“What do you write of these Cuban slaves?” I asked him.
“Aside from having no idea what they say to me, beyond general welcomes and good-byes, I just look at their meager surroundings and try to understand the meanings of the objects they surround themselves with: a drum that barks what to them are meaningful phrases; a gourd that is scraped in a certain way as they sing incantations to their gods — Obatalá and Changó are two that have registered on my dim brain. No crucifixes anywhere. Above all, Henry, at a white man’s kindness, they smile — despite the fact they are slaves.” Then: “I suppose they saw that I am used to their kind, even if they speak a different language.”
For my part, while spending time with Mr. Stanley, I took every opportunity to offer him my services. He seemed to have taken on the role of bookkeeper for the estate, though from what I could observe, their “office” consisted of a single desk set out in the cool inner courtyard, on which were stacked several ledger books.
“If you would like me to go over your books, it would be a pleasure to do so,” I told him. But of this he felt no need: “Why should you, when you might well decide to leave this place for good?” Then: “In any case, there is not very much to do right now: As you can see, even though I am not what I once was, I don’t mind these little chores.”
It disappointed me that despite my friendliness toward my father and the outward signs of his paternity toward me, he seemed most content to be left alone.
Of the plantation itself I will now speak, for Clemens and I rode around it one morning with Mr. Davis and my father.
It was at least several square miles in size, I would judge, given its distance from the forest surrounding it on all sides. To run it, the partners had about one hundred or so working slaves — not counting the children, who seemed to be everywhere; one white overseer, a Cuban; and several old, experienced slaves also acted as bosses. Two dozen slaves worked in the fields, slashing away at the cane stalks. They moved in unison, in one direction, much like a line of infantry, harvesting yard by yard the seemingly endless forest of cane. Afterward, they gathered the stalks up and loaded them into the oxcarts, and these were pulled to the sugar mill, where the raw cane was laid out in big piles on a platform and fed lengthwise through the trough of a machine whose steam-driven rollers crushed them into a pulp, their juices dripping down into enormous vats. Their residue of leftover bark and fibers was then carried out to dry in a field and stored as fuel for the mill’s furnace. All during the process there was a constant grinding of machinery, the cries of the slaves giving one another instructions—“Dale candela”—and chanting and sometimes singing. The air in that place was so intensely sweet and thick, I imagined it would take a long time to get used to it.
“Our problem here,” said Mr. Davis that day, “is not the production itself. Aside from the machinery, the slaves comprise our greatest expense. But they are good and hard workers — we try not to use force against them. Isn’t that so, Mr. Stanley? In general, we have found that, while this is not a paradise for them, they have it better here than they would in many other plantations; certainly better than what I have seen in your American South.
“Now, as you two have come here through that wood, you can well imagine that our biggest problem is transport, for it is not an accommodating route. For some time now we have been attempting to build a new road through the woods between here and the train station at Limonar; a road we hope to get under way with the help of monies and slaves from other plantations, as such a road would benefit us all.” Then, to Mr. Stanley, he said, “Since we are planning to visit with a plantation owner tomorrow morning to discuss the matter, perhaps these lads would like to join us.”
“Why not?” said Mr. Stanley.
SINCE OUR DAYS HAD BEEN largely uneventful, we welcomed the diversion, but oddly, as Clemens and I retired to our rooms that night, I was overcome by a strange misgiving about it. Where such impressions or manifestations of dread come from, I do not know, but as I attempted, somewhat restlessly, to fathom the source of my intuition, I became convinced that Mr. Stanley should not make that journey. Such was my alarm that I could not sleep, and in an agitated state I went to Clemens’s room, knocking fiercely on his door. Fortunately the strong smell of tobacco smoke met my nostrils, for he, too, had remained awake and had been restless, but for other reasons, I suppose. “What is it, Henry?” he asked, and in that moment I poured my apprehensions out.
While sympathetic to my fears, he remained cautious: “Come, now,” he told me. “As you know, I once had a dream about my brother that came true. But that was a mere coincidence: a coincidence that I have never been happy about, but a coincidence all the same. No doubt you are just feeling anxious about your father.”
Shortly I went back to my room, but I was again unable to sleep. Quietly I made my way out from one hall into another, my path lit by a candle, and, coming to my father’s chamber door, I knocked. And when I heard no response, I knocked again.
My father, Mr. Stanley, a grave expression upon his face, opened the door.
“What on earth can you want at this late hour?”
“Father, do not make that journey tomorrow.”
“What?”
“You will be in danger. Do not question me — I know it to be true.”
He sighed. “It is a late hour; you have been dreaming; and perhaps you are somewhat out of sorts.” Then: “If it is the business with the adoption, rest assured, my boy, that I will attend to it.” And he closed the door.
That night, when I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of many wishful things. I saw that I lived in a magnificent house surrounded by a garden, and I had a wife to love me, and three children. I saw Mr. Stanley coming to visit us, and with his enormous frame settled down upon a chair, jostling an infant on his lap; but then that soon turned to air, and I awoke early that morning, hearing the plantation bells summoning the day.
AFTER BREAKFAST, CLEMENS, MR. DAVIS, Mr. Stanley, and I saddled up and rode out to the edge of the fields, about a mile from the house. For part of the way, as I remember, Clemens — or Sam, as he preferred to be called — had engaged my father in a discussion that veered somewhere between literature and religion, for they came, in that Cuban clime, to talk about the Bible.
To Clemens’s inquiry “What, in your opinion, is the Bible?” my father, with his effortless genius, summarized his feelings about it in a single phrase: “The Bible is a book of allegories made to instruct man in the higher principles that should guide life.”
“And would you consider it a true history of those times?” Clemens asked.
“Yes — a history in the sense of reflecting general ancient events. But mainly they are attractive myths, to console men and guide them.”
“And the word of God?”
My father exhaled a deep breath.
“The awareness of God, the speculations about Him, surely fired up the imaginations of the holy thinking men who accumulated such stories, all of them glorious in the Decalogue. But after so many years of study, I have come to consider it more as a literary creation than anything else.”
“You know, Mr. Stanley,” Clemens said, “you would get lynched in some parts of the South for saying that.”