Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [146]
“What is that, what is that?” Isaac paced back and forth in the small cabin, unable to settle down and listen.
“‘The fact is, that there was considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration,- a troublesome practice’”—Liza went on reading, with all sorts of troublesome pronunciation and emphases, but read she did nevertheless—“‘but one which custom has rendered necessary to our easy existence; and for some time he lay gasping on a little flock mattress, rather unequally poised between this world and the next: the balance being decidedly in favour of the latter. Now, if, during this brief period, Oliver had been surrounded by careful grandmothers, anxious aunts, experienced nurses, and doctors of profound wisdom, he would most inevitably and indubitably have been killed in no time. There being nobody by, however, but a pauper old woman, who was rendered rather misty by an unwonted allowance of beer; and a parish surgeon who did such matters by contract; Oliver and Nature fought out the point between them. The result was, that, after a few struggles, Oliver breathed, sneezed, and proceeded to advertise to the inmates of the workhouse the fact of a new burden having been imposed upon the parish, by setting up as loud a cry as could reasonably have been expected from a male infant who had not been possessed of that very useful appendage, a voice, for a much longer space of time than three minutes and a quarter…’”
“Who is Nature? What is pauper? Workhouse like a plantation?”
Liza answered his questions as best she could and then continued reading for awhile. When she had finished she shut the book and held it to her chest.
“What is that?” Isaac said again.
Liza opened the book and looked to the small type across from the title page.
“That was London, that is what it was. That was London.”
“How do I know?” Isaac said. “London, what? I never been there and neither have you. So how you know?”
“The words make it happen.”
Isaac, seeming perplexed at first, now took a different tack.
“How you know how to do that? What do you do? You stealing something to do that? Why you keep on doing it?”
Liza took a deep breath and allowed herself a smile.
“Because it makes me free.”
***
Isaac might as well have been wearing chains the way he clanked around in his mixture of anger and resentment. His father was sinking. And whenever he saw the master, his urge to slaughter him and the entire family rose up in his gorge and fire spread through his chest up into his throat.
One day Old Walla-Walla caught him lashing at one of the horses and grabbed his arm.
“What do you think are you doing?” the old man said, holding him in a crushing trap of arms.
Isaac went limp.
He did not know. He was scarcely aware that he had been mistreating the animal. He had just picked up the whip and went at him, in blind fury, in the rush of terrible rage. Damn, damn, damn! Only after the old man stopped him did he hear the animal squealing, hoarsely, in pain. It took hours for them to calm the beast down and treat its wounds.
On another occasion, after a day of watching Liza at some distance at work in and around the house, he turned up at her cabin and found her reading again.
“Hello, Isaac,” she said without looking up.
“More books?”
“Yes.”
“This one good?”
Now she looked at him.
“I am not sure. It is very hard for me to understand.”
“Read to me,” he said, lowering himself onto the pallet next to her.
She gave him a half-smile, and began to read.
Every one loved Elizabeth. The passionate and almost reverential attachment with which all regarded her became, while I shared it, my pride and my delight.
“This about love,” Isaac said.
Liza nodded, and kept on reading.
On the evening previous to her being brought to my home, my mother had said playfully—“I have a pretty present for my Victor—to-morrow