Chapter 4: The Romantic 19th Century (2)
TL: Hanguk
A loyal enslaved man of the Sergent family, and James's personal attendant.
Leo had been getting the feeling that his master had become a little strange these past few days.
When had it started, again? Thinking back on it, it seemed to be that morning when James had suddenly screamed and stood there gaping at the mirror like an idiot.
He'd first shocked Leo by abruptly thanking him, and now here he was, handing over the food they served at this fancy restaurant and telling them to eat it too.
"Now, Master Sergent. Surely feeding enslaved folk a meal like this will only spoil them?"
"Gentlemen, try looking at it from a different angle. The slaves you brought along today will have felt this country's true reality in their very bones."
"Pardon?"
"They make such a great show of being clean-handed, forbidding slavery and all, but their hotels ban colored guests from lodging and shove them down in the cellar, and their restaurants forbid them entry outright, do they not? But we generous Southerners are different from those hypocrites."
"Ahh, so that was your meaning. Indeed, the slaves who've received your kindness today will surely tell the others once they're back South. They'll say that when they actually saw the North, the people up there treated us as even lower than the South does."
His words left no opening anywhere, so even his fellow slaveholders found themselves praising James instead.
Of course, Leo did not believe his master was quite that virtuous a man.
Having served James since they were both children, Leo knew well that James was nothing more, and nothing less, than an average heir to a Southern plantation.
The truth was that America was a contradictory country.
It took pride in having no aristocracy, declaring that we are different from Europe, yet America's wealthy men quietly dreamed of living like European nobles all the same.
The landowners of the South considered themselves aristocrats in all but name, imitating European nobility in everything from the style of their mansions to their cultural pursuits to their education.
The Sergent family in particular had imitated the nobility of ancient Rome, assigning Leo, who was close to James in age, as his playmate when James was a boy.
From that time, the young James had naturally learned how to handle slaves, and Leo had learned how to obey his master.
A slave who had been together with his master from childhood into adulthood not only knew his master's tastes well but also tended to be highly loyal.
Of course, even so, the South of today crushed its slaves so brutally that a single mistake could cost you your head no matter how long you'd served from childhood.
The slave who had made a mistake at the funeral of James's father last year, and had been sold off then and there, was proof enough of that.
That was exactly why Leo too had been so utterly horrified when James offered him a word of thanks.
But.
"Leo, that's James Sergent over there, the one you serve, right? Lucky you."
"No kidding. This is the first time in my life I've eaten food like this."
The slaves of other households, who had come along with the Southern Dixies, were casting looks of tremendous envy his way.
"It's not like that. The Master only used us as a tool to mock the hypocrisy of the Northerners. Even I can never eat food like this back at the house."
"Still, Sam, the one who came with you, told me he gave you all this huge amount of space on the boat and on the train too. Said he even ordered the hotel cellar cleaned up nice and tidy."
"W-well, that's true, I guess?"
There was a reason for that too, in its own way.
Hadn't he said that since the slaves had to make the round trip all the way to New York, their health was important, so they had to be kept in good condition?
But had James really been the type to fuss over such things before?
"Whatever the reason, what matters is that he looks out for us."
"Right, right. We're jealous of you. Honestly."
In a corner seat, behind a large curtain drawn so as not to offend their masters.
"But will a good day ever... come for us?"
"Who knows. You saw how it is, coming here this time, didn't you?"
"Still. Someday."
Watching their masters, who were carrying on with their party late into the night.
For the first time, Leo cut into a whole steak, not someone's leftovers.
The beef, warm rather than gone stone cold, was so damn good it was a crime.
***
After the meal was finished, I drew a little apart from those tiresome Dixies and headed back to the Bloomington hotel.
Drunk out of their minds, the Dixies bellowed at the top of their lungs that slavery had to be preserved as they staggered up to their rooms.
Don't all look at me like that. I don't know these people.
Yawning, I went over to Kate as she was about to head up to her room and pointed a finger toward the bottom of the stairs.
"I'm going to go inspect the conditions where Leo, Sam, and Ann will be staying before I turn in. That ordinance the manager mentioned earlier left a bad taste in my mouth."
"What's gotten into you? Fussing over a thing like that. You never used to give it a second thought."
Kate looked at me with eyes that were half exhaustion, half puzzlement.
Well, no surprise. Kate aside, the original James Sergent wouldn't have batted an eye whether the cellar was growing mold or crawling with rats.
"With Father gone now, I'm the head of the Sergent family. Managing my 'assets' is a natural duty for the head of the house. I'd better start making it a habit from now on."
A rational, reasonable answer, thoroughly befitting a plantation owner.
Persuaded by my words, Kate told me I was working too hard, waved good night, and went up.
Fortunately, the cellar was not as bad as I'd expected.
A musty smell of mold stung my nose, but the floor was thickly spread with dry straw, perhaps on the manager's orders, and there was less damp than I'd feared.
It was just as I was coming back up to the lobby, thinking that this would do, that it happened.
In the middle of the hotel lobby, my eye caught six or seven people gathered in a standing cluster, listening intently to the words of one middle-aged gentleman.
He was a gaunt man dressed in a suit that somehow looked ill-fitting on him, but with his thoughtful eyes, his earnest gestures, and a way with words that drew people in, he had his audience completely in hand.
His face was so very familiar that I wondered for a moment whether he was someone James Sergent knew, but I quickly realized that wasn't it.
A figure that Kim Hyunwoo, who had lived in the 21st century, could not possibly fail to recognize, even if James Sergent could not.
The face I'd seen countless times in textbooks, in films, and on the dollar bill turned toward me.
And slowly.
That man, Abraham Lincoln, excused himself to the audience and came straight toward me, as if he had been waiting for me all along.
His gait was slow, but there was no hesitation in it.
"Forgive me, but would you be James Sergent?"
The hand he extended was large and rough.
It looked less like the hand of a lawyer than that of a farmer or laborer who had worked the land his whole life.
I clasped his hand politely as I answered.
"I am indeed James Sergent, but do you know me? I'm somewhat well known in the South, I'll admit, but I had no idea my name had reached as far as the North."
"Here in Bloomington, no less, near the very hotel where the party holds its official event the day after tomorrow, you staged so splendid an affair with Negroes in tow. How could I not know?"
So even a fledgling organization like the Republican Party wasn't so slipshod as to miss a pack of Southern Dixies wandering about its own front yard.
And given the gleeful spectacle I'd made of throwing money around, it would honestly be stranger if word hadn't reached him at once.
"I rented out that restaurant not to stir up a commotion but, on the contrary, to avoid one."
"Ah, it's quite all right. I haven't come here to take issue with that sort of thing. I've long wanted to have a talk, just once, with a young Southern man like yourself. About your thinking, your future, and the future of this country that we will build together."
Lincoln in this period, just as Kate had said, had lost election after election, with a single exception, but that very fact had made him a marquee politician, famous even in the South.
Even so, there was no arrogance in his manner, enough that he would treat a young man like me in earnest, and his eyes too burned with passion.
"If you don't mind, would you care for a drink over in that lounge?"
I fell briefly into thought.
If this reached the ears of the Dixies, might my true motives come under suspicion?
No, in that case I could just shoot my mouth off and say I'd met him to find out what kind of thinking the enemy we had to bring down was harboring.
In the first place, when one of the most respected presidents among 21st-century Americans wants to sit down and have a serious talk, you'd have to be out of your mind to refuse.
Build as many connections in the North as possible, short of getting branded a traitor in the South.
This, considering the future ahead, was the first principle of action I had to follow.
"Very well. One drink should be fine."
I followed Lincoln to a secluded seat in the corner of the hotel lounge and sat down.
Perhaps he truly wanted to talk just the two of us, for it was a completely isolated seat where no one could overhear.
"I've heard a great deal about you, Mr. Sergent. They say you inherited more than five hundred servants at the age of twenty."
"I'm just a lucky greenhorn who happened to be born to the right parents."
"I've met my share of fairly prominent Southern politicians and great landowners, but I've never spoken with a young man like you, Mr. Sergent. So I'm very curious what sort of thinking you might hold."
Were the young men like me, and not only the old men whose minds had already set hard as stone, blockheads with no room left for persuasion?
That, I imagined, was probably what he was most curious about, but sadly, the conclusion he hoped for would not be the one he got.
After all, the answer key was already in my head, and my goal was to leave some kind of deep impression on this future president who was destined for greatness.
"I've heard, Mr. Lincoln, that you have long and fiercely opposed slavery."
"I have. It is a system utterly opposed to the founding ideals of our great Republic's Constitution. Is it not shameful that our Republic, which seeks the equality of all men, runs a slavery system that even Europe has banned entirely?"
"It is. A preposterous business."
When I nodded as though it were nothing and lifted my beer to my lips, Lincoln blinked, taken aback.
"Pardon?"
"It's an inhumane, antiquated system that deserves to die out. If there's a man who truly believes there's nothing morally wrong with slavery, he ought to have his head cracked open and examined."
"Do you really believe that?"
"Of course. The fact is, it's not that I'm some great oddity. There are surely plenty of people within the South too who, in truth, don't think slavery is right. Only, the seed of the tragedy is that this isn't a question of right and wrong."
Lincoln's face hardened gravely.
To put it coldly, those who believed slavery was a good thing were a minority even in the South, in this present age.
But their creed was that if slavery vanished, the Southern economy would collapse and the social order maintained until now would fall to ruin, and therefore it must not be done away with.
In a way, this was the more troublesome situation.
If it were a question of right and wrong, persuasion would at least be possible, but in the South slavery sat in the realm of "it must exist," and so there was no persuading anyone.
"That is why I, along with the other Republican congressmen, advocate for gradual abolition. No one is arguing that slaves should be seized from the South at once."
"Mr. Lincoln, you can say such things because you have no plantation and no slaves in the South. To the ears of Southern folk, those words are no different from saying: we won't take your lives right now, but we'll turn your children and your grandchildren into penniless beggars."
It wasn't as if Lincoln, of all people, hadn't known what I was saying.
But the fact that this came from the mouth of a fresh young man rather than a seasoned elder made his expression heavier still.
"So then, Mr. Sergent, are you trying to tell me that unity of opinion between South and North is impossible?"
"Yes. Someday this rotten slavery system will all disappear, but it won't be by some peaceful agreement between North and South. I'd stake my entire fortune on the world not working that way."
I could feel his gaze on me, looking at me as though dumbfounded.
He'd hardly find it easy to believe that one of the most gilded silver spoons in the entire South was saying such a thing.
But here, I had to come across not as a Southerner or a Northerner, but as an objective, clear-eyed patriot of the United States.
"An unavoidable storm is coming, drawing closer and closer to swallow us whole. So I believe a man like you must keep rallying the voice of the North, while a man like me must prepare for the aftermath, for what comes once that storm has passed."
"I do not want the North and the South to fight."
"Seeking out a path to avoid the fight, right to the very end, is the right thing to do. But shouldn't we prepare for the worst case as well?"
With those words as my last, I emptied every dollar and cent in my pocket and laid it on the table.
"It's a donation. I'd be glad if you'd put it toward your speeches or your future campaigns."
The South will never give up slavery, not to the end.
And yet slavery is fated to disappear all the same.
Lincoln, who could not possibly have failed to grasp what I was getting at, gazed quietly down at the substantial donation set before him.
"I've met many Southern gentlemen until now in the hope of persuading them, but this is the first time I've encountered a case like this, so I'm at a loss for what to say."
"You and me both. When I think about how I'm supposed to hold out down there, all I see is darkness ahead."
"Does that mean you intend to remain in Mississippi? If you were to come North, I could look into finding you a position."
"I'm grateful for the offer, but it's only by staying that my Southern brothers won't go and kill me as a traitor."
"There is that, too."
Lincoln gave a meaningful smile, and rather than refusing the donation I'd held out, he tucked it away.
"The mere fact that you've given support to a fledgling party like ours leaves me with no room to doubt your intentions, Mr. Sergent. So please, do not forget the heart you hold now, in the days to come. However high the wall of reality may be, I believe that if we all become one, someday we can climb over it."
"Even if another hell waits on the far side of that wall?"
"If so, then I will walk through the very deepest part of that hell myself."
In that instant, I caught a glimpse, within Lincoln's eyes, of a conviction that surpassed even the bounds of madness.
A man who, though he knew a reality cold beyond all bearing, would never once cast aside his ideals.
This man would walk that road with a smile, even if that conviction burned away everything he had.
And so the great future president, his courtesy never failing to the end, shook my hand and then returned to his audience.
I too added not a word more either way, resolving to keep this bond I'd forged today thin but long.
Because when that man became the protagonist of the age, this thread I'd tied today would shield me more dependably than any shield.
*****
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