All Other Nights (35 page)

“I can’t,” Rose repeated. “I won’t.”

It occurred to Jacob that it wasn’t his fate that Rose cared about, but rather her own. If Lottie discovered him and had him hanged, then Rose wouldn’t be able to write to her father—and the war might continue for another thirty years, and she might never hear from him again. Rose was in Lottie’s thrall now, her prisoner. Their home was a citadel within a citadel, and he would have to find his own way in.

He noticed an almost imperceptible crack in the fortress wall. “Why are you watching the baby?” he asked. “Where is Jeannie?”

Rose pursed her lips, looking down. As he waited for Rose to answer, he imagined that his joy had been misplaced, that he had been terribly mistaken, that Jeannie—

At last Rose spoke. “A few months ago Jeannie found a—a position. She’s supporting all of us now. Even Phoebe and her mother-in-law.”

Phoebe was married? He remembered Phoebe too as more girl than woman, engrossed in her whittling, laughing with the guests at his wedding. But he couldn’t think of Phoebe now; all he could think of was Jeannie. And Deborah.

“A ‘position’?” he asked. “What sort of ‘position’?”

Rose wouldn’t look back up at him. “She works in the evenings, and I look after Deborah,” she said.

This was a childish evasion, and he wouldn’t accept it. He stared at Rose, suddenly nauseated. Had Jeannie become some sort of—some kind of—

“Where does she work?” he demanded. “How can I see her?”

Rose shook her head. “She doesn’t want to see you.”

He stood still, stricken. With a gravity that pulled at his weakened knees, he suddenly understood that this must be true. But he could not let it matter to him, not now. “Tell me where she works,” he demanded again.

“She doesn’t want to see you. She hates you.”

He flinched, cringing from the blow.
She hates you.
It was entirely possible. Probable, even. But he had come too far. “I don’t care. I want to see her. Tell me where she works.”

“No.”

He clutched Rose’s wrist, his tight grip brushing the edge of cruelty. “Rose, do you want me to send that letter to your father? If you ever want to hear from your father again—”

Rose finally looked up, and he saw in her eyes the flaw in the fortress wall, the crack widening. “She wouldn’t want you to know,” she said.

“Why?” he asked, though he was afraid of the answer. “Is it—is it something shameful?”

“No,” Rose said simply. He breathed with relief. Rose added, with a Levy smile, “It would only be shameful for you.”

He looked at her, baffled. “Shameful for me?”

Rose couldn’t help herself anymore; the citadel was breached. She grinned as she pulled a folded piece of paper out of her apron pocket, which she then passed to him.

He unfolded it, expecting some sort of letter. But he soon saw that it was a printed advertisement—or, rather, an invitation. The ink had blurred along the creases where Rose had folded it, but the text was still eminently clear:

You are Cordially Invited to Attend

The Cary Sisters’ Starvation Ball

WITH ENTERTAINMENTS BY

The One-Legged Orchestra

AND

The Acclaimed

Miss Eugenia Van Damme,

PERFORMING AS

“The Escape Artist.”

Prepare to be ASTOUNDED!!

30 M
ARCH,
E
IGHT
O’C
LOCK

AT THE
C
ARY
R
ESIDENCE,
23 C
LAY
S
TREET

“R
EFRESHMENTS”
W
ILL BE
S
ERVED!

^**
Donations accepted at the door
^**

for Chimborazo Hospital

He read the words on the page, utterly bewildered. At last he spoke.

“Van Damme?” he asked.

Rose smiled. “It’s the name she used in the theater, before the war.” Of course. He had wondered, a lifetime ago, how she had managed to have such a successful theater career with a name like Levy. “She was famous here,” Rose added. “People remember her.”

He looked at the invitation again. “What is a starvation ball?” he asked.

“It’s the fashion here. The society people hold grand parties just like before the war, but with empty plates instead of food. Everyone thinks it’s great fun.”

He thought of the Passover seder in New Orleans, of the drunken cheering for the cause. It was a land of delusion, a glorious, ridiculous dream. He read the advertisement once more, hypnotized. “
The Escape Artist.
” Of course, of course! He would have laughed, if he hadn’t been so stunned. Rose was right: it was only shameful for him.

“She performs everywhere now. This week she is occupied with rehearsals for another performance, but this one is next Thursday night,” Rose said through the haze of his thoughts, pointing to the date. “No one will stop you from going in, if you are dressed appropriately enough,” she told him. “They are always eager for more gentlemen. Stay in the back of the room. She won’t recognize you from a distance. But you must not let her see you there.”

She plucked the paper out of his hand. He tried to grab it back from her, until he saw that she was tucking it into his own vest pocket. “I shall come back tomorrow morning at eight o’clock, with a letter for Papa,” she said, and smiled. “If you aren’t here, you may expect to be hanged.”

With that, she bent down, picked up her sack of potatoes, and darted away. He would have followed her, but she was much too fast for him. He watched her as she disappeared around a corner, and then he sank down to the ground, his legs buckling under the weight of newfound wonder. He read the invitation once more, and marveled at the revival of the dead.

T
HE NEXT MORNING, ROSE GAVE HIM HER LETTER FOR PHILIP,
without a word. Once she had left, he opened it, in case it was some sort of trick. Inside he found pages of scenes, some rendered in anagrams, but most in painfully direct prose, describing everything the sisters had endured in the past two years: the death of Phoebe’s husband in the battle at Spotsylvania; how the baby Phoebe had been expecting was born too soon and died; their aunt’s illness; Rose’s job as a hospital orderly; Phoebe’s promotion to hospital matron; Lottie’s raving fury since her release.
She breaks things
, Rose wrote. Of Jeannie, out of fear, she offered only one cryptic sentence:
Miss Van Damme has returned to the stage, and thanks to her efforts we are no longer hungry.
A single line toward the end of the letter made him unable to read any more:
Deborah will be two years old at the end of May, and I regret to say that she looks exactly like her father.
He returned the letter to the envelope, blinking his remaining eye. That evening, he brought it, with special delivery instructions, to the cobbler.

When he arrived at the cobbler’s, he discovered that there was already a message waiting for him from the command—a response, he knew, to Sally’s revelation. He hobbled back to his rented room to open it, amazed by how elated he felt. It was as if the leather harness he had just purchased was itself the medal they planned to pin to his chest. But when he pried open the seams of the doubled leather and excavated the message, he deciphered it four times, each time unable to believe what he read:

REGARDING YOUR LAST MEMORANDUM: PINKERTON IS SKEPTICAL OF YOUR INFORMANT, WHOSE INTELLIGENCE WE CANNOT CONSIDER RELIABLE. WE REQUEST CONFIRMATION FROM A MORE REPUTABLE SOURCE. UNTIL THEN WE SHALL HOLD OFF FURTHER PURSUIT.

He read it again and again.
Hold off further pursuit
? But what if the plot were already in motion, the deed about to be done, and no one prevented it—merely because no one would believe a twelve-year-old Negro girl?

Over the next few days, he wrote back urgently, each time explaining how Sally’s remarks corroborated what he had found before, insisting that they believe him. In each response he received, he was addressed like a child: gently reprimanded, scolded for his naïveté in accepting an unknown Negro girl’s ramblings as fact, accused of concealing his own failures behind a child’s fantasies (or, one message insinuated, perhaps even inventing the story himself ), instructed not to panic, reminded that he needed to be more thorough, more dependable, more certain. His own certainty was driving him mad. At length they reassured him that Lincoln was about to embark on a riverboat for a conference, where he would be guarded very closely for several days; at the least, this would give Jacob time to try to gather more reputable evidence. In the meantime, the following Thursday arrived, and Jacob waited for evening, when he at last would see his wife.

“RAPPAPORT, I HAVE
an important task for you.”

It was late Thursday afternoon, and Jacob could not have been more agitated when Benjamin walked in the door and planted himself across from his desk. Since Sally’s revelation, no further details had emerged about the potential kidnapping. Jacob couldn’t stop denigrating himself for allowing her to escape, or thinking of all the ways he might have used her to his advantage. Of course, everyone had always used Sally to their advantage; for her entire life, she had been nothing more than an advantage, to everyone but herself. He felt like a fool for setting her free.

He tried to concentrate on corroborating the evidence, but with each passing day he became more and more frustrated. To distract himself, he often took out the invitation Rose had given him, counting down the hours until he would finally see Miss Eugenia Van Damme. But now, just as he was preparing to leave the office, Benjamin had walked in, ready to assign him yet another “important task.” He held back a groan.

Benjamin stood in front of him with a pile of papers under his arm. Jacob looked up at him as he always did, summoning his most obsequious expression. He noticed that something seemed different about Benjamin, though at first he could not determine what. The Secretary was dressed as impeccably as ever, his suit perfectly pressed; his face was as haggard and weary as it always was, with its usual perpetual smile. Then Jacob saw that Benjamin’s hands were trembling.

“There is a small possibility,” Benjamin said, “that we may need to briefly relocate certain government offices to Danville.”

“Danville?”

Benjamin coughed, taking the papers out from under his arm. “Danville, Virginia. It’s about a hundred and fifty miles south of here. It would simply be a precaution.”

Jacob paused, wondering what this might mean. “Which offices?” he asked.

For the first time, he saw Benjamin’s perfect equanimity falter. His smile vanished as he cleared his throat, his careful gaze averted to his feet. He replied, under his breath, “All of them.”

Jacob bit his lip, unable to believe it. The information he had been receiving from the command had been severely limited; all he knew about the front was what he read in the Richmond papers, various delusions recorded on newsprint. But now it was clear that the Union army was at the door. He saw Benjamin blush, his sallow skin taking on an almost purplish tone. “Davis’s clerk has left instructions for the local militia in the event of our departure. I am entrusting a copy to you as well,” he said, and handed Jacob the sheaf of documents. His hands fluttered quickly to his sides as Jacob took the papers, as though he were relieved to be rid of them. “Should circumstances require our relocation, I expect you to remain here, to address any problems that may arise in our absence.”

Suddenly Jacob understood. The government officials would escape, and leave him behind to take the fall.

“I expect that I can trust you to handle any contacts with our agents in the event of our temporary displacement,” Benjamin said. “If our displacement is even required, that is. Most likely it will prove unnecessary, but I think it wise to be prepared.”

“Certainly,” Jacob said. He was hardly able to keep the cheer from his voice. But then, almost by accident, he glanced down at the first few paragraphs of the instructions on the pages Benjamin had handed him.
In the event of a governmental evacuation, all supplies are to be burned…all manufactories are to be burned…all river vessels are to be burned…all bridges are to be burned…all warehouses are to be burned…
Jacob turned one page, then the next, his vision faltering. They had arranged for the end of the world. He looked down at his shattered legs and wondered how he could ever save himself from a fire, when he could no longer run.

Benjamin was still speaking as Jacob turned pale before him. “Little Johnny is scheduled to depart for Washington this coming Sunday evening at midnight,” he said. Now his voice was bland again, as if all of this were perfectly routine. “He will meet his transport at the old burial ground on Shockoe Hill. I selected this meeting point myself. It’s not as frequented as the newer cemeteries, and the hill makes it a good lookout point.” Benjamin was digressing now. “It’s both a Christian and a Hebrew burial ground, you may be interested to know,” he added. “The two graveyards are distinct, but they sit side by side. Perhaps that is another reason why I selected it. The dead have achieved an equivalence to which the living only aspire.” Jacob nodded as Benjamin stiffened, as if waking from a dream. “In the event that we are obliged to relocate the government before Sunday, I would like you to deliver this message to him prior to his departure,” Benjamin said. He held up an envelope, already closed with his own seal. “Under those circumstances, this message would become rather urgent. If we depart, I shall leave it for you in the safe.”

“You—you may depend on me,” Jacob stammered, looking at the envelope. Benjamin was already putting it into his own vest pocket, changing the subject.

“There is one more very minor favor I would like to request of you, Rappaport, should this relocation occur,” he said.

“I am at your service,” Jacob replied.

Benjamin’s eyes were wide, almost childlike. He looked toward the window beyond Jacob’s desk, as if speaking to someone who wasn’t in the room. “My older sister is in New Orleans,” he said. “Her name is Rebecca Kruttschnitt, but the family calls her Penny. I haven’t seen her since ’62, before the city fell. If—if all seems lost, please notify her that I shall find my way to England. She will want to know that I am safe.”

“England?” Jacob asked.

He smiled. “I was born in St. Croix in the West Indies, so I am a British subject. My family came here when I was two years old.”

Jacob waited for Benjamin to return to the matter at hand. But Benjamin preferred to evade the inevitable, and continued his retreat into the certainty of the past. “I grew up in South Carolina, in Charleston. My parents owned a fruit store near the harbor,” Benjamin said brightly, as though Jacob had asked. “Penny and I used to go swimming in the harbor’s older section whenever there weren’t too many boats, off the abandoned docks.”

Jacob wondered why Benjamin was telling him this. For a moment he tried to think of an innocuous reply. But Benjamin kept talking, his words flowing one after another until their happy irrelevance filled the doomed and quiet room. “Our parents didn’t allow us to swim there, and of course that was precisely why I always wanted to do it. And Penny always agreed to come along, just to indulge me, even though she knew how foolish it was,” he said, apropos of nothing. Jacob had never seen Benjamin like this before; perhaps no one had. He listened, captivated, as Benjamin continued.

“One afternoon we were swimming there when a storm broke,” he said. “It came very suddenly. I remember that I was swimming rather far from the docks, and I was floating on my back when I noticed that the sky had turned into a slab of slate, right above my head. The rain broke through it and started pouring down in torrents, with the wind whipping the waves into hideous squalls. The water churned quite violently, and soon it was pulling down on my arms and legs. I was sure I was about to die. I was on the verge of sinking when I felt someone dragging me back to the dock. Penny was always a stronger swimmer than me, and always better at judging risks. I was lying on the dock beside her like a living shipwreck when I saw our father running toward us. I was more afraid of him than I was of the storm. He brought us both back to the store, and when I saw his face I knew he was ready to beat the life out of me. And then Penny told him that she had been the one who swam out in the storm and nearly drowned, and that I had saved her. My father always admired me after that. Two years later, when I was fourteen, I had the opportunity to attend the law school at Yale. My mother was always very ambitious on my behalf, but she hesitated. She thought that I would leave the family forever. But my father told my mother that he trusted me, that anyone who risked his own life to save his sister was a person who knew the meaning of devotion.”

Benjamin was blushing now, his eyes cast down at the floor. Jacob lowered his scarred face before him. The only thing that made either of them matter was the presence of someone else’s love.

“I shall tell your sister where to find you,” Jacob said.

“Thank you,” Benjamin replied, and at last raised his eyes. “Tell me, Rappaport, do you have a family?” he suddenly asked. “Besides your parents, I mean. Harry Hyams’s wife had mentioned that you were widowed, that night in ’62.” Jacob winced, remembering the lies. But Benjamin was looking at him with curiosity, empathy. “Are you—are you married now?”

For a moment Jacob held his breath, before deciding to tell the truth. “Yes,” he said.

“Do you have children?” Benjamin asked.

Jacob swallowed. “A daughter,” he answered.

“I made a grave mistake with my own daughter,” Benjamin said. “I hope you will never make one like it.” His candor was strange, disarming, a fortress of pretense suddenly dissolving into sand. Now he was leaning over Jacob, his melancholy clouding the air between them. “One night many years ago, my wife asked me if she could take our daughter away with her, to Paris. We had a long argument about it. I am very good at winning arguments; my entire career has been built on winning arguments. But that night I gave in. I suppose I thought that I had merely lost the battle that night, and that on some other night in the future, everything would be different. I have since learned that there are no exceptions. What you allow to happen one night will happen on all other nights as well. The person you are tonight is the person you will always be.”

Benjamin stepped back from Jacob’s desk, suddenly embarrassed. He coughed, and pulled a watch out of his vest pocket. “Excuse me, but I am expected upstairs,” he said. “I wish you a pleasant evening.”

With that, he walked away, leaving Jacob drowning in wonder.

When the day faded, Jacob limped out the door. As the invitation warned, he was prepared to be astounded. But, as he knew when he rang the bell at 23 Clay Street that evening, no one is ever really prepared.