Loved By Another Chapter Four

JULY SIX

A startling thing has happened with Oliver. Two days ago, he commented that he had noticed that my sleeping habits were disturbed, and suggested (or rather told me) that one of the staff was to attend me, kind of handmaidenesque. He has given me Clover to attend me at night. Clover was one of the field staff, but has been ill enough not to actually work. If he had attempted to sell Clover, after such a short time, it would appear as if something is wrong and this would loose him money and social propriety to have a damaged slave. He said that since arriving here, I have had no attendant, and as I was used to this, it may calm me. Clover has been terribly ill lately, a rash swelling her body and making her skin all mumps like. When she was moved around in-between crops, the rash cleared up, but then she started suffering for breath, and her face remained swollen as if beaten. Oliver, angered, left her in the quarters, and she was fine within two days. He told me this now; a day after her recovery, as she has improved and he did not want to waste her just yet. Selling her this early would reduce her value, apparently, as it is too soon after purchase, and he is not going to another market.

It actually has been, and is wonderful to have a handmaiden. Clover is a beautiful girl who speaks eloquently about life, whose spirit is so overabundant that she inspires me. It is also lovely to have someone who is with me and speaks to me as if I were her equal. I do not ever feel that I am worthy. The other domestic staff will not even look at me, nor ever meet my eye, but Clover always raises me above. She tells me all that Oliver will not, all of the farming particulars, of the treatment that they receive. He has not done anything to them physically. Yet. He did, though, place a sheet of rules up with the slave quarter walls. I don’t think Oliver would even have thought to ask them if they could read. His oblivious, ambivalent feelings towards these people is phenomenal, I cannot even recognise any sense of human in him at all. It is depressing.

JULY 15th

I have been giving all of the staff basic lessons in reading and writing. One of the field workers broke one of the sacred roles that Oliver had written. For the wheat crops, there are distinct piles, for selling, for feed to the farm animals, for stock, the damaged and the inedible. The worker, Coquen, took some of the damaged wheat for the group’s consumption. After whipping Coquen so badly that he has not been able to walk, Oliver went to town and ordered chains for them. Clover told me all of this three hours after Oliver had left, and after I had returned to the estate from a social visit. She told me that, as none of them had (or could) read the rules, none of them knew that they couldn’t take the damaged stock. She said that they had used this type of stock before, and in fact Oliver had told them to do so, and this had never posed a problem before. They were all waiting, eager, for the new crop of corn to be ready.

Oliver returned as dinner was being served, I asked him about the disturbance of earlier in the day, not to suggest I knew anything that would disagree with him. He went into a tirade about the immorality of them, and how they were the Devils spawn, and how any diminutive body of darkened skin were beyond any form of redemption. Through Clover, I have never met such devout people. I found the right moment to suggest that the slaves could not read, so couldn’t have known about the rules. He seemed aghast, as if this very concept was beyond his increasingly limited grasp. Which, upon reflection, it probably was.

I also made the mistake (again, upon reflection) that the horses and stock seemed rather lacklustre lately, as I already have foreknowledge that they have been fed the damaged stock, that which is inappropriate for sale. I must have come across as more that I intended, as innocent and naive. From then on, the first grade was sale, the second grade was stock feed, the third grade, the most damaged and diseased, was slave allocation.

Oliver thought it unacceptable for anyone, or anything who was capable of reading not too, although he maintains that they do not have the intellectual capacity to learn, an oxymoron in a world of complexity. I guess it will be easy to prove him wrong; it is just convincing him of it. Due to their reverence for the lord, and for its odd, and admittedly intriguing mixture with tribal faiths, spell working faiths wrought by fire and earth, power that is challenged and channelled. It is a complex mix of belief and ritual, and the hint of a force collectively, yet the influence of God here also represents the fractured temptation of how members of family’s and tribes and faiths are separated, moved, sold, and therefore something essential is lost. What Clover has told me, it is as if they have drawn together what they can with what they have access too. This is an opportunity to learn, to exchange our belief, our faith.

Oliver is always gone at dusk, in a façade of friendship with other members of the estate landowners; he joins their games and drinking. They are never here. I do not know why. But this gives me the opportunity to teach the skill of reading. We alternate nights, for they tell me stories in songs and dance, in beauty and grace. It is fascinating, complex and absorbing. In return, I relay myths of my own, mostly from my home land, and translations from the bible. I have this desire to understand, this pain when I miss the swell of kisses within the soft beauty of the language they whisper in. I do not understand this culture that has become ever more foreign to myself. It has become a curse of my husbands, this social bareness that I am drifting in, let alone the cruelty that we insist on surrounding ourselves with to make ourselves feel important or exalted. This nightly journey has been the only thing that I have received enjoyment from.

Oliver has been trying to increase my contact with the other estate wives. I have managed to convince him otherwise, telling him that my supervision of the domestic staff cannot be interrupted by extensive social engagements. He is fearful of people attending our estate, as he fears that it is not presenting its primary face, that it is not finished yet. I think he is only trying to distract me, to keep me occupied, so that I will not notice that he has ceased visiting me at night, after the difficult violence of the first month, let alone touch me, or show me any thing other that distant curtesy. It is as if something about me repels him. But that is not my issue. In fact, it may be that everything about him repels me and he can feel my apathy. Maybe it is these feelings towards him as this abhorrent creature that he has noticed. I doubt he has that level of sensitivity, though. His personality is as immobile as wood and for him to recognise anything it must be presented to him directly. Actually, I think petrified wood is more mutable and pliable than Oliver could ever achieve to be.

July 17th (AUGUST 12th)

He sent me to a neighbouring estate on the eighth for morning tea despite my requests. At least he allowed Clover to attend me. I depend on her more and more each day for comfort and understanding. It is amazing to me that the awful and evil predicaments that beset us both are separated by the very world that is drawing us together in the darkness within which both of us exist.

The tea was splendid in its abnormality. Everything is the same as it is back home, yet so horribly different as it has become a hybrid with the languishing of estate life coupled with the memory of a life that was intentionally left. At least back home, the staff are not slaves expected to exist on oxygen alone. The slave trade here is more than just accepted, it is integral in the consciousness of these women as a natural occurrence, not as the scar that is fracturing my soul. The longer that I witness the squalor and debasement of society in which I have lived my whole life, but never had the displeasure of understanding, I loose more of who I fundamentally am. I loose a bit extra of myself every day.

It has taken a lifetime to build up prejudice and misconceptions, but in the last couple of months, I see that the broken pieces of myself repairing itself in a totally new fashion, one where the tapestry in interwoven and thick rather than thread bare and stark grey. It feels like I have died and am now rebuilding my spirit again, yet with my eyes wide open.

JULY 21st (OCTOBER 11th)

Oliver is still forcing me to attend once numerous society events. He has also added arithmetic to my teaching sessions, and have given the labours more responsibility. There reading and writing phenomenally. Nearly all of them can read well now, and are actually teaching me their stories. They are teaching me comparative religions. Tarquin, though, Oliver had removed from classes, stating that “He already knows how to read and write reasonably well, Hallie, that’s all I need.” Obviously he wants everyone else to understand numbers, Why not Tarquin?

The society ladies are appalling in behaviour and manners to their staff, often punishing without warrant. I thought Oliver was disturbed, but these women are shocking in there depravity. And their husbands! You question God’s divine plan when the pure existence of these men ignore his every degree. I am not surprised at Oliver’s affinity to them, though. They make his behaviour and attitude look positively upstanding. I know he tries hard to display as much base personality as they do, but I do not think he has quite reached their level yet. But I know he is studying them hard and with become as hateful as they are soon enough.

I am content with maintaining the best possible standard of living for the workers. He had never checked the domestic accounts to my knowledge and has never questioned the amount of dress fabric I buy, nor why the spare fabric is given to the staff (the domestic staff in particular, who receive the dresses I no longer choose to utilise.) This seems as if I am making a perfect contribution, giving away used and unuseful goods, but it id only in this way I can circumnavigate Oliver and provide at lease something.

Although, I think that the main reason for Oliver’s distraction is that after much deliberation, has chosen a name for the estate. All of this time, it has just read “Lord and Lady Oliver Tobie Biaah” and like my existence here is an afterthought of his. This has been replaced by a sign, large and obnoxious, reading now “Heaven Scent Estate.” Which is ironic, as what he thinks is heaven sent is blatantly demonic, and what he assumes is the work of the devil is actually Heaven sent. His rules of ethics and morality have very little to do with actual ethics and morality, as he is disillusioned by the power he once had, and desires to have again. Although, he has never been disillusioned much by the segregation of society because his heart remains frozen in anarchic models of society, whereby everything is stagnant against what position you are born too. He will never see the beauty of a place where hate and unwarranted violence are unacceptable to anyone.

JULY 23rd (OCTOBER 12th)

These society teas are growing ever more tedious. The women talk of markets to which I have never been, and have no interest in going to. They gossip about people I have not yet met, and parties of which I do not attend. Oliver has ordered me through Clover to aquire some dresses through a dressmaker in town. I must go. It is demoralising that he is forcing me back into this false social existence. It is hard to disagree with him, because if I make him angry, he may disallow the education program, or even not allow me to supply the workers with anything unnecessary to their existence. I have no doubt he would do something that callus to punish me.

The classes are excelling well; they are working their way through the texts that I have provided. It is difficult, as we only have classic texts in this house, as Oliver thinks this is the appropriate books to have on display. It is unfortunate that we have no modern texts for them. Their writing is becoming more solid, even though they are having slight spelling difficulties. Although, most of them can spell their own names. Coquen is turning out particularly fast learner.

Oliver has been mentioning, or rather mumbling through mouthfuls of food, as meal times are the only time I see him, that he is considering purchasing more “slaves.” Although the estate has settled, the maintenance is gruelling. He has also stated that the domestic staff are allowing the house to fall into disrepair, and that he is required to hire more to if we are to start hosting social gatherings. At least he isn’t thinking of hosting for at least 6 months, and by then, the social calendar will have moved to fast for either of us to catch up. Never having established or organised a social calendar, or seasonal events, and having been in India most of the time rather than at home, Oliver does not have any concept of how quickly these social functions shift and leave one behind without a place within. He will, by then I am sure, have deemed my education program a success and cancelled it. But, I think Coquen with may learn enough in this time to be truly brilliant. I may still be able to teach him to teach and pass him the lessons.