Washington Black: A Novel

by Esi Edugyan

  I tried to imagine the cold north of Titch’s country. I could not. “Is that where your cousin is from also?”

  “Ah, indeed, no—Philip is my father’s cousin’s boy, our second cousin. For many decades now their branch of the family has resided in London. They keep townhouses in Grosvenor Square.”

  “He is from London,” I repeated.

  Titch reached forward, squeezed my shoulder. “It does you no credit to fret so, Washington. Philip is a gentle-enough character. You shall see.”

  * * *

  —

  AS THE CARRIAGE entered Bridge Town, I sat up higher on the bench, pressing my brow to the hot glass. I had not once visited its streets; such a privilege was granted only to select slaves, never a field cutter. I stared in wonder. So many buildings. Their wooden slats silvered from decades of hurricane weather, and before them, pale, brightly dressed people bustled through the streets. Swells of dust boiled up off the roads. Horses trotted past, heads low in the heat, flies swarming. We clattered past a sailor on a street corner blowing through some bizarre knot of pipes, while beside him a second danced along to his own fiddle, his fingers flying like shadows over the strings. We stopped in the sudden traffic; through the carriage oozed the stink of overripe fruit carted in from the port, and of immense slabs of tuna starting to turn in the heat. At a passing market stall I glimpsed their fishy eyes, fissured with blood as they gawked on beds of cool leaves.

  All this I wanted to remember, on that first trip into the town; all this I wanted to hold in my mind to draw later. The carriage rattled softly under us as the horses jogged across a kind of boardwalk. And then you could not help but see it, your eyes rising: there, above the hills of the town, among the dark trees, flashed an endless white swarm of enormous windmills. I leaned forward, pressing my hands against the glass.

  “But you have seen windmills, Washington, powering your own sugar mills,” Titch said, surprised at my interest. “I suppose it is that you have never seen so many all at once like this. Well, it is a monstrous spectacle.”

  Bridge Town seemed to extend forever, to my innocent eye. I kept trying to imagine the rooftops I had glimpsed from Corvus Peak, but could not do so. As we descended towards the water, I saw groves of lemons, limes, oranges. I glanced up. Gun batteries loomed over the entrance to the harbour. When at last we reached the wharf, Titch swung open the carriage door and unfolded himself down into the street. He set his hat carefully on his head.

  “No need for you to brave this heat, René,” he called to the driver. “I shall fetch my cousin myself.”

  Out he went into the throng of people, his elbows slightly raised the better to get by. I climbed down and brushed off the folding step to stand at the carriage door; it would not do to be seen waiting inside, seated like a master’s son. I saw we had pulled up on the landward side of a wide wooden boardwalk. Piers, platforms and gangways ran alongside the harbour, great wooden vessels moored high overhead. Everywhere people called out, their voices bright and harsh; luggage thundered down gangplanks; sweating black porters hoisted above their heads crates of pale new wood. There was everywhere much colour, and great motion.

  We waited. René stood with a hand on the harness, near the horses. He did not speak to me.

  At last Titch was wending his way back through the crowds, his arm around the shoulders of a dark-haired man. I felt my heart flutter into my throat; my legs seemed to thrum. For though the man shared Titch’s finely boned face, the same black hair and jade-coloured eyes, he was far thicker through the waist, and his face was set differently, so that he appeared flinty, and cautious. I did not like the look of him.

  Behind them came two porters, rolling the visitor’s large leather trunks. I stepped forward at once and began instructing them about how and where to set each on the carriage’s roof. Titch’s cousin took no notice of me, but stepped past and into the carriage, waving his hat before his face for the heat. The flies were biting. And I saw that while the man was portlier than Titch, he was by no measure enormous. All their talk of his eating had given me to think he’d be gargantuan. He was not even half of Big Kit’s girth. His arms, awkwardly thin, folded oddly out from his body. A strange creature indeed.

  I double-checked the knots to be certain the man Philip’s baggage would not be lost during the dusty ride back to Faith Plantation. Then I scrambled back down and climbed up into the carriage. I swung the door shut with a satisfying bang.

  Mister Philip stared. “Rides in here with you, does he?”

  “Excuse me,” said Titch, gesturing to me. “This is Washington. My assistant.”

  “Washington?” Mister Philip said with soft displeasure. “I’d rethink that name if I were you, Titch. Makes a mockery of the poor creature.”

  “I did not choose it, Philip. It is his name.”

  “Well, rename him, then, for goodness’ sake. However did he get such a name?”

  “My uncle Richard, I imagine,” said Titch. “Richard Black. Indeed, most of the slaves were given fairly benign names, but others seem to have been christened rather queerly. René, after Descartes, Immanuel, after Immanuel Kant, Émilie, after Émilie du Châtelet.”

  I jolted softly at her name. So many weeks had passed since I’d last glimpsed sight of her at Faith that only now, in the cloistered warmth of our carriage, did I realize I had given up searching. She was clearly no longer at Wilde Hall. Where had she gone, then, so heavy with child? Was the baby now born? I understood I would likely never find out, for those who disappeared from Faith were never, not ever, seen again.

  “Richard Black,” said Mister Philip, shaking his head. “Heavens. The man was a lunatic.” Mister Philip flitted his green eyes at a lady passing outside, her bonnet reeling back from her face in a slap of wind. He glanced suddenly back at me. “What a smell in here.”

  “It smells fine,” frowned Titch.

  Mister Philip shrugged, crossing his legs, shifting his bulk. “I did always find that lot insufferable, the Blacks. All their hymns and sermons. I should sooner suffer a charnel house than visit good Felicia Black’s dinner table yet again.”

  “I thought them rather clever. Bookish branch of the family.”

  “Well, you can keep them.”

  “Heaven keeps them now.”

  “Heaven does. Making better use of the afterlife, one hopes. Lord knows they wasted their time down here. Cornelius Black wore out his miserable knees in their little chapel.”

  “Blasphemer,” smiled Titch.

  “Ought to have worn out his wife’s knees, that would have been heaven. Or holier. If you take my meaning.”

  “Good god, man!”

  “Come now. You wouldn’t argue your aunt Amelia hadn’t a heat to her cheeks, would you?”

  Titch was very studiously examining the dust on the rattling pane. “She was very handsome, yes.”

  “Died looking like a sack of chicory, what. But in her prime? Oh.” Mister Philip closed his eyes theatrically. “Your failing, good cousin, was always a lack of appreciation for the world’s bounty. You would rather suffer the grotesque than know beauty first-hand.”

  Titch laughed. “The grotesque?”

  “All your scientific nonsense. It’s a pity, really.”

  “Some pity. My father and I are satisfied enough.”

  “Yes,” said Mister Philip, and something shifted in his face. It was difficult to say, but he looked almost guilty. “Well. In any case. I see you are in fine health. Erasmus is well too, I hope? I am ever so eager to see him again.”

  “Erasmus has business at another plantation. Indeed, he will be the whole week away, even two, perhaps. He truly did want to be present at your arrival, but I understood it was a matter of some urgency.”

  “I see,” said Mister Philip, and I thought I glimpsed a dim anxiety beneath his easy, relaxed smile. “Well.” He
was silent some moments. “Well.”

  Titch glanced from the window back to his cousin. “And how is my mother?”

  Philip sighed. “You are sorely missed in Hampshire, Christopher. It took the poor lady an age to ferret out your whereabouts. Erasmus, apparently, sent along a letter. Said you’d gone soft-witted and chased him all the way to this godforsaken wasteland, instruments in tow. I cannot say she took it very well. Nearly went half-mad herself.”

  “So then she is fully there,” Titch muttered, but a flush rose slowly in his cheeks. “But she is generally well?”

  “Your mother is forever ailing and she will outlive us all, I daresay. Outlive England herself, perhaps.”

  Titch smiled. “A fine observation from you, man. Have you not her same fear of molecules?”

  “It has passed,” Mister Philip murmured, “the molecules.”

  We rolled onto Broad Street, and I raised my face to see a series of large hardwood cages, silvering and flaking in the sun. Within them, slaves sat or paced or rested their sun-sore faces against the bars. The ground at their feet was strewn with cast-off clothes and their own horrid waste, and drifting slowly by we could smell the obscene yellow reek of it.

  Mister Philip did not ask about them. But I knew these to be runaways. The house slaves had often mentioned this makeshift street prison with a dark pleasure at having witnessed it. No man would raise his face, and I was relieved to catch no one’s eye. I stared at a short, thickly built man, his muscles draped in stained rags. His face was expressionless, as though he had outlived his urges, or lost the very memory of desire. He might yet be retrieved by his master, and maimed, and allowed to live.

  I flattened my palm against the sun-warmed pane, a dark apparition of a boy gliding by in his fine service linens.

  “Such a dreary place,” said Mister Philip, yawning against his fist. “I cannot imagine how you tolerate it.”

  * * *

  —

  I COULD NOT have described him so then, but Mister Philip was merely a man of his class, nothing more. His great passions were not passions but distractions; one day was but a bridge to the next. He took in the world with a mild dissatisfaction, for the world was of little consequence.

  He was often, it is true, in a grey, grey mood. On these days he could be silent for hours, as if mulling over a problem of exquisite difficulty. He liked to walk the scrub hills with Titch on our collecting expeditions, but he would bring a shotgun, and attempt to hunt as we went. This shotgun was a source of some teasing from Titch, as Mister Philip took much finer care of it than even his own appearance. In dress he was expensive but hastily tossed together, always some button or string dangling. His gun and his stomach were his chief obsessions, and in the nurturing of these he was fanatical. He had little hunger but much appetite, and was thoughtful but decisive in his requests for dishes. He would eat fried plantain and sweet potatoes by the pound, would graze on salted cod and turtle stew. He ate cassava topped with raw oysters, marlin eyes stewed in hollandaise. He devoured glass after glass of mobby, bowl upon bowl of custards. In the mornings he slept late; in the afternoons he would be found slumped in a cane rocking chair on the verandah of our quarters, a lemon water in his hand. He spoke little to me, beyond soft commands. But one day, as I sketched alongside Titch before a dish of Scotch bonnet snails, he glimpsed my drawing and, grunting, took the paper from me, holding it out in amazement.

  “You have seen this, cousin?” he said.

  Titch glanced up, smiling. “Washington has a rare gift, does he not?”

  Mister Philip shook his head. “You have put ideas in a slave’s head, Christopher. You should be more careful. No good ever came of it.”

  “You sound like Erasmus.”

  “I have read my Gibbon. You would do well to read it again.”

  Titch frowned. “The Romans did not collapse because their slaves learned to draw.”

  Mister Philip returned the paper to me. “Everything begins somewhere.”

  Despite his general mildness, I feared him, of course. He wandered the halls of Titch’s residence with the lost expression of a ghost, his exquisite frock coats straining across his chest, the heat plastering his hair to his forehead.

  “Boy,” he would call softly to me in the evenings as I kneeled polishing the dark mahogany floors with coconut husks. I would freeze in the rope of light from the nearby window, feeling the shudder of his steps crossing the boards. He had never struck me, but the possibility floated between us like a thread of music. “You are not an artist when it comes to food,” he said gently, like a disappointed father. “This night’s chicken was not good. Too much salt, too much ginger, what. You must do better tomorrow.”

  I nodded, even as his dark form retreated.

  As the days passed, however, I began to understand that he would not make blistering use of his fists, as the master would. In fact he seemed, on certain afternoons, to be startled by the sight of the labouring slaves, as if their shadows were a sudden darkness marring the picturesque island holiday he’d imagined for himself. “Well,” he’d say somewhat cheerlessly, sounding strained, “no progress without blood, I suppose.” Then he’d turn rigidly from the sight, as though a chill had entered him, and make his slow, considered way back to Titch’s quarters.

  Over the weeks, my fear of Mister Philip eased, though my wariness of him remained. Some nights, when the eating proved too much, Mister Philip would remove himself to the east-facing sitting room and collapse upon a chaise. On these occasions I would creep into the room with my leads and tattered sketchbook. There he’d lie, his mouth slackening back to reveal a dark-pink gullet, wheezing out the smell of sweet milk. And I would begin to draw his form, starting with the ferocious roots of his toes, stockingless and gnarled on the rug. Then I would go up, up, ending in the white, chick-like down at his temples.

  These sketches were some of the softest I ever drew. True, I had done technically better ones, ones in which a flower looked so powdery it seemed the paper might break apart at a touch. But these secret etchings of the glutton were strangely vivid, underlit with a tenderness I did not understand. I showed them to no one, Titch least of all.

  Each night in my room I tore them up, burned them piece by piece in the candle’s flame.

  9

  AND SO THE WEEKS passed much as they had before, except that we had among us an unending hunger in the form of a living man. The master finally returned from his business across the island, but he came back ill and shivering, and shut himself away at Wilde Hall. When his newly arrived cousin and his brother came to call, they were turned gently away by Gaius. There were rumours of putrid fever, of the master’s possible death. I prayed they were true.

  My nightly readings with Titch continued, broken occasionally now by Mister Philip’s brooding presence, and I struggled still to identify the words without difficulty. I could take only the most rudimentary dictation in the field, but Titch was pleased with my progress. I realized then that he had selected me with only the barest hope of my actual success, and seeing now my abilities, he felt happy, confirmed in his choice.

  The men and women continued their labours on Corvus Peak, hauling the crates and lumber and ropes up the crumbling hill. We would inspect their progress daily, Mister Philip accompanying us in the heat some afternoons, Titch with a satchel of instruments slung over one shoulder, me with our provisions in tow. At last, on an infernal afternoon, all the pieces of the apparatus were collected in their entirety, finally ready for assembly.

  Titch was in excellent spirits. He kept slapping at the back of his neck with a cloth he had brought for the task. “We shall have to celebrate, cousin,” he called breathlessly back to Mister Philip. “Look at this sight.” He turned grinning to me. “Wait until my father hears about this. He swore it could not be done.” He placed a damp hand on my shoulder. “What a great venture lies in wait he
re.”

  “A blasted fool venture,” gasped Mister Philip as he came over the crest.

  There, on the top of Corvus Peak, lay dozens of crates and boxes and coils of rope. There was the bright wicker frame like an enormous toppled hat stand; a heap of odd beige cloth; rolls and rolls of new wood for the gondola, pale as skimmed butter. I crouched in the hot dirt, unslung our bag of provisions, began to massage my shoulder. All had been carefully arranged in a semicircle around the flattest expanse of the peak, and there, in the centre, lay the colossal rubberized mass of the aerostat itself. We had in the previous days carefully examined every inch of its surface, Titch and I, seeking any imperfection or possible leak. I did not, it is true, quite comprehend the nature of his Cloud-cutter, but I understood his directions well enough.

  I shuffled closer to Titch, lowered my voice. “I do not doubt your father would be most impressed.”

  Mister Philip was standing with his hand at his chest, peering around him in mild interest. He mopped at his sweating face. “What do you imagine Erasmus would say to see all this mess?”

  With a tight smile, panting softly, Mister Philip drifted off to examine the view from the western edge of the peak. Titch began pacing, muttering and frowning against the dreadful sun. It was a windless day, and up here the heat felt as clotted as smoke. He touched a black-streaked handkerchief to his glistening brow.