Middle Passage

When Rutherford enters Falcon’s cabin, he is disoriented by the sight of the artifacts Falcon looted and the Allmuseri destroyed. Falcon is severely wounded and trapped under a beam. Despite the fact that Falcon has to crawl to meet him, Rutherford finds that he is “still ensorcelled by a leader who lived by the principle of never explain and never apologize” (143). He pities Falcon and the Allmuseri, who will forever be bound psychologically to Falcon “through the consequences of what he had set in motion” (144) by enslaving them.

Falcon is somewhat confused because of damage to his nervous system. The captain has a horrifying vision of a multicultural, sexually egalitarian world in which Asians own almost everything and Africans spout German philosophy. Rutherford assures him that these visions will never come to pass and that he never betrayed him. The captain tells Rutherford that his only responsibility from this point on is to keep a true written account of the voyage in the ship’s logbook.

Only then does the captain want to hear what their situation is. When Rutherford tells the captain that the Africans have the ship and that the ship is headed for Senegambia, Falcon counters that the Africans do not own the ship. The ship is owned by three investors who are counting on the captain to bring in a high financial return. Rutherford is shocked by this news, leading him to conclude that the captain is no freer than the Allmuseri.

Furthermore, Falcon tells Rutherford that three of the Allmuseri individually belong to one of the three investors, who turns out to be Papa Zeringue. The thought of a black person dealing in slaves sickens Rutherford. After requesting that Rutherford give him back the magnetized ring that allows the captain to operate his weapons, Falcon dismisses Rutherford. Moments later, the captain commits suicide with a shot to the head.

In the weeks that follow, the ship and its passengers lumber along, guided only by the North Star. Rutherford is shocked to find that Diamelo, an Allmuseri who particularly despises Rutherford and the surviving crew members, seems most affected by the captain’s death. Diamelo has gained some power by swaying the others with “the purity of his racial outrage” (153). Diamelo insists that everyone speak Allmuseri and was one of the most vocal in calling for the execution of the remaining crew members.

Ngonyama tells Rutherford that Diamelo had been a drunk, a poor relation of Ngonyama’s family back home. In the middle passage, people who would never have listened to him back home now see him as a rival to Ngonyama and support his demands that only Allmuseri maps, medicine, and food ways should rule on the ship.

The lack of food, the understaffed crew, and the many diseases running through everyone on board soon put an end to these rigid requirements. The worst of the diseases is the yellow fever, which rots its victims within days, and tetanus. The smell of rot coming from Cringle is Rutherford’s first clue that that Cringle is mortally ill. Cringle tells Rutherford that he cannot steer the ship because the stars area thousand light-years from where they should be. Rutherford believes the Republic is a ghost ship, doomed to sail forever.

Rutherford learns more about Cringle’s life as the failed son of a self-made man. The berth on the Republic is Cringle’s last chance to prove himself to his father, and Cringle tells Rutherford that Rutherford is lucky to have been free of such crushing expectations.

Rutherford is exhausted from caring for Baleka, entertaining the children, and serving as an English–Allmuseri interpreter. Whereas before Rutherford knew himself to be of no worth to or use to anyone, he now finds that the memories and stories he shares with the children and the sick are important. He comes to see himself as “pieces and fragments of all” (163). He feels a sense of indebtedness and like he is a conduit for transmitting all his experiences to the Allmuseri below decks. Rutherford even manages to believe that they will make it home alive.

Ngonyama is not so sanguine about the future. Ngonyama believes the Allmuseri are cursed for killing the crew of the Republic, and he cannot imagine how Rutherford could have voluntarily boarded the ship. Rutherford realizes that the Allmuseri believe a person creates his or her own reality through actions; if the world is terrible or evil or happy, it is because the man or woman has made it so. By these terms, the Allmuseri are doomed by their killing of the crew.

Rutherford is haunted by all these dead as well, and he thinks longingly of Isadora and how he will make amends to her if given the chance. Baleka, whose thoughts Rutherford has learned to read despite her Allmuseri tact and stoicism, comes upon Rutherford crying. Baleka tells Rutherford that it is his turn to feed the god. Rutherford goes below decks and struggles to move through air the closer he gets to the god. He is floored when the god appears to him as Riley Calhoun, his dead fugitive father.

Rutherford is nearly driven insane by the aspect that the god presents to him. He describes the god as “coal black and squatting on stubby legs, as you might see objects through clouded glass. This blistering vision licked itself clean, as cats do, and had other beings, whole cultures of them, living parasitically on its body” (163).

Rutherford remembers just a few things about his father. He hates Riley Calhoun because he left his family behind. Jackson told him that their father was handsome, could play the guitar, and was constantly making cuckolds of other men, who forgave him when he explained that slavery made him do it. He told his fellow slaves that they had been kings back in Africa (a lie in Riley’s case, since he clearly remembered being a serf in his village). Riley refused all constraints and efforts to impose morality. On New Year’s Day, 1811, Riley stole a horse and rode off to freedom. The patrollers caught and killed him almost immediately.

There, in front of the god, Rutherford struggles to distinguish Riley’s single voice from “the We that swelled each particle and pore of him, as if the (black) self was the greatest of all fictions” (171). Rutherford becomes convinced that the god’s name is Rutherford and feels the ship disappear from beneath him. Rutherford “fainted. Or died. Whatever” (171).

When Rutherford comes to three days later, Squibb is holding him down and feeding him what appears to be steak but is actually Cringle, who sacrificed himself days ago for meat. Even more momentous is that they’ve spotted a ship, which is gaining on them as the hours go by. Rutherford is moved by Cringle’s sacrifice and feels sympathy and respect for Squibb, a cook called upon to be much more by circumstances. Rutherford sleeps for days more and finally comes to again. He throws up black clumps of matter he thinks must be bits of the Allmuseri god. He dreams of home, an “upside-down caricature of a country called America” (179), a “cauldron of mongrels from all points of the compass” (179).

Baleka and Ngonyama come to sit with Rutherford, who wonders if Allmuseri culture will die out. Rutherford is sure he is dying because paralysis is creeping up his body. Then, a storm surge swamps the Republic, which sinks. Rutherford manages to stay afloat for a few hours, but he sinks once the hammock on which he floats becomes waterlogged.

Rutherford, Baleka, and a few others are fished from the sea by people aboard the pleasure cruiser Juno. The Republic, it turns out, drifted into the West Indies and crossed the path of their rescuers by pure chance. Rutherford realizes that the suspension between home and death aboard the Republic made him unattached like the Allmuseri. He goes into shock, is unable to sleep, and cannot imagine how he will return to land.

The only thing that calms Rutherford is reading through the ship’s logs, which he augments from memory. Rutherford refuses to socialize with the other passengers. He has lost all his teeth and hair. He sees himself as “the wreck of the Republic” (190), but he willingly takes the clothes and wig offered by one of the rich passengers. He is shocked and frightened when he discovers that his benefactor is Papa Zeringue, a passenger aboard the ship. He knows that Baleka and the surviving children are legally the property of Papa.

He experiences an even greater shock when he discovers that Isadora, now much more svelte after pining away for Rutherford, is on board the ship and scheduled to marry Papa in a ceremony that evening. Rutherford rushes to halt the wedding, but he is stopped by Santos. When Isadora sees Rutherford, she is shocked by the changes in him, especially the sense of responsibility he has toward Baleka. He proposes to Isadora, arguing that he needs a partner to raise Baleka.

Isadora turns him down, explaining that it is impossible to say no to a kingpin like Papa. She stalled the ceremony for months by telling Papa she had to knit booties and sweaters for her collection of strays, which Papa told her had to go back to the streets. Santos discovered that Isadora was unraveling all of her work by night, so the ceremony was moved up.

After assuring Isadora that he will take care of everything and asking her to lock herself in her cabin, Rutherford confronts Papa with the logbook, which contains enough evidence to convince all the people back in New Orleans that Papa, a respected “race man,” is a slaver. Santos, who watches this confrontation, is astonished to learn this. When Rutherford confronts Papa with the logbook, Papa agrees to give up Isadora, relinquish his claims to the children, and provide funds for their care. In the end, Santos, apparently a direct descendant of an enslaved Allmuseri (and thus a cousin of some sort to Baleka), turns on Papa and refuses to take the book from Rutherford.

Afterward, Rutherford returns to Isadora, who is dressed scantily and tries to seduce him. His refusal of her convinces her that he has truly changed, and she is relieved to learn she no longer has to marry Papa. The novel ends with the two of them holding each other for comfort and warmth against the cold of the Atlantic Ocean.