Middle Passage (13 page)

“Thank you, sir.”

Falcon broke off a hunch of biscuit. “Your report, laddie.”

Please don't think poorly of me if I confess that during
the next half hour I unbosomed myself. I withheld nothing. Did I lack liver? Touching my side I assured myself this organ was there. Perhaps I simply needed to talk. Perhaps I was, at heart, a two-faced coward as bad as my brother when it came to betraying rebellious slaves to Master Chandler. (I'll tell of this treachery in my own good time.) However it may be, I outlined the mutineers' plan to deep-six him, citing each rebel by name, and described the central role they had assigned me in the takeover, the whole account spilling from me in fits and starts, for I feared Falcon's Jovian wrath more than theirs. More than once, his rages had sent men climbing to the crow's-nest for safety, and he'd turn to one of his officers, chuckling, “They think I'm loony.” I told everything, talking louder toward the end because the ship's dogs began a howling brangle outside louder than before, belike timber wolves or wild coyotes. When, finished, I looked up, Falcon was smiling and picking his teeth with his thumbnail.

“So that's the way of it. They think settin' me adrift will solve everythin'? Hah! Hark you now. I'm not an
easy
man to eliminate, Mr. Calhoun. Not even for me.” He tapped the container on his desk with his spoon. “I tried to kill myself once. That's what come of it. The ball bent flat on my skull. Naw, the peace they want's impossible, whether Cringle's at the helm or McGaffin or me.”

“How do you mean?”

“I'm not the problem is what I mean.” Apparently he felt the tightness of his gunbelt after eating; he took it off, placing his pistol and keys down on the table between us, a presence that made me all the more uncomfortable. I tried not to look at the gun, fearful that if I stared it might suddenly go off.
“Man
is the problem, Mr. Calhoun. Not just
gents, but women as well, anythin' capable of
thought.
Now, why do I say such a curious thing? Study it for a spell. You're a boy with some schoolin', I can tell. Did it include the teaching of Ancillon, de Maistre, or Portalis? You recall each says war is divine, as much a child of the soul as music and poetry. For a self to act, it must have somethin' to act
on.
A nonself—some call this Nature—that resists, thwarts the will, and
vetoes
the actor. May I proceed? Well, suppose that nonself is another self? What then? As long as each sees a situation differently there will be slaughter and slavery and the subordination of one to another 'cause two notions of things never exist side by side as equals. Why not—I put it to you—if both are true? Books live together in the library, don't they, Teresa of Avila beside Aristippus, Bacon beside Berkeley? The reason—the irrefragable truth is each person in his heart believes
his
beliefs is best. Fact is, down deep no man's democratic. We're closet anarchists, I'd wager.
Ouk agathón polykoíranín eis koíranos éstos.
We believe what we believe. And the final test of truth is war on foreign soil. War in your front yard. War in your bedroom. War in your own heart, if you listen too much to other people. And in each battle 'tis the winning belief what's true and the conquerer whose vision is veritable.”

“No—nossir!” says I, louder than I intended. “By my heart, sir, if something is true, it can't be suppressed, can it, regardless of whether all the armies of the world stand ready to silence it?”

“You're a smart boy. What d'you think? Is truth floatin' round out there in space separate from persons? Now, be frank.”

“No, but—”

“Conflict,” says he,
“is
what it means to be conscious.
Dualism is a bloody structure of the mind. Subject and object, perceiver and perceived, self and other—these ancient twins are built into mind like the stem-piece of a merchantman. We cannot
think
without them, sir. And what, pray, kin such a thing mean? Only this, Mr. Calhoun: They are signs of a transcendental Fault, a deep crack in consciousness itself. Mind was
made
for murder. Slavery, if you think this through, forcing yourself not to flinch, is the social correlate of a deeper, ontic wound.” He could see I was squirming and smiled. “Let 'em put me over the side. Before my dinghy's out of sight, they'll be arguing and pitching daggers till there's only one tar left alive. Such are my views.” He pushed back from the table. “D'you still plan to help the rebels set me adrift?”

“No.”

“That means you
submit,
doesn't it?”

“I guess so.”

“See, 'tis always that way.”

On deck the dogs kept snarling, as if they'd cornered something. I sat for a moment in misery and methought myself outdone. I stank. I could smell myself, and stood, wanting a defense against Falcon's dark counsel and arguments that broke my head. To my everlasting shame, I knew of none. As my fingers curled around his empty plate and passed over his keys, pausing there, then over his pistol, he pulled his robe tightly around him.

“Don't think I'm not grateful for what you told me. You'll be rewarded. Tomorrow break in that door, as you promised, but leave my things as they are. I'll arm a few mates on our side and we'll chain the rebels in the hold with the blacks.”

“That's all? They won't be harmed?”

“I'll set them free. They'll forfeit their shares, of course, and I might bastinado the bunch of 'em to teach the others a lesson. But aye, I'll set 'em free. If all goes well, I'll double your lay from the cargo. You'll be in the lolly soon, I can promise. There'll be a bonus—hatch money—for the find we've got below.”

“Can you tell me what that is?”

“I suppose I can now. We're past keeping secrets from each other.” A soft burp forced its way to his lips. The hounds quieted some, leaving a silence in which I could hear only whimpering and Falcon's voice, as he leaned toward me, beckoning with one crooked finger that I tip my head toward his own. “Sit down here beside me, Mr. Calhoun. You shouldn't hear what I've got to say standin'.”

“ 'Tis a god.” Falcon kept his voice low; he looked round furtively, as if the furniture might be listening. “We've captured an African god.”

I said nothing. Surely you can understand why.

“Oh, I'm not one to believe in heathen gods, but I know 'tis different from anythin' seen back in the States. The Allmuseri have worshiped it since the Stone Age. They say it sustains everythin' in the universe. It never sleeps. Night and day, it works, like a weaver—like rust, or an Alabama field hand—to ensure that galaxies push outward and particles smaller than the eye dance their endless, pointless reel. It is the heat in fire, they say. The wetness in water. Once a year the whole tribe stays awake all night so it can rest, then resume its labor of creating and destroying the cosmos, then creating it again, cycle after cycle. According to Allmuseri priests, it accomplishes this with only one-fourth of its full power. That alone is enough to, say, guarantee photosynthesis and keep the planet on its axis. Perhaps it uses the other three-quarters to sustain alternate universes, parallel worlds and counterhistories where, for example, you are captain of the
Republic
and I'm the cook's helper. Naturally, they do not speak its name. That takes too long. It has a
thousand names. Nor do they carve its image. All things are its image: stone and sand. Master and slave. When Ahman-de-Bellah raided their village two months ago, he found their Most High located in a shrine, for like the Old Testament god this one, far from receding into silence, delights in walking with and talking to its people. With me, it's a witty conversationalist, I can tell you that, though prone to periods of self-pity and depression. Knows a little of everythin', though not as we know things, of course, and seems slightly amused Ahman-de-Bellah put it in irons.”

“You can do that?”

“Quite right, m'boy. 'Twasn't
easy,
of course. Sometimes it's physical, you know, like me and thee. But only for a few seconds at a time. Mostly, it's immaterial, the way gods and angels are supposed to be. Being unphysical means there can only be
one
of each kind of god or angel—one Throne, one Principality, one Archangel, 'cause there's only a formal (not a material) difference amongst 'em, so the one below is the only creature of its kind in the universe—
is
the universe, the Allmuseri say.” He paused, cleared his dry throat, and lifted a teaspoon of coffee to his lips. “Another thing 'bout not bein' physical most of the time is that it can't understand any of the sciences based on matter, like geometry. Heh heh. It can't
do
geometry, you see, 'cause it's a god.”

“Are you saying even a god has limitations?”

“That I am. And not only limitations, lad. I daresay it has downright contradictions. For example, a god can't know its own nature. For itself, it can't be an object of knowledge. D'you see the logic here? The Allmuseri god is everything, so the very knowing situation we mortals rely on—a separation between knower and known—never rises in its experience. You might say empirical knowledge is on man's side,
not God's. It's our glory and grief both, a function of the duality of mind I mentioned a moment ago. Oh, 'tis a strange creature we have below, Mr. Calhoun. Omnipresence means it forefeits our kind of knowledge. Omnipotence means, ironically, that it can create a stone so heavy it cannot lift that same stone from the floor.”

None of this was clear. Aphasic, I nodded anyway. My brain had stopped functioning a full five sentences ago. Could it be that in a dimension alongside this one I was a dwarf sitting in a Chinese robe, telling a white mate I had captured a European god and, below us, the hold was crammed with white chattel? Preposterous! Considering thoughts of this sort was like standing on the edge of a cliff. “Cap'n,” I said, swallowing, “you've got a god on ship?”

“You shouldn't goggle,” says he. “Makes you look weak-minded, Mr. Calhoun. We're not only shipping Allmuseri on this trip, we're bringin' back their deity too. I'd wager this freight's worth at least a footnote in the history books, wouldn't you say? Better'n stumblin' on Lemuria or findin' the source of the Nile. Most nations will pay a pretty whack to possess a creature such as this. It's a tricky rascal, though, if you ain't careful.”

“Tricky, sir?”

“I mean what it did to Tommy O'Toole. Legend has it the Creature has a hundred ways to relieve men of their reason. It traps them, tricks them into Heaven. It's Loki and Brer Rabbit together. That's why no one goes near it but me.”

“You, I take it, are immune to Heaven?”

He gave me a look, then stood, placing his hand on my arm to bid me rise, then eased me outside. “Do as I said tomorrow. Tell no one we've talked—and, for Christ's sake, see what's spooked the dogs.”

I closed the door by leaning against the muntin, and frowned (I hated it whenever anyone used the word “spook”), my head on the frieze rail, listening to blood thrum in my temples. I waited for my second wind. It never came. Forth I went anyway through layers of mist toward the animal pens, holding Falcon's tray close to my chest, squeezing it for no other reason than to have something concrete and stable to hold onto, and holding as well a key I'd taken off his table. I couldn't help myself. Stealing was a nervous habit for me sometimes, a way to shake off stress and occupy my hands. And I
had
felt nervous in his cabin because so little on this ship seemed solid, reliable. If before my report to Falcon I had felt unsure whom to trust, now I distrusted my own eyes and ears. A godhead in the hold? Closing my eyes, I made myself consider the consequences of the being that sustained the world falling into the hands of an American soldier of fortune. No explorer could touch Falcon now. He had won his deepest wish. From the Vatican to political circles in Virginia he would be pursued, maybe given the presidency or the personal empire he had dreamed of since the Revolution. Once his cargo was in captivity, under lock and key at some college (or more likely a military camp), history would change. History, as we knew it, would
end
for there would be no barriers between the secular and sacred. I was starting to scare myself now and figured I'd better stop. Gods only appeared, Reverend Chandler had said, on Judgment Day. For my part, I wanted to live a little longer. I was only twenty-three years old. The Apocalypse would definitely put a crimp in my career plans. I needed the world as I knew it, as evil and flawed as it was, to
be
there for a while. On the other hand, if Falcon had not lied, there were easily half a dozen questions I wanted to put to who—or
whatever maintained the cosmos second by second. Shaking my head to clear it, I pushed on to the pens, the trembling of my hands rattling silverware on his tray, for I could not imagine all the implications of Falcon's discovery, or what shocks at sea awaited me next.

Instantly I got my answer.

The dogs were howling, a slobber like sea foam spilling from their mouths, because Meadows was beating them viciously with a sjambok. In the glow of a deck light, I could see he was wearing my clothes. The killing part was my blouse looked better on him than on me. Lashing the ship's dogs, he spoke to them in an unerring imitation of black English, his accent passably southern Illinoisan, his speech sprinkled with my quirky, rhetorical asides, which I swore right then I would never use again. For a moment I was fascinated. It was like watching a voodoo priest manipulating a lock of your hair. Impaling a doll effigy of you with pins. Meadows even managed to mime a few of my physical eccentricities, like the way I tugged my right earlobe when perplexed—I caught myself doing it then, glanced back at him and gasped—or sometimes rubbed my nose with a quick flick of my thumb, boxer style: gestures that were quintessentially Rutherford Calhoun and delivered now to the frothing dogs with profound, heartless doses of pain. Meadows peeled off my clothing, let the hounds smell and snap at it one last time; then he pulled a pair of Cringle's breeches over his own, rolling up the cuffs. Again, he whipped them, wrenching his voice toward higher registers to sound like the master's mate giving orders. It laid me low, seeing Meadows vanish and a devastating caricature of Peter Cringle emerge, boiled down to his broad outlines. The barber-surgeon was a born thespian. Knowing each mate medically,
I guessed, gave him this gift for brutal satire. After rubbing the crotch of Cringle's smelly trousers into their noses to drive home his strongest scent, Meadows draped a few articles of brightly colored African dress—Abo Po and abada—around his broad waist, unleashed a new, stinging round of stripes, and spoke those haunting words the Allmuseri men and women used, like a fragrance, breathed into the air. For the dogs, though, these were hated words, intertwined with twenty lashes. They would throw themselves, fangs unsheathed, with no thought toward their safety upon anyone speaking Allmuseri, scratching his brow like Cringle, or blending the languages of house and field, street and seminary, as I often did.