Authors: Aaron Thier
The Ghost Apple (24 page)
Mr. Cavendish, who used sometimes to stroll among us at night, often spoke of the desires of corporations as being more honest and pure than the desires of men, and used to impress upon us the very great good of profit, stating that if all men pursued their own self-interest, as corporations did, the world would be a superior place. But sometimes, in another mood, he used to become melancholy, and sought to justify himself as follows:
“Such a labor system as we have here on St. Renard is the only one which makes economic sense, for here indeed we have a situation exactly analogous to that faced by the planters of the eighteenth century, with the only difference being that we have eschewed mechanized cultivators by choice.”
At such moments, it seemed possible that executives elsewhere in the company might have been unaware of the system in place on St. Renard, that system having been conceived by Mr. Cavendish himself as the only means of satisfying at least some of the requirements of low-carbon agriculture while at the same time making the plantation profitable, a challenge he would have been unable to meet without slave labor.
At still other times, he used to represent himself as an honest man engaged in a great struggle to exact a minimum of labor from an unwilling and exceedingly indolent labor force. Sometimes he seemed to forget the fear and suspicion that at other times nearly drove him mad, and I heard him speak thus:
“Why should they work, when indeed we are so indulgent, and the land so bountiful? The fact, I take it, is that there are too many good things in St. Renard for the number of laborers who have to enjoy them. If the competitors were more in number, more trouble would be necessary for their acquirement, and then we should see a labor force grateful for what work it can get.”
In short, I cannot say what the truth of the situation was—whether Mr. Cavendish was acting on his own in running the plantation thus, or whether such practices were followed elsewhere in the company. I can only report the details of my confinement on that island as I myself recollect them, and if others can tell a different story, I invite them to do so.
From the local laborers, with whom, as our treatment worsened, we increasingly had opportunities to speak, we heard dreadful rumors about Mr. Cavendish, so that by the time he came to single me out, a misfortune of which I shall tell in time, I had already a good idea of his character. One story was that he used to gather a few of the younger men, make them drunk with cane liquor, and set them to fighting with one another for his amusement. Another story was that he would walk among the laborers’ cabins in the dead of night, dripping and reeking with the noxious chemicals in which he soaked his clothing as a deterrent against biting insects, and in that state, drunken and tottering, he would attempt to force his affections upon the local women, who had but little recourse than to submit, fearing reprisals and harsh treatment. I had cause to believe this story, as the following will show.
As we grew more conditioned to the pace of the work, we were driven harder, working no less than fifteen or sixteen hours in a day, as well as three nights each week in the boiling house. One morning, when I was helping to truss a molasses cask, I was taken with a spell of dizziness and pitched forward onto my face. I had worked all the previous night in the boiling house, and all the previous day in the most infernal heat, and I had come to the end of my strength. But although I could not stand, and indeed was hardly aware of my surroundings, being half-dead with fatigue, the overseer, Mr. Drax, began jeering at me and making the most absurd insinuations, suggesting that I was a malingerer, and that I was intent on sabotaging the honest labor in which my fellows were engaged. When I did not rise to my feet after a period of three minutes, he was forced to relent, and instructed two of the other students to drag me off to the sick house.
I was confined for some days, being at first unable to stand, and there I regained some of my strength, but it was in the sick house that I was subjected to the first of those crowning indignities by which my semester abroad was made wholly and finally insupportable. For while I lay in bed, alone in that vile structure, Mr. Cavendish came to see me. He was much aroused, and paced rapidly about the room with his hands clasped behind his back. I should say that our clothes were at this time little better than rags, and sometimes not even that, so that we were compelled to labor in a state of shameful exposure, licentiousness prevailing among the overseers in consequence. Thus Mr. Cavendish, gazing upon me, and driven to lustful fantasies, began making pathetic entreaties, and asking me to pity him, as he was a lonely man. At any moment I expected him to become violent, nor was I fit enough to resist him, and I have no doubt that my honor would have been violated had there not come at just that time a cry from the field, in response to which he ran out again and left me.
I had no peace after this, fearing an outburst of that anger he so often vented on the backs of the Renardennes, and indeed those fears were soon requited, though in the event it was Mr. Akins who was the agent of evil. One day I had gone to beg a drink of water from some islanders when that man, surprising us together in the field, and perhaps taking me, dark as I was, for an islander myself, threw me down in the dust, saying that he would teach me to neglect my work, and dealt me two or three savage blows with a rawhide whip, as well as numerous kicks and punches. At this I felt something fall away within me, and I cannot easily describe my impressions, except to say that such treatment was the nightmare of which I realized that a part of me had always lived in fear, growing up, happy though I had been, a black girl in the shadow of American slavery. Thus the beating I received, in addition to being a surprise of the very worst kind, was also like a return to something I had known before.
The next day I was again at my work, cutting and processing cane, when Mr. Cavendish came upon me in the field, saying that he had heard about what had happened, and that he had been desirous of speaking with me. He asked that I come to see him in the field office that evening, and I had no choice but to consent, fearing the worst.
I found him seated behind his desk, his face horribly flushed, and his eyes the color of watermelon. He pretended to be much preoccupied with what he represented to me as “labor problems,” and he delivered a most peculiar speech upon the nature and disposition of the island laborers, of which I will give a sample to show how little it touched upon the truth of things:
“When the Renardenne has eaten his banana,” he said, “he goes to sleep, and though a hurricane destroys the hopes of the planter, though fire consumes the buildings erected at a vast expense, though subterraneous commotions engulf whole cities—what is all this to him! Enveloped in his blanket, and tranquilly seated on the ruins, he sees with the same eye the smoke which exhales from his pipe, and the torrents of flame which devour the prospects of a whole generation!”
He sighed and threw up his hands, very much as if he expected me to agree with him, and to establish with me some common understanding upon these grounds. I cannot say what he meant, nor what had occasioned these thoughts, and moreover, as I drew near, I saw that the papers upon which he had seemed to be writing were in fact X-Men comics, the margins of which he had filled with most obscene and childish drawings, and, further, that he was sitting with his trousers unfastened, in a state of firm and colorful arousal. I then made as if to excuse myself, pretending to think that I had surprised him in an intimate act, for the accomplishment of which he required privacy. With apologies, averting my eyes, I began to back out of the office, even as I heard him making entreaties and supplications, begging me to stay with him and protesting that he did not deserve such treatment. If he made no move to restrain me, I soon learned the reason, for there were some men stationed outside the door, Mr. Akins and Mr. Drax among them, and as I passed through they grabbed hold of me.
Now Mr. Cavendish appeared in the doorway, laughing softly and joking with the other men. I have a good idea what he intended, for he came up to me and pressed himself close, and I could feel the metal buttons of his shirt on my face, to say nothing of the appalling manifestation of his desire. He began murmuring to me, though I could not understand him, and the abominable reek of his breath, sweet with cane liquor, was like an exhalation of Hell.
These men got me over a molasses cask and held me there, though they did not tie me. Then someone pushed my dress up around my waist, laughing all the while and making the most crude comments and suggestions.
At just this moment there recurred to my mind an incident I had witnessed earlier in the day. I had been walking past the field office when I saw Mr. Cavendish crossing the yard in the opposite direction. I quickly hid myself behind a small bush, and from there I heard an islander call out, and I saw my torturer stop and turn around. Crouching down and peering through the branches, I could see the islander quite clearly. He held in his hands a hammer and a nail. Murmuring to himself and tossing his head rhythmically, he knelt down and drove the nail into the soil of the yard. Mr. Cavendish seemed much affected by this event, and indeed grew very pale, and said not a word. Later, when both men had gone, I crept from my hideaway to discover for myself what the islander had done, and I saw that he had driven the nail into Mr. Cavendish’s footprint.
Reflecting on this fact much later, I cannot but wonder what effect this ancient magic might have had, for now there came a sharp cry, and a confusion of voices, and Mr. Monthan, an overseer whom I did not know very well, came running in our direction, saying that the maroons were on the plantation, and they had set fire to the cane fields.
End of Part One
The Tripoli College Telegraph (Approved Content)
March
10
,
2010
Acting President Shows Clemency
Professor Richard Carlyle was released from custody late Tuesday night after Acting President Beckford announced that he was granting the troubled professor a full pardon.
“Artists are like children,” said the acting president, “and must be treated indulgently.”
Professor Carlyle was apprehended last Saturday while attempting to liberate the cowardly slave trader Bish Pinkman III, who is currently working off his debt to Tripoli in the service of the acting president.
Professor Carlyle explained that he had been feeling “desolate” about the role he had played in the Pinkman case but that he had not intended to lead Mr. Pinkman III to freedom.
“I was just thinking we could drink some NyQuil together and make amends,” he said. “I wanted to apologize.”
The acting president expressed disappointment in Professor Carlyle, although he insisted that he still considers the poet a friend.
A car came for me at about five o’clock on the evening I was scheduled to have dinner at Mr. Johnson Price’s home. He lived no more than ten miles outside San Cristobal, but it was a different world out there in the country. His house, a huge Georgian mansion built from coral rock, was surrounded by five acres of terraced tropical gardens, and from the back porch he had an unbroken view of the coastal plain and the sea.
I was met at the door by an old black man who introduced himself as Affleck. I took him for a butler or a footman. He seemed very perturbed that I didn’t have a coat to give him, but how could I wear a coat when it was almost eighty degrees in the dark?
I almost fell down as I stepped inside—the mahogany floors had been polished as smooth as a hockey rink—and I was gripping a hall table to steady myself when Mr. Price appeared. He was a boisterous and energetic person, running to fat but still light on his feet. He clapped me on the back and seemed very happy to see me, though at first he mistook me for a shareholder in the Royal African Company. It took him a moment to remember what Tripoli College was. I subsequently learned that it was his secretary who had sent me the invitation.
There were already about twenty or thirty people in the great hall, and everyone looked as if they’d been drinking for a few hours already. A very dark-skinned waiter named London brought me a glass of plantain wine, which was extremely strong, and I melted into the crowd and tried to fit in.
But it wasn’t the kind of event at which you could fit in or not fit in. Everyone seemed to have come prepared for a different kind of evening. Some people wore T-shirts and shorts, others wore slim black dresses and suits in contemporary cuts, one man was wearing a bathing suit, and still others wore outlandish costumes—silk breeches with white silk coats and waistcoats, dressing gowns, ornate doublets, wide fur hats. Mr. Price was wearing a simple black suit when he met me at the door, but soon he slipped away and reappeared in a kind of tropical safari costume, complete with cork helmet. Some of the women were wearing bulky Victorian ball gowns, and at least two people were barefoot.
Almost as soon as I entered the hall, I found myself cornered by a disconsolate young woman who introduced herself as Lady Nugent. She had been on the island only a week or two. Like me, she was having trouble adjusting to the heat.
“This climate has a most extraordinary effect upon me,” she complained. “I am not ill, but every object is, at times, not only uninteresting, but even disgusting.”
“Where are you staying?” I said. “Don’t you have air-conditioning?”
“I feel a sort of inward discontent and restlessness that are perfectly unnatural to me—at moments, when I exert myself, I go even beyond my usual spirits, but the instant I give way, a sort of despondency takes possession of my mind. I argue with myself against it, but all in vain.”
