Theory of Slavery | Hamilton

VIII

I WOKE UP on the floor, under the canopy of black skirts, disheveled and missing a shoe. The dressing room was glittering, bathed in brilliant light. Its maroon, grey, and dirty-green hues for an instant lost all their gloominess, it is as though there were a sudden clearness in my soul. It is wonderful what one ray of sunshine can do for the soul of man!

But the ray of sunshine had died away, and instantly I came back to my usual surroundings. Everything was very clean in the room; the floor and the furniture were brightly polished; everything shone. My work, I thought.

It was a wet day. Despite a sudden glimmer of light, it was grey outside. The sunbeams suddenly peeping out from the clouds for a moment were hidden again behind a foggy veil, and everything had grown dingy again before my eyes; or perhaps the whole vista of my future flashed before me so sad and forbidding, and I saw myself just as I was now, ten years hence, older, in the same room, just as helpless, wearing the same costume and with lines on my face.

I don't know why, but I suddenly felt terribly anxious. I remember quite well that I felt an unpleasant sensation clutch at my heart, and I could not myself have told what that sensation was. Perhaps it was shame mixed with resentment.

I am not a mystic. I scarcely believe in presentiments and divinings, yet I have, as probably most people have had some rather inexplicable experiences in my life. For example, yesterday: why was it that at that meeting with him I had at once a presentiment that that same evening something not quite ordinary would happen to me? That he knew that I would come to him? I was ill, however, and sensations in illness are almost always deceptive.

I lifted up my skirt and looked at my foot; wiggled my toes. The memories of everything that happened dawned upon me like a swarm of bees. Suddenly the feeling of repulsion had reached such a pitch in me that I did not know what to do with it anymore. If I had an axe or a saw, I surely would have cut my foot off.

"No, it's nonsense," I thought hopefully. "It's simply physical derangement. I must wash..."

I came out from under the hanger and found fresh stockings. Then I began searching for shoes. "Well, there must be a spare pair somewhere..."

I turned over all the possible cabinets and then realised that the only suitable shoe was left there– in the office.

"God," I muttered. "Can it be, can it be that there aren't any similar shoes?"

I looked round me once more, perplexed, as though not trusting myself.

"What's it with me! How could I forget to take the shoe with me? I must have known that I only have one pair..."

My chest ached; my soul became confused and feverish. It all worked painfully upon my already overwrought nerves.

"Shall I go to him? And to rack my brains for excuses, to prevaricate—Jesus, am I actually going to do it?" No, rather than that, I would creep down the stairs like a cat and slip out unseen.

I felt utterly broken, my brain was exhausted. I passed the corridor with slow, feeble step, moving my legs as though they were sticks, seeming not to bend them, all hunched. If it had happened that on my way I could have stumbled upon someone, someone like Theodosia, I would, it seems, have passed them and would not utter a word. As for procuring the shoe, that trifling business cost me no anxiety. I was thinking of the more important things, and put off trifling details until everything would resolve by itself. But that seemed utterly unattainable. I could not imagine, for instance, that Hamilton would sometime come to me, give me everything back, apologize... He never apologized. My analysis in his regard was complete:  Formerly I would doggedly, slavishly seek arguments in all directions, fumbling for them; now my convictions had become keen as a razor. Hamilton was ill, without a doubt. At first—long before indeed—I had been much occupied with one question; why would someone renounce God and get into sodomy? It was my conviction that vile thoughts attack a man like a disease, develop gradually and reach the highest point at the moment of aberration or impairment of will: in our case because of the alcohol. Then they pass off like any other disease. Where do such thoughts come from, though? I heard that man's passions remain always the same; which means that this proneness to pæderasty, this vile crime against nature, must be congenital? I did not yet feel able to decide.