VIII
~ ~ ~
… I don’t know exactly how or when it happened, but at some point I simply defined the life I was leading as a good one, which meant that anything I did that allowed me to continue living my good life was also good. And so I became afflicted with an especially perilous form of blindness.
Where I had once seen light and dark, black and white, red, yellow, orange, purple, I now saw only gray. Everything became muted, dim. I lost my ability to feel the pain of others or to be outraged. In order to believe that I lived in a good world, I had to believe that the whole rest of the world was no good — people especially — and that my only obligation was to care for my children, my family, the people I loved.
And so I used little truths and partial truths and sometimes big truths (my love for my children) to convince myself of the very big lie that I need feel no shame, that I was as close to virtuous as I could reasonably have expected to be.
I said yes to Mr. Jefferson and yes to evasions, lies and complicity. But I could have said no. No, you may not kiss me. No, I do not want your hands on my body. No, I owe you nothing. I don’t believe you. No, I don’t. I won’t. I don’t love you. No.
Had I adopted that policy, none of yesterday’s evils would have been averted, but I would not have been complicit in them, nor in any of the other evils from which I have profited over the last forty years.
No and no and no.
I might have had a purer soul….
~ ~ ~
James T. Callender is walking up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the president’s mansion — although “avenue” is an absurd euphemism for this dirt track passing through swamp and primeval forest, along which a carriage could not travel twenty feet without jolting over a boulder or an insufficiently excised tree stump. So, too, the name “city,” when applied to these half dozen unfinished and ill-designed Palladian imitations amid a scattering of shacks and swaybacked houses belonging to trappers and fishermen and to the benighted farmers who supposed this swampland might be made to flourish under their plows.
Almost exactly a year ago, Callender was martyred for his service to Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican Party when John Adams had him imprisoned under the Sedition Act for the crime of publishing the truth of Adams’s own villainy and the villainy of the party he serves. No one could have been happier than Callender himself when his efforts propelled Adams out of office and Thomas Jefferson into the presidency, and no one could have been more justified in the expectation that those efforts and his consequent martyrdom would be amply compensated for by the man who had derived the greatest benefit from them. But this expectation has been revealed to have little more validity than the fantastical notion that this mosquito-infested wilderness through which he is walking might be the august capital city of a great nation.
Although it is early April, the weather belongs to July, and Callender is aware of the rank effluvium being suffused by his own person and wardrobe. He remained naked much of the previous day, as he scrubbed his solitary suit of clothing and then waited for it to dry. He had worn those same clothes every day of his imprisonment and, despite numerous washings, had never been able to rid them of the fetid stench of his cell. This morning, lifting his coat and breeches to his nose, he concluded that his efforts had at last met with success, but now, thanks to the heat of the sun and of his own body, he knows that he will never cease smelling of the jailhouse until he has the funds to purchase an entirely new wardrobe.
But maybe that is a good thing. Maybe nothing would be better than for Thomas Jefferson to experience this mere hint of the suffering that James T. Callender endured on his behalf. Maybe then he will comprehend the rankness of his own failure to live up to his obligations.
Callender’s requests could hardly have been more humble: the mere two hundred dollars that Thomas Jefferson has already promised him and an appointment as postmaster of Richmond. Is that too much to ask? The money would only cover the fine he had to pay after his conviction, and the job could hardly be more innocuous, nor easier for a president to effect. The current postmaster is, after all, a Federalist, and it is only in the government’s best interests to purge every last Federalist occupying an administrative post.
While Thomas Jefferson seems to have entirely given up answering his letters, Callender does not see how the man could possibly deny the justice of his requests once he has been confronted by them in person.
A hot day indeed, and a brilliant one, especially once he ventures across the muddy plain that surrounds the president’s mansion — so brilliant that he can see almost nothing once he has stepped into the building itself. But he can hear Thomas Jefferson’s voice echoing down a corridor to his right. And even though Callender can still make out little more than floating wads of darkness and smears of illumination reflected off polished floors, he hurries in the direction of the voice, knowing that Jefferson could well choose to avoid him if given the chance.
Callender has hardly taken two steps, however, when a figure looms out of the obscurity and catches him by the elbow. It is James Madison, Jefferson’s lackey and attack dog. “Mr. Callender!” he says. “What a surprise! Might I trouble you for a moment of your time?”
James T. Callender tugs his elbow from Madison’s grasp and says, “I have essential business with the president.”
“Yes, yes — I’m sure you do. But I need to have a word with you first. It’s important.”
This time Madison grips Callender’s arm with such force that it would be impossible to escape without a struggle. “Right here,” he says, and all but shoves Callender through the door into an office, pleasantly decorated with mahogany furniture and gilt-framed paintings and suffused with golden daylight. “Please,” says Madison, indicating a chair in front of the desk, behind which he himself takes a seat.
“I have to talk to the president immediately,” says Callender.
“I’m aware of that,” says Madison. “But I have to speak to you first.” He indicates the chair again, and Callender, thinking better of making a dash for the door, finally sits. He pulls his flask from his pocket and takes a deep swallow but pointedly does not offer any to Madison.
Everything transpires exactly as Callender expects. The corruptive magnetism of power cannot be resisted. Within the precincts of Monticello, Thomas Jefferson was an immensely articulate opponent of all forms of power, and so Callender dared to imagine he might prove truer to his own principles than most. But in the end, words and principles are less substantial than the breath it takes to speak them, and they have no force except insofar as they prettify brutal self-interest. Now that Thomas Jefferson has achieved the most powerful position in the land, his own words and principles are only an embarrassment, because they expose, by contrast, the true nakedness of his greed.