Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [81]
We believe that those who sleep in the dust will awake, and
All who have died will return to life.
I studied this yet again, finding this talk about death and resurrection rather odd for the Jews, since in New York this subject never arose. And then remembering something I had put aside while I had been unpacking I went to my bag and saw at the bottom the rumpled New York news sheet that I had used to wrap my mother’s portrait.
I unfolded the sheet, held it up to my nose to catch an inky whiff of the city I had only recently left but which already seemed so distant that this artifact might have come from the ruins of some ancient exotic capital. The headlines I ignored—despite all of my old teacher Halevi’s promptings, I was never much one for news—but by the flickering light of the candle I read a poem that the editors in their wisdom had chosen to publish.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I
pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume
of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping,
suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping
at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered,
“tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more…
This poem kept me rapt with the spirit of it, and a bit on the edge of nervousness after hearing of its speaker’s encounter with the harbinger of darkness and death.
Open here I flung the shutter. When,
With many a flirt and flutter
In there stepped a stately Raven of the
Saintly days of yore…
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!
Prophet still, if bird or devil!…
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—
Tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
All this knocking, rapping, tapping—and the apparition of that bird—set me to walking about my room—the knocking, rapping, tapping—and even after I put out the candle and climbed into the bed it kept my mind alert.
Knocking—rapping—tapping…
Try as I might I could not find sleep. Instead I imagined my father in his office—the king in his counting house—going over the books, counting and measuring shipments from Samarkand, barrels from Italy and China, gems from the volcanoes of Borneo—and then his homecoming each evening, when Aunt Isabelle would greet him at the door, the perfect housekeeper (assisted of course by Marzy). And they would take their supper and sip a glass of wine and talk about the business of the day.
Oh, how these thoughts drew in me a such a longing to be home I nearly cried out in the dark!
Slaves and dogs and fish and sun, birds and pistols! Wishing to imagine such things no further, eventually I fell into a troubled sleep. After what I could surmise as having been a short while, I awoke (in my dream?) to find myself standing before a black-winged creature with the head of snake and the body of a cat.
A deep-voiced “Sir!” from out of the dark. I sat up with a start.
“It’s Black Jack, massa.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I heard you cry out, massa. Are you all right?”
He stood there in the room, as much a part of the dark as he was of what little light there was from a faint moon glowing outside the window.
“I cried out loud?”
“You did, massa,” he said. “May I help?”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “I was reading. I was dreaming. Black Jack, something to drink, please? Something soothing…”
“Of course, massa,” he said. “I thought you might want something like that.” And with that he faded away into the darkness near the door. I could hear his footsteps down the hall, and fainter still on the stairs. Oh, houses at night! How they change from the places we inhabit during the day, as if when the sun goes down and the moon comes up we live in more than one plane at a time. I lay in the dark thinking about this and before I knew it I heard footsteps coming back up the stairs. A light tapping (tapping, tapping) at the door.
“Come in, Black Jack,” I said.
I felt the light breeze as the door opened and the figure entered