Crescent City

  The Washington Post calls her “AN ACCOMPLISHED STORYTELLER—IN THE MANNER OF AGNES SLIGH TURNBULL, FRANCES PARKINSON KEYES, AND THAT MASTER, A. J. CRONIN.”

  Rave Reviews names her “ONE OF THE GREATEST STORYTELLERS OF OUR TIME.”

  The New York Times proclaims her “THE QUEEN OF FAMILY-SAGA WRITERS.”

  Belva Plain

  Author of five fabulous national best sellers: EVERGREEN, RANDOM WINDS, EDEN BURNING, THE GOLDEN CUP, and …

  CRESCENT CITY

  “WELL WRITTEN, FASCINATING, RICH IN PLOT AND CHARACTERS … presents [not only an interesting story, but] a portrait of the Jewish community in the 19th-century South.”

  —Newark Sunday Star-Ledger

  “SEDUCTIVE … MOVES ALONG BRISKLY through the kind of territory her avid readers most appreciate.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “AS A ROMANCE, CRESCENT CITY CANT MISS!”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  Books by Belva Plain

  EVERGREEN

  RANDOM WINDS

  EDEN BURNING

  CRESCENT CITY

  THE GOLDEN CUP

  TAPESTRY

  BLESSINGS

  HARVEST

  TREASURES

  WHISPERS

  DAYBREAK

  Table of Contents

  Other Books by This Author

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  To the memory of my husband,

  companion of a lifetime.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In the course of this novel many names of people who actually lived are briefly mentioned. These, with the exception of historically important characters like Lincoln and Davis, are the following: Valcour Aime; Judah P. Benjamin; Dyson, the schoolteacher; Rabbi Einhorn; Manuel García; Louis Moreau Gottschalk; Jesse Grant, father of the general; Rebecca Gratz; Rabbi Gutheim; Henry Hyams; Rabbi Illowy; Manis Jacobs; Gershom Kursheedt; Isaac Leeser; Rabbi Lilienthal; Rowley Marks; Penina Moise; Father Moni; Eugenia Phillips; Baroness Pontalba; Rabbi Raphall; Ernestine Rose; Seignouret; Rabbi Seixas; Slidell; Pierre Soulé; Judah Touro; Rabbi Wise; Dr. Zacharie.

  All other characters are completely fictional.

  1

  Toward evening of a spring Saturday in the year 1835, a traveling berlin made a sudden appearance at the crest of a rise above the village of Gruenwald—midway between the Bavarian Alps and the city of Wurzburg in the province of Franconia. Its varnished yellow wheels were grayed with dust and the four massive horses who drew it were weary. It had evidently come a long way. Peasants, ending their day in the fields, straightened their rounded backs and gaped in dull wonderment, for visitors seldom came to the village and those who did traveled either on foot or in some lumbering farm wagon to trade. For a moment the berlin stood in bulky outline against the windy pink-streaked sky, halted on the brink of the descent as though someone within had wanted, before descending, to get a bird’s-eye view of the village below. Then, swaying and creaking on its leather straps, it disappeared from view beneath a cover of budding linden leafage. A minute or two later it emerged at the bottom of the hill, traveled down the short length of the single street, and turned into Jews’ Alley.

  The watching peasants shook their heads. “Well, now, what do you make of that?”

  Inside the berlin the single occupant was also shaking his head in wonder. He was a sturdy young man, still in his thirties. His rich dark hair encircled a good-humored face with inquisitive bright eyes and a soft loose mouth.

  “Judengasse,” he murmured to himself almost in disbelief. “It hasn’t changed”—although why it should have changed or how it could have changed materially in the eight years since he had seen it last, he could not have said.

  The same cramped, narrow houses which had been new three centuries before still stood on either side of the alley, tilting over it as old men quarreling lean toward one another. The last weak evening light winked on little window-eyes under the brows of a medieval second-story overhang and glossed the crisscrossed beams that seamed the ancient faces.

  Between the butcher’s and the Inn of the Golden Bear, halfway down the alley—there, there in another moment the house would loom! And a wave of sickness swelled up in the young man’s throat. Again that dark doorway, the terrible cries, the vicious laughter—yes, there had been laughter—the running feet, and the blood of his young wife spilled on the steps—With a violent effort he steadied himself.

  “America,” he said aloud, not knowing that he said it.

  The Sabbath had come to a close, and the double doors of the old wooden synagogue were shut, the high steps deserted. When the berlin jolted to a halt in the yard of the Golden Bear, the last worshipers were just straggling home in their Sabbath finery. So a little crowd of them gathered quickly. What the young man saw as he leaned forward, readying himself to step down, was a pale blur of faces, collectively startled and hopeful of some novelty. They were like people coming to the circus or a play. Nothing, after all—not counting intermittent disasters—ever really happened in this place. Aware of himself as the focus of attention and having no wish at the moment to be recognized, for he was in a hurry, he lowered his head.

  What they saw, then, was, first, a pair of leather boots extending from the vehicle’s open door; next, a walking stick with a silver knob; and finally, a velvet-collared broadcloth coat and a top hat of the same fawn color. A stranger sight, though, which diverted their attention, was the pair of coal-black human beings, who, descending from the box where they had been almost hidden by the coachman’s flounced cape, now revealed themselves as half-grown boys in bright blue breeches and waistcoats with gold lace cuffs.

  The traveler, with his back to the onlookers, instructed the coachman, “Get a room for me for the night. And see that these two are well taken care of. They don’t speak the language.” He clapped the two black boys on the shoulders.

  “Maxim! Chanute!” There followed some words in French to which the pair responded with cheerful nods. Then, looking neither right nor left, the traveler strode out of the yard and down the street to the home of Reuben Nathansohn. There he rapped on the door. When it was opened, he disappeared inside.

  Astonished eyes rested on that door. “Now, who the devil would he be, coming to see old Nathansohn, do you suppose?”

  “A foreigner, a Frenchman. You heard him.”

  “Some dignitary?”

  “Dignitary! Not in a hired coach!”

  “A banker. A foreign banker, or a merchant maybe—”

  “A Jew. Couldn’t you see? He was a Jew.”

  “How could I see? A rich foreigner looks like a rich foreigner. You think he wears a sign. ‘I am a Jew’? or ‘I am not a Jew’? Foreigners don’t have to wear our badges.”

  An old woman cried out with shrill scorn. Her gold earrings swung in her excitement. “You don’t know who that is? You didn’t recognize him? It’s Ferd
inand Raphael.”

  “Ferdinand the Frenchy!”

  Voices crossed in midair, interrupting each other.

  “He wasn’t French, he was Alsatian! He’d just come from Alsace when he married Hannah Nathansohn.”

  “I remember when—”

  “It can’t be! He went to America after the troubles.”

  “Yes, and what’s to prevent him from coming back? He’s here to fetch his children.”

  “Well, anyone might figure that out.”

  “You think so? But high time if it’s true. The girl’s already eight.”

  “Nine. Miriam is nine.”

  The woman who had spoken first moved to the front. “Miriam is eight,” she said decidedly. “I was there when she was born. Didn’t I see her mother give birth and die all in a minute’s time?” Her voice rose, chanting. “Oh, a miracle it was! A miracle that the child could live at all—”

  There came an instant’s respectful, grieving silence. Then a young woman spoke. “Wasn’t she killed when the students—”

  “That was before your time here, Hilda. Oh, yes, when the fine young gentlemen went mad, tearing through the village on their great horses straight to the Judengasse .…” Now the voice became a dreamy monotone, as if the speaker were unwilling, and yet compelled, to repeat the horror. “Windows smashed, doors broken in, all of us running, running … The stones they had! So big, hurled in two hands. Oh, God! I was with Hannah, two steps ahead when they hit—”

  “She was struck on the head, Nathansohn’s Hannah, young Raphael’s wife, right at the front door, at that door over there. We carried her inside.”

  “The baby took her first breath as the mother took her last.”

  Once more silence fell, the hideous recollection making a single entity of the little group.

  Then someone said, “He left right after that. Left for America.”

  “A man would want to get as far away as he could, wouldn’t he?”

  “Well, now, it seems he must have made his American fortune and he’s come back for his children.”

  “He’ll have his hands full with the boy, that’s sure.”

  “Why so? He’s a fine, bright boy as far as I can see.”

  “Oh, smart, yes, but stubborn as an ox. And not such a boy, either. He must be fifteen.”

  So they waited in the alley, reluctant to miss any of this extraordinary happening. Full darkness came. The crowd began to dwindle. A few fetched lanterns and waited. But there was really nothing to be seen other than the rump of the cow feeding in the byre next to the Nathansohn house. After a while the last lingerers went home.

  A file of green-painted storks circled the tile belly of the stove in the corner. As the night grew colder, the listeners drew closer to the stove. When Ferdinand held his hands toward the heat, a round sapphire on his finger bloomed out of the shadows.

  “Not used to this northern climate anymore,” he said in his soft French-accented German. He looked up, smiling.

  “So you remember your father a little, David?”

  The boy had not taken his eyes away from his father. There was something judgmental in those rather somber eyes.

  “Yes,” he said. He spoke shortly, decisively, as people do who do not speak for the pleasure of hearing themselves. “And I remember my mother, too. I remember everything.”

  “Of course you do. You were a very smart little boy. But why not? Brains have never been in short supply in our family. Never.”

  And Ferdinand smiled again, since it was his nature to intersperse his remarks with smiles. He received no smile now in return, however, only the steady regard of those thoughtful eyes. He felt uncomfortable. And he passed his hand reflectively over the sleek beaver nap of the hat which still rested on his knees, smoothing and smoothing the brim, absently perhaps, or else to reassure himself by the feel of it that he was who he was.

  This shadowed room—had he actually lived here once? Dank and spare it was, at any season of the year. The stove and the great oak cupboard rearing in the opposite corner like some forest beast were its only substantial shapes. The table and chairs were mere spindly sticks, little better than firewood. The floor was bare and chilly. Ferdinand shuddered. Wretched, everlasting poverty! Here in this place one could forget that wine was fragrant and fruit luscious, that laughter was music and music made the feet dance. One hardly knew in such a place that a man could have the means, the comforting means, to let himself savor all those things and sleep well through the night.

  They were staring at him, waiting for a fuller explanation of his presence, as if they were hostile to it. He must seem a stranger—was a stranger now. And Dinah had her own special bitterness: She’d been an old maid already when he’d married her younger sister, gentle Hannah, so dark and dear, when Dinah had been dried up. Dryer than ever now, gone pasty yellow, forty years old, with a disgusting stain on her Sabbath skirt and nothing to wait for, nothing but the old man’s death, which would, by the look of him, be coming soon enough. On his cot Opa was coughing and shaking while he pulled the shawl around his gaunt neck. To grow old, to die, in this gloom! And Ferdinand was soft with pity.

  Miriam’s was the only face in the room that answered to his, that gave what he wanted to receive. She had her mother’s opal eyes, tipping upward at the corners, with a kind of gaiety about them even when their owner was in a serious mood, as she was now. Like her mother’s, too, was the short upper lip, channeled between nose and mouth by two delicate ridges, while the upper lip barely closed upon the lower. It was a tender mouth, too tender, he thought penitently, for this house, for the poor querulous old man and the spinster, who must, he suspected, have her own forms of petty tyranny. So he was painfully moved by the discovery of this little daughter, by the elegance of her narrow feet, crossed at the ankles, and the grace of her thin fingers, now stroking the small, silky dog on her lap.

  “I’ve got some nice things for you, Miriam,” he said. Tears gathered at the back of his throat, and he swallowed. He wanted so much to give, to give out of love and sorrow over the irretrievable lost years. “I bought things in Paris and left them there to be shipped home.”

  And he thought of the marvelous things which were already on their way to New Orleans: a Pleyel piano, boxes of gold and blue Sèvres porcelain, yards of Alencon lace, embroidered shawls, ruffled parasols, painted fans, and fine leather-bound books for the boy. Then it flashed through his mind that to speak of these things here on the Judengasse would be a cruelty. There would be time enough to show what he could do for his children when he had them home.

  So he said only, “I’ve bought you a doll with golden hair. It’s in my portmanteau at the inn, and I’ll give it to you in the morning.” Then a moment later he could not help adding, “Also a suit for you, David, and a traveling dress for you, Miriam. They’re in this box. You must wear them tomorrow so you’ll look nice on the journey.”

  “And now you are going to take my children away.” The grandfather spoke reproachfully, accusingly.

  “Opa, I know how it must be for you, I know. But I’ll take you, too, if you’ll come. And you also, Dinah.” Instantly Ferdinand was dubious about his offer: What if they were to accept? Well, then, he would just have to take them!

  “I have a wife, a good woman, Emma. A widow with a family. Two daughters. One was married last winter. Pelagie, a lovely girl. And I’ve a fine large house, as grand as anything you’ve ever seen in Wurzburg.”

  “Naturally. Gold lies about on the streets in America. We all know that,” Dinah said.

  Sarcastic as of old, she had to let him know that she was impressed neither by his magnificence nor his munificence.

  The Sharp tongue of the unmarried woman, the un-chosen, he thought, pitying her, too. For her condition, one had to admit, was only in part her fault. Young Jewish men were either penniless or leaving for America. In addition, there was the heartless matrikel to be reckoned with—the state permit granted only to a few at best. No, not al
together her fault.

  He answered quietly. “I didn’t find mine lying in the streets. I had to work very hard for it.”

  The old man coughed violently, painfully, spitting blood. David brought a cup of water; with gentle patience he held his grandfather’s hands steady on the cup.

  Suddenly, almost forcefully, as though he had with strong effort willed himself to break his own silence, the boy addressed Ferdinand. “Tell us about America. Tell us what happened after you left here.”

  Although he must have told this story a hundred times or more, it pleased Ferdinand to tell it again now.

  “Well, after your mother died—I had been thinking for a long time about America—I made up my mind. As you know, I didn’t own very much, so I just took what I had, wrapped it up in a linen bag, and tramped westward. Before I reached the Rhine, I had worn out my shoes, so I traded two days’ work picking apples for a pair of old boots. Luckily they fit. Then I journeyed part of the way on a Rhine boat. In Strasbourg I had some distant cousins who let me rest for a few days and gave me some good meals.”

  They were all listening in that attitude of motionless attention which encourages a tale. The boy was rapt. He can’t wait to go, too, Ferdinand thought. And he went on.

  “I got a ride on an empty cotton wagon as far as Paris .…”

  Paris then and Paris now. Revolting, smelly alleys. Flowering chestnut and long, wide avenues. Two different cities, depending on the money you have or have not got in your purse.

  “I reached Le Havre at last and sailed from there. It took two months and cost me seventy American dollars, all I had in the world .… The sea is like mountains crashing toward you. You can’t imagine it. I was at the bottom of the ship where the immigrants go. I was so sick. Some people even died of seasickness.” He looked up, a smile spreading again across his face. “Don’t worry, it won’t be like that for you. You’ll have nice cabins, high up, with plenty of fresh salt air. You should see the cabins! Teakwood and polished brass. Fine quilts and linens. Well, anyway, I crossed the ocean, got to Baltimore, and went to work. It was very hard. Sometimes I wonder how I did it, how anyone ever does it. But they do, and I did. Got to New Orleans in the end, too.”