Theory of Slavery | Hamilton

VII

I'M READY to bet that the reader by this point knows anything whatever about me. A noteworthy admission, isn't it? The reader must be of a keen intelligence then, if he was capable of grasping my tortuous story clearly and in full, through scraps and bits of it found in newspapers. It also follows that I, the writer, don't possess any such quality if, only two years afterwards, I cannot not recall it without messing up the details.
How much truth one will glean from bits of my crumpled and poorly written book I do not know. The coincidence of the title, 'Theory of Slavery', with the name of an infamous bill of amendments is deliberate in a sad little way: I wearily thought I had better not bring my own convictions to this, lest make it an abolitionist manifesto, but failed to recognize in my memoir just another, politically charged, sexually inappropriate version of the legend of John Laurens.
I am aware that the general view on the radical abolitionists is supercilious in the extreme. Nonetheless, I used to be one; I am not one anymore. When I was a student, I took to reading prohibited publications and even the revolutionary manifestoes which were just beginning to appear at the time; this alone set my head in a whirl. I began to cherish the dream of joining the movement and showing my powers, and my unbounded faith in liberty instantly revived as I was thrown into a violent ferment. Radical abolitionism calls for emancipation without a moment's delay. Radical abolitionism disregards all consequences. Radical abolitionism is the feel of that tumble before the bleeding. It grew in me, flourished through me, senseless—not by way of protest, not as a symbol, or anything like that, but merely as an act of mindless self-admiration. It made me disregard all laws of humanity, and the feeling was good. I didn't care about the slaves. I didn't care about the poor. What I did care about was the way my speeches were perceived. Nothing is nearer to the elimination of all human decency than performative activism.
America, oh, my America. Please don't hate me.

***

Hamilton's jacket smelled of yesterday's tobacco and cologne; it was his smell, with a faint fried addition of some other gloomy self-conscious stench. I laundered two changes of underwear for him daily, and was always able to recognize a familiar hint of yesterday's reawakened sweat about his person, less a smell than an ammoniacal reminder of our eternal bond. It was as natural and as inoffensive as the thick dark scent of his hair on pillowcases, and the smell of my fingers after dressing him in the morning.
He sat next to me, his slender hands gripping the steering wheel, the top buttons of his shirt unbuttoned, his jacket removed, and it was plain that only the top layer of his hair was brushed back—the lower levels were pointed resolutely sidewise. He had offered me his jacket because I was shaking so much that he had assumed I was cold. My hands, of that vague blue color that only anxiety can produce, were in the pockets to conceal the trembling fingers. The jacket felt immeasurably loose on my ill-nourished body.
That's what it must feel like, I thought, to be him.
I imagined myself with pleasantly arched black eyebrows, the good Mr. Hamilton, who smelled of shampoo and would head, I knew, for gin at the first opportunity. I saw myself meditating in my sunlit study over a typewriter, rather gaunt-profiled, wearing a well-tailored waistcoat and brown pants.
"Are you feeling well?"
I did not respond. I knew that what I just did marked another turning point in my life. My presence was an intrusion. It was paying some tribute to things unforgotten, unshriven, unexpurgated.
He sighed deeply and offered me a cigar. I refused.
"I hope you understand it was orchestrated," Hamilton said lightly. "It's not your fault."
"They are dead. I had them killed."
"No you didn't. Thomas made a wrong prognosis or something—I've hardly had time to think the thing out myself."
"Is he gone?"
"He left with the police."
We sat silent. From Hamilton flowed a vast tragic apathy.
"It was merely a show," he said, finally. "For our campaign. We needed to show that the slaves oppose the idea of abolition–"
"Oh, don't tell me."
"You're like an old watch, you know, you shake it and somehow from sheer habit it gets going again. You never fail to anger the crowd."
"Please don't tell me any more," I interrupted. "Please don't—I couldn't stand any more."
"All right. But if you must know, they were hopeless to begin with."
Of course I knew it was all hopeless, that it was all for the show, that the fate of the rebels was hopelessly unchangeable, and it was a perfect matter of indifference to them whether this manifestation be effective or insignificant. The affair broke the monotony of their lives; it was an escape, and as such, something to sympathize with deeply. Something like hope and a disposition to confront their fate, to end things in an honorable way. They despised me.
And suddenly I was restless with despair, and my clothes felt miserably damp and tight, and I was almost glad when Hamilton voiced my suppositions.
"I just don't see why you have to—to keep doing this to me," I said quietly. "To use me for propaganda."
I was sick of it. I was so, so tired; perhaps witnessing death makes you tired.
"I feel terribly about this, Hamilton."
Hamilton slowed down from a blind seventy to a purblind fifty. Then with a graceful movement he turned off the main road, and after two or three big bounces we came to a gentle rocking stop. He quieted the engine.
"Who was it you saw there?" He inquired, looking with more worry than I had counted upon—at my hands (I was involuntarily folding and crushing and folding again the edge of his jacket). "I thought you saw someone."
"Belcher."
"What, you feel sorry for him?"
"If Belcher was there, then Charles was there. I can't– I just want to see him at once," I whispered, bending upon him a burning glance. "I really hope he's alive."
Hamilton was astounded.
"But he hates you. He almost had you killed."
The phrase was said in a kindly manner; but this phrase I had already heard several thousand times in my head. Under no circumstances could Charles ever forgive me, I knew it. I had it arranged in my mind, and the more time passed all the more disheartening it was to check how obediently I conformed to this notion of Charles every time I heard of him. Perhaps I would prefer not to have known at all of what happened to him, if it turned out that he forgave me but was already dead; that he would never be free and would never meet the poor girl whom he got with child when he was eighteen.
"You know nothing of him. He is my friend above all."
"To me his kind is all the same," obstinately contradicted Hamilton. "He is malicious and proud."
"He was never malicious nor proud... Is he alive? Is he alright?"
"You're just in that mood. Things aren't always arranged so that this could be as you want..."
I dismissed this.
"I miss him terribly."
"You shouldn't."
"He kissed me."
I wondered idly if he might become angry with me because of this. Not that I cared.
"So? People kiss for all different reasons. I kissed you too."
"What, you remember now?"
"Not exactly. But I assume..."
"Well, no, you didn't."
"No?"
His eyes glanced momentarily at me, and his lips parted with an abortive attempt at flirtation. Luckily the radio took this moment to catch an unknown wave and shriek unpleasantly in a strange voice, whereupon he flinched and turned it off.
"You are such a schoolboy," His thoughts added, "There's too much to teach you."
I turned away from him. For the first time the mention of that night annoyed rather than intimidated me.
"I experienced this also, many years ago" continued Hamilton. "But, do you know, it's really too childish and disgusting. Something of the nature of flies that get stuck in pairs on a window sill. The window sill is no place for playing at love, but they still do, and they scratch their backs with their little hind legs while doing so..."
"What?"
"While there they thirst for savage passions, jealousy, tears, sacrifices—in a word, hysterical romanticism. And it's easy to understand why. The heart always wants love, and for that reason even the thieves, murderers, and other riff-raff like yourself will always search for it."
"Enough of this! Why on earth are you trying to teach me?" I retorted incredulously. "You know, sometimes you are quite revoltingly old."
"Am I? I'm only a decade and a half older. But look, most important of all, this fly business at once spoiled all the friendly relations which have been so well built up between you two. Did it not?"
"Shut up!" I shouted at last, striking myself on the knee with my fist; and he, without even wincing, bent upon me a pitiful gaze and re-started the car. In my mind quickly flashed the images of my former friend, so proud, so brave, and so resourceful—oh, far brainier than any man I've known—and I, almost unexpectedly for myself, said sharply:
"I'm not a baby. It isn't that I don't know things, but I simply don't indulge in them."
"Really," Hamilton said looking out the window, as the Cypress Hills Cemetery sign came into sight down the road. "Have you not slept with him?"
My face grew red, but every vestige of shame was soon gone. This question, to my delirious embarrassment, had some refinements of flutter and probe which made me conclude he was simply curious. Not determined. The main reason why I tolerated this conversation was the spell of neutrality that his ample person cast on my innermost struggles. He was much too self-centered and abstract to initiate anything that might lead to a frank question on his part and a frank answer on mine. He knew my secret, of course he did, but now it seemed to interest him only insofar as throwing some light on the simplicity of my attitude toward him, which attitude was as free of polite strain; for despite his colorless mind and dim memory, he was perhaps very aware that I knew his secret as well.
I opened my mouth, but had to stop myself with a shamefaced feeling that my voice would quiver and break.
"You are a brute."
A humored, crafty look passed over his face. The wrinkles on his forehead were smoothed out, his eyes contracted, his features broadened and he suddenly went off into a nervous prolonged laugh.
"But have you ever slept with a man?"
"I– No."
"And– Really, never?"
"Never."
"Well, what's right is right," Hamilton shrugged. "Suppose you are like a holy hermit."
He wouldn't say another word. As we passed the Roosevelt bridge, I gazed quietly and anxiously at the water, at the glowing white sun burning a hole in the glowing sky. I worried and tormented myself trying to think, flew into an impossible inner rage, or sank into awful, intolerable terror. Hamilton would from time to time give me a careful and over-serious side-eye, which at once became oppressive and embarrassing.
At some point we entered a brick slum lined with the dark, deserted shops. The ashy Brooklyn opened on both sides and surrounded us. I waited, breathing painfully till Hamiltom finally said: "And lastly, if you must know, Lee is not in the New-York Center." A note of personal affront crept into his voice "If you truly must know."
A tremendous weight seemed to have rolled off my shoulders.
"Oh, thank God."
I felt I had cast off that fearful burden that had so long been weighing upon me, and all at once there was a sense of relief and peace in my soul. 'Lord,' I prayed, 'Let him be well, then.'
With hope I was looking out the window now at the dimly illuminated, very square and impoverished buildings squatting throughout the narrow blocks, and the jagged silvery ramparts of fire escapes. Brooklyn represents the American world as it is. Before the Theory, doctors lived here, lawyers, university professors. The legal profession is virtually nonexistent, and the university has been shuttered. There, criminals torture other criminals, telephone bills run to millions, and, in a robust atmosphere of mistrust and paranoia, potential suspects are chased through sewers and storehouses by pathologically fearless cops. Everyone here has the instincts of a reporter or a spy. You shall bear witness against your neighbor. The evidence from a single person is admissible, and even the most minor offense is enough to become enslaved. The smallest indiscretion can be used against them, often at the behest of another criminal seeking refuge. Though former convicts are never pardoned.
Finally there is the ore-like glitter of the city dump, the spectacular protests, the pistol thrusts through the shivered window panes, the stupendous fist fights, the sweet crash of fist against cheek, the kick in the belly, the broken bones.
We drove through the slumbering town at a thirty-mile-per-hour pace. The streets disgorged an offensive smell of dirt, grease, and motor oil, which mixed itself up with the stench of the gutters and that of the cesspools in the middle of the streets. As we passed the haymarket, I felt the puffs of warm, close air reeking with alcohol, tobacco, and fish.
"Where are we going now?" I asked, unamused.
"I want to have a drink."
Hamilton threw on both brakes impatiently, and we slid to an abrupt dusty stop on the side of a deserted parking lot.
"We walk from here," he said, fixing his collar.
"Am I to go with you?"
"Sure."
"Is it allowed?"
"Let me think," he was already out of the car, pulling at my door from outside. "No."
I began taking his jacket off me, realizing I had been sweating.
"You can keep it on," Hamilton took hold of my elbow and literally forced me from the car. "We'll have to be fast. Come on," he insisted.
We were in an alleyway behind a building, which seemed to have suffered from water on the brain when it was a child. It had a crazy look. A familiar garage sign – Gas. Cars bought and sold, was freshly painted in bluish purple, and made the appearance of having some scabby skin disease. I followed Hamilton over a low green fence, and we walked three yards or so down the street under the wrecked Fiat's persistent stare.
I had so many questions I didn't even know where to begin.
"What is this place?" I asked, suddenly remembering our last visit here. "I don't see a bar."
He did not respond nor look at me. I began to suspect that destination was in itself a perfectly arbitrary one (as, alas, so many were to be with him), and I shook in my shoes as I wondered how is he going to keep the whole arrangement plausible, and what other plausible objectives will he invent after we had taken all the possible turns. His dry hand remained over my forearm, his fingers a luminous crimson as they tried to resist the cold air. I jerked my arm away and stretched it sideways and backwards. To avoid his hand, my hand then slipped into the pocket of the jacket, grasping at the outline of a fountain pen. Hamilton sighed.
"If anyone asks you, say you are with me," he said as we approached the garage. "Don't talk to strangers and stay where I can see you."
"Alright."
As soon as he opened the back door, a torrent of cheerful music came from inside—that of the stairs leading down. What romantic soul was playing the piano where no piano had plunged in that forsaken place? With sudden familiarity I followed Hamilton into half darkness. We went down a winding, slippery staircase, lighted by asthmatic, flickering light bulbs on the walls. Although I was loth to lay my hand on the greasy banisters, it was almost impossible to descend these narrow steps without doing so. Of course, I realized, it's merely a decoy. Like 'The Three Oysters.'
I remembered it well. Since the young people think entirely differently than the grown-ups, and since everything that is forbidden, everything not said fully, or said in secret, has in their eyes an enormous, threefold interest—it is therefore natural for them to rebel against the Prohibition. As the night falls, they exit a cozy student restaurant, stamp upon the sidewalk, near the restaurant's back entrance, and discuss where else they might go to wind up the night. In all such restaurants the back doors are always slightly ajar, and through them one may see a steep stairway descending downstairs and the lamp's multifaceted reflector flashing. Till the very morning hundreds of people ascend and descend these staircases. I frequented such places often. Visiting illegal bars was like a sip of Burgundy when I was a child. I would come freely and simply, sometimes by myself, smoke, drink forbidden liquors, discuss suffrage with the flappers, convulsively pretend to be merry; I danced, executing abominable movements of charleston, and then, excited by alcohol, would come out of the smoky, fumy underground places into the street,
with its warm, heady air, from which the nostrils dilate avidly—my head aflame and yearning for immoral pleasures. Happy times.
Presently we ended up in a long corridor with walls green, painted over with bizarre landscapes. It was suffused with the same dim, impossible fluorescent light that every other secret establishment in New-York goes with. Little gusts of piano music wailed around us. We went along the corridor and through a flat gray door and along another corridor, softly lit and carpeted this time. Doors opened off it, with numbers on them. It was a hotel then.
"I have business here, but I can't leave you in the car," Hamilton muttered from behind me. "I'll have to leave you on your own for a while. Stay quiet. Don't tell anyone your name. Keep my jacket on."
"Alright, alright," I said, growing annoyed. "I have been to an underground establishment before, I know the deal."
"It's not quite the establishment."
He pushed another door, and immediately from behind it floated the continuous noise of knives upon plates and piano music, galloping in waves. It smelt of rich and pungent kitchen fumes, of perfume, and of that underground dampness so reminiscent of my distant past. We stepped into some kind of loggia, and as I looked down into the room before us, I was, for a moment, if not dazzled, at least pleasantly bewildered. A hundred lightbulbs of varied form filled the room with a strong yet hazy vari-colored light. In the middle of the dancefloor, upon a stand, a full orchestra was waiting – trombones and saxophones and viols and drums and a piano. They were all silent, except for the piano, which was at the time wailing the hopeless comment of the "Chicago Blues". The pianist, bending forward and affectedly swaying, was making unseemly sweet eyes at the public—the eyes of a man-prostitute. At first glance there was nothing wrong with this scene. The room was jammed, most of the tables taken, dancing couples holding each other, and a great number of singles dancing individually. Amidst the consequent mixture of voices the staff of lackeys functioned, pinning down their clients to the facts of enormous champagne glasses. Men mingled with women, a lot of men, but in their dark suits they formed only a kind of background. The women were tropical, dressed in festive outfits – feathers and glitter, cut high up the thighs, low over the breasts. There were a great many ombrecatchers in the room; there were a great many buttocks, too. One of the dancing pairs caught my eye: a man's hand was evidently under the skirts of the girl clasped against him. Suddenly I realized that it wasn't a girl at all. Oh, what the hell, I thought.
"Don't gawk," Hamilton put a gentle hand on my shoulder and led me forward. Another man has spotted him, has greeted him and set himself in motion towards us. Hamilton's grip tightened, and he muttered something else– I do not remember if I understood aright, but what I thought I did made him withdraw his hand, and of course his conversation with the man was fog to me. I kept looking about me, petrified. Some men, just like women, were in lingerie, bathing suits, the occasional see-through negligee. I think I caught a glimpse of somebody's penis. There were old men pushing other men– young and good looking, backward in eternal graceless circles. Some were lounging there by twos and threes, dancing in attitudes of the most consummate lewdness such as the imagination can never picture to itself. And everything together—this abundance of tiresome electric lights, the exaggeratedly bright toilettes of both the ladies and the men, the odors of spicy perfumes and bodily emissions, this ringing music—everything fitted the one to the other, setting for an imitation of a gay, unseemly carouse. Of course Hamilton would frequent this sort of place.
"No, I'm not staying. I need to collect a payment. I need–" music drowned the rest of Hamilton's sentence. "Can somebody look after him?"
"Just leave him at the bar. Or do you mean–"
"No, no, not like that. John, go downstairs and wait for me."
"Alright."
I was a little too distracted to think clearly; it was too much of a rare sight, seen from the cage in which I was cooped my whole life. As I descended the stairs into the dance room, it seemed to me as if I were in some rank jungle, where everything that is beautiful brings about instant death. It was a tall room, tall enough to release the smoke and chatter and music upward. Above, around the entire hall, ran an open gallery, upon which, as upon little balconies, opened the doors of the private cabinets. Men and women in obscene costumes, dancing, laughing, drinking. Was there joy to this? Of course there was. But for some reason the past I remembered wasn't exactly like this. As I was gazing up at the balconies, someone ran into me and mumbled a rapid "sorry." It was a lovely woman with black ringlets, accroche-cœurs, in a dark blue velvet tea-gown, with bare arms and bronze shoulders. She had one of the saddest faces I had ever seen. I stumbled about aimlessly, half-terrified and half-excited. The bar was the only place in which I could linger without looking purposeless. In common parlance, I needed a drink: it took me five minutes to find the bar-table in that venerable place full of perspiring sexless beings.
I found there a number of people who were cheerfully drinking together. I sat down awkwardly next to two dark-haired young beauties, sisters no doubt. One of them, a white negative image of a summer dress patterned against her tanned shoulders, turned to face me. Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more bold angle.
"What a beautiful little brunet!" as though by accident she put against my leg her strong, warm thigh. "What are you doing here on your own?"
I shivered a little.
"Hello. I'm just waiting for someone."
"Your host?" She dragged her golden hand against the lapel of Hamilton's jacket. "I see. He must be a swell gentleman if he gave you this."
"No... I'm waiting for my owner. Listen, I know nothing of this place. Could you please tell me where I am?"
The girl looked me in the eyes intently—looked so fixedly, that I even began to feel uncomfortable. She laughed.
"Give this boy a drink somebody," she cried, beckoning the bartender. The second girl, fingering a bright something about her white neck, said nothing, but just smiled on, so lewd.
"I'm afraid I'm not supposed to."
"Once won't hurt," the girl said. "No nicotine-and-alcohol taboos here!"
"No, I mean, I'm a slave. I have no money."
She laughed again, and brushed the hair off her face, and gradually the odd sense of living in a mad new dream world, where everything was permissible, came over me.
"The price is dearer than money. As is the rule in all good establishments. If your owner brought you down here, it means you may drink as much as you like." She let her fingers creep up my back, and her warm breath poured over me. "What'll it be, then?"
"I don't know," I blurted out in a hoarse, unfamiliar bass. Her hand felt heavy on my back. I got ready to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment. "What do they have?"
"Whatever you like," the bartender commenced to bustle. "Oh, how sweet to look at; a handsome gent and two dames. A regular bouquet. Of the sweet, there are Chardonnays, church wine, Teneriffe; while of the French there's Lafitte. You can get champagne. The ladies just simply adore tropical liquors with lemonade. So, what shall I treat you with?"
In my younger years I always had a great deal of money in my pocket, and went on a violent splurge whenever I was partying. Beer and other such light refreshments I drank only out of bravado, but could not bear their weak taste, and wondered how others could ever drink it. For that reason, squeamishly, like an old rake, I said: "But then, you surely must have some stronger stuff?"
Five minutes had passed, and all of a sudden I was enjoying myself. Everything that happened from this point forward has a dim, hazy cast over it in my memory.
"How very nice," the girl observed as I drank all the shots of vodka I wanted. I felt some necessity for it. "Having a gay time now?"
"Yes. Much better." I turned to my new acquaintance. "This is an unusual party for me, you know..."
The scene had changed before my eyes into something fun and simple.
"Do you come to such places often?"
"I like to come," the girl said. "I always have a great time."
"And what exactly is this place?"
The girl smiled at me indulgently.
"How do they call you, ducky dear?"
"John."
"Johnny-Jack, oh, how sweet. I adore such pale brunets; they make great lovers. Surely you must know, Johnny, what sort of place this is. Look around you."
The girl then drew her hot mouth nearer to my ear and whispered with a cunning face:
"It's a whore-house. Your owner brings you here, so that someone else can fool around with you for money."
The shocking truthfulness of her words took my breath away and made my hair stand on end.
"Is this a brothel..?"
"Well, that's not what we call it."
"What do you call it?"
"Nothing. It has no name."
The idea itself was downright crushing, terrible. To my drunken mind came the loud phrases from the time before: about the traffic of women's flesh, about the child slaves, about prostitution being a corroding fester of large cities, and so on, and so on... The Theory gave life to a dry profession, renewed a contract, an agreement, made it no better, no worse than, say, the trade in groceries. The most degrading form of slavery, a vileness before one's own conscience, mind, and logic.
My disdain seemingly affected the girl (the vile girl!) as little as if she were a photographic image rippling upon a screen and I a humble hunchback abusing myself in the dark. The music drifted on and on, and the dancing grew bolder, and fear, even stronger than before, began to afflict me again. I asked for another shot. Eventually the girl grew bored of me and enjoyed herself, even began flirtations of tropical eye-rollings and pawings, with the bartender. Let him come soon, I
prayed, addressing a lone God, please, I hate it here.
Suddenly the other sister ran up to the band platform, where a microphone was already being set up for her. She must have been a part of the band all along. The guests formed a motley circle around the dance floor; some elfish chance offered me a clear sight of it. The lights grew brighter. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varied the pitch of the piano obligingly for the singer, and there was a burst of applause as he got up and took a stand in front of the platform. With the boom of a bass drum, his voice rang out above the room:
"Ladies and gentlemen," he cried. "Turn your attention this way, for you are about to witness a sensation. Living Pictures. Thunder Storm on a Summer Day in June. The work of the unrecognized prima!"
The crowd responded to him again with an uproar of leaping, tumbling, scattering applause. I didn't even realize that I had swallowed another burning shot. The pianist smiled widely with jovial condescension. "Orchestra, if you please!"
He sat back down at the piano, and obligingly the orchestra launched into "If you love me, shoot me down." The crowd roared. No matter how I pressed myself, I could not, in any way, drag myself off my place at the bar. The recent light intoxication had by now gotten into my head, made it heavy. More and more horrible, unrealizable, and monstrous did the idea of this place seem to me.
A small backstage door opened, and upon the white crackling glow of the dance floor came a young someone, dressed like a dancer (Whistles). The hot electric light clipped close their shadow—it was too bright to see their features at first. Whatever the sex of this unusual lanky figure was, he or she had on a tight-fitting dress of a changing color—gold in the light, pink in the shade—silk gloves and stockings of the same tint as the satin of the dress, fitting tightly on the long pale arms and most beautifully-shaped legs.