at his residence in the Hôtel de Langeac, Paris, 1788
THOMAS
the last eight miles to my hilltop on horseback in deep snow, Patty throwing her head back to laugh, her breath pluming into the moonlight How difficult it is to come home with you, Mr. Jefferson and then the doorway is drifted high with the snow and I lift her into my arms to carry her through and the servants are asleep and the fires are out and we are home at last and I find a Château Latour and I start a fire and we drink and she turns her face to me My husband she says and there in our bedroom on our wedding night the firelight isn’t enough to keep the night’s darkness from tainting her face, like this face now, Sally’s, her very blood shared with Patty, but her face darkened from within, as if through memory, as if by death, as if by my six-year grief, and Patty throws her head back at the run of her hands on the keys and I finger my strings lightly, the Bach sonata carrying us both and I am wooing still and she will say yes and we will marry and she will die, and I look into these eyes now and now and they are dark, Patty’s hazel charred into deep blackness, but the shape of them is the same and I hear the Bach and I run now inside like Patty’s hands running on her harpsichord I run and I run and I pursue my happiness
SALLY
so easy to come to this at last: he is playing his violin and it is very sad, the music, and I stand for a long while quiet in the doorway, behind him, his shoulders hunched forward a little, his hair—I have enough of the blood of my father and my mama’s father in me that I can blush in this color of his hair—he bears my blush, which I see on my cheeks in the mirror with the eagle near the parlor door when I turn my face at his passing—his hair catches the light from the fireplace and he draws his bow back and forth on his violin, his elbow rising and falling—and I move to him and he stops playing, he knows I am behind him, and he knows how fast my heart is beating, and he ceases playing and he turns to me and his eyes are so sad and I will never as long as I live know how I come to lift my hand and put it on my master’s face but I do and I am happy
NAPOLÉON BONAPARTE
26, general in command of the French “Army of Italy”
JOSÉPHINE DE BEAUHARNAIS
33, his wife
FORTUNÉ
4, pug, her dog
at the Palazzo Serbelloni, Milan, in the midst of his invasion of Italy, their third night together in the 129 days of their marriage, July 13, 1796
JOSÉPHINE
O my darling my darling, in bed again with you my darling, we shall be in bed again soon, even as we fucked our way from Paris to Milan, O my lieutenant, my hussar, my sweet Hippolyte, from inn to inn and also from riverbank to meadow and even, with sublime alacrity, in the carriage while the entourage pissed behind trees, the new France does not understand its own military ranks: attend to the true insignia, ye Directors of the Republic, this lieutenant is far above this general and it is signified by neither gorget nor epaulets but by the length of their swords, though, my darling Hippolyte, I’m afraid you must share my love, share my bed, for sometimes it is necessary that love gently separate itself in two, and my other love breathes heavily now and I listen to him with sweet attention: he sat until a few moments ago at the foot of the bed watching, my sweet Fortuné, and I hear him still
NAPOLÉON
consider the musket, our infantry’s beloved Charleville, consider the musket ball and its speed from the muzzle, slow, in truth, climbing quickly and falling quickly, as well, aim carefully, my men, at the head from two hundred meters, at the waist from a hundred, at the knees from fifty, so for my wife, who took her blatant neglectful time joining her triumphant husband, I ponder a near shot, aiming at her shins and plugging her in her woman-hood, and as for this wretched animal she insists on having in our bed, I will put the muzzle in its mouth so there is no doubt, but now, but wait, ah my wife, my ravishing Joséphine, she banishes these thoughts at once by touching the back of my thigh, clasping me there with her befurred womanhood: and yet how can that be, for she is below me
FORTUNÉ
big dog on my doggie and I missed her signifying or I’d’ve been there first, but itchy itchy now and I niggle my claw into my side and that’s very good, and I could just keep doing this, I suppose, till my doggie is done with the big stinky slick dog, niggle niggle at my side, but now the itchy is gone and I stop, a little regretful, for that was a nice itchy-niggly, and my tongue is cool, flopping in the air, and there’s something gathering in my nose and another itchy begins down in my snozzle, and I wonder if I need to do some licking there, but no, snozzle has its own uppity uppity ideas now, and my doggie is occupied but, surprisingly, since it’s sickly slick, there’s suddenly a certain je ne sais quoi about the big dog, and I hop on
BENJAMIN
23, field slave
HANNAH
17, house slave
in his slave quarters, Adams County, Mississippi, 1855
BENJAMIN
the bells going now in the middle of the night and the dogs’ barking getting farther off toward the river and they say Jacob done run off and I seed him take the bullwhip today and I seed his face and I knowed he was up to running at last and the whip fire on my own back make me hold her on our sides and she is here, from the house she all the sudden here, and Jacob done give us this moment, in all the fuss she come to me and for God’s sake she be soft along my thighs and on my belly and she be soft against my chest and she be soft upon my manhood and she be putting her soft mouth on mine and I am about to weep like the little nigger boy I used to be cause this is all so sweet and soft
HANNAH
hold tight my Ben my Ben for the first time my Ben my Ben: you go ahead make a sound now please, you don’t have to do quiet, there be plenty of uproar outside so you make a sound that can take Master’s voice away from my head Come here girl come here and it’s even bright morning sun and it’s even his own parlor and it’s even his wife’s stuffed couch and it’s her antimacassar I am clutching hard crumpling in the palm of my hand while he be doing that thing and I be looking off to the sun out the window and I wants to keep looking till I can go blind but I look away cause I think of that man I seed out the window yesterday who sees me and I make it in my head he be mine someday and I want to have eyes to see him, and now there ain’t no sun and there be just pine board and a corn-shuck mattress and he doing close upon me and now he do make a sound, a small one, something like the sound you make holding back your voice when you is whipped, but it’s okay, my Ben, that sound’ll do
JOHN WILKES BOOTH
24, actor
CATHERINE WINSLOW
26, actress
in his rooms at the National Hotel, Washington, DC, after the opening of his production of Richard III, which was attended by President and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, April 11, 1863
JOHN
you dare to watch even this, I look over my shoulder and there you are, sitting across the room, spindleleg crossed over spindleleg, cheeks sunk deep, sucked dry, as you are, of the last dewdrop trace of humanity, and you watch me in this bed even as you watched me tonight from your box: be gone, tyrant, be gone, don’t you understand when I, as the villainous Richard, crawled on my belly like a snake on Bosworth Field, it was you I portrayed, it was you in my mind and in my body, and I regret this for Richard’s sake, regret that I sensed you there watching and, in doing so, envenomed my Richard into a creature far more vile than he was—what were his sins compared to yours? your hobnailed boot pressed on the throat of a nascent nation, and even in my own Maryland, unconfederated still, you jail us without warrant, intercept our mail, persecute us for speaking our minds—and I grind now at Kate, my sweet Kate, my long-limbed Kate, she is Juliet above, on a balcony, combing her hair She speaks yet she says nothing, what of that? her eye discourses, I will answer it and I do, thrust by thrust, thrust by deep thrust, as deep as I would plunge a knife into a chest or fire a bullet into a brain, even as you clear your throat across the room
CATHERINE
I saw what you thought no one saw, in your delicacy, the poor fool of a local actor in Chattanooga taken on at the last moment to play Montague and not merely forgetting his lines with you but swirling them up in some perverse new order which only made you look bad to a full house, and in the wings you put your arm around the man and I drew near, behind you, to hear you say, quite softly Don’t worry, my friend, you’ll do better tomorrow and the man wept on your shoulder, grateful, I’m sure, that you had not murdered him, which actors of only half your fame would be inclined to do, my sweet Wilkes, and oh how your Romeo tossed me around in passion, more Walt Whitman than William Shakespeare, my wild Wilkes, and always the grand grabbing and lifting and swooping would end with some grace note of your gentleness, a fingertip trailing across my wrist, the softest touch of your lips, a low word or two below your breath, that secret tender heart of yours: My sweet Kate I see you clearly and you do, and though you drive deep into me now such as to make my teeth rattle, I see your gentle eyes flash as I have not seen them before, flash with a dark loving fire for me
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
54, President of the United States
MARY TODD LINCOLN
44, First Lady
in their bedroom on the second floor of the White House, Washington, DC, after attending the opening night of Richard III, starring John Wilkes Booth, April 11, 1863
ABRAHAM
she rail-split my log long ago, the products of which were dispatched to erect a fence in some far land and leaving nothing erectable behind, but tonight my Mary wants this again after such a long while and what she needs is far above my poor power to add or detract, so I try to see her once more across the dance floor at the General Assembly ball, and her cousin Major Stuart has her by the elbow and is guiding her my way and her eyes are certainly blue, even from a distance, and her chestnut ringlets of hair quake above a great expanse of an exposed bosom that has been much admired all around already, I am fully aware, and she has not yet shrieked at me, indeed, in that moment as she draws near, has not yet spoken a single word to her future husband, though now, in this bed, she will soon speak at my slowness to respond, shriek, in fact, so let us strive on to finish the work we are in, and I do, I turn to look in another direction, my leg crossed, my hands on the arms of my chair, I look to the bright glow of the stage below me, just a few hours ago, and his face turns up and his eyes are as black as a cougar’s come upon on a moonless night, and like the cougar’s they burn, and if a cougar can purr, which being a cat, surely it can, this is its sound, the voice of this man before me: Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front, and now, instead of mounting barbed steeds to fright the souls of fearful adversaries, he capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber to the lascivious pleasing of a lute: and his lascivious pleasing sighs its sibilance through my loins, even now, and I stir
MARY
when Richard III began to crawl on his belly like a snake crying for a horse in vain, I knew the President would die, and soon, but I am a brave woman and so I did not throw myself headfirst from the box, I went on instead with my hands folded in my lap, with my eyes holding steady on this actor, who was ludicrously beautiful as the ugly king, and I waited for this house and this bed before I would myself cry out, from my fear, but now the cries do not come and all I want is this man once more inside me, a last time inside me, and would that tonight’s beautiful actor could play this ugly king, but Abe will do, Abe will have to do, Abe I suppose, is necessary in this surprising desire, except Abe will not do, he is slack and slow and so there is nothing to be done about the knife or the bullet or the bomb, there is nothing to do about this man’s distaste for me, and words begin to boil up in my bosom and I try to see him standing beside me in the parlor of my sister’s house and Reverend Dresser is before us in canonical white and his brow is furrowed with God’s serious purpose and Abe is absolutely still, not a twitch, the ring, I know, in his hand, engraved Love Is Eternal, and I am in white muslin and it’s raining outside, raining hard, and I let the back of my hand touch his, and suddenly now he has caught up and there is a touch, now and now, and he is my husband and he is the President and we both shall soon die
MARTHA JANE “CALAMITY JANE” CANARY
24, frontierswoman
JAMES BUTLER “WILD BILL” HICKOK
39, gambler and gunfighter
in a back room at E. A. Swearingen’s Cricket Saloon, July 31, 1876
JANE
he’s been losing at poker and drinking himself almost to blindness but not quite, I got him away first and I know he can still see out of those pale blue eyes and it’s me he’s seeing and I reined in my own jag so I could do this and remember it later, if anything’s been worth doing in my life it’s Wild Bill and me in this bed right now and it’s been brewing since Fort Laramie and the trail to the Black Hills where he could see firsthand how I could do with a team of mules—bullwhacking better than any man—and I killed a coyote from a hundred yards with an 1860 Colt Army pistol while all the men were missing with rifles and he could see this, my Bill, he could see with his own eyes, and even though it finally took a goddamn dress and a goddamn bath and me hanging on his arm like a white-slave girl afraid for her life, he’s mine now and he’s looking me straight and true in the eyes while I go at him and I can hardly see him for my own goddamn girl’s tears because I know this is never going to happen again
BILL
I think I’m dead I think I’m dead and I can smell the flames of perdition already and I’m getting a little hot around the edges and it’s begun, but they got to bury me first and some damn fool is acting like she don’t even know how to lay a man into his coffin, give me back my goddamn clothes you ain’t gonna bury me in the raw and they don’t stuff you with anything in Deadwood but lead so just put my duds back on and leave me alone ’cause I’m a goner and I’m about to start weeping like a girl for some thing or other but what goddamn good was it all anyway, I think I’ll just weep for my pair of sweet Colt 1851 Navy thirty-sixes with that cool slick ivory on my palms and the hammers cocked at the tips of my thumbs and then them barking away straight and true and no man could stand fair and square before me like that and live, and I wonder how they got me, probably from behind
WALT WHITMAN
64, poet
OSCAR WILDE
28, poet and playwright
in Whitman’s bedroom in his brother’s house on Stevens Street in Camden, New Jersey, 1883
WALT
for this poet I sing, for this large boy, who cast off black velvet coat, cast off pink cravat, cast off white silk shirt, cast off salmon-colored stockings—O thou legs of many legs! not cast off the stockings so much as carefully peeled each and shook it out and draped it so as not to make it run—and he presents eyes now gray now pale blue, jaw pendulous, lips tumescent, fingers long and fondling, and he is not farmer, not ship joiner, not sawyer, not mule skinner, not coal miner or fireman or hog reeve or hawker or lamplighter—perhaps lamplighter, with my lamp only, whose wick he puts to flame—not butcher or cobbler or cook but poet but young but beautiful, my beard is white my skin is coarse my one arm and one leg are weak still, from their stoppage long ago, and they will stop again soon, leg and arm and belly and man-root and heart and mouth, but for now I sing
OSCAR
your body is not electric, my captain, it is not even a steam engine, it is a wood fire in an open field—I will say on Hampstead Heath, it is bad enough to think of the outdoors, so I will at least imagine your embers within the London city limits—but this room of yours, my dearest Walt, if only books and newspapers and foolscap were made of porcelain and pewter and cloisonné you would still have a distressing jumble of an antique shop but at least one could take a breath and handle an object or two, though do not mistake me, dear old man, I am not ungrateful as I touch you—every pubic inch of space is a miracle—we share so much, for out in the world they speak and write of us viciously, but contempt breeds familiarity and how sad it would be to make su
ch grand gestures as we do make and not have the wide world to witness them, though this private gesture is, for the moment, the grandest of all, my sweet barbarian, your beard smells not of trees but of book paper and we are one: I sound my nuanced yip in the parlors of the world
SIGMUND FREUD
42, psychiatrist
MINNA BERNAYS
33, his sister-in-law
in room 11 at the Schweizerhaus, Maloja, in the Swiss Alps, before sunrise, August 14, 1898
SIGMUND
only a few minutes ago in a dream I flew out this window and into the dark of the night and I was high above the rooftops of Maloja and before me I could see one isolated mountain rising from the Alps, tall and white in the moonlight, and I flew toward it faster and faster and then I was upon it, clinging to the merest bits of rock on its vast side, and above somewhere was a bird’s nest and I had to go there, I began to climb the mountain and above me I could hear the mother bird in the nest—the loving mama bird—and I knew she was feeding two of her children—two female birds—and I was driven to climb faster and faster—I had to find the mother bird—I realized she would die unless I could find her quickly and put my hand upon her—and I climbed even faster, breathlessly, and at last I reached a ledge and I lifted my head and in front of me was the nest, wide and deep, and sitting inside were three birds—three plump, gray-feathered, long-beaked female birds—and they turned their heads to look at me and, as young birds of a certain age often are, the two girlchicks were indistinguishable from the mother bird—all three birds were identical and I had no way to sort them out, but I had to reach in and touch the mother in her nest or she would die: I looked at the three birds, the three birds looked at me, and then suddenly it was all right, suddenly it didn’t matter, any of them would do: so here I am fucking my mother
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