John Wray - Canaan's Tongue

His face, reflected in the glass, was the picture of bewilderment. “Your eye?” he stammered. “But surely, Virgil, you understand that I was speaking figuratively—; your eye, as such, means nothing to me—; nothing whatsoever—”

“That’s right, Mr. Barker. And it never will.”

“Don’t be an ass, ” Barker managed to squawk, but by then I’d already pulled the trigger. I had no desire to trade one Redeemer for another.

GOD AND SCIENCE WERE MARRIED one Sunday in Paris, Asa says. I myself was minister.

At the Académie—: as soon as Mssr. Horseface came up to the labs on his appointed rounds (Sunday morning, 6 May 1853) I flagged him to my table. Mssr. Trist, he said, his horse-mouth hanging open. Have you no other studies? Do you pass every waking hour on these premises?

He was standing at the north-west corner of the desk, width of a lady’s palm from my work, but still he did not see it. We might as well be out on the river, in a punt, I thought, and the idea brought a curse-word out of me. But it was a curse-word in English and as such out of Mssr. Horseface’s ken. What did you say, Mssr. Trist? he cheeped at me. He looked askance. Would you not care to retire to your dormitory, peradventure, and take a spell of rest?

I might just, I answered. I’m well satisfied with my work.

Very good, Horseface sighed, his eyes gone to the window. In that event, if you’ll permit me, Mssr.—

I’ve made a discovery, I said. A discovery of merit. I might go so far, in fact, as to announce that the merit of my discovery is such that this academy will never be forgotten.

His eyes spun back from that window you can bet. My dear fellow—, he began. I knew then that I had his ear—: more than that. I knew that I had him frightened and this knowledge did more for my pride than if he had stripped himself naked and got onto his thick, blotchy knees and petitioned me to explicate my researches. My pride was such that it spilled over, it over-spilled, I became wild at the merest thought of it. The school would be remembered now (by G*d!) and the unwashed son of an American river planter would have done it for them. They’d hate me openly but the pleasure of their hating would be lost to them. My dear fellow—, he said again. I held up a hand before he could run on and away.

Shall I tell you my discovery?

His eyes fell shut. His mouth fell open and formed a noiseless syllable. I could see it in the air above him—: O — U—I.

I shifted the ocular to one side and pulled the papers closer. I shuffled them a bit, arranging them so he might better follow faith and intellect on their little sack-race. I gave him a few moments but it was all too much and I spoke very sweetly, clipping my s ’s in the manner of his home province (the Lorraine)—:

The difference between yourself and a nigger, Mssr. LeVertier, is the sum of a single molecule.

I thought at first he hadn’t heard me. He stared down at the topmost sheet, the one that outlined my methods and my protocols. The idea came to me that perhaps I hadn’t spoken it aloud, and I had just opened my mouth as wide as I could get it when he said—:

This is what you’ve been about, then, all this time? This is the result of your first term at our academy? His black eyes dug into the paper.

Mssr. LeVertier—

What molecule?

A decatomic protein, I said. The wildness came on as I said it. C 2H 2Fl 3O 1N 2. The most beautiful compound I have ever seen.

Preposterous! he muttered. But a hum came out of him regardless. The crease of his lips was peaked and white. It twitched at both its ends.

Where did you find it, Mssr. Trist, if I may pry? May I ask you to reveal so much? His eyes were full upon me now and I could not stomach them. Kindly remove your eyes from me, sir, I howled, but again he did not hear. Did he?

In the blood, I suppose? Is that it? In suspension?

It was all I could do. Not blood, I said. Not blood at all.

What’s that? he said. Not blood? He was white all over. Speak up, little Asa. Speak. Have you forgotten already? Forgotten how?

Skin, I spat out, the sound cotillioning in my mouth. In the skin the skin the skin.

He went quiet as a pond. In the skin, he said. The wildness had gone from one breath to the next and I felt undressed and afraid. Please, Mssr. LeVertier, I said.

His eyes were gone already. They could barely stand to look. They wandered from my hands to my smock to the microscope to the bottles ranged transparently behind me. The bottles! I must get his eyes away from them.

Look here, Mssr. LeVertier, I said. I pulled the top sheet from my notes. Underneath lay my first sketch of the decatom. I coaxed his eyeballs down to it.

Merely a sketch, I offered.

He took up the paper with a twitch. Blinking slowly, like a horse, he held it high above his shoulder, as a school-master would a dirty drawing—:

This is the molecule, is it? Your protein molecule? Your pigment?

I shook my head. No, sir. Not a pigment.

Not a pigment, Mssr. Trist? What, then, would you have it be?

I said nothing for a goodly while. I took a breath—:

His mark.

His mark, Horseface repeated. He lowered the paper. Whose?

G*d’s, I answered. Stamped in Moses’ time onto the flesh of his chosen peoples. The niggers and the Jews.

He laid the paper daintily on the table.

You see God in this, do you, you baboon?

It represents the Passion, I said. I spoke slowly and carefully, so that he might follow. Christ’s quartered host, superimposed over the Doric crucifix. It’s been tipped to one side, as you can see—: He is about to be taken down from the cross.

He was smitten. In others words, then, Mssr. Trist—

In other words, sir, He is dead already. I paused, seeing that he was not yet satisfied. I said—: Do you see now, Professor? Science and Heaven do agree.

Science? he said, staring down at the desk. Science taught you this?

G*d taught it to me, Mssr. Horsepiss, I answered, and gave a little bow.

I CAME BACK FROM MEMPHIS A KILLER THRICE OVER, Virgil says. And I had one murder in me yet.

I arrived at 37 alone, off a stern-wheeler bound for Baton Rouge. My idea was to kill Morelle at the next of our match-and-candle sessions — kill him quickly and with a minimum of fuss — and go straight to Clementine with the news. I truly believed that I could do this—: I’d just put a bullet in his double, after all.

But Morelle was a far cry from Morris Barker. For six days he showed no inclination toward a reading, and I never once caught him unattended. South Carolina had just announced its secession, and his thoughts turned upon this fact like wool upon a spool. I grew more and more restless, more impatient to see Clementine—; on the seventh day I found I could wait no longer. I boarded the next down-river steamer, a new boat christened the Hyapatia Lee, though Morelle himself cautioned me that my old rival Lieutenant Beauregard was on it. The date was December 27, 1860.

As there was no hope of avoiding the lieutenant for the duration of the trip, I resolved to seek him out at once. With his uniform and moustaches he was an easy mark—: I found him reclining like Caesar Augustus on a divan in the front saloon, following a game of faro at a nearby table with the bashful fascination of a child. His hair was now distinguished by a romantic sprinkling of gray—; his eyes had a melancholy satisfaction to them. The port wine he sipped was evidently to his liking. He looked at me blankly when I greeted him, then broke into a pearly-toothed grin, clapped me on the shoulder, and motioned to the bar-boy for another glass.