TransAtlantic

by Colum McCann

  A loosening was taking place in his thoughts. Just the fact that he was not pursued, did not have to look over his shoulder, could not be whisked away.

  On occasion I have to pause, astounded that I am not fugitive anymore. My mind unshackled. They cannot place me, or even imagine me, upon the auction block. I do not fear the clink of a chain, or crack of whip, or turn of door handle.

  Douglass laid aside his pen for a moment, opened the curtains to the still dark. No sounds at all. On the street, a lone man in rags hurried along, hunched into the wind. He thought then that he had found the word for Dublin: a huddled city. He, too, had spent so many years, huddled into himself.

  He pondered the possibility of his own living room: Harriet reading the letter aloud, Anna in cotton dress and red head wrap, her hands folded in her lap, his children at the edge of her chair, poised, eager, confused. I send you my unceasing love, Frederick.

  He tightened the curtains, got back into bed, stretched his feet out over the end of the mattress. His toes extended beyond the bed. It was something humorous, he thought, to include in his next letter.

  ON A TABLE, in neat piles, was the Irish edition of his book. Brand-new. Webb stood behind him, shadowed, hands folded behind his back. He watched Douglass intently as he flicked through and inhaled the scent of the book. Douglass paused at the engraving at the front, ran his finger over his likeness. Webb, he thought, had endeavored to make him look straight-nosed, aquiline, clear-jawed. They wanted to remove the Negro from him. But perhaps it was not Webb’s fault. An artist’s error maybe. Some fault of the imagination.

  He closed the book. Nodded. Turned to Webb, smiled. He ran his fingers once more along the spine. He did not say a word. So much was expected of him. Every turn. Every gesture.

  He paused, took a fountain pen from his pocket, let it hover a moment and signed the first book. For Richard Webb, In friendship and respect, Frederick Douglass.

  A measure of humility lay in one’s signature: it was important not to flourish the pen.

  I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the large part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant.

  AT THE BOTTOM of his traveling trunk he kept two iron barbells. Made for him by a blacksmith in New Hampshire: an abolitionist, a friend, a white man. Each of the barbells weighed twelve and a half pounds. The blacksmith told him that he had melted them from slave chains that had once been used in the auction houses where men, women, and children were sold. The blacksmith had gone around and bought all the chains, melted them, made artifacts from them. In order, he said, not to forget.

  Douglass kept the barbells a secret. Only Anna knew. She had lowered her eyes to the floor when she had first seen them, but she soon grew used to them: first thing every morning, last thing at night. There was a part of him that still missed the days of carpentry and caulking: fatigue, desire, hunger.

  He turned the key in the bedroom door, pulled the curtains across, locked out the light of the Dublin gas lamps. He lit a candle, stood in his shirtsleeves.

  He lifted the barbells one after another—first from the floor and then high in the air—until sweat dripped down onto the wood. He positioned himself to watch himself in the oval looking glass. He would not become soft. It was exhaustion he wanted—it helped him write. He needed each of his words to appreciate the weight they bore. He felt like he was lifting them and then letting them drop to the end of his fingers, dragging his muscle to work, carving his mind open with idea.

  He was in the fever of work. He wanted them to know what it might mean to be branded: for another man’s initials to be burned into your skin; to be yoked about the neck; to wear an iron bit at the mouth; to cross the water in a fever ship; to wake in another man’s field; to hear the jangle of the marketplace; to feel the lash of the cowhide; to have your ears cropped; to accept, to bend, to disappear.

  It was his work to capture that through the nib of his pen. His billowy white shirt was covered in ink stains. At times, searching for words, he would hold the blotting paper to his forehead. Later, dressing himself for dinner—cravat, smoking jacket, cufflinks, polished shoes—he would glance in the mirror and find blue spots of ink smudged on his face. He was told by Webb that the Irish words for a black man were fear gorm, a blue man. He scrubbed his face, his hands, his fingernails. He looked at himself again in the mirror, lashed out, stopped short, his knuckles trembling at the glass.

  He descended the curved staircase, stopped, bent down, shone the front of his shoes once more, using the wetted edge of a handkerchief.

  The butler greeted him in the hallway. He could not for the life of him remember the man’s name, Charles or Clyde or James. A terrible thing, to forget a man’s name. He nodded to the butler, moved through the hallway, into the shadows.

  Webb had hired a pianist to accompany the evenings. Douglass could hear the notes colliding in the air as he approached. He was fond of the standard fare—Beethoven, Mozart, Bach—but he had heard there was someone new, a Frenchman called Édouard Batiste who was said to be coming to Dublin to play. He would have to inquire: his life these days was much about having to inquire without exhibiting a lack of knowledge. He could not seem ignorant, yet he did not want to be strident either. A fine line. He was not sure where he could show weakness.

  The essence of intelligence was to know when, or if, to expose even the heart’s deep need for instruction.

  If he showed a chink, they might shine a light through, stun him, maybe even blind him. He could not allow for a single mistake. It was not an excuse for arrogance. It was a matter of defense. Webb, of course, could not be expected to understand. How could he? He was an Irish Quaker. Good-hearted, yes. But he saw all his efforts as pure benevolence. It was not Webb’s freedom that was at stake. It was Webb’s ability to be free. Webb himself had his own ideas about who was slave, who was not, and what it was that lay between them.

  Small matter, thought Douglass. He would not let it poison him. The Irish had been so friendly. He was a guest. He had to remember that.

  The butler pushed the door open for him. Douglass entered the drawing room with his arms behind his back, his hands clasped. He felt it best to enter a room this way. Equal amounts of deference and aloofness in it. Not haughty. Never haughty. Just tall, full, solid.

  It struck him: the sheer surprise of being here. A carpenter, a caulker of ships, a man of the fields. To have come such a distance. To have left behind his wife, his beloved children. To hear the sound of his shoes striking the floor. The only moving shoes in a roomful of men. His voice had now become his hands: he understood what it meant to be made flesh. An energy moved through him. He cleared his throat, but held back a moment. These were, he remembered, the members of the Royal Dublin Society. Creatures of high collars and groomed moustaches. They had an air of antiquity about them. He gazed out at them. The sort of men who had hung their swords above the fireplaces of their minds. He would wait to unleash his fury.

  He stepped forward to shake their hands. Marked their names. Reverend Archibald. Brother Harrington. He would write them in his diary later tonight. These were the small matters of etiquette that he had to remember. The pronunciation. The spelling.

  —It’s a pleasure to meet you, gentlemen.

  —An honor, Mr. Douglass. We have read your book. A remarkable achievement.

  —Thank you.

  —There is much to learn from it. Much to admire in its style, even more in its content.

  —You’re very kind.

  —And is Dublin to your liking?

  —It is livelier than Boston, yes.

  There was laughter all around and he was grateful for it, the manner in which it allowed him to ease his body out of his stiffness. Webb guided him toward
s a deep chair in the center of the room. He glanced across to see Lily, the maid, pouring him a cup of tea. He liked his tea with an extraordinary amount of sugar. His weakness: a sweet tooth. Lily’s face, half carved in light as she poured, sharp, pretty, alabaster. She glided across to him. Her cool white wrists. The china cup was very thin. It was said that this made the tea taste better. He could feel the cup trembling in his hands. The thinner the china, the louder the rattle.

  He hoped his manner of holding the teacup did not appear crude. He shifted slightly in his seat. He could feel his hands grow clammy again.

  Webb introduced him. Even in America, Douglass had seldom listened to the introductions that others made. They embarrassed him. Sometimes they made of him a caricature: the colored conquistador, the gentleman slave, the American Orpheus. In the course of the introductions they would remark, invariably, that his father was a white man. As if it could not be otherwise. How he was taken from his mother, his siblings, whisked away, brought for a spell under the guidance of white benevolence. Douglass found the descriptions monotonous. The words dissolved in his head. He did not listen. He scanned the faces of the men. He could sense their uncertainty, a little hint of confusion around their eyes as he watched them, watching him. A slave. In a Dublin drawing room. So remarkably well-kept.

  He looked up to see that Webb had finished. A silence. The teacup shook in his hands. He allowed the quiet to edge up against the uncomfortable. He had found that being nervous made him tighter with his words, stronger, more careful.

  Douglass brought the saucer up to the bottom of the cup.

  I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence. From my earliest recollection I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace. Now, in the long curve of this journey, I find myself spinning a new strand and I appeal to you, gentlemen, to strive against the despotism, bigotry and tyranny of those who might refuse me entry to this very room.

  AT THE END of his second week he wrote to Anna that he hadn’t been called a nigger on Irish soil, not once, not yet anyway. He was hailed most everywhere he went. He wasn’t yet sure what to make of it, it baffled him. There was something crystallizing inside him. He felt, for the first time ever maybe, that he could properly inhabit his skin. There was a chance that he was just a curio to them, but something in him felt aligned to those he met, and in all his twenty-seven years he hadn’t seen anything like it. He wished she could be there to witness it.

  It was a cold gray country under a hat of rain, but he could take the middle of the footpath, or board a stagecoach, or hail a hansom without apology. There was poverty everywhere, yes, but still he would take the poverty of a free man. No whips. No chains. No branding marks.

  He was of course traveling in high company, but even on the roughest streets he had not heard any vitriol. He attracted a ferocious stare or two, but perhaps it was also because of the rather high cut at the back of his coat: Webb had already told him that he could perhaps afford a tad more modesty.

  THE BELL ON the door sounded out long and lazy. The tailor looked up but the shop continued its business. That’s what surprised Douglass the most: the absence of alarm. No shock. No scurry. He walked along the rack of coats. The tailor finally came from behind the counter and shook his hand: You’re welcome to my establishment, sir.

  —Thank you.

  —You’re the talk of the town, sir.

  —I’m interested in a new jacket.

  —Certainly.

  —And a longer cut of coat, said Webb.

  —I’m quite capable of dressing myself, said Douglass.

  They glared at each other across the gulf of the room.

  —Gentlemen, said the tailor. Come this way.

  Webb stepped across but Douglass put his hand on his chest. The air froze. Webb lowered his eyes and gave the faint hint of a smile. He took out a wallet of morocco leather and rubbed the length of it, inserted it back in his jacket pocket.

  —As you wish.

  Douglass stepped, large and loud-footed, with the tailor towards a rear room. Scissors, needles, cutouts. Dusty ells and bolts of cloth spooled out across the tables. What fields did the cloth come from? What fingers had spun it out?

  The tailor whisked a looking glass across the room. The mirror was on a stand, mounted with wheels.

  He had never been measured by a white man before. The tailor stood behind him. Douglass flinched a moment when the tape was put around his neck.

  —Sorry, sir, is the tape cold?

  He closed his eyes. Allowed the measurements. His rib cage, his chest, his waist. Raised his arms in the air to see how deep the armpit of the waistcoat could go. Breathed in, breathed out. Allowed the tattered yellow tape along his inseam. The tailor scribbled the measurements down. His handwriting was fine and exact.

  When he was finished, the tailor wrapped his fingers around Douglass’s shoulders, gripped him hard.

  —You’re a fine broad man, sir, I’ll venture that.

  —To tell the truth …

  He glanced at Webb in the front of the shop. The Quaker was standing at the window, looking out, an overseer. The Liffey seemed to want to carry him away on its continuous sleeve of gray.

  —I’d be rather grateful, said Douglass.

  —Yes, sir?

  He looked out at Webb again.

  —If you’d also fit me for a camel’s-hair vest.

  —A vest, sir?

  —Yes, a waistcoat I believe you call it.

  —Indeed, sir.

  The tailor turned him around once more, busied himself with a measurement of Douglass’s rib cage, brought the ends of the tape together at his navel.

  —You can put it on Mr. Webb’s bill.

  —Yes, sir.

  —He’s always been fond of a surprise.

  THE CROWDS CAME, eager, hatted, earnest. A balloon of perfume about them. They lined the front of the Methodist churches, the Quaker meeting halls, the front drawing rooms of mansions. He stretched up on his toes, put his thumbs in the pockets of his new waistcoat.

  In the afternoons he took tea with the Dublin Anti-Slavery Society, the Hibernian Association, the Whigs, the Friends of Abolition. They were well-informed, clever, audacious in speech, generous with their donations. They thought him so very young, handsome, debonair. He could hear the ruffle of dresses in the queue waiting to meet him. Webb said that he had never seen so many young ladies attend the events. Even one or two Catholics from good families. In the gardens of well-appointed houses the women spread their dresses on wooden benches and posed for portraits with him.

  Douglass was careful to make sure that he mentioned his wife, his children at home in Lynn. It was odd, but at times the talk of Anna drew the women closer. They hovered. There were giggles and parasols and handkerchiefs. They wanted to know what fashions the free Negro women in America wore. He said that he had no clue, that one dress looked much like the other to him. They clapped their hands together in a delight he could not understand.

  He was invited to dinner with the Lord Mayor. The chandeliers in the Mansion House sparkled. The ceilings were tall. The paintings majestic. The rooms led into one another like fabulous sentences.

  He met with Father Mathew, joined forces with the temperance movement. The streets of Dublin were full of the demons of alcohol. He took the Pledge. It might, he thought, enamor him of a whole new audience. Besides, he never drank. He did not want to lose control. Too much of the master in it: its desire to sedate. He walked with the Pledge badge worn prominently on the lapel of his new coat. He felt himself to be taller somehow. He drew the gray Dublin air into his lungs. He was seldom left alone. There were always one or two who volunteered to accompany him. He found rhythm in the dips and swerves and repetitions of the Irish accent. He had a penchant for mimicry. Grand day, y’r honor. For the love of God, wouldya ever gi’us sixpe
nce, sir? It delighted his hosts to hear his impersonations. There was a deeper intent there, too: he knew that something so simple could hook a crowd. I am pleased to be in aul’ Ireland.

  He was five weeks in Dublin. His face appeared on printed bills around the city. Newspaper reporters met him for high tea in the Gresham Hotel. He was leonine, they wrote, feral, an elegant panther. One paper dubbed him the Dark Dandy. He laughed and tore the paper up—did they expect him to dress in rags of American cotton? He was taken to the Four Courts, brought to the finest dining rooms, asked to sit under chandeliers where he could be properly seen. When he was guided into a room to speak, the applause often extended a full minute. He removed his hat and bowed.

  Afterwards they lined up to buy his book. It amazed him to raise his gaze from his fountain pen and see the row of dresses awaiting him.

  On certain days he grew tired, thought of himself as an elaborate poodle on a leash. He removed himself to his room, took out the barbells, worked himself into a frenzy.

  One evening he found the bill for the waistcoat neatly folded on his bedside table. He had to laugh. They would eventually bill him for every thought he ever had. He wore the camel’s-hair to dinner that evening, casually slipping his thumbs into the pockets as he waited for dessert.

  EVERY DAY HE found another word: he wrote them in a small notebook he carried in his inside pocket. Rapacity. Enmity. Phoenician. Words he recognized from The Columbian Orator. Assiduous. Declarative. Tendentious.

  When he had first found language, in his boyhood days, it had felt to him like carving open a tree. Now he had to be more careful. He did not want to slip up. He was, after all, being watched by Webb and the others: root, blossom, stem. It was essential to hold his nerve. To summon things into being by the mysterious alchemy of language. Atlantic. Atlas. Aloft. He was holding the image of his own people up: sometimes it was weight enough to stagger under.