Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

“Not I. But if I had known and been placed to intercede, I like to think that I would have been one of those who advocated on your behalf. As matters stood, the ERO was in the main opposed to the hiring of a nigg—a Negro doctor. It was Garrison Harper’s intercession, I gather, that brought you here. He believed that excellence in a man is not dictated by race or creed—but by the strength of the lineage. Great men come from all corners of the Earth. It is a belief a few of us share.”

Andrew tried not to laugh. “I’m flattered you—or at least Mr. Harper—thought so highly of me,” he said.

“You ought to be,” she said, and: “Oh. Hush.”

The door from the ward room swung open as Mrs. Frost lifted the cloth.”Lie back,” she said. Andrew reclined, but he watched as the small figure stepped through. It was a girl—very young, this one—with long dark hair tied into an off-centre braid. She wore a grey frock, and a serious and wide-eyed expression as she went to the bedside of one of the women at the far end of the room. She delicately put her hands on the woman’s belly, rubbed them in circles, and began to sing.

She’s singing to Jukes, Andrew thought. Because all these women are carrying Jukes. Just like Maryanne Leonard, and Loo Tavish.

The woman responded to the child’s song, the circling touch—writhing obscenely beneath the sheet, stretching as though waking from a long and restful sleep. The woman didn’t wake, but she did join in—and the strange, wordless song became a duet.

Mrs. Frost set the cloth on his forehead again. She drew it across his brow, down his cheek. The damp tip of it stopped at the corner of his mouth. She leaned over him.

“You ought to be flattered,” she said softly, her breath sour as the night. “You are a fine, strong, smart Negro. I know they didn’t appreciate that in Paris—in New York, when you tried to find internships there. They look at skin, and they think—inferior, by dint of darkness.” She huffed, and spat: “Prejudice.”

Andrew reached up and took her hand. Her eyes widened, and she snatched the cloth away, and for barely an instant, she looked quite fierce.

“They can scarcely tell,” she said, “when Gods walk among them.”

Gods. Andrew thought about that. Gods were what these people thought they were making: people like Bergstrom, like Harper… like the people who worked with Mrs. Frost. How susceptible they all must have been, to the alluring lie of the Juke, which put worms into the wombs of virgins to make saviours; into the flesh of men, to make prophets of them… .

Did any of them ever mark the day, he wondered, when they fell from reason into madness?

And then he wondered: Did I?

“Mrs. Frost,” Andrew said, “I must find your nephew. Jason Thistledown. Can you tell me where he is?”

“My nephew,” she said thoughtfully. “Jason. You need to find him, you say?”

The little girl had moved on to a second patient, three beds away from them. Germaine Frost glanced over her shoulder, as she bunched the cloth up into a ball in her fist, then back at him.

“To what end?” she asked.

Andrew lowered his voice. “The boy is in as much danger as any of us here,” he said. “I don’t know where he might be—I’ve come back looking for him, but had no luck. But he’s your nephew, Mrs. Frost. If you’re hiding him from these people—these Feegers—you don’t need to hide him from me. He may be with Miss Harper.”

Mrs. Frost looked back over her shoulder. The little girl was making circles on the new woman’s belly, same as before, singing a song with a slightly different cadence. She regarded Andrew with a twitch of a smile.

“I don’t know where he is,” she said, “but I can guess. He’s an intelligent boy—a fine boy—and he will have known where to go. There is not much that gets past a boy of Jason Thistledown’s stock.”

“Where, Mrs. Frost?”

“We would have to go together.”

“All right.” Andrew glanced at the little girl. She had moved around so as to face away from them. “She can’t be the only one here. Are there others waiting outside?”

“Who can say? I saw two men bring you in. And the last time she was here, she didn’t come in by herself. She was with a man who was so tall. Practically a giant. But now—”

“Well, that’s a problem,” said Andrew. “I’m in no shape to deal with someone like that and you—”

He didn’t get the opportunity to finish. Germaine Frost spun a quarter turn on her stool and in three large steps moved past the foot of two beds. The girl stopped singing at the commotion, and lifted her hands off the woman’s belly as Germaine Frost stepped nimbly as a spider between the beds.