Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [123]
“Now,” she said, and touched me as she stood up and led me to the large porcelain tub in the far corner of the room into which the slave-boys poured the water.
I climbed in, flinching at the heat, and then relaxing into it.
I shut my eyes, and when I opened them again Liza had already removed her cambric, and then her skirt and stood before me, a living sculpture in sandstone, before climbing into the tub alongside me.
“The road was dusty,” I said as she laved me with a cloth.
“Your dust I can wash away,” she said.
“I’ll wash you,” I said.
“Not this you can’t wash off,” she said, holding her darker arm next to mine.
“Well, you can’t wash the Jew out of me, either.”
“That is not my worry. I am not even a Jew. Just a Jew-slave.”
“You’re my slave,” I said, taking her liquid body in my liquid arms.
“Uh-uh,” she said, “I belong…”
“Hush,” I said, kissing her wet lips with mine.
“Naw,” she said, just after, “I was saying, in my heart? I don’t belong to anyone.”
I pulled back my arms and picked up the cloth and began daubing at her breasts.
“And these are not mine?”
“No,” she said.
“To whom do they belong?”
“In my heart?”
“In your heart.”
“Nobody.”
“And this?” I said, dabbing the cloth at the precious place between her legs.
“Nobody,” she said.
“I wish I was nobody,” I said.
“What?” she said, and then she laughed, and we embraced again, and then stood up, splashing water everywhere, as we stepped out of the tub and rubbed each other down with towel cloths before rushing to the bed.
***
What followed I cannot say except that you can imagine it, the naïve boy and the wounded slave girl, what transformations of love they made.
And the talk that followed.
“Nate,” Liza said in a whisper, her warm words in my ear. “What if you could buy me? Would you buy me?”
“I have already thought about that,” I said. “Indeed, I would. That way we would never be apart. I will make an offer to uncle as soon as we return.”
“But you have to understand he will refuse. Your cousin…will force him to refuse.”
“What interest does he have in keeping you?”
“He is a…stubborn man. He will not give me up, not to you.”
I accepted her view as truth.
“Liza,” I said, “here is what I will do,” making a great revelation to myself as well as her. “When I return to New York I will advise my father to buy into the plantation. That is why he sent me, to advise him on this question. This means I will own you after all. And once I own you, I will set you free.”
“Nate, the family will never agree to that. They would rather lose the plantation rather than set me free.”
“They are mad, then. Why would they take such a course?”
Liza shook her head, but remained silent.
At that point I should have asked another question. But instead I became caught up in the intrigue of the moment.
“Then I will steal you,” I said. “What if I bought us passage on a ship north and we left from here next week?”
“We could not,” she said, engaged again in our speculations. “You must have papers for your slaves. A bill of sale.”
“I…” I took a deep breath. “I could forge one.”
“Do you even know how to begin such a thing, Nate?”
“No,” I said. “But I can find out.”
“And if you owned me you would truly set me free?”
“We would be free souls together, Liza. I swear.”
She rolled close to me, and more time went by.
After what seemed like some hours I consulted my watch, only to find that it had stopped, for lack of winding.
Chapter Fifty-two
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A Visitor (1)
You have got a cast like a nigger,” my cousin said to me on our return while Liza was climbing down from the carriage.
I looked over at her but she gave no impression that she had heard what he said.
“I bathed this morning, but now I have to bathe all over again.”
“Did she help you with your bath?” my cousin said, with Liza still within earshot. He did not give me a chance to reply before adding, “And now that blush on you makes you look even more nigger-like. Or maybe like a redskin. Or a Jew!”
“You don’t have to speak that way, Cousin,”