For those who have read Mark Twain’s masterpiece, Huckleberry Finn, this is familiar territory, yet strange. It’s mostly Huck Finn, with a very few additions, but narrated by Jim, Miss Watson’s slave, the James of the title.
James the narrator and Jim the slave are as chalk and cheese. James is cerebral and educated, an expert on keeping the white man happy: he teaches children to translate their language into a pidgin that won’t threaten white, less educated masters, and mistresses, for Jim’s owner is Miss Watson. Jim is skilled in many ways, unlettered, and not bright.
Miss Watson decides to sell Jim, but not his wife and daughter: Jim gets to know, and decides to leave while he can. He packs some food and takes off for Jackson’s Island, in the Mississippi, where he intends to hide until he finds a way to take his family along. On the morning after, he trouble: Huck, unable to bear his alcoholic father’s beatings any longer, has fled. He has killed a pig and spread its blood all over their cabin to make it look as if someone has killed him, and takes off for — where else — Jackson’s Island. So now there are people hunting for Huck’s corpse and Jim the killer. They have no choice: they flee along the river, on a raft. James finds that Huck, with his youthful innocence — and incompetence — won’t last long on his own, and decides to protect the white boy from all kinds of predators.
They find a sinking houseboat, from which, to Huck’s surprise, James rescues a stack of books. They’re not quite the books James wants to read, but he thinks any book is better than none, and grabs the whole stack, reading them one by one, surreptitiously. Shortly after, James encounters John Locke, one of the framers of the American constitution, in a dream: their brief conversation brings out something fundamental in human nature.
They meet two predatory tricksters, one claiming to be the Duke of Bridgewater and the other the King of France, both deprived of their positions by people of evil intent. As they go along, there’s some mayhem: a plantation set afire, a murder, and so on, but at the end of the journey lies freedom.
Everett writes with verve and wit, and even humour a kind different from Twain’s. His mastery of the argot shines through, as does his liberal philosophy and wisdom, to which, no doubt, the the history of slavery has contributed much.
Would the happy inhabitants of South America, gentler, richer, and wiser far than the Europeans who colonised them, have felt as James did? Or the Indians who bore the brunt of British rule? Or Asians who felt the whip of the Ottomans? Or, for that matter, women put down by the mere fact that men are stronger? I think so. James is a must-read for anyone who’s been at the receiving end of slavery or of colonisation by a cruder, coarser, more ignorant, people whose strength lies in their skill with organised violence.
James
Percival Everett
Pan Macmillan
pp. 320; Rs 750
