Song of Slaves in the Desert (21 page)

But his father had already turned away.

All of this came to mind for the doctor, though his father was long dead and his brothers had taken over the family business, and he himself having drifted into the orbit of these Hebrews, whom he had befriended after they had called him one desperate night to attend, if he could, what turned out to be the last hours of the matriarch of the Pereira family. More death! This time it had been the withered Jewish crone who had been an infant in Holland and after her family’s passage to the Antilles had grown to womanhood in the islands. Oh, time! Oh, time! A few decades after the American Revolution, one of her sons had packed them all up and moved them to Charleston when it became clear that there might be greater fortunes to be made in South Carolina than on their small Carib isle. Another son went to New York. Pondering all this change and transformation made the doctor both lament to himself and celebrate the perseverance of this tribe. Yet he understood the decision of someone who wanted to set a course for a more prosperous shore. At her vigil, hopeless, of course, but one in which he tried all that he knew about medicine that might change the course of the old Hebrew woman’s decline, he encountered unfamiliar complexity in the person of Old Dou, the crone of darker hue who as an infant had arrived on a slave ship before anyone else in the household. (In the middle of a storm at sea she had slipped out from between her mother’s legs, and after her mother had died of dysentery some weeks later spent the rest of the voyage being passed along among the strongest of the remaining women, and some of the men.)

So here she was, the African woman, the first time the doctor had spied her, hovering over her old mistress’s body, drawing her hands along the lines of her arteries and veins. When the doctor, about to apply leeches, asked what she was doing, she explained that she was using the power in her hands to smooth out the flow of the old woman’s blood.

“Up north, not so many years ago,” the doctor said, drawing on some lore he had acquired during his medical training in Massachusetts, “someone might call what you are doing witchcraft.”

Old Dou looked him hard in the eyes, not an act a slave made without serious decision at that time, and then laughed.

“I am a witch, yes, and you are another.”

The doctor ignored what she said about him and asked her to show him what she was doing and explain why. A few minutes passed while she talked about the blood river in the old woman’s body and how sun, moon, sky, and certain stars could change the course of the body’s flow, as directed in the hands of someone like herself.

The doctor listened in fascination, but in the end he went along on his own way, employed his training, and bled the old woman. This seemed to have kept her alive for a few days, but then without more than a whisper, with the entire family gathered around her bed while the doctor and Old Dou stood off to one side, she expelled through her lips a single bubble of air and passed away.

And what had all of this to do with the little girl child who lay murmuring in the basket in the single room of the shack behind the big house where Old Dou, her stature long ago elevated beyond that of the field hands, had been allowed to sleep and live? Well, it had all to do with the old African woman herself, who had, while Lyaza’s mother had passed from pregnancy to birth—and young girlhood, we have to say, to womanhood, in the throes of her murderous labor—listened to the tormented woman’s stories, sometimes garbled, sometimes lucid, about her passage, and her family back in the forest and back further still into the desert land where they had first come to awareness of themselves. Her (old African) religion helped her to understand the meanness, if not wickedness, of the slaveholder’s way of seeing, because she understood that all life on earth, from scorpions to mayflies and everything in between, every stone and rock, flowing stream, and cloud, and tree and plant, and certainly every living creature above that level of life, was filled with god, each one had a spirit, some smaller, others greater, and that it was no slander—as the slaveholders often depicted it—to think of us having descended from the large animals that lived in trees and foraged for food on the ground, and fought, and mated, and nursed and raised their children, and even laughed and played nearly as we still do, when sorrowful occasions pass us by, rather than saying only Africans came down in the world that way, and were not truly human, while the slaveholders, Christians almost all of them—with a few exceptions, such as the Pereiras—were made directly by their god, or passed down in a line from the angels above.

See what this woman held in her hand just before the birth of that child! A stone, marked at some distant moment in the dark or light or invisible past! Where had it come from? Was it witchcraft? How did Old Dou find it? Had Lyaa handed it to her before she went into labor? Or did she find it, when it was forced out of the center of the mad, young girl’s body during childbirth, just before the new girl-child arrived into the light of a Carolina summer morning? The foundation stone, a pebble yet a boulder, mysteriously carried in the body, first mineral of earliest creation, now it saw the light again.

The doctor held this stone up and studied it, before Old Dou asked him for it.

“I’ll keep it for the girl ‘til she’s grown,” the African woman said. “It’s like hearing the true stories of the old country,” she said. “It is a piece of the old country, a piece of the first world on earth…”

The Oaks

Goosecreek

South Carolina

My dearest Miriam:

Though it has been several weeks now since I saw you at the pier, I can still hear the music of the band and I can still picture your charming face before me, far below, down there in the crowd, yet still close to me. Of course I must admit from the moment that we lost sight of the Battery, life began to change for me in many other ways. We sailed down the Arthur Kill and put in at Perth Amboy, where I was overwhelmed with emotion, because there in that town my mother first took sick, and there we had our last good time together. After Perth Amboy, we headed south, hugging the coast, and after some days reaching the delightful port of Charleston, here in South Carolina.

I cannot tell you how different it is here from New York. Beginning with the air itself, which is a not-so-delightful mixture of warm water and various natural perfumes. Here and all around a certain stillness has overtaken men, though surely only for the moment. The odor of the port, the odor of horses, these are familiar. But out in the country, which is where I write you from, the land is hot, damp, and marshy, and the sky is laden with large thunderheads that float above us, never stopping, like some grand oceangoing armada. Even inland about fifteen miles, water is everything. As I write to you I must pause and take a sip from the glass at my writing table. In the rice fields the “driver,” as the one who drives the labor force is called, must work the small dams that keep water from the creek out or, opened, let it in, to flow across the newly growing stalks of this precious grain. There is a rhythm to it which has been explained to me and over the past week or so I have seen a number of demonstrations, though I have not yet mastered it.

Even though I am a Master.

Will you be my Slave?

A jest.

Isaac is the slave who serves as the overseer in the rice fields. He is one of three “drivers,” working in the brickyard and the other fieldwork and wood-cutting cadres. He has been in charge of showing me how the rice-planting is done. Though we do not always get along, for a slave—but listen to me talk!—he is a proud, almost arrogant sort of fellow—yet I have found him to be the most knowledgeable person on the plantation when it comes to the agricultural questions.

The overseer is usually a free man, but Uncle has put Isaac in charge because he commands the respect of all the others and is completely loyal to the family. I hear stories about cranky and rebellious slaves who must be severely disciplined in order to keep them in line. But on our plantation—well, look what I have written! “our”!—on Uncle’s plantation firmness and kindness seems to work just as well as physical punishment and the kind of disdain and spite that seems to rule in other places.

For an example of the other sort I can tell you about what we witnessed when on a sojourn to town—Charleston—just the other day.

We had come in to have lunch with the family of my cousin Jonathan’s wife Rebecca and it was a very agreeable time in their house on Society Street, only a few blocks from the water. The house is a three-story wood and white-washed-brick affair, with the face that it shows to the street wearing a rather blank brick stare. The entrance is reached by a walk through a gate to the left of the façade and a short path to the steps leading to a wide veranda that sweeps around the west side of the house and looks out on a lovely garden which is blocked from sight from the street by tall hedges and a rather majestic magnolia tree.

On the veranda when we arrived was a large black woman—she could be the sister of Precious Sally who cooks at The Oaks plantation—sweeping the floor. She greeted us warmly, and invited us inside, where Rebecca’s mother and father were waiting in the front sitting room. The room reminded me a good deal of home, because it had curtains that cut out the light and noise of the street, and many family portraits on the walls, and several sets of silver candlesticks. Rebecca’s father, Louis Salvador, was the son of one of the first Jews to serve in the army of our Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War. Her mother, born Elena Suares, was the child of two immigrants from the Indies.

“We arrived with nothing,” she said. “And now we have everything.”

And, indeed, if you count the pretty house and garden and the many sets of candlesticks, and dishes and paintings and silverware, and their children, with Rebecca the oldest and three younger brothers, Joseph, Louis, and Abraham, and their business—fine clothing for the town gentry—they do hold quite a store of wonderful possessions. Oh, yes, and this includes the woman who was sweeping the porch when we arrived, and a cook, and two male slaves who worked the yard here and inside the house and two others who worked in the store.

Two of Rebecca’s brothers serve in the store with their father, an elderly man with long white curls dangling down on either side of his head, while the third is an attorney who was recently elected to the state legislature. This was Joseph, a tall, red-haired fellow with a wide nose that gave the appearance of having been flattened with the backside of a spoon. Sitting next to him on the veranda was his wife Jessica, a buxom woman with sand-colored hair, and two children, a boy and a girl, who reminded me of the way the two of us used to be. Also in attendance, a cousin of Rebecca’s, a dark haired girl, whom we met at the synagogue the Sabbath before.

To entertain me at the gathering Rebecca’s father wanted his grandchildren to show off their talents.

“Say the poem for our guest, darlings,” he urged them.

“Oh, Father,” Rebecca said in protest, “do not force them.”

“Of course they will recite,” her brother, the father of the children, said.

At his bidding, they stood and turned to me, smiling, as if quite familiar with the art of performance, and the boy announced, “This is a picture in words of one of our old people, Abraham Seixas.”

“If he ever really existed,” Rebecca said.

“Of course he did,” her father said. “I knew him.”

“Of course, you knew him,” said his wife. “You knew everybody. Now let them just say the poem, darling, and be done with it.”

“This is a poem,” my host said to me, “that will make you see a lot of who we are.” He gestured toward his grandchildren, as if he were about to conduct a band. “Children?”

They stood, and the boy bowed toward us and announced the poem.

“Abraham Seixas.”

The pair began reciting.

Abraham Seixas,

All so gracious,

Once again
does offer

His service pure

For to secure

Money in the coffer…

“It’s a portrait,” my host said.

“You told him that,” said his wife.

“Children, go on,” said my host.

“Father,” Rebecca said, “not this next part. It’s too…”

“Rebecca,” said my cousin Jonathan, “respect your father.”

She looked at me, I looked to the children.

He has for sale

Some Negroes, male,

Will suit full
well grooms,

He has likewise

Some of their wives

Can make clean, dirty rooms…

“It is…silly and hurtful,” Rebecca said, looking at me. She turned to her cousin. “Don’t you think so, Anna?”

Her cousin shook her head.

“It is silly,” she said.

“It is mean,” Rebecca said.

“Rebecca, hush,” Jonathan said. “Let them finish.”

“It is just beginning,” Rebecca said. “Father?”

My host ignored her, directing the children to go on.

For planting, too,

He has a few

To sell, all for the cash,

Of various price,

To work the rice

Or bring them to the lash.

The young ones true,

If that will do,

May some be had of him

To learn your trade

They may be made,

Or bring them to your trim.

“Have you heard enough?” Rebecca said to me.

But I did not wish to be an ungracious guest, and so I shook my head, while the children raced along in their sing-song fashion.

The boatmen great.

Will you elate

They are so brisk
and free;

What e’er
you say,

They will obey,

If you buy them of me.

He also can

Suit any man

With land all o’er
the State;

A bargain, sure,

They may procure

If they don’t stay too late.

For paper he

Will sure
agree,

Bond, note or public debt;

To sell the same

If with good
name

Any buyer can
be met.

To such of those

As will dispose

He begs of them to tell;

By not or phiz,

What e’er it is

That they have got to sell.

He surely will

Try all his skill

To sell, for
more or less,

The articles

Of beaux and belles,

That they to him address.

They bowed, and we applauded and went in to lunch.

At table the father of the children, Rebecca’s brother Joseph, the red-haired legislator, having had just returned from the capital was dishing out a plateful of news about battles in the governing body in Columbia.

“The struggle now is between those who want to nullify and those who talk secession,” he said.

Rebecca’s father announced that he had always been in favor of nullification as long as it did not lead to secession.

“Tariffs are never good for me,” he said. “It makes all of my imported cloths cost extra. And my prices go up.”

“You are arguing a practical point,” said his son. “My colleagues in Columbia put forward nullification because they would desire to have us make our own laws and regulations, in other words, create our own union. It is the first step.”

“Ah, yes,” his father said, “because they want to preserve our peculiar institution no matter what the law of the nation.”

“Father,” Rebecca spoke up, “you call it peculiar but whom do we have cooking our lunch just this moment?”

“That’s what I mean,” her father said. “To me this is very peculiar.”

“That’s why I had my vision,” Rebecca said. “Because it is all so peculiar.”

“Your vision,” her father said. Then turning to look directly at me. “You know about her vision?

I nodded, preferring to keep my silence.

But next he said, “And what do you think of it?”

I looked down into my glass and took a breath.

“Peculiar,” I said, and we all laughed together.

“But you do think she is right?” her father said.

“I don’t know enough about the way things are down here,” I said.

“The way things are? They are what they are, sir. They are the way the Lord intended them to be.
Selah, selah
.”

“Father,” Rebecca said.

“Do we want to discuss this?” Jonathan said.

“All we have is what we talk about,” Rebecca’s father said.

“We have God’s laws and man’s laws,” her brother put in. “If God had solved everything, why do we need a legislature?”

“Yes, you have a point,” said our host. Turning to me, “But I am interested in our guest’s view of things.”

“His view of us?” Jonathan said. “He thinks we are queer folk. With our strange ways. He is, of course, a Jew himself. But Yankee Jews seem to be different from us.”

“And what is that difference?” said our host.

“They don’t own slaves.” He paused, licked his lips in anticipation of what he was going to say next, and then said it. “Yet.”

Everyone at table laughed at that, at me, except for Rebecca. Jonathan meanwhile refilled his wine glass, something which I had not noticed he had been doing since we sat down at table.

“You all are being horrible,” Rebecca said. “Horrible rude and horrible, just plain horrible.”

“I will take back what I said,” Jonathan spoke up. “They will never have slavery in the north. It is too cold, I hear, much too cold for an African population to survive.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “if they have a choice between slavery and warm weather and freedom and cold weather, they might still wrap themselves in warm coats and choose freedom.”

“A good point,” put in our host. “And do you think they will have a choice?”

“If your daughter’s plan, or vision, whatever you call it, works, they will.”

“It never will work,” he said.

“Father!” Rebecca was insulted.

“It won’t,” he said. “You might educate the occasional genius of a slave. But as they are like most other people, geniuses are few and far between. Most of them are condemned to a life of ordinary servitude.”

“Do you really believe that, sir?” I said.

“I do,” he said. “But what do you believe, young man? Are these black slaves educable, do you think?”

“I…I do not know enough of them to say.”

“Well, sir, you must live here a while with us and find out for yourself.”

“That is exactly what he is doing,” said my uncle. “He is making a study of it.”

“To what end?” asked our host. “Are you aiming to become a scientist and study our skulls, Jews and slaves alike?”

“No, sir,” I said. “I am here because my father, my uncle’s brother, asked me to come and investigate plantation life.”

“Investigate? Oh, sir, that makes it sound quite serious, as though we are part of some sort of crime. Investigate, to what end?”

“He is thinking of ways to invest, sir,” I said.

“A good Jew,” our host said.

“He is trying to help his business, sir,” I said.

“And that is?”

“Sir, it is import-export.”

“Does he buy and sell slaves?”

“No, sir, not now. Only lifeless goods.”

“Very good, very good. But he may yet. Is that what he is asking you to investigate?”

My uncle broke in.

“My brother has many irons in the fire,” he said. “He and I have had a correspondence. Let us say that he is quite interested in what we do here, because he himself may choose to become part of it.”

“Well, he is a wise man to look before he leaps. There is no greater sorrow than to enter into a business about which you know nothing. Especially if it is a business that deals in human lives.”