TransAtlantic

by Colum McCann

  Anna might cherish hearing the letters read to her for an evening or two, but soon enough they would be burned. It gladdened him, really, that the letters would become smoke: it was so much of what happened to one’s own history.

  THE CITY WAS dark, yet it didn’t press down on him quite like Dublin had. He began to feel that, even in the gloaming, things had opened up. The church bells rang high and brassy. The markets on Saint Patrick’s Street hummed. Swans glided under the footbridges that crisscrossed the city. Shandon Steeple stood out against the sky. Even the slums seemed more forgiving. It was a city that gave alms. The poor were still legion, but he could walk with the Jennings sisters along the quays and the beggars would leave them alone. Men carried pieces of lit clay in their hands. They offered Douglass a pull of their pipes, clapped him on the shoulder.

  There was something in the music of the accent that Douglass liked: it was as if the Cork people put long lazy hammocks in their sentences.

  He was happy when Webb announced, after six long days, that he would leave Cork on urgent business. Both men were glad to be rid of one another. Douglass watched the carriage move away and felt a bolt of freedom. It was the first time in ages that he felt truly alone. At ease in the ornate looking glass.

  It must be said that in my time here in Ireland my heart feels stirred. Instead of the bright, blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe and lo! the chattel becomes a man! Though I have seen much that would make my own people tremble, I am encouraged to exercise my true and proper voice. I breathe the sea air freely. And while there is much I observe to make the heart heavy, I am at least temporarily without chains.

  HE WALKED ALONG the River Lee, his hands clasped behind his back. A new walk for him. Large and public. The attitude of a thinking man. He enjoyed the pose, found it conducive to the idea of himself. He heard the clopping of a horse behind him on the cobbles, the soft sound of a harness creaking. Isabel descended the horse, walked alongside him, her hand careful at the horse’s neck. The sheen of sweat on the animal’s body.

  Barges plied along the river. Corn barges. Barley barges. Cattle barges. Salt barges. Pig barges. Sheep for the slaughterhouses farther downriver. Firkins of butter. Oatmeal. Flour bags. Egg boxes. Baskets of turkeys. Canned fruit. Bottled soda and minerals.

  They watched the river of food in silence. Gulls busied themselves behind the boats, swooping every now and then to claim what they could.

  They walked along by a merchant-marine shop, a bookseller’s, a tailor shop. Farther down the quays she pulled the horse close to her. As if it might offer protection.

  —I could not find her.

  —Excuse me?

  —That woman you met upon the road.

  For a brief moment he was not sure what Isabel was talking about, an incidental skim of words across the surface of the day, but then he caught himself, said it was a great shame, but he was sure the child was buried by now.

  —You did what you could, said Isabel.

  He knew it was not so: he had done nothing at all. He had borne witness and stayed silent.

  —There’s nothing worse, she said, than a small coffin.

  He juggled the words in his mind for a moment. He nodded. He liked her. He thought of her, increasingly these past few days, as a younger sister. It was odd to think so—her green eyes, her awkward walk, the rustle of her humble dresses—but, that’s what she was: sisterly. Hovering. Curious. Intrusive. She explored new ideas with him. There were few limits. What did he think of the notion of Liberia? What was the gulf between revenge and justice? Did he have a plan with Garrison to send the money back from churches that embraced slaveholders?

  She was quieter when the talk returned to what was happening around them. She stopped midsentence. She worried the bracelet on her left arm. She gazed into the distance. Her voice caught.

  There was enough food in the land to feed Ireland three or four times over, she said. It was being shipped across to India, China, the West Indies. The exhaustion of empire. She wished there was something she could do about it. The truth could not be preserved by silence. Her own family had warehouses full of food farther down the river. Bottles of vinegar. Stocks of yeast. Malting barley. Even crates of fruit jam. But it could not just be given away. There were laws and customs and issues of ownership. Other complexities, too. Business alliances. Extended contracts. Taxation. The demands of the poor. The creation of moral illusions.

  It struck him that Isabel carried the wounds of privilege. Perhaps, then, he did also? He leafed through the New Testament. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded. And yet if he himself spoke out on behalf of the poor Irish, what would happen? What language could he create for this? To whom would he speak?

  The politics still confounded him: who was Irish, who was British, who was Catholic, who was Protestant, who owned the land, whose child stood rheumy-eyed with hunger, whose house was burned to the ground, whose soil belonged to whom, and why? The simple way to see it was that the British were Protestant, the Irish were Catholic. One ruled, the other lay underfoot. But where did Webb fit in? And where did Isabel fit in? He would gladly have allowed himself to align with the desires of freedom and justice, but it was to his own known cause that he had to remain entirely loyal. Three million voices. He could not speak out against those who had brought him here as a visitor. There was only so much he could take upon himself. He had to look to what mattered. What was beyond toleration was the ownership of man and woman. The Irish were poor, but not enslaved. He had come here to hack away at the ropes that held American slavery in place. Sometimes it withered him just to keep his mind steady. He was aware that the essence of proper intelligence was the embrace of contradiction. And the recognition of complexity was to be balanced against the need for simplicity. He was still a slave. Fugitive. If he returned to Boston he could be kidnapped at any time, taken south, strapped to a tree, whipped. His owners. They would make a spectacle of his fame. They had tried to silence him for many years already. No longer. He had been given a chance to speak out against what had held him in chains. And he would continue to do so until the links lay in pieces at his feet.

  He thought he knew now what had brought him here—the chance to explore what it felt like to be free and captive at the same time. It was not something even the most aggrieved Irishman could understand. To be in bondage to everything, even the idea of one’s own peace.

  His body, his mind, his soul, had, for years, served only for the profit of others. He had his own people to whom he was pledged. Three million. They were the currency of his freedom. What weight would he carry if he tried to support the Irish, too? Their agonies, their ambiguities. He had enough of his own.

  The barges passed.

  A river of food afloat.

  The sun went down over the slate rooftops of Cork.

  THERE WAS A story he sometimes told his audiences. The slave masters in America used barrels. Bourbon mostly. Olive oil. Wine. Any sort of barrel that could be found. They drove large six-inch nails into the wood. Sometimes they placed crushed glass inside the barrel, too. Or thorny bushes. Then, he said, they would bring their slave—he always invoked this word on a deeper pitch—up to the top of a hill. For the most minor of offenses. Maybe she had forgotten to lock the stable door. Or perhaps she had dropped a piece of crockery. Or maybe she had looked askance at the mistress of the house. Or maybe she had left a dishcloth dirty. It did not matter. She was to be punished. It was the natural order of things.

  Halfway through his story he would give the slave a name: Mary. He would hear a silence come over his Irish listeners. Mary, he said again.

  And then the owners—this word volleyed savagely from him—forced Mary to take the barrel from the barn. It was rolled out into the dust, along the dirt road, to the top of a small nearby hill. They gathered the other slaves together and brought them, too, to the hilltop. To witness. The owners would often shout verses from the
Holy Book. They forced Mary to step inside the wooden barrel. They pushed her head down, crushed her shoulders into it. The protruding nails ripped her body. The glass penetrated her feet. The thorns encircled her shoulders. Then the masters put the lid on and hammered it shut. They rocked it back and forth a few minutes. They read again from the Holy Book.

  Then the barrel went down the hill, tumbling.

  THE CROWDS WERE enormous. He had spoken alongside Father Mathew. He found a language in the temperance movement. The papers still called him the black O’Connell. Posters were pasted up all around the city. His fame spread, day by day. He picnicked with twenty-four women from the Cork Ladies Anti-Slavery Society: they delighted in the large lounge of him underneath a spreading oak tree, a dainty blue napkin at his throat, the gurgle of a brook behind him. The women unloosened the bonnets at their necks and raised their faces towards the sun. They hung on his every word. Later, the group walked together, carrying picnic baskets and parasols, out over the long grass and back towards a wooden bridge. Douglass dared to take off his shoes and socks and waded briefly in the cold water. The women turned away and giggled. The water darkened the cuffs of his trousers.

  Newspaper reporters clamored to see him. Whole pages were devoted to his lectures. He had collected hundreds of pounds to be shipped back to Boston. He had sold over two thousand books. He would go on to Limerick next, then to Belfast. From there he would go to England where he would negotiate his freedom, buy himself back, return to America, a freeman.

  There was a great welling inside him. His voice had always come from others, but when he stood to speak now, it felt more distinctly his own. There were times he wished he had a thousand voices and could throw them in so many directions, but he had just one, and it served a single purpose: to annihilate slavery. He was almost glad one afternoon when, walking past an ale house on Paul Street, he heard someone say that a nigger had just walked past, a filthy niggerboy, did he not have a home to go to, he wouldn’t find bananas in that direction, did he not know there were no trees to swing from in Cork, Cromwell had taken them all already, go on now, nigger.

  He stopped, swelled his chest, held his ground, almost a fake fury, then walked on in his camel-hair vest. Nigger. Filthy nigger. For the first time, the word felt strangely welcome. An old shirt that he would have to wear in the future. Something to unbutton and tear off and rebutton again and again and again.

  A FEW DAYS before he left Cork—a day that would stay with him quietly, a flag, a kite, a remnant—he heard a knocking at the door on Brown Street. He was in the midst of writing. His forearms were splattered with ink. His back ached from the bend over the desk. He pushed back in the chair and listened to the voices drifting up from below, then leaned into the work of writing once more.

  Later that evening he bathed and dressed and descended the stairs for dinner. A young woman sat at the end of the table, next to Isabel. She seemed at odds with the manner with which she had been seated. Hunched, awkward, but pretty. With fair hair. Her skin so very pale. He thought he knew her, but he did not know from where. She stood up and said his name.

  —Good evening, he replied, still confounded.

  A hush came over the table. It was obvious to him that some other response was needed. He coughed into his fist.

  —Such a pleasure to see you, Madame, he said.

  He could feel the embarrassment swell the room.

  —Lily is leaving for America, said Isabel.

  It was then that he recognized her. She seemed so very different out of her uniform. Younger even. He remembered her shape on the stairs. She had, it seemed, left the employ of Mr. Webb and journeyed from Dublin.

  —She will leave from Cove in a few days, said Isabel.

  —That’s wonderful, said Douglass.

  —She walked here.

  —Good Lord.

  —Lily was inspired by you. Isn’t that right, Lily?

  —By me?

  A small panic seized him. He could see a blush come over the young woman’s face. She seemed to want to vanish. He wondered if she had left Webb’s house without rancor. He certainly had not meant to cause consternation. He nodded politely, tried to avoid her gaze. He recalled with a sharp pang the way she had whispered good-bye. He was glad nothing more had come from his presence in Dublin.

  —Your speeches, said Isabel. They were a great inspiration. Isn’t that right, Lily?

  The maid didn’t look up.

  —Boston? said Douglass. Is that your intention?

  She nodded and by degrees lifted her head: a surprising shine to her eyes.

  —Perhaps I’ll try New York, she said.

  A murmur of approval went around the room. Douglass ate quickly, quietly. He kept his gaze on his plate, but glanced upwards every now and then to see Isabel and her sisters lavish attention on the young maid. They served her and poured her a ginger mineral from a pitcher.

  The maid seemed to balance a weighing scale about her eyes: she seemed at any moment as if she could easily launch into a volley of words, or just as easily burst into tears.

  When Douglass stood to excuse himself—he had more writing to do, he said—he raised a glass to Lily and said that he wished her well, that she would have Godspeed on her adventure, that he, too, hoped to return to his native land and to his wife and family soon.

  The toast was taken up around the table. A clinking of water glasses. The maid flicked a brief glance at him: he was not sure if it was one of fear or anger. He made his way up the stairs. Her appearance had unnerved him. What exactly was he expected to do? How should he have reacted? He did indeed wish her well, but what more could he have said? Perhaps tomorrow he could recommend a prominent family for her to work with? Maybe Garrison or Chapman might know someone? Or he could suggest an area of the city where she would be at ease? Why, he wondered, had she come all the way to Cork by foot? And in such weather, too?

  He sat at his writing desk, buried the nib of the pen in the inkwell. He had much to do, but he could not write. He tossed and turned beneath the covers.

  The birds woke furious with dawn. A blanket of dark had been lifted from Brown Street. He heard his name called from below. He parted his curtains. Isabel stood in the puddled yard at the rear of the house.

  —Lily left in the middle of the night, she said.

  He could feel the cold against the pane of the window. A rooster crowed in the yard and a young hen rose in the air and scrambled away.

  —Can you come with us, Mr. Douglass? she said.

  An alarm in her voice.

  —One moment, please.

  There were letters to write. Correspondence to sign. Meetings to arrange. A debate to prepare with the clergymen of the North Cathedral.

  He closed the curtains and placed his washbasin upon the windowsill. He removed his nightshirt and dampened a towel. The water was cold to the touch. It tightened his skin. He heard his name called from below once more. Then the high whinny of a horse from the stables. The clop and splash of hooves. Two of the Jennings sisters, Charlotte and Helen, came from beneath the archway. They wore wide hats and green rain clothing. Isabel appeared again seconds later, holding a sturdy nag by the reins.

  Douglass leaned out the window. He had forgotten for a moment that he was shirtless. He saw the two younger sisters turn away and giggle.

  Isabel rigged a series of leather harnesses around the horses: she left the tallest horse for him.

  He cursed himself. A maid. A simple maid. So, she had left early. And so what? It was hardly his fault. Yet he was eager to please. The inability to say no. He stepped back from the window, bumped his head on the frame. Perhaps it was a foolish desire on behalf of the young woman. It was not as if—not as if—surely not, no. He had not shown any impropriety. None at all. Certainly not.

  He went to his writing desk, shuffled the papers. Weighed them up. Stacked them, then turned to pull on his shirt and boots. He had been given an oilskin slicker by Mr. Jennings. A fishermen’s coat.
That, and a black hat, wide-brimmed and shapeless. He hadn’t yet worn it during his visit. He caught sight of himself in the swivel mirror. Preposterous. But he was not beyond laughing at himself. He clomped down the stairs, poked his head into the kitchen. Mr. Jennings slapped his teacup down and spurted tea across the thick wooden table. Douglass gave an exaggerated bow and said he was off for a few hours, he had been taken hostage, it seemed they were hoping to overtake the young maid from Dublin, if he didn’t return by nightfall could they please send a search party and perhaps a Saint Bernard? The elderly Jennings sat back in his soft chair and laughed.

  Douglass opened the latch on the back door, stepped outside and under the archway to the front of the house where the women sat on their horses, waiting. They smiled at the sight of him: the coat, the wide hat.

  He had not been on a horse in a long time. He felt foolish as he swung up onto it. The stirrup bit hard into his foot. The animal was dark and muscled. He could feel its rib cage through his own body. He was surprised when Isabel got off her own mount and deftly readjusted the underbelly strap of his horse. A strength in the young woman that he had not seen before. She moved forward, patted the horse’s neck.

  —We’ll take the Cove road, she said.

  They went south along the quays, beyond the gaol, past the poor-house. Her sisters rode dainty and high-backed. Isabel was cruder in her style. She galloped up behind stagecoaches, glanced in, reared up, rode on. Looked around as she rode, calling out Lily’s name.

  The streets were draped in an October gray. The wind pulsed wintry along the river. Rain spat down in flurries. Outside the fever hospital a man moaned with hunger. He stretched out his arms to them. He had a long, loping, simian stride. They rode past. He started hitting himself, like a man beset with bees and madness. They rode faster. A woman came out from an alleyway and begged for a penny. Her face was bearded, splotched with fever. They hurried again. If they stopped to give alms they would never get beyond the city.