Respectable Trade Read online

  Frances paused at the doorway and looked back at him. She longed to touch him, just lightly, a soft touch with her fingertip on the inside of his wrist where his black skin was soft.

  He turned his head to watch her go, until all he could see was the hem of her gray gown and the shadow of the closing door.

  The door at the head of the passage closed abruptly, shutting out the daylight and the sound of voices. The slaves were left in darkness.

  Mehuru leaned his head back against the damp wall again and closed his eyes.

  He did not despair. Snake’s counsel was ambiguous, not always to be obeyed. Like all gods he teased with false knowledge. Mehuru kept his mind turned inward and waited for the earth under his feet to stop rocking. One of the women was crying, but the children were shocked and silent. They looked to Mehuru to advise them, to speculate about what would happen next. The smallest of the children was not yet three, and he watched Mehuru’s face with the large, trusting eyes of a baby. Mehuru shook his head and looked away from the child. He did not know what would happen. He could be of no comfort to anyone.

  In a little while, the door opened again, and the man brought them loaves of strange-tasting bread, slices of cooked meat that tasted like old dry beef, and some hard good fruit with a green skin and sweet white flesh. There was clean, sour-tasting water to drink in a pan.

  After a short time, the man came back and made them stand and prepared them to walk in a line. Mehuru did not look for a chance to escape. He realized he was defeated. He did not know where he was; he had never even heard of a place where the air itself was cold and gray and smelled of smoke and dirt. He could not run when he did not know where he should go. So he followed like one of the children in his pitiful obedience. The man had two pistols stuck into his belt and a long, thick horsewhip in his hand; they had no chance against him. They lined up like herded cattle and did as they were bid, straggling along the tunnel and up the four shallow steps into the warmth and poignant normality of the kitchen.

  They were not allowed to linger. There was a lad waiting for them who steered them out of the kitchen door into the backyard. Mehuru was so afraid that they were going back to the ship and on another long, dreadful journey that he did not look around him at first but watched his bare, cold feet creeping slavishly on the cold cobbles; a man no longer, but a trained animal.

  “Get on, you!” the man said gruffly, and tugged at Mehuru’s chain. They were in a cobbled yard surrounded by high, redbrick walls. Ahead of them and on each side were the glowering bulks of the warehouses with small, barred windows. Mehuru gazed up and up the grim facade. He had seen stone buildings before—the city of Oyo had higher walls and greater buildings than this—but he had never seen such functional ugliness before. The blank redness of the walls held his eyes. He was afraid the stones had been colored with blood.

  The man shouted at him, and Mehuru was pulled forward to the pump in the center of the yard. The lad worked the pump until the water gushed out into a bucket, and the big man threw buckets of water at their heads and mimed to them that they should wash themselves with a block of soap. The water was icy and tasted bitter. The soap stank of ashes from old fires and the fat of pigs. Mehuru shivered miserably and hastened to do as he was ordered.

  Two of the women seemed paralyzed with fear; they were certain they were being washed for the white men to eat them. They thought they would be safer if they remained dirty. They held tight to their loincloths and ducked away from the buckets of water. In the end the lad poked them with a pitchfork and laughed as they flinched between the icy water and the sharp prongs. He licked his lips at them, and the slave driver guffawed when he saw how they looked to the manacled men for help. The two men looked back at them in passive misery, wishing they were blind.

  One by one they washed and then rubbed themselves dry on the same rough cloth. Then the back door of the house opened, and the scullery maid brought out clothes for them, tittering at their naked discomfort. The lad, tiring of the jest, pulled the clothes onto one of the boys and left the rest to guess how the breeches should fit. The women kept their hands spread over their genitals, their dark faces blushing even blacker with shame. The lad grinned and slid a curious finger between one of the women’s clenched buttocks.

  Mehuru spoke softly to her, and she disengaged herself with a slow, speechless dignity. The lad glanced at Mehuru, his eyes drawn to the blue tattoos on his forehead and cheeks.

  “What you staring at?” he asked aggressively, gesturing with the pitchfork. “What you looking at, you beast, you?”

  “Is it now?” Mehuru asked Snake curiously, in the quietest corner of his mind. “Will he spear me and kill me now?”

  Snake kept his silence.

  Mehuru dropped his eyes to the ground, and the lad put the pitchfork down, oddly dissatisfied. “I hate them,” he said to the driver. “Let’s get them out of the yard and back into the cellar.”

  John Bates shook his head. “They’re to go upstairs,” he said. “The new mistress is teaching them to talk English, if she can. Then they go into service.”

  The lad looked at them. “They can talk?” he asked incredulously. He stepped closer to Mehuru. “Can you talk?” he shouted into his face.

  Mehuru flinched at the spittle. He had no idea at all what the young man was shouting at him. The young man stuck his tongue out at Mehuru.

  “Got a tongue?” he shouted. “Can you speak to me?”

  A sigh of pure terror went through the others at the sight of that startlingly red tongue poking out from the obscene pink lips.

  “Gently,” Mehuru said to the others in his own language. “Be still.”

  “He made a noise!” the lad said, delighted. “Say some more, animal! Say something more!”

  Mehuru looked down into the face of the young man. The scaly, gray-green eyes looked up at him curiously. The ghostly, dreadful skin was speckled with spots of brown, as if the youth had some strange sickness.

  “Come on,” said John Bates the slave driver, weary of the lad’s interest. “You must have seen enough niggers before.”

  “Not straight from Africa I haven’t,” the lad replied. “I’ve seen them when they’re tame, from the Sugar Islands. I’ve never seen them straight from Africa. They eat each other, don’t they?”

  “They wouldn’t eat you,” Bates said. “Too smelly by half. Come on, now, let’s get them in.”

  They split them into two groups by pushing them into place and prodding them with the pitchfork. One group they left chained in the yard, but Mehuru, two women, two little boys, and one youth they chained and led toward the kitchen door. Mehuru turned back to the other group, shivering in the coldness of the wind.

  “The gods be with you,” he said.

  The other man looked after him. “May we meet again, in a better place,” he said.

  They shuffled into the kitchen, stooping to accommodate the weight and cutting edges of the neck irons. Mehuru looked more vulnerable in the ill-fitting breeches and shirt than in his own loincloth. It had not been thought worthwhile to buy them shoes, so the new breeches ended just below the knee, and he was barefoot. The women were wearing cheap gowns that reached their ankles.

  Frances and Miss Cole were waiting for them in the hall. When Frances saw them, she drew a quick breath of surprise. Close at hand she was struck at once by the tiny frailty of the children. Their smocks and breeches were far too large for them; their little black necks were coldly exposed by the broad scoop of the collars. The smallest boy was about two, she thought, and the one who stood beside him and watched her with enormous black eyes was no more than five. They both looked at her solemnly, unwaveringly, with the open faces of children whose experiences of cruelty and loss have not yet wiped out the early memory of love. They were still capable of hope.

  “They don’t smell so bad now, ma’am,” John Bates said loudly. “Will you have them in the parlor?”

  “Yes, take them upstairs,” Miss Cole sai
d. “Are they safe?”

  “Quiet as dead rats,” John Bates assured her cheerfully.

  “We’ll keep them chained for the first lesson,” Miss Cole decided nervously. She walked down the line as they stood, their eyes fixed on the ground. They trembled slightly as the ghostly woman went by.

  “Come along, then,” she said, and turned for the staircase to the upper floor. John prodded the woman at the head of the chain, and they followed her, their lips compressed tight so they did not cry out in their terror. Only the widening of their eyes revealed that they were afraid, and the slight sheen of sweat on their faces.

  Frances watched each one as they went past her. The two women looked as if they had suffered the most. Their skin was lighter, and they clung together; both were scarred on the back, and one had an unhealed cut on her cheekbone. They were followed by one awkward, ungainly youth who tried to keep a courteous distance from them but was dragged forward by the shortness of the chain. Frances made herself look away and stepped back to let the line go by her. She did not look up again, not even when she heard the thud of someone struck with the butt end of a whip.

  “He was lagging, ma’am,” Bates explained cheerfully.

  Miss Cole led them up the narrow stairs to the little parlor. When the line walked into the room, they hesitated and did not know what to do. Miss Cole pulled out a chair but then could not bring herself to touch the leading woman to guide her to her seat.

  “Bates,” she said shortly. He put a broad, red hand on the woman’s shoulder and thrust her into a seat. Then the other woman and the youth perched on the very edge of the hard chairs and looked at Miss Cole and Frances with eyes that were blank with terror. The little boys had to be lifted up on their chairs. John Bates stepped away from the table and set himself with his back against the door, two pistols stuck in his belt and his whip held across him.

  “Sit at the head of the table, Frances, and start their lesson,” Miss Cole ordered.

  Mehuru kept his head down, but he noted the tone of command and he saw that the younger white woman obeyed.

  Her looks were horrible. She was as smooth and as pale as polished ivory. But the worst thing about her was her hair, which was as long and as thick as weeds in the river and was piled upon her head with trails of it coming down around her shoulders and curling like water weed around her face. Unpinned it must stretch down to her buttocks like some dreadful smooth cloth. Her eyes were as dark as his own, but she moved like one of them, with small steps and a hunched body as if she hated herself, as if she were trying to hide her breasts and her belly.

  She was bony and small, like an ugly child. He scanned her body and saw the uselessness of her narrow pelvis and the skinny buttocks. She was too thin; a man could not embrace her and roll her over and over on the ground. She would not seize a lover and take him with laughter. She would not shout joyfully at the approach of pleasure. He thought of his woman at home and how he would thrust his shoulder against her open mouth to muffle her singing cries when she opened her legs wide to him. This ghostwoman knew nothing of this, could learn nothing of this. She moved as if she had denied herself pleasure for many years, as if she had never known lust, as if she had never known desire. She held herself like a criminal, not like a woman at all.

  Mehuru suddenly realized that she was looking at him, and he feared that his thoughts were showing on his face. He flushed quickly and looked away from her.

  CHAPTER

  9

  FRANCES DREW A BREATH. She seated herself gingerly in the chair at the head of the table. Sarah went to the window seat and gazed avidly at them all. “Go on,” she said impatiently. “Teach them something!”

  The noises from outside the window were very loud. Josiah was auctioning his sugar on the quayside; Frances could hear his excited shout as the bids went higher.

  “Go on,” Sarah said.

  Frances looked down the table. The children were whimpering softly, each stretching out for the woman seated beside him. Only Mehuru was looking at her, with his strange, judging gaze. As their eyes met, he slightly inclined his head. It was as if he had given her some permission. She felt an unexpected sense of humility before him. She looked at him more closely. His forehead was lined with raised tattoos showing dark blue against his black skin. Around his mouth there were half a dozen blue circles that drew the gaze to the wide sensuality of his lips. His eyes were dark and unfathomable. His nose was broad and flat. His skin was perfectly black and smooth. Frances wanted to touch him, to feel that he was real.

  She dragged her eyes from his face and tapped the table with the flat of her hand. “Table,” she said quietly.

  They looked at her in silence. They were all of them frozen with fear.

  She slapped the table again. “Table,” she repeated more firmly.

  Miss Cole glared irritably at her across the bowed black heads. “They clearly don’t know what you mean,” she said. “You must make them speak.”

  Frances drew a breath and paused. She did not know what to do.

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am, he can speak.” John Bates pointed with the butt end of his whip at Mehuru. “Spoke in the yard when the lad asked him to make a noise. Him with the drawings on his face.”

  Frances looked at Mehuru. “Say ‘table,’ ” she said, without much hope. “Tay-bull.”

  “Day-bull,” Mehuru said.

  Frances jumped. He had a pleasant, confident voice, the voice of a man who is accustomed to being heard. She was as surprised as if the table itself had said its name to her. She had not expected him to speak—she had not expected him to have this strong, clear baritone.

  “Yes.” She nodded.

  “Make the others say it!” Miss Cole came forward from the window seat, her flat breasts heaving with excitement. “Make them say it, too! Make them all say it!”

  “Now you.” Frances pointed to the woman seated at the foot of the table. She slapped the wood and looked at her. “Table,” she said.

  With the tip of his fingers, the young boy pattered out a message on the tabletop in the ancient language of drumming. “What?” the rhythm asked urgently. “What?”

  “Speak,” Mehuru tapped back. He glanced around the table and nodded at the frightened faces. “Speak,” his fingers tapped again. It was not the warm-skinned talking drums of home, which could send messages for miles and miles across country, but it was still a little power, a little secret they had left.

  “Stop that!” Miss Cole snapped with instant anger. “Make the next one speak.”

  Frances pointed at the woman again and slapped the table with her hand. Her palm made a sharp, unkind sound after Mehuru’s seductive drumming. “Table,” she said.

  “Day-bull,” the woman replied, in a voice as low as a whisper.

  “Yes!” Miss Cole’s shrill excitement frightened them all. They shot scared looks at Mehuru, who had his eyes fixed on the shiny wooden surface.

  “Make them all say it!” Miss Cole commanded. She was standing at the foot of the table, her sallow cheeks burning with two pink spots. “Make them speak!” she cried.

  “Table,” Frances said. “T . . . t . . . table.”

  “Day-bull,” they repeated.

  Mehuru was watching Frances, though she did not know it. His eyes were still turned down to the tabletop, and he was watching the inverted reflection of her pale face in the polished surface.

  “Day-bull,” he said with the rest, but in his head he called for Snake.

  Snake would know who this ghostwoman was and what she wanted with them. He called for Snake and begged him for sight. As if from a distance, Snake chuckled in his long throat and said, “Sight is easy.” Then Mehuru saw this woman with her hair in a thick plait lying in a high bed with a great many white covers. She was lying on her back, and her face was wet with tears. Mehuru sensed her coldness and her loneliness. He thought that he had never in his life known a woman with so much power—power over him and all these others—and yet suc
h passivity that she should lie like a stone and grieve for nothing.

  She was defeated and fearful, a woman who had thrown away her power. She was a fool who had chosen to know nothing. She had closed her eyes to her own feelings. She had denied her own nature. All she had left was the shell of her body and—weep-weep-weep—a constant flow of tears. The light in the room and the covers on the bed were very cold and white. Mehuru knew it was this land, but not, he thought, exactly this time. Snake hissed a laugh in his head and said, “What does time or place matter to you? You who are imprisoned in the here and now?”

  “Day-bull,” Mehuru repeated with the others. Day-bull? What did she mean, day-bull? Did she mean wood or the sort of wood it was? Did she mean the polish that made the wood shine? Did she mean the name of the woodcarver? Or the god of woodcarvers? Did she mean the feel of the wood under her palm or the noise it made when she slapped it so?

  Frances looked down the table and saw Mehuru frown even as he repeated the word. She suddenly flushed with her sense of helplessness. If she could not teach them to speak, then the experiment would be abandoned and they would be sent to the plantations. No one lived long working on the sugar crop. A quarter of them would die before their first year was out; half of the rest would not live more than four years.

  That was why the slavers went crossing and recrossing the wide reaches of the Atlantic seas, pouring men and women and children into the plantations, which ate them up as surely as they crushed sugarcane. They worked so hard, they lived so poor, that they could not even breed to replace the dead. Children died before they could reach adulthood. Women died before they could give birth. Men died before they could lie with a woman and give her a child. Every month, every week, every day, new slaves had to be captured and shipped and sold. Without them the plantations would collapse and the English people would have no sugar, tobacco, cotton, or rum.

  Frances had spent her life among events that never rose above the trivial. Now, suddenly, she was responsible for the survival of thirteen people, and one of them a man who sat as if he were wrapped in a cloak of magic. She turned quickly to the sideboard.