Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [74]
Another young woman walked up the steps chanting, and would not, despite the urging of the auctioneer, quiet down. What language, the boy had never heard. What was she shouting, almost singing to the crowd, no one, probably, could say, except perhaps the other slaves crowded now into the space between the back of the block and the walls of the barracks. The boy could not have ever seen her before, of course, and yet she looked familiar, and when, as sometimes happens when a person stands above a crowd and runs her eyes across their faces, her eyes for a moment met his he recalled the black mermaid who had saved his life, if that is what happened when the undertow pulled him into the waves not so long ago, and as the young woman went on chanting above the calls of the auctioneer the boy wrenched himself from the crowd and ignoring the shouts of his father ran toward the water and when he reached the brackish line of tidal wrack just below the tarry stanchions holding up the pier threw up the contents of his last meal and for a number of minutes retched drily, and in tormenting pain in stomach and bowels.
These people are weak, he shouted to himself in a loud voice in his mind, who but the weak would ever let themselves be caught and bought and sold? I never would. I would escape! I would fight to the death!
This is what I gleaned, this is what I heard, this is what I surmised, this is what I dreamed, this is what I imagine took place, given all, all that I have learned.
His father took another view.
“If you keep people,” he often said to Jonathan, “you must sometimes treat them as if they are your own children.”
His father did not like to say “own.” He said “keep” instead, always, even if his son would sometimes call him out on that.
“And treat your own children like slaves?”
“Show me the respect I deserve,” his father said. “Do not speak to me in that rough manner. You are a gentleman, raised by a gentleman.”
“Yes, sir, I am sorry,” his son said. “I do apologize.”
That was how it went back and forth between them, father and son, patriarch and heir apparent.
As to his relations with his mother, they were nothing. In his dark heart women were nothing to him, slave women were nothing, white women, Jewish women, a little better than nothing. Whatever happened between the gods as they discussed his fate, out of it came a hard bargain!
Oh, what a fate, a fortune to look in the eye, to have such a grandfather as this!
Chapter Thirty
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The Second Sabbath
Any daydreams I might have called up about Anna and any plans I might have had in mind about Miriam fled like wisps of fog at the first appearance of morning sun when on the Gentile Sabbath as I lay in bed listening to the birdsong outside my window there came a knock on my door.
“Yes?”
“Massa?”
Her voice! It chilled me as sharply as a pitcher of cold water dashed across my chest!
And at the same time heated me up!
“Massa Jonathan sends some trousers for you, sir.”
“Leave them outside the door,” I said, wary of showing my eagerness for seeing her. I was in an excited state all of a sudden (again, again!), and it wasn’t something of which I was proud.
“Yes, sir,” Liza said, but immediately opened the door and entered anyway, a broad smirk on her face. She tossed a pair of heavy trousers onto the foot of the bed and stood there looking beautiful in her green eyes and white smock.
“You must not keep on doing this. You must respect my privacy, Liza. Please leave the room so that I can dress.”
“These are for you, sir, from Massa Jonathan,” she said. “For your hunting trip today.”
“It’s true, I did not pack for hunting in the woods,” I said. “Thank you, Liza. Now please leave me.”
She stood a moment, lingering as she did the morning before, and