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“Another snakebite, Master Jeremiah?” said his wife’s maidservant. “How many is that this week?”
“Nine,” said Master Jeremiah. “Tell the men to fetch my wagon for going to town. I must summon the doctor. And the undertaker.”
“They poisonous!” she said. “Oh, they poisonous!”
“They are indeed filled with a wicked venom,” Master Jeremiah said, sighing. “And tell the men to fetch me Massamba!”
Beneath the Great Elm they met once again, with witnesses, witnesses of the white man and witnesses of the black man. Master Jeremiah accused, saying, “My slaves are not susceptible to the power of these vipers.”
“No, Master Jeremiah,” said Massamba.
“Did you command these vipers?”
“No, Master Jeremiah.”
“Do you know who did?”
Massamba paused, his countenance darkening beneath the shade.
“You do know!”
“I do not know for certain, Master Jeremiah,” Massamba said. The overseer’s whip hand twitched in anticipation. “I will say they are coming out of the Lord himself, to make a reckoning for what you did to your own man.”
“Balderdash!” exclaimed Master Jeremiah. The whip went forth, and it cut Massamba beneath his right eye. “Stay your hand, you fool!” Master Jeremiah said to his overseer. “Do you not perceive what danger we are in? This man is a prophet!”
The overseer spat on the ground before Massamba’s feet.
One of the laborers at hand said, “A prophet? From Africa? All the way from Africa by special boat, to come down from on high to prophesize to us! Ain’t we blessed! For a animal to crawl out of the jungle naked for to telling us fore! Well, I’ll be—”
“Stay your tongue, you fool!” Master Jeremiah said. “What ignorance impels your tongue to wag like a pine tree in a hurricane!” The owner looked around, taking in his eye all that belonged to him, from horizon to horizon, and he said, “Have I gained so much that I am surrounded by the ignorant and the fool? My own hands must be the hands of a fool.”
Just then the horses and wagon were presented to Master Jeremiah. While he was making himself ready to drive, he commanded his men, “Do not lay a finger upon Massamba nor any of his kindred.” He paused. “I also command against the whip, or any other injurious thing. I restrain you.” The overseer seethed.
The laborer began to speak, watching the wagon wind away toward the village. “Why, I do declare, that man values his own slaves more than he values the likes of us; I put it to you.”
Massamba spoke, “You also are a prophet?”
“You just shut your yap, there, slave-man. If you really were so precious to the Lord, that he would give you power over vipers and over masters, then why are you bonded, no better than a dog, worse than a dog, forced to labor under the sun? Even the dogs play under their master’s table!”
“For myself and my kindred I can only say that our bondage is in payment for the murder of my mother. Even so, it is as evil as to all the rest. Even to you, brother.”
“I ain’t your brother!”
“Your back is nearly as black as mine, and your neck is as red as an apple.”
“Yes, but I ain’t ever touched you in the field.”
“And doesn’t your own roof pour water upon your marriage bed when the rains come?”
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“At least I get to leave whenever I want.”
“There, my brother, you have me. I am bound.”
“Well, I ain’t.”
Massamba looked at the white man, whose white skin was plain beneath the filth and dust of the rice fields. He held out his own arm, showing him the skin of his blackness, also covered with the same filth and dust of labor.
“Well?” the laborer said.
Massamba said, “When this rots away, how will they know which of us was free?”
“You’ll be buried yonder,” the laborer said, pointing to an obscure corner of the chapel graveyard. “And as for me, they’ll chip out my name on a piece o’ rock and put me up next to the chapel siding. And that makes all the difference.”
“All the difference,” said Massamba. He wiped his face, where blood had begun to trickle from the cut beneath his eye. He saw the blood on his hand, staining the dust red, and he smiled broadly. “Look at me,” he said to the overseer and to the laborer. “Am I not Joseph, under the evil of my brothers, waiting for God’s good? Indeed I am. I have listened to your priest, and I know that I am Joseph.”
The overseer continued to boil a hatred behind his eyes, while the laborer, along with all Massamba’s kindred, stared in wonder.
That night, the Great Elm called to Massamba, speaking to him for the first time; as a tree he spoke to him for the first time, with power from beyond the depths. Massamba went to him and knelt on the ground.
“Autumn-Leaves,” said the Great Elm.
“I am your servant,” Massamba said.
“Your leaves have lost their color, and they are beginning to fall.”
With a loud crash, Master Jeremiah banged open the great doors of the plantation mansion, crying out in despair. “Oh, my bride! Mother of my children! Grandmother to threescore! Dead! She is dead! O my bride!”
Immediately, a lamentation went up, rising and swelling, swaying and climbing. Massamba stood, holding himself tall, and he looked on while his kindred mourned their master’s wife:
>
>
> The queen of heaven bows low (Lord, open the door)
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> Her whiteness all aglow (Lord, open the door)
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> She who carried the Lord (Lord, open the door)
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> In her womb (Lord, open the door)
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> In the oxen manger (Lord, open the door)
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> And at the foot of the cross (Lord, open the door)
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> She bows to light the way (O Lord, you open the door)
>
> The queen is low (low) low (low) low (low).
The priest came, doing his incantations over the hole, gesticulations of prayer and thanksgiving, flinging water, smoke, and earth in various directions, then granting a benediction to all the white people. He departed.
Jeremiah Beaufort came to Massamba, his hat still removed from his head while they lowered his bride into the hole, and he said, “Your defiance: what power does it have!”
“It has all the power of the earth.”
“Indeed. Look at it.”
Massamba began to weep. Jeremiah fell to the earth, and his many servants carried him into his plantation mansion, the work of his hands, which was now utterly empty, save that of the mourning of Jeremiah for his wife, which filled its many halls.
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One night not too many days thereafter, the primary shack emptied itself of its mistress, and Massamba awakened the entire plantation with his outcry. “O my bride!”
> He wore a thorny crown (Oh, my heart is broken)
>
> And didn’t his blood flow down (Oh, my heart is broken)
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> The earth was shaking (Oh, my heart is broken)
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> And the temple was quaking (Oh, my heart is broken)
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> The sun was dark (Oh, my black heart is broken to pieces)
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> Oh, that flood it takes (takes) takes (takes) takes (takes)
>
> Oh, the flood it takes me away
Jeremiah Beaufort called for the priest, but he would not come. A second time Jeremiah Beaufort called for the priest. The second time he would not come. With wagon laden with flour and pork and preserves of every sort, Jeremiah Beaufort himself went to fetch the priest, who was obliged to come by those many gifts to the Lord. (“Otherwise,” Master Jeremiah had said, “I will call the Anabaptist, and he will come at my first beck to the sight of all these gifts”).
“You will grant them the benediction,” Master Jeremiah declared, after all the incantations, gesticulations, and earth-flinging. “The blood of my bride cries the same from the ground.” The priest grew pale, bloodless in his white skin. Master Jeremiah did not ask a second time, but the priest had heard in his heart that he should grant the benediction, even to these soulless slaves (as he thought). When he did so, Massamba wept aloud. Jeremiah Beaufort came to him, embraced him, and wept aloud with him, to the wonder of very many people.
Many days later, while Massamba was granting permissions beneath the Great Elm, Jeremiah Beaufort came to him, alone, without overseer and without laborer. Massamba dismissed his kindred, and he turned to Jeremiah.
“Your hair,” said Jeremiah. “It has grown white. Like snow adorning your peaks, it has fallen upon your brow.”
“My autumn is passing away,” said Massamba. “I am about to walk through lonely and desolate places.”
Jeremiah stood, his hands at his side. He said, “I cannot bear it, Massamba.” The two of them stood together, looking over their respective kingdoms. “Look,” said Jeremiah, gesturing with his hand, “your kindred’s offspring: they were human beings until I heard the music of golden coins playing in my soul. Now I have made them slaves. I have debased them with the purest of gold, gold refined in the hottest fire.”
“Not all is lost. Let them go.”
At this, Jeremiah laughed. “Oh, Massamba! Are you indeed a wise man? Aren’t you indeed the lord of your own kingdom, there, among the shacks and the fields? Must I proclaim to you the truth of what I have done?"
“You have done a great evil.”
“I have. I have bound us all to evil forever.”
“Not forever.”
Jeremiah sighed, and said, “So says the God of my bride, but I do not see her, and I do not see the end of all this. Look at my children: they are already falling into a citadel, wherein a long and bloody warfare shall henceforth proceed, until fire comes.”
“Fire shall come,” said Massamba, “and it shall burn away the evil which has debased my kindred.”
“We shall all writhe as vipers, then.”
“For a while,” said Massamba. “For a little while.”
Days passed, and Jeremiah Beaufort sought out the wisdom of Massamba during those days many times. They spoke long and hard about many difficult things, about the slave shacks, about the laborer shacks, about the plantation mansion, and about the overseer’s whip.
One night, one moonless night, when inland skies were overcast by the storm clouds of a wild and hurried sea, the Great Elm awakened Massamba and called to him.
“Massamba,” said the Great Elm.
“I am your servant,” he said, making his tired hips and knees bend into prostration before the tree.
“The time of your slavery is ended. The wages of your people’s sins have been paid in your body, twice again. Your voyage shall port in fair harbors, where white foams are playing, where sails have no signs of trader-kings, and where your children await thee with song and rhyme.”
“They shall bury my body in an obscure place, without any remembrance for my labors and bloodshed.”
“Yes,” said the Great Elm, “they shall. And when they do, then your body shall declare to them my greatness, the length of my root, and the reach of my bough.”
“Amen,” said Massamba, and there he died.
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