Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [38]
“…we thank you for the fruit of thy fields.”
“‘For our daily bread,’” Jonathan encouraged him.
“And for the bread of our table.”
“No Hebrew?” I said, turning to Rebecca.
“We are Reformed here,” she said. “Which means we have reformed our prayers.”
“We sound like Gentiles,” I said.
“At home do you speak Hebrew?”
“No,” I shook my head. “But I always imagine all other Jews as more religious than me.”
Abraham squinted at me across the table, wondering what it was I could be talking about and if it made any sense for him to listen well.
Through all this banter we ate and drank, and I watched the servants move to and fro through the room. I thought at one point that I might have caught a glimpse of the slender slave girl on the other side of the doorway, but when I looked again she was gone, if she had been there at all.
After supper we men retired to the porch—what they called here a “veranda”—and my uncle offered port and cigars to me and Jonathan. The smoke kept the insects at bay and we talked a while about matters broad and consequential and narrow and of no matter while imbibing the rich imported liquor.
“The Indians first smoked these,” my uncle said, “as I understand it, as a form of prayer. They puffed on these and it made a rope of smoke that rose from their lips to the nostrils of their gods.”
“Smoke instead of prayers?” I said.
“Smart boy,” my uncle said. “Yes, you might put it that way.”
A faint recollection, wispier than smoke, drifted into my memory.
“My dear mother, may she rest in peace,” I said, “lighted candles every Sabbath. I still remember that.”
“Same principle,” my uncle said. “She was a lovely woman. I met her only once, when I traveled up to New York on business and stayed with you.”
“I don’t remember that,” I said.
“You were the smallest of children then.”
“But I would have remembered.”
My uncle laughed and his bulky belly and arms and neck shook with his laughter.
“Because of my girth, no doubt, you think. But I was a lesser man back then. No bulkier than slender Jonathan here.”
“And so I have something to aspire to then, father?” my cousin said, sipping from his cup.
“You do, indeed, sir,” my uncle said.
We puffed out our smoke for a while longer, while the butler appeared with a bottle of port.
“Black Jack,” my uncle said, “this is my nephew, here from New York to learn the ways of running a plantation.”
I made to shake hands with the man but he backed a step away.
Alone then, we sipped the wine and talked.
“I’d like to hear all the news about my brother,” my uncle said.
I made a summary for him of all, or most, that had happened in the past year—telling mostly the story of our business.
“And so he is well?”
“He is, sir.”
“And your late mother’s sister? How is she faring?”
He paused in thought, while I idly studied the shadow of the candle flickering across his broad face. In and out of the light his face shifted, looking first younger, than old, younger, old.
“She is well, sir,” I replied, unhappy at the thought of Aunt Isabelle, whose person had not entered my conscious thoughts for a good long while.
“You say your father has not remarried.”
I shook my head.
“And he has no thought about marrying Isabelle? Isn’t that her name?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
My uncle tilted his large head to one side, then the other.
“It is an ancient custom of our people, you may recall, when a man becomes a widower to marry the sister of his late wife.”
The thought gave me the fearful chills.
“He has not said a word to me about it.”
“You would be the last to hear, I think,” my uncle said. “But I know men and I know my brother. Your visit here has much to do with business, but it does also give your father some time alone with Isabelle.”
It occurred to me with a shudder in my blood that all of this, my mission, my journey, might all have been a ruse constructed by my father, and then I brushed the thought aside and washed down some of my worry with more port. Where was the slave girl? Where was she?
“But it is business that brings me here,” I said, daring myself to squarely