by John Keene
Pulling myself from the window I went to the attic staircase and moved as swiftly as I could, catlike, my ears pricked, my eyes cutting through the murk. Voices, or at least one, issued from the main room there. The door was cracked and I slid through. To my left Eugénie was telling her lover that she had all her garments, some coins, sturdy boots, her cape, and the maps, mine, the ones I had drawn, which she had studied assiduously and was sure would serve them as well as any others. Her lover did not speak, but I wondered, given how frequently Fr. Malesvaux had come and gone from west to east and back why he would need to depend on one of my maps, drawn, in any case, from my inner vision and not cartographic accuracy. He persisted in not speaking and it struck me that he might be communicating with her in another way. Papers rustled in the darkness, until I could tell he was stilling her, calming her. She asked if the horses were ready, and he conveyed to her that they were. I stepped out of the way to let them head downstairs; I was not going to betray her to the nuns, since I was sure she and her popish paramour would not get far, at least based on the maps I had drawn, and they would find that out soon enough.
Right near the door, she turned, her shoulder-slung sack swinging and nearly hitting me in the face, and asked, “How long do you think it’ll be before they discover you took all the money?” I was not surprised at this bald statement of duplicity and sin, and yet I was. Fr. Malesvaux, whatever he was or was not, had never seemed to me to be an evil man, let alone a thief. Even the Haitians at and around Valdoré had recognized this, French and ever liberal with Christian casuistry though he was.
The voice that responded to her, in a hard, somewhat stammering twang, in English, was not Fr. Malesvaux’s, however, but another’s. “Just like you told me to I put enough of it in their food they ought not figure I’m gone till midday.” It was Job White Jr. who spoke. I must admit that his presence jarred me, at least momentarily, and I was determined to find out what was going on. I commanded the lamps to come on, and they beamed with an unearthly light. Eugénie and White, ready with sacks at their sides for flight, both suppressed their urge to cry out, but did back away from me immediately.
“What are you doing up here, you black witch?” she said to me, her voice breaking just above a whisper. I was going to answer, but I could hear the hubbub from outside growing louder and closer; with a clarity I have never felt before or since I could see the crowns of the torches gathering in the town square, before they made their way up the hill. I could see them, as I looked at Eugénie and White, who both were so pale as to appear ill. Despite this Eugénie repeated her question, and then said, “We are leaving, and you cannot stop us. I’ve placed all your demonic writings, your hellish illustrations, that diary full of gibberish and nonsense, in a flour sack just inside Sr. Louis Marie’s door. We also left a letter for Job’s father, Rev. White, and for others in the town to let him know that the nuns were harboring you, and you won’t be able to say a word in your defense. Rather than wondering where I’ve gotten off to, where we are, they’ll—” I silenced her, and exited the room. The door I made sure I sealed shut. Almost as soon as she began pulling on the knob, as he began heaving his shoulder into the wood, their screams started. Downstairs there was a shuffling of feet, and startled wailing. I got to work.
The wall outside the room leading down a storey was an expanse of paint the hue of buttermilk, but, I now knew, I no longer needed it, nor the charcoal I kept in my pocket. Instead as I walked down the stairs I urged Marinette, Rochelle, Hubert, and Moor, all asleep in their quarters out back, to go immediately to the stables and ready horses and carts, which they did, each dressing as quickly as possible, each baffled for a minute that they had had the same aim until they realized its source. I thought about letting the nuns counter the Reverend and the townspeople on their own, but it was not, it seemed to me, the charitable thing to do, and although they had assisted in the maintenance of my bondage, that would endure as a cross for their consciences to bear. I roused each of them from their prayers, their default response in the face of an approaching threat, as if they had lost all command of reason, and set them to motion.
The only white girl other than Eugénie—whose screams, now echoing throughout the upstairs and building, had turned into something almost animal—remaining, Annie Lawrie, had also never been a source of torment, so I hoisted her as if she were a marionette from the corner of her bedroom into which she had barricade herself, and spurred her to aid Marinette, in the process muting her so that she could not give a single order. Not one of the nuns, not the Mother Superior, not even Sr. François Agnès, in whom I had had some semblance of confidence, had thought to ring a warning bell, so I had her do so.
At another window that looked out onto the town below I could see the flames, at the base of the hill, ascending, like a wave of gold, towards the convent. Lamp and candlelight from the room seared through the dark. It was as if I were painting and in the painting at the same time, as if the inside and outside were fusing into one rich, polysensory perspective, and I almost had to stop for a second to steady myself. The nuns, amongst whom I passed though not a single one spotted me, were grabbing crucifixes from the walls, stuffing books and papers into bags, and reciting snatches of Scripture, in French. Their rosaries they did not think to look for, thankfully, since they would not have found them; I had already collected and disassembled them over the last week, so as to have the necessary tools at my disposal. I continued forward, forcing Annie Lawrie, weeping uncontrollably, down the main stairwell, where she had stalled, and outside to the stables, where Hubert and Marinette had hitched several carts, into which Rochelle had packed enough bread, water and dried food to keep everyone fed for at least a day or two.
When I reached the Mother Superior’s room, the sack containing all my handiwork was not where Eugénie had claimed, but sitting beneath a desk. Whether she had put it there or the Mother Superior had moved it was unclear, but no matter. It was heavier than I thought it would be, but once I rifled through it I was sure that save for the maps everything I had accomplished since arriving here filled it. I hefted it over my shoulder and started to leave the room, when, glancing back, I saw Fr. Malesvaux, sitting on the edge of the bed, immobile as if stricken. I thought to leave him there, especially as in the blue of his irises and the sunburnt contours of his face I could read the pilasters and eaves of Valdoré, the crop of Nicolas de L’Écart, the fusillade of Napoléon, and L’Ouverture rotting in a forgotten cell, but I thought better of it, and stirred him such that he barreled past me, wearing only his dressing gown.
There was nothing in my own room that I needed to take with me beyond the pitcher of water and the washing bowl that sat beside Eugénie’s bed. I made my way back to the attic, stopping briefly to peer first into the back grounds, where I could see everyone seated on horses or piled into the carts, which began to take off toward the river’s oxbow, Moor’s knowledge of the area enough to save them, and then out front, where a contingent of the townspeople, their faces lit white with torchlights, were belling around in a semicircle on the front drive, chanting for the nuns to open the door and show their faces, and to bring Job White Jr., Eugénie, and me out. I thought to turn them all into a giant, writhing pyre, but that time, I knew, would come.
The door opened with little effort, and I closed it tight behind me. Eugénie and White had folded themselves into a tiny ball beside a mountain of crates. Both had hollered and wept themselves dry, and neither moved as I entered the room. I pa
id them no mind and, taking a silver flask, engraved with the initials “NDL,” which I knew she had filled with liquor from the cellar, I initiated my procedures, pouring a generous libation accompanied by prayers, drawing a circle around me with the wine, filling the washbasin with enough water that I could see my reflection. I sat beside it, formed a filigreed vane with the beads and closed my eyes. Before I could get too far into my imprecations, I heard a voice so tiny it almost sounded as if it were coming from another world. I opened my eyes. Eugénie had risen and planted herself right outside the circle.
“You spook,” her voice boomed, “I command you to get up and let us out of here. And you’re going to hitch up one of the horses right after you open that door. Did you forget you still belong to me? Now be a good heifer and do what I tell you!” I closed my eyes and continued my prayers, opening them only to peer into the water, onto which a variety of images, first two dimensional as in my drawings and then, as if looking into a magical screen in which life itself could be projected, took shape, color and form.
Nisi audiam no te exaudiam. The fragrance of fire taking wing through the bowers of trees fused with voices thundering just beyond the nearby pane to generate an effect not unlike a nervous system subjected to an intense and continuous shock. I trembled but pressed onward with my chant.
“Ma négresse,” the girl said firmly, though no longer screaming, and still outside the circle, “ouvre la porte maintenant.” White was yanking on the doorknob, but it would not budge. “Have you forgotten how close we once were? How you were ma pétite poupée? Ma chère, open that door.” On the screen before me I could see those days, she in her pastel lawn following me from room to room, interrupting my tasks with questions, demands, how she kept me up late and woke me before dawn, how she would extend her thin pink ankle just before I took a step, her chamberpot in tow, sending it and me spilling down the stairs, how she placed the knife to the small of my back and ordered me to prepare the wagon and stallion to carry her and her barely breathing mother to the port.
Build a castle on sand, even with lime, and it will eventually be a gift to the sea. I did not even have to raise my hand to drive the pictures from the water’s surface. Battering on the main door below began to resound all the way up to the ceiling above us.
“Carmel,” the child said, almost softly, though I could feel the blade in every word, “let us go. You can join us if you want to. Once we get to the Northwest Territory I might even set you free. Don’t you want to save yourself, don’t you want to be free?”
I thought about her offer for a second—seeing the three of us, they on the one aged gelding still on the grounds, and I on foot chasing behind them as they galloped off into the dark, then me helping her across the Tennessee as White and the sack of coins he had emptied from his father’s safes sank to its brown depths, and then me foraging on her behalf for something to sustain us as we proceeded through the land the Chickasaws still tenaciously had held onto, where she nevertheless would encounter her own people as well, as they had seeped like an underground leak from one end of this region to the other—but no longer. Instead, I rose and answered her, “Fòk mwen te manke w pou m te kap apresye w.” The door swung open, sweeping her and White out. I resumed my position and continued searching in the watery mirror, until I finally found my mother’s face.
A dialogue
Are you going to waste yet another opportunity to save yourself?
Didn’t I already tell you I refused to think of them as wasted opportunities to save myself, but rather as stages in my careful process of preparation.
So you are ready to take action?
Have you been so busy you weren’t paying attention?
Don’t forget who you are speaking to.
Don’t forget who you are speaking to.
I think I have finally come to appreciate your logic.
Perhaps, I find myself recounting to Phedra, Marinette and others, it will be left to the patience of someone more devoted to the genre of literature than I to record the noises that filled that hot and moonless night in Kentucky, or the taste that lingered on the tongues of the few survivors after the gunpowder stored beneath the printing press caught fire, or the particular stench of burning brick and plaster and ink fused with flesh and hair, or the feeling of being thrown far, far into the black air with nothing to halt your eventual fall back to the parched, grassless soil . . . I personally shall never forget how that scene—so distant from where I was then that it required all my powers to concentrate—reminded me of nothing less than a forget-me-not, white with bright scars of crimson and azure, holding fast like a last memory or reliquary of sorrows against the bluffs above a small, almost forgotten provincial island or inland colonial town.
II
ENCOUNTERNARRATIVES
Knowledge is submarine.
Edward Kamau Brathwaite
I believe that if we have any notion at all of what has generally
been called human nature, it is because History, like a mirror,
holds up for our contemplation, an image of ourselves.
Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá
He never tires of the journey, he who is the darkest one,
the darkest one of them all.
Adrienne Kennedy
THE AERONAUTS
Scream I holler to Horatio’s, Nimrod’s and Rosaline’s laughter, then they’re asking me to tell it to them again, though I plead how at this age I can’t hardly even remember my name. Horatio says, “Red, come on, just one more time cause you ain’t fooling us,” and I start with how it began six months before all that happened, round the middle of May, 1861, when I showed up for my job as a steward at the final Saturday of the spring lecture series at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. I had spent that morning toiling under my regular boss, Dameron, helping prepare for a grand dinner party he was catering for a Mr. Albert Linde, president of the Philadelphia Equitable Mutual Insurance Company, and was glancing up at the wall clock so often I nearly cut my thumbs off dicing rhubarbs. Dameron couldn’t afford an accident so he switched me over to kneading the bread and pie doughs, then had me stir the turtle soup stock. Finally he released me a little early with the promise that I’d be back promptly, at four o’clock. Dameron didn’t gainsay me earning a little extra from my side job, but he also had warned me more than once about my tardiness. Although I was no great cook, hated being in kitchens and hated even more ordering anyone around, catering was going be my profession, cause as my daddy used to say, “Anybody can cook a bad meal for theyself but rich folks always welcome help to eat well.”
I ran the eight blocks from Dameron’s to Orators Hall on Broad, where the Academy held its Saturday talks, and almost as soon as I slipped in the back door, I heard Kerney, the head of stewards, ringing his bell, calling us to order because the lecture was about to begin. I was completely out of breath but I immediately shucked off my dingy gingham trousers and brown cooking smock, and crammed myself into my uniform, which had belonged to Old Gabriel Tinsley till he came down stricken on Christmas the year before. The Prussian blue kersey waistcoat and trousers, still carrying his regular scent of wet cinders, were almost too tight on my thighs and backside. I mopped the sweat off my brow, knotted my gray cravat from memory, cause there wasn’t a mirror in the stewards’ dressing room, and hurried out to the main hall.
All of the other stewards, including my older brother Jonathan, were already finishing up their tasks, gliding between the reception room and the main ha
ll. They had emptied and polished the brass bowls of the standing ashtrays, transferred the Amontillado sherry from the glass decanters into the miniature crystal glasses, and brushed the last specks of lint from the main serving table’s emerald baize cover. Jonathan nodded to me as several of the stewards began ushering the guests from the alcove to their seats, but I didn’t see Kerney though I had certainly heard that bell. Several gentlemen, members of the Academy and their guests, entered the hall and as I attempted to head over to guide each to one of the other stewards who would be seating them, I felt fingers winching round my forearm, like the claws of an ancient bird the Academy would probably exhibit, and sour breath warming my ear: “Boy, if you had walked through that door there even a second later I would thrown you out in the street myself! Late one more time and there won’t be no damn next time.”
I turned to see Kerney fixing me with his red-eyed stare. I could smell he had been tasting, or how he liked to say testing, the sherry, and probably had been tallying every second on the main hall clock’s little hand past the time I was supposed to walk through that door. I eased myself out his grip, his crisped apple face tracking me across the room, and took care not to look in his direction. Soon as I reached my assigned spot Dr. Cassin, the president of the Academy, Dr. Cresson, who ran the Franklin Institute, and the afternoon’s speaker, another professor I recalled from a prior lecture, took their seats, the customary hush settled over the room, and the five other stewards and I assumed our places. Shoulder to shoulder we lined up, erect as a row of tin soldiers, facing the lecture hall’s high, windowless, crimson wall. Stock still, thighs against the table edge, chins up, our white cotton-gloved right hands palm-down over the lowest button of our waistcoats, we were so quiet you could forget we were there.