“Suh,” said Santos, “this is a private function.” He was as muscular and lumpy-looking as ever, dressed in a neckstock cravat and barrow-coat: the very portrait of misery. Modern styles in fashion clearly were not the best attire for a giant afflicted with that rare disease — gaposis — where nothing fits right. Pulling at his collar, he tilted his head left, studying me. Recognition flickered and burst into flame. “Say, hold on heah! Just one fuhcockin minute! By Gawd, you’s a pitiful sight, but underneath that wig, ain’t you that thief from Illinois?”
Our commotion was attracting onlookers.
“Papa, looka what just pulled into harbor!” Santos reached with his right hand, planning to grab my left wrist, a move I’d seen McGaffin make during the mutiny, and something (I cannot say what) swept over me (I cannot say how), but I sidestepped as I’d seen Atufal do, snatched his wrist and allowed Santos’s propulsion to pitch him forward whilst I took a half step closer inside his guard, dropped quickly to the ground directly below him, then scissored his waist with my legs and tipped him over backward, the back of his skull bouncing off the deck. I’d wager the deck was more damaged than Santos’s head. Like the brontosaurus, snapping at something that bit it yesterday, it might be a full thirty minutes before the pain of that bump traveled from his skin to his central nervous system. Nevertheless, this elegant and unexpected eruption of capoeira, which now seemed as natural to me as lifting my arm, was enough to sting his pride and send him scurrying backward, startled, into a forest of legs. We were surrounded by spectators, among them Squibb, who had come running from our room when he discovered I was gone.
“Santos,” Papa snapped, stepping outside, “who is this?”
Santos was staring at me in bewilderment. “That’s that boy the schoolteacher was seein’.” Deeply, he frowned. “Nigguh, how’d you do that?”
Isadora asked, “Rutherford?”
The captain peered over her and Papa’s shoulders. “Mr. Calhoun, I’m glad to see you’re taking a little air after your misfortunes. However, we’re in the middle of an important ceremony—”
“He was on that ship?” Papa stepped back from me, scratching his jaw. “Calhoun? I don’t believe it, but if you was there, I wanna talk to you tout why that ship went down and whose fault it was. In my cabin, son. Right now. Santos, you bring him along — and don’t lose the goddamn ring.”
His man sat where he was, leery of me. I used this second of uncertainty to pull Squibb to one side and ask him to perform one last duty for me, one my life and Isadora’s depended on, then hurried her away from the others. Baleka kept following us, trying to listen. I shooed her away. And all the while Isadora gave me a once-over, pushing her head close to see if I’d switched my nose for a different proboscis, if I was the same person under my beard, and just as quickly she pulled back.
“Do I smell that bad?”
She shook her head. “You don’t look or sound the same.”
Of course, she was right. Sometimes without knowing it, I spoke in the slightly higher register of the slaves, had their accent, brisk tempo of talk, and occasionally caught myself incapable of seeing things in general terms. In other words, when I wasn’t watching myself, each figure floating past me possessed haecceitas but not quidditas, a uniqueness so radical I felt I could assume nothing about anyone or anything, or now — in the case of Isadora — generalize about her from one moment to the next.
She began squinting, and not simply to shut out the sun, although we were on the ship’s western side afore the windlass. Rather, it was the squint of slowly remembered rage, and suddenly her voice was full of frowns. “Where were you, Rutherford! I waited for hours and hours after everyone else left, except for him.” She pointed in Papa’s direction. “Do you know — have you any idea — how humiliating that was for me?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “If I could do it over, I would.” Cautiously, I touched her left arm, hoping she would not pull away. “I’m not the same, as you say. There’s someone else, a girl. .”
I could feel Isadora’s arm tense beneath my fingers. Quietly, with her lower lip caught between her teeth, she waited for me to explain.
“She’s one of the children orphaned by the voyage. And no, I’m not her father, if that’s what you’re thinking, but I might as well be. Whenever Baleka is out of my sight I am worried. If she bruises herself, I feel bruised. Night and day I pray all will go well for her, even after I am gone. Sometimes she drives me to distraction with all the things she shoves under my nose for me to see — Yankee things she wants me to explain, but I cannot eat, if you must know, until I am sure she has eaten first, nor sleep if she is restless and, to make matters worse, if she is quiet for too long, I worry about that as well. .”
Isadora placed her right hand over my fingers. “My goodness, you have changed, Rutherford.”
“Aye, and what I’m saying is that in order to raise her I shall need your help.”
“Is that a proposal?”
“It is.”
“Then I’m sorry, Rutherford.” She lowered her eyes, her hand left mine, and for a moment I felt like a ship unmoored. “I can’t accept your proposal now.”
“Why not? Is it because you accepted Papa’s first? Isadora, how can you even consider marrying him?”
She hurried to the rail, gagged, her stomach unsettled by either the rocking of the ship or her scheduled marriage to a man who made Cesare Borgia seem like a milquetoast. And abruptly she was angry with me again, so angry after gagging her voice came in sputters and a spray of spittle I felt too ashamed to avoid by turning my head or by taking a step away. “Papa and that goon of his were there when you weren’t, Rutherford! He might be a criminal, but he saw how I was hurting, standing there in front of all those people Madame Toulouse invited, so everybody who’s anybody in New Orleans would know nobody wanted me.” I eased to one side, believing Isadora was drawing back her fist; instead, she pulled nervously at her earlobe, a new habit she’d developed since I’d been gone. “I could have died right there, really I could have. But then. . he was nice to me. He took me home. The next night he came by with a whole carriage filled with my favorite flowers, and proposed, and then I didn’t know what to do. You don’t say no when you’re being courted by a man who owns half the city, has underworld connections everywhere, and kills people for interrupting him.”
“You did that?”
“Once,” she confessed. “After that I was afraid to. He scares me, Rutherford! Sometimes I’m so frightened I can’t eat or sleep. You don’t know what kind of things he’s been up to.”
“I think I do. And I’m not surprised he wants you. You’re beautiful,” I said, to soften her anger, yet it was true. Her anxiety and loss of appetite had made her prettier. Up close, I could see she’d used the ash from matches to darken her eyes, the juice from berries to rouge her cheeks and lips. “You’ve twice as much education and culture as he has. Given the circles he moves in, marrying you might bring the lubber a little respectability.”