Charles Johnson - Middle Passage

“D’you think I’m overly cautious?”

“Well — a wee bit, yes.”

“I gather you trust, even like, other people, don’t you?”

I was a little startled by his question. Was he joking? I laughed a second too late. “Yes, I do, sir. Don’t you?”

“Not a bit. Never have. I suppose they’ve never been real to me. Only I’m real to me. Even you’re not real to me, Mr. Calhoun, but I think you like me a little, so I like you too.”

“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.”