Song of Slaves in the Desert

by Alan Cheuse

  Along that berm Isaac pointed out to me the small squares of grating and wood that served as the flood-gates embedded in the walls of earth, some two dozen of them.

  Along this low wall of earth, with all these windows ready to be opened to the water, the slave minions, mostly men, but a few women here and there (including a decidedly pregnant girl, at the far end of the first field) stood at the ready, waiting for Isaac’s command.

  “The plants,” he explained to me, “are ready, as you can see.”

  And he stopped us, and bent down to show me the young rice stalks at our feet just tall enough to bend in a breeze.

  “Feel it,” he said.

  I reached down and took one of the tender stalks in my fingers, enjoying its smoothness and breathing in the humid odor of the earth and the few inches of water in which it grew along with its thousand thousand sisters.

  “The little darlings,” he said, “they be needing the support, and it is time. The tide has gone all the way out, so the creek is more fresh water than salt, and the marsh been cleaned by the upstream waters.”

  About thirty or so slaves stood at the gates, waiting for his command. He raised a hand above his head.

  “How long will you be staying here, mas’? You going to stay long enough to see the harvest?”

  I shook my head, feeling myself informed with my new way of thinking.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I believe I will return to New York quite soon. Possibly within a few days.”

  “Is that true?” He kept his hand raised above his head.

  “Yes,” I said with a nod, amazed that my resolve had stuck with me and at the same time wondering what my cousin might be thinking if he could overhear this conversation.

  “Then we got to work quick,” Isaac said, making a pulling motion and drawing his hand back to his side.

  The slaves bent to their work, opening one by one the doors of the small dams and standing back as the water trickled in from the marsh and the creek beyond. Though the water level rose slowly, the sharp stink of the salt rose quickly to my nose.

  Bring the river

  [the slaves sang out]

  Bring the river

  To the garden.

  Bring the river

  Bring the river

  To the garden…

  Bring the river

  Bring the river

  To the gar-ar-den,

  Bring the river

  To the garden

  Oh, mah Lord…

  Here was a striking event, the way these people brought the work and the singing together, making one lovely melody of sound and physical labor. They moved slowly and deliberately, as did their voices, and the effect put to shame all the music I had ever heard in the synagogue, and certainly any stray songs I might have heard trickling from the churches in my city of a Sunday.

  Oh, bring the river to the garden!

  “So you see,” Isaac was saying to me, “the fresh water floods in, and lifts the stalks, and keeps them lifted until they are strong enough to stand on their own, which is the time when we open the flood doors at the bottom of the field and drain the water down. In a moon and a half…it will be ready…”

  “A moon and a half,” I said.

  “A month and a bit more,” he said.

  “And then the harvest?”

  “And then the harvest.”

  “So, Isaac, you employ here knowledge of the plants themselves—”

  “Yes.” He nodded his head.

  “And the growing season.”

  “Yes.”

  “And a knowledge of the tides.”

  “Oh, yes, the tides, very important.”

  “And the mixture of minerals and such in the water.”

  “Yes, oh, yes.”

  “And the climate.”

  “The sun, you mean? Yes, yes, sun and moon. In Africa they pay as much attention to the cool light of the moon as they do to the heat of the sun.”

  “But you have never been there?”

  “Mas’, I been there. I am there now. I am there always. I make Africa here.”

  A shout went up from the flooded field. The slaves went running, and we followed after.

  The girl who had stood full-bellied at the flood-gate now bent over, doubled and doubled again.

  Her water had broken, spilled out into the flooding field.

  A good sign! All these slave folks cried out.

  My second birth here in my short stay on the plantation! I should have been taking this as a sign of rebirth, in myself, and in the life around me. And yet in me rose up so suddenly—I could not then say why—such gushing waters of regret that I wanted to drown myself in my own confusion.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  ________________________

  Is a Decision Near?

  And how did you enjoy the flooding of the rice plants?” my uncle said to me that night when the first course of our evening meal was set before us.

  (My uncle, about whom more in a moment, was sitting in front of a full plate of food—meat, rice—a bountiful meal produced by Precious Sally the slave cook—but he was not eating.)

  “Enjoy, Uncle? I found it quite enlightening.”

  “Isaac is a good guide, is he not?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, he is.”

  “Quite a good fellow, that Isaac,” my uncle said.

  “Good?” said my aunt. “How do you know he is good?”

  “He does good work,” my uncle said.

  “And work is everything?” My aunt seemed quite annoyed.

  “We have to keep an eye on it,” my uncle said. “The price of rice is down, the cost of shipping goes up. We have to pay good money for flour and meat to feed the…” He broke off, and suddenly dropped his eyes and rested his head on his chin.

  “You were saying?” My aunt spoke as if she actually wanted to know what he spoke about.

  My uncle looked up, seemingly startled to find himself where he had been just a moment before. He stared directly at me.

  “To feed the niggers, you were saying,” my cousin said.

  “Please,” said Rebecca. She nodded her head toward Abraham, who sat silently observing the family exchange.

  Turning to Jonathan, my uncle said, “I do not like that word.”

  “Africans, then,” my cousin said.

  My uncle seemed to have regained all of the vigor which momentarily he had appeared to have lost.

  “Africans? Southern-born? I truly do not know the exact figures. We should do a census. So many have been born, so many have died. Now Isaac’s father, he was African-born, yes?”

  “Yes,” my cousin said.

  “Is he alive or dead?” My uncle spoke as though he expected an immediate reply.

  “I do not know,” my cousin said.

  “Let us find out,” my uncle said.

  “Jonathan,” my aunt said, “you will do this?”

  “A census?” my uncle said. “An accounting? Let Isaac do it. Better a slave, who will find out all the truth than one of us, to whom they will lie if they believe they must.”

  Rebecca, Jonathan’s wife, cleared her throat and said, “Isaac reads and writes now.”

  “Yes, that is marvelous,” my cousin Jonathan said. “Isaac is a reader and writer.” By his tone I could not tell whether or not he thought this was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “He could do a census, that is what I mean,” said Rebecca.

  My uncle leaned across the table and said to me, “Isaac took you to the fields today, did he not?”

  “He did, sir. It was quite interesting.”

  “You will find the harvest quite interesting, too.”

  I then spoke up, declaring from my heart.

  “Uncle, I am going to miss the harvest.”

  Everyone at the table turned his attention to me.

  “You’re mistaken,” my uncle said. “The harvest comes in the next two months.”

  I stared at the food heaped high on
my plate and when I looked up I noticed that Precious Sally was watching me from the doorway. Not wanting to insult her, I carved myself a bit of meat and began to chew. It tasted dry and slightly earthy, as though it had been dropped in the mud. The rest of the family settled back to eating while I spit the meat back out on my plate.

  “I am returning to New York on the next ship out,” I said.

  “What?”

  My uncle sputtered and showered the place before him with his spittle.

  “Surely you’re joking,” my cousin said.

  “I am not joking,” I said. “I am leaving as soon as I can.”

  “Nephew,” my uncle said, “dear Nathaniel, you must not think of leaving. We need you to stay and report to your father.”

  Jonathan pursed his lips and took a swallow of wine.

  “It is our peculiar institution,” he said. “He does not want to be a part of it.”

  “No, I do not,” I said. “I am not condemning it. I just do not want to be part of it, no.”

  “Oh, so you will return to New York and tell your father that you cannot bear the thought of investing in an enterprise such as ours?”

  “My father will do whatever it is he wants to do,” I said. “I make no decisions for him.”

  “But you are here to report for him,” Jonathan said. “Leaving so precipitously, my cousin, will say a lot to him.”

  “It will say more about me than about you,” I said. “I am just not much for farming. I am a city boy, Cousin. I am weary of the country.”

  My uncle made a sputtering noise with his lips and his head swayed from side to side, and for a moment I worried that I might have caused him to suffer a seizure.

  My aunt thought the same. She reached over to touch him on the face and said his name.

  “I do not want you to worry,” she went on. “We are going to find a way.”

  “Yes, yes,” he responded. “I am merely surprised, and distraught. Nothing more. But that is sufficient, is it not?” He pulled at his collar. “The heat, the heat. Do you suffer too much from this damnable heat, nephew?”

  I would have spoken, if I had something else to say. But my cousin put in his opinion.

  “Father,” Jonathan said. “He mentioned nothing of the heat.”

  “Then it is other things. The isolation. Sir?” He pointed a finger at me. “I promise you more of town. You are a city person, you need more of it to survive. So!” He patted the palm of his hand against the table. “Yes, yes, we all go to town once a week, at least, to dinners, to the synagogue, of course. And on that subject, Rebecca, dear daughter-in-law, please tell your cousin by marriage what you were recently telling me.”

  Rebecca, who remained silent throughout these exchanges, touched the tip of her napkin to her lips and said, “Cousin Nathaniel, I was hoping that you would join me in the conduct of my work with the slaves.”

  “Perfect,” my uncle said, “perfect, perfect, perfect. You, sir, will have a hand in the making of citizens out of the stuff of slaves.”

  “It is certainly an admirable project,” I could not help but say.

  “Then you will consider staying to work on it?”

  “I will consider it, yes,” I said, feeling myself turn on a pivot.

  “An admirable idea,” my cousin said. “You can only help the poor slaves by staying.”

  “I think it sounds just lovely,” my aunt said.

  “I’m so glad to hear this,” Rebecca said.

  “But dear daughter-in-law, there was something else, was there not?” my uncle said.

  “Oh, yes,” Rebecca said, and it was quite odd, because for a moment she appeared to be blushing.

  “Nathaniel, you recall my cousin Anna?”

  “I do.”

  I was trying to be polite, but Rebecca took this as enthusiasm.

  “She is a lovely young woman,” my aunt said.

  “She seemed quite lovely,” I said.

  “Her parents give a lovely spring party every year,” my aunt said.

  Rebecca leaned closer to me and said, “We are all wondering, Anna is wondering, I am wondering, if you would come as her guest to this event.”

  Black Jack moved in and out of the room, carrying trays, fetching trays, while Precious Sally remained in the doorway, nodding her sage head. Liza, who sometimes helped with the preparation of meals, was nowhere to be seen. My growing obsession with her seemed suddenly vile and ignorant and unjust. Rebecca’s idea was quite tempting. This slavery question has been vexing me so. My sentiments have me spinning around and around and around so that I am dizzy with indecision. In how many ways could the world pull a young fellow like me? I supposed that I was soon going to find out.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  ________________________

  Into the Maelstrom

  The night came and again I retired early, abjuring the after-dinner talk with the family. My thoughts were topsy-turvy, jogging to and fro. Be that as it may, as I climbed the stairs to my room, I believed I had finally made up my mind. I knew clearly that I had to leave. I simply could no longer understand how anyone could live under these circumstances, in this fool’s paradise built on the backs of the indentured.

  I sat down at the desk and wrote to my father, hoping to have the letter delivered to town the next morning and posted to New York, and as I wrote I found myself imagining that I might even find a ship going north that same tomorrow morning and deliver the letter by my own hand.

  And yet I could not, when I put out the candle and lay back on the bed and closed my eyes, find an easy passage to the temporary oblivion of sleep. As much as the problems I turned over in my mind disturbed me they also kept me alert. Back and forth, back and forth I trundled in my mind, as a figure plagued by madness might shift from one point on stage to another and back again, and back again.

  I reignited the lamp and by the steady flame in the still air read some pages of a book from my uncle’s library.

  Anything to distract me from my worrisome woes!

  “A Descent into the Maelstrom.”

  This story took me quite rapidly along with it, as I began to read, the story within the story, that is. “We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak…”

  The characters in the story within the story climb the mountain called Helseggen, and I climb with them, even as the narrator reaches the vertiginous moment when he looks down from the heights at the sea.

  “I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer’s account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive…”

  I no sooner looked upon the sea with this agitated narrator within the story when I heard the knocking at my door.

  Still in a stupor, in a reading dream, I lowered my feet to the floor and stood up.

  The knocking, tapping, sounded again.

  “Yes?”

  With chilled blood in my veins I half-imagined to find a giant raven standing there.

  I went to the door and opened it.

  “Massa,” Liza said.

  “No, no, no, no,” I said, suffering a jump in my blood into my throat and down along both upper limbs, and then down further. “I would prefer that you do not call me that,” I said. I was agitated from reading the story, I told myself.

  Liza looked furtively behind her.

  “May I come in, massa?”

  I nodded, and she stepped inside, trailing an invisible cloud of scent. Earth after rain, wood-smoke, wood-flower—her perfumes charmed me with their natural airs.

  “It is late, Liza,” I said. “Is there trouble?”

  She shook her head.

  “They have all gone to bed. I’ve been walking up and down the hall, trying to…to make the courage to knock on your door.”

  At which point she burst into tears.

  “Oh, massa!
”

  “Please?” I said.

  She shook from her misery, and wailed on.

  “Tell me,” I said, “what is the difficulty? You act as though you’re being pursued.”

  “I am,” she said, and threw herself down upon the bed, which she herself had prepared for me so many nights since my arrival.

  “Please tell me,” I said, still keeping my distance and trying to pretend that we were together in a well-lighted downstairs room with many people passing in and out instead of alone together in the dark in my room and on my bed.

  “Water, please,” she said.

  Immediately, I poured her a cup of water from the pitcher near my bedside, a pitcher that she herself had fetched and often refilled.

  She sat up and sipped from my cup.

  “Thank you, massa,” she said.

  “Nate,” I said. “Call me Nate.”

  “Nate,” she said. “Thank you, Nate.”

  Still quite in possession of my own mind, I noted the effect the saying of my name on her lips produced in me.

  “So now, Liza,” I said, “will you please explain to me what circumstances have brought you here to me at this hour of the night?”

  For a small part of a second, she laughed, or I thought she laughed, but then it turned out to be the awkward intake of breath and noise that began another round of tears.

  Which she suddenly cut short, jerking herself erect and pushing her head back against the headboard.

  “He is after me,” she said in a deep and hurried whisper.

  “Who is after you?”

  I leaned closer, and found myself, with legs already weak, naturally giving in to gravity, sitting lightly near the foot of the bed, and allowing my eyes to focus on her face. Even in the dark her eyes showed a ferocity and a fear at the same time that I could not fully comprehend. And her hands meanwhile she clasped together, almost as if in prayer, and kneaded them nervously on her breast.