Canaan's Tongue (30 page)

“A peach, this Fuh!—Fuh!—
Foster!
” Kennedy mutters.

Virgil looks hard at Foster. “How do you boys manage to keep clear, with all those Federals in the woods?”

Foster shrugs again. “They plenty of Yankees hereabouts. That’s all I can tell you.”

“I think you can tell us more than that,” says Virgil. “A very great deal more.”

Foster looks ruffled. “Look here, now. If you all are really part of Thaddeus Murel’s—”

“Ssshh!”
says Oliver. Kennedy puts his hands over his ears.

“We don’t speak that name aloud, Sergeant,” the Colonel whispers.

Foster blinks at him. “Why the hell not?”

“Superstition, child—; no more than that,” Parson says, gliding into the room like a dress-maker’s bust on wheels.

Foster stops and gapes. He makes a creaking sound behind his teeth. “Who is
that
?” he says in a small blanched voice.

Parson looks from one of us to the next. We stare down at the floor.

“Why did no-one wake me?” Parson says.

The Colonel squirms a little. “I sent Dodds up to fetch you, Parson. Heaven knows where that blasted nigger—”

“So you’ve poached yourselves a Yankee,” Parson says, cutting him short. “And now you’re having trouble with him.”

“No, no, Parson!” the Colonel says. “This man is a member of the Sartoris Company—: a Dixie man. One of our own. He tells me—”

“Oh! I think I’d know a Yankee,” Parson says. He winks at Foster. “If the wind was blowing right.”

Foster’s face goes softer still.

Nobody says anything for a good long while.

“Well, dip me in bread-crumbs!” Kennedy says at last, throwing the satchel open with a laugh.

“Why not leave Mr. Foster in my care, gentlemen?” Parson says.

The Colonel shakes his head at this but no-one minds him. Kennedy stops short, looks down at his works, and spits.

“Parson!” the Colonel says. “Please, Parson. This—this boy—”

“Shut your mouth, Colonel,” Parson says. The Colonel shuts it.

“Leave us for a bit,” Parson says, smiling at Foster. “All of you.”

Kennedy gets to his feet and curses each of us and walks out with his bag of tricks wide open in the middle of the floor. Oliver trails out after him. The Colonel looks so old and dried-up on his stool that I expect him to blow away like dandelion-seed. He looks at Parson, then at Foster. He bows his head and shuts his eyes.

Parson rolls up to the settee. The hem of his skirt scrapes stiff as a tea-cup across the parquet. He lays a hand on the Colonel’s shoulder as he passes. “Why didn’t you wake me, Erratus?”

“Let me stay with this boy,” the Colonel says. “Let me stay with you and this boy, Parson.” His voice is as thin as an onion-skin.

Virgil helps the Colonel to his feet. “Come along, old smoke,” he says. “This boy’s no boy of yours.”

“Let the old donkey stay,” Foster says. “I don’t mind.” His upcountry drawl has been neatly put aside.

Parson lifts his skirts like a lady climbing into a coach and sets himself down next to Foster. Foster’s nape bunches up like a kitten’s.

I hang back in the room a moment, watching him. If he’s a spy, then he must know something about us already. And if he knows something about us already, then he must be wishing to saints above that Parson hadn’t woken from his nap.

I turn to leave. “Miss!” Foster calls out. “Would you be so kind as to get me a cup of water from that pail in the kitchen?”

I stop and squint at him. The air in the parlor is close and still. “When did you happen to be in the kitchen, Mr. Foster?” I say.

“Get me some god-damned
water,
” Foster squeaks. His face is grayer than his coat. I smile. The wish of a man who expects the life to be sucked out of him drop by drop for a cup of water seems a funny one to me.

“Go on, Miss Gilchrist,” Parson says. “Get our prisoner his drink.” Parson has always preferred a drop of water in his soup.

I’m away perhaps two minutes. When I come back they’re both exactly as they were. Not a word has passed between them, by the look of it. Dew has begun to form on Foster’s temples. I set the jar of water at his feet. He takes no notice. Parson is looking up at the ceiling like a spinster thinking of a dirty story.

“By-the-bye, Miss Gilchrist,” he says. “Have you seen little Asa Trist?”

I think a moment. “This morning I did, by the orchard fence. Jabbering away at Virgil.”

His eyes come down at once. “Talking to Virgil?” he says.

I nod. “It looked to be quite an epic.”

His face gives a flutter. “How do you mean, ‘an epic’?”

“Just that,” I say. “There looked to be no end of poetry in it.”

Parson says nothing.

“I was watching from my window,” I say. “I couldn’t hear them, Parson.”

“From your window. Yes. I have no doubt that you were.” Parson looks me over. “But then, you hear all sorts of things through that window of yours—; don’t you, Miss Gilchrist.”

I keep my face shut to him. “Have you and Asa had a fight?”

Parson sits back with a sigh. “You might say that we’ve had a parting of the waters,” he says.

“A religious matter, was it?”

His eyes go cloudy. “You might call it that.”

Foster lets out a choked-sounding breath and reaches for the jar. He moves his arms as though they were borrowed from some other. He takes hold of the jar and lifts it to his mouth. He hasn’t once looked at Parson or at me.

“I’ve always considered you and Asa birds of a feather,” I say to Parson. “You both make me want to run screaming for the hills.”

“Asa Trist is a bird,” Foster announces, setting down the jar.

It takes me a moment to recover my voice. “What did you say, Mr. Foster?”

Foster’s mouth shuts. His face is like the weather-side of an old frame house.

Parson gathers up the hem of his gown and studies it. He moves his thumb back and forth across a stain. He purses his lips. “Go on, Mr. Foster,” he says.

“Asa Trist is a bird,” Foster says again. His voice is as unlike the voice that asked me to fetch the water as my own voice is to Parson’s.

“A plucked pigeon,” Foster says. “A fallen snipe.”

I turn stone-faced to Parson. “I’ve seen this trick before,” I say. “It holds no charm for me.” But even as I say so a faintness gathers against my skin and I understand he’ll do exactly what he likes. He’ll do exactly what he likes with me.

Parson sits forward with a yawn. Foster crumples like a cast-off glove.

“Let’s chat a bit, Clementine,” he says. He pats the empty stool beside him.

From Parson’s Day-Book.

This in the language of Christ’s murderers is
hokmah
nistarah
, the
clandestine wisdom, passed from one generation to the next since the
death
of Abraham, to whom it was revealed by G*d. The sin which
sequesters us from His boundaryless glory is not that of vice, but of ignorance.
Our eyes were given us to see.

The link between G*d and the world is indirect. G*d is a pier-glass from
which pours forth a bountiful light. The light is reflected in a second glass,
from which it passes to a third, a fourth, and so on until the mortal coil is
reached. With each reflection the light loses something of its strength, till at
last it falls dimly onto the floor of this our earth, finite and desecrated, that we
may look upon ourselves and weep.

At the beginning all that existed was G*d and nothing. G*d sent out into
the nothing an emanation of Itself, and from this came a great tumult of
emanations, forming a cradle for the emptiness, a quickening grid of light.
The ten emanations are called the sephiroth, and their splendid lights, properlyread, yield up the most secret name of G*d. The universe that grew up in
this cradle was made out of G*d, and the sephiroth are no less than the ten
facets of Its nature. They are the path by which the soul journeys downward to
the world at birth, and the points by which it navigates its return to Heaven.

Death, however, is not a necessary precondition to this journey. The spirit
can climb the ladder of the sephiroth while yet in the flesh, and likewise can a
man descend the ladder a second time and make himself as a god on earth.
Whosoever has ears to hear, let him hear, etc.

Virgil Ball has ears.

Endurance.

I WAS BORN WHITE, Asa says. Shall I tell it?

Under oath, Asa Trist, genuine land-owner’s son, learned to brake, cut, card, spin flax, all genuine farming work well learned, mashing potatoes for the horses, pigs, well-watering and slopping cows, milking cows, pulling the legs at birthing, pulling calves, milking goats, separating milk from cream, setting milk to stand in a cool, dry place, making white-curd cheese from butter-milk, from bitches’-milk, making cheese, making a good side of smooth, oval cheese, good God, dousing it with cream, turning over, standing straight, lying bent, for hours
good God
learning words, boiling sugar-beet, then pressing, boiling the juice, preparing for the making of the sweet sugar-beet syrup, giving it out on Sundays to the niggers, letting twenty niggers in to wash, taking twenty cuts, smelling the butter off the skin, early hot milk skimmed, little tear-drops, big pot full of boiled potatoes, watching father hand out the plates, watching mother, one plate sugar-beet syrup, one plate white-curd cheese, one plate bread, planting rice, laying it out in neat white lines on the ground, cutting up the meat, hunks of ham or fat drippings or scrapple, greetings to all honorable childs of niggers

I SEE VIRGIL ALONE, by the orchard fence. Write my biography, Virgil! I call out to him. And I’ll write one for you.

Morning, Asa, Virgil says. Careful, now. Clem is watching us from her cat-seat.

Clementine talks with the Redeemer that way, Virgil.

I know.

Listen to me, Virgil. Please. The Redeemer and I share the same idea.

Virgil smiles. What idea is that, Asa?

To make me sick, I answer. That I might learn endurance.

ONE WHIP LAID LENGTH-WISE IN A LINE, frontsteps of the mansion to the old poplar tree, two whips end-to-end, back porch to the cabins, four whips configured into a diamond, eighteen feet by eighteen feet by eighteen, one thousand diamonds into a net, neighbors and family and children, nets to catch stray birds, strung out across the water, niggers dressed in net-skirts, Heaven a high, cold house with nets strung across the windows, outside the neighbors, the friends, the chattering family, eighteen whips each eighteen feet laid out in a chain, a stable full of horses, hat-box full of bottles, God laughs—Asa!

Then forgives.

THE LIMBS OF THE FRUIT TREES along the fence look like arms and legs. Virgil is offering me a choice—: to tell him the history of my greatest exploits, or to die.

That hat-box you had in Memphis, Asa. He looks me in the face. Asa!

Yes?

That black box. Do you recollect it?

Parson has it, I say, blinking.

Virgil frowns. Parson.

I feel much better now, Virgil. Pray let’s make use of it. There’s very little time.

First tell me about the hat-box.

I lift my shoulders. Samples. Cuts. A project.

He looks at me. Research?

Yes. That.

What would Parson want with it?

Parson is a castrato! I snicker. A singer in the choir.

Virgil looks me in the eye. Were
all
the cuts from niggers?

No sir. Some were from dirty old white men.

PLACED IN SOLUTION of carbon disulfide sample desiccates, reduces, color of wood-smoke, color of butter, scars, gouges, incision-marks fatten and blister, cat-fish gathered up in nets, family property, Federal state and district, oil, coal and natural gas, stately ladies of New Orleans tilt and squat over cast-iron pails, quadrilles, quarantine, quadroons, Creole bandy-legs, red-bones, over the cast-iron fathers of New Orleans. Say, Virgil—:

THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME, you see. In that solution.

Virgil is quiet. They all look like nigger skins.

I say nothing, but my heart is flying toward him—: Yes.

Virgil rubs his face. You might be onto something there, Asa, he says. Laughing as he says it in his heart.

Yes.

I still don’t see what Parson would want that hat-box for.

Shall I tell him?
He has three locks of your hair,
Virgil. And of mine.

Virgil stops. Takes hold of the fence-rail with both his hands. Whitens. You don’t mean. You don’t mean to say, those bottles—

I lift a trouser-leg, disclosing a bright rectilinear scar.

He pants. You buggered fool, Asa. Who else did you cut?

Thaddeus Morelle, a lock of hair. Goodman Harvey—generous, obliging—a snippet of hide. Virgil Ball—

Virgil heaves me back against the fence. You never cut into
me,
you son-of-a-bitch. You never—with your limp white lady-hands. You never did.

Allow me to write a brief chapter, Virgil.
Virgil
—:

VIRGIL’S WHITE ARM UNCOILS. I fall sweetly to earth. I wanted to reconcile opposites, Virgil. Occult knowledge and science, black hide and white hide, the healthy and the sick—

By God, Asa. You’d better tell me something I want to listen to.

He keeps it up in his attic, I say.

What?

The box. The cuttings. Everything I took. I look up at Virgil. And I’ll tell you something more.

Virgil turns and starts toward the house. If you’re only spinning thread, you moon-faced bastard, on my mother’s grave, I’ll—

Virgil! I moon-face at him. Stop a moment further, Virgil! There’s more to tell.

I’ve heard enough, Asa. You can dribble the rest out later.

Later is an open grave, but Virgil cannot know this.

ASA TRIST, GENTLE-FARMER’S SON, spit on at birth, mother-coddled, good worker, learned well the following—: the Hand of Glory. Cut a hand from a runaway and wrap it in a winding-sheet. Press it thoroughly to drain the fluid from it. The blood, the water, the lymph. Keep it for a week in an earthen jar mixed with pepper and saltpeter under the ground. Dry it in the heat of the sun or if the sun is not ample in a cotton-wood-fed furnace. The fat which runneth from the hand is mixed with wax to make a candle. Said candle is then put into the hand’s own fingers. Light from said candle will cure any spell of whiteness. Light from said candle will bring horrors to a child.

MY FATHER WAS WELL-KNOWN TO THE REDEEMER, Virgil, as you know.

Virgil looks back at the house. I know it.

You walk the grounds each day, with Delamare. The same rounds each day,
exactly.
Why?

For Christ’s sake, Asa—

EVERY day, I say again. I close my eyes. You’ve never noticed it?

He curses. What, Asa? What should I notice?

I raise my left hand, holding up three fingers. Thaddeus Morelle, at the privy. Goodman Harvey, beside the stables. Now there’s a hole by the tobacco-shed.

Virgil blinks twice. I know, he says. I’ve seen it.

Dodds dug it. Parson helped him.

Stone-faced now. Not running up the hill. Listening to me. And?

Two holes, connected, make a line. I work my mouth into a grin. Three holes, now. Three holes make a figure.

That’s right, Asa. For the birds to look at.

An angel would see it, I say. Looking down from on high. I take in a breath. Or even from the attic.

His eyes get rounder. He fashions the word ‘attic’ with his lips.

I killed my mother when I was born, Virgil! And my father was born blue-blooded out of me.

He’s off and running now, stumbling and cursing. Off toward the house.

Good-bye, Virgil. Good-bye, house!

Take a pencil with you, Virgil! I shout after him. Make a sketch!