And it is the same even in the village, where the columned edifices of the municipal assembly and public school preside at either end of the central square, and where there are more newspaper offices than places of worship, and these latter include not just churches but the temples of Jews, Mohammedans, Hindoos, Buddhists and Jains, and there is not a single bank. Every one of these buildings is open and ready to accommodate the diverse needs of a thriving community, and yet none of them seems to have ever been profaned by a single human breath, apart from that of Thomas Jefferson himself.
~ ~ ~
It is not, of course, possible to do an emotional taxonomy of color — which is exactly why the idea appeals to Thomas Jefferson and why it might even be important. What he wants is to find a vacant apartment building — or, better yet, an abandoned hospital or asylum — and paint every room a different color and furnish each room with tables, chairs, beds and paintings all exactly the color of the walls, and there would be microphones hidden in every room, recording what people say as they pass in and out. And then this installation could have a second life in a gallery or a museum, where projected video images of the empty rooms would have sound tracks consisting of the words of the people who once passed through them. Or perhaps he could live as a different color every day for a year, dyeing his clothes and his skin and his hair that color, and then have someone follow him around with a video camera, documenting everything said to him by strangers and friends. Or maybe he could give strangers and friends sunglasses with lenses he would color himself, and ask them to spend a day seeing only that color, and then tell him what they did and thought and felt. Or he should put people in a dark room and project ambiguous colors on the wall — bluish green, purplish gray, yellowish orange — and ask them to name the color and then tell him a story, made up or remembered, lived, read or watched. And perhaps every one of these installations and conceptual pieces could have its ultimate life on a Web site, to which people from all over the world would be encouraged to add their own color-related musings and artworks. What he would love most is to have millions of people from all classes and all countries trying to define what cannot be defined and each having an experience of color that only he or she can have, and only once, and never again.
IX
~ ~ ~
Of my father, Thomas Jefferson, I knew more of his domestic than his public life during his life time. It is only since his death that I have learned much of the latter, except that he was considered as a foremost man in the land, and held many important trusts, including that of President. I learned to read by inducing the white children to teach me the letters and something more; what else I know of books I have picked up here and there till now I can read and write. I was almost 21 1/2 years of age when my father died on the 4th of July, 1826.
About his own home he was the quietest of men. He was hardly ever known to get angry, though sometimes he was irritated when matters went wrong, but even then he hardly ever allowed himself to be made unhappy any great length of time. Unlike Washington he had but little taste or care for agricultural pursuits. He left matters pertaining to his plantations mostly with his stewards and overseers. He always had mechanics at work for him, such as carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, coopers, &c. It was his mechanics he seemed mostly to direct, and in their operations he took great interest. Almost every day of his later years he might have been seen among them. He occupied much of the time in his office engaged in correspondence and reading and writing. His general temperament was smooth and even; he was very undemonstrative. He was uniformly kind to all about him. He was not in the habit of showing partiality or fatherly affection to us children. We were the only children of his by a slave woman. He was affectionate toward his white grandchildren, of whom he had fourteen, twelve of whom lived to manhood and womanhood.
— Madison Hemings
“Life Among the Lowly, No. 1”
Pike County (Ohio) Republican
March 13, 1873
~ ~ ~
Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson are dead. The world they inhabit is the world in which they lived, except that they are all alone and things don’t seem connected in the usual way. The trees, for example, will be bare one instant, then lush and August green the next, and then outlined with snow, and then hung with whispering, copper-colored leaves. Or it will be a brilliant morning and then — in an instant — a star-crowded midnight. Or Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson will be smooth-cheeked and avid-eyed, then toothless and gray. Or they will be standing on the veranda, or in the kitchen, or on the lawn, or they will be strolling along the Rivanna, or amid meadows they don’t quite recognize — all within instants or hours (it is impossible to be sure which). But mostly they will be lying side by side in bed. It will be dark. Or it will be that slow moment when dawn becomes a blue possibility around the edges of the window curtains.
“I am not sure I like being dead,” says Sally Hemings.
Thomas Jefferson is silent a long time.
“I think I prefer it,” he says.
“Why?”
“Because there is so much to wonder at, so much to see. This is all so beautiful.” (They are in a rattling coach now, a procession of rust-orange mountains passing by its windows.) “And mysterious. Don’t you think so? But also it is only itself, so we can lose ourselves in it utterly. That’s the main thing, I think.”
Now it is Sally Hemings’s turn to be silent.
“I’m not sure I see what you mean,” she says.
“If there is nothing to hope for, or dread, or plan for, or mourn, if nothing we do or say can have any consequences, then there is nothing for us to think about except each individual moment as it happens. In an odd way, we are more alive now than we ever were when we were living.”
“But we are not alive. We are nothing. We are not actually even here.”
“I am seeing,” says Thomas Jefferson. “I am thinking. I am talking to you. So I am here.”
“But if you can do nothing, if nothing you do has any effect on the world, then from the point of view of the world you are nothing. You don’t exist.”
“Yes. Exactly. That’s what I enjoy most.”
“How can you say that? You devoted your entire life to changing the world. That was what you lived for. That was who you really were. And now you can’t be yourself anymore. There is no Thomas Jefferson. You are not him, and you never will be again.”
At first Thomas Jefferson seems to have a ready counterargument. He opens his mouth to speak, but no sound comes out. At last he sighs. “Yes,” he says. “That’s true. I do regret that aspect of it. But even so—”
Sally Hemings cuts him off. “You say you are in the world, but the world has changed several times since we began talking. So which world are you in? Or are you in any world at all? And which world am I in, for that matter? If I am not in the same world as you, then you may be talking, but you are only talking at me, not to me or with me. It is even possible that you are not with me at all. I may be somewhere else.”
“I am lying in bed with you,” says Thomas Jefferson. “We are both entirely undressed, and you are as beautiful as you have ever been. I am leaning on my elbow, looking down into your eyes. My thigh is across your thigh, and my foot rests between your feet. In a moment, perhaps, we will make love. But now we are only talking, and we could hardly be more content.”