The gaze continues into the fourth paragraph. Avellaneda’s
description of the landscape begins with “[…] the eye encounters
[…]” (Ibid). Then suddenly another sense comes into play, that of
sound, a country fellow is approaching, he is singing a folk tune. At
this point the gaze is no longer the reader’s gaze, it is the rider’s.
Immediately after that, it is the country fellow’s eyes who are
scrutinizing the rider. This is the encounter. The author goes from
one gaze, to the other, and back. Avellaneda renders this encounter
by focusing on the eyes. “[…] while in turn the eyes of the former
were just as strongly drawn to the latter” (28).
Again, it is the rider’s turn to gaze at the country fellow, who did
not appear to be a white criolloi, or black, or indigenous. Quickly, in
his mind, the rider tries to determine the ethnicity of the fellow
before him. He soon comes to the conclusion that this person is a
mixture of races, the European and the African, “without being a
perfect mulatto.” This means that although the country fellow had
“[…] thick purplish lips that revealed his African heritage […]” his
coloring was yellowish white, he had lustrous hair, and his nose was
aquiline.
It is important to remember that this novel was written by a white
woman between 1836-1838, and published in 1841, and that it is
therefore a novel of another time. I hesitate to use the term
“politically incorrect”, because there was no such misdeed at the
time, but I will use it for lack of a better contemporary term. In any
case, the novel, were it to be contemporary, could very well be a
study of the politically incorrect. It would be one blunder after the
other, and many good intentions. In other words, the mulatto who
isn’t a perfect mulatto that Avellaneda is presenting to the reader
looks good enough to be mistaken for a plantation owner. He could
not possibly look like a slave. He could pass for white. He must pass
for white.
The two men speak in Spanish, the newcomer asks the country
fellow for directions to Don Carlos de B ---’s plantation and surmises
that he is this gentleman’s neighbor. Without acknowledging the
comment, the country fellow simply volunteers to be the
newcomer’s guide.
Subsequently, the newcomer’s questions betray his greediness.
“Did you say that Señor de B--- owns all of this land?” he asks. “It
appears to be very fertile,” he comments. “This plantation must bring
its owner a good income,” he suggests (29). At this point both Señor
de B--- and his land are being evaluated as commodities by this
newcomer, this capitalist. Without this newcomer, however, Señor
de B--- is the capitalist, the slave-holding landed gentry.
The country fellow explains that there was a time when this
plantation produced far more than now, “[…] some three hundred
thousand pounds of sugar every year, because then more than a
hundred blacks worked in the cane fields” (29).
The newcomer’s reaction is one of studied concern over the
difficult life of a plantation slave. The country fellow agrees that it is
truly a terrible life and expatiates on the subject. Here, Avellaneda,
without knowing, is in fact describing alienation in a romantic way.
The country fellow describes the sun that burns the slave’s skin, the
slave’s unhappy soul. “[…] the slave with his sweat and tears waters
the place” (29).
The country fellow concludes this diatribe by exclaiming, “Ah yes!
The sight of this degraded humanity, where men become mere
brutes, is a cruel spectacle. These are men whose brows are seared with the mark of slavery just as their souls are branded with the
desperation of hell” (29-30). Estrangement and alienation are
continually suggested with words and expressions such as: degraded
humanity, brutes, cruel, seared, branded, desperation, and hell.
The country fellow’s language convinces the newcomer that he is
conversing with a landowner. Once again, he repeats, “If I am not
mistaken, you are Don Carlos de B---’s friend and neighbor…” (30).
If I have lingered on the first few pages of this novel it was to arrive
at this moment and to make it all the more obvious.
At this point the country fellow can no longer elude the
newcomer’s comment. He lowers his eyes and replies that he
belongs, “[…] to that unhappy race deprived of human rights… I
am a mulatto and a slave” (Ibid).
Embarrassed by his error, the traveler immediately “[…] assumes
the tone of disdainful familiarity used toward slaves” (Ibid). He adds
that he suspected as much. Suddenly, the slave begins to see himself
being seen by the Other, the blond and blue-eyed man with an
English surname, Enrique Otway. Once again, the reader is taken
from one gaze to the other, from Otway’s realization that Sab is in
fact a slave, to Sab’s feeling Otway’s scorn, then back to Otway who
continues talking down to Sab, thus precipitating him into his
moment of unhomeliness. The situation couldn’t be more awkward,
or uncanny.
Bhabha writes that the unhomeliness is the condition of extraterritorial
and crosscultural initiations:
“The unhomely moment creeps upon you stealthily as your
own shadow and
suddenly you find yourself with Henry James’s Isabel Archer,
in The Portrait of a Lady, taking the measure of your dwelling in a state of
‘incredulous terror.’ And it is at this point that the world first shrinks for Isabel and then expands enormously.
As she struggles to survive the fathomless waters, the rushing
torrents, James introduces us to the unhomeliness inherent in that rite of
extra-territorial and crosscultural initiation. The recesses of the domestic space become sites for history’s most intricate invasions. In that displacement, the borders between home and world become confused; […]” (9)