Steve Erickson - Arc d'X

“She shouldn’t go to Paris.”

THEY DID NOT know her. The city did not know Sally on the drizzling autumn day the coach delivered her, along with Polly to the rue d’X; the street did not know her when Patsy dashed from the Hotel Langeac into the rain and mud to sweep her baffled little sister up in her arms. “But who are you?” Patsy finally turned to ask Sally amidst the family reunion, as the slavegirl lingered before the fire in the hotel’s front room; and Sally answered, “It’s me, miss.” They had spent many afternoons playing together in Virginia. “Father,” Patsy said, looking at Sally from head to foot in consternation, “it’s Betty Hemings’ little girl!” On the stairs Thomas stood with an elegant young Englishwoman and a black man who Sally realized, after some moments, was her brother; they all regarded her with troubled curiosity. “But why did they send someone so young with Polly?” Patsy asked, though in fact Patsy was only a year older than Sally, and it was Sally who looked like a woman. “Isn’t it odd?”

“She tricked me,” Polly exclaimed petulantly. It was the first thing she’d said.

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” Sally said. James stood at her side, studying his hands nervously. “Miss Polly wasn’t at all keen on making the passage. They decided I was the only one who could get her onto the ship.”

“It was a shrewd maneuver then,” said Thomas.

“It was a bloody trick!” the eight-year-old cried.

“Don’t say that word,” Thomas admonished, “obviously you spent too much time in England.” He disappeared up the stairs with his daughters. James followed in silence with the bags. Sally stood shivering in the foyer as the other woman remained on the stairs watching her. “I’m sure,” the woman finally said, “it would be all right with Mr. Jefferson if you wish to warm yourself for a moment by the fire. Then your brother will show you your quarters.” The woman left and Sally was completely alone for what seemed a long time. She realized it was longer than she’d ever been alone. No one else was in the hotel foyer; the only sound was the crackling of the fire and some footsteps upstairs, and the flow and ebb of the din from the streets. She could hear the voices of passersby outside speaking words she didn’t understand. This isn’t Virginia, this is the ocean, she’d said to Polly on the boat. She looked at the door of the hotel and had a thought she’d never had before; she so terrified herself by it that she immediately left the fire and went upstairs, where she found her quarters across the hall from James’.

It was a tiny room but it was her own. There was a wooden bed with posts; at night she’d take the long blue ribbon from her raven hair and tie it to the post above her head. She’d shake her hair loose and let it cover her bare shoulders. High above the bed was a small window in the shape of a crescent moon, and through it came the light of torches in the middle of the night and the angry tumult of growing mobs.

Sally was shocked when James later explained that the woman on the stairs was the master’s lover. “But don’t you remember,” Sally said to her brother, “he promised his wife he’d never marry again,” and James answered, “He’ll keep that promise. Mrs. Cosway is already married.” Sally saw the woman twice more. Two days after arriving in Paris she served the couple breakfast. Both Thomas and Maria were lost in their thoughts, staring silently out the window of their suite at the ceaseless rain: he appeared too depressed to eat and she, regarding Sally once, lowered her eyes and never looked back up. But just as Sally was about to leave Thomas asked what she could tell him of Virginia, and so the nearly dumbstruck fourteen-year-old sat in the suite for the next hour trying to update him on what had happened since he’d left. The more she talked and answered his eager questions, the more evident was his wistfulness for home and the more Maria seemed to wilt beside him. For the rest of the day Sally was ecstatic at how she’d raised his spirits.

Then one afternoon a week later, coming up the street after taking Polly for a walk, Sally saw a coach in front of the hotel being loaded with luggage. Thomas and Maria stood together in the hotel door. Both of them looked very unhappy. They held each other’s hands and said nothing; as she turned to the coach, he was ashen. Several feet from the carriage she stopped for a moment and he raised his arms as though expecting her to come back. But Maria boarded the coach staring straight before her; and Thomas, more crestfallen than Sally had seen him since his wife’s death, whirled around and disappeared into the hotel.

The headaches began after that. They were worse than any he’d had since that terrible summer five years before. As then, he hid in the dark of his room, only occasionally receiving the visitors who arrived every day in an endless stream. Through the double doors Sally could hear their monologues punctuated by pauses in which Thomas’ whisper was barely discernible. Sally would close the hallway windows to shut out the sound of the crowds who gathered every day in the streets, listening to speeches. “Why are you closing the windows,” Patsy said to her one unseasonably warm afternoon.

“I thought your father would appreciate the silence,” Sally answered.

Both girls were immediately struck that she’d called Thomas “your father” rather than “the master.” A moment passed before Patsy said, “Perhaps for a while, until things outside calm down.”

Mortified by her faux pas, Sally could only mutter, “Paris is an excitable place.” Outside it did not calm down. The afternoon grew more volatile and Thomas remained in his sanctuary, emerging each afternoon only to ask if a letter had arrived from Maria in London, then vanishing back into the dark. Finally Sally summoned all her courage and early one evening entered Thomas’ room. She brought some cold rags as she’d seen her mother do in Virginia. She carried them in a smooth peach-colored porcelain bowl. Thomas was lying back in a chair that reclined. Sally waited in one place for several minutes and, her courage slipping, was about to leave when Thomas looked up. “Who is it?” he said.

Am I so black, Sally asked herself, that he doesn’t know me in the dark? “It’s Sally, sir.”

“Sally.”

“I have some cold cloths for your head, if you’d like.”

“Yes,” Thomas whispered after a bit. He said, “Sometimes I think the pain’s about to leave, but midday it returns.”

Midday, she thought, when he hopes for word from her. Thomas lay back in the chair. Sally set the bowl down on the desk beside him. She wrung the excess water from the rags; she squeezed the rags over and over until her hands were red. Nothing would be so appalling as to put the rags on his head and have a drop of cold water run down his face. Her hands shook badly as she held the rags above his forehead; she had to set them down for a moment and collect herself. His eyes remained closed, waiting.

She was aware of someone behind her. She turned and Patsy was in the doorway. Without meeting Sally’s eyes, Patsy came and silently took the rags from Sally’s hands. Thomas didn’t stir. Patsy placed the cold rags on her father’s head; she never looked at Sally or spoke. Sally bowed her head slightly and left the room.

Thomas lay in the chair and felt her hands on his head. He was having a vision of the King of France hanging by the neck from an archway in Versailles. It wasn’t an unpleasant vision, though in all truthfulness Thomas found the king an amiable fellow, perhaps even well-meaning in a weak and ultimately pointless way. But there he was, nonetheless, dangling from the rafters of Thomas’ mind; when Thomas himself actually felt the wind blow through the king’s hair, he realized the slavegirl was stroking his brow. After a while he opened his eyes and saw, quite unexpectedly, his daughter. “Oh,” he said.