Chapter Thirty-two
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That night I returned to my room and, in a rather melancholy mood, stood at the window a while as though I might see into the dark across the fields and into the woods where that runaway black man had been hiding—though I was quite sure he had been captured, giving the excitement of the dogs who went after him—and then picked my way through a book case near the bed. The only thing there that caught my interest was a small volume of illustrated poems by a man named William Blake. But these I put aside for further study. Next I went to the bureau and took up the prayer pamphlet I had folded and pressed during my stay in the synagogue.
Creed of the Reformed Society of Israelites
Q. What are the fundamental Elements which form the basis of the Jewish faith?
A. The thirteen following:
1. The existence of God.—We believe that God exists, who created and sustains the universe.
2. His unity.—We believe that God is ONE, and only one, without a second that can in any manner be compared to, or associated with him.
Slowly, I read down the list of the other elements of the faith—His incorporeity, his eternity (“We believe that he is eternal, without beginning and without end…”), his direct superintendence (that he reigns alone over the universe without the intermediation of any other power…), his providence, the truth of prophecy, the prophecy of Moses (“the prince of prophets”), the delivery of the Law, the permanence of the Law, oh, and yes, the rewards and punishments for those who fulfill the law and those who transgress it, and the Coming of the Messiah—and last, the Resurrection of the dead.
We believe that those who sleep in the dust will awake, and
All who have died will return to life.
I studied this yet again, finding this talk about death and resurrection rather odd for the Jews, since in New York this subject never arose. And then remembering something I had put aside while I had been unpacking I went to my bag and saw at the bottom the rumpled New York news sheet that I had used to wrap my mother’s portrait.
I unfolded the sheet, held it up to my nose to catch an inky whiff of the city I had only recently left but which already seemed so distant that this artifact might have come from the ruins of some ancient exotic capital. The headlines I ignored—despite all of my old teacher Halevi’s promptings, I was never much one for news—but by the flickering light of the candle I read a poem that the editors in their wisdom had chosen to publish.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I
pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume
of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping,
suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping
at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered,
“tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more…
This poem kept me rapt with the spirit of it, and a bit on the edge of nervousness after hearing of its speaker’s encounter with the harbinger of darkness and death.
Open here I flung the shutter. When,
With many a flirt and flutter
In there stepped a stately Raven of the
Saintly days of yore…
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!
Prophet still, if bird or devil!…
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—
Tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
All this knocking, rapping, tapping—and the apparition of that bird—set me to walking about my room—the knocking, rapping, tapping—and even after I put out the candle and climbed into the bed it kept my mind alert.
Knocking—rapping—tapping…
Try as I might I could not find sleep. Instead I imagined my father in his office—the king in his counting house—going over the books, counting and measuring shipments from Samarkand, barrels from Italy and China, gems from the volcanoes of Borneo—and then his homecoming each evening, when Aunt Isabelle would greet him at the door, the perfect housekeeper (assisted of course by Marzy). And they would take their supper and sip a glass of wine and talk about the business of the day.
Oh, how these thoughts drew in me a such a longing to be home I nearly cried out in the dark!
Slaves and dogs and fish and sun, birds and pistols! Wishing to imagine such things no further, eventually I fell into a troubled sleep. After what I could surmise as having been a short while, I awoke (in my dream?) to find myself standing before a black-winged creature with the head of snake and the body of a cat.
A deep-voiced “Sir!” from out of the dark. I sat up with a start.
“It’s Black Jack, massa.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I heard you cry out, massa. Are you all right?”
He stood there in the room, as much a part of the dark as he was of what little light there was from a faint moon glowing outside the window.
“I cried out loud?”
“You did, massa,” he said. “May I help?”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “I was reading. I was dreaming. Black Jack, something to drink, please? Something soothing…”
“Of course, massa,” he said. “I thought you might want something like that.” And with that he faded away into the darkness near the door. I could hear his footsteps down the hall, and fainter still on the stairs. Oh, houses at night! How they change from the places we inhabit during the day, as if when the sun goes down and the moon comes up we live in more than one plane at a time. I lay in the dark thinking about this and before I knew it I heard footsteps coming back up the stairs. A light tapping (tapping, tapping) at the door.
“Come in, Black Jack,” I said.
I felt the light breeze as the door opened and the figure entered the room, a form cast by the light of a candle, and for a flickering instant I felt a terrible rush of icy fear in my blood—a mare out the night had come to murder me!—
And then I heard her voice.
“Massa Pereira?”
“Who—oh!”
I jumped to my feet.
“Yes, sir,” the girl Liza said. “Black Jack asked me to bring you this. He said you were having trouble falling asleep.”
As she crossed the room first she was nothing more than a wavering of the dark, and then, as her pale (compared to the darkness) face caught the light of the candle-flame, I could finally make her out in a white smock holding the tray before her.
“What is that?” I said, seeing the goblet on the tray.
“His special potion for sleep,” she said.
“A magic potion?”
“Yes, yes,” she said. “Drink and you shall be bewitched, massa.”
I strained my eyes in the dark to see if I might catch a glimpse of her eyes, but she was nothing but a solid emblem of something somewhat lighter than the dark behind her, with no particular features for me to make out.
“Then bewitched I shall be,” I said. “But first, one thing.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Stop calling me master, please?”
“—”
“Liza?”
“Yes, massa?”
“That is exactly what I’m talking about. No more of that.”
“No, massa,” she said.
“Liza!”
“—”
“Liza?”
“But what do I call you then, massa?”
“Nathaniel, call me Nathaniel. Or Nate.”
“I can’t do that. The old massa will be angry with me.”
“Then let’s make an agreement,” I said, picking up the goblet and without hesitation taking a long swallow of the sweet pungent liquid that stopped me for a moment from breathing.
“Massa?” she said.
“No more of that,” I said in a raven-like croak.
“Yes, sir.”
“No, no, no, no. When we are alone, you call me Nate. When we are with the family, you can do your duty and address me as usual.”
“Yes, massa.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, Nate,” she said. There was something as smooth and pungent in her voice as the liquid in my throat.
We paused there, and I must say, in the spirit of candor, that in that instant, when I stood so close to her that I could hear her quiet breathing and mistake it for my own, the heat of our two bodies embossed the place in the dark where we faced each other.
“Nate,” she said.
“Ah,” I said, quite taken with the fact that she had used my name and the way she had spoken it.
Tenderly, she took the goblet from my hand and turned to set it on the tray as I boldly allowed myself the gaze at her faint outline in the dark, ghostliness upon ghostliness.
I stepped toward her.
But she was already out the door and gone.
I returned to my bed and lay there what I thought was a long time and then I was opening my eyes to bright dawn sun and the music of birds.