Heartfire ttoam-5 Read online

  Then he remembered the dead hummingbird. Lady Ashworth naked in bed. He stopped himself before he remembered every act that others had criticized– no reason to list the catalogue of them for Margaret's watchful eye. For her to report to Alvin with, no doubt, the worst possible interpretation. Alvin's spy–

  No, keep the anger under control. She couldn't help what her knack was, any more than Calvin could, or anybody else. She wasn't a spy.

  A judge, though. She was clearly judging him, she had said as much. She judged everybody. That's why she was here in the Crown Colonies– because she had judged and condemned them for practicing slavery, even though the whole world had always practiced slavery until just lately, and it was hardly fair to condemn these people when the idea of emancipation was really just some fancy new trend from Puritan England and a few French philosophers.

  And he didn't want to be judged by what he did, either. That was wrong, too. People made mistakes. Found out later that a choice was wrong. You couldn't hold that against them forever, could you?

  No, people should be judged by what they meant to do in the long run. By the overarching purpose they meant to accomplish. Calvin was going to help Alvin build the Crystal City. That was why he had gone to France and England, wasn't it? To learn how people were gathered to one purpose and governed in the real world. None of this feeble teaching that Alvin did back in Vigor Church, trying to turn people into what they were not and never could be. No, Alvin would get nowhere that way. Calvin was the one who would figure it all out and come back and show Alvin the way. Calvin would be the teacher, and together the brothers would build the great city and the whole world would be ruled from that place, and even Napoleon would come and bow to them, and then all of Calvin's mistakes and bad thoughts would be forgotten in the honor and glory that would come to him.

  And even if he never succeeded, it was his purpose that counted. That's who Calvin really was, and that was how Margaret should judge him.

  Come to think of it, she had no business judging him at all. That's what Jesus said, wasn't it? Judge not lest ye be judged. Jesus forgave everybody. Margaret should take a lesson from Jesus and forgive Calvin instead of condemning him. If the world had a little more forgiveness in it, it would be a better place. Everybody sinned. What was Calvin's little fling with Lady Ashworth compared to Alvin killing that Slave Finder? What was a dead hummingbird compared to a dead man? Margaret could forgive Alvin, but never Calvin, no, because he wasn't one of the favored ones.

  People are such hypocrites. It made him sick, the way they were always pretending to be soooo righteous…

  Except Balzac. He never pretended at all. He was just himself. And he didn't judge Calvin. Just accepted him for the man he was. Didn't compare him with Alvin, either. How could he? They had never met.

  The meal was almost over. Calvin had been so busy brooding that he hadn't noticed that he was almost completely silent. But what could he say, when Margaret thought she already knew everything about him anyway?

  Balzac was talking to her about the slavegirl who opened the door for them at the boardinghouse. “I asked her what she wanted most in all the world, and she told me what she wanted was a name. I thought people named their slaves.”

  Margaret looked at him in surprise, and it took a moment for her to respond. “The girl you talked to has two names,” she finally said. “But she hates them both.”

  “Is that what she meant?” asked Balzac. “That she didn't like her name? But that's not the same as wishing she had one.”

  Again Margaret looked contemplative for a few moments.

  “I think you've uncovered something that I was having trouble understanding. She hates her name, and then she tells you she wishes she had one. I can't decipher it.”

  Balzac leaned over the table and rested his hand on Margaret's. “You must tell me what you are really thinking, madame.”

  “I am really thinking you should take your hand off mine,” said Margaret mildly. “That may work with the women of France, but uninvited intimacies do not work well with me.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “And I did tell you what I really thought,” said Margaret.

  “But that is not true,” said Balzac.

  Calvin almost laughed out loud, to hear him front her so bold.

  “Is it not?” asked Margaret. “If so, I am not aware of what the truth might be.”

  “You got a look in your eyes. Very thoughtful. Then you reached a conclusion. And yet you told me that you can't decipher this girl's wish for a name.”

  “I said I can't decipher it,” said Margaret. “I meant that I can't find her real name.”

  “Ah. So that means you have deciphered something.”

  “I've never thought to look for this before. But it seems that the two names I had for her– the name her mother called her, which was awful, and her household name, which is hardly better; they call her 'Fishy'– neither of those is her true name. But she thinks they are. Or rather, she knows of no other name, and yet she knows there must be another name, and so she wishes for that true name, and– well, as you can see, I haven't deciphered anything.”

  “Your decipherment is not up to your own standard of understanding maybe,” said Balzac, “but it is enough to leave me breathless.”

  On they blathered, Balzac and Mrs. Smith, trading compliments. Calvin thought about names. About how much easier his life might have been if his own name had not been shared with Alvin, save one letter. About how Alvin resisted using the name Maker even though he had earned it. Alvin Smith indeed. And then Margaret– why did she decide to stop being Peggy? What pretension was she nursing? Or was Margaret the true name and Peggy the disguise?

  Chatter chatter. Oh, shut up, both of you. “Here's a question,” Calvin asked, interrupting them. “Which comes first, the name or the soul?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Balzac.

  “I mean is the soul the same, no matter what you name it? Or if you change names do you change souls?”

  “What do names have to do with…” Margaret's voice trailed off. She looked off into the distance.

  “I think decipherment happens before our eyes,” said Balzac.

  Calvin was annoyed. She wasn't supposed to take this seriously. “I just asked a question, I wasn't trying to plumb the secrets of the universe.”

  Margaret looked at him with disinterest. “You were going to make some foolish joke about giving Alvin the C from your name and you could be the one that everybody likes.”

  “Was not,” said Calvin.

  She ignored him. “The slaves have names,” she said, “but they don't, because the names their masters give them aren't real. Don't you see? It's a way of staying free.”

  “Doesn't compare with actual freedom,” said Calvin.

  “Of course it doesn't,” said Margaret. “But still, it's more than just a matter of the name itself. Because when they hide their names, they hide something else.”

  Calvin thought of what he had said to start this stupid discussion. “Their souls?”

  “Their heartfires,” she said. “I know you understand what I'm talking about. You don't see into them the way I do, but you know where they are. Haven't you noticed that the slaves don't have them?”

  “Yes, they do,” said Calvin.

  “What are you talking about?” said Balzac.

  “Souls,” said Calvin.

  “Heartfires,” said Margaret. “I don't know if they're the same thing.”

  “Doesn't matter,” said Calvin. “The French don't have either one.”

  “Now he insults me and my whole country,” said Balzac, “but you see that I do not kill him.”

  “That's because you've got short arms and you drink too much to aim a gun,” said Calvin.

  “It is because I am civilized and I disdain violence.”

  “Don't either of you care,” said Margaret, “that the slaves have found a way to hide their souls from their masters? Are the
y so invisible to you, Calvin, that you haven't ever bothered to notice that their heartfires are missing?”

  “They still got a spark in them,” said Calvin.

  “But it's tiny, it has no depth,” said Margaret. “It's the memory of a heartfire, not the fire itself. I can't see anything in them.”

  "Seems to me that they've found a way to hide their souls from you, said Calvin.

  “Doesn't he ever listen to anybody?” Margaret asked Balzac.

  “He does,” said Balzac. “He hears, but he doesn't care.”

  “What am I supposed to be caring about that I'm not?” asked Calvin.

  “What the Black girl said she wished for,” said Balzac. “A name. She has hidden away her name and her soul, but now she wants them back and she doesn't know how.”

  “When did you two figure this out?” asked Calvin.

  “It was obvious once Madame Smith made the connection,” said Balzac. “But you are the most knowledgeable people I know of, when it comes to hidden powers. How could you not know of this?”

  “I don't do souls,” said Calvin.

  “The powers they bring from Africa work differently,” said Margaret. “Alvin tried to figure it out, and so did I, and we think that everybody is born with hidden powers, but they learn from the people around them to use them in different ways. We White people– or at least English people– but Napoleon's like this too, so who knows– we learn to use these powers individually, binding them tightly to some inborn talent or preference or need. A little bit of it we can put outside ourselves, in hexes, but the real power is held in each person. While the Reds, they open their powers to the world around them, becoming less and less alone, more and more tied to the power of nature. It gives them great powers, but cut them off from the natural world and it's gone.”

  “And Blacks?” asked Balzac.

  “They learn to put it into objects, or perhaps they find it there, I don't know. Since I've never done it myself, nor has Alvin, we could only speculate. Some things I've seen in Black folks' heartfires, though– I could hardly believe it. Yet it's so. Arthur Stuart's mother– she had extraordinary power, and by making something, she gave herself wings. She flew.”

  Balzac laughed, then realized she wasn't joking or even speaking metaphorically. “Flew?”

  “At least a hundred miles,” said Margaret. “Not far enough, not entirely in the right direction, but it was enough to save her baby, though her own strength and life were spent.”

  “This Arthur Stuart, why don't you ask him how the power of Black people works?”

  “He's just a boy,” said Calvin scornfully, “and he's half-White anyway.”

  “You don't know him,” said Margaret. “He doesn't know how the powers of Blacks work because it isn't carried in the blood, it's taught from parent to child. Alvin learned the greensong of the Reds because he became like a child to Tenskwa-Tawa and Ta-Kumsaw. Arthur Stuart grew up with his power shaped into a knack, like Whites, because he was raised among Whites. I think Blacks have a hard time holding on to their African ways. Maybe that's why Fishy can't remember her real name. Someone took her name from her, took her soul, to keep it in hiding, to keep it safe and free. But now she wants it back and she can't get it because she's not African-born, she's not surrounded by a tribe, she's surrounded by beaten-down slaves whose heartfires and names are all in hiding.”

  “If they got all these powers,” said Calvin, “how come they're slaves?”

  “Oh, that's easy,” said Balzac. “The ones who capture them in Africa, they are also African, they know what the powers are, they keep them from having the things they need.”

  “Blacks against Blacks,” said Margaret sadly.

  “How do you know all that?” Calvin asked Balzac.

  “I was at the docks! I saw the Blacks being dragged off the ships in chains. I saw the Black men who searched them, took away little dolls made of cloth or dung, many different things.”

  “Where was I when you were seeing this stuff?”

  “Drunk, my friend,” said Balzac.

  “So were you, then,” said Calvin.

  “But I have an enormous capacity for wine,” said Balzac. “When I am drunk I am at my best. It is the national knack of the French.”

  “I wouldn't be proud of it if I were you,” said Margaret.

  “I wouldn't be sanctimonious about our wine, here in the land of corn liquor and rye whiskey.” Balzac leered at her.

  “Just when I think I might like you, Monsieur Balzac, you show yourself not to be a gentleman.”

  “I don't have to be a gentleman,” said Balzac. “I am an artist.”

  “You still walk on two legs and eat through your mouth,” said Margaret. “Being an artist doesn't give you special privileges. If anything, it gives you greater responsibilities.”

  “I have to study life in all its manifestations,” said Balzac.

  “Perhaps that is true,” said Margaret. “But if you sample all the wickedness of the world, and commit every betrayal and every harm, then you will not be able to sample the higher joys, for you will not be healthy enough or strong enough– or decent enough for the company of good people, which is one of the greatest joys of all.”

  “If they cannot forgive me my foibles, then they are not such good people, no?” Balzac smiled as if he had played the last ace in the deck.

  “But they do forgive your foibles,” said Margaret. “They would welcome your company, too. But if you joined them, you would not understand what they were talking about. You would not have had the experiences that bind them together. You would be an outsider, not because of any act of theirs, but because you have not passed along the road that teaches you to be one of them. You will feel like an exile from the beautiful garden, but it will be you who exiled yourself. And yet you will blame them, and call them judgmental and unforgiving, even as it is your own pain and bitter memory that condemns you, your own ignorance of virtue that makes you a stranger in the land that should have been your home.”

  Her eyes were on fire and Balzac looked at her with rapt admiration. “I always thought I would experiment with evil, and imagine good because it was easier. Almost you convince me I should do it the other way around.”

  Calvin was not so entranced. He knew that this little sermon was directed at him and he didn't like it. “There's no such secret that the good people know,” said Calvin. “They just pretend, to console themselves for having missed out on all the fun.”

  Margaret smiled at him. “I took these ideas from your own thoughts of only a few minutes ago, Calvin. You know that what I'm saying is true.”

  “I was thinking the opposite,” said Calvin.

  “That's what you thought you were thinking,” said Margaret. “But you wouldn't have had to think such thoughts if that was what you really thought about it.”

  Balzac laughed aloud, and Calvin joined him– albeit halfheartedly.

  “Madame Smith, I could have labored all my days and never thought of a conversation in which someone was able to deliver such a sentence and have it mean anything at all. 'That's what you thought you were thinking.' Delicious! 'You would not think these thoughts if you really thought what you think you thought' Or was it 'thought you think.'”

  “Neither one,” said Margaret. “You are already preparing to misquote me.”

  “I am not a journalist! I am a novelist, and I can improve any speech.”

  “Improve this,” said Margaret. “You two play your foolish games– Calvin playing at being powerful, Monsieur de Balzac playing at being an artist– but around you here is real life. Real suffering. These Black people are as human as you and me, but they give up their heartfires and their names in order to endure the torment of belonging to other people who despise and fear them. If you can dwell in this city of evil and remain untouched by their suffering, then it is you who are the trivial, empty people. You are able to hold on to your names and heartfires because they aren't worth stealing.”
/>   With that she rose from the table and left the restaurant.

  “Do you think we offended her?” asked Calvin.

  “Perhaps,” said Balzac. “But that concerns me a great deal less than the fact that she did not pay.”

  As be spoke, the waiter was already approaching them. “Do the gentlemen wish to pay in cash?”

  “It was the lady who invited us,” said Balzac. “Did she forget to pay?”

  “But she did pay,” said the waiter. “For her own meal. Before you sat down, she wrote us her check.”

  Balzac looked at Calvin and burst out laughing. “You should see your face, Monsieur Calvin!”

  “They can arrest us for this,” said Calvin.

  “But they do not wish to arrest a French novelist,” said Balzac. “For I would return to France and write about their restaurant and declare it to be a house of flies and pestilence.”

  The waiter looked at him coldly. “The French ambassador engages us to cater his parties,” he said. “I do not fear your threat.”

  A few moments later, up to his arms in dishwater and slops, Calvin seethed in resentment. Of Margaret, of course. Of Alvin, whose fault it was for marrying her. Of Balzac, too, for the cheerful way he bantered with the Black slaves who would otherwise have done all the kitchen work they were doing. Not that the Blacks bantered back. They hardly looked at him. But Calvin could see that they liked hearing him from the way more and more of them lingered in the room a little longer than their jobs required. While he was completely ignored, carrying buckets of table scraps out to be composted for the vegetable garden, emptying pails of dishwater, hauling full ones from the well to be heated. Heavy, sweaty labor, filth on his hands, grime on his face. He thought last night's urine-soaked sleep was as low as he could get in his life, but now he was doing the work of slaves while slaves looked on; and even here, there was another man that they all liked better than him.