Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings (16 page)

C
olors are illusions. Better yet: They don't entirely exist. A particular blue will look radically different in a field of orange than in a field of green. Show ten people a blue wall. Then take them into another room, present them with a hundred cards in assorted varieties of blue and ask them to pick out the color of the wall they were just looking at. It is highly likely that each person will pick out a different blue and likelier still that none of the blues they choose will match the wall in the other room. What is blue in sunshine might be green by candlelight and purple under fluorescent light. A blue on a smooth surface will appear a different blue when the surface is rough. There is a color that, especially in its paler tints, most men see as blue and most women see as green. It is a fact that the colors we see are never actually present, and yet, at the same time, they are absolutely present, as present as our emotions, memories, hopes, desires, beliefs—our very selves. And, of course—individually, but more commonly together—colors can constitute that most vivid and immediate form of truth, that truth also known as beauty.

T
he huge clamor of steel shrieking on steel recedes into the rumble and roar of the train hurtling through the soot-blackened tunnel. As Thomas Jefferson watches, Sally Hemings lowers her fingers from her ears, pulls her book out from under her arm and reopens it. She sighs, and her face settles into peaceful concentration—so maybe she hasn't noticed him after all. Gradually a faint tribulation darkens the center of her brow, but maybe only in response to some sorrow or worry experienced by the imaginary people about whom she is reading. He remembers, years ago, watching her through a window as she sat in a wicker chair out on the porch, gazing idly into space, her feet up on the railing. He felt, as he studied her then, that he was seeing her as she actually was—which is to say, as she was in his absence. It was a moment of terrific
intimacy.

S
ally Hemings stands in the dim hallway thinking about different kinds of knowledge. Some things that you know leave you alone, like the way bread tastes, or your name, or the stink of butcher shops on a summer afternoon. But there are other things that once you know them won't let you be yourself anymore. You can remember who you used to be, but you are no longer that person. And you never will be again.

The fear came first and the disgust afterward. As she lay alone in her bed once Thomas Jefferson had gone, she was haunted by the images of his sweating, red face, distorted by drink and by the brutal, animalistic urges that had taken him over. He had, in fact, become an animal as he threw himself on top of her, grunting, groaning, clawing at her, rubbing himself against her. How is it possible that a man as dignified, gentle and wise as Thomas Jefferson could have yielded to such crude impulses?

If she could find a way to go back to when he'd asked if she would like to see a true miracle, she would say no. And when he told her to put on her yellow gown: No. And when he asked her to get into the carriage with him, she would say it was not proper for a gentleman to ride with his serving girl. And when he offered her wine, she would say, “No. I won't drink it. No.”

But now, in the cold morning—gray sky in the window at the end of the hall—she thinks that as horrified as she may have been last night, it is probably for the better that she now knows that Thomas Jefferson is no different from any of the brutal men her mother warned her of, that his civility is merely a subterfuge, as it is perhaps for all men. She is wiser for this knowledge, and maybe also stronger.

Last night she had thought that she was weak, that she was nothing, not even a leaf blowing down the street. But now she knows that Thomas Jefferson is the one who is weak—because he showed her that he needed something from her; he needed something so badly that it turned him into a wordless animal. And he also showed her his shame—which perhaps is what matters most.

He sat there on the end of her bed, his head in his hands, talking to
himself, moaning, cursing, and then he left, staggering as he pulled up his breeches in midstep. And as Sally Hemings watched his shame, all of her own went away.
I am blameless
, she told herself. And now, in the hallway, she says aloud, “I am better than him.” Never before did she imagine that she could be better than Thomas Jefferson. The world as she knew it simply didn't allow for that possibility. And now it does.

T
here is so much room inside Thomas Jefferson. I shout, and there is no echo. I have been walking for days and am not sure I will ever traverse the distance between his head and his feet. Nights I unroll my sleeping bag and make a fire from the dried sticks and punky logs that are scattered everywhere in here. Last night a man walked out of the darkness and asked if he could sit down and warm his hands at my fire. A fresh-killed rabbit dangled from his belt, and he said he'd be happy to share it with me. He, too, has been walking for days and days, and he has come to the conclusion that Thomas Jefferson does not exist, that this is only a sort of purgatory or perhaps one of the upper rings of hell—the one reserved for those who can't distinguish fact from hope.

Tonight a different man is warming himself by my fire. He has no food to offer, but he is happy to help me cut potatoes and beets for a soup. I tell him what the man said last night, and he tells me he knows for certain that Thomas Jefferson is real and that we are inside him. It's just that these fires of ours make him lighter than air, and so he is constantly drifting among the clouds. “That's why you can never get to the end of him,” the man says. “He is everywhere.”

I tell him I don't understand why that should be true, and he tells me he has conclusive evidence. “A couple of weeks ago,” he says, “I happened to be near one of his eyes, and I could look down at the moonlight shining off the tops of the clouds. And below them I could see the orange lights of a huge city—London or Los Angeles. Or maybe Tokyo.”

I don't see what this proves but decide not to argue.

After we have finished our soup, we put a couple of big logs on the fire and get into our sleeping bags. Sometime later I am awakened by the clicking of clawed feet and by soft but emphatic woofs, exhalations and semivoiced yelps, which all together sound remarkably like speech. I sit up and place a couple more logs on the fire. At first they only smoke, but after I have blown on them awhile, flags of yellow flame ripple up into the darkness.

As I pull the top of my sleeping bag back over my shoulders, I notice
two perfectly round coals glowing in the gloom about a dozen yards from the fire. I hear a low noise, something between a grunt and a howl, and find another pair of coals hovering about the same distance away in the opposite direction. I grab a stout branch and drag it into my sleeping bag with me, just in case. There is no horizon here and no real dawn or daylight—just a cataract-colored luminescence that lasts about as long as a regular day.

T
homas Jefferson walks hurriedly along the sandy path through the Champs-Élysées, head down, hands in the pockets of his breeches, coattails kicked again and again by his striding calves, a grid of plane trees spreading out for acres on either side of him. He hardly slept last night and was too bleary and restless this morning to work. It is April 21, a month past the vernal equinox, but the air is dank, cold. Heaps of cloud, white and gray, drift over the rooftops, intermittently releasing showers of musket-ball-size drops, but so far never intensely enough to merit his turning around and heading home.

He is trying to convince himself that what he had wanted last night would not have been a theft but a gift, that the girl, with all the modesty that is natural to her sex, had been looking on him exactly as he had been looking on her and that, unable to acknowledge the depth of her own feeling—

But this line of reasoning is quashed by his memory of her rigid body, her averted face and the noises she had made—noises of childish fear and grief.

He veers off the path and into the geometric forest, where identical tree trunks angle through his peripheral vision in perfect diagonal and perpendicular rows. He stops, his forehead against smooth, mottled bark, and gasps in panicked despair at the impossibility of escaping his own being. But then, hearing that the sounds he is making now are the sounds he made last night, he falls silent.

This is self-pity,
he tells himself.
You have no right to self-pity.

Pushing away from the tree, he continues walking, his head down, hands in his pockets. He feels tears rising to his eyes, but they never come. He hasn't cried in years, not since Martha died.

How could he have allowed himself to get so drunk? How could he have allowed such low urges and repulsive ideas to take possession of his judgment? It is true. He cannot deny it:
le droit du seigneur.
That foul aristocratic presumption had come to mind last night every time his resolve wavered, every time he was overcome with anticipatory shame.
Who
would blame you?
he had thought.
They all do it.
Lafayette has told him that he has had
un goûter
of every single one of his serving girls. Even James Monroe has confessed to a dalliance with his chambermaid.
No one will blame you,
he had told himself time and again.

And yet once he was actually in the girl's room, he never gave a thought to his “right,” nor did he think of himself as “taking” anything from her. All that was in his mind were his nights with Martha—especially those first nights of their marriage, by the fireplace, when the snow was falling outside the windows. Stupidly, blindly, selfishly, he had imagined that all that was needed was a little patience, some loving words, a gentle touch here and there with hand, lips and tongue, and all at once Sally Hemings's desire would overwhelm her modesty and, as with Martha, her thighs would loosen, her arms would fly up and she would cover his neck and lips with her kisses. But instead he'd inspired nothing but her loathing, and now he feels nothing but loathing for himself.

He hears a pattery drumming in the leaves overhead. A cold drop strikes his cheek. In a matter of seconds, the rain is falling so thick and fast that it hits the sandy earth all around him with a sound like millions of tiny feet stamping.

T
homas Jefferson has never called her “Miss Hemings” before. She came upon him under the portico, squeezing water out of his sodden coat by twisting it into a thick rope. The sleeves of his white shirt were sodden, too, and perfectly transparent where the wet linen clung to the skin of his arms. As soon as he realized he was being observed, he shook out the coat and attempted to put it on. After prodding several times at the interior of a still-drenched and twisted sleeve, he gave up, flung the coat over his shoulders and pulled the lapels across his chest.

His lips were blue, his hair a mass of tarnished copper coils, his face dripping. As he looked at her, a shiver passed through his whole body. This was when he said it: “Miss Hemings, I know that I don't deserve your forgiveness, but I want you to know that I profoundly regret my actions. They were utterly inexcusable, and they will fill me with shame until the end of my days.”

Now he is silent. His clearly rehearsed speech over, there is nothing he can do save wait for her reply.

But Sally Hemings is too filled with rage to talk. Her ears roar with it, and everything turns white. By the time she comes back to herself, she is already at the bottom of the steps and making her way rapidly but unsteadily toward the gate to the street.

She has no idea what she said or did while the world was roaring and white. She has no idea what she looked like, but she feels as if she were shaken into a vibrating cloud of light and noise.

And now she is out of the gate and on the street, which smells of feces and wet stone. The tremulous weakness fades from her legs; her stride grows purposeful, strong.

It is Saturday. She is going to pick up Patsy and Polly at their school across the river, on rue de Grenelle. It will take her an hour to walk there and longer to walk back. Maybe when she returns, she will know what to do.

T
he guard tightens her belt. She speaks.

—Wake up.

—Uh . . .

—Wake up. It's morning.

—Wha . . . ?

—Get the fuck out of bed.

—Who are you?

—Get the fuck up, I told you!

—Why?

—Because I told you so.

—It's the middle of the night.

—No it's not.

—I've only been asleep for ten minutes.

—It's been three hours.

—What?

—Three hours. I've been on duty three hours, and the whole time I've been sitting here watching you. So now it's morning.

—It's
not
morning.

—How do you know?

—Leave me alone.

—How do you know?

—Because I'm fucking exhausted, and I want to sleep.

—Answer my question.

— . . .

—Answer my question.

—I just did.

—Just because you're tired doesn't mean it's morning. You think the sun rises and falls according to when you feel like sleeping?

— . . .

—When was the last time you saw daylight?

—How the fuck do I know?

—I rest my case.

—Why are you doing this?

—Well, there are two reasons. First of all, I'm the guard and you're shit, so whatever I say is the law. That's the most important reason. The second reason is that I've been reading your file, and I'm interested in you.

—Great.

—Don't you want to know why?

—Why?

—Because I know you think you don't belong here.

—Does anybody think they belong here?

—Nobody likes being here, but that's not the same thing as thinking they don't belong.

— . . .

—Some people know they don't deserve freedom. Murderers, mostly. Even the really heinous ones. On the whole I prefer working with murderers.

—Why?

—Because they know the difference between right and wrong. They know that some people are good and some people are evil and there is no in-between.

—How can you say that?

—You see! That's exactly what I'm talking about.

—No in-between. How can you say that?

—Because that's the way it is.

The prisoner makes a vocalization that commonly precedes speech. The guard speaks
.

—Shut up! I'm still talking. I know what you are going to say. You're going to tell me about complexity, ambiguity, our muddy human souls. But none of that matters. So what if you wanted to do the right thing? So what if you thought you
were
doing the right thing? Or if you had a terrible childhood? Or even if you were insane? If the thing you did was evil, that's all that matters: You're evil. You belong here. End of story.

—How can you say that?

—Hah!

—What?

—Didn't I just tell you? You're shit in here. And I'm
God
. Right? I'm the big, fucking, all-powerful mystery. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Didst thou create Behemoth? Leviathan? Have
the gates of death been open unto thee? Get down on thy knees! Repent in dust and ashes!

The prisoner is laughing. The guard speaks
.

—What's so funny?

—Nothing.

—Then shut up!

— . . .

— . . .

The prisoner speaks.

—But still, there's a flaw in your reasoning.

—I knew you'd say that.

—So you know what I'm talking about?

—Why don't you tell me?

—You said
if
the thing you did was evil. That implies that you have to have a way of distinguishing evil from ordinary wrongdoing, or even from virtue—because, after all, sometimes evil is just a matter of perspective. The theft of a loaf of bread might seem evil to the baker, but to the starving man—

—Just like I said: Complexity. Ambiguity. Our muddy human souls. You're like a robot.

—Don't evade the point.

—What is the point?

—The point is that conclusions about whether a person is good or evil have to be based on evidence, and evidence can be misleading, or just hard to interpret. And then there's the matter of terminology. How exactly do you define evil? And where do you draw the line—

—Are you actually paying attention to what you are saying?

— . . .

—I mean, do you actually think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out that a man who buys and sells human beings is evil?

— . . .

—Well? What have you got to say for yourself?

—That's not what I . . .

—You think there's any way that trading in human beings isn't evil?

—I'm just talking about what you said, about there being no in-between.

—Well, you know what? I don't give a fuck about what you were talking about. If you're evil, you're evil. That's all there is to it. We're not
talking garden variety screwup here, or even mean fucking bastard. We're talking evil. There's no such thing as being a little bit evil. Evil is an all or nothing proposition. That's it. And all your talk about ambiguity, definitions and all that other bullshit is just a way of avoiding the simple truth.

—And I'm saying that there is no such thing as simple truth. For better or for worse, reality is always complex and ambiguous, and a failure to recognize that fact leads straight to tyranny.

The guard shakes her head and smiles. The prisoner speaks.

—What?

—If that's what you think, then it looks like you've got a lot to learn about tyranny.

She bangs her billy club against the bars of the cell. The prisoner leaps backward. He speaks.

—What the fuck!

—Get down on your knees!

— . . .

—You heard me! Get down on your knees!

The guard pulls a ring of keys out of her pocket and unlocks the cell door. The prisoner speaks.

—What are you doing?

The guard bangs her billy club against the cell bars once again, but far more forcefully. The bars ring. The ringing reverberates down the corridor. The prisoner speaks.

—What are you doing?

—I'm going to teach you a lesson about tyranny.

The door swings open as if of its own accord. The guard and the prisoner look into each other's eyes. She speaks.

—And about your fucking pursuit of happiness and your fucking created equal.

The guard enters the cell. The prisoner backs away. The guard speaks.

—That is so fucking over.