Crescent City Read Free Page B

in the cafés. And through such contacts alone, I was able to get hold of a profitable line of goods appealing to the ladies—jewelry, shoes, linens, and such. Luxuries, delicacies. I always had a good eye for delicacies. Yes, my partner never had reason to regret his choice in the short time we were together.”
    The grandfather had been paying close attention. “Short time?”
    “Yes, unfortunately my partner died of yellow fever a year ago. Most people leave the city in the summer, but for once he didn’t do it, and he caught the fever. Terrible thing.”
    “So now you own the business?”
    “Yes, he left it to me. His widow and daughter are otherwise provided for with a fine home in Shreveport. I did promise to look out for them if ever I should be needed. The girl, Marie Claire, is a little older than Miriam.”
    “Marie Claire,” Dinah remarked. “A strange name for Jewish girl.”
    “Well, customs are different in New Orleans.” Yes, different, he reflected, wishing himself back there now and suddenly aware of how far away it was. “My business soon will be one of the largest in the city, if it isn’t already. Last year I finished my house. All brick, built around a courtyard”—his arms swept the air in a large, enthusiastic gesture—“ten times the size of this whole house, with stables and quarters at the rear, built in the square. All the houses are built that way, it’s actually a Mediterranean style.”
    “After the Roman atrium,” David said.
    “You do keep surprising me, David!”
    The old man’s thin voice quivered with scorn. “Thisboy’s head is full of things that don’t concern a Jew. Roman atrium!”
    “Opa.” David spoke patiently. “Opa, you never understand. People aren’t content anymore to live behind closed doors. We want to know what’s been happening in the world outside. That doesn’t mean we must lose our faith.”
    Opa rose on his elbow. “Listen to him. Oh, they may not be content, but they’d be better off if they were. I’ve seen enough in my lifetime not to be tricked again. Napoleon came: we were all free. Napoleon left; back inside the wall with us!” The skeletal hands clapped together, making a wall. “Here’s where we are. There’s where they are. And I don’t need to know a thing about what’s happening on their side of the wall because I’m never going to live on their side of the wall. It will never be different. Let a war come or a financial panic, or God knows what, and it’ll be our fault again. It always has been.”
    Ferdinand spoke quietly. “With my respect to you, Opa, David is right. If you could only see how we live in America! In my city nobody asks what religion you are, or even whether you have any religion. Anyone who can afford the cost is free to move in the highest social circles.”
    “It seems to me,” Dinah remarked, “you were always telling us the same thing about your family in France when Napoleon was emperor.”
    “And so I did. There were great days. If he had lasted, things would have been different all over Europe.”
    “But he didn’t last,” the old man interrupted. “So it’s just what I’ve been saying. Must I tell you—you of all people—what happened when the Hep Hep boys swept through half the towns in Franconia? Massacre in Darmstadt, in Karlsruhe, in Bayreuth—Hep Hep,”he said bitterly. “I keep forgetting the words it stood for, something about Jerusalem—”
    “Hierosolyma perdita est.
Jerusalem has been destroyed. That’s Latin.”
    “Latin or not, it was blood to us. Hannah’s blood.”
    There was a somber silence. Ferdinand lowered his head. The eyes—his son’s, his daughter’s—were unbearable to see. They were Hannah’s eyes, her sweet eyes, which, during these years since he’d lost her, he had almost forgotten.
    “Yes,” the old man resumed. The terrible subject had poured a few minutes’ worth of energy into his veins. “Yes, back where we were before! No equal