Crescent City (9 page)

Next a pair of boys mounted the steps to the platform. Not more than twelve or thirteen years old, they faced the crowd with darting eyes in which fear and childish curiosity mingled.

The auctioneer became enthusiastic. “Now, here we have a fine pair, two brothers not yet full grown, it’s true, but there’s plenty of work in them. Their owner is really reluctant to part with them but he finds himself overstaffed. He’d like to sell them as a pair, if possible. They’ve grown up together—”

“Chanute and Maxim came together, too,” Ferdinand whispered. “They’re cousins, though, not brothers.”

“So the owner is willing to concede on the price to anyone who’ll buy the pair—”

On the platform the younger of the boys suddenly reached for the other one’s hand. And David felt a knocking in his chest as if he were going to be ill. He stood up, bumping against his neighbor, who glared at him.

“Let’s get out of here! I have to get out of here, Papa.”

Ferdinand followed him to the street. “That distressed you so much?” he asked curiously and added, “Yes, it can be distressing the first time you see it, until you understand how the system works. It’s really not
as cruel as it seems, or the way it used to be at all, you know. Goodness, in Jean Lafitte’s time they put caufles and iron collars on the Africans when they brought them in! Lafitte had a blacksmith shop on St. Philip Street where he used to forge the chains. Well, that’s long since gone.

“Today the Negro is part of a respectable business structure. Our biggest corporations, the railroad, the gas plant, all of them use Negroes.”

“Own them,” David said.

“Oh, yes, they train them in every kind of work you can think of, anything from carpentry to catering. All the skills. Train them and treat them well.”

On the other side of the street a young man with a black beard tipped his hat to Ferdinand.

“That was Eugene Mendes. Originally from Louisville. You must wonder that I know so many people. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were to settle here permanently. He’s been buying property, one nice piece on Canal Street only last month. He deals in merchandise sent on consignment from the North. Would you believe he’s not much more than twenty? Twenty-two at the most. I daresay he got an inheritance to start him off. But there’s something in knowing how to handle an inheritance, too, you know. Yes, there are great opportunities in the city for a young man who looks sharp about him. It’s a great place to be young in.” He patted David’s shoulder. “I expect big things from you, David.” And as if he were trying to urge out of his son an enthusiasm to match his own, he seemed to examine David’s face for some sign of encouragement. None was given.

Hasn’t he noticed that I’ve scarcely said a word all the way? David wondered, as they came to the front door. In sadness and anger he thought: My father will be disappointed in me. I am not what he wanted.

In the evening Sylvain Labouisse was there. David went to the library with the men after dinner, while the ladies took the air on the verandah. By mid-evening Ferdinand and Sylvain put the chessmen away and in the heat of conversation were setting the
café brûlot
aside, too. A sharp scent of citrus peel and burnt brandy rose from the cup.

“Fanatics.” Sylvain spoke angrily. “Coming here into a peaceable country. Abolitionists and fanatics.”

For the last quarter of an hour David had been listening to the agitated conversation. Now he asked what abolitionists were.

“People who come down from the North with some idea of stirring up the Negroes and setting them free. ‘Free,’” Sylvain repeated contemptuously. “Free to do what? To roam unfed and unclothed like children without parents or a home?”

“What do the abolitionists do when they come?” David wanted to know.

Sylvain uncrossed his legs. He was tense with energy and indignation. “Do? Why, spread terror, that’s all they do. They’d have us all murdered in our beds. We had an insurrection last year not ten miles from my father’s place. Some half-crazed Negroes were whipped up wild, but fortunately we got to them in time. I kept my horses saddled for two weeks afterward in the stables, ready to leave at a moment’s notice. That’s how long it took to feel sure that everything had been quieted down.”

“Sylvain doesn’t tell you that the governor appointed him a colonel of militia last year,” Ferdinand said. “The right man for the job, too.”

“Let me tell you,” Sylvain added, “through it all, while I was away, my own Negroes guarded our family faithfully. I put total trust in them and it was justified.

So much for your abolitionists!” He snapped his fingers.

“Obviously,” Ferdinand said, “they’re well satisfied with their lot. Having kind masters, they know when they’re well off.”

“And are all masters kind?” asked David.

“No,” Ferdinand answered mildly. “No, any more than all men are just. But most are, wouldn’t you say so, Sylvain? After all, none of us has ever whipped a Negro. I’m certain no one I know has done so, either. Most people are decent. At least, that’s been my experience.”

Sylvain turned to David. “I’ll tell you something interesting. Did you know that almost any Negro would rather be owned by a white man than by a free person of color? If you want to see cruel treatment, there’s where you’ll see it. Right in this city, where the FPCs keep house servants and treat them abominably.”

David got up and fetched the newspaper. “I read something in the
Bee
this afternoon. Here it is.” And he read aloud: “Xavier Barthelemy will give a thirty-dollar reward for the return of his boy Caesar, about sixteen years old, light-skinned, light eyes, may still be wearing part of fine uniform, gray jacket and matching pantaloons, silver buttons. Ran away last Thursday.” He stopped.

“Well?” asked Ferdinand.

“A boy my age! A year older,” David said slowly. “A boy like me.”

“Not like you. He’s he, and you’re you.” Sylvain spoke with exasperation. His eyes, which had tended to look past David, now fastened themselves on David’s eyes. David thought: We are like two strange dogs, circling warily, waiting for the attack. Sylvain was first to look away.

“You have to remember how few ever try to leave their homes. When they do, it’s because an overseer is harsh, and oddly enough, nine out of ten overseers come from the North. Most of those who want to be free can earn their freedom far more pleasantly than by running away, I assure you.”

Deeper and deeper David was being drawn in, almost against his will. He had to know more. He had to know.

“And how does one buy his freedom?”

“Well,” Ferdinand began, “someone who has a trade, a barber, let’s say, or a nurse, can hire himself out. He pays his master a certain amount every month for the privilege and saves the rest up till he has enough to buy his freedom. It works out very well.”

“For the master,” David said.

His father was startled. “What do you mean?”

David spoke deliberately, fighting disgust “I mean that it’s unspeakable and horrible to own another human being. It’s not”—he sought a word—“not civilized.” And vividly into his mind came the picture of the woman Lucinda: the impassive face, the dignity, the resignation.

Sylvain gave a short, unpleasant laugh. “Allow me to say you really don’t know enough about it to have any opinion, David. It happens that the system is eminently civilized. It frees the white man’s mind from petty concerns, frees him for higher endeavors. And certainly it civilizes the African, who was nothing but a cannibal in Africa. Here he’s supported, he learns religion and refinements. He acquires a conscience.” Sylvain paused. “And as to conscience, let me tell you, I feel much safer on the plantation among my Negroes than I would living in some northern city with angry mobs of unemployed factory workers at my gates, even though they’re white.”

“But you said a while ago that you kept your horses ready all those nights—”

Uncomfortable and embarrassed, Ferdinand glanced at Sylvain, then back at his son. “Sylvain is right. You really don’t know enough about it, David. It’s stupid to talk about things you don’t understand.”

“What I saw today wasn’t hard to understand, Papa.”

“He was at the St. Louis Auction,” Ferdinand explained, “and he—”

David interrupted. “I’ve been thinking of it every minute since. I’ve been remembering the things you always said about the way we were treated in Germany, and why you left and why you wanted us to leave.” And as he spoke there came again that old fast memory of screaming terror, the dark doorway and running feet and his mother’s bloodied skirt. “And it seems to me this is the same thing. Just the same.”

Now Ferdinand’s anger flared. “Same thing! Nonsense! Ask Sisyphus what he thinks about that! Sisyphus who goes to the opera and the concerts of the Free Negro Group and travels to the seaside with us! Take a look at Maxim and Chanute next Sunday! Why, they have better clothes than you had when you lived with your grandfather, than those people had on the ship, those people you were so sorry for. Look at your own Blaise—”

“He’s not ‘my own Blaise.’ I don’t own him. I don’t want to own him.”

“You’re being ridiculous, David. You’re talking like a child .… Well, after all, you are a child, aren’t you?”

“I’m talking like a Jew. ‘For we were slaves in the land of Egypt.’ So we should have all the more pity, shouldn’t we?”

“You’re mixing the issues. The one thing has nothing to do with the other.”

“But I think it has,” David answered. He was being pushed; some tide was turning, and its vast waters rushed to engulf him.

“You know what I think?” Ferdinand demanded. “I think this talk has gone far enough. David, your father orders you to drop the subject.”

Sylvain tactfully studied his fingernails. The shadow of a smile touched his well-shaped lips, conveying a silent opinion: Go on with your quarrel if you will; it’s really not worth my interest.

For that superiority alone, David despised Sylvain.

And he cried out passionately, “This isn’t what I imagined America to be! I thought—” Then he stumbled. Even if he had been more fluent in the language, he would have stumbled. “I thought it would be all clean, all different …” Romantic images filtered through his head: spruce forests, virginal and aromatic; heroic new cities, all of them possessed of some vague virtue and gladness. He scarcely understood himself what it was that he had expected, only that it was certainly not what he had found. He would have liked to explain his sensation: that things were closing in on him, that he could not bear to live where life was stratified and each man had his “place” forever and ever. But instinct told him that neither of these men would understand. Worse yet, they would mock. Already Sylvain’s subtle smile had broadened to frank amusement. The sardonic eyebrows raised themselves into perfect semicircles of disdain.

“America isn’t what you expected? What do you want to do? Go back to that mudhole in Europe? Damn you!” Ferdinand cried, he who almost never cursed.

“I don’t want that, either,” the boy said vehemently.

“Well, what do you want? Make up your mind! You’re fifteen years old, a young man. You ought to know what you want, dammit!”

“A minute ago you said I was a child.”

“What are you trying to do, trip me up? I won’t stand for this, David. I haven’t said this before, but you might as well know: You’ve been a trial to me. I’ve tried to overlook things and build something between us, but you seem bent on preventing it. It’s sad, I tell you, terribly sad, when all I wanted was to bring us together, and now all you seem to want is to quarrel with me.”

“I don’t want to quarrel, Papa. It’s just that I feel—I feel that I won’t ever fit in here!”

“Will you lower your voice! You’ll upset the women. Look, you’ve frightened the child already with your shouting.”

For Miriam now stood in the doorway, looking from one to the other. And stricken, David remembered how she feared loud, angry argument, how she had used to stick her fingers in her ears and run from the house.

Pelagie drew her outside again. “Come away, Miriam. It’s nothing. Just men talking. It’s nothing.”

“Maybe it would be bearable,” David said, “if you at least saw how wrong you are and would try to change things. Let all the servants go free and join those—what did you call them, abolitionists?”

Sylvain coughed and looked at Ferdinand. His look said: He’s your son, are you going to permit this?

Ferdinand stood up. “Fool’s talk! Ignorant and dangerous! Dangerous! Keep opening your mouth like that and none of us will be accepted in any respectable house between here and Richmond, Virginia. Now,
get this in your head, David, I’ll have no more of it. You’ll have to promise me that there’ll be no more of it, or else—” The father trembled and finished, “Or else you can’t stay here.”

David also trembled. But the great tide swept over him, pulling him with it. “Then, I suppose I can’t stay here,” he said very low.

Ferdinand paced. He smashed his fist into his open palm. “Was ever a father so bedeviled?” he demanded of Sylvain, who did not answer. He whirled upon David. “What do you want? What’s to become of you?”

“I can work. I can go north where the abolitionists are. Yes, I’ll work. I’m strong.”

“Work? What in blazes can you do, do you think?”

“I don’t know. I can find something. You did.”

“I did, did I? You want to do what I did? Tramp the miles with a bundle of gewgaws for sale? Is that what I brought you from Europe for, so you can begin all over again? No, dammit, you’ll start where I left off! You’ll go to school or you’ll go back to Europe! As sure as I’m standing here, you will.”

“Papa, I’ll go north to study. You said I might.” A lump formed in David’s throat. A lump of anger and fright. With enormous effort he swallowed it. “That boy Gabriel Carvalho said he’d be going to Columbia in New York. I’d like it better in New York, I’m sure, and I’d be out of your way. It would be better for us both.”

Ferdinand walked to the end of the room. His fists were clenched at his sides, his head bent. Reaching the fireplace, he studied the bronze mantel clock as if it might hold the answer to his perplexity. When suddenly, on the half hour, it chimed its treble note, he started as if indeed an answer had been given.