Washington Black

by Esi Edugyan, 2018

Fascinating book about a little boy, George Washington Black (Wash), who is a slave on the Faith Plantation in Barbados. He works alongside a big black woman, Big Kit. She takes care of him and he gets to sleep with her at night and work alongside her during the day. One day, Big Kit and Wash are asked to serve at the master’s table. From that day forward, Wash becomes the evil master’s brother’s assistant in order to help him fly his Cloud-cutter. The master is evil but his brother is not but Wash does not know it.

The master’s brother is named Christopher Wilde but is called Titch. He takes Wash under his wing and teaches him how to read and write and discovers his talent for drawing – a prodigy. When Titch’s cousin kills himself and involves Wash by forcing him to come along, Titch and Wash escape in the dead of night on the Cloud-cutter. They crash in the middle of a storm on a ship at sea. The captain takes them to Virginia and from there, they discover that Titch’s father, who has been reported dead, may not really be dead. They travel to the Arctic and find Titch’s father alive and well. Something causes Titch to abandon Wash – to walk into the arctic winter never to be found. He abandons Wash in the dead of winter in an igloo in the Arctic North with people who do not know him or care for him. Wash is taken to Nova Scotia and works for years in that town, on his own, always fearful that the evil master’s posse-man will find him. The man eventually does, years later, but by that time, slaves have been freed in the British West Indies and the evil master has died, so after a long conversation in a bar, they end up in a fight and Wash stabs him in the eye.

Wash falls in love with a woman named Tanna and works for her father collecting marine specimens and drawing them. They take Wash with them to London. Wash meets with Titch’s mother and discovers Titch is still alive. He searches for him in London, then in Amsterdam, and finally in Morocco, where he finds him in the middle of the desert living with another young boy and working on another cloud cutter. Ever since Titch abandoned Wash in the Arctic, Titch has been trying to overcome the grief and understand the reason why.

The book is fascinating and so well-written. Her descriptions of people and places and settings are rich and easily imagined. You really feel like you’ve been with these people and have been to all these places. The ending was not satisfying however, because after he finally meets Titch and they have a long conversation, Wash walks out into a desert storm, and I don’t know whether he dies or not. He has a beautiful woman who loves him and meaningful work to do back in London, so why does he walk out into this desert storm?

Samples from the book: First is when Wash dons diving gear and goes diving in the sea off Nova Scotia:A

And all at once I felt my body dropping away, all of the clenching and the anger and the terror, the scorch of Goff’s black, disapproving eyes, and the touch of Big Kit’s skin; the image of Titch walking backwards over the ice, the smell of Arctic timber, the shudder of the Cloud-cutter, it all fell away; the blood on the blackened grass in the clearing, the pain on Philip’s face, I let it all fall away; Willard’s small, constant shadow–all this I let drop away, so that I hung with my arms suspended at my sides, the soft current tugging at me. The cold sucked at me and the light weakened, and I was finally, mercifully, nothing.

from Washington Black

Here’s when he is explaining to Tanna why he can’t let go of trying to find Titch:

In truth, my reasons proved as murky to me as they did to her. I suppose I wanted an apology, some expression of his remorse. Or at the very least, an explanation. I wanted him to tell me why he had plucked me from my life of toil in the first place, if anything had existed for him beyond the possibilities of my being useful to his cause. I wanted to know why my loyalty had moved him so little that he’d abruptly abandoned me. Perhaps his words would never be enough, in the end. Perhaps it was stupid to seek any peace from him. But I wanted very much to hear him speak my name, and to read in his face the guilt, the shame. And if there was no guilt or shame, I wanted to see that too.

from Washington Black

And here is the very last paragraph of the book:

I stepped out onto the threshold, the sand stinging me, blinding my eyes. Behind me I thought I heard Tanna call my name, but I did not turn, could not take my gaze from the orange blur of the horizon. I gripped my arms about myself, went a few steps forward. The wind across my forehead was like a living thing.

last paragraph of Washington Black