Chameleon in a Mirror

by Ruth Nestvold

  “Despite the obvious dependence on the lie,” Richard continued, “the claim to truth which cannot be true, the author paradoxically bestows on Oroonoko's tribe an idealized innocence —precisely because they are incapable of lying. They present a naive alternative to the representatives of English civilization, including the author herself. I quote: '...these people represented to me an absolute idea of the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin.'“

  Billie nearly jumped out of her seat. That quote had nothing to do with Oroonoko's African tribe: it referred to the Indians of Surinam. How could Richard make such a blatant mistake? Her neighbor caught her eye and winked; in reply, Billie raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  Richard had an amusing, sardonic lecturing style; if Billie hadn't been so mad about what he was saying she might have enjoyed it. As it was, she fumed through the paper. To think she'd come back because of this man. Ok, that wasn't true. She had come back because it was the world she was comfortable with; she had come back for the ease of life; she had come back for the toilets.

  She began to examine the other members of the audience for signs of impatience; glances passed between a number of women and a network was established.

  “So as you can see, the novel's fictional claim to truth can be traced back to a barber's daughter with delusions of grandeur and a good estimation of her reading public. If this seems ironic, then so be it. Literary history is not only a history of the great names, like Daniel Defoe and Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne; it is also a history of the marginal writers, the writers who aimed to please rather than to create great literature.” Billie couldn't help but remember how upset Aphra was over the reception of The Dutch Lover; the Aphra she knew thought of herself as an artist.

  “Every so often a popular writer such as Aphra Behn has come up with an important contribution to literature. As if by chance, the right combination of circumstance and ability has led an occasional minor writer to recognize the tenor of the times and change literary conventions accordingly. Mrs. Behn was in the right place at the right time. While not intentionally innovative, even such casual contributions deserve to be acknowledged by literary history. Thank you.”

  Billie and her neighbor applauded briefly, exchanging a glance and a shrug. At least Richard had admitted Behn made a contribution which deserved to be acknowledged, which was more than Fogerty would have done. But the paper was betrayal, pure and simple.

  Fogerty shook Richard's hand, thanking him, and turned to the audience. “The floor is now open for questions.”

  Billie's hand shot up, the rest of her following so fast her reluctant dissertation advisor had no choice but to acknowledge her. He twisted his eyebrows at her with an expression that said it would have been better for her if she'd stayed seated, but she ignored him. “First of all, I would like to point out that the Bernbaum essay you cite is from 1913,” Billie began.

  “I am quite aware of that,” Richard said testily.

  “And has since been called into question by numerous scholars,” she continued, unheeding. She was a singer, and her voice carried, even without a microphone. “Back in 1977, Maureen Duffy showed that the Aphra Amis whose birth registration Bernbaum identifies with Aphra Behn died a few days after her birth.”

  “One of her feminist biographers?” Richard asked, the tone of his voice communicating to his audience what they should think of a feminist biography.

  Billie ignored the question — he knew perfectly well who Duffy was. “I would also like to draw your attention to a textual error you made in your discussion of deception and truth. In the quote you cited, 'the first state of innocence' refers to the Indians of Surinam and not Oroonoko's tribe in Africa.”

  “Does it really?” Richard asked.

  Billie could have punched him. He was deliberately trying to make her look the fool. “Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of the book with me to prove it.”

  “I do,” another woman in the audience volunteered, and stood up to read the passage. Billie gave her a grateful grin across the lecture hall and sat down again.

  In the face of the textual evidence, Richard was forced to make a concession. “Thank you, I'll change that. But whether the innocence is personified by the Indians or the Africans makes no difference to my argument. What is important here is that Behn pretends she is telling the truth when it is obvious the story is a fabrication — a very novelistic strategy — while at the same time she equates lying with sin in her description of the Africans. I mean Indians. Despite what a number of recent scholars have contended, it is imminently clear from the exaggerations of the text that Behn was never in Surinam: she used claims to veracity to justify her tall tales, even to justify her own biography in the novel, her false profession of gentility, for example.”

  “But we don't know for a fact she's lying,” Billie threw in. She could have kicked herself for not getting any more information out of Aphra during the time she was in the past. Which now seemed much farther away than only a few hours. She was back in her own familiar world, and the world of brassy decorations and Restoration rakes was fading fast. She would have to find out something about Aphra to prove ... what? What could she possibly uncover that would have an effect on Aphra's literary reputation? Even if she could get some information establishing that Aphra was not biographically a charlatan, would the gray men in their gray suits really stop considering her a literary charlatan? Probably not. They would only revert to the typical argument that women's writing was autobiographical rather than imaginative. The creative use of autobiography was out of the question — that might mean that a woman would have to be considered one of the early innovative forces of the novel as we know it, seriously disturbing the hierarchy of Defoe, Richardson, Fielding and Sterne.

  Richard just bestowed his charming smile on her again and took another question.

  When the discussion was over and the audience got up with a collective sigh of relief, Billie's neighbor gave her a hearty handshake. “Bravo,” she said. “I would have liked to say something myself, but I'm not a literary scholar.” She leaned forward and whispered in Billie's ear, “What rot!”

  A moment earlier, Billie had felt like exploding; now, she chuckled in relief. She still felt betrayed, personally as well as academically, but at least she had an ally.

  “By the way, I'm Aileen McCarthy.”

  “Oh,” Billie exclaimed, her eyes lighting up in recognition. “You're the plenary speaker on Sunday, right? The historian giving the lecture on life in Kent during Cromwell?” Aileen nodded. “I'm Billie Armstrong, a graduate student here.”

  “Are you giving a paper in one of the workshops?” Billie shook her head. “No wonder,” Aileen continued. “I wish I'd known what I was getting into before I came. But who would guess that a symposium on Aphra Behn would boil down to defensive male posturing?”

  “Right.” Of course, Billie had wanted to participate, but Aileen made her glad she wasn't in the program.

  Aileen shook her head. “I hope this kind of sloppy research isn't standard for your discipline. Did the man even read Oroonoko?”

  “Oh, he read it all right. We discussed it.”

  Aileen looked at her sharply. “You know him?”

  Billie pressed her eyelids shut with thumb and forefinger. “Yeah. We live together.”

  “Uh ... as in roommates?”

  She lowered her hand and looked up again. “A bit more than that. But let's not go there right now, okay?”

  There was a moment of shocked silence, but then Aileen let out a ringing laugh that reminded Billie of Aphra. Richard paused in his handshaking and looked straight over at them. Billie stared back deliberately.

  They left their seats to merge with the press of people in the aisles. “You know, I think the young man who just gave that paper deserves an answer, don't you?” Aileen said.

  Billie shrugged. “Probably. But I wouldn't know how. Richard has the support of the department head.”


  “And I have a speaking slot on Sunday,” Aileen said with an angelic smile. “I have the feeling I was engaged as the token woman.”

  “I think you were.”

  “All the more reason to cry foul. Would you perhaps be interested in helping me rewrite the paper I was going to give?”

  Billie stopped in her tracks and gazed at the professor. “I — but I'm not a historian.”

  “Precisely. If I want to shift the emphasis of my paper a bit, I'll need the assistance of a literary scholar.”

  “If you really want me to, I'd be more than happy to help.”

  “Then we have a deal?” Aileen asked, extending her hand.

  Billie took it, and they shook to seal their partnership. “You're on.” She might well be committing academic suicide, but at this moment, she didn't care. She was too angry.

  They exchanged cell phone numbers and continued on to the open doors of the lecture hall. “How much truth do you think there is in Oroonoko?” Aileen asked thoughtfully.

  “I don't know about the plot, but I'm convinced Behn was talking about a place she knew. She was afraid of being called an American, after all.”

  “Was she really?” Aileen looked up at Billie, smiling. “You don't look as if you would be afraid of anyone calling you that.”

  “Oh, I was once,” Billie replied. “But not anymore.”

  11

  ...it is there eternal spring, always the very months of April, May, and June; the shades are perpetual, the trees bearing at once all degrees of leaves, and fruit, from blooming buds to ripe autumn: groves of oranges, lemons, citrons, figs, nutmegs, and noble aromatics, continually bearing their fragrances: the trees appearing all like nosegays, adorned with flowers of different kinds; some are all white, some purple, some scarlet, some blue, some yellow; bearing at the same time ripe fruit, and blooming young, or producing every day new.

  Aphra Behn, Oroonoko

  * * *

  Off the coast of Barbados, 1663

  * * *

  In the summer of 1663, Aphra Johnson took a slow boat to the New World — nine weeks from England to Surinam at the hottest time of the year. She was accompanying her father, or, as many whispered, the dupe who pretended to acknowledge her. The Restoration of the monarchy had reinstated a number of Bartholomew Johnson's influential friends along with it, providing him with an administrative appointment in the British colony of Surinam. To improve the family fortunes, Johnson took the position — and ended up in oilcloth.

  As Bartholomew Johnson's body was lowered into the waves of the Atlantic, Captain Wright read a few words from the Bible and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Aphra, standing between her mother and Lord Willoughby, cried openly. The captain looked up from the holy book and sent an admiring glance and a few less than holy thoughts her way, thoughts particularly inappropriate to a funeral. Aphra Johnson might be past her prime, already over twenty, but she was still a fine figure of a woman.

  Past her prime and now without a protector. Lord Willoughby certainly couldn't be expected to take on that role; he had problems enough in the colonies and too many legitimate commitments to worry much about the illegitimate. Which would mean Aphra was fair game. The rules of chivalry only applied to members of the fair sex who had chivalrous family members to defend their honor, and the youth standing near Aphra could hardly be expected to fulfill that role.

  Despite her grief, Aphra was well aware of the captain's glances and what they meant. She was hardly a green girl. She and her older sister and their mother were now women alone en route to a foreign continent with only an adolescent boy for protection: two widows, a spinster and a youth, marginally genteel but nearly penniless. She wondered what Lord Willoughby would do with them. The captain was eying her in that intrusive way men had, but she had escaped the London merchant, and she would escape this ruttish sea captain as well. She would show him she didn't belong in the category of fair game. Aphra took Lord Willoughby's arm.

  It was a calculated gesture. Despite what people whispered, Aphra would not have cried as much about the Lord standing next to her as she was crying now. From Lord Willoughby, Aphra may have had a few shadowy traits of feature and coloring, but from Bartholomew Johnson she had inherited qualities of curiosity and determination that would last her a lifetime. When she was a child and Lord Willoughby came to visit, Aphra was taken up on a lap of generous proportions and given generous gifts. He made her feel special, but the man under oilcloth had led her through the fields of Canterbury and Harbledown and shown her the inner workings of flowers and the life of insects. She called Lord Willoughby by name; she had called Bartholomew Johnson father. Anything that is repeated often enough eventually becomes truth, or the next best thing.

  Aphra watched the body sink into the waters of the Atlantic and dried her tears. There was too much to be done to spend time crying.

  She was on her own.

  Will Scot stood leaning against the stone ramparts of Fort Willoughby, his arms folded in front of his chest. The small harbor town was as full as the fort and the scattering of huts and houses would allow. The Lord Governor's arrival had been expected for over a week, and a slaver was due any day as well. One ship was an event, two a carnival.

  Scot watched as the longboat with the new colonists approached the shore. Either they were Puritans, or something had gone wrong on the voyage: despite the heat, all wore dark clothes. They would soon rid themselves of that foolish habit, or become ill with sunstroke.

  Scot noticed William Byam lean forward as if wanting to see better; he too seemed to have noticed the dark clothing. The right death in the family would serve Byam's purposes well. Willoughby was bringing a new deputy with him to replace the unpopular Byam.

  Scot leaned over to John Treffry and murmured, “Looks as if Byam may be in luck, and we are out of it.”

  Treffry too was watching the boat closely. He shrugged. “'Tis hardly certain a new deputy governor would have been a change for the better.”

  As the longboat drew near, Scot abandoned the support of the wall and stood straighter. If his eyes didn't deceive him, there were no less than three young women aboard. It seemed he had been right about the tragedy at sea: other than the slaves rowing the boat, the only adult male he could discern was Willoughby himself. There were quite a few colonists who would not be happy about that.

  Yes, at least one of those dark-clad figures definitely deserved closer attention, and Scot gave it to her. Her eyes were large and dark and the curls showing underneath her hat bright chestnut, but it was the full lips and determined chin that made the corners of his mouth curl up eagerly.

  She was his, Scot decided, at least if he had any say in it. He grinned.

  “Shall we greet our new citizens?” he suggested, loud enough to include Byam this time. The other two nodded, and the three men approached the single dock of Paramaribo.

  The white stucco and wood houses of Paramaribo reflected the glare of the sun as the longboat pulled up to the dock, a stark contrast to the intense green of the vegetation. The bright colors made Aphra squint; it was so different from the mellow hues of Kent. The sunlight had a different quality here, brutally honest, hiding nothing, drawing colors out and making contours more distinct.

  Their dark clothes sucked in the sun, trapping it in cocoons of heat around their sweating bodies. Aphra had piled her hair high on the top of her head under her hat, but the strands escaping at the back of her neck and her temples were plastered to her skin with sweat. She wiped her forehead with a handkerchief and touched her mother's arm. “We can't possibly stay in mourning long in this heat.” Elizabeth Johnson nodded mutely.

  Aphra was none too impressed by her first glimpse of the colony of Surinam. As a port, Paramaribo was a pretty shabby affair, with only one wharf and few buildings, a small gouge of civilization on the face of the jungle. Several buildings were tall, impressive residences with roofed terraces offering protection from the sun, but most were little more
than shacks. The white houses trembled in the heat and the air smelled of ripe fruit and decaying flowers.

  They came alongside the dock where three men were waiting for them. Gathering her heavy, dark skirts in one hand, Aphra reached her other hand up to a gentleman with a white hat under his arm. As she clambered out of the longboat, a sudden swell almost made her lose her balance, but the hand of the gentleman tightened on hers, and Aphra managed to scramble up.

  “Miss Johnson, I presume,” the stranger said. He had short, fair hair which curled around his ears but left his neck bare.

  Aphra drew herself to her full height, nodding. “And who might you be, sir?”

  The man laughed, a loud, infectious sound, disarming Aphra completely. She smiled and examined him more closely. He had a nose which dominated his face a bit too much for beauty, but the charm of his smile and the frankness of his laugh more than made up for it.

  Lord Willoughby had an irritated look on his face, and Treffry hastened to appease him. “I asked Mr. Scot to come along, my lord. We will all be busy in Paramaribo for several days, and someone must accompany the ladies to Toorarica.”

  At the name Scot, Aphra narrowed her eyes and looked from her new acquaintance to Lord Willoughby and back. If this was Thomas Scot's son ...!

  “They can't stay here in Paramaribo, my lord,” Treffry continued when the Lord Governor didn't answer.

  Scot made Willoughby a mocking bow. “The war is over, my lord. And this is not England.”

  It was Thomas Scot's son, Aphra decided. This laughing stranger was the son of a regicide, one of the chief organizers of the trial and execution of King Charles I — and also a personal enemy of Lord Willoughby's. No wonder the Lord Governor did not look pleased; he had every reason in the world not to trust a Scot. After Cromwell's death, Willoughby had been involved in a plot to reinstate the monarchy, but Thomas Scot had learned of it — from Lady Willoughby — and the plot was foiled. Charles II was finally restored to the throne a year later, and Thomas Scot executed. Lady Willoughby died soon thereafter.