The Bride of Texas, page 32
“Read?” smirked Sarah. “That I want to see.”
Benjamin licked his lips. “Me too!”
She emptied his chamber-pot, but massa read his books to himself. He didn’t read a lot. Mostly he sat in his armchair staring out the window. And he drank a lot. She brought him cognac and carried out the empty bottles. Once a week Dr. Webber came from Austin to examine his stump. The wound was still slightly infected and she changed his dressing twice a day, bathed the stump in a cleansing solution, and rubbed ointment on it. She felt sorry for young massa but she never said anything, because he never spoke to her. He would just look at her, watch her nursing his wound, follow her with his eyes as she walked across the room. She was aware of his attention. She knew that he watched her carrying out the dirty bandages, that he watched her from the window as she walked among the trees with a basket of apricots from the orchard. She watched him, too. She would stand by the dining-room window as he hobbled across the lawn swinging on his crutches like a pendulum, a slender French cigar clenched between his teeth. Then he stopped using the chamber-pot. She thought nothing of it until the day he began talking to her. She had come in with his cognac and caught him staring at a picture. He quickly stuck it in the drawer of his nightstand and let her pour him some cognac. As she was gathering up the coffee service she saw him looking at her more intently than usual. The next morning she came to change the bedsheets when he was downstairs, and she opened the drawer. The picture was there, in an ebony frame, face down. She turned it over and was startled. Her first impression was that the picture was of her. Instead of a black dress and starched apron, however, the woman wore a gown like the ones the ladies used to wear when the Ribordeaux held a ball. The complexion of the skin in the décolletage was a bit lighter than hers, but not much. She stared at the picture and lost track of time.
“That’s not you,” she heard a voice from the door saying. She looked up, unperturbed.
“Forgive me, Massa Étienne. The drawer was open —”
“Don’t lie,” he said, and swung into the bedroom on his crutches.
She put the picture back in the nightstand, but before she could shut the drawer he said, “Give it here!” He sat down in the armchair, rested the crutches against the armrests, and stared at the portrait. “Come over here!” She came nearer. “Closer,” he said. “I want to take a good look.”
She leaned over the chair, and he held the picture close to her face.
“This could be you if you weren’t black,” he said. “As a matter of fact, you’re not even that black. Maybe she wasn’t completely white. I couldn’t have brought her to Texas.”
Much later, he told her that the woman’s name was Doña Jorge de Castiello and that her colour came not from the sun of Southern Spain — because since she was five she’d lived in Paris, where her father was a diplomat — but from the Moorish blood in her veins. She could hardly become a Texas bride. Besides, she had lost interest when he lost his leg, even though it was on account of her.
“Who is she?” Dinah asked.
“A countess.”
“Can a Negro woman be a countess in Europe?”
He didn’t reply. She knew that the idea of a Negro countess violated the hypotheses that existed as absolute truths over glasses of bourbon and cigar smoke. “Come up after supper,” he said.
She knew what that meant.
Reading aloud from French romances.
That evening, a moon hung over the blossoming cotton-fields like an etching illustrating the French novels Mademoiselle de Ribordeaux had used to read, tearfully mouthing each syllable. Dinah had read over her shoulder and then, later, borrowed them without permission and reread them by the light falling on the front lawn from the big windows of the master bedroom, where old massa was reading something, though not French romances.
She knew there was nothing she could do. That was just the way it was. Black countesses only existed in Europe. But being sixteen and full of those French romances, she decided that, while she did it, she would be a French countess.
He was lying on the bed, already naked, and he said, “Take off your clothes.”
The moon over the cotton-fields shone on the muscular body of the young man with one leg. His stump was healing well now. The day before, a cabinet-maker from Galveston who also manufactured artificial limbs had measured it.
She pulled her dress over her head, removed her corset and her underwear. Aroused, he said, “Come here. Sit down on me.”
He grasped her by the hips, lifted her up, and lowered her down slowly. She was a virgin and she hissed with pain. Massa started to writhe, his palms on her breasts.
The white moon was shining, a night bird called out, and the cotton rustled in the breeze. The novels never described this moment, but if they did it surely wouldn’t be like this. That night she didn’t become a black countess. He kept his eyes closed the whole time. But then, perhaps I am, she said to herself. It hurt a lot, as she had known it probably would. Later on, she would enjoy it. Before she left his room that night, she changed the bedclothes. Of course, the washerwoman, Mother Terrill, had to tell everyone.
“He really give it to you,” Benjamin sniggered.
“I give it to him. His stump started bleeding.”
She would never again say anything so cynical. But then, he had merely asserted his right of ownership, and besides, it was only painful for her, and nothing more. Later on, they always did it the same way. They could have reversed positions, but he would have been too aware of his stump. He would embrace her, hold her close, and even kiss her. She enjoyed it, but he was the one who began falling in love.
Of course, she never thought it could be anything else, as it might have been with the real black countess in Europe, the one he saw behind his closed eyelids. Soon, though, he stopped closing his eyes. When he married — the stump would be no obstacle; the plantation was the second-largest in the state and he was the only son — three things could happen. He could put her away in a little house in Austin, or maybe farther away, in Galveston, and under one pretext or another come to see her once or twice a month, and his wife would be either stupid enough to believe him or smart enough not to pry. The second possibility was that she would not exist for the wife; she would be no more than a piece of property kept in one of the shacks on the plantation to soothe his nerves, the way he kept French cigars in a humidor. The third and worst possibility: Étienne would fall in love with his wife, and Dinah would be demoted back to the status of a chambermaid who did nothing but make beds and serve cognac and empty the chamber-pot again. When time passed, and along with it the charms that reminded him of his Moorish countess, she would end up with the others in a shack on the plantation, perhaps the mother of a few of his bastards, perhaps along with the children of a Negro husband.
She couldn’t — fortunately — imagine any other possibility.
And he was the one who started it. Actually, it was started by a letter sent to old massa from Louisiana. The story — the horror, the bloody and costly triumph — spread through the plantation from a single source: Gideon, who, after old massa had read the letter, took it to young massa in the summer-house, where he sat over a big book smoking and copying things out. That was how they first heard the story of the costly triumph. She heard it all again late that night in Étienne’s room. That night he wasn’t naked on the bed, but was sitting in the armchair, smoking. He told her how the Negroes on the plantation of M. de Ribordeaux’s cousin in Louisiana had rebelled. Not all of them had, just eight. They took massa and his two overseers hostage, and massa, with a knife at his throat, gave them their freedom, all eight of them. He gave it to them in writing, in black and white. They weren’t foolish enough to think that would be enough. It was more like insurance in case someone stopped them on the road before the word got out. Word wasn’t supposed to get out until morning, when the house niggers, who weren’t in on it, would start wondering why massa hadn’t come down to breakfast yet; the field niggers would assume the overseers had had too much to drink and were sleeping in. The men had stolen horses and intended to ride all night and all day through the woods until they reached the Underground Railroad. An itinerant abolitionist preacher had told them where to go. They picked an evening when the young massa had taken his sister and the plantation-owner’s wife to visit relatives in New Orleans. They tied up massa and the two overseers, gagged them, buried them in the hay, took several pistols from massa’s room, and set out. Their downfall was their need to stay together. They hid the pistols under their shirts, but eight well-dressed Negroes — like M. de Ribordeaux, the cousin didn’t treat his slaves badly — riding handsome plantation horses were rather conspicuous in the Louisiana countryside. Early the next morning, while massa and his two overseers were still bound and gagged in the hay, three white men on horseback stopped the eight of them. The manumission papers aroused even more suspicion. How could all eight of them have been granted freedom on the same day? The horses were obviously well bred, more likely to be found at the races than under nigger butts.
“Hmm” — one of the riders spat on the ground — “everybody knows Ribordeaux’s crazy and spoils his niggers. But I can’t believe he’d have gone this far.”
The three riders agreed and the oldest, with a military-style moustache, turned to the runaways. “Okay, you’ll ride back with us and we’ll ask Mr. de Ribordeaux how much he had to drink last night.” And he waved in their faces the papers that had represented their hopes.
The plan had failed and their only recourse was the pistols. Jim and Luke pulled theirs out and shot the rider with the moustache; the other riders were quick on the draw and shot Jim and Luke. Two others reached for their weapons, but one fell off his horse with a bullet in his head, and the other spun around and managed to gallop away. The remaining four surrendered.
The one who had escaped was picked up that evening by a posse of plantation-owners. He resisted but they shot the pistol out of his hand and clapped him behind bars along with the four who had surrendered, though in a separate cell. His fate was certain. One of the other four would share the gallows with him — the one who had started it.
“What’s that?” she asked. She couldn’t let on that she had already heard the heroic story in the kitchen, so she simply asked him to define a word he had used to explain it all away. And she added — unable to keep the disbelief out of her voice — “Is that a sickness?”
“That’s right,” he replied uncertainly. “There’s a book about it, written by a physician, Dr. Samuel W. Cartwright. It’s a sickness of the mind. Drapetomania. After all, they had no reason to run away.”
She said nothing. She looked out the window at the lovely row of trees, and the cotton-fields beyond it rising slowly to the horizon, rimmed with beautiful woods. Beyond lay an even more beautiful world, at the end of the Underground Railroad.
“Or did they?”
“I don’t know, massa.”
“Uncle Jean-Jacques is no fool. His overseers had instructions not to beat his slaves. Six of the eight could read and write. Three of them had learned a trade,” said young massa. His voice betrayed growing uncertainty.
She said nothing.
“Were they lacking anything?”
She shrugged.
“Are you?” By the time he got to this point, he had lost all hope of trusting his own beliefs. Because he would always know that the only way she could be a black countess was when he closed his eyes. She could never have what the black countess in Europe had — beautiful clothes, jewels, a carriage. The privilege to sometimes say no.
“No,” she said softly.
“So you see,” he said, but he knew she saw nothing. “Damn!” he swore, and stood up. He had his artificial leg by then. It was made of fine wood, and elegantly carved and polished, but it was artificial all the same. He turned to the window and lit a cigar.
She asked, “Should I take off my clothes?”
Silence.
“Massa?” she whispered.
He turned. “Do you want to?”
“If you do, massa —”
“Do you?”
Oh, what do I want? To have what the black countess has, even if she were suddenly very poor. But in her clever mind she knew that Étienne was going through something his books didn’t explain, something they never dealt with, something that never came up over bourbon and cigars, something the worst gossip wouldn’t mention. Fool nigger-girl, she said to herself, but she couldn’t help it; she felt sorry for him. His dark, defeated silhouette against the window and the Texas sky. Despite everything, she pitied him. Silly nigger-girl.
She nodded.
Then she pulled her dress over her head, unlaced her corset; he tore his clothes off and unfastened his wooden leg; she climbed on the bed and sat back on her heels, waiting for him to lie down on his back. But he knelt beside her on his knee and, supported by his stump, he gently laid her down on her back and gently spread her legs. She embraced him.
That night he was the slave.
It wasn’t love she felt, just pity.
“You were a silly nigger-girl,” Cyril said later.
“You’d have been too,” Dinah said. “How was I to know your little sister was going to show up in Texas?”
That night Étienne told her everything — how he had collapsed with a bullet in his shin, but Lissieux had fallen too, beyond help; how he had to leave Paris, and his leg was given hasty treatment by the physician he’d brought along for just such an eventuality. He waited for his mistress in Rennes. She never showed up. He expected a letter from her, at least. They amputated the leg, then at last news arrived that she’d left for Cordoba, where she would be getting married. So it had just been a flirtation. She had only been pulling his leg. He hadn’t known then of a fiancé, who was now a bridegroom. Only then did he understand Lissieux’s remark, the remark he had taken as a mortal insult, not recognizing the truth in it. Now Lissieux was dead and the woman was in Cordoba. Gideon found out when the next ship was due to leave and they sailed for Galveston.
Dinah didn’t love him, but she was rather fond of him, and besides, she found that he was the best at it. She tried it with young Ezekiel, mainly to see if massa was as good as she thought he was. He was. Now Ezekiel spent his nights howling outside her window but she refused to give in again, and when he tried to obtain by force what he felt entitled to (she was hanging out laundry behind the big house and Ezekiel had feigned a toothache and left the fields to find her) she kicked him in the groin, and he fell to the ground and whimpered in such pain that she was afraid she’d damaged him for good. She was relieved, a month later, when he got a silly field-nigger pregnant. Massa Étienne might be a virtuoso, but in this sphere it was she who was free and he who was the slave. In fact, as she would soon discover, he was a born slave. He started talking about a little house he had seen for sale in Austin, about the garden with a stable where he could put his horse.
That was after old massa’s friend came to visit from Louisiana and brought along his daughter. About the same time, old massa would often, at dinner, raise the subject of a grandson and heir, whose appearance on the scene would not be unwelcome. The friend’s daughter, whose name was Scarlett, was pretty enough — quite lovely, in fact, except for her freckles. But in the evening, when they were assessing the situation in the kitchen, Beulah said white men liked freckles.
And Benjamin said, “Pretty soon no more screwing for you, Dinah. Leastwise not twice a day and four times a night like now.”
“You sure don’t think much of us, Benjy. We ain’t a hundred years old like you,” she snapped at him.
That was when Étienne started talking about a little house in Austin. Well, she said to herself, it could be worse.
Then Mr. Carson came to call, and brought with him a foreign beauty with stunning blue eyes and a long braid she liked to play with. And her brother. Suddenly there were two slaves, and they weren’t both hers.
Géza Mihalotzy
(illustration credit 5.1)
The
Writer’s
Third
Intermezzo
I WAS SITTING in the parlour working on my correspondence when Jasmine brought in a grey calling card.
“This lady wants to talk to you, Miz Tracy. She says she’s sorry to arrive unannounced, but she says you were friends years ago, in Liberty.”
The calling card read:
Mrs. L.A. Brumble
217 Main Street
Sanderstown, Rhode Island.
On the reverse, my visitor had added a handwritten note: “Maggie Rogers — remember me, you lucky girl?”
How could I forget Maggie’s exasperated outburst? “You dimwit!” she’d said, on an occasion when I had indeed displayed singular dimness of wit. No, you don’t forget moments like that.
“Don’t bother showing her in, I’ll go myself, Jasmine.” In the front hall stood a broomstick of a woman dressed in dark green velvet. She had a fat black handbag in one hand, a fat black book in the other. Her dark eyes stared at me out of unfathomed depths. She had rings under them the likes of which I had never seen. Maggie had never been a beauty, but a picture like this —
“Maggie, …” I breathed.
“Yes, it’s me, all right,” said my old friend.
I got my second shock when she sat down at the coffee table and put her book on it. It had a spine of pink leather (or something that looked like pink leather) and the title was in gilt lettering.… Good God!
“Don’t tell me you read this kind of thing?”
Maggie smiled. She still had pretty white teeth, though they had looked prettier in Liberty. Back then, she had some colour to her complexion; now she was ashen. “Are you surprised?”
“It’s just that you never were much for romance novels.”
“That’s because I thought I was above all that. As sometimes happens, though, life has disabused me of that illusion.”
