Crescent City (13 page)

“It’s an old story,” Mr. Kursheedt remarked. “When Jews rise to great prominence there comes a temptation to take the easy social path and forget
one’s heritage. Touro is not the only one. Take Judah Benjamin.”

“I knew him when he came to the city,” Henry observed. “I was invited to his wedding in the cathedral.”

“He’s buying a plantation twenty miles south of here, Belle Chasse. Very grand,” said Eugene Mendes, adding ironically, “It’s got silver-plated doorknobs, or so they tell me.”

“But you have a fine place of your own,” Rosa told him.

“Oh, you can’t mention it in the same breath as Belle Chasse. It’s merely my quiet retreat from the heat and the fever.”

“Don’t you believe it,” Rosa whispered as they left the dining room. “It’s a splendid place. It’s just that he doesn’t like to talk about himself.”

If it were Papa, Miriam thought fondly and ruefully, he would be telling everyone how many rooms there were and what it had all cost.

“I suppose you would call Mr. Mendes a modest man,” she said then. “A simple man.”

“Simple?” Rosa laughed. “That is the one thing I would never call him.” She regarded Miriam, her eyes narrowing. “It’s a lucky girl who will get him, I can tell you. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you were that lucky one.”

“I don’t really …” Miriam murmured and, stopping, saw that Rosa was mistaking a mixture of pride and fright for modesty and joy.

“Oh, I’m almost sure of it!” Rosa cried, squeezing Miriam’s hand. “It couldn’t happen to a sweeter girl, either, or more deserving! Such an attractive man …”

They were caught in a crush at the door, and Rosa
was swept into the parlor, leaving Miriam for a moment alone with the echo of her words.

Such an attractive man.

If everyone else says so, Miriam thought, then I ought to think so, too. Shouldn’t I? Yes of course, I should.

On the following morning a servant bearing a note and requesting an answer knocked at the Raphaels’ door. Almost immediately after he had gone away, Fanny came to say that Mrs. Raphael wanted Miriam downstairs.

“We have a visit to make this afternoon, Miriam my dear. Mr. Mendes sent his boy just now to ask whether we will call on him.” Emma’s smile was sprightly, almost mischievous. “He pays me the compliment of admiring my taste and asks my advice on the decoration of his new house. Do wear your new coat. I don’t think we need ask Odette to do your hair, do you? The curls are still quite tight. Perhaps Fanny could go over them a bit.”

Once more Miriam stood before the pier glass. Just the week before the mantua-maker had finished a bottle-green silk coat with taffeta bow knots. She had not worn it yet. Her boots of gray cloth and black patent leather were also new. Gray kid gloves and a bonnet heavy with roses waited on the bed while Fanny brushed her hair. For an instant their eyes met in the mirror before Fanny’s, quickly lowered, hid themselves under her lashes. Fanny knows, Miriam thought. Servants know things before they happen. She may know better than I do what I’m feeling, too. I wish David were here to tell me what I’m feeling, because I don’t understand myself, and he would understand.

I’m racing downhill, running so fast I can’t stop,
scared that I’ll crash. Am I perhaps imagining things that are not there at all?

“You look beautiful,” Fanny said, fastening the last hairpin. “Now the bonnet. Back on the head a little more. Yes, that’s it.”

In the carriage Emma echoed Fanny. “You look lovely, Miriam. I must remind you, though, to be more careful about wearing a veil when you’re outdoors. You do want to keep your complexion so no one will ever get the idea you’ve a touch of the tar-brush. Not that there’s any danger of that, you having been born in Europe.” She laughed. “I so envy you your hair. It’s like black silk. Enjoy it while you can before you have to start covering the gray with coffee.”

The carriage rolled down Esplanade Avenue. “I’m really eager to see the inside of Mr. Mendes’s house. It was built by Parmentier, a very wealthy auctioneer—before he lost his money, that is. Gambling,” Emma said disdainfully. “It’s one thing to make money and another to hold on to it. He came of poor stock, though; French, but
Chacalatas,
back-country people, not my sort. That’s why I was never in the house. Well, here it is.”

Stone cherubs held up the gallery, across which ran an iron-lace balcony in a pattern of acorns and twining oak-leaves. At the side of the house a brick wall surrounded a large plot of ground, which almost certainly contained a spacious garden.

Eugene Mendes waited at the top of the steps. He looked taller than Miriam remembered. As Rosa had said, he was an imposing man. His hands reached down to help the women mount the steps. Miriam had a queer thought: He can get anything he wants.

Addressing Emma, he asked now, “Would you like tea, madame, or would you rather see the house first?”

“Oh, since you are kind enough to want my advice, let us see the house first.”

It was a fine building in the Greek Revival style, finer and larger than the Raphael home. A clean breeze traveled through the tall windows, rippling the curtains. Lofty, shady rooms, twin parlors, a music room and a ballroom, were separated by double doors carved in panels of magnolia blossoms. At either end of the long back verandah was a cabin-size room.

“The cabiniers, for the boys of the house,” Mr. Mendes explained. “The previous owner had many sons.”

“Well, he was fortunate in that respect, anyway,” Emma observed, adding with a daring, almost coquettish air, “You are well prepared in this house for whatever life may bring you, one sees.”

The host smiled slightly, and the little procession continued through the rooms. Mirrors tossed their reflections back and forth, Miriam following in silence while Mr. Mendes courteously bent his head toward Emma’s chatter.

“Think how many hundreds of hours of labor in that!” she exclaimed over an Empire sofa covered with flowers in needlepoint.

Miriam realized that this friendly stream of trivial remarks did serve some purpose. It covered silences that might otherwise be dreadful.

In front of a painting of a Renaissance noble whose velvet hat drooped over a dissipated face, Emma paused. “Is that not from the collection of the Duke of Tuscany?”

“You are most discerning, madame. Yes, like your husband, I am a founder of our National Art Gallery of Painting.” For the first time Mr. Mendes spoke directly to Miriam. “You may be familiar with our undertaking. A group of us here in the city bought the
Duke’s collection and we’re hoping that the Gallery will take it. If not, we shall keep these for private homes. Do you know as much about paintings as you do about literature?”

“I know very little about either, I’m afraid.”

“You have read
Ivanhoe,
at any rate.” And turning back to Emma, “Shall we go upstairs?” he asked. “It’s really in sorry condition without carpets or hangings. I’ve had some furniture sent on approval from Seignouret. I should like to know what you think of it, madame.”

“You couldn’t do better than Seignouret, Mr. Mendes.”

“Nevertheless, I should like your opinion. If you have other ideas, do be frank. And you, too, Miss Miriam. After all, I am without mother or sister to advise me.

Massive armoires of rosewood and mahogany stood with huge four-poster beds canopied in tufted satin.

Emma spoke approval. “Most elegant! And, so wisely, he has used marble tops on the tables. He knows our climate.”

“Yes,” agreed the host, “dampness does the veneers no good.”

A half-opened door revealed a little room at the rear of the hall. Miriam, pausing, saw a bare, shining floor, a narrow, plain bed, and a cypress wood chest standing between two white-curtained windows.

Mr. Mendes apologized. “That’s just a spare room. A catch-all for some old things from my grandparents’ country place.”

Something in the spareness of the little room appealed to Miriam and she exclaimed, “Oh, but I like this best! It feels comfortable and peaceful.”

“Then, you admire simplicity,” Mr. Mendes said.

“Miriam!” Emma cried reproachfully.

And Miriam, aware that she had made a mistake, amended at once, “Of course, the other rooms are beautiful, they’re very different, very grand .…”

“Oh, but I like your spirit,” Mr. Mendes said. “You expressed your true feelings and you are right. There is a special beauty in simplicity. Shall we go down again? So you approve, madame? Now I need only to increase my plate service. I shall be entertaining rather a good deal now that I am permanently settled in the city. I suppose I ought to have two dozen settings?”

“Oh, indeed. Perhaps more, if you wish. Mr. Raphael frequently brings guests for lunch. It is nothing to find twenty-four in our house at two thirty in the afternoon.”

“Then I shall put in my order tomorrow. Would you prefer refreshment in the garden, madame? It’s very cool and pleasant, I think.”

A bench encircled a round table in the gazebo, where cakes and coffee had been set out. Emma immediately praised the cakes.

The host acknowledged the praise. “My cook Grégoire was trained at the best eating house in Savannah.”

Emma reached for her third. She admired the camellias espaliered against the wall, the jessamine and the daylilies; she loved the peal of the cathedral bells.

“We can barely hear them at our house. This is a perfect location here in every way.”

“Yes, it is,” he replied.

He was paying only partial attention to Emma. His eyes were on Miriam now. She was uncomfortably conscious of his stare.

Some distance away on the garden wall a plaque marked the spot where someone had been buried in the garden. She strained to read. “
AIMÉE
DE
—” The surname was concealed by a branch of hibiscus. “
AIMÉE
DE—,
DÉCÉDÉE
LE—FÉVRIER,
ÉPOUSE
DE
—” A young wife, died in February. Of the fever, or in childbirth? Had she gone singing through this house? Would it be a happy thing to be a wife in this house?

“You are very thoughtful, Miss Miriam.”

Now she was forced to look at him. “I was admiring the statue.”

A small stone figure of Aphrodite stood above a two-tiered fountain. Into a little pool the falling water splashed and doubled like flounces on a skirt. The city was so far away, beyond that wall. One might think oneself in a forest, in a grove, all green, and but for the quiet splashing, all still.

“What do you think of it?”

She hesitated. “It’s a happy thing to have in one’s garden. With the doves and the flowers. She was a love goddess.”

“You know something about mythology, then.”

“Miriam is a reader,” Emma explained. “But not a bookworm, thank goodness! If there’s one thing,” she said meaningfully, “that you men despise, it’s a bluestocking female, isn’t it?”

“And do you like my house, Miss Miriam?” Mr. Mendes asked, not replying to Emma.

“Oh, yes. I hope you will be very happy in it,” she said with the courtesy that was expected of a guest.

“Thank you, I expect to be.” He turned back to Emma.

It was strange how different he seemed from what he had been at Rosa’s yesterday. Today there was something too intense about him. He is so very strong, she thought again. He can manage anything. Under the tight gray coat was a body muscled like those of the Greek gods and Roman warriors in the engravings upstairs in that room. There had been a flowered china pitcher and a bowl where he must wash and shave in
the mornings. From the mosquito bar on the bed the netting hung like a veil, a bridal veil. In one of those large carved beds, probably in the red room—she didn’t know why, but it seemed that he would select the red room for himself and his bride—in that bed, the girl whom he brought there would be … She would be different in the morning. The mysteries! Perhaps if David were here she could ask him. But no, of course not. He, too, was a man, even if he was her brother. What would she ask him, anyway? She wasn’t even sure.

She was stiff and tense on the bench. Her hands were so tightly clasped on her lap that the fingertips went red. Mr. Mendes’s hands were hairy. But they were clean. His fingernails had white rims. That was good; she liked his being so clean. But his forehead was too high. It was like a dome. Someday probably he would lose his black hair and be bald.

“You’re shivering,” Mr. Mendes said. “Are you cold?”

“A little. There is a chill in the wind.”

“Is there? I don’t feel it. Shall I get you a shawl?”

“She’s in the shade,” Emma said. “Move over into the sun, Miriam.”

Now her skirt almost touched Mr. Mendes’s knees. Why was she so afraid of being that close to him? She had admired him yesterday. Such a gentleman. So well thought of. And this fine house. What was there to be afraid of? And besides, he hadn’t asked her, might not even want her, despite what Rosa thought. And she embarrassed herself with her own thoughts.

But he will ask you, Miriam. And you will say yes. You will be expected to. Any girl would say yes to him, wouldn’t she? But it will be wrong if you do. But a girl has to be married. But it will be wrong. And she had a terrible sense of dread.

The blood pounded in her neck. She had never fainted, but she felt so queer. It was unbearable to sit there any longer. She prayed that Emma would get up and leave.

Presently Emma did.

On the way home in the carriage Emma spoke with a satisfied sigh. “I’m almost certain he’s going to speak to your father about you, Miriam. Tomorrow, I shouldn’t wonder. Of course that’s why he wanted you to see his house.”

“I’m sure he only wanted your advice about the decorations, Aunt.”

Emma laughed. “Nonsense! How innocent you are! Not that that isn’t very becoming. To tell you the truth, your father and I have already discussed it. Your father is delighted. And why shouldn’t he be? We both think you’re a very fortunate girl. New Orleans is scarcely filled with eligible Jewish men, and while, as you have seen, many Jews and Christians marry each other, we understand that you wouldn’t do it. And certainly it’s your privilege to have a husband of your own faith.”