Theory of Slavery | Hamilton

VI

"Come on, till the very last one."
"I can't..."
"Keep trying. Pull it. Yes, just like that, now push it in."
Hamilton wasn't looking at me while I lay beside him in nothing but a nightgown. He wasn't even looking while I was changing from the nightgown into my dress, even in the early morning hours, when it's the most permissible thing to do. Since the day he invited me to his bed, all guesses and all practical questions which required a solution ceased to matter to me. Perhaps he did so instinctively and without hesitation, that is, for no reason. At first I was surprised and anxious; but, as he lay on his side of the bed and didn't move or touch me or speak, it grew upon me that I did not care. I spent five nights in his bed, and over the course of those five nights absolutely nothing had happened between us. He paid me the same attention that one gives to an awkward underage servant. But I was not a servant in any sense of the word; he needed me. Some natural force attracted him to me. I felt a sort of curiosity. The bored haughty face that he turned to the world concealed something—most affectations conceal something eventually. It was not so much a conspiracy or a disguise, or fear of compromising one's self, but rather a game, of its own kind, a game tracing its beginning from the day when we first met. I knew everything about him, and there was nothing he could hide from me. He had seemingly lost interest in me, and that was all.
Of course he understood that he could not keep me in his bedroom for no reason, and would therefore make me do chores. Every morning he asked me to tie his tie, or button up his waistcoat, or help him with a shoelace. I think from his laziness and conceit he ought rather to have been a marshal of nobility of the good old days than a secretary in such simple and busy times as ours. I felt humiliated serving him in such an insignificant way.
"It's way too tight now."
"No, I think that's just how it's supposed to be."
That morning he had some urgent business, and we woke up earlier than usual. He sat on the edge of the bed, next to a crumpled sheet, while I with unbending fingers wrenched his waistcoat by its buttons. He yawned, stretched, and an involuntary expression of wearisomeness and aversion did not leave his face, unwholesomely glossy. Outside – November gloom and moaning winds; I had spent most of my life in small apartments and thought that wind only howled like that in novels. It appeared that it howled like that in real life. Where has the world disappeared to? Where are the electric lights of the city? Where are the people, where is the sky? And so I fell to daydreaming, staring at the reflection on the black window of the kerosene lamp.
"You look like a gentleman from one of them advertisement pictures," I said innocently. "You know, those where everyone is always half-naked..."
"Don't get distracted."
Afraid to touch his shoulder (though there was nothing to fear), I said to him:
"Just move nearer to the light, will you?"
Hamilton turned the way I wanted him to, and the light shone on his skin. Finally I buttoned the last button and sighed in relief. Hamilton stood up, pulling his pants up.
"Good job."
I thought he was making fun of me and glowered at him. He began brushing his hair in front of the mirror.
"Get dressed," he said, facing away from me.
I already managed to get into bed and was rightfully annoyed.
"It's too early. Let me sleep."
"I'm taking you with me. "
I was now in what is sometimes called a "wild moment"—I was not yet unified and was absorbed in playing around with my assumptions as if it were a picture puzzle. Hamilton constantly added new pieces.
"Why? Where to? To the city?"
"No. A little closer than that." Hamilton put on a tie with his favorite pearl; to limber himself up he bent backwards until a fountain pen and coins fell out of his pocket.
"Why do I have to go?" I asked, my heart skipping a bit.
"Get dressed."
Here we go again, I thought to myself, quite unable to get my feet into my shoes. What kind of habit is that, to bring your slave with you everywhere? The thought dawned on me: hadn't he perhaps really done all this without purpose? What if God had softened him, or something had gone wrong– and so he was looking out for someone on whom to vent his heart? Or maybe he just found pleasure in torturing me.
I put my shirt away aggressively and reached for the ombrecatcher, taken off in haste and flung in a crumpled heap under the bed a week ago. Getting dressed was no simple matter: pants and linen, shirt, over the shirt a buttoned suit, then gloves– the gloves must be put on over the sleeves. Everything is in black and as firm as cardboard.
"I just don't understand why you take me with you everywhere. Last time I was in your way all the time..."
"Let's go."
No more than ten minutes later, with my socks inside out, unkempt, my jacket unbuttoned, I bounded across the courtyard and got into the Fordy. We set off. It was a murky, almost winter dawn. I kept quiet and every now and then wriggled my aching toes in my boots, and breathed on the glass, which was growing a shaggy fringe of hoar-frost, and could hear the clasp of Hamilton's suitcase, which stood in between my legs, clanging. My inseparable escort sat silently beside me. Inwardly, I was as chilled as my feet. Now and then I raised my face to look at him and in my ears, almost without cease, as though the sound had solidiɹed, I could hear the scraps of his conversation with the Soviet delegate.
When the black, frostbound forest vanished, and the road stretched along the bank of the still, dark waters of the mysterious creek, the east was already crayoned red and yellow. But the beautiful scenery gave me less and less joy, and at times I felt as if my ability to experience strong emotions dulled to the point where I stopped dreaming about freedom. Freedom for me always meant the sky above my head, and for the first time in a while the burning dawn left me indifferent. Perhaps the car salon oppressed me, bearing the heavy memory of the disastrous occasion.
Ahead of us the stop-signal of a car winked violet. Hamilton slowed down and suddenly looked at me.
"Hungry?"
I almost started.
"Well... Maybe, a little."
"That's good. Mr. Jefferson was kind enough to invite me for breakfast, and I thought it would be good for you to join."
Some hot, loathsome shame stirred and glided through within my soul. I should have been, long ago, not with Hamiltone, but in a psychiatric ward, because of an excruciating nervous malady, which compelled me to give myself up, frenziedly, to fantasies about man who may have seemed remotely attractive to me. I remembered the dream I had about him very well, and it made me angry. I was not fantasizing about him voluntarily, rather I was following my horrible, insatiable instinct. Thomas Jefferson was my main inhumane enemy, because for the entirety of America there exists only one enemy – his Theory. But I, passive in everything save my impersonal sensuality, would go with anybody who might have treated me well.
"Please, you don't have to..." I answered, dully and downcast. I paled, and my fingers underneath the table convulsively clenched into fists.
"And why is that? It's nice of me to invite you."
But, even though he did speak with delight, there was still something rapacious, uneasy to be glimpsed in his frequently winking eyes, in the harsh outline of his chin.
"It is very nice of you," I said hastily. "But I feel like he won't be happy about it."
"Why are you so certain?"
"I am not certain at all... You know, you might want to have breakfast with me, but he surely does not."
Hamilton chuckled strangely,
"I am the one who doesn't want that. It shouldn't even be allowed."
"You brought me with you!"
"Well, maybe that's why I'm thinking it would be good."
We left the main road, passed a barrier of dark trees, and then the facade of the restaurant, a block of delicate pale light, beamed down in front of us. Hamilton parked the car; in a slow, deliberate motion put his hat on. I can't express the despair I felt when I looked at him."
"Please, speak plainly, why am I here? What's your affair?"
I thought about Jefferson, about his eyes and his cane, and felt sick.
Hamilton made a contemptuous grimace.
"My affairs cannot possibly interest you. If you do wish to know, you simply must be present."
"So I must be? But you don't want me to be?"
"That's right."
The conversation was over. As soon as we entered the guest room, Hamilton greeted all the personnel without embarrassment, with the independent bearing of the first personage in the building, then immediately entered the bar and swallowed a glass of gin (I wasn't even surprised that here the liquor was sold openly). When he asked if Jefferson had arrived yet, he was looked upon with such suspicious air that he had to show his documents. And once again I was surprised that nobody recognized him.
They led us to a private room upstairs. There were almost no people at the restaurant — it was early morning, a quiet atmosphere of carpets and padded waiters, who did not march at the stomping quick-step of those lackeys who brought food to the tables of slave owners the other day.
I was very nervous– although in regards to my illness I have been in a very religious and resigned mood. Disasters that could have attended upon me seeing Jefferson had passed in prophecy through my mind
"One drink and I'm already feeling better. You should try this too," said Hamilton who was walking beside me.
Before I could answer, he pushed the door open and without hesitation walked into the room.
Jefferson, as it turned out, arrived at seven o'clock if not earlier. The windows were shut and thin beams were busy pulling up the dust from washed-out armchairs. On the table, two white, tarred necks of bottles stuck up out of a bucket, sweated from the cold, and the light in a tenuous gold played in shallow wine glasses. Jefferson sat alone at the table. Everything in me collapsed. Not because of how ripe and handsome he was, not because of the way he was dressed. And not because of how he would now bow his head and look out provokingly from under his eyebrows, then suddenly toss it back and let his eyelashes down and look with pride and confidence... No, perhaps, this is why.
"You are late, Mr. Hamilton."
Hamilton had already miraculously moved behind the bar table.
"I think you're just early."
I sat down awkwardly in the corner.
"I was supposed to ship to Virginia last night, actually," Jefferson said.
"Why didn't you?" asked Hamilton.
"How could I miss an opportunity to speak to the press?"
Hamilton for some reason cast a quick glance in my direction, but instantly concentrated his attention on Jefferson.
"Besides, I am reading a serial in a local magazine," continued Jefferson. "And the next installment is due Wednesday—so if I leave I will have missed it—then I will never know what is going to happen next."
"It must be a tremendous story."
"It's a tr-r-remendous story. Now, let's order. I'm starving."
They summoned a waiter and ordered a fruit pie. I still sat in the corner, feeling inexcusably inferior. The waiter left, and finally Jefferson looked at me.
"Have you fed him?"
He made it sound like he was talking about a dog.
"Not yet. I probably should."
"Go order something for him, then."
Hamilton was about to say something, but Jefferson rapidly and with deep significance pointed the door out to him with his eyes. That was rather nice– but only for a moment, because the next second I was left alone with Jefferson.
"Ach, finally," Jefferson rose up from his seat and approached the bar table. "I will be honest with you, his company bores me. Will you have a drink?"
And I suddenly felt that my illness at the mere contact with him, at the first words, at the first looks, had grown in an instant to monstrous proportions.
"I don't drink," I lied, not taking my eyes off him.
"You don't drink at all? Here, would you look at that..." He retrieved a bottle of Brandy which seemed to hold ten quarts.
"No-o," I waved my hands. "Either long training, or, perhaps, hereditary abilities, are necessary for this."
"We could try mixing it with Coca-Cola."
"May I have plain Coca-Cola, then?"
Jefferson laughed.
"My God, life in your Carolina must be so boring!"
"Well, and is it any gayer in your Virginia?"
"Of course it is," Jefferson handed me a bottle of Coca-Cola. "Everyone in Virginia is an alcoholic, naturally."
The old interior laughter had begun inside me and I knew I couldn't keep it up much longer. What finally confused me most was the peculiar familiarity which he began to show more and more markedly. He always spoke very respectfully, and I spoke in the same way, in a tone that suggested that we had some kind of compact, some secret between us, that had at some time been expressed on both sides.
Jefferson sat back down and at first kept watching me intently as though saying to himself: "So that's what you're like," and for the first minute neither of us could find words to begin our conversation.
"We have so much to talk over together," he began.
"What about?" I asked, smiling involuntarily.
"Ever so many things."
"How about your venture with the Soviet Union?"
"No, this is over," he responded somewhat sternly. "It did not go through."
I nodded understandingly, but on the inside I was so overjoyed that I looked at him almost conciliatingly, almost tenderly.
"I'm sorry to hear that. Why would you even try?"
"So that Mr. Hamilton doesn't bother me with reproaches for doing nothing."
His confident and triumphant air and the indifference with which he referred to Hamilton revived my flagging spirits and cheered me up at once.
"And what right does he have to bother you?"
"You are no doubt unaware," he said, now jauntily drawling his words in a Southern manner, "What is meant by an "old secretary". But I think with Alexander you can find out in practice..."
"Old secretary? I don't know what that is."
I took a sip of Coca-Cola.
"Well..." continued Jefferson. "Suppose we set the most insignificant nonentity to sell some miserable refreshments at a cheap restaurant, and keep him there for twenty years, the nonentity will at once feel privileged to look down on you like a Jupiter when you go to make an order. 'Now then,' he says, 'I've been selling these biscuits for twenty years, I know better than you, I have power!' And in him it comes to a genuine administrative audacity. This is what I call "an old secretary"."
"He has been serving you for twenty years?"
"Oh, no, no. It's just an allegory."
"How long has he been serving you for?"
"Since 1918."
"It's not too long ago."
"Long enough to get an audacity."
Suddenly a thought came to me that on that fateful day when I spilled the wine, Jefferson did not actually ask Hamilton to whip me; he teased him, angered him, perhaps with no purpose whatsoever. Hamilton gave in blindly. I reached the stage where I saw in Hamilton a willless, mechanical wheel in a general machine. He was one of those 'secretaries' who till they're forty, have been stagnating in insignificance and then come to the front through suddenly acquiring a distinguished friend, or by some other equally desperate means... Hamilton by nature was a people-pleaser, he liked to be liked, especially by his patron. This idea tore at me and confused me.
"Still you give him orders, not the other way around."
"That depends," Jefferson responded strangely. "Anyhow, let us not discuss a person behind his back. He can always feel it very well."
I nodded and drank some more, feeling a rush of confidence. I wonder what they put in Coca-Cola nowadays?
"Is his friend the same?"
"What friend? Here, let me get you a drink..."
"No, thank you. I mean Mr. Burr."
"I can't stand him; he's dumb and thinks too highly of himself."
Who would have thought, I thought sarcastically,
"I might be biased," Jefferson set off at once. "But he only collects approval. He holds with the principle of general— how do I say this? General pleasing."
"General pleasing?" I couldn't hold myself any longer. A pleasant conversation and Coca-Cola made me forget for an instant that there was a Republican in front of me, and not any Republican but the Republican Presidential candidate. I felt offended to the highest degree.
"Is it because he's against slavery? So is the rest of the civilized world, you know."
There was a lingering moment of silence. I tried to look calm, even though I for some reason felt embarrassed. Jefferson too seemed anxious. It was evident in the way he drew his chair closer to the table and in the way his lips shifted silently.
"Mr. Jefferson... I..."
"Call me Thomas."
"Thomas."
My head spun from the mere sound of his name. Jefferson looked gratefully at me. I finished my Сoca-Cola in one big gulp.
"I just wanted to say that Mr. Burr is not who he says he is."
"Well, maybe it's true," I smiled indifferently.
"He switched parties," Jefferson spoke passionately and defiantly. "Did you know that?"
"What... How?"
A swarm of ideas flared up in Jefferson's eyes like a shower of fireworks. He liked that subject and reckoned boldly upon it.
"He used to be a Republican, but a year ago he changed his convictions to a radical opposite, in rather a crude form. He gets everything out of books, and at the first hint coming from any of progressive corners he's prepared to throw any idea overboard, so soon as he is advised to do so. Do you get what I'm saying?"
His words shocked me. Everything might all have gone off far more harmoniously and easily if he had taken the trouble to prepare me for this fact a little. He caused in me political disenchantment, which by itself is simply insulting; I was so completely thrown out of my reckoning that I did not even know what to say.
"I get it..."
Our conversation met a dead end. Having taken another bottle from behind the bar table, he stretched it out to me, while I stretched out my empty bottle; at which, during the time of the operation, we both looked at each other's eyes and hands intently and warily.
Hamilton came back and began to complain, complained much and long and rather incoherently about a waiter. It seemed to me that Jefferson was displeased and irritated and looked at him hostilely, and his gaze was not at all what it had been when we were alone. Hamilton's gaze was the same, but it was directed at me.
When the food arrived, they sat down opposite one another at the table, whilst I remained sitting in the corner, a bowl of broth on my lap.