The Pox Party

by M. T. Anderson

  “It is easy for dreamers to speak of abolishing slavery,” said Mr. Sharpe. “It is easy for women of leisure to sit in their mansions, singing harpsichord-tunes about slave-girls and reading sentimental novels of injustice. They have no knowledge of common realities — how the market works. They give no thought to the Africans themselves — to the chaos and riots which should ensue, the starvation, the burning of public buildings, the invasion of Indian tribes, if the people of your nation —”

  “What nation is that?”

  “Perhaps you should tell me.”

  “Am I not an American?”

  “Are you not? To what nation do you belong, then?”

  “I belong,” I answered in voice shrill and tight, “to the nation of whosoever — without profit — pursues the good and the right.”

  “Then,” said Mr. Sharpe, turning from me, “you are a member of an even more bedraggled and inconsequential diaspora than I had imagined.”

  He poured his tea into his saucer and sipped it loudly.

  I rose from my chair and, like one distempered, began shouting, “This is insupportable!”

  “Octavian,” said Mr. Gitney, with a note of warning.

  “These crimes —”

  “They are not crimes,” said Mr. Sharpe. “Your escape is a crime.”

  “How?”

  “It is theft of my property. Your labor belongs to me.”

  “When did I sell it?”

  “Your body belongs to me.”

  “When did I —”

  “Good God! How!” yelled Mr. Sharpe, striding to the door and unlocking it. “Put the mask back on him! I do not need to argue points with a specimen.”

  Two Irish boys came in and placed the metal mask over my face, and I screamed something — I cannot now recall what — as they swung down the bit and it struck my teeth and scraped the flesh of my mouth. The bit intruding, I was bent almost double with gagging, and could not get a breath; and as I labored there, Mr. Sharpe ushered the two guards out and locked the door and looked upon me with some satisfaction.

  I fell then to my knees; I fell upon the floor where my mother had fallen, sick with the fever; and I commenced to vomit through the mask, choking all the while on the dirty and acidic issue which clogged the mask and my mouth.

  Mr. Sharpe stood above me, speaking in profile, declaring, oblivious to my convulsions, “The world, Octavian — the real world of objects — and not the phantasies in which you have been indulged in the outrageous luxuries of your upbringing here — is engaged entirely in commerce. Make no mistake of this. Look everywhere, Octavian, and you shall see nothing but exchange and consumption.”

  I heaved on the floor by his feet.

  “We have labored too long under a government that has sought to curtail exchange; such interference is unnatural. We shall see a brave new day, Octavian, when the rights of liberty and property are exercised, and when all men are free to operate in their own self-interest. And as each individual expresses his self-interested will, so does the democratical voice speak, the will of the common people, not kings or ministers; and when the self-interest of every citizen speaks together, then and only then does benevolence arise.”

  He paused and drank. He then continued, “Look about you, Octavian. We are all part of a web of finance and exchange from which we cannot extricate ourselves. Consider the most pleasant scene of pastoral repose. It is nothing but a vision of consumption. Consider”— and he began to enumerate points on his fingers —“(a) yes, consider, my boy, the lilies of the field. You know as well as I that they toil, engaged desperately in drawing nutrition from the soil and straining toward the sun; and the birds, (b), the birds, which twitter in the trees, a music that lays to rest all of the strife of the human breast — but could we record that speech and translate it, we should see that it is a record of hunger, display, and terror, cries for help, shouts of warning, the boasting of males eager for fornication, vying in power; the cry of chicks demanding that grain or other living things be shuttled to their open mouths; as (c) the small squirming things of the field are snatched for their food, or writhe in their own operations of hunger and excretion.

  “And the farmer, (d), the yeoman farmer working the field, dependent on the flight of bees and the circuit of worms and the drifting of seed, the farmer, will he not sell the grain of that field at the market, and will he not require for his own sustenance the devouring of chickens, and pigs, and cattle, all of whom will also require feed; and is he not beholden not only to the worm, but also, through labor’s division, to (e) the blacksmith who made his scythe and (f) the weaver who made the linen stuff of his smock and (g) the spinner of linen thread from flax and (h) he who heckled the flax and (i) he who made the heckle and (j) the button-maker making buttons from the bones of (k) an ox, which mayhap was fed by (l) grain grown upon another farm by other farmers with shirts, and buttons, and scythes, and worms, and merchants to purchase all of it and distribute it across the country — and so the whole fabric of society is predicated upon need and exchange. And even (m) this speech itself; is it not a form of market, at which I display my goods to you, taking pains to best arrange them so that they shall be purchased by you and owned? And even within me, are not my very organs (n), as I speak, and yours, as you writhe there, spitting, all your body in disorder, are not these very organs involved in exchange — the stomach hungering in its lickerish decoctions, the heart drawing and expelling blood, which circulates, carrying its half-exhausted freight, and so, inwards and outwards, the organs and the skin, the lungs and the air, the energies of sun and flesh, in all things, we are involved in commerce; and all things, Octavian, devour, and all things are for sale; and all things have their price; and all things vie and kill; and that is all we do; and all things must support themselves, or be consumed.”

  I was crouched and still upon the floor; not moving except to heave my breaths, which gargled in the mess I had coughed into the mask. At intervals, in my efforts to breathe through both vomit and iron, I convulsed again in spasms; and choked more; and vomited; which foulness ran through the mask, stopping up the nose, and dripped from the eye-slits, as if, defeated by Mr. Sharpe’s harangue, I wept.

  “It would be a tragic world,” said Mr. Sharpe, “if at the top of all of this, at the apex of this system of use and ingestion, there were not God Himself, (o) — or rather, (a) and (o), alpha and omega, first and last — who grants us desires and pleasures and motivates us to action.”

  I looked up now, and saw a curious thing: Behind Mr. Sharpe, Mr. Gitney was trying to rise out of his chair, but seemed unable so to do. He saw me glancing at him, and wiggled his hands. His mouth was open. His limbs moved convulsively.

  “God Himself,” continued Mr. Sharpe, oblivious, his eyes fluttering, “engaged in all this vast commerce, this destruction and use . . . Triune overseer of this one, monadic, universal œconomy: at once Investor, Capital, and Profit. . . . He who invested His only begotten Son for the gain of all . . . He who . . . instilled in us . . . our individual desires . . .”

  Mr. Gitney had sagged to the floor, his mouth opening and closing. Mr. Sharpe’s arm, previously raised with fingers outstretched to enumerate, again and again, the little stock of what devoured what, had fallen to his side. He said in dullard tones, “He who leads us now . . . to follow Him . . . He has instilled in us . . . individual desires . . . and pleasures. . . . Did I already . . . ?”

  Mr. Gitney made a long, lowing noise, the speech of a cow. I sat up fully and watched them. Mr. Sharpe had not ceased in his pontification, though weaving unsteadily now in his deportment.

  “America . . . shall respond finally . . . to the self-interest instilled in all men by our God . . . now untrammeled by the unnatural devices of princes and . . . tyrants. . . .” He coughed. He scratched at his throat. “And as each individual will . . . expresses itself through commerce . . . the good of all shall be promoted . . . and mankind . . .” Mr. Gitney glided behind him like a large whi
te slug. “Mankind shall reach . . . its native perfection . . . and perfect . . .” He stepped backward over Mr. Gitney. He sat. “Felicity,” he said.

  Turning to Dr. Trefusis, he said, “The tea.”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Trefusis.

  Mr. Sharpe shook his head as if to clear it of contrarieties. He rubbed his eyes with his hands, and, drawing them away, blinked slowly. He regarded no one thing in the room, but rather gaped at whatever lay before him. His words somewhat deformed, he said, “I have been in heaven.”

  Dr. Trefusis said, “You’ve earned your wings.”

  Mr. Gitney was crying on the floor, the whine pitched high.

  Mr. Sharpe reported, in words uneven and slurred, that angels had no arms. Dr. Trefusis agreed.

  “They lift . . . with hope,” said Mr. Sharpe.

  “That’s a pretty sentiment,” said Dr. Trefusis.

  “I need . . . my gravity,” said Mr. Sharpe.

  Mr. Gitney gave a sudden cry, and trembled briefly with all his frame; then fell still. Mr. Sharpe slept, his head upon a trestle-table laden with mounted oyster-shells.

  I knelt upon the floor. Outside, through the shutters, someone still played a country tune upon a whistle. The vomit dripped through my mask.

  Mr.’s Gitney and Sharpe were now without motion. The patterns of their breath were disjunct, and hissed in the experimental chamber. One rose, one fell. I was in a pool of my own foul expulsions. Dr. Trefusis sat on his chair, smiling faintly and looking at his colleagues where they slouched.

  “It seems,” he opined, “a very pleasant day for a walk.”

  I nodded slowly, the alloys of my helmet rattling.

  “An opiate,” explained Dr. Trefusis. “I have never before poisoned, but I find it extremely agreeable.”

  He rose up and went to Mr. Sharpe’s body; with a flourish, he drew forth a set of keys and, from another pocket, a handkerchief. He came to my side. “For one last time, you shall be requested to lower your head before me,” he said. I did so. I felt the entrance of the key in the lock; and the report of its revolution.

  With that, the mask came away. Vomit splashed to the floor. I gasped for air, finally untrammeled (as Mr. Sharpe would have it) by the strictures of tyranny.

  Dr. Trefusis gave me the handkerchief. Bringing both of my hands up to my face, I wiped at the vomit there. While I thus cleaned myself, Dr. Trefusis hunkered down, his thin shanks tucked beside his neck, and he fiddled with the lock at my ankles until my feet were free. He rose and took the manacles to Mr. Sharpe, who he shackled to a table-leg.

  He turned back to me. I held out the handkerchief and my wrists. He came to me and took the handkerchief. He searched the ring for the key to my metal cuffs.

  Watching him, I realized that the subterfuge should be greater still, did I not exhibit the freedom of my hands to the household as we departed, and I lowered my arms. Said I to Dr. Trefusis, “No, sir. It is a fashion that suits me.”

  He looked at my wrists, and then at me. “Ah, indeed,” said he. “Le bon goût.” He tucked away the keys in his waistcoat, hands trembling giddily.

  He took a profound breath, smiled briefly at me, and said, “The Stoics prescribed that we should be indifferent to external events. Nevertheless, at this moment, I must admit I find I am not in full possession of my hard-won ataraxia.”

  He went to Mr. Sharpe and worked at tying the wet handkerchief around that reprehensible man’s head as a gag. “My emotions at the moment,” Dr. Trefusis observed, “are scarcely intelligible. I wonder why we insist on naming them. Hope at this instant is indistinguishable from fear; joy looks much the same as anger; and anxiety,” he said, “cannot be divided from pleasure.” He shifted the handkerchief, the vomit smearing on Mr. Sharpe’s jaws. With a jab of the thumbs, he pressed the sodden cloth between Mr. Sharpe’s lips.

  The venerable philosophe surveyed his handiwork. “Pleasure, Octavian,” said Dr. Trefusis, wiping his fingers on Mr. Sharpe’s coat. “We must learn to enjoy our little pleasures.”

  Together, we shrugged Mr. Gitney out of his robe — he not having a handkerchief — and used it both as gag and binding — the arm for a gag, the tail of it, wrapped tightly, to tie him to the mantel column.

  With that, Dr. Trefusis pushed me before him to the door. He unlocked it and I stepped into the corridor. He called back into the chamber with the two inert bodies, “I understand, sir,” and shut the door behind him. He locked it. To the two boys who stood by the door, he said, “Mr. Sharpe has asked he not be disturbed before he is done. On no account. You, secure the Negro. We are taking him to the carriage.”

  They took my arms roughly and led me out of the detested house.

  Outside, the verdure of field and tree was overwhelming. The green was opulent; and I almost fell upon my knees with thanks.

  A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty

  Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.

  They led me to the carriage house. Dr. Trefusis demanded that the groom prepare the equipage for a journey to Worcester. To the boys, he said, “Mr. Sharpe and Mr. Gitney will be working in the experimental chamber until later this evening. Tell the cook she need not prepare them anything. They wish no intrusion.”

  It was not an easy wait for the horses to be harnessed to the carriage. Dr. Trefusis and myself both lacked the instinct for subterfuge; and so we both worked uneasily with flaps or pockets. I drew my shackles up and down my wrist; he wrapped his fingers in the lace of his sleeves and paced about the yard.

  One of the Young Men came out of the house. “Do you have word of Mr. G.?” he called to Dr. Trefusis.

  “Which . . . Mr. G.?”

  “Uncle.”

  “He is in some mysterious colloque with Mr. Sharpe in the experimental chamber. They asked not to be disturbed.”

  “He and I were going to try some soldering.”

  “I think he has put soldering quite out of his mind,” said Dr. Trefusis. “I would not disturb him for solder.”

  “Soldering, lads?” said a second Young Man, projecting his head out of the door. “Is the word ‘soldering’? Capital. Don’t begin without me.”

  “Uncle’s in the experimental chamber, plotting with Mr. Sharpe.”

  “I say let’s rouse him.”

  “Famous. Let’s!”

  Dr. Trefusis said, “He asked —”

  “What happened to the Negro, made him spew?”

  Dr. Trefusis held up his hands. “Boys, do not . . . — Mr. Gitney would fain not be disturbed.”

  “‘Fain’? What’s ‘fain’?”

  “Sir,” said the groom, “your carriage is ready.”

  “Do not disturb your uncle,” said Dr. Trefusis.

  “We will give him ten minutes.”

  “Two or three hours, at least,” said Dr. Trefusis, “to transact their business.” He ushered me quickly to the carriage.

  I mounted the steps; and Trefusis having shut the door behind us and rapped upon it, we set out. Though I was jolted by the ruts of the road, I was infinitely gratified to see that house — that execrable house — dwindle behind me. The Young Men stood about in the yard, watching us go.

  Once the noise of our transit was too great for the coachman reasonably to hear anything that passed between us, Dr. Trefusis plucked at his eyebrows, his spirits disordered from the dangers that still lay before us.

  “What waits for us in Worcester?” I asked.

  “Naught,” said he. “I shall momentarily request that we turn for Cambridge. We lay a false trail.” He smoothed his eyebrows with some agitation. “It shall not be long,” said he, “before they discover our subterfuge and send riders after us.”

  “I shall not submit to capture,” I said simply. “I cannot go back.”

  “There is no fear of that,” replied Dr. Trefusis. “When we are caught, you will be hanged for murder attempted and treason and I will be hanged for the theft of you.”

  I thought on this, then asked, “Why treason?”


  “A slave who seeks to kill his master, as through poison, is always hanged for treason. In attacking your master, you attack the system of sovereignty itself. Do you find it is difficult to breathe when there is commotion? I do.”

  We rode for a while through the countryside. We saw boys training on village greens. They stood in rows which elongated and revealed new actants in military geometry as we passed them. Their calves were crossed; rakes held at ready like guns; their faces full of the seriousness of fight.

  Elsewhere, there were men working in the fields, and women carrying water in yokes across their shoulders. We heard no pursuit.

  “What waits for us in Cambridge?” I asked.

  “Naught,” he said. “The tides today will be low at eleven o’ clock in the evening. By dark, we will flee across the mud-flats into Boston.”

  I thought on this; and then offered, “We should cross to the south, at Roxbury or Dorchester.”

  “Why?”

  “There is a floating battery off the shore at Cambridge. They are more likely to spy us there than if we approach the city from the south.”

  Dr. Trefusis smiled and clapped. “A strategist!” he exclaimed.

  He opened the sash and leaned his head out of the carriage, shouting up to the coachman, “I have made an error. Take us instead to Roxbury.” He drew back inside. He offered, “Things have come to an entertaining pass, when a city under siege — the spot of greatest danger in the colony — is the only place that might offer us safety.”

  We rode across the countryside towards Boston, and the encampment of the enemy.

  As we rode on, the day grew more chill, the sky’s blue more hardened with silver. We stopped at an inn to bait the horses, sup, and arrange that I should be sluiced with water to clear off the vomit; being washed, I felt the dampness of the afternoon even more acutely. Dr. Trefusis arranged a horse-blanket to be draped over me, and we continued upon our way.

  When we arrived at Roxbury, night was falling, and so also was drizzle. The coachman ducked beneath his cape as we clambered down.