The Pox Party Read online

  A harpsichord was rented for the festivities. We placed it in one of the experimental chambers and hauled the philosophic machines against the wall so there should be space for dancing. The day before the party, one of the grooms was employed to wax the floor.

  He wore a slipper on one foot and a brush on the other. They required him to dance there alone for three hours.

  I passed and watched.

  In the silence, he skated.

  The afternoon sun was cast across the floor. Where the bowing and leaping should soon commence, there the old man slid and spun by himself, his arms fluttering, making pretty courtesies to chairs; pausing for a pas de Basque; his heels thumping; executing secret glissades in beeswax.

  Silence and sunlight were his partners.

  On the first of April, we began our Pox Party. The handsome equipages of the wealthy delivered them up to our doorstep — the Young Men, their spouses, their children, their friends. There was, first, a reception in the parlor, animated with the same frisson of excitement that accompanies the tumbling of acrobats in high spaces.

  Well do I recall the finery. Men of business wore waistcoats trimmed with silver galloon. Boston ladies, their skirts all passementarie and furbelow, India silk and jaconet, crowded the chambers, swiveling their hoops and panniers like dames on clocks to navigate the doors. The arrival of their trunks and their servants was advertised by the clamor of feet, heavy-laden, in the hall.

  Following light refreshment, we were asked to form a queue leading back through the passage to the newly appointed philosophical apartments. The queue was fairly abuzz with gossip and greetings, the pleasantries of long acquaintance or new. I stood silently behind my mother, where we had been directed, waiting just behind the white denizens of the house, just before the other Negro servants; and we listened to the glad hubbub of the meandering line, the cries of “Ah, sir!” and “Your most affectionate . . .”; inquiries regarding the whereabouts of aunts; rapid intelligences between the ladies respecting flounces, petticoats, and stomachers, the quality of the civic mud.

  At the front of the line waited Mr. Gitney by a birthing chair, his instruments laid out before him. As each guest sat and presented a bare arm, he spoke briefly with them of some small matter, asking them of the welfare of their hound or the qualities of the wine they had brought; and then gouged them with a scalpel and inserted into the wound a length of hair wet with pus from a victim in Salem.

  Once the corruption was deep within them, Dr. Trefusis and Mr. Sharpe bound their arms with cloths.

  Two little boys, dressed in identical gowns, were hopping in line, piping, “Now me! Next is me!”

  “Octavian,” said Mr. Gitney to me, full of cheer. “Know you that this remedy was first proposed by the inhabitants of Africa?” He rolled my sleeve to reveal my forearm. “It came hither by way of industrious slaves and Constantinople. As with so much medicine, the Arabs hath preceded us, know you . . . Averroës and Avicenna and such like. In Constantinople, too, they institute parties for the variolation against the pox. It is said that they —” He pierced me with the blade. I gasped.

  I perceived a jolt — and trembled — as he laid the hair in my blood.

  “Through corruption,” he said, “you shall be healed.”

  Later that afternoon, servants unfurled great red silk flags from each window, on which were sewn, GOD HAVE MERCY UPON THIS HOUSE, as was statutory for a house infected with the pox; and as the banners snapped to their full extent, the company assembled all applauded with their fingers on their palms; for the pox party had begun.

  It is generally held that any convocation of individuals immured is a microcosm of the wider world; and certainly, that was true of our pox party, if it is to be observed that misfortune fell upon the knaves and good alike.

  In the foyer, tables had been assembled, and the Young Men were seated about them, playing at faro and whist. Servants stood against the wall, awaiting demands for port or biscuits. In the experimental chambers, Mr. Gitney delivered addresses on our expedition to witness the Transit of Venus and the determination of natural law.

  In the parlor, the women gathered, waiting for the contagion to enflame their chaste frames. My mother sat among them, speaking pleasantries, though some did not mark her speech; their disapproval being a curious mixture of awe at her beauty, suspicion for her capacities to charm, and repugnance at her frowardness in mingling.

  Mr. Goff, once 07-03, had taken to executing portraits at the top of the stairs, with prospects out the window of the garden and the meadows of Canaan, advertising that he should limn the gentlemen and ladies in all their smooth and unruffled beauty before the pox descended, and, were they unlucky, curdled them forever. When he had not a sitter, he would circulate through the gaming tables and the women’s parlor, quivering with his palsy, murmuring, “Madam? Insurance against the blight of your face? The blasting of hopes and future years?”

  With such a street cry, he did not lack subjects.

  Among the servants, too, there was some opportunity for social pleasantry, we being drawn from so many houses. Aina, the cook, was delighted to discover another of the Benin nation among the visiting maids, both of them being marked on the face with the scars of their kingdom. They spake to one another in a tongue Aina had not heard in long years; and I could tell that they related stories of places they had been as children. There was the quickening of the voice, the molten flurry of excitation, the motion of the hand — an affirmation, as if to say, “Yes! Yes!”— related to the appearance in their discourse, perhaps, of some citadel, or the cloth of some village, or the way the merchants of some certain city habitually treated boatmen.

  Only a few days had passed when Intrigue in her shuttered gown was seen skulking through the corridors, as must be expected when numbers of the young, full of high animal spirits, are placed into confinement together.

  I shall not dilate upon these intrigues; they were washed away by all that followed. Suffice it to say, there was a love triangle, and one who, to seek revenge, went spreading tales of having licked a breast. No further details were offered to me, and I requested to hear none of it.

  Suffice it to say also that there were intrigues among the parental generation, as well — most mischievous, perhaps, to the peace of the gathering was the flirtation of the painter, Mr. Goff, with one of his lady sitters, who felt his queasy palpitations to be the thrumming of energies divine. Though there had been as yet no infidelity, her husband stormed about for some days, requesting the ejection of “that damned dauber,” saying that such a one had no business in a gathering of respectable and successful men of the better sort; that painting was, after all, nought but deception one paid for dearly.

  So our little intrigues played out while women whispered over the backs of the sofas and men, after supper, passed the port and listened to tales of the wars against the French and the Indians. An elderly veteran of the provincial forces in the late war recounted the peremptory cruelties and unmerited debaucheries of his officers in the King’s Army, sparing no cruel details of the lash and noose. The company hung upon his every word.

  In the evening, we held dances in the experimental chambers. Three of us among the servants made a little consort of music — I on the violin, an indentured Irishman who also played the fiddle, and a slave from another house who played the flageolet. The Irishman taught us jigs and country tunes, and it was one of the rare pleasures of that party, to learn from his divisions and variations upon those tunes, our strings speaking back and forth to each other while the gentry did their contra-dances, skipping and turning in lines.

  I watched them dance before me — the young and the wealthy, their parents, full of knowledge of the ways of trade and profit — delicate in the light of candles and fire — while behind them, the metal orbs of Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Sol hung unused from their orrery gears, and in their cages, the raccoon and serpent surveyed the hornpipe frisking with superstitious gaze; a skeleton was hanging, face
turned to the wall; and while those dainty dancers skipped it on the polished floors, they brushed against engines that could produce the sparks of electrical virtue that brought thunder and lightning battering from the skies.

  And this sublimity of danger around which we danced suggests perhaps the final scene in our geography of the festivities: At the top of the house, in the eaves, three of the Young Men were posted at all hours in rotation, with the guns of many houses stacked between them. I did not perceive why they were there, nor why many who had survived the pox in its last visitation were present, master and servant alike. When I trod to the top of the stairs with their meals, I noted only the sentinels’ air of watchfulness. They looked out at the windows; one smoked. They watched the coming day; they watched the laborers turn in from the fields.

  They watched the servants in the yard.

  Mr. Gitney, one night, called me away from my new duties serving refreshments in the parlor; he instructed that I was to come and see him in the forbidden chamber.

  He sat sunk in green gloom. He gestured to a chair, and I sat. I observed that he had a pistol on the desk before him.

  “Octavian,” said he, “has anyone approached you with any request?”

  “We are serving tea, sir, though calling it chocolate so as not to agitate the sensibilities of Patriots.”

  “Octavian,” said he, “have any voices presented themselves to you — speaking in remote quarters — which you might not, in other seasons, hearken to?”

  I sat in silence. His queries were insurmountably opaque.

  “A slip of paper? Something you find in a basket of eggs?” He waited a space, then continued, “Behind the smithy, concealed in smoke? Handshakes by the brick-yard?” He reached to the desk and hefted the pistol. I watched it with awe. He said, “This is a matter of some interest to us all.”

  “I aver, sir, I have so little conception of the direction of this interview that I cannot offer any reply whatsoever.”

  “You swear solemnly that you have no conception of what I speak.”

  I raised my hand. “So do I swear.”

  “You swear to Christ in heaven that you have understood not a word of this interchange?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “I have been in every way incomprehensible?”

  “Your meaning as dark as night, sir.”

  “Very good then, Octavian.” He placed the pistol on the desk and grasped my shoulder. “You know my affection for you.”

  I could not answer that either.

  “You are sensible of the kindnesses which have been granted freely to you in this house.”

  I perceived that this interview would not conclude until I had given him assurance; and so I did, vowing that I was grateful, that I was not insensible of the considerable gifts lavished upon me; expatiating on the forthcoming dance that evening; and so, having made my lie, I bowed and made my exit.

  When I returned to the kitchen to fetch a second urn of tea, I asked Aina, the cook, “Do you fathom what disaster Mr. Gitney and the Young Men anticipate?”

  She looked back from the fire. “You tell me, Prince sir,” she said, “what disaster don’t they anticipate?”

  After some days, the fevers began. In the parlor, the tea-cups rattled on their saucers. Women could not hold them steady. The children complained of head-ache, and their bones seemed to be thawing within them.

  Mr. Gitney wandered amongst the guests, noting the progress of each. I accompanied him to the servants’ quarters, where he squatted by our pallets and asked each of us to describe any symptoms we might feel. He touched the head of the sickly and felt their heat.

  A little boy, the son of one of the Young Men, was the first to find a pock upon him. He insisted upon showing the company. It was on his lip. All praised him for his celerity in sickening.

  By later in that day, there were empty seats at the dining table. Girls had seen their palms turning scarlet. A boy had a line of bumps upon his neck like a halter.

  That night, we had one of our dances. I could feel the heat rising within me. My day had been uncommonly full of the duties of the servant, my throat felt dewy and raw, and I was in no little discomfort, standing before the remaining company, fevered, playing minuets.

  After some twenty minutes, I begged reprieve for a dance, and sat by the wall, looking, I am afraid, much sunk in misery, one leg thrown out, the other against my chest, when Dr. Trefusis hunkered beside me.

  “This is a bad business,” he said. “They will start frowning if you remain seated. Shall I remove you to the servants’ quarters?”

  My mother was dancing. I watched her glide across the floor. I was drawn to observe the various manners in which men touched her, the grasp of their hands, the motions across the looped skirts and petticoats of her gown, the intricacies of her bodice.

  “When my mother dances now, sir,” said I, “men pull her more tightly to them than they do the other women . . . taking liberties . . . or they scarcely deign to touch her. Was it ever thus?” She passed from partner to partner out upon the floor. “I recall her dancing with utmost propriety and a singular beauty.”

  Dr. Trefusis swiveled on his heels to face the lines of dancers. He noted them for a while, not speaking; and finally, when he spake, he said, “I am sure that it is best you rely upon your memory.”

  Near us a boy owned loudly that this was a tearing fine collation; and a young maiden replied that she had not seen a more belle assemblée in all her years.

  To Dr. Trefusis, I said, “None of this can last long.”

  Someone had slipped a dessert-plate between the ribs of the skeleton. On it sat a half-eaten pudding.

  “Hesiod,” said Dr. Trefusis, “believed that we were in the fifth declining Age of Man. First the Golden Age, when mankind was in its infancy, and the animals were paired in perfection, and the rivers ran with milk that never soured in the reeds; then from that state, when time began, we fell; and then we had the Silver Age, then the Bronze, followed by the Heroic Age; and now, finally, the base Age of Iron, when men, children of blood, ply the waves and kill for gain. But I fear that some new and even more dismal metal is upon us.”

  I said, “They fear a revolt, do they not?

  “If you mean Mr. Sharpe and the Young Men, indeed, they fear a revolt, though they incite one.”

  “Mr. Gitney interviewed me. I did not understand his queries.”

  “Octavian, there is word up and down the coast that the British are attempting to convince slaves to take up arms against their American masters. The citizenry is terrified. You are lying here amongst us, your bodies too dark to see until it is too late.” He smiled. “That is what they say. They fear you will all turn murderers.” He fell silent, wary of the maids and youths who stood near us, bantering.

  “Bono,” said I. “Knew he something of this?”

  “They suspected him of knowing,” said Dr. Trefusis. “He had heard the rumor of an uprising, as had they; but I believe he knew no more.”

  With realization, I whispered, “They sent him away for this. Out of fear.”

  “Not simply for this,” said Dr. Trefusis. “Bono was a valuable gift. A most excellent valet. Possessed of surprising arts.”

  At the revelation of this further indignity — Bono’s life altered universally by mere rumor — I could not speak immediately. I could but hear the twittering of the music, and the badinage of the young persons to our side, who laughed about kisses; one girl exclaiming, “I will take the upper lip, Sarah, if you take the lower,” another replying that the whole male race smellt of beef.

  “You ladies are cruel,” cried one of the youths, slapping his chest. “My heart is bursting in its rib-cage.”

  Lowering his head, Dr. Trefusis murmured, “The rebels cannot stand for this threat of insurrection. They look, and everywhere, up and down the coast, they see Africans. Their slaves sleep next to the family children. Their slaves touch their wives’ necks in the mornings, as they lay out jewelry
upon the breast. Their slaves,” he said, “shave them with razors. The watch has been doubled. Mr. Sharpe and the Young Men have been discussing it when none of you are nearby. They say it is an outrage, that the British should so endeavor to turn a man’s property against him. They fear that the British will stop at nothing to subdue them. It is yet another reason they prompt insurrection.”

  “This,” I said sadly, “is why they have quarantined us here.”

  “One reason, indeed. They predict that within the month, something will come to pass; and it is best if they are out of it, with their slaves weak, and fearful of running. All shall be changed, Octavian. The rebels gather ammunition and gunpowder just outside the city. They are ready for an offensive, come it from the slave quarters or the barracks of the King’s Army. The British will not abide this for long. Something, my Prince, shall come to pass.”

  Nearby us, the young pursued their flirtation. A boy declared, “I should like to see one of you ladies hung upside down by the ankles. Perhaps you would care to guess which one.”

  “Does anyone wish more Brie?” asked another youth. “I could eat Brie until I looked like soap.”

  “All shall be changed,” I whispered.

  “Except,” said Dr. Trefusis, looking around the gathering, “that I fear one thing shall remain. When I peer into the reaches of the most distant futurity, I fear that even in some unseen epoch when there are colonies even upon the moon itself, there shall still be gatherings like this, where the young, blinded by privilege, shall dance and giggle and compare their poxy lesions.” He balanced himself with his fingertips. “We are a young country, a country of the young,” he said bitterly. “The young must have their little entertainments.”