by David Payne
“You see how much there is,” he says. “It’s absurd of him to plague me over one lost order. We’ll be in Washington by summer anyway. This will more than see us through.”
“It’s like the granaries of Egypt,” Addie says.
Harlan laughs. “Yes, and now you are the Pharaoh’s wife. But come here in the light where I can look at you.” He unrolls a bolt of flannel on the coffee sacks and pats, inviting her to sit. “I don’t know what reception you’re to have from Father and the others, Addie, so before I take you to them, I want you to know what has occurred.
“So, Thursday last,” he says, removing the chimney of the lamp and relighting his cigar, “the day after my return from Charleston and the wedding, Father called us all together in the library—and by all, you understand, I mean myself, Paloma, Jarry, and Clarisse. With great solemnity and mystery, as though he were about to lead us in some arcane rite, he produced a key from around his neck, opened the drawer of the partners desk, and produced his final will and testament. Most people, Addie, have the decency to die before inflicting their intentions on their kin, but Father, knowing he was going to stir a fracas, could not deny himself the stimulation of observing it firsthand. So it was read. To be exact, Jarry read it to us. Father, you see, prefers Jarry’s style of oratory to my own…or do I mean rhetoric? But, never mind, I’ll spare you the catalog of petty insults I endure, which would no doubt bore you and keep us here into the middle of next week.” Harlan smiles perfunctorily, as though he’s tasted something spoiled.
Addie, who has never heard this tone from him before, folds her hands and, with some effort, manages to keep a neutral face. “I take it you were displeased by its provisions?”
“In a word, I was,” he replies. “Though the document leaves the property to me—to us—as I expected, as it should, there were surprises. Paloma, for her years of…‘service,’ shall we say, is to be freed. I didn’t know of that, but, frankly, she’s past her prime, and I’m content for her to live out her days in the pine barren cottage with Clarisse, if that is her desire. What came as a far greater shock,” he says, puffing furiously, “what I can neither brook…nor tolerate…nor allow to stand…is Father’s intention to free Jarry. Not to put too fine a point on it, this would be ruinous to us. It is, moreover, by current law, illegal in the state of South Carolina, and in every state of the Confederacy, to manumit a slave except by special action of the legislature. Father, of course, does not concede the authority of the government in Montgomery. The law, you see, according to his settled view, is changeable according to his whim, whereas his word has a force equal to, if not somewhat in excess of, biblical decree.”
“He gave it then?” she asks.
“Apparently, he did,” says Harlan, pacing up and down with one arm squared behind his back. “They all knew of this, of course. It was only I—his legitimate son and heir—who was kept in the dark. Not until the day after our wedding, ten days to the day before my departure for Fort Moultrie, did Father see fit to enlighten me. His position—wholly preposterous—was that it had never occurred to him I might object.”
“But you do?”
“Do I? Madam, believe you me, I do! I object most strenuously and told him so in no uncertain terms. If he persists in this folly, I mean to contest the will, and let them see how a South Carolina court views the rights of one spoiled, selfish nigger slave against those of a plantation owner and first lieutenant in the Twenty-first!”
“My dear!” she says. “What happened?”
“What happened? What happened?” Harlan fulminates. “Madam, had there been pistols in the room, I could not have confidently ruled out the possibility of bloodshed. They all took his side, of course—of course!”
“And Clarisse?” says Addie. “Is she to be freed as well?”
“Clarisse? Clarisse is free, Addie. Long since free. Have I not acquainted you with her situation?”
“I don’t believe you have.”
Harlan’s features concentrate. He smokes and stares into the distance. “Clarisse is not my father’s child,” he says after a beat. “She is Wenceslao Villa-Urrutia’s by Paloma.”
Addie blinks. “Wenceslao…”
“Villa-Urrutia. You have no idea who he is….”
She shakes her head. “I don’t.”
“Of course you don’t. How could you. How to put this…” He begins to pace again. “Briefly, Addie, Father, in his youth, displayed a mechanical ingenuity—one would almost have to say a genius—that led him, after some professional misadventures, into relations with a man named Charles Derosne. Together, they developed what subsequently became known as the Derosne mill. Father was instrumental in the design of the vacuum pan. That’s what first took him to Cuba, where he made his fortune. I feel certain I’ve mentioned this to you before.”
“It has to do with sugar?” “Exactly. The mill produced a new and iridescent form of it, of a quality no one had dreamed possible before. It long ago transformed the refining process—in Cuba and elsewhere—but its early history was checkered. The machinery was complex, temperamental, and fabulously expensive. The prototype cost over sixty thousand dollars and was wholly unproved. In an effort to win acceptance, he and Charles traveled to Matanzas and personally installed the first one at La Mella, which was Wenceslao’s hereditary estate.”
“Villa—”
“Villa-Urrutia. Yes, correct. Count Wenceslao Villa-Urrutia. Father served as chief machinist in La Mella’s caldron and purga, the boiler house and refinery. That’s where he met Paloma. She was a housemaid at the hacienda, Villa-Urrutia’s mistress. Father was smitten and tried to buy her. Prime wenches went—in Cuba, in those days—for twenty onzas or a little more, around four hundred dollars. Father offered six, then eight, but the Conde, like many Cubans of his class, was an inveterate gambler and proposed a more sporting proposition. He offered to put Paloma against Father’s stake in the mill. We’re talking two and a half years of work.”
“He took the bet?”
“He took the bet.”
“She must have been something,” Addie says, with a slight smile.
“She still is. Mucha mujer. Of course, she’s old now, but you’ll see. They made the wager in the purging house, over cigars, using the bocoyes of coarse sugar for a table. A single hand of faro, and Father won. When she came to him, Paloma was pregnant.”
“With Jarry?”
Harlan wags a finger.
“Clarisse!” she says. “Clarisse?”
He smiles. “Correct. She is Wenceslao’s child. She was born in Cuba and raised in the Count’s household, educated like his other daughters.”
“And she came here?”
Harlan nods. “When I went down for my apprenticeship, I brought her back to help her mother with the house. Villa-Urrutia, you see, left her little but her wardrobe and expensive tastes. It was essentially an act of charity, Addie, something Father undertook for Paloma’s sake. Clarisse, you see, is not related to this family. She is Villa-Urrutia’s upon Paloma.”
“So you said.”
“Did I? Forgive me, I’ve lost my train of thought.” He turns away from her and stares into the shadows, as though what he’s misplaced might be lurking among the soft goods and comestibles in the dark, far corner of the room. “You were telling me about your father’s promise to Jarry.”
“Yes, thank you. He did this for Paloma, Addie. From our vantage here in proper South Carolina, it may be hard for you to understand, but Father’s racial views were formed when he was young.”
“In Cuba…”
“In Cuba. Yes. Things are different there.” Taking out his handkerchief, he dabs his brow and walks away from her. “The races mix more freely. One meets people of mixed blood in society all the time, even in the highest circles, and it is expected, Addie, it is socially de rigueur, for one to treat these people—for a young man, let us say, to treat these women, these well-connected mulatas—one calls them morenas there, ‘brunettes’—
as one would treat women of good family here. In effect, as I treat you.”
“I see.”
“And perhaps you can also see how easy it might be for a young man to fall under the spell of Spanish decadence and so forget himself….”
“As your father did.”
“As my father did.” He stops and faces her. His expression turns forlorn. “I myself, in my time there…I was not perfect, Addie.”
“I appreciate your forthrightness, Harlan,” she replies, after a moment, when it appears an answer is required. “But if you think to shock me, you must take a different tack. I’m not a child.”
He smiles. “You are good. The more I come to know you, the more convinced I am you will be good for me.” Absolved, he starts to pace again, smoking with complacent energy.
Addie is thoughtful over his revelation and a bit put off by the self-centeredness of his response—only a bit, though. She’s also half amused by it and curious to watch as he comes out. She hasn’t seen him in this light.
“Fortunately, I woke up from the spell in time,” he goes on. “Father, in all these years, never has. This, in a word, is why Wando Passo is what it is and what you see, which must seem strange to you. I must tell you, Addie, had it been up to me, Jarry would never have been made steward in the first place. It is unwise, most unwise—I can tell you from bitter, personal experience—ever to put oneself in dependent relations with persons of that race. I didn’t always feel that way, but time—maturity, if I may say so—has seasoned me. Sadly, though, this water’s long since passed the bridge. There are four hundred souls upon this property—from the crop hands to the coopers, gardeners, and smiths—all answerable to Jarry. This plantation is an immense wheel that turns upon its steward as the axle, and if Father were to die while I’m away, if Jarry were to leave, I honestly don’t see how it could turn. The place would go to ruin in a season—nay, a month!”
“I see,” says Addie, having finally, with some difficulty, grasped the central point. “You asked your father, then, to break his word.”
“Not to break it, Addie, to delay it merely. To wait until the war is done, when I return. There are many in my regiment—even the soberest heads—who think we’ll be in Washington by summer.”
“Do they? I know so little of military matters.”
“You saw how it went at Sumter—judge from that. Even in the worst case, I don’t believe the war can last beyond a year. The Yankees hate us, hate our principles, our institutions, our way of life—why would they not let us go? The Union’s like a bad old marriage. They may rail at ending it, but will they shed their blood to keep us locked in a relationship they—and we—abhor? I don’t believe they will, and so, you see, it’s really not that much to ask.”
“Of Jarry.”
“Of Jarry. How many Negroes in this state, I ask you, can boast of advantages like his?”
“Your father takes a different view….”
“He does. It is his word, you see—he’s punctilious upon that point.”
What gentleman is not? Addie thinks, but doesn’t bring herself to say. In this area, her upbringing has left no shade of gray. “What happened, Harlan?”
“It was, madam, as if a hornet’s nest had fallen from the eave and burst.”
“What did he do?”
“He? They, madam, they! They combined their regiments! I was cast as villain of the house. You may as well know, Addie, this is my accustomed role at Wando Passo—it’s been my role for years. They refused to speak to me, to acknowledge my presence in a room. They treated me, in short, as though I were a malodorous substance to be scraped from the bottoms of their shoes.”
“But Clarisse relented….”
“Yes, Clarisse, and only she. But I must tell you, Addie, I don’t entirely trust her motives.”
“What do you think they are?”
“Lord knows! She’s a woman, isn’t she? If I were to guess, I’d say she may have seen it as an opportunity to play hostess and receive the credit of the event.”
“A Negro? Here? In South Carolina?”
“Your incredulity—though shared by me—would be lost upon the other members of this house. In Cuba on a day like this, they would be congratulated and deferred to, Negro blood or no, and it’s by this principle that Father has run his house. Rather, it’s by this principle that he has let them run it for him. And I’m sick and goddamned tired of it. So, I told her, Addie, I said, ‘Clarisse, if you would like to give a party, have away at it, and please accept my thanks. But, I cannot allow you or your mother to mingle with the guests.’”
“What did she say?”
“Not a word,” he says. “Not one. Her expression, though, was eloquent. The human capacity for self-deception never ceases to amaze me, Addie. I honestly believe that till that moment, till that very day and hour, Clarisse thought I thought about her…” Harlan’s gaze returns to that dark corner, as though his train of thought has skipped the track again.
“She thought you thought about her how?”
“Like a sister.” Now his eyes come back. “A sister, who is white.”
“Oh.” Her hand goes to the button on her breast. “Oh, how terrible for her.”
“For her?” he says. “It was terrible for me, Addie, for me, to be put in that position.”
“Yes, dear, of course,” she says. “Of course, it must have been.”
“But what was I to do?” he asks, taking out his handkerchief again. “Present her and Paloma to Louisa Elliott, to Miss Blanche Huger, on a footing of equality?”
“No, of course. Of course not, dear,” she says, noting how he is perspiring, pacing faster, smoking more, smoking quite furiously, in fact, and accompanying his tale with large, emphatic gestures of his hands. It’s as though he stands accused and feels compelled—indignantly compelled—to defend himself, as though, moreover, his accuser is in the room, a ghostly third that he can see and she cannot. Addie can gauge its presence from his actions, though, the way he smiles mockingly in its direction, steps around it or angrily shoulders it aside. And gradually it dawns on her, not certainly, but only as a possibility, that in addition to what he’s telling her—which she has no reason to doubt—there is something he is holding back.
“To her credit, though, Clarisse made peace with it and went ahead. It was my father who exploded.”
“What did he say?”
“Words that I, as a gentleman, must forbear repeating in your company. I will only tell you that the recent events at Fort Sumter were mild compared to the detonations in this house.”
“Dearest!”
“But I granted him no quarter, Addie. I gave it to him straight, no water and no ice! Frankly, the sooner he’s gone, the better it will be for everyone. We’ll never put our house in order while he lives. The first thing I’d like to do as soon as he is cool upon the board is put Paloma and Clarisse on a boat to Cuba. It was a mistake ever to have brought her here. Clarisse has never adjusted to the alteration in her status. In South Carolina, she’s like a tiger in a cage.”
“If she’s unhappy, and free, why doesn’t she leave?”
“That, madam, is a question you must pose to the philosophers! Father, of course, refused to come out of solidarity with Paloma. For years now, he’s refused to attend events where she and they—the ‘dark family,’ as I believe our well-meaning friends refer to them—were not invited. Which, in short, is why, for years, he’s barely left these grounds. By his own choice, he’s made himself a pariah, infamous throughout the county and the state, and he’s made me one, too, Addie, willy-nilly.”
“I had no idea how this had affected you.”
“The thing has tainted my whole life, Addie,” he says earnestly, “and it is hardly too much to say that it has poisoned it.” Harlan now applies himself to his cigar, puffing single-mindedly like a disgruntled infant at a sugar-tit, till Addie sees a glaze form in his eyes. “This is how we live, my dear. It’s why Wando Passo is not a proper house. To
make it one, you and I have a Herculean task ahead of us. Not to put too fine a point on it, Father treats these half-breed niggers in all respects as he treats me, his legitimate son, as though there were no differences of quality or degree, and I’ll go further and tell you he actually prefers their company to mine. That, my dear, is why Jarry was made steward, while I was sent away—exiled is not too strong a term—to Cuba. It’s a rare evening, madam, let me tell you, when you don’t hear them in the library, Jarry and Father, holding forth, their voices raised over some project or some book. They were at it last night, too—so help me God, they were, with the party looming and Father at death’s door, supposedly! They were parsing Wordsworth—I could hear them through the floor. ‘It is not now as it hath been of yore….’ Grant me patience, Lord! And a quarter of an hour later on to Thucydides! ‘The strong do what they can while the weak suffer what they must.’ They kept me up to all hours shouting and laughing over cigars and port the way men only shout and laugh when they’re aroused. Father, I can tell you, has never deigned to discuss such things with me. I lack sufficient intelligence, you see, to comprehend great English poetry, and the Greeks…oh, certainly not.”
Addie’s eyes are wide, her aspect reminiscent of Blanche’s, in the Nina’s bow, under stress from the hot wind. “And what was the upshot?”
“The upshot of what?” he asks with a brusque note.
“Of your disagreement with your father.”
“On what subject, madam? They are multiple and myriad.”
“The subject of Jarry’s manumission.”
“Ah, that! He told me, Addie, to remove my hind parts by the proximate, or nearest, door—and that, madam, is not a paraphrase, but a quote. And from that moment until now, I have not exchanged a word with him or had the pleasure of his beneficent, paternal smile. Now, therefore, let us gird our loins and go to face the dragon in his lair!”