The Amalgamation Polka

by Stephen Wright

  “Asa,” he replied, nimbly gliding over a slight hesitation, the spoken name tasting oddly gamy upon his tongue.

  “Oh, him. Yes, he’s here all right.”

  Liberty waited, the pause lengthened, scrape, scrape, went the blade, I have endured much said the monkey’s doleful brown eyes, and when it became plainly apparent no further information was forthcoming, he inquired politely, “And where might I find this Mr. Maury?”

  The woman let out a protracted sigh. “Expect the doctor’s where he always is, out back taking care of business.”

  “Doctor?” blurted Liberty, surprised by a title previously unknown to any member of his branch of the family as far as he could recollect. “Doctor of what, I ask you?”

  The question met by an incoherent tumble of dark chuckling and garbled syllables.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch—”

  “I say, you’d best go and quiz him yourself and see if he don’t allow he’s the beatingest Professor of Niggerology in all creation.”

  “There are actual degrees granted in such a preposterous subject?”

  “So white folks say. And they ain’t shy about professing, neither. They got a right smart chance of ’em, too. They got a professor of sunshine, a professor of cats, a professor of misery, they got a mess of fancy professors and not a one knows a damn thing.”

  She directed Liberty to follow the trace from the vegetable garden past the stand of wilted pear trees, between the smokehouse and the fowl coop, along the row of cabins, the boneyard and straight on down into the hollow and the isolated wooden shack she grandly referred to as “Dr. Maury’s office,” further advising him to raise a sufficient ruckus when approaching since the doctor did not take kindly to unexpected interruptions of his work.

  “What work is that, exactly?”

  “Nothing I want to know anything about,” muttered the woman, wiping the blade with a soiled towel. “And if you’re as smart as you look, you wouldn’t want to know anything about that business, either.”

  “I’m a curious fellow,” explained Liberty, offering up a helpless, apologetic smile.

  She turned on him a searching gaze of well-practiced pity, the knowledge in her rheumy eyes reducing him for an instant to the green boy he thought he’d long outgrown, and in that distracting interval the woman’s hand slipped, the monkey screamed and, trailing bright gobbets of blood from the fresh cut on his thigh, leaped from his mistress’s flailing arms to clamber adroitly atop a nearby cabinet from which vantage he glared furiously down upon the two hapless humans, canines bared.

  “Sharp razor,” observed Liberty.

  The instrument went clattering into the china bowl and the bowl went sailing through the open door as the woman unleashed a torrent of colorful blasphemies such as Liberty had rarely heard even from the tobacco-stained lips of the most grizzled veteran. From the relative safety of his perch the monkey now commenced to emit a series of chattering sounds in which an element of mockery was plainly present, the insults seasoned with a goodly rain of primate spittle. The enraged woman, all but consumed in a mindless frenzy, responded with a lively barrage of whatever was at hand, flinging pots, pans, plates, cups, assorted vegetables, a wooden mallet, even one of her shoes, a heavy man’s brogan, at the nimbly dodging beast.

  “Well, ma’am,” Liberty said, touching his cap, “good luck to you.”

  “Luck?” cried the woman, preparing to scale the cabinet herself. “Better plague me with curses from hell than bless me with any of your damn luck.”

  Outside, Liberty was at once confronted by a matching pair of massive hounds, no relation, obviously, to the mangy animal dozing on the gallery. They sat like lifeless statues in the middle of the path, their cold olive eyes studying him as if he were a rabbit about to bolt. “Easy there, boys,” he said in as genial a tone as he could muster, holding out his hand in a gesture of peace. Then, abruptly and without ceremony, as if this had been in the plan all along, one of the dogs simply got up, trotted over and licked the back of Liberty’s quivering hand. Family, he thought, they smell family on me.

  Off in the haze in a freshly harrowed field, a solitary man was beating on a mule with a stick, flailing energetically away as if the animal’s flank were an anvil and the length of wood a smith’s heavy hammer. Noticing Liberty, he paused in his labors to shout out something unintelligible. Liberty waved and went on. The mischievous sun, having consumed the morning in a spirited game of hide-and-seek with thickly passing clouds, broke briefly free, flooding the somber plantation with a light so sudden and pure it seemed positively benedictory. But then a cloud intervened, the sun went out and all was returned to its naturally fallen state.

  The path, as promised, guided him past the cabins (from open doorways the round, omniscient eyes of half-naked children marking his progress), the well-populated cemetery graves were decorated with bottles, gourds, pieces of colored glass, and on down into an unexpectedly cozy little dell where, nestled in the comforting shade, stood a nondescript shack of rusted tin and moldering wood. Applying a hearty knock to the weathered door, Liberty stepped back and waited. He was about to try again when a voice that seemed to emanate from a cavern deep underground gruffly called out a word that sounded something like “Yare!” Then, a moment later, “Well, open the damn door if you want to come in!” Liberty did as he was told, entering a cramped, musky pitch-black interior. “And who in the freezing hell might you be?” came the same voice out of the gloom.

  “My name, sir, is Liberty Fish,” he replied, advancing uncertainly into the shadows.

  “Hold!” the voice commanded, as a match was struck and applied to the wick of a lantern, raising out of the pungent murk the shape of a room, a cluttered desk and, behind it, seemingly suspended in midair, a great wrinkled head wreathed in an untidy mass of luminous white hair, and, in place of eyes, stones of polished obsidian in which a full heaven’s worth of night was fiercely gathered. And as Liberty’s vision adjusted to the low flickering flame, he also noted that the head was connected to a rather youthfully lean body and the body to a muscled arm and the arm to an imposing-looking regulation U.S. Navy revolver. “I can glim you fine from here. The lamp’s for your benefit. I could see you without it.”

  “Exceptional sight.”

  “Nonsense. Any fool could do the same. Just practice, that’s all.” He leaned forward into the light, his features rearranging themselves into a passable picture of elderly kindliness. “You ever enjoy sitting alone in a room in the dark, ruminating?”

  “Ruminating?”

  “There’s no dearth of topics on this confounding, disjointed planet that couldn’t be measurably enlarged by the application of superior mental leverage.”

  “I think I prefer a bright, warm fire and good company.”

  “Figured as much. Noticed your bumps, your cranial organs. Rather pronounced for amativeness and vitativeness. Have a seat,” he added, wiggling the barrel of the gun toward a chair piled high with thick old books. “Just toss that trash on the floor. Done with that business anyhow. As you may have observed, my quarters, though necessarily secluded, are a trifle confined, quite in contrast to the magnitude of the work performed herein, but then original minds have often wanted for proper lodgings and equipment.”

  Liberty lifted the heavy stack into his arms, curious titles swimming dizzily before his perplexed gaze: The Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations, History of the Anglo-Saxons, Northern Antiquities, Dissertation on the Origin and Progress of the Scythians or Goths, The Genuine Principles of the Ancient Saxon or English Constitution, An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man.

  “Follow the Teutonic line, son, that’s my advice to you. There’s your progress, there’s your evolution.”

  Once settled into the chair, Liberty found himself on a bit too intimate a plane with the pointed revolver. “Excuse me, but is the weapon quite necessary?”

  “Probably not.” He placed the gun on the desk with exaggerated delicacy. “Due t
o diminished contact with the moderating influences of society, my manners seem to have undergone an unfortunate degeneration, but let me also inform you that I have walked about in this world for some seven decades and I have learned, through hard necessity, that this superb example of the metallurgical arts”—indicating the Colt—“is more dependable, more worthy of trust than your nearest kin.”

  “Are you Asa Maury?”

  “What’s in a name?” He regarded his visitor with detached bemusement. On a shelf above his head, ranked according to size, stood an orderly row of gleaming skulls of various species and dimensions, in silent contrast to the persistent activity taking place within the numerous wire cages scattered haphazardly about this cramped den, where growled, cried, scuttled and scampered an extraordinary collection of exotic creatures feathered, furred and scaled.

  “Have I actually traveled these hundreds of miles, risking injury, imprisonment or worse to engage in a mere verbal joust?”

  “Supposing I were the gentleman you take me for, what would you want of me?”

  “I thought, unwisely perhaps, that simple courtesy required this visit, just as simple human curiosity and the unsparing needs of the soul to comprehend its own origins demanded it. I expected, after absorbing a lifetime of tales about the prodigious man, to meet finally face-to-face the legend himself, my maternal grandfather. And frankly, sir, I presumed the reception would be somewhat more enthusiastic than that provided.”

  “You speak quite eloquently for one of such meager years.”

  Liberty permitted himself a slight smile. “I descend from a long line of acclaimed talkers.”

  “Ah,” he mused, the chair creaking as he shifted about, “a gathering of the clan then, a union of the severed branches north and south. An early peace.” He glanced inquisitively at Liberty.

  “So I had hoped.”

  “Hope, a rare and precious commodity. Difficult to bear the demands of the day without it.” He pawed through the fermenting mass of books, journals, pamphlets and loose papers heaped helter-skelter on the desk before him. “Have you perhaps had an opportunity to peruse Morton’s Crania Americana, an essential monograph on an endlessly fascinating subject? I commend it to you with the heartiest of endorsements.” Thrusting into Liberty’s outstretched hand a warped volume exuding a distinctly fusty odor, he went on affably, “Tell me, have you in your admittedly brief existence given any consideration to the topic of race? I mean, of course, serious consideration, not the frivolous prattle of politicos and grubby newspapermen. I have devoted a lifetime of toil to this vexing issue, and as a consequence I have arrived at some rather shocking conclusions.” From somewhere out of the desktop chaos he produced a tooled moroccan leather box. “Care for a cigar?”

  Liberty declined. At this precise moment feeling neither particularly genial and not at all gentlemanly, he had no desire to relax into the sort of clubby, postprandial chat his “grandfather”—for who else could this silly old man be?—was attempting so anxiously to weave.

  “Difficult to obtain in these pinched times,” he said, inhaling the scent of a long, bulky cheroot. “Cuban, of course. You’d be surprised at what gets through the blockade. If you don’t mind,” he leaned into the lamp to ignite the tobacco, his sidelong glances silently appraising Liberty through the resulting clouds of smoke that added yet another noxious note to the cacophony of offensive aromas already assailing his nose.

  “As I was saying,” the old man went on, “from scholarly endeavors both profound and exhaustive I have concluded, with great reluctance, I might add, that the so-called negro race is in fact a distinct and separate limb of the evolutionary tree—a limb untended, unpruned, thoroughly blighted. But what of Genesis, you might well ask, and the rather authoritative account of the Adamic origin of all humanity? Again, along with several other eminences in the field, I have determined—sorrowfully, sir, sorrowfully—that the biblical depiction is simply false. Study the Gospel closely and you will discover a text riddled with disturbing anomalies. Quick, name me the daughters of Adam and Eve. No? You cannot? Of course not. No such daughters are ever mentioned; yet they had to exist. And, similarly, when Cain is banished, he takes a wife by whom he begets a son. Who is this mysterious woman, and whence did she come? The scriptures remain strangely silent. The obvious solution to these thorny problems is that there were indeed other peoples formed at the creation. They go unremarked because the Good Book is a chronicle of the superior types. Now, the next question, of course, and a most troublesome one at that, is why the Divine would even bother to fashion a dusky tribe so innately dull, so barbaric in custom, so wanting in physical beauty, so incapable of even the most trifling improvement. Can you reply?” He spoke with a pronounced animation of speech and eye Liberty had previously encountered only in an unfortunate victim of “camp fever” shortly before he died.

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Is that a smirk of sarcasm I detect leering so disingenuously through that silky, ingratiating voice of yours?”

  “Oh no. No, I certainly didn’t mean to suggest—”

  The old man raised a mollifying palm. “Please, go right ahead, assault me with your skepticism, wallop me with ridicule, give me a good flogging. I’m quite accustomed to defending myself against honest objections in whatever spurious guise they might appear.”

  “Kind of touchy about these notions of yours.”

  “Science, young man, not baseless conjecture. What do you know of natural history, of comparative anatomy, cranial capacities, facial angles?”

  “I’m sure not as much as I should.”

  “You never responded to my question.”

  “Which one was that?”

  “Why the black race?”

  “Because they were the ones on the bottom of the pot who got scorched?” replied Liberty promptly, conscious now of the sound of tiny claws scratching at the dark edges of the room.

  “Because the Infinite, in His all-encompassing wisdom, chose to bless us with a great gift. The Ethiop is the shadow laid across our path, a perplexing obstacle to the soul’s attainment of the harmonious and the good. We need such a trial in order to develop our faculties to the utmost. But the way, of course, is stubbornly difficult and fraught with peril of the gravest sort, and I fear we may have lost our direction. The outcome is in doubt, as surely it must be, or the tribulation would not be worth enduring. Luckily, the remedy to our ordeal occurred to me one evening many years ago, long before the dawning of this terrible war, after a particularly grueling day in the field when I had to personally oversee the hanging of Proud Jed, one of my most dependable hands, for a demonstration of insolence I simply could not abide and needn’t bother elaborating on now. It was a perfectly clear night. I was relaxing on the gallery, meditating on the cold, stately wonderment of the heavens, all that indissoluble darkness, so little light, when the stars spoke to me. They provided the receipt to all our ills.”

  “Which is?”

  “Why, the transformation of black into white, of course.”

  “And this deliverance to be achieved by…?”

  “A subtle chemical process too intricate for lay understanding.”

  “I believe I’ve already happened upon some of the fruits of your handicraft,” said Liberty dryly. “Two gentlemen out by the fence, horribly disfigured.”

  The old man brushed aside the comment with a dismissive wave. “A mere biological sport. Of no lasting consequence really. Those blemishes should heal fully in no time. The march of knowledge, you know. Always a few casualties left hobbling about in the rear.”

  “Why not the transformation of white into black?”

  “Impossible. A gross violation of natural law. You might as well command the leopard to change into a snail. Can’t be done. Our ebony friends, you see, are an intermediary species, the bar Our Father has placed between man and beast, beneath which humanity cannot fall. All aspires upward, into the light. We of the present generation shall be the first in recorde
d time to witness the grand metamorphosis, the final defeat of pigmentation.”

  “From what evidence I’ve seen I would expect the wait to be a tad lengthier.”

  “Those were primitive efforts I have advanced far beyond. But also, over the years, I have been developing a parallel, nonmedicinal method which, as the Good Lord no doubt intended, has proven to be most profitable. Would you care to see?”

  “I certainly wouldn’t want to miss a single exhibit on the tour.”

  “And so you shan’t.” He rose grunting from behind his desk, addressing Liberty for the first time in a measured, placid tone that seemed almost reasonable, even confiding. “I seem to have attained an age when I must keep moving fairly regularly or the various parts start to stiffen. One of these days, I’m afraid, I’m going to doze off in a chair and they’ll have to bury me upright in it. Your arm, please.”

  Liberty hastened to offer his assistance, guiding the shambling man around the desk and out the door, each tentative step surprisingly firmer than the last, until by the time they stood blinking together in the harsh afternoon sun all the man’s previous vigor seemed to have been regained. He led Liberty around back to another shack no larger than an outhouse, its flimsy door secured by an enormous iron lock into which the old man inserted an equally enormous key from the heavy brass ring of keys jingling incessantly at his waist.

  The interior smelled worse than any stable, as if once living matter had been left to fester and grow, intermittent illumination provided by the thin bars of light slanting in between the boards. Once Liberty’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom, he was able to make out a vaguely human form collapsed on a pile of straw in the corner.

  “This is Bridget,” the old man announced.

  “Hello,” Liberty said softly.

  There was no response.

  “And how you doing today, Bridget?” the old man boomed out, as if greeting a business colleague on a city street.

  Silence.

  “I asked you a question, child, and expect a prompt answer.”