The President's Daughter (46 page)

Thomas Jefferson

SOMEWHERE NEAR THE MOZAMBIQUE BORDER, TRANSVAAL

My Loved Ones,

There has been incredible change here since the Zulu forces were defeated by the English, and the Boers have fled toward the north into the provinces of Orange, Transvaal, and Lesotho. This is a three-sided war which is both a civil and a national war. The Boers against the English, the English against the Zulus, and the Zulus against all. The English commander has his hands full, and if he doesn't receive the reinforcements he's asked the Queen for, there is no way he will be able to reoccupy all the provinces where the Boers are threatening to secede, to the great surprise of the Zulu princes, especially the Ndebele tribe, whose ancestral territory it is.

In a country ten times more underpopulated than the West of the United States and twice as large in territory, one would think that some kind of territorial treaty could bè worked out. The Zulus, of course, are being treated like our American Indians, although the former immigrated from the north a bit more than a hundred years ago—with malice, arrogance, and mendacity. The confederacy built by Emperor Shaka Zulu twenty years ago, and which gave even Britain's Foreign Office a fit of apoplexy, has fallen into disarray, with the various tribes fighting and warring
amongst themselves, dissipating their fighting strength in petty quarrels between princes and chiefs.

The British, of course, are masters in taking political advantage of ambiguous situations and have managed to persuade the Zulus to attack the Boer wagon trains reaching Orange. The princes and ministers don't seem to realize it is the English who are ultimately their enemy, not the Boers. The Boers, like our western settlers, have no place else to go, and they will stand and fight off every attack the Zulu nation will mount against them, while the English in the Cape and the Portuguese in Mozambique rub their hands in glee at the full killing fields.

Meanwhile, our expedition has wrapped up its latest work and we are on our way back down the coast to Durban: a hundred bearers, cooks, and guns, six medical wagons and mobile laboratories,” a herd of oxen, a menagerie of walking food supplies, sixteen field tents—in other words, an army. We have to keep on good terms with everyone in order for our work to go on. We can't afford to anger either the Boers, the English, or the Zulus. There is a French-German team here at the same time, and we have decided to paint yellow crosses on all our tents and wagons, and paint our crates and bearers' loads with the same cross. It may not save us from a Zulu attack, but we hope it works with our Christian brothers.

We are nearing the rainy season, and although there is no rain yet, it is a misty morning, the sky is cloudy, and everything is gray. Abraham says there is nothing any sadder than Philadelphia, but in Philly, this kind of weather tends to inspire meditation, reading, study, listening to music. Here it tends toward memories, and I find that a phenomenon occurs here which is so very extraordinary that I have spoken to several of the French scientists about it. It is this: my memory of this country—that is, how I think of it when I am in the States, for example—is so vivid, that is to say, I have imagined it in my thoughts of it so strongly, that my recollection of it fights with the reality before my eyes.

I look out on a splendid plain of elephant grass edged in gray mist, receding into the distance of gray hills, where a pair of sea eagles whose wings are wider than an elephant's head fly over. In the center of this landscape, a baobab tree which can shade twenty people stands outlined in the mist, its one-thousand-year-old branches sweeping out like a maestro conducting a symphony orchestra. But is what is before my eyes real, or is this the memory I've carried of this scene superimposed on the reality before me? It seems that in many cases, we are so enamored of our false images that even reality itself cannot transform the imprint in one's mind's eye. One sees what one wants to see. …

In five days we will leave Durban and start home. It's been two years. Either I've turned into a Flying Dutchman or a blasted Zulu, I'm not sure which. Or rather, take your pick.

Kiss your children for their uncle. And yourselves. This letter is for Lividia and Tabitha, as well as you two dears. I think much of Mother. May God bless you and keep you.

Th. Wellington

Thor's research into herbal medicine and homeopathy had made him famous. And no sooner had he arrived home than invitations poured in for conferences and lectures. Thor's time was taken up almost entirely, and his work at the laboratory with Abraham was carried on at night, while a stray fugitive or so climbed in and out of the laboratory vats that covered our secret passageway.

Thor seemed oblivious of these nocturnal goings-on, and we never spoke of them or even mentioned the words
runaway, bounty hunter, police, sheriff, slave.
Thor's connection with Africa and Africans was such a pastoral and nonviolent one that it seemed wrong to impose a different kind of allegiance on this dreamy passionate scientist until it was absolutely necessary.

Thor lived with us because it was the only home he had except the expeditionary camp in Africa. When he wasn't out working, he was home with the children, playing or writing letters. I often played the piano for him. If only there were some way, he said, that music could be carried with you, without the services of an entire orchestra. I had had a letter-copying machine like my father's made for him as a coming-home present.

Often when I walked by the laboratory on my way to the warehouse or the wharf, I would peek in and see Thor and Thance busily sorting their thousands of specimens. Bent over their worktable, they were difficult to tell apart.

“Why don't you put labels on your own smocks so people can tell you apart?” I said.

“You
can tell us apart,” laughed Thor.

I remember it was raining and it was very late at night. The drops made a rapid hissing sound on the skylight windows. I walked past the window of the laboratory, my cloak drawn over my shoulders. I intended to return to the warehouse offices, and as I walked by I thought I saw Thance. He was to leave for the Cape to join a new scientific expedition, and he was taking Abraham, who had not been back to South Africa in more than seven years, with him. Once again, Thenia had refused to sail with Abe, postponing their
“country wedding.” She was afraid of ships, afraid of large bodies of water, afraid of Africa. I had tried everything to convince her that a sea voyage was as safe as riding the Pennsylvania Railroad. Thance seemed to be searching for something. Beauty, Independence's granddaughter, followed at my heels as I opened the door of the laboratory.

“Thance?” I said as I walked in, my wet skirts dragging. I pulled my cloak off my shoulders just as the dog, shaking the rain from her back, spied something moving behind one of the storage vats and made a run for it, brushing by me. The motion wheeled me around. I was caught off balance, and I felt myself slipping. To break my fall, I grabbed the nearest shelf. A voice behind me cried out in alarm.

“Harriet! Don't touch those shelves!”

Dreamily I recognized Thor's voice, as the folds of my cape caught on a fragile wooden shelf and it came tumbling down, bringing with it dark glass bottles, cascading one onto the other like dominoes. I stepped back to avoid the breaking glass, but my foot caught in the hem of my dress, already snagged on the shelf, and I was pitched forward onto my hands and knees, the steaming liquids making a pool around them. The noise of the cascading bottles made a sound like a cannon, drowning out Beauty's frantic barking. The broken bottles all had carefully written labels: silver nitrate, vitriol, sulfuric acid, carbolic acid, formaldehyde, oxalic lye …

The liquids and their gases spread out from my cloak, which protected the rest of me, but my hands were on fire. A searing pain shot up my wrists and forearms, so fierce it stopped my heart. Almost at once, two strong hands gathered up my wrists and, amidst my terrible screams, dragged me forward toward the water pumps. The water gushed over my wrists as I struggled against the pain, which was pulling me under. The room spun and I lapsed into unconsciousness.

When I awoke, I was propped on the Chesterfield sofa in Thor's office. My hands were on fire. I looked down at them. They were tightly bound in muslin mittens. I began to cry.

“Harriet,” said Thor gently, “drink this, please. You had an accident. Your hands have been burned, but only superficially. They will begin to heal in a few days. I've dressed them with a pomade I made of hickory tree moss and coconut butter, used for burns in Africa. Can you move your fingers?”

Slowly I tried to move my thumb; although only with great pain, I could move the fingers of both hands.

“Yes,” I said, looking down on the white bundles.

“You stopped your fall with your hands, thank God.”

I groaned.

“Oh, my God, Harriet. If something had happened to you … your face …”

“I was careless.”

“I was so frightened, seeing you … Harriet … my God, Harriet, I was so scared.”

I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, Thor was staring down at me; his face held the same expression as his twin, his eyes the same helpless love.

“I blame myself entirely,” Thor was saying. “Those bottles should be locked away.”

“Beauty had no business in here. I was distracted, an inexcusable fault in a laboratory. I'm sorry.”

“You're
sorry! It was entirely my fault!”

“Oh, Thor, that's not true. I'm not a child. I'm not your responsibility.”

“But you
are
my responsibility. From the first day I saw you, I knew you would always be the only woman I would ever feel responsible for.”

There it was. He was shaking, his eyes bright with unshed tears. The blood had drained from his face. He hadn't wanted to say any of this. I hadn't wanted it.

“Your brother's wife,” I said, warning him.

“Yes, my brother's wife. My beloved brother's beloved wife. As beloved by her brother-in-law as by her husband.”

His words hung in the air like a silk banner, fluttering with unspoken yearnings and pain. How much more bizarre and convoluted could my family life become, I thought, almost laughing. Imposture, miscegenation, a double life which was now a triple or quadruple life. Perhaps I should have been sold in New Orleans after all. That would have been one of the more banal occurrences in my life. Now I had seduced my brother-in-law.

“I love you both,” I said truthfully. “I can hardly tell you apart.”

This last was a lie, like so many of my lies. I knew very well who Thor was and who Thance was, and I had no trouble at all telling them apart.

In two weeks, because of Thor's medicines and the fact that he had so quickly washed them with water and alkali (I still heard the gushing pump, its iron wheeze, Thor's calm voice), my hands began to heal. Healthy skin had begun to grow on the burned palms. The dead flesh peeled off. The pain diminished. I could once more hold an object.

Thor took off my bandages and left only gauze mittens tied loosely around my wrists. Then one day, when no one was around, I took off the mittens and inspected the insides of my hands.

In shocked disbelief, I realized that I no longer had fingerprints! The tips of my fingers were as smooth and white as marble. As smooth and white as the backs of my hands, which had been untouched. In the center of my palm, where my life line ran, there remained scar tissue, crisscrossing its center as if laid on by a whip. I had seen such scars on runaways. But even these scars would soon fade, leaving only tracks of white, like fine lace against a palm even paler than before.

My blank fingertips were the only lasting souvenir of the accident. My identity was erased. I felt both sad and jubilant. My heart beat faster. It was a sign, I thought, as I stared at my mutilated hands. My oblivion was complete. The injury of my birth eradicated. But was this retribution or deliverance? Tears of confusion welled in my eyes. Did this make me my father's daughter or the contrary?

In the weeks that followed my accident, Thenia visited me almost every day, her six-year-old Raphael in tow. During the first visit, we stared at each other in silence. Thenia had not wanted to burden me with her problems, and I couldn't begin to explain the importance of fingerprints to her. But eventually I learned Thenia had been keeping a lot of things from me. Abe wanted to return home to Africa. He saw no point in accepting the indignities of life as a northern black and was disheartened by the hatred and rejection he found everywhere. Abe wanted his sons to live in his own country, and although he had come to learn Western methodology and had been admitted to the Jefferson College of Pharmacy, he had been refused admittance to the Apothecary Guild. He had even been refused a peddler's license for patient medicines. He could learn more on an expeditionary field trip of six months than he could here, labeling Thor's samples, running Thance's warehouse. Abe was going back to the field.

Thenia was afraid of Africa, and she didn't want Raphael to go. Abe was allowing her to stay until he returned from this expedition, but it was the last reprieve. He was going back to Africa, and he wanted Thenia with him.

“If I leave, I'll never return, and I'll never find my family. I'll never se-se-see them aga-ga-gain,” she wept. “As long as I am here, there's hope that I can find them: Mama, Daddy, Doll, Ellen. But if I'm
there,
I'll never find them. And I'm pregnant again,” she continued. “If I tell Abe, he'll think it's because I don't want him to go. But if he doesn't return in eight months, this baby'll be born without its fa-fa-father.”

“They'll be back before the birth of the baby, Thenia. And I may be pregnant myself. Or maybe it's because of the accident that I haven't had my migraine this month.”

I was forty-three years old. My grandmother's last child had been born when she was forty-three.