hurried down the stairs. When he arrived, old Isaacs and the rabbi had already set the marriage contract on the dining-room table. In minutes it was signed, witnessed, completed: the bride legally acquired, his obligations to her inscribed in ink, binding. They escorted him through the rain to the Levys’ house, where he crossed the threshold and saw his bride.

The sisters had draped the entire front room with garlands of white flowers, which he knew Rose and Phoebe must have spent days collecting in the woods outside. Two boys Phoebe’s age—sons, Jacob remembered, of one of Philip’s colleagues—were standing in the corner, playing a pair of fiddles. Guests lined the room, a parade of shabby suits, dresses and top hats. But Jacob saw only Jeannie, who sat on a chair in the middle of the room in a simple white gown. Her face was radiant, as though she were made of pure light. It seemed impossible that she was real.

Jacob lowered her veil over her face, wincing as he remembered his dream of Harry Hyams, and then they were led under a canopy of branches and flowers that the girls had built by the front-room window. He was so captivated by Jeannie that he spilled the wine on his suit when the rabbi passed the cup to him. Then he tried to stammer out the Hebrew wedding formula, and had to repeat it over and over, even with the rabbi’s prompting, before he got it exactly right. The guests were laughing at him, but Jacob barely heard them. His chest tightened as he held up Jeannie’s mother’s wedding ring. He thought of Lottie and was suddenly certain that this was all an elaborate joke, that Jeannie was about to laugh in his face, throw it down and flee. He was amazed when she allowed him to put it on her finger, and for the rest of the ceremony he kept waiting for her to fling it to the floor. Even after he smashed a glass under his foot (which also required three or four tries) and everyone shouted their congratulations, he still could not quite believe it. It was only when he and Jeannie retreated to Philip’s study, with the door guarded by the rabbi and old Isaacs, and she leapt into his arms, that he made himself believe that it was real.

When they returned to the front room a few moments later, the house seemed to spin with happiness. The fiddlers were playing, and the women had begun to dance as the men passed around the drinks. Philip rushed to them and embraced them both, his face washed with tears. A line of guests waited behind him, anxious to greet them, and Philip quickly disappeared into the crowd. Jacob had expected to feel that knot in his stomach, the sinking sickness of shame and fear, but to his astonishment he felt nothing but joy. Jeannie was at his side, clutching his hand, her mother’s wedding ring digging into his skin. Jacob was talking with Jeannie’s aunt from Richmond and blinking back tears of his own when, in between the notes of the fiddle music, he heard an innocuous sound, like a child entering a noisy room. It was the doorbell.

At first no one answered the door. Out of the corner of his eye, Jacob saw Phoebe excuse herself from a conversation, stepping aside to glance out the front-room window. Then the door resounded with a loud and terrifying thump, and burst open. On the threshold stood William Wilhelm Williams the Third, dripping with rain, holding a raised shotgun in his hands.

For a few moments the fiddlers continued playing, and it took a surprisingly long time for everyone to turn toward the figure in the doorway. There was a fraction of an instant when Jacob had seen him but Jeannie still hadn’t, and his first impulse was to clutch her hand and turn her away from the door: if everyone ignored him, Jacob insanely believed for that second, then perhaps he would simply disappear. But one of the fiddles stopped mid-note, then squawked as the musician clutched the bow. The second fiddler glanced at the first, and both of them turned toward the door. As the music ceased, the conversations around the room trickled into silence until everyone was looking in the same direction. And then Rose screamed.

William stood still in the doorway as the room slowly transformed into a theater, with every last person present watching him before he spoke.

“Good day, everyone,” he announced, with an enormous smile on his face. The guests scurried like insects against the walls. Only Jacob and Jeannie remained frozen in the middle of the room.

For an instant time stopped, and Jacob was paralyzed, waiting for death. But it soon became clear that William wouldn’t begin firing immediately. He was a man who loved being onstage, and for this performance he clearly planned to follow his script to the letter. As he stepped across the threshold, he even took a bow, as though he expected the guests to applaud.

“I’m so sorry I missed the ceremony,” he continued. “It must have been lovely. Of course, I’d be curious to know how you people get married. Did the bride and groom get to drink from a cup of blood?”

“William,” Jeannie said softly.

Jacob looked at her, then at William. William took three grand steps toward them, entering the room.

“Dearest Eugenia,” William said, and bowed deeply to her, his gun raised above his shoulder as his head swept down nearly to his knees. “Please, do forgive me for my lack of punctuality. I’m sure my invitation was lost in the post. The post is so unreliable these days.”

Jacob was shaking, but when he turned to glance at Jeannie, he saw that she was perfectly poised. “William,” she said, her voice steady and clear, “I know you have a weakness for the dramatic denouement, but this isn’t one of your plays. I suggest that you leave.”

Her calm amazed Jacob. For a moment he wondered whether she had somehow planned this, or if perhaps she had some magic up her sleeve that would allow her to steal away his shotgun the way she had stolen Jacob’s wallet. But he felt her hand trembling in his.

“Did you read my letter, Eugenia?” William asked.

“What on earth are you talking about?” Jeannie replied, in her laughing voice. She dropped Jacob’s hand. “William, do stop being ridiculous.” She seemed remarkably composed, as though the gun were merely a stage prop. But she was turning pale.

“Lying wench. I know you read it.”

For an instant Jacob thought of old Isaacs crouching somewhere in the room behind him, of Isaacs’s first war, and he pushed Jeannie behind him so that he could stand between her and the gun. “Jeannie, please go upstairs for a moment,” he said loudly. His voice was quaking, but he continued. “Mr. Williams and I will discuss this outside.” He had noticed a knife lying on one of the buffet tables alongside the door; perhaps he could grab it on his way out.

William leveled the gun at Jacob. “I have nothing to discuss with you,” he said.

Jeannie stepped out from behind Jacob’s back. “William, I read your letter,” she said. “Your letter was very kind. I did appreciate your concern for—for my soul. Truly I did. But please, let’s be civil,” she said, her voice reeking sweetness.

William glared at her, his eyes cold. “I meant it, Eugenia. I meant every word of that letter. Particularly the ending.”

Jacob waited for William to announce his guilt, or for Jeannie at least to ask what he meant. But William wasn’t even looking at Jacob now. “Every word out of your mouth is a lie, Eugenia,” he said. “The kiss of Judas, that’s what you gave me. But you shall be paid back. His kisses are worse than yours. You’ll see.” William was imagining himself onstage, Jacob saw; he spoke as though he were reciting lines.

“William, you’ve misunderstood,” Jeannie said. To Jacob’s shock, his bold bride took several steps forward, moving toward the man with the gun.

“Jeannie, stop!” Jacob shouted, and jumped in front of her. But he wasn’t quick enough. William, still holding the shotgun in one hand, had already stepped toward her and grabbed her arm. She drew back, but he had caught her too tightly: he pulled her toward him and threw her to the floor, splayed at his feet.

Jacob rushed toward her, but now William had his grip back on his shotgun. He planted a foot on the skirt of Jeannie’s dress, and as Jacob reached for her, William butted him away with the gun, slamming the barrel against Jacob’s head three times, until Jacob fell to the floor at Jeannie’s side. Then he hoisted Jeannie to her feet with one hand, her skirt still caught under his foot. Her dress tore. She stood by herself for a moment as William returned his hand to the trigger, before looking down at her bared legs. Jacob was on all fours, struggling to stand again while attempting to keep the room from moving in his swaying field of vision, when he saw Jeannie try to cover herself, shrinking back down to her knees.

William rested a foot on her hand, then looked up at the crowd and grinned. “Ladies and gentlemen, you all will be reading about Miss Levy in the newspapers soon enough. But allow me to be the first to inform you that this charming young lady is a Union whore.”

Suddenly, in the tiny corner of rationality Jacob retreated to in his brain as he reeled on the floor, he understood what William was thinking. Jeannie hadn’t responded to William’s letter, or, rather, had responded by not responding, by marrying Jacob regardless. So William had then concluded that she was actually a double agent—working with Jacob! It occurred to Jacob that there must be some sort of posse outside the house, waiting to arrest them both. He glanced past William through the open door, but he saw no one, not even a horse. Apparently William had decided that he could take care of both of them himself. As Jacob looked up at the shotgun, he knew that he could.

“Mr. Williams,” someone said behind them.

When Jacob managed to turn around, he saw Philip standing at the back of the room, just outside the door of his study, in his top hat and tails. His hands were raised in front of him and clasped together high, as if in some sort of ecstatic Christian prayer. It was another long second before Jacob saw that Philip was holding a revolver, pointed at William Wilhelm Williams the Third.

“This is my daughter’s wedding, and you are not invited,” Philip said. His voice was calm, even, utterly without fear. The revolver was steady in his hands. “Now please get out of my house.”

The guests remained plastered along the walls, the women clinging to the men as everyone crouched at the edges of the room. Jeannie, apparently forgetting her dress, tried to stand again, but Jacob pulled her back down to the floor. William was startled, but now he leveled his gun again, at Philip.

“Philip Mordecai Levy. The Shylock of the Old Dominion. Greetings, sir. I’m so sorry I can’t offer you a pound of my flesh, but perhaps you might accept a pound of Rappaport’s instead.”

In his top hat, Philip blazed like a pillar of fire. He spoke slowly, carefully. “No one else in my family is going to die in this room.”

William cocked back the gun, and smirked. “Levy, your confidence is impressive. In that case, I challenge you to a duel. Rappaport can be your second, and Eugenia can be mine.” He looked straight at Philip’s pistol, and kept grinning. “Obviously, Levy, you’ve never been in a duel before. If you had, you wouldn’t be here at all.”

Philip did not move. “Williams, I am only going to warn you one more time. Get out of my house.”

William laughed out loud. It was a long laugh, five long descending notes that plummeted into a growl. Then he aimed the gun carefully at Philip, and fired.

The guests hit the floor as William pulled the trigger. But as Jacob watched William, he saw the most amazing sight: as William fired, his right arm suddenly snapped inward in a frantic spasm, recoiling toward his shoulder so that the barrel of the gun flailed madly toward the ceiling as the shot rang out.

The plaster hadn’t even begun to fall from the bullet hole in the ceiling when a second shot screamed through the room. William staggered backward and fell to the floor, blood flowing gently from his head onto the threshold of the house. The battlefield injury that had made him into an entertainer for the troops had ensured that crippled William Wilhelm Williams the Third would never again win a duel.

And contrary to all of Jacob’s expectations for his wedding day, it was Philip Mordecai Levy who spent Jacob’s wedding night in jail.