Washington Black: A Novel

by Esi Edugyan

  “You are disgusted to hear how awful I was,” said Titch. “As you should be.” He looked at me, his face lost in the dark.

  I glanced at him, silent.

  “We were so cruel to him.”

  I looked at the dusty floor some moments. “What is the truth of any life, Titch? I doubt even the man who lives it can say.” I raised my face. “You cannot know the true nature of another’s suffering.”

  “No. But you can try your damnedest not to worsen it.”

  We fell silent. Then, with little sound, I rose to my feet. Titch did not glance up. I went towards him and, very slowly, very gently, placed a soft hand on his shoulder.

  * * *

  —

  WIND BATTERED the house. I stepped away, letting my hand drop. Titch sat silent some moments. We both said nothing. Finally he rose and, setting his cup on a tower of books piled at the window, went and lay down to sleep beside the boy. I sat quietly there in the dark, my mind blank, empty. Within minutes Titch was asleep, breathing exhaustedly. In the outer dark, the sand hissed against the windows like human whispers.

  I thought I could hear Tanna stirring in the other room, but then I knew it was only the wind. I raised myself up to a crouch. The windows held a soft orange glow, as if the sun were trying to rise through the roar of sand. I watched shadows beat like black birds at the panes. There came a long howl from the east, and then a clicking, as though pebbles had been thrown at the glass.

  How astonishing to have discovered Titch here, among these meagre possessions, his only companion the boy. His guilt was nothing to do with me—all these years I had lain easy on his conscience. But what did it matter anymore. He had suffered other sorrows. And these wounds had arrested him in boyhood, in a single draining urge to re-create our years at Faith, despite their brutality. Someone else might have looked upon his life here and seen only how different it was from all that had come before. I saw only what remained the same: the scattered furniture, as if no real home could ever be made here; the mess of instruments that would only measure and never draw a single conclusion; the friendship with a boy who, in days, months, years, would find himself abandoned in a place so far from where he had begun that he’d hardly recognize himself, would struggle to build a second life. I imagined the boy nameless and afraid, clawing his way through a world of ice.

  There came a sound from the other room, and I thought I heard Tanna rising, her soft, girlish steps. I stilled myself, waiting for her to come through the doorway, but she never arrived. At the window I could see the great sky emptying, as though it could no longer sustain anything—no bird, no cloud.

  Through the badly nailed boards of the door a hissing threaded in like voices. Exhausted, I rose unthinkingly to my feet. I pressed my palm to the door, felt its vibrations. And then I was dragging it open, so that the grand yellow air rose before me, buzzing. A tree’s branch whipped past, splintered apart against the harsh stone house. The wind was furious, rasping and singing over the pale ground, whipping sprays of sand into the whitening east. There was no trace of human presence anywhere, neither trail nor footstep. It was so cold I expected to see my breath.

  I stepped out onto the threshold, the sand stinging me, blinding my eyes. Behind me I thought I heard Tanna call my name, but I did not turn, could not take my gaze from the orange blur of the horizon. I gripped my arms about myself, went a few steps forward. The wind across my forehead was like a living thing.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks are due to Ellen Levine at Trident Media, Patrick Crean and Iris Tupholme at HarperCollins, Rebecca Gray and Hannah Westland at Serpent’s Tail, Diana Miller at Alfred A. Knopf, John Sweet, Peter Straus at RCW, Noelle Zitzer and the Athabasca Writer-in-Residence Program.

  And thank you also to Peggy and Bob Price, Jacqueline Baker, Jeff Mireau, the Edugyans, and especially to Steven Price, my dearest partner in this madness.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ESI EDUGYAN is the author of the novels The Second Life of Samuel Tyne and Half-Blood Blues, which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Orange Prize. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

  An A. A. Knopf Reading Group Guide

  Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

  The discussion questions and suggested reading that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of Washington Black, the sprawling, emotionally piercing odyssey of a young boy who escapes slavery in Barbados and goes on to discover the true meaning of freedom, beyond the bounds of the only world he has ever known.

  Discussion Questions

  Big Kit tells Washington that “If you dead, you wake up again in your homeland. You wake up free.” How does this line resonate at the end of the book, in the final moments as Wash asks about Dahomey and looks out into the horizon?

  Why do you think Big Kit didn’t tell Wash that she was his mother? Do you think he would have responded to Titch’s offer differently had he known? How might his life have been different?

  Another secret kept in the novel is when Philip delays giving Titch the news of his father’s death—which turns out not to be true. How does this lie compare to Big Kit’s? How is Titch’s response different from Wash’s?

  Wash carries distinctive scars on his face, and the various people he meets react in different ways to them. For example, here is one encounter: “He reached out and touched the burnt half of my face, drawing his rough hand sharply back almost at once, as if scorched. I was too surprised to move. I stood stunned by the feel of his fingers. His touch had been cool, and gentle, and somehow, though I would never have thought it, filled with an impossible sadness.” Discuss the kinds of scars the characters sustain in the novel, both visible and invisible.

  Tanna tells Wash, “You are like an interruption in a novel, Wash. The agent that sets things off course. Like a hailstorm. Or a wedding.” How does this metaphor manifest in literal and symbolic ways throughout Wash’s journeys?

  Wash’s final meeting with Titch calls into question Titch’s motives for educating him. Wash accuses Titch of not really treating him as more than a slave. What is Wash’s benchmark for love and trust? Do Big Kit and Tanna fill the holes in his life that send him on an “erratic pursuit of an unanswerable truth [and] calm my sense of rootlessness—solve the chaos of my origins”?

  Describe Wash and Tanna’s relationship. What qualities and life experiences do they share that draw them together? What differences create a gulf between them?

  How is Wash sometimes manipulated by those around him? Who would you say is the worst offender? As one example, consider the bounty Erasmus puts on his head. Do you believe Titch’s remark that it was more a way to get back at Titch than a desire to find Wash?

  What does it mean to be a “master” in this time period and for these characters? Recall Wash’s first impression of Philip as “the oddity of a body used for nothing but satisfying urges, bloated and ethereal as sea foam, as if it might break apart. He smelled of molasses and salted cod, and of the fine sweetness of mangoes in the hot season.”

  Part of what Titch first notices in Wash is an uncanny gift for drawing. How does the ability to observe and record run through the novel as a motif? What becomes, as Titch says, “worthy of observation”?

  What draws Wash to the beauty of the octopus? What does it mean for him, a former slave, to capture it and other specimens for study and display, even with the motive of showing people that creatures they thought were “nightmarish…were in fact beautiful and nothing to fear”?

  Titch’s confession about how he treated Philip as a boy reveals a new side of him to Wash. Does this revelation lead you to feel more or less compassion toward him? Does it complicate his relat
ionship with Wash?

  The novel is set between 1830 and 1836 and takes place on multiple continents. How are the larger global and political tremors shaking the world during this time felt through the characters? For example, Titch is described as an Abolitionist and often derided for it. How does this aspect of his worldview affect the way he behaves? What about your perceptions of him as a character?

  Today in 2018, there are many groups suffering under the oppression of cruel governments and leaders. How might a narrative of their experiences compare to Wash’s? How are today’s oppressed being given or denied a voice?

  Suggested further reading

  Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

  Lisa Ko, The Leavers

  Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

  Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

  Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature

  Jessie Burton, The Miniaturist

  Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

  Henry Louis Gates (ed.), The Classic Slave Narratives

  Toni Morrison, Beloved

  Zora Neale Hurston, Baracoon

  Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

  Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

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