Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

I bowed to my listeners and took my place beside Mrs. Stanley, who had started to fan herself, as if the room had become too warm, and I became convinced that it might have been better had I said nothing at all.

Smiling, Mr. Stanley later said to me: “You are still young and have much to learn about the world. It is one thing to speak of matters based solely on impressions; another to speak from a deeper knowledge. But it is my hope that, in time, you will become more than what you are.” Then, thinking that perhaps I really knew nothing about the matter of slavery in that city, I decided to learn something more of it.

AS IT WAS MY CUSTOM to take an occasional walk during my lunch hour, one late morning — it was a Saturday — I decided to visit the slave market on Canal Street. The building was a large, square, two-story edifice surrounded by twelve-foot-high walls, their tops embedded with shards of glass. An odor of an untended outhouse hung in the air, as did the smells of captive humanity. A few dogs roamed about, looking for scraps of food. Entering into an inner courtyard from the street, I could see the many cells in which the slaves were kept, with their heavy oak doors lining the inner courtyard walls. A murmur of voices was audible through their metal gratings. Wandering about, I happened upon the entranceway of a room, the guard’s house, on whose walls hung all kinds of apparatuses: manacles, iron collars, chains, and handcuffs as well as devices like thumbscrews and pincers of an unusual size. Among the other visitors to that place was a crowd of New Orleans citizens, all finely dressed, who had happened by during their strolls to take things in, as the courtyard was visible from the street. Then the clanging of a bell, the signal for the sale to begin.

Quietly I watched as a line of male slaves was marched out and arranged from tallest to shortest, each having been outfitted with shoes, trousers, a shirt, and jacket; some were in the prime of youth, strong-limbed and clear-eyed; the others, very old and weary of life, were to be had at bargain prices if anyone wanted them. The women, some with their children, were lined up on the other side of the courtyard. Wearing bright calico dresses and silken bandannas around their heads, they were arranged in order of their beauty and youth, the first in that line a woman, who could not have been more than seventeen or so, weeping profusely as she stood waiting, with her head bowed, for that proceeding to begin. The eldest was a toothless and anguished-looking woman of perhaps forty, her back bent and right hand shaking from the years she had already spent in the cotton fields, resigned to the fate that she would be likely “thrown in” for nothing as part of someone’s purchase.

Naturally, the strongest males and loveliest of the women were sold quickly — the highest price being one thousand dollars for a young “buck” in such superb condition that his new master must have reckoned he would be good for at least twenty years of fruitful labor.

“You have a name?”

“Yes, sir. Thomas.”

“You know how to pick cotton?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you’re a good worker?”

“I’ve been told so, sir, yes.”

“Then why is your master selling you?”

“He had to sell everything, on account of his owing.”

“How many years was you his slave?”

“Fifteen.”

“Did he ever strike you?”

“No, sir.”

“Or whip you, for coming up short in your pickings?”

“No, sir.”

“And never once did he beat you for disobedience?”

“No, sir.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two, come winter.”

“And your teeth are good?”

“Yes, sir. I ain’t never been sick. ’Cept once.”

“Then you will do.”

The buyer then turned to the slave trader and said, “I’ll take this boy and the pretty girl, too.”

Later I walked back to the store, wondering for the life of me how such dealings went on each morning, six days a week.

Though my mind had not been put at ease by what I had seen on that morning, there is some truth to the notion that even the worst things, once absorbed through constant exposure, become matters of acceptance; and while my heart, with its surplus of harsh memories, was injured by such sights, a shell of denial developed around me.

IT TURNED OUT THAT, whatever my shortcomings, Mr. Stanley had seen in me the raw materials of a gentleman: Not a week after I had dined with him, I received another invitation to his house for a Sunday breakfast. On that occasion, we went to church and afterward took a carriage ride out to a local resort by Lake Pontchartrain, north of the city center, for lunch, a routine that was repeated on subsequent Sundays whenever he remained in town. In the process, Mr. Stanley, as a former minister, set straightaway to improving my spiritual outlook, for he had noticed that I sometimes dozed off during the Sunday services. His suspicions about my faith aroused, he would make inquiries as to whether I bothered to pray at all. When I confessed that I was lapsed in that regard, he made me promise to get down on my knees each morning and evening to say an Our Father.

THAT NIGHT, I RECITED the one prayer I knew well — the Our Father in Welsh. It goes as follows:

Ein Tad, yr hwn wyt yn y nefoedd. Sancteiddier dy enw. Deled dy deyrnas. Gweneler dy ewyllys, megis yn y nef, felly ar y ddaear hefyd. Dyro i ni heddyiw ein bara beunyddiol. A maddeu i ni ein dyledion, fel y maddeuwn ninnau i’n dyledwyr. Ac nac arwain ni i brofedigaeth; eithr gwared ni rhag y drwg. Canys eiddot ti yw y deyrnas, a’r nerth, a’r gogoniant, yn oe oesoedd. Amen.

I repeated it again and again, waiting to be moved to a stronger faith.

IN THE MEANTIME, MY POSITION at the firm only strengthened: It became Mr. Speake’s custom to call me into the office from time to time to make inquiries about the personnel and whether I had, of late, noticed any new “irregularities” of behavior. During his inquiries, Mr. Kennicy came often to mind. In his successful “discovery” of the slaves’ theft, Mr. Kennicy had been rewarded, but he seemed to be more of a drunk than before and increasingly irritable around the clerks. As for the slaves, after spending a month in one of the prison sheds, Samuel, as I mentioned, had been brought back to work, thank God, and a young man named Jim came in to take Dan’s place: It was their misfortune to have Mr. Kennicy to contend with.

Despite my dislike for Mr. Kennicy, I had no need to mention his continuing alcoholism to Mr. Speake. Aside from refusing to be a snitch, I agreed with the consensus among the other clerks that he would sooner or later cook in his own juice. One day, during my third month there, Mr. Kennicy came back from his lunch hour so drunk and in a rile over some failed matter of romance that he tumbled headlong into Mr. Speake’s office; so apparent was his state that Mr. Speake summarily dismissed him. I was given yet another raise, to thirty dollars a month, and some of Mr. Kennicy’s bookkeeping duties as well.

The Summer of 1859

IN THAT SUMMER OF 1859, while Mr. Stanley had gone upriver again, I still made my Sunday visits to his wife. It was this continued contact with her that had perhaps kept me closer to piety than not. For in those days, without such godly influences, I might have well succumbed to the lurid delights of the city.