Crescent City (38 page)

When Ferdinand came back, his anguish at the city’s plight contradicted his uncontrollable excitement at the drama of events.

“Fifteen thousand bales of cotton burning!” he cried. “Cotton ships, too. And steamboats, the docks, everything! Sugar and molasses poured out onto the street, people are scooping up what they can—”

“Burning cotton!” Eugene was horrified. “Damn fools! We shall be needing it! Don’t they know that?”

“Those are the orders. Smash machinery and anything the enemy might use. Thousands of people are down at the docks.”

Miriam stood on the verandah watching black smoke rise and swirl over the levee. A crowd of women passed at the bottom of the street, poor shabby women, and others in silk, followed by a taggle of little black children who probably thought this was another sort of carnival.

“Burn the city!” shrieked the women. “Don’t let them take it! Set it all on fire!” Some of them brandishing pistols. Miriam was almost sure she recognized Eulalie. The world had gone mad. It is enough to make one go mad, she thought.

Night came. As darkness plunged, so quiet came, as if the city had exhausted itself with the day. The household went early to bed. Miriam alone was still downstairs when Fanny appeared at the parlor door.

“Shall you be wanting anything, Miss Miriam?” she inquired after the nightly ritual.

“No, thank you, Fanny, you may go to bed.”

“You’re not going?” The keen face expressed concern.

“Not just yet, Fanny.”

The door closed quietly. And Miriam had an ugly, fleeting thought that the concern might be nothing more perhaps than a clever mask. One would like to ask: What do you think of all this, Fanny? Since this is a war—at least in part—for your liberation, are you rejoicing tonight that this city may fall, or are you perhaps a little saddened by the thought of its destruction? This was the first time there had been a barrier between them, something they could not cross with honest speech. No, that was not quite true. The central question of their relationship, of ownership, had never been spoken of, either; it had been tacitly forbidden on both their parts, so this was not the first time.

Can Fanny possibly have any intimation of how I really feel about what is happening in the South? Probably not, since I have had to keep my feelings hidden. Still, there are subtleties of voice and manner, things not said as much as things said; Fanny’s brisk cheer, on which I daily rely, must surely conceal many things; in repose, when she thinks herself unobserved, a thoughtful expression, almost melancholic, settles over her face, but on hearing her name called, it is on the instant wiped away.

So Miriam’s own thoughts ran on this night of fear and change.

The tall clock in the hall coughed like the old thing it was and sounded once: Bong! Half past midnight. She took a book from the shelves, and finding that the words made no sense, replaced it to stand and contemplate the pleasant rows of leather bindings, of George Eliot, Dickens, Cooper, the
Contes and Nouvelles
of de Musset, the recollection of smooth pages and smooth
words, rich images, making a delicious taste on the tongue and glimmering before the eyes. Civilized.

She walked around the room. Finding some candy left in a silver dish on the table, she finished it. Then in the dining room she took a peach from the bowl on the sideboard, eating too much and still hungry. Back in the parlor she stood and stared at the piano. It was square and made of rosewood. It had been built in Boston. There was a chip on one of the legs where once little Eugene had hit it with his drumstick. She ran her fingers lightly over the keys; their trill and tinkle, although barely touched, were too loud in the dead stillness of the house.

The dog stood whining to go out. She picked it up. Warm little creature, not understanding a word, yet sure to respond to human need. Listen to me, Gretel, I’m all alone, there is no one I can tell how I feel. And do you know, I’m not even sure how I really do feel?

In deepest stillness the earth waited. Against the milky sky the date palms drooped black as funeral plumes. Suddenly, the echoing, hasty footsteps of someone passing unseen sent Miriam racing back into the house, closing the door so hard that the crystal balls on the hall candelabra jangled in distress. She leaned against the door with her hand on her pounding heart. Then, ashamed of her terror, she remembered the night-latch and slid it all the way, that great stout iron bar, five feet long, bolted to the wall. Still, if they wanted to get in, they could do so, couldn’t they? They could batter down the top half of the door and climb in, or they could smash the windows .…

Upstairs a stripe of light fell across the bed where Angelique was asleep. She looked like a woman, with her long legs extended almost to the foot, and her hair sprayed out upon the pillow. The little girl who had
slept with each arm curled around a doll was poised now on the farthest edge of childhood.

Across the hall a candle was hastily snuffed out as Miriam passed the door. Let the boy think she didn’t know he read half the night against his father’s orders! And she had a quick recollection of David, in that dark village so many years ago, borrowing every book he could lay his hands on.

Oh, what would the war—the victory or the defeat, depending on which side one stood—what would it do to these young lives? To all of us in this house, in this city? To André?

There was not a ray of light that could begin to penetrate the future.

“I want to go to the levee,” Eugene said in the morning, meaning, Miriam knew, but not finding himself able to say: I want to see the Federal ships arrive.

And Miriam, because of her own turmoil, both wanting and not wanting to see them, looked overhead, where dark clouds were swirling and the first drops raining, and sought excuse. “It’s going to storm.”

“I am quite able to go without you,” he retorted, so that she felt foolish, for surely he had always gone everywhere without her.

“I’ll be ready in a minute,” she said.

The streets, too crowded for a carriage, were filling with a defiant mob, pushing on foot toward the waterfront, oblivious to the rain. At the levee, over the heads of the crowd, the gunboats were plainly to be seen, for the river had crested and the ships could ride high, their guns reminding Miriam, as always, of threatening beast-mouths, pointed down upon the city.

Impatiently, Eugene demanded a description of events.

“Some ships are still coming round the bend.” Miriam wet dry lips. “Six altogether. No, seven, eight. They’re filled with men, all armed.” Her voice began to tremble. She did not say that the Stars and Stripes were flying and that all around them on the levee Confederate banners waved.

“Down with the Stars and Stripes!” a man cried out.

The cry was taken up by hundreds of voices, including those of Miriam’s son and daughter. Women wept. A man with a fife joined in, piping “Dixie,” and the crowd began to sing, Emma with profound conviction, as though she were singing a hymn. In spite of all reason this unified outpouring of emotion stirred Miriam to the heart.

A small boat put off from the
Hartford,
and three officers came to land.

Eugene was more frustrated than ever. “What are they doing now? Do you mind telling me what’s happening?”

“Some officers are landing. There are sailors. They have guns and bayonets, too.”

They passed, the strangers—almost shocking herself, Miriam had thought of the word “invaders”—in dark blue, with their gilt eagles and their severe faces, ignoring the crowd. But they were frightened; of course they must be terrified of this menacing mob; they were so young, like David, who wore their uniform. Miriam stood staring as the strangers swung away in step down the street.

“They’ll be going to the city hall,” someone said.

The crowd surged after them, behind them, alongside of them, restrained by the sight of guns and bayonets, but giving voice all the way.

“Go home, damned Yankees!”

Then the heavens opened. The steady rain mounted into flood. Yellow clouds roiled furiously, snaking and
twining through the black. The rain pocked the river, splashing upward from the pavement, slashed at the trees, and drenched the group still standing at the levee. Savagely, the rain attacked as though the fall of the city were not grief enough for one day.

“It is all over,” Eugene said. There were tears in his blind eyes.

Ferdinand remonstrated with him. “Don’t say that. The forts haven’t fallen.”

“What difference? They’ve passed the forts. And the forts will surrender. They’re loaded with northern men. Come, let’s go home.”

And all the way back to the house he muttered, “The cable wasn’t put in the right place. It was a good idea, but it should have been placed above Fort St. Philip, where there’s a fierce current, instead of below Jackson, where they could creep in practically undetected and dismantle it. Fools, fools,” he repeated. “And this is only the beginning. In a few days Butler will land with his troops, and then we shall see something.”

At the front door Sisyphus stood looking up the street. When he saw them he hurried down the steps. His old face was solemn with the message he had to give.

“They sent a boy from Madam de Rivera’s. News of her son. He was killed in the fighting on the river.”

“My God!” cried Miriam. “Which son was it, did they say?”

“Mr. Herbert. She asks you please to come.”

Emma crossed herself. “God’s will. We have neglected him, and now he is punishing our righteous cause. We must pray all the harder.”

Scalded. Drowned. He was a baby, not yet walking when I first came to Rosa’s house. Now he is—was—a
young man with a young wife and a baby of his own. Scalded. Drowned.

She spurred herself. “At once. I’ll go at once.” But what comfort could she bring, what words?

“I will go to her,” she repeated, as the others stood watching.

Ferdinand was stricken. She could read her father’s mind: I thought I had left all this behind in Europe, he was thinking, as he looked back toward the river and the guns.

Once, as a child, she had watched where some peasants at the edge of a pond had spread a huge net to catch migrating birds. And she had never forgotten the cries and the struggle, the beating wings and limp, broken necks. Now it seemed as though the city, the whole country, were caught in such a net.

Sharp voices came from the hall below, and Miriam hurried downstairs in time to see the front door closing on a blue-clad soldier and Eugene disappearing into the parlor. Maxim had a letter in his hand.

“A Union officer, Miss Miriam. He brought this from your brother. He say a friend of his, he asked him specially to deliver this. Mr. Eugene say no Union man to set foot in this house.”

“Thank you, Maxim.” And taking the letter, she went upstairs to read it in private.

So long since she had heard from David! Spreading the sheets cm her lap, she thought, My brother’s hands were on this paper. Her eyes skimmed rapidly.

But André, Miriam thought, André is there, and his mission will fail. There is a hollow ache in my head when I think of it all.

Still carrying the banners, Miriam thought, smiling to herself.
A stubborn fellow,
Opa had said.
When he thinks he’s right, he will never give up.