City of God (48 page)

They were married, the man said, and he’d carried her all the way from Philadelphia. “We had a mule before that. But it be dying soon as we crossed on out o’ Pennsylvania. There was places we was s’posed to go where they be looking after us, but I couldn’t find none of ’em. Lost my way like. ’Til I got here.”

Ben knelt beside the woman he now thought of as his patient, therefore under his protection. The wound was inflamed and swollen, and she had a high fever, but the leg had not turned black. “I think we can save it,” he said, with a nod at the handle of the kitchen knife poking out of Liza’s pocket. “You’re quite right. The musket ball must come out. Only not here.”

David and Rebecca arrived with his bag. “I want you both to see what is involved in this enterprise in which you’ve implicated yourselves,” Ben said. “David, you and I will carry her upstairs. And we must do so without any of the younger children seeing, in case they should say something by mistake. You go ahead, Rebecca. Make sure the way is clear.”

“It is called the underground railroad,” Ben said when he came up to bed.

“I know,” Bella said.

It was after ten and he thought by now she would be asleep, but she was at her dressing table, brushing her hair. It gleamed, so he thought she must have been doing it for some time. She put down the brush. “Where are they?”

“Liza made up beds for them by the kitchen stove.”

“I see.” She got up. “Sit. I’ll help you take off your shoes.”

Ben sat on the side of the bed. Bella knelt in front of him and began loosening the laces of the shoes he’d been wearing since six o’clock that morning. “Oh…that feels good.”

She smiled. “Here, give me the other foot. Benjamin, I have been thinking about—”

“I know what you’ve been thinking about. And I admit it’s dangerous, but I cannot turn onto the street a woman with a musket ball in her thigh. Or permit someone with no idea what they’re doing to dig it out with a knife that ten minutes before she used to chop cabbage.” Because of germs, which he already believed were transferred from one thing to another thing, carrying disease with them. Though he wouldn’t admit that to Dr. Turner.

Bella reached up under the legs of his trousers and loosened his garters so she could roll down his hose. “Please stop talking and listen to me. I am not thinking about that. Tell me again the names of the men who will be the trustees of this Jews’ Hospital.”

He was astonished that she would want to talk about that when two runaway slaves were sleeping in their kitchen, but she had taken off his stockings and begun massaging his feet. “That’s wonderful,” he said, and so she wouldn’t stop, recited the names of the proposed board.

“All Sephardim,” she said, when this second telling confirmed what she thought she remembered. “All from the ones who came first, members of Congregation Shearith Israel. Not even one of us.”

She meant not one German Jew. “I know.”

“And do you think it’s right?”

“Of course I don’t think it’s right. But the business with the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim, that’s an old story. And it’s maybe why the Chrystie Street rabbi isn’t wrong.”

“Maybe. But right now I am not thinking about Temple Emanu-El and my grandfather, may his name be for a blessing, and the reform. I am thinking about how people always look for someone they can be better than. And about Mr. Tappan.”

“Tappan the silk merchant? What has he got to do with this? Oh, you mean because always he was so strong for abolition.”

“Exactly.” She helped him out of his trousers and extended her massage up to his knees. “Do you remember after the fire, after he’d rebuilt and got his business going again, how then the bad money times came and his business collapsed?”

“I remember.”

“You remember what people said?”

“Not everyone,” he corrected. “Just one man.”

“One man said it first, but plenty of others joined in. ‘Mr. Tappan has failed,’ they said. ‘All you nigras come and help him.’ They didn’t mean anyone should help him. They were gloating. Because they’re afraid of abolition they were enjoying his failure.”

“That’s an ugly idea.”

“I agree. But buying and selling people is worse. The men who oppose abolition, who say that without slaves the South will collapse and everyone in New York will lose enormous amounts of money, they said also that it had to be that
Hashem
did not approve of the New Evangelists like Mr. Tappan and their ideas about reforming society, about giving women the vote and having for everyone free schools. If
Hashem
approved, they said, Mr. Tappan would have been protected from failing.”

“They don’t say
Hashem
, they say Go—”

“Don’t! I can’t hear that, Benjamin. Not in my house where my children are sleeping. I am not so sure about all this reform.”

“All right, I’m sorry. But something else I think you are sure of. What are you trying to tell me, my lovely Bella?” He put out his hand and touched her hair. When it hung free like this, it reached her shoulders and formed a beautiful black cloud.

“That I don’t think we should be worried about the anti-every-kind-of-reform people. They are small-minded and petty, and they put their purse above everything else. If we have to be on a side, Benjy, let it be the side of Mr. Tappan, not those who are against him. Otherwise we are simply like the old men of Shearith Israel. We resist others because they are not exactly like ourselves.”

“Not all of them.”

“Benjy, please.”

She usually called him Benjy only when they were most intimate, here in the bed. Her hands on his legs felt wonderful and she looked beautiful, but he was so tired he could barely move. “Darling Bella, I don’t think I can—”

“I know about the Fugitive Slave Act. I know what President Fillmore said. ‘
Hashem
knows that I detest slavery, but the constitution protects it.’ And don’t tell me he didn’t say
Hashem.
I know that too.”

“I wasn’t going to say…Bella, how do you know so much about politics?”

“I can read, Benjamin. Do you think with all the papers that come in and out of this house I never look at one? But we are discussing those two people downstairs. And”—her head came up in defiance—“many more just like them. We must help them get to Canada. I know if we are caught, it means six months in prison, and a thousand-dollar fine. And that probably no one will ever want you again for their doctor. I don’t care. Right, Benjy, is right. So we will tell them that from now on we are a regular stop on their underground railway. The train comes to Hudson Square.”

It amazed Carolina how much she loved going up to the turret of the house on Sunshine Hill. At first it had almost made her dizzy; now she adored it.
The vastness of the view was intoxicating, even on a cold January day like this one. She could train Nicholas’s telescope on the harbor and watch for any ships that might be flying the Devrey flag, particularly the clippers. Hard to miss them with their great drifts of sail.

Sometimes, however, the view close up was the most interesting of all.

A small carriage had stopped at the foot of the hill. The double gates to their driveway were always locked, and a substantial bell hung beside the gate for visitors to ring to attract attention, but in all the years they had lived here the bell had been rung exactly three times. On each occasion it was someone coming from the town to summon Nick to a patient’s bedside. Today Nick was in his office on Crosby Street and easily reached there, and Carolina recognized the person who had gotten out of the carriage.

She practically flew down the stairs, out the door, and down the precipitous path that led to the road. The clanging of the bell still echoed when Carolina flung open the gate. “Mrs. Klein? Has something happened? Is Nicholas all right?”

“Oh dear, I didn’t mean to alarm you. He is fine. Please forgive me, Mrs. Devrey. I should have realized you would immediately assume…Dr. Turner is fine. I didn’t come with bad news. I give you my word.”

Carolina took a second or two to catch her breath. “Then why? I’m sorry. I am being extremely rude.” She unlatched the second gate and began pushing them both apart.

Bella had come in a small, half-closed carriage known as a doctor’s buggy, designed to be driven without a coachman. She was swathed in furs, but her face was bright red from wind.

“You must be exhausted as well as frozen,” Carolina said. “Come, drive inside the gates and I’ll close them. Then I’ll get in, if I may, and we can ride up the hill together.”

“Thank you, that was delicious and very welcome.” Bella put down her cup of chocolate, now empty, and dabbed at her lips with the
fine linen napkin Carolina Devrey had provided. It was, Bella noted, monogrammed with an R for Randolf, which she knew had been Carolina’s maiden name. A nice finesse of the irregular situation.

“I should be giving you brandy after that difficult journey,” Carolina said. “In fact, I think I shall.” There was a tray with a decanter and glasses on a nearby table; she got up and poured a drink for her guest and one for herself. Bella did not immediately take the bulbous snifter out of her hostess’s hands. “Take it,” Carolina said with a smile. “You have driven yourself five miles up Manhattan in bitter cold and come to call on a woman who, as you know for a fact, is living in sin. Surely you’re not going to balk at a few sips of cognac. Nothing will warm you more quickly.”

Bella allowed herself a smile. “Perhaps you’re right.”

“I am.”

“Very well. Your good health.”

“And yours.”

The first sip went down like liquid fire, but Bella found herself immediately wanting another. “I am not an expert on the subject, but I think this is a very fine cognac.”

“The best,” Carolina said without modesty. “My ships bring it directly from France.”

“Yes. Well, that’s what I came to talk about. Your ships.”

Since it was not some sort of emergency involving the shared enterprise of their menfolk, Carolina waited.

Bella took another sip of cognac. This time it was comforting warmth only. Nothing like fire. “The underground railway.” She blurted it out because she could think of no subtle way to introduce the topic. “That’s what I’ve come to discuss.”

“Indeed.”

“I don’t know how you feel, Mrs. Devrey, but…” Bella blushed.

“Please, call me Carolina. It is easier for both of us that way. And I think the underground railway a brave and very necessary thing to combat a wicked, wicked injustice. But I have five children, Mrs. Klein—”

“Bella. If you are Carolina, I am Bella.”

“Very well. I have five children, Bella.”

“I have seven.”

“Yes, but I already live outside the norms of society. My children can be made to bear a great deal of suffering because of choices not theirs but those of their parents.”

“Whose children can not?” Bella asked. “And you are very wealthy. That will help to protect them.”

Carolina’s eyes opened wide. Most men would not make such an unvarnished statement about the uses of money. Coming from a woman it was breathtaking. “A thousand-dollar fine is a considerable penalty.”

“Six months in prison would be far worse. I am much more afraid of that. I have nightmares about it. Who would look after my babies? My Rachel, my youngest, is still nursing.” She had expelled a beaker of milk before she left the house earlier today so that the baby could be fed from a bottle. Six months in prison, however, was something else entirely.

“You have nightmares, but you are actively involved in the underground railway and you wish me to become involved as well. Either because of my isolated house or my shipping connections.”

“Both,” Bella said. “You have such advantages to offer, and I have heard my husband say that Dr. Turner shares our views on the issue of slavery, so I was sure you must as well. So many blandishments were too much temptation to resist.”

“How could you be sure I would have the same opinion as Nicholas Turner on this matter?” Carolina sat back and waited for an answer. It was the measure of the thing as far as she was concerned. To become involved in something so dangerous she had to know this woman’s true mettle.

“Because slavery is about buying and selling human beings, but people do not admit that. They talk about how the Negroes need to be protected and how well they are looked after, when what they mean is that they want to own other human beings so they will be richer. I do not believe that Dr. Turner could love a woman who would condone such a thing. I do not think he would risk his entire professional reputation
to be with a woman who did not think as he did on a matter of such profound moral importance.”

“I take it you refer to an opinion the woman had formed on her own, not simply adopted because it was that of her hus—of the man she loved.”

“Of course formed on her own. We are not china dolls, Carolina. We do not have smiles someone else has painted on our faces and arms and legs that move according to how someone else bends them. But if that is not true of you and I with our white skins, why should it be true of a woman with a black skin? Why is she a…a commodity to be exchanged for money?”