Crescent City

  “Oh, those women are very well brought up,” she had told Miriam. “You’d be surprised! A man never touches one before being accepted by her mother. Then he has to set the daughter and the mother up in a nice little house and take care of them. It’s an expensive hobby. He has to promise to support the children, too, should there be any. But,” she added soberly, “sometimes it really is a case of love and these girls are faithful. Lots of men keep right on seeing the mistress even after making a good marriage.”

  So that’s what it was. Fanny knew and had known. Without a doubt all the servants had. She wondered whether Rosa had. She didn’t want to know whether Rosa had. She didn’t want to be angry at Rosa.

  Presently Eugene’s rapid heavy steps sounded from the gallery. The front door opened and closed. A moment later voices came from the open windows upstairs. He had gone to the children’s rooms, where they would just now be waking from their naps. He would go there first to toss the boy into the air, to make mock fists and pretend to pummel him; the boy would squeal, laughing with excitement over his father’s lavish love; his round hot cheeks would go red and his eyes would flash. Then the father would clasp him, ruffling his hair. To Angelique, Eugene brought proper tribute; a white lace dress, a French bisque doll, or a chain with a gold heart; but to his boy he gave his own heart.

  Now Eugene came down to the garden. He regarded Miriam curiously. “What are you doing here?”

  “Thinking,” she answered, flinging the word like a stone.

  “Well,” he said dryly, “that’s always a worthy occupation. Of what are you thinking, may I ask?”

  “Of why you pretended you didn’t see me a little while ago.”

  “See you? Where should I have seen you?”

  “You ran around the corner of Chartres Street. Please don’t say you didn’t. I can’t abide a liar.”

  “I beg your pardon!” Eugene said furiously.

  Miriam stood up. Her pulsebeat was loud in her ears. “I know why you were there. I know about Queen.”

  His eyebrows, those eyebrows that she hated, slid upward. Black caterpillars.

  “Where did you hear that name?”

  “Does it matter? I heard it.”

  “I can’t stomach a liar, either, I’m warning you.”

  “I shan’t lie. I simply don’t intend to tell you.”

  “Was it Fanny? It was Fanny, wasn’t it? No? Lucetta? Blaise? Some meddling snooper from your father’s house? That miserable pair, Maxim and Chanute?”

  “It makes no difference, I tell you. They all knew it. Everyone did except me.”

  Eugene had removed his gloves; she saw that his hands were trembling. He looked past her to the drowsing dove at the feet of the little goddess.

  “Well,” he said after a minute, “since you know what you know, you might as well hear the rest.” He met Miriam’s eyes. His own, so severe and sharp whenever he turned them to her, now had a tender shine. “I have—there is—a child. A son. My other son. He’s seven years old.”

  She needed moments to comprehend the words. Seven years. So it had been going on that long. At the time of their marriage and long before that. Another child, another boy, not hers. Here was a bewilderment of possibilities. She was aware of them standing there like two people who had just met, who knew nothing about each other.

  “Then why did you marry me?” she whispered. “Surely not for money or position. You have ten times more than I have of either one.”

  “I wanted a son who could be recognized as mine. A boy with my name who would be educated here and have a future in this city. That’s what I wanted.”

  Now she began to feel. Tears stung in back of her eyes. She was furious with her stupid tears.

  “Oh!” she cried. “I know I was ignorant when I married you, ignorant as no girl ought to be and as we all are, but now I think I was mad besides! To marry a man who didn’t even want me, who wanted—a brood mare!”

  “No, you’re wrong. I wanted much more than that. I wouldn’t have asked you if I hadn’t intended to make it work. I wanted a refined and beautiful young wife to give me a son and make a family. What is unnatural about that? But you didn’t give it a chance.”

  She could not deny it.

  “At first I thought I understood. A modest young girl, I thought. It will take a little time. But the time never came. Of course a man doesn’t expect his wife to be like—well, a wife is a lady, after all, and the man knows that. But you! You’re ice. You’re as cold as that statue. What is it? Am I dirty? I ask myself. No, I am not. What, then? Ugly? It’s not generally thought so. Coarse, then? I don’t believe I am. Why do you despise me? Why do you find me disgusting? Because you do, and you can’t deny it.” He waited for her answer.

  She could only answer miserably and with reluctance, “I don’t know.” How tell him: I can’t bear your slightest touch, my teeth clench when you come near me.

  “If there had been the least response from you, if you had—well, what’s the use? I might have ended that other affair. I probably would have. But as it was …”

  Never could she have imagined Eugene Mendes as a supplicant; it was never his way to ask, only to require. Now he stood before her, this foremost citizen in his velvet waistcoat with his hands still trembling as they held his buckskin gloves.

  “Why?” he repeated. “Tell me. What’s wrong with me?”

  She looked down at the grass, at Eugene’s feet on the grass. His fine London shoes were covered in dust. There was something pathetic about them. Everything was very still. A locust drilled abruptly, and as abruptly cut itself off. She had not thought of Eugene before as a human being who could be hurt; it was always he who did the hurting. But of course he had been wounded in the very core of his manhood. To be rejected even by a woman one didn’t love must make a man doubt himself, even when there was another woman waiting with wide-open arms. She remembered the flash of those black, startled eyes and all the golden glitter.

  But it was nobody’s fault. She saw that suddenly and clearly. It was only a fact that he repelled her, a thing that had happened, like having a taste for gooseberries or an aversion to milk.

  “Why?” Eugene insisted.

  Her mouth was dry with fear. It was like standing on a cliff; since one could not go forward and certainly not backward, there remained only to go to the right or the left, but where those ways led one didn’t know.

  She faltered, “I suppose it’s just that some people don’t suit each other. I tried. I did try.”

  “Perhaps,” Eugene said, “someone else would suit you better, then? Gabriel Carvalho, perhaps? He can’t take his eyes away from you. Would he suit you better, do you think?”

  She slapped him. Without thought, without conscious will, her hand came up and stung his cheek. The scorn on his face changed to a furious astonishment. Terrified at what she had done, she stepped back. He grasped her wrists and they stood there staring, ready to strike.

  “Because you have a trollop, you think that I must be doing what you—”

  “I take it back. You haven’t life enough in you!”

  “My God, how I hate you!” she cried.

  “Lower your voice. Keep your dignity if you can.”

  “Oh, you’re the right one, aren’t you, to speak of dignity!”

  “I am. I have done nothing that other men in my position don’t do. I told you, if you had been a proper wife to me, I would have done differently. But whether I did or not, a proper wife would know how to keep out of her husband’s concerns.”

  “Then, I am not a proper wife!”

  “You are not a wife at all.”

  “But she—that woman—she is.”

  Eugene released her hands. “Yes,” he said simply, “yes. She is.”

  On the other side of the wall a vendor passed, calling, “Strawberries! Fresh and nice, nice and fresh!” The sound of his drawl will stay in my ears, Miriam thought. Such moments mark a life: that sleepy voice, the powdery hot dust and
the scent of Eugene’s eau de cologne—these will remain.

  She thought of something else. “You should not have said that about Gabriel Carvalho. It was wicked and untrue.”

  “Perhaps I should not. Yes, you’re right, I should not. He’s a decent gentleman. And you’re the mother of my children, the mistress of my house. Let us remember it. Let us live here in decency.”

  “In decency,” she said.

  “Do what is expected of you and I shall never touch you again. You have my pledge of that. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “You needn’t worry. I don’t even want you anymore.”

  For a moment they waited as if they did not know what came next. Then Eugene said, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  “We’re tied together in such falsehood. Tied.” She turned her palms up in a hopeless gesture. “Forever, do you realize that?”

  He nodded. And there being nothing more to say, he turned about and went back into the house.

  Late that evening Miriam was still out on the balcony. A heavy rain swept through the trees and dripped from the roof, splashing her dress and her hair; In the smoky light of the streetlamp at the corner she could see Blaise and the stack of wooden boxes with which he took people dry-shod across the flooded street. She wondered whether he was saving his earnings to buy his freedom. And it occurred to her how odd it was that Blaise had some possibility of freedom, whereas she had none.

  “Miss Miriam,” Fanny called. “I been looking for you everyplace. What you doing out there in this rain? Aren’t you ever coming in?”

  Miriam’s dress had gone limp and her hair had been torn about by the wind. Emma always said a lady should never allow anyone to see her looking less than her best. What would Emma have to say about Queen?

  “Oh, it’s the way men are,” she would say. Miriam could hear her voice, slightly embarrassed and slightly superior. “Men are like that, my dear. But a wife should never let on that she knows. It wouldn’t do any good, only make him angry. Best to look the other way. And if he treats you well, what difference does it make?”

  Yes, certainly Emma would say that. So would Pelagie. And Rosa, so totally different from either of those two, would very likely say it also.

  Why do I care? I have no reason to care what Eugene does. And the answer came: because he is free to take what he wants from life, while you are not. That’s why.

  Impatiently she tore at her buttons. “You’re ruining your dress! Here, let me,” Fanny cried.

  “I don’t care. It’s ruined anyway.” Wet petticoats dropped to the floor. “Fanny, tell me. You can talk truly to me now. Mr. Mendes has told me everything. The boy, Queen’s boy, have you ever seen him? Tell me the truth. I won’t be angry.”

  Fanny picked up the petticoats.

  “Yes, miss, I know her boy. He looks like Queen, maybe lighter than Queen.”

  Then he must be a handsome child. And now Miriam felt a thrust of jealousy, not for herself, God knew, but on behalf of her own little Eugene, whose father’s love must surely be divided between him and that other son. At the same time she knew this was not rational.

  She thought out loud, repeating herself. “Then, he must be a handsome child.”

  “Yes. Smart, too.” Relieved from secrecy and fear, Fanny now rushed to tell her what she knew.

  “Queen belonged to Mr. Mendes’s family. She some kind of cousin, I think. Then he freed her, but not the boy. He still owns the boy.”

  To “own” one’s child! It was all so queer and strange! The silence, when Fanny stopped talking, thrummed and drummed in Miriam’s head. The candlelight threw distorted goblin figures and mocking faces on the wall; the walls pressed themselves in and began to spin .…

  “He crazy about that boy,” Fanny resumed. “Ashamed, too.” She sighed. “But that’s the way it always is. Nothing new about that.”

  She must pull herself together, keep hold. Things must not fly apart; the solid house must shelter her children, no matter what it cost; she must keep herself sane, must—

  “I know something you could do,” Fanny said suddenly.

  “Do? What do you mean?”

  “I could get you a black candle. If you want to hurt somebody, you know, like hurting Queen or”—she came closer to Miriam, whispering—“or Mr. Eugene, you write the name on a piece of paper and pin it on the candle. When the candle burns all the way down, the person will have awful sickness and pain.”

  This foolishness broke the spell and Miriam righted herself.

  “Come! You don’t believe such nonsense! You’re too smart for that.”

  Ashamed, Fanny laughed. “Well, you’re right, I guess. Still, sometimes I’m not so sure. I’ve seen things. Shall I get you some tea? Laurel-leaf tea for stomachache?”

  “Just plain tea. It’s not my stomach that aches.”

  “Not your heart, either.”

  “No. What is it, then?”

  “Your head is thinking what you’re going to do all your life.”

  “You’re right. That’s what my head is thinking.”

  There was such a fluttering within her that she had to move. She went to the window. Thunder, moving westward, still rolled. By the weak light of the street-lamp she saw that Blaise had left, having found, no doubt, that there were not enough customers tonight to make it worth his while to stand in the rain. Eugene, as always, would come home by carriage.

  She lit a candle and went to her desk, where a little stack of notices and invitations waited to be answered. Leafing through them, she read: the Society for the Visiting of the Sick; a wedding announcement; a birthday dinner for one of Emma’s more distant cousins; a meeting of the Hebrew Benevolent Society for the Relief of the Aged. The annual ball was to be next month and every fashionable member of the Jewish community would be there. She would need a new dress. Things collapsed, but nevertheless one needed a dress.

  Gabriel Carvalho was one of the officers. He can’t take his eyes away from you, Eugene had said. She didn’t believe it. Certainly she had never noticed. To begin with, he seldom spoke to her directly and then only to mention something about their long-ago voyage, or about the dog, or else some polite comment about how the children were growing. He was—well, stiff. Yes, that was the word, stiff. People who acted like that were often supposed to be shy. Yet how could a man as successful as Gabriel was be shy? True, he never talked very much, even among the men; it was always David or Eugene who had so much to say, Eugene commanding and David enthusiastic. But then, they always turned to him for the final say, didn’t they? It was really puzzling, when you thought about it.

  But she had no wish to think about it. For whatever the reason, Gabriel was aloof, so let him be so! Rosa thought he was handsome. Naturally. He was her brother. Well, perhaps he was. He had fine, thoughtful eyes, an austere expression. But what Eugene had said today was untrue. He had even admitted that it was untrue. Unconsciously, Miriam made a pretty shrug as she straightened the papers and prepared for bed.

  But she did not sleep. She moved to the very edge of the bed, thankful that it was a wide bed, since Eugene, for appearances’ sake, would surely sleep beside her until the end of their days.

  It was so cruel! A useless woman till the end of those days! Two children she had, and now no more. In two more years they would be in school and would not need her to read stories to them, or go on morning walks. Indeed, they scarcely needed her now; their nurses did almost everything for them, anyway. Often she liked to send the nurses out and give than their baths herself; it moved her heart to see how tall and firm they were, how Angelique, young as she was, had already begun to show the graceful indentation at the waist which is so feminine, while Eugene was so compact and square. His sister was voluble, her talk a string of questions: Why must we? Who was that lady? Where are those people going? Eugene could amuse himself for hours. He had a tower of blocks in his room as high as his waist. It will reach the moon, he said.

  And soon
all this will be over; they will grow up and go away. Then what would be left for their mother? To spend her life making wax flowers to put in glass bells or embroidering dresses for other women’s babies?

  And her thoughts went to Eulalie, busy with christening clothes, exquisite as bridal veils; to the feeble body and the eyes so filled with misery even when she wore the “social smile” that was expected of her. Yes, Miriam thought, there is little you could tell Eulalie about suffering. One did not like Eulalie; a Jew especially could not like a person who in his heart despised a Jew; yet one could understand her.

  Who am J? Mrs. Eugene Mendes. What is she? What does she do? If I had a talent, a voice maybe, like that girl Marie Claire, I know what I’d do. She wants to go abroad to study, but her mother won’t let her, Rosa says. I’d find a way. I’d go. If I had a talent, I would, but I don’t know anything.

  It’s not right! Men can learn. They earn money and dispense it as they please. We have to ask for it. A man can preach chastity while he keeps a mistress. He can do whatever he wants.

  I could hate men, but I don’t want to. I want to love one man. I want a reason to love him. I’ve been asking for that ever since I was old enough to know the meaning of the word.

  Maybe I still don’t know the meaning of the word.

  9

  It was late autumn, but still very warm in the courtyard at the Raphael house, where preparations for an elaborate party were almost complete. True to his promise to “look after” his late partner’s daughter, Ferdinand was giving a dance in honor of Marie Claire’s engagement to André Perrin of Natchez.

  “It is remarkable, Mama says,” Pelagie observed, “that he will marry her with such a small dowry. You’ve never met him?”

  Miriam answered carelessly, “No, but Eugene has. They’ve had some business dealings, I believe.”

  “He’s quite handsome. Wait till you see.”