Tides From the New Worlds

by Tobias S. Buckell

  One thing that Toad has always wanted to know is: did Hamilton ever have a Caribbean accent. Oh, that would just burn everyone, wouldn’t it? Here was one of the principal creators of America, an architect of the country. When historians studied his past, they would mention Nevis. Often, in the following terms:

  ...he was from the tiny Caribbean island of Nevis, where the slave trade dominated the local economy. Hamilton hated this, and felt it was wrong...

  That was it. Two lines sum up his entire time on the island, an entire childhood. The next thing to be mentioned:

  ...luckily, Hamilton attracted the attention of a wealthy businessman who paid to have him leave and gain his schooling in America...

  Toad resents that. He wonders exactly how the islands influenced Hamilton. Or was it all just negative? Hamilton’s dark view of humanity was born on the tiny island of Nevis. Does Hamilton deplore slavery, while thinking black people inferior, Toad wonders. How does that work? These men could be so fascinating. Hypocritical, yet in such a grand manner.

  Toad sits in his tiny study and reads books. And in his drawer he has candy bars. He eats them as he reads, and when he is done, he takes the foil wrapper, separating it from the paper with the brand name glossed onto it. He flattens the foil by rubbing it on the corner of his desk, and begins to fold it in an absent manner. With one hand, he holds a book open, and with the other, fingers and thumb deftly creasing and turning the foil over, he creates the small figurine of a standing man with a tricornered hat.

  These tiny soldiers stand throughout the shelves of his office, the crinkled foil reflecting the dim light in a fractured way. They almost twinkle.

  Sometime, late into the night, early in the morning, he wonders if he can go to his room and sleep. Lana will be there in the bed, asleep, he thinks. Her eyes will be closed. She will stir as the door opens and turn over on her side.

  Usually she asks how his day was.

  Tonight, Toad knows he can’t look at her. He used to be able to push the thought of the other men away. He could touch Lana, kiss the nape of her neck and run his hands down her smooth, dark skin, and find a peace that never comes easy to him. After seeing Dovert, Toad can only imagine Lana’s breath catching as Dovert runs his hands down her stomach.

  Toad slides to the floor and shudders.

  This is not living. But Lana has every right. It is everyone’s right. Were he to go out tonight and find a bar, and find a woman, and bring her back to make love right here in this office, Lana would only smile in the morning and bring the woman coffee.

  It is the way the world is. Toad doesn’t think it is the way the world should be. What would Burr do?

  Ha, Toad thinks. Burr was a hedonist at best. What is it he said? “If a lady does me the honor of naming me her child’s father, I will gladly accept.” Even Hamilton found himself in the middle of an intrigue, where he paid a man good money to allow his continued visits to the man’s wife. Toad’s situation is hardly something new. He knows this. He knows it academically, however. It isn’t what the gut reaction in his stomach tells him as he falls asleep on the floor.

  • • •

  The next morning in the museum, it is still on his mind. The modern age has accepted the practice of monogamy as the pure pursuit, he tells himself. There can be only one mate.

  He thinks this while standing in front of an exhibit detailing the pinnacle of the modern consciousness; World War II. American soldiers liberate France, and as the wide-eyed farmboys in green uniforms pause for a while in Paris, the cute announcer with a bob haircut and long skirt standing in front of the exhibit slyly points out:

  “The French were so grateful for the liberation. American soldiers flooded the city, and rapidly turned their attentions to the local girls. And it wasn’t unusual for some French husbands to be proud that their wives were...”

  Toad passes through the exhibit quickly.

  In the Revolutionary Exhibits, major remodeling is still going on. Robots of all shapes and sizes cling to the walls and spin great machines out the nozzles under their bellies. They attach these new machines to the upper corners of each room, like giant spotlights. Some of them stand in front of the one-way windows, not able to see out at Toad looking in at them.

  A waxing machine sprays the floor and begins spinning the pads under its squat tublike body. It pauses when it notices Toad, shoving a stalk into the air.

  “You,” it says tonelessly, as if bored by having to stop its job to talk to Toad. The Museum has taken control of the robot to speak to Toad. It gives him orders; the later Aaron Burr, the oldest one they have in the museum, now needs to be overseen in a temporary holding room while some final repairs are done.

  It continues buffing the floor after he walks on.

  Burr is in a study. Toad pauses after he knocks on the door and gets a gruff “enter!” in response. Burr looks up at him with rheumy eyes. A single candle flickers in the corner. Despite the daylight outside, dark, heavy curtains cover the single window of the study. Small Greek toy soldiers stand around Burr’s desk, looking out over the study with implacable beady eyes. A half-assembled model of the Trojan horse sits at the center of the desk, and Burr has scratched an outline of Troy into the dark cherry wood of his desk.

  “Yes?” Burr asks. He looks at Toad carefully. “Are you bringing food in or what, man?”

  Toad realizes Burr thinks he is a servant. Or maybe a slave.

  “No,” he says.

  This Burr hasn’t spent evenings chatting with him about Revolutionary politics, the rights of woman, or even a gradual grudging respect for Toad’s ‘kind’ that comes out of the evening conversations.

  “Ah, just as well,” Burr says. He turns back to his desk. “What are you here for?”

  “Keep you company, until we move again.”

  “Damn all this moving about,” Burr says. “It messes with my concentration. Here, there, I don’t understand,” he starts scraping at the Trojan horse with a file. “And I don’t need some...”

  There is a commotion outside, and Toad opens the door. A small dark-skinned man in a white robe is shooing a fly down the corridor to safety. The assistant following Gandhi has a chagrined look on his face.

  “Sorry,” he says to Toad, in explanation. “I tried to swat the fly, I wasn’t thinking.”

  Toad smiles and steps back so he can shut the door. When it clicks shut, he turns around. Burr looks aghast. Toad’s heart skips. Has Burr recognized Gandhi? He can’t, it’s impossible. That is the first thought that bubbles up into Toad’s mind. Aaron Burr gets out of his chair with a grunt, gripping the arms and heaving his good bulk forward.

  He walks over to his bookshelf and pulls out a large volume from the rows of spines. It is Laurence Sterne’s Tristam Shandy, Toad sees, all nine of the books in between two covers. Next to it sits a book by Voltaire. Burr takes Shandy back to his desk. With a palm on its top, like some bible, Burr looks up.

  “Ever since I shot him,” Burr says. Toad knows he’s talking about Hamilton. “I’ve always wondered,” Burr continues. “I’ve thought about it a great deal. People always asked me about that choice, the accusation of murder strong in their tone.” He grins slightly. “I can’t imagine too many other vice-presidents in this country will ever stand trial for both murder and treason. Eh?”

  Toad nods. “No.”

  “Well.” Burr looks at the door, as if seeing out at the corridor. “I’ll say this. If I had read more Stern and less Voltaire, perhaps I would have realized that the world was large enough for both Hamilton and me.”

  Toad studies the hardwood floor. It is scuffed and muddy. Yes, he thinks, maybe this is so. Yet, could Burr have done it any other way? This old, broken man has regrets. This is not the proud Burr, so full of life, which Toad knows in the other rooms.

  • • •

  It is in his reading, late at night, that Toad finds another reference to Tristam Shandy. Jefferson, the president who Burr almost ousted, has a fierce love
for the book. He and his wife, Martha, share an affection for it. When she dies, bearing his seventh child, he locks himself up in a room and paces for a week.

  It’s funny, Toad thinks, that Jefferson was the one who read more Sterne than Burr. There are distant noises from the bedroom. Toad pulls out a candy bar and absently works on the tin foil.

  An hour or so later, when Toad’s eyes are beginning to fail, Lana opens the door. Light spills into the study and he blinks. She tiptoes up to his chair and kisses him on the cheek. He sits still as she wraps her arms around his neck, her hair falling down in between his shirt and his back.

  “Miss you,” she says.

  Toad allows himself to be pulled toward the bedroom. Dovert lies asleep under the covers, his arm lolling off the side of the bed.

  Lana moves into him, sitting on him, legs wrapped around his waist. They caress and nuzzle. Lana is still riding a peak. Every touch seems magnified. Despite himself, Toad is aroused. The world narrows into tunnel vision, just two warm bodies, and Toad begins to thrust with her, pushing his palms down onto the bed for leverage.

  Until the side of his hand brushes Dovert’s. He stops and looks down. Dovert has shifted. Toad loses the excitement and Lana rolls off him. They’re both disappointed, and Toad buries his face into a pillow.

  • • •

  The psychiatrist hovers in the air. A lens shifts, and the soccer-ball shaped machine settles into the desk in front of Toad.

  “I wish I’d never introduced them,” Toad says. The psychiatrist has thousands of small metallic filings on its ‘face’ that shift into human expressions. With a slight ‘shhfff’ sound, it creates and raises an eyebrow, as if to say, ‘go on, I’m interested.’ “Dovert was my best friend,” Toad continues. “We met at the museum. We had similar jobs, just different time periods. I brought him home for lunch, and had to leave. When I came back, Dovert and Lana were... well, you know.”

  The psychiatrist waits.

  Toad swallows. “They were having sex.”

  “This is a free world,” the psychiatrist says. “Lana is a modern woman. She is perfectly free to choose her own lovers. As many as she wants. Unless you have a binding contract of exclusivity?”

  “No,” Toad says.

  The psychiatrist cocks its head.

  “Are there any reasons you can’t leave. Economic? You don’t have to stay in the current arrangement, you are also free to choose your own lovers. You can leave.”

  “Yes,” Toad says.

  “So why don’t you?”

  “Because I love her.”

  “And you think she loves you, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Toad says. “I think so.” He gets up.

  “So you feel that all that time you spent with Lana together, implies a continuation of exclusivity without a contract?”

  “Yes, maybe, I’m not sure,” Toad says, all at once and jumbled together. He can’t believe he’s spent this money doing this. This is something he needs to work out on his own. He’s getting frustrated with the machine.

  “Historically speaking, real freedom of individuals to choose has been suppressed. That conflicts with natural biological design toward promiscuity. It is hardwired into the species.”

  “Don’t lecture me about history,” Toad says.

  He walks out of the room.

  “Please,” the psychiatrist says. “Schedule another appointment. I would like to see you again. I feel like we should spend some more time...”

  “Yes,” Toad says, and shuts the door.

  • • •

  He briefly entertains the thought of sneaking in to see Freud at the musuem. But what would that man know of his situation? It is too complicated now, and the rules that Toad lives under don’t fit with Freud’s.

  Toad replays the conversation with the mechanical psychiatrist in his head.

  “...biological design toward promiscuity...”

  So what? He thinks. We have a design towards pissing anywhere when the need arrives. But we all manage to use bathrooms or arrange for some semblance of privacy. With humans, biological design meant nothing. That, Toad thinks, is the whole point of being human. Isn’t it?

  We manipulate ourselves. We control our destiny. Don’t we? Toad furrows his eyebrows.

  He’s different. He knows it. He spends too much time in the past. It has affected him. He wanders throughout the museum, going from exhibit room to exhibit rooms. He ends up in Feudal Japan and stops.

  Musashi.

  “Miyamoto Musashi is legend and reality,” says the man in front of the room that looks into 1600. “The greatest duelist in Japan, he became a walking legend even in his own time.”

  Unlike traditional Samurai, Musashi has no topknot, as he cannot shave. A bad case of eczema has disfigured him, and in the strict Japanese society, makes him an automatic outcast. Musashi, the guide explains, refuses to wash himself or change his clothes, forcing people to become discomforted when about him.

  Musashi’s father, the man Musashi looks up to, has taught him the art of swords. But the father is very distant from his son, and shows no love whatsoever. This, the man before the one-way window explains, tortures and drives Musashi to be the best swordsman ever.

  Toad watches as Musashi faces an almost endless stream of challenging warriors over the years, and defeats them all. In this society, at this time, the duel is the way to bring respect. Musashi is expert.

  Toad empathizes with Musashi’s outcast feelings. He wishes he could be grand and legendary through his own psychological failings.

  • • •

  Toad is back with Burr in the night before the duel. Burr paces throughout the mansion, his buckle shoes tapping on the hardwood floors, going quiet as he walks across rugs, then tapping again. Toad sits on a small seat with Theodosia and drinks tea. She’s reading William Blake’s America: A Prophecy. The spine of the book is resting between her thighs, pushing her dress down onto the chair.

  When Toad looks up, he realizes Theodosia isn’t reading the book. Her dark eyes are locked on his. She blushes expertly and turns a page, looking back down. The ringlets around her face bounce slightly from the motion.

  It is wrong, Toad thinks. She shouldn’t be so.

  Aaron Burr bursts into the room. Even though he hasn’t done anything, Toad jumps with a guilty expression to his face. Burr walks through the room and takes a long musket up from wall.

  “I am going hunting,” he declares. Then he pauses and hands Theodosia a sealed letter. “Don’t open this until tomorrow,” he says. “Swear to me you won’t open this until then.”

  Theodosia nods.

  “Yes, father. My word.”

  “Good.” Aaron Burr leaves the room in great agitation. Toad hears the door slam as he leaves for the forest.

  Theodosia opens the letter.

  “You gave your word,” Toad says.

  “I believe it was my father who said, ‘Great souls have little use for small morals.’” She scans the letter and struggles to keep her face from showing emotion. Toad takes the letter and reads it:

  I am indebted to you, my dearest

  Theodosia, for a very great portion

  of the happiness which I have enjoyed

  in this life. You have completely

  satisfied all that my heart and

  affections had hoped or even wished.

  With a little more perseverance,

  determination, and industry, you will

  obtain all that my ambition or vanity

  had fondly imagined. Let your son

  have occasion to be proud that he had a mother.

  Adieu. Adieu.

  Theodosia closes the Blake book and sets it to her side. She stands up and takes the letter from Toad.

  “He’ll see the broken seal now, though” she says, looking down at the broken rough circle of wax.

  “I know where he keeps his seal,” Toad says. “We can fix it.”

  Theodosia steps forward a
nd takes his arm. Toad feels a thrill of pleasure run up his back.

  “Thank you,” she says. “I apologize for all this. I should not have come up from South Carolina, and left...” she pauses. But Toad can fill in the name coming: Joseph Alston. Her husband, and eventual governor of the state.

  The truth is, Theodosia should still be in South Carolina. But the museum thought the exhibit would do better with an intelligent woman as a part of the attraction, and Theodosia’s mother, also named Theodosia, had died well before the duel. So they send a coach south for Burr’s daughter.

  It is a favor really. Theodosia suffers in the swamps of the south. She hates the mosquitoes and the climate. Every moment of it.

  The moment passes. Toad leads her up the stairs to Burr’s office. There they take his seal out of the drawer. Toad burns his fingers on the hot wax as he presses the seal in. He swears, and Theodosia takes his hand in hers.

  “It hurt?” She asks.

  “Yes.” Toad looks down at the tips of his finger, glossed in cooled red wax. Theodosia bends her lips to them and gives a gentle kiss. Toad can barely feel the sensation over the wax, but then her tongue darts to caress middle of his index finger. He sighs.

  “Thee,” Toad says. “You shouldn’t...”

  “I have done it.” Theodosia whispers from the palm of his hand. “On the plantation already. He is too concerned with money and politics, and assures my complaints of intimacy with only more talk about positions of state and future glory. I have to be loved by someone.”

  Toad cups her neck with the palm of his hand.

  “It is scandalous,” Theodosia says with a smile. “The daughter of the vice-president making love to a Negro.”

  “Yes,” Toad says.

  “My future is uncertain, my father will be off to duel. And I dread going back to the South, away from my books, alive only through letters to father. Which may not keep coming...” she trails off and nuzzles his neck. “I am very lonely right now.”

  Toad closes his eyes and begins to pull at her corset. Theodosia helps him to the floor, and the cold hardwood puts goosebumps all down his back. The single candle flickers. Theodosia grabs his hair, handfuls of dreadlocks.