Crescent City (26 page)

“Generous he is, but he is not wealthy anymore. His house of cards is about to collapse.”

“What do you mean?” she cried.

“That he will be going through bankruptcy very soon.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“You can believe it. Rumors have been all over the city for weeks. He’s been reorganizing his companies to stave it off, but it’s too late, it won’t help.”

Miriam put her hand to her mouth in horror. “I don’t believe it!”

Shortly before noon on the second day of the new year, the Bank of New Orleans called its loans to the House of Raphael. Whisper to whisper at first, then louder and surer, from the tables at Victor’s to the wharves, the news was spread. By evening there was not a house in the Vieux Carré which did not know of the disaster.

For once unaccompanied by guests, Eugene came home to confirm the news. “Well,” he said, “this is what happens when a man gets to thinking he’s infallible.” His tone was somewhere between commiseration and superiority.

Miriam sat on the sofa. They were in the front parlor, the stiff, gilded room. Her voice was harsh with pain.

“What happened? Why did it happen?”

“He was gullible, for one thing. He endorsed bad notes for his so-called friends. Wanted to be liked, I suppose. A common enough story. And for another, he simply spent too much. And for a third, he speculated, building pyramids like Pharaoh. Only Pharaoh’s lasted longer.”

“Pyramids? I don’t understand.”

“Mortgaging your properties to get money to buy
more property. Take the cornerstone out and the pyramid falls. You see?”

Standing against the daylight, Eugene was a powerful dark presence. One hand jingled coins in his pocket. The gesture spoke of easy assurance. This sort of thing will never happen to me, it said.

“I have no mortgages on any of my properties, nor did I ever speculate in cotton futures. Why do you think Judah Touro came through the panic unscathed? Because he was prudent.”

“You mean Papa has nothing at all?”

“What do you think bankruptcy is? No, there is nothing left. Not of his, nor of Emma’s either.”

“Of Emma’s?”

“He had enlarged Emma’s plantation, bought three thousand acres adjoining it by mortgaging the original land.” A bunch of keys in the other pocket now made their separate jingle. “Next comes the sheriff’s sale: the schooner, the office and warehouses, all the baled cotton waiting for shipment, the slaves, the house on Conti Street—”

“Not Papa’s beautiful house!”

Now pity came into his voice, as if suddenly he had seen that she was crushed. “Yes, it will go, I’m sorry to say.”

She stood up. “I’m going to Papa now.”

“I’ll go with you,” Eugene said immediately.

She didn’t want him—with all that power and competence. “You don’t have to. I’ll go alone.”

“It’s my place,” he said firmly: “I’m his son-in-law.”

Yes, she thought as she followed him, it’s your place. There are people who go to funerals because it’s their place, but really it’s to congratulate themselves on being alive.

In his front parlor Ferdinand was reading a newspaper.
Over his head hung a portrait of young Emma in her Empire gown, with her bouquet and the affable gaze of a person who has never known any trouble. He had been reading the
Deutsche Zeitung,
which, wanting so much to be American that he was ashamed to be seen with a German newspaper, he had always read in secret. He made no attempt to hide it now.

“Well, Papa,” Miriam said, kissing him. Stroking his forehead, she felt the forked vein on the temple throb under her fingers.

He murmured something and she drew away, pitying his embarrassment, should he be seen with tears in his eyes. But he was not weeping. Instead he wore a look of surprise, as if to say: I do not—no, I do not understand how this could have happened to me. To me!

After the swift, steady rise, his daughter thought, straining with every bit of energy, tensed to the fullest, after all that skillful juggling and maneuvering through the first hard years, and finally the lovely lavish years—to end like this?

“Let’s talk about facts,” Eugene said, taking command. “Get pens and paper.”

Hastily, Ferdinand obeyed, and the two men bent their heads over a sheaf of documents on the desk. This was man’s work. Miriam scarcely understood the meaning of words like
mortgage, demand note,
or
bond.
Half hearing them, she could only remember irrelevant things: that last year Papa had taken her children to P. T. Barnum’s circus and bought them balloons.

Presently Ferdinand looked up. “Will you go see Emma?” he asked. “Poor Emma. She’s upstairs in her sitting room with Pelagie and Eulalie.”

On her
lit de repos,
leaning against a mound of ruffled
pillows, Emma lay mourning, while her maid applied eau de cologne to her flushed forehead.

“My land! My beautiful land! How can it be? Yesterday it was there, all those acres! And the finest staircase in the state, did you know that? A free-standing staircase. Yesterday it was mine and now they tell me—they tell me—”

Poor Emma! Such bitter tragedy for her to whom “position in society” meant, next to her family, all there was of value in the world.

“And two hundred slaves!” A falling tear made a wet spot on Emma’s blue sleeve. “People who served my parents and my grandmother! What is to become of them all? What is to become of Sisyphus?”

Yet she had not one word of blame for Ferdinand.

“Those wicked bankers!” she cried. “All the friends he helped, the people we entertained, where are they? It’s their fault, bringing a good man down to ruin.”

“Nonsense, Mama,” Eulalie interjected. “It’s nobody’s fault but your husband’s, your greedy, gambling, spendthrift husband. But then, you might have known, Jews are always—”

Pelagie whirled upon her sister. “What can you be saying? Was he the only one? Half the city was ruined in the panic only a few years ago. Half the city spends more than it owns, gambles on the horses, on cards, on anything it can. And you talk of a Jewish vice!”

For a moment Miriam’s outrage tied her tongue. A moment later, in the face of Pelagie’s decency, the anger ebbed. And again she saw Eulalie clearly: the rejected woman, filled with fears.

My father was her male protector, the only one she had, and he has failed her. Yes, and failed me, too. Now I am condemned to stay with Eugene. And Miriam caught herself wringing her hands in a helpless
gesture which she had made without thinking, and which she despised.

Downstairs on the verandah the Christmas roses were turning a mournful purple, dropping their petals to the floor. In the courtyard under the pallid winter sun it was quite still, with neither clatter nor chatter heard from the quarters. The news had reached the servants, then, and they feared what might happen to them. A pall had fallen on the house.

On the bottom step she stood just looking. She saw her father on her wedding evening, expansive with pride in his daughter and his house. She saw herself sitting in the arbor struggling to read French, then later, entering her childish thoughts in the white satin book. There came Gretel, the first Gretel, turning, tamping the earth down to make a cool place for herself under the mulberry bush. There much later, on another night, she had danced—danced with the husband of Marie Claire.
Why are you so unhappy?
he’d asked.

Fool! Fool! Still thinking of him when nothing will ever come of it. Nothing.

Eugene came down the steps behind her.

“I thought you were up with Emma.”

“I was. But Eulalie was too much for me. She blames it all on Papa’s being Jewish.”

“Stupid old maid. Nasty old maid,” Eugene said savagely. “Had you known that about her before?”

“Oh, there’ve always been little things here and there, mostly things unsaid.”

“They all took from him. How they all took from him! Of course, the wreck is his own doing, but they helped it along. I always said he had no right to support her extravagant relatives. What a reversal now! And he too old to start again.”

From inside the house they heard voices, first David’s and then Gabriel’s.

David was asking, “Is it really as bad as it looks?”

“Every bit and perhaps even worse.” Gabriel’s voice was somber. The two men descended the steps to the courtyard.

“What’s Papa doing?” Miriam asked.

“I urged him to lie down on the sofa and try to sleep. He hasn’t slept all night.”

Miriam met David’s sorrowful eyes. The eyes spoke to one another. Seeing again how their father had once come to them in pride and splendor; now the eyes mourned for him.

“I shall go right to the office when I leave here,” Gabriel said. “Maybe, after all, I’ll find a loophole, some way to salvage something.” This was more a question than a statement.

“You won’t, you know that,” Eugene told him. “Not even a clever lawyer like you.”

“You are undoubtedly right.” Gabriel sighed. “Still, I can try.”

There was, then, no hope. And yet, even so, there was comfort in just the presence of these two men, her brother and her stalwart friend. And Miriam felt their joint strength as if it were a wall to shelter her and to lean on.

Where, though, as Emma had lamented, were all the friends and relatives who only a week ago had filled the house with celebration? Then a second question struck hard.

“Where will they go when they leave this house? Where will they live?”

It was Eugene who answered with astonishing alacrity.

“We shall take them in.”

“We shall?”

“Certainly. The only other possibility is the Labouisse place with Pelagie and Sylvain, which actually isn’t a possibility. How would it look for your father to go there when his own son-in-law has a home? No, we shall have to take them in. As for Eulalie, she can go to the Labouisse place if she wishes. Although,” he added somewhat grandly, “I’m willing to take her, too, in spite of her prejudice.” A little satisfied smile flickered at the corners of Eugene’s full lips.

Miriam said hesitantly, “Emma is worried about what will happen to Sisyphus.”

“Oh, tell her I shall buy him for her. And while I’m about it, that rascally pair, Chanute and Maxim, too. Why not? If I’m going to do this at all, I might as well do it right.”

Such generosity must be acknowledged. Eugene was waiting for it.

“You’re very generous,” she murmured, as Gabriel and David smiled in agreement.

“Southerners take care of kin. It is a tradition among us, an obligation,” Eugene said. And he said again, “How would it appear to the community if I were to do anything less?”

“Still, it’s so good of you.” She sounded humble. Indeed, she was humbled under the weight of this enormous indebtedness.

It would have been so much easier to accept the gift if instead Eugene had said: I shall do this because I’m sorry for your father, because I’m fond of him.

The narrow channel of Bourbon Street overflowed with the Mardi Gras crowd. Costumed knights and noblemen, emblazoned, spangled, and plumed, riding in carriages or on beribboned horses, jostled and pushed their way among rowdies, prostitutes, and pickpockets under the crowded balconies.

“Haven’t we seen enough?” David complained, stepping out of the press to a side street to avoid a trio of lurching drunks.

He had always held himself aloof from the Mardi Gras. In spite of his compassion for humanity, he disliked all crowds, and in particular, he disliked this one. Protected as they were by masks, these holiday-makers seemed always to hover on the far, thin edge of good-natured celebration; an accidental shove, a startled rearing horse, could push it over that edge into violent anger.

Besides, Mardi Gras was a Christian holiday. Why should it have such fascination for Jews? He supposed it was simply the normal contagion of gaiety. That was the only reason he had gone this year, to cheer his father, who needed to be cheered.

“By God!” Eugene exclaimed. “If I weren’t with all you proper gentlemen, I’d know where to spend the rest of the night!”

They had come abreast of the Washington Ballroom. A crush of arrivals and departures spilled from the luminous dazzle indoors to fill the sidewalk and half the width of the street. A woman with sparkling beads laced into her long black hair ran out laughing on the arm of a blond masked youth.

“The most beautiful women in the world,” Eugene cried, “bar none. I’ve heard it said a thousand times by men who’ve been all over the globe—”

From the darkness outside of the streaming light a man’s arms seized him by the shoulders, jerking him off his feet.

“Goddamn you, Raphael! You ruined me, did you, you bastard? Now it’s my turn!”

Eugene fell heavily to the pavement. There was a crash and tinkle of broken glass, then running feet
pounded away into the darkness, and Eugene was screaming, screaming.

“My eyes! Oh, God, my eyes!”

The noisy night had gone dead still. The terrible cries were alone in the stillness.

“Jesus!” somebody said.

Now a tremendous hubbub arose in the circling crowd. “What is it? What happened?”

“A man threw something at him.”

“He’s bleeding.”

“No, it’s his eyes!”

“It’s his eyes, for Christ’s sake!”

“Get him up off the street!”

“Somebody call—”

Eugene’s legs moved, kicking the cobblestones. David bent over him, pulling at the hands that frantically cupped his eyes.

“Somebody help me! Hold him still.”

A man brought a lantern.

“Here … Here … Eugene,” David murmured, straining to see.

When he straightened up, his voice shook with horror. “Lime! My God! Boiling lime!”

Ferdinand sank to his knees. “It was meant for me.” He sobbed. “You heard it. Meant for me.”

“I’ll get a carriage,” Gabriel said. “We’ll take him home. Unless, David, you think we ought—”

Now a woman parted the crowd with her elbows. “Let me see! I want to see! They said it was Eugene Mendes .…”

On the cobbles, in her satin skirt, she knelt over the wounded man, then turned her dark, anguished face up to David. “I know him. Take him to my house. It’s near, just down the street.”