In the morning, of course, all of this seemed nonsense, and I resumed my determination to cut Mr. Jefferson no quarter and to preserve my dignity and modesty above all else….
~ ~ ~
Thomas Jefferson is walking amid the lush stench of the open sewers and the rankness of butcher shops and slaughterhouses, the smoke of coal and tobacco, the smell of wet wool and of houses hollowed by fire, then drenched by rain. But mostly he is walking among faces. So many faces.
Although he is reluctant to cede any advantage to Europe, he feels that the variety of faces he sees on the streets of Paris is vastly beyond that of any city in America, even Philadelphia. The variety is almost entirely due to disease, however, and to the fundamental cruelty of life under a monarch. The pitted, leathery faces of the pox sufferers, for example, or the dwarf-eyed faces of the blind-since-birth, or the toothless and the potato-nosed, or the mad and the aghast.
But there are also noble faces. He cannot deny this. The hawk-sharp gaze of the broad-shouldered ironmonger. The creamy cheeks and blue-eyed concern of the barefoot mother, hurrying her two small children out of the path of the clattering phaeton. And even the face of the duchess riding in that phaeton, who, lost in her own musings, her head and shoulders shaken in the shuddering of wheels over cobbles, lets her eyes fall on Thomas Jefferson’s and gives him a glance that cuts like a cool arrow straight into his heart. And then she is gone.
Just that morning Thomas Jefferson looked at his own face in the mirror above his washstand, and he believed he was looking at himself. But now he thinks that he was mistaken. Our faces are not ourselves. They are only the façades behind which our selves perpetrate their histories, shrouded in obscurity and human wishes.
Thomas Jefferson’s heart pounds, and he is sweating.
That plump woman smiling blandly as she stands behind her board table in the market square: What secret sufferings lurk behind those brown button eyes? What does she long for and fear as she stokes the fires under her pots of fruit? As she seals her preserves in porcelain jars under layers of wax, paper and twine?
Strawberry. Red currant. Apple. Apricot.
Thomas Jefferson’s fingertips have gone slick with sweat.
He has conceived the desire to buy a jar of the apricot preserves from the woman, and now, mysteriously, he cannot breathe. A nugget of pain throbs in each of his temples. What is happening? he wonders. Then he remembers one sunny morning some two or three months past, when Sally Hemings licked her fingers, laughed and proclaimed, “Nothing on earth was so delicious as French apricot preserves!” He turns his back on the woman and her preserves and strides empty-handed out of the market square.
And then, minutes later, his fingertips having gone ice cold, he is hurrying home with a jar of apricot preserves in the pocket of his greatcoat.
He has to wipe his hands on his breeches before taking up his pen to write on a scrap of paper torn off the bottom of a cobbler’s bilclass="underline" “For Sally.”
After he has left the jar of preserves atop his note on the table in the empty kitchen and has walked halfway down the hall, he decides he must return and retrieve his pathetic and shameful offering. He ventures back as far as the kitchen door, but then the notion that he should be ashamed of so innocent a gesture only seems more pathetic and incriminating, so once again he hurries down the hall.
And then: the bemused surprise of Clotilde when, an hour later, she comes across the jar and the note.
And then: Jimmy’s somber gaze when, some hours after that, his sister walks into the kitchen.
“What’s the matter?” asks Sally Hemings, stopping in the doorway.
He nods in the direction of the jar.
She recognizes not just the one word she can read but the handwriting.
What she cannot make sense of is the blue scrawl on the label glued to the jar.
“What flavor?” she asks her brother, and he tells her. She picks up the jar, and then she puts it down and leaves the room.
But Jimmy has not had time to skin an onion before she is standing again beside the table. “It won’t hurt to taste,” she says.
Fingertips glossed with sweat, she tugs at the twine and paper, then picks up a knife and breaks the wax seal.
~ ~ ~
It is nine at night, and Sally Hemings has just finished washing and putting away the pots used by her brother and Clotilde when she hears the Marquis de Lafayette’s laughter coming down the corridor from the direction of Thomas Jefferson’s study. It would have been faster for her to go up to her room via the staircase just outside the kitchen, but she decides to take the main staircase instead, in the hope of catching a glimpse of the funny and kind marquis.
As she passes, candle in hand, in front of Thomas Jefferson’s door, she sees a paper-strewn desk, a lit oil lamp and, just to the right of the lamp, somebody’s knee, but she doesn’t dare hesitate long enough to determine whose knee it is.
No sooner has she passed the door than she hears the marquis’s voice: “Is that my beautiful little Sarah?”
“Sally!” Thomas Jefferson calls. “Sally! Would you mind coming here for a moment?”
Straightening her hair and her apron with her one free hand, she returns to the door. “Yes, Mr. Jefferson.”
The two men are leaning forward to get a better view of the door, Thomas Jefferson behind the desk, the Marquis de Lafayette in front of it. (His was the knee she had glimpsed.) Both have shiny red faces and glittering eyes. A half-empty bottle of wine and two full glasses are on the desk. Two empty bottles stand beside the marquis’s chair. He is looking at Sally Hemings with his usual merry smile. Thomas Jefferson is also smiling, but less easily. Sally Hemings feels a piercing sorrow as she looks at him, but she is not sure why.
“Thank you, Sally,” says Thomas Jefferson. “You remember the marquis?”
“Mais oui,” says Sally Hemings. “Bien sûr.”
“And how is my beautiful Sarah?” says the marquis.
“I’m fine, thank you.” Sally Hemings knows that she should say, “And how are you, my lord?” but she can’t bring herself to ask him a question.
“We need your advice!” the marquis announces, his smile growing just a touch mischievous. “Your good friend, le philosophe”—he gestures at Thomas Jefferson, who has ceased smiling altogether—“and I are trying to come up with a document that will help this benighted monarchy acquire some of the virtues of your wise and civilized country.”
“Gilbert,” Thomas Jefferson says reprovingly.
“Nonsense,” says the marquis. “Je veux vraiment savoir ce qu’elle pense.”
Thomas Jefferson takes a deep sip from his glass and leans back in his chair. His face grows darker as it recedes from the lamp glow, but the flame still gleams in his eyes.
“Come in, chère Sarah,” says the marquis. “Would you like a chair?” He looks around the room. Every other chair is stacked with books, papers, surveying equipment or other mechanical devices.