Washington Black: A Novel

by Esi Edugyan

“That depends,” she said vaguely, taking my plate to serve me. “Do you like them?”

  Suddenly the plate snapped in half, and she fumbled to catch the pieces. She managed to grab one, the second half clattering unharmed to the floor. “Truly?” she said, flustered. “The hardwood floor is soft enough, but my hands too hard?”

  I half-rose from my seat. “You are hurt?”

  “Oh, for god’s sake,” she said. “Life is not a Venetian opera, Mister Black.” I did not understand her meaning, but I could see she had a cut on the inside of her wrist, and that she was embarrassed. She went alone to the scullery to patch it up.

  “Your daughter is a fine painter,” I said to Goff, who all this time had sat silently. I stared boldly at his face, awaiting his reaction to the compliment. When he said nothing, I continued, “One of her many charms.”

  “You seem to have taken a great interest in her charms,” he said, his black eyes steady.

  I felt my heart in my throat. I knew I was being too forward, but I was filled with an impulsive irritation and could not help myself. I moistened my lips. “She is an admirable woman.”

  “She is no woman. She is a girl.”

  “She is twenty.”

  “She is twenty.”

  I could see now a strange sheen on his hardened eyes, like a second darkness, so that I stopped abruptly, as though I had reached a rocky precipice. “Well, then,” I murmured, letting my voice taper off.

  Goff took a deep sip of his wine, and I could see he was relieved I had stopped. He turned the stem of the glass in his hands. “Life has been more difficult for Tanna than I ever imagined it would be,” he said softly. “You would never know it—she is so self-possessed. But she has never been accepted in English society, and this has wounded her deeply. I will say she does not make things easier on herself by being always drawn to strangeness. Mark me—you put twelve people in a room and Tanna will always gravitate towards the most eccentric of them. Even as a child she was this way. It is touching, and big-hearted of her, but it has rarely served her well. I would not wish her any more hardship.”

  He peered softly across at me, and I understood then that what he feared for her, for us both, was social disdain. He seemed to be saying that had circumstances been different, he would certainly have accepted me.

  He cleared his throat. “Her drawings, yes. Well, Tanna does try. But your own paintings, Mister Black—now those are things of beauty. I have never seen an artist be so meticulous and still bring life to it.”

  The praise was not new; Goff had often commented on the grace and elegance of my line.

  “You are too kind,” I said.

  “We both know I am not.” He flashed a dry, crooked smile. “But I have been meaning to ask you for some days now—would you do me the honour of illustrating my new tract?”

  I felt my cheeks warm with embarrassment. “You tease me?”

  “It does not appeal to you?”

  “It would be an absolute pleasure, sir.” Despite all that lay between us he was still a legend to me, and I saw this for the deep honour that it was.

  He frowned. “What’s that? Speak louder.”

  Tanna returned with a chipped, gold-rimmed white plate. When she set it down before me, a wet-eyed ginger cat oozed from beneath the table and leapt directly onto it.

  “Ah,” said Goff, swatting at it. “You’re in her seat, that’s what.” He clapped his hands sharply. “Away with you, Medusa.”

  “You see the state we live in,” said Tanna.

  Goff puffed air through his lips, as though this was nothing to apologize for. Then he began to gobble up his fish in quick, rabbit-like bites, his eyes always on his plate.

  “I said I would be honoured to do it, sir,” I said. “How is the writing proceeding?”

  “Do what?” said Tanna.

  “Ah, the writing,” Goff grumbled, and shook his head, the flesh of the mackerel flashing in his small, bright teeth.

  “Illustrate the new book,” I said, turning to Tanna.

  She glanced at her father. “I see.” She took her seat across from us, and the candles shuddered as she bumped the table, grey shadows passing like moths over the pale fabric of her dress. She looked at her fork some moments, then raised her face with a smile. “It will be beautiful, I have no doubt.”

  Goff continued to eat heartily. “I would do it myself, but the eyesight, you know. In any case, I grow rather less and less interested in drawing these days. In writing, even. The exhibition—that is the thing.”

  I had not intended to mention it, and yet all that had come to me on the dive rose now to mind, and I felt I must speak or lose the opportunity. “Have you given any thought to making your exhibition a live one?”

  Goff frowned at me. “A live one, Mister Black?”

  I paused, going on only when I had their full attention. “Imagine a large hall, a gallery, but filled not with benches. There are instead large tanks holding all manner of aquatic life. Enormous tanks. Perhaps there are open-air terrariums with toads and turtles and lizards. And people could come and press their faces right against the glass. Learn the habits of the animals first-hand. It could be permanent, like an indoor park.”

  “A menagerie of the sea,” murmured Tanna.

  Goff gave a flustered grunt, shoving some boiled potatoes into his mouth, but I could see he was interested. “Such a thing is not possible.”

  I peered quietly at him. “Nothing is possible, sir, until it is made so.”

  He studied me, his expression softening. “Well, it would be a marvel, son.”

  “But how?” said Tanna, and I could see she too was giving it serious thought. “The tanks would need to be sealed utterly, leak-proof over the long term, and yet—”

  “The animals would be in ready need of oxygen,” said I.

  “Precisely. And how would you begin to house such a collection? It is one thing to organize a temporary exhibition of dead specimens, and quite another to nurture living organisms over a period of years. Would one be able to repurpose a building for such a use, which might prove less costly, or must a building be specifically designed for the purpose?”

  “It is a fascinating conundrum, in any case,” Goff grunted.

  We began to speak at length of the problems of balancing carbonic acid and oxygen, of the decay of vegetation and the temperamental acidity of water. It was bracing, and intimate, the three of us weighing each other’s words with true enthusiasm and consideration. So absorbed were we in our talk that when finally I rose to go out to the water closet, long shadows had deepened across the table.

  I returned to find Goff staring thoughtfully at his gravy-stained plate; something was just now occurring to him. I expected some new point on oxygen levels, but he only said, gruffly, “I will have to leave you two to sort out the crinoids next Saturday. I am travelling up the coast, to a little hamlet some thirty miles from here. Seems a fisherman there caught a white-skinned fish with wings. They say it is a strange and alien thing, not of this world. Who knows if this is not some exaggeration—if it is a common-enough genus that has suffered a trauma altering its externals. But perhaps it truly is something rare, something new. In any case, shouldn’t take but a day or two. I will take a room, and I hope to be back the following evening.”

  Tanna looked calmly, coolly at him. “This is the first I’m hearing of this.”

  I lowered my eyes, took an uneasy sip of my water.

  “You are upset I have not asked you to accompany me, my dear,” said Goff. “It will not be a pleasant journey. I did not think you would mind.”

  “Do what you must,” said Tanna.

  And she stood and began to clear the table in silence, leaving in a clatter of clinking dishes, her dress rustling.

  Goff turned to me, unruffled. “Will you take a port, son?”

>   10

  SOME DAYS LATER it came to me.

  I’d awoken that morning to a dreadful chill in my room, feeling strange, unhappy. I hobbled down the hall to the water bucket, shirttails drooping. There I splashed my face and armpits, trying to take no notice of the sounds emanating from the room directly opposite. Its occupant was a tiny, sway-backed man with no teeth who smoked incessantly, and every morning he would wake to the world with a violent, racking cough.

  I returned to my rooms, tending to the seedlings I grew in soup platters on my windowsill. I was pouring out the greening water from my stoneware cask when all at once it struck me. I started to tremble. I set the cask down with a click and, without even fastening my waistcoat, went out to the shores to dredge specimens. When I returned, my apartment was dark, smelling of chalk and damp. I placed the rotifera and infusoria I had gathered, along with some sea water, in my cask, by the window. After much nurturing I was crestfallen to find them dead two days later. But then I thought it through, and went again to the shores to collect more sea organisms and plants, placing them this time in an entirely clear glass receptacle.

  For what had struck me was this: marine animals absorb oxygen and exhale carbonic acid; plants do the opposite—absorb carbonic acid and throw off oxygen. So perhaps, then, the way to make them thrive in captivity was to house them together.

  What had been missing from my first experiment, with the clay urn, was light. In the clear glass tank, the vegetation could get what it needed for synthesis.

  In this way my new specimens survived a long while. The natural decay and excretions of both the plants and the animals were fended off by my occasional stirring and syringing out of the tank’s salt water.

  I held off rushing to the Goffs. Instead, on one of Medwin’s trips to Halifax, I travelled in the safety of his company to the constructions on the main square there. Trundling across the dirt and fallen lumber of half-erected warehouses, I began to ask after their builders. At a warehouse some two blocks from the ocean a foreman walked out from the shadow of a cast-iron frame and irritably agreed to answer my questions. It did not take long for his impatience to turn to curiosity. We conversed nearly an hour, and I went happily away to make calculations.

  I am no great mathematician. But the Cloud-cutter had required some very precise mensuration, and with this knowledge I was able, over the coming days, to design what I thought might be a viable large-scale tank. I drew plate-glass walls of several dimensions, with parallel sides to prevent distortion. I experimented with many bonding putties, deciding finally on a mixture concocted of white lead.

  It took me three evenings to build. I spoke to no one outside work and ate little and laboured until the joints of my hands clicked painfully. I built a tank two feet long, one and a half feet wide and a half foot deep; for the base I used a one-inch slab of slate. Medwin brought me some cast-off birchwood from his friend’s lumber operation, and this I lathed into pillars with knobs at the top, joining them with a bar. I attached everything together, then sought out a glass-blower who owed Medwin money and had him cut me four pieces of glass at no charge. These I slid into grooves notched into the slate and the wood, securing them with my white-lead putty. I was careful, however, knowing how murderous lead was to sea life: when it had set, I filled up the tank with shell-lac dissolved in naphtha to make a paste with whiting. When the mixture solidified, it would stop the water from coming into contact with the lead, which constantly gives off small doses of oxide.

  I held my breath and prayed it would all come together, prayed that in the end I could give her something to draw out the astonishment in her fine, sharp face.

  * * *

  —

  AN EARLY DUSK WAS FALLING when I left the dry goods store the next evening. Crisp leaves rasped in the wind, and I noted with surprise that autumn was upon us again. There was a charge in the air; it smelled strongly of damp, of mud. I passed many cancelled-out lodgings, the windows black, and I passed also many brightly lit ones, so that I could see in clear detail the pleasure or the irritation or the disappointment in the gestures of the people at their windows. I passed a home in which a man sat at a crude pine desk, his head in his hands.

  Nearing a coloured grill-house, I paused, inhaling the scent of burnt onions and spiced meat. Impulsively, I counted the money in my billfold, then went inside.

  It was a rundown little establishment, the air hazy with grease, the tables filled with men hunched over plates in which their faces were reflected greyly back up at them. I trod over the flaking wooden boards to an empty stool at the far edge of the bar, feeling the slow weight of men’s stares on my burns. It was always so, especially in eateries. And though I had long grown used to it, I felt no less alien and apart.

  I withdrew a small ledger from my satchel and began to make calculations to do with water composition and temperature and volume. The barman approached to take my order of hodgepodge and went away again. I glanced at the spattered windows at the end of the dining room. The light was darkening, cooling. I rubbed at my eyes, wondering, not for the first time, if I was in need of ocular assistance. I sighed, my gaze drifting to a tall, corpulent man in a clean new suit just as he glanced up and met my eyes. He was a stranger to me; I looked quickly away.

  My stew came, and I ate absently, chewing on one side of my mouth, scratching away at the ledger. I was reaching for my spoon when there came a damp click on the counter and I saw by the side of my eye a glass of clouded whisky. I shifted slightly on my stool, making space for the man settling in beside me. I drew two columns on the page, tallying, frowning. In the far corner a drunk barked out ugly laughter.

  “You enjoy equations,” said the man beside me.

  The voice so obviously belonged to a Scotsman that I looked up in puzzlement.

  It was a white man.

  “I used to fiddle with numbers myself,” said he, and I froze to see those eyes behind their smudged spectacles, so light they were nearly colourless. “I still do have the fascination of it. Calculations, proofs.” He paused. “I suppose one never loses the knack of a childhood passion.”

  I had the feeling of being slowly submerged underwater, as if I wore the weight of the diving suit, though I was light-headed, dizzy. I stared at him, and I was astonished at how different it all felt from how I had supposed it would be, how quiet and familiar.

  The barman watched us warily.

  The white man paid the barkeep no heed, only peered gently at me from behind his lenses, curious. He wore his sooty blond hair pomaded into place, his side part severe as a scar above his right ear, and his face was tanned, calm, a trace of purple veins in his cheeks. It was a thin face, a pleasant face, with high cheekbones and a slow, lipless mouth shadowed by a line of tidy blond hairs. He appeared relaxed, at ease.

  “Please do not get up,” he said softly, though I had made no move to do so, not risen at all. “Go on with your meal, eat.”

  I swallowed; it was as though sand had caught in my throat. Even seated, I could see he was much shorter than myself, Goff’s height perhaps, and he was lean and rangy, his forearms hard with veins.

  “Please,” he said again, and there was the faint suggestion of a smile. His left eye squinted nearly shut then, and the defect was off-putting, as if his eye had never properly formed. “You need your sustenance.”

  I would never have imagined such a voice. Light, soft, but not effeminate. Rather, he sounded like a man easily respected, a man who need not press his will to be heard. He could not, I thought, be more than forty years old.

  “What would you recommend of the food?” he said, unhooking his spectacles. “I do not eat fish.”

  I only stared, feeling the punch of my heart in my ribs.

  “You can vouch for nothing? Well, now. That stew of yours smells good.”

  When I made no answer, he slowly took up his whisky and drank. I could see t
hrough the smudged glass a mouthful of bright, crooked teeth. Despite the shiver in my hands a hard calm came over me, as with Philip in the clearing all those years ago. The noise of the eatery—knives scraping, coughing, muttering—grew sharper, icier. I was filled with a bitter sense of inevitability.

  My eyes came somehow to rest on his clothes. I noticed threads hanging from his left cuff and the patched elbow of his very poor suit, the fabric cheap and threadbare. It was as though he had lately been brought down in the world, and fallen hard.

  He chuckled softly to see me take his measure. “My tailor died, if you can believe it. Now, there was a fine man. He knew his craft as men today don’t care to. Every seam, every stitch had its name and its purpose. Such men pass from the world and are replaced by dilettantes. Dabblers. I tell you, there are few of this new generation who have the patience to learn an art truly. And so nothing lasts, and all crumbles and is impermanent. The world rots before our eyes.” He smiled, his eye squinting. “I sound old.” He shrugged. “I am old. Or so my daughter tells me. I do not see the changes myself.”

  I did not even glance at the exit, knowing I could never reach it. I gripped my ledger, the paper cutting into my hands, thinking of this man’s daughter, trying to picture a new line with the same colourless eyes, the same rough red chin.

  “Of course, she was born with every advantage,” he said, studying his drink. “Cotillions, fine dresses. Me, I was a St. Joseph’s boy. Raised in the spike. You don’t know work until you know the spike.” He shook his head imperceptibly. “There is nothing, nothing worse than it. No greater anguish.”

  I recalled my last moments with Philip, his conclusion that my life was easy, simplified by slavery. I peered stiffly ahead.

  “I suppose modernity will have its way, whatever our desires.” He paused, thoughtful. “Have you seen the new steam locomotives? The Stockton and Darlington rail?”

  I stared at his small eyes, said nothing.

  He smiled dryly. “Don’t you talk? I asked, have you seen the new public rail lines of England?”