Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [43]
Now do not take this in the wrong way. New York had its own olfactory wonders, from the tarry beams on the river piers to the bittersweet smell of wood burning in fireplaces on the first cold autumn morning. And imagine crossing the Spuyten Duyvil into the Bronx farmlands without feeling yourself pushing aside a curtain of green wind. And the meaty stench of the horse apples in the gutters or the sweet stink of a dying dog in the roadway, its entrails laid open to the sun. Or if you would stand at the foot of our Battery and breathe in the perfect salt-sea sting of the incoming ocean tide, the breeze that carried it parting your hair toward the land behind you, you know the varied pleasures of our New York air.
But this curtain of oxygen—oh, I also learned my chemistry with master Halevi—in which I lay entangled weighed everything and nothing and like the depths of the ocean which I have heard has made a comfortable resting place for sailors who give up fighting sleep beneath the waves it pressed me to the bed—while at the same time allowed a medium in which my mind could take flight. Wasn’t this how it might have been—and would be—if I had—when I would—set sail for Europe on my tour?
In a sleep-drenched state, picturing large thunderheads sailing toward us from the south, their stately top-heavy presences looming like figures from a dream, watching over me, smiling faces painted on their upfurling undersides, eyes winking, mouths wide in laughter, and from a long way away over the heaving water the boom and belch of their voices, disconnected from their bodies but by the breadth and length of their thunderous rolls making clear their relation to the soaring clouds—and at my elbow, a girl, just my age, her hair flowing the wind off the waves, one hand pressed tightly on my arm, the other holding to the rail—not-Miriam—and the wind snatches away my hat and we laugh as we watch it flop and roll into the ocean and the girl, not-Miriam, turns to me, face uplifted, and says my name—
A knock at my door.
“Yes?”
I sat up, still half-drowsy, and after a blinking moment, swung my feet to the floor.
“Massa Pereira?”
A woman’s voice, sultry and soft, inviting, yet with a certain tone of servitude.
“Just a moment.”
I stood up and pulled my nightshirt over my head. As I was doing so I heard the door open and I immediately covered myself with the shirt.
There was the slave girl, standing in the doorway, looking at the floor.
“Excuse me,” I began, “do you always walk in on a man in his room?”
“I’m sorry, Massa Pereira, but your uncle said it was urgent. He would like to speak with you in the sunroom.”
She stood there, as if waiting for my reply, her eyes still averted.
“You might have waited a moment.”
Now she looked up at me, just a glance, and then down again.
“Yes, sir,” she said, but did not move.
“I thought you were my cousin’s wife.”
She looked up at me, and then down again.
“Miss Rebecca,” she said, “yes, massa. No, I am not.”
Again, I caught the tiniest flicker in her eye.
“No, no, of course I know that. I meant that I thought it was she who was knocking.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“And your name is…?”
“Liza, sir.”
“Liza, I want to tell you how much I admire the clarity of your speech.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“You have no slave accent.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Has my cousin’s wife tutored you in speech as well as reading?”
“She has, sir. And the doctor.”
“The doctor?”
“The doctor who attends us, sir.”
“Well, he has done a very good job.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and I could not help but wonder if that flicker in her eye meant that she was ready to laugh.
***
My uncle waited for me downstairs in the company of the tall young African man, who had driven the carriage in from town.
“This is Isaac,” my uncle introduced him to me as one of the overseers for the plantation.
“We met yesterday, Uncle,” I said. “Isaac drove the carriage from town.”
“Of course,” my uncle said, while Isaac cast an appraising eye on me, as if he were figuring out right then and there the mettle of my branch of the family, which gave me the