Chapter 7 #2
“He knew of my wife, Rochester,” he said gently, “but in those days I hoped neither Bertha nor Richard would follow their mother’s course. And I still hold out hope that Bertha…will…not…”
He did not complete his thought, but I knew it was a false hope.
After that, from time to time, I tried writing to my father, demanding to know why he had not warned me about Bertha’s inheritance.
I wished him to blush with shame at having had any part in sending me to Jonas Mason, for I was certain now that he had known far more than I did from the very beginning, and I could not imagine why he would do such a thing to his own son—bring me up, educate me, for this…
this hell. But every time I wrote, I balled up the letter without sending it, for I could never think of how to adequately express my anger and my loss of respect for him.
As for Jonas, while of course I wished he had been more honest with me, my sense of betrayal was less acute: I understood his desire to ensure his daughter’s care, which was what any father would do.
It was my own father who seemed to have sacrificed his son—me—for Bertha’s sake.
To escape the disappointment of our marriage, I buried myself in my work.
True, Bertha was as beautiful as ever, and true, I could not complain of the way she graced my bed.
But beyond that, there was nearly nothing.
We did not share meals, nor did we speak of everyday things, or our hopes and dreams. She did not care to read or to share her thoughts on any subject, small or large.
I did complete the purchase of the Sea Nymph, though the ship had become nearly a burden for me, a reminder of the mistake my marriage seemed to have been.
There were other tensions as well in our world, especially between the Creoles and the field slaves in the West Indies.
Negroes on the island of Jamaica outnumbered whites by ten or more to one, and there was—always—the fear of a slave uprising.
Such revolts happened on all the sugar islands from time to time—uprisings that saw a great deal of violence and destruction on both sides.
At those times slave owners were rarely killed, but often they were shamed by their negroes by being put into the stocks, or shackled—as negroes sometimes were—to iron posts set into the ground, a humiliation beyond bearing.
And, of course, the great fear was the burning of the cane fields.
Daniels, the estate manager at Valley View, had informed me early on that it was never allowed for all the whites to be absent from the estate at the same time.
He did not say outright that it was to deter insurrection, but I understood.
The one weapon the whites had against the negroes was fear.
A negro late to the field received ten lashes; a negro who tried to escape was beheaded and his head placed on a pole at the side of the road as a warning.
Does not the effect of unlimited power and the frequent witnessing of such severe punishment tend to harden the heart?
Yes, I found, it does, although the whites of the West Indies would have said it is an unfortunate truth that must be accepted, for there is no way to grow and harvest sugar without it.
But there is also no doubt that such power destroys the souls of those who wield it every bit as much as it destroys the bodies and spirits of those who suffer under it, and I was no exception, for I too easily slid into acceptance of the way of life of a Jamaican planter.
I followed Daniels around, watching his dealings, learning the routines of a sugar plantation: the planting season, which involves the most difficult work of holing for the new canes; the rainy season, when the canes and the weeds grow most vigorously and the weeds need constant chopping lest they—and the vermin they harbor—get entirely out of control; the autumn and winter months, when the temperature grows cooler and the plantation manager needs to keep an eye on the cane and on the dampness of the soil and when the final repairs to the mill must be completed, so that sometime in the first few months of the year, when the cane is ready to harvest, all is prepared for the long, mad days of harvest and of sugaring.
At that time I was so intent on all that the plantation involved, I often did not see Bertha from dawn until evening, and when we were together there were frequently sharp words between us.
“You care nothing for me!” she would scream.
“It’s only the stupid, idiotic, bloody harvest that you care for. ”
“You know that’s not true,” I would respond, forcing my voice into calmness. I had gotten used to her foul language and had come to think that if I ignored it she would stop using it, as if she were some kind of child who was only trying to shock.
“You’re worthless!” she screamed once. “Ugly! Stupid! You know nothing of women! You can’t even fuck right!”
That jolted me into silence, and I stormed out of the room.
* * *
Crop time was almost a relief. The pressures are heavy on all involved, because sugar is a finicky crop: it must be harvested at just the right stage, for a day or two in one direction or another can ruin the crop and mean the loss of a year’s work and thousands of pounds of income—the difference between the life of a prosperous planter like Jonas and that of the poorest landholder in the county.
Although the work of a plantation like Valley View is highly regimented, everyone having his or her own responsibilities, at crop time all work is focused on chopping and transporting the canes to the mill, and on boiling and distilling and curing the sugar that will someday grace the tables of the wealthiest and noblest Europeans, and on the production of the rum that warms many a man the world over.
The harvest lasted about a week, the black smoke rising day and night from the boiling-house chimneys.
Book-keepers took twenty-four-hour spells overseeing the work gangs and catching a few moments of sleep wherever and whenever they could.
People grew tired and snappish but carried on until the work was finished.
I did not see Bertha at all during those crop time days.
I was in the fields or the sugar mill or the distillery all day and half the night, and when I did return to the house, I fell into bed, sometimes not even bothering to take off my clothes.
Bertha was occasionally absent from the bed, but I assumed she was sitting somewhere in the dark with Molly.
For me, for that brief time, my mind and body were so occupied with all the fury and activity around me that I could not possibly think of anything else. And that was a blessing.