Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [114]
“I do not want you to worry,” she went on. “We are going to find a way.”
“Yes, yes,” he responded. “I am merely surprised, and distraught. Nothing more. But that is sufficient, is it not?” He pulled at his collar. “The heat, the heat. Do you suffer too much from this damnable heat, nephew?”
I would have spoken, if I had something else to say. But my cousin put in his opinion.
“Father,” Jonathan said. “He mentioned nothing of the heat.”
“Then it is other things. The isolation. Sir?” He pointed a finger at me. “I promise you more of town. You are a city person, you need more of it to survive. So!” He patted the palm of his hand against the table. “Yes, yes, we all go to town once a week, at least, to dinners, to the synagogue, of course. And on that subject, Rebecca, dear daughter-in-law, please tell your cousin by marriage what you were recently telling me.”
Rebecca, who remained silent throughout these exchanges, touched the tip of her napkin to her lips and said, “Cousin Nathaniel, I was hoping that you would join me in the conduct of my work with the slaves.”
“Perfect,” my uncle said, “perfect, perfect, perfect. You, sir, will have a hand in the making of citizens out of the stuff of slaves.”
“It is certainly an admirable project,” I could not help but say.
“Then you will consider staying to work on it?”
“I will consider it, yes,” I said, feeling myself turn on a pivot.
“An admirable idea,” my cousin said. “You can only help the poor slaves by staying.”
“I think it sounds just lovely,” my aunt said.
“I’m so glad to hear this,” Rebecca said.
“But dear daughter-in-law, there was something else, was there not?” my uncle said.
“Oh, yes,” Rebecca said, and it was quite odd, because for a moment she appeared to be blushing.
“Nathaniel, you recall my cousin Anna?”
“I do.”
I was trying to be polite, but Rebecca took this as enthusiasm.
“She is a lovely young woman,” my aunt said.
“She seemed quite lovely,” I said.
“Her parents give a lovely spring party every year,” my aunt said.
Rebecca leaned closer to me and said, “We are all wondering, Anna is wondering, I am wondering, if you would come as her guest to this event.”
Black Jack moved in and out of the room, carrying trays, fetching trays, while Precious Sally remained in the doorway, nodding her sage head. Liza, who sometimes helped with the preparation of meals, was nowhere to be seen. My growing obsession with her seemed suddenly vile and ignorant and unjust. Rebecca’s idea was quite tempting. This slavery question has been vexing me so. My sentiments have me spinning around and around and around so that I am dizzy with indecision. In how many ways could the world pull a young fellow like me? I supposed that I was soon going to find out.
Chapter Forty-eight
________________________
Into the Maelstrom
The night came and again I retired early, abjuring the after-dinner talk with the family. My thoughts were topsy-turvy, jogging to and fro. Be that as it may, as I climbed the stairs to my room, I believed I had finally made up my mind. I knew clearly that I had to leave. I simply could no longer understand how anyone could live under these circumstances, in this fool’s paradise built on the backs of the indentured.
I sat down at the desk and wrote to my father, hoping to have the letter delivered to town the next morning and posted to New York, and as I wrote I found myself imagining that I might even find a ship going north that same tomorrow morning and deliver the letter by my own hand.
And yet I could not, when I put out the candle and lay back on the bed and closed my eyes, find an easy passage to the temporary oblivion of sleep. As much as the problems I turned over in my mind disturbed me they also kept me alert. Back and forth, back and forth I trundled in my mind, as a figure plagued by madness might shift from one point on stage to another and back again, and back again.
I reignited the lamp and by the steady flame in the still air read some pages of a book from my uncle