Toni Morrison - Tar Baby

He remembered the trip over as half an hour, forty-five minutes at most, but this trip seemed longer. They’d been out at least an hour. The boat rocked and skipped, rocked and skipped to a regular beat. The jaw’s harp was back like a nuthouse lullaby and he dozed a little and woke; dozed a little and woke. Each time his eyes opened they rested on the shadow of Marie Thérèse Foucault. Each time her shoulders and profile grew darker—her outline fainter. Till finally he could barely make her out at all, he simply felt her feet against his. Even her breathing could not be heard over the motor’s breath and the insistent harp in his head. The light rain stopped and the clouds descended to examine that party of two. One tranquil, dozing, weakly fighting sleep—the other, head turned landward intent on a horizon she could not possibly see even if she were not as blind as justice. Her hands on the lever were nimble, steady. The upper part of her body leaned forward straining as if to hear fish calling from the sea. Behind the curious clouds, hills crouched on all fours and at their knees were rocks and the permanent sea. Thérèse cut the motor and dropped one oar to guide with. The tide carried them and the little boat seemed to be floating on its own. She held the oar midships until it struck a rock, split and slowed the boat to a half turn and then a rocking on baby waves. Son stirred and opened his eyes. There was nothing to see—not sky or island or Marie Thérèse. The sea was very still as in a lagoon or a cove.

“Here,” she said. “We are here.”

“Where?” All he could see was mist. “Where’s the dock?”

“On the other side. We are at the back of Isle des Chevaliers. You can climb here on the rocks. They are all together here, like a bridge. You can crawl them all the way to shore.”

“It’s too foggy,” he said. “I can’t see my way.”

“Don’t be afraid. This is the place. On the far side.”

“I can’t see shit. I can hardly see you.”

“Don’t see; feel,” she said. “You can feel your way, but hurry, hurry. I have to get back.”

“This doesn’t make sense. Why don’t you go to the other side, where the dock is?”

“No,” she said. “This is the place.”

“Isle des Chevaliers?”

“Yes. Yes. The far side.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Son took his tie out of his jacket pocket and began to knot it around the handle of his traveling bag. “I don’t get it, Thérèse. You bring me here as a favor, but before I can say thanks, you make it hard for me to land and even harder to get to the house. What’d you do that for?”

“This is the place. Where you can take a choice. Back there you say you don’t. Now you do.”

“What the hell are you talking about? If I get off these rocks without drowning, I have to stomp all around in those hills to get to the other side. It must be, good God, ten miles. I’ll be all night and half the day…”

“Hurry! Get out. I have to get away before the water is too small.”

He attached the tie to his waist so the bag hung from behind him. Then he moved over to negotiate the rocks.

“It’s easy,” she said. “Climb to it and the next one is right behind, then another and another like a road. Then the land.”

“You sure, Thérèse?”

“Yes. Yes,” she said, then as he turned toward the rocks she touched his back. “Wait. Tell me. If you cannot find her what will you do? Live in the garden of some other white people house?”

He looked around to tell her to mind her own business, but the inability to see her face in the fog stopped him.

“Small boy,” she said, “don’t go to L’Arbe de la Croix.” Her voice was a calamitous whisper coming out of the darkness toward him like jaws. “Forget her. There is nothing in her parts for you. She has forgotten her ancient properties.”

He swallowed and, saying nothing, turned back to the rocks, kneeling, stretching his hand to feel them. He touched one. It was dry above the water line and rough, but large enough, it seemed to him, to hold a grown man.

He leaned out of the boat tipping it so it took a little water. The bag knocked clumsily against his thigh. He sat back down and undid the knot. “Keep it for me,” he said. Then he grabbed with both hands the surface of the rock and heaved himself onto it. He lay there for a bit, then stretched his arm again and felt the sister rock at his fingertips. Now he could smell the land.

“Hurry,” she urged him. “They are waiting.”

“Waiting? Who’s waiting?” Suddenly he was alarmed.

“The men. The men are waiting for you.” She was pulling the oars now, moving out. “You can choose now. You can get free of her. They are waiting in the hills for you. They are naked and they are blind too. I have seen them; their eyes have no color in them. But they gallop; they race those horses like angels all over the hills where the rain forest is, where the champion daisy trees still grow. Go there. Choose them.” She was far from him now, but her voice was near like skin.

“Thérèse!” he shouted, turning his head around to the place where the urging of her jaws had come from. “Are you sure?”

If she answered, he could not hear it, and he certainly couldn’t see her, so he went. First he crawled the rocks one by one, one by one, till his hands touched shore and the nursing sound of the sea was behind him. He felt around, crawled off and then stood up. Breathing heavily with his mouth open he took a few tentative steps. The pebbles made him stumble and so did the roots of trees. He threw out his hands to guide and steady his going. By and by he walked steadier, now steadier. The mist lifted and the trees stepped back a bit as if to make the way easier for a certain kind of man. Then he ran. Lickety-split. Lickety-split. Looking neither to the left nor to the right. Lickety-split. Lickety-split. Lickety-lickety-lickety-split.

TONI MORRISON

TAR BABY

Toni Morrison is the Robert F. Goheen Professor of Humanities at Princeton University. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She lives in Rockland County, New York, and Princeton, New Jersey.

ALSO BY TONI MORRISON

FICTION

Love

Paradise

Jazz

Beloved

Song of Solomon

Sula

The Bluest Eye

NONFICTION

The Dancing Mind

Playing in the Dark:

Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

Acclaim for

TONI MORRISON’S

TAR BABY

“That rare commodity, a truly public novel…. Morrison’s genius lies in her uncanny ability to immerse you totally in the world she creates.”

— Newsweek

“Powerful…. A stunning performance…. Morrison is one of the most exciting living American writers.”

— The Kansas City Star

“It takes one to the sheer edge of human relationships.”

— Vogue

“Wise, beautiful, astonishing, absolutely breathtaking.”

— St. Louis Globe-Democrat

“Reminds us again that Toni Morrison is one of the finest writers in America today.”

— Louisville Courier-Journal

“ Tar Baby is stupendous. Morrison is a writer of amazing skill.”

— The Roanoke Times & World

“Its scope is grand and the interplay complex. But Morrison has the control of a skilled choreographer, with a careful eye pinned on pacing, suspense, grace, and frenzy…. She has an awesome lyric flair.”