“Yes, they do,” said Calvin.

“What are you talking about?” said Balzac.

“Souls,” said Calvin.

“Heartfires,” said Margaret. “I don't know if they're the same thing.”

“Doesn't matter,” said Calvin. “The French don't have either one.”

“Now he insults me and my whole country,” said Balzac, “but you see that I do not kill him.”

“That's because you've got short arms and you drink too much to aim a gun,” said Calvin.

“It is because I am civilized and I disdain violence.”

“Don't either of you care,” said Margaret, “that the slaves have found a way to hide their souls from their masters? Are they so invisible to you, Calvin, that you haven't ever bothered to notice that their heartfires are missing?”

“They still got a spark in them,” said Calvin.

“But it's tiny, it has no depth,” said Margaret. “It's the memory of a heartfire, not the fire itself. I can't see anything in them.”

"Seems to me that they've found a way to hide their souls from you, said Calvin.

“Doesn't he ever listen to anybody?” Margaret asked Balzac.

“He does,” said Balzac. “He hears, but he doesn't care.”

“What am I supposed to be caring about that I'm not?” asked Calvin.

“What the Black girl said she wished for,” said Balzac. “A name. She has hidden away her name and her soul, but now she wants them back and she doesn't know how.”

“When did you two figure this out?” asked Calvin.

“It was obvious once Madame Smith made the connection,” said Balzac. “But you are the most knowledgeable people I know of, when it comes to hidden powers. How could you not know of this?”

“I don't do souls,” said Calvin.

“The powers they bring from Africa work differently,” said Margaret. “Alvin tried to figure it out, and so did I, and we think that everybody is born with hidden powers, but they learn from the people around them to use them in different ways. We White people– or at least English people– but Napoleon's like this too, so who knows– we learn to use these powers individually, binding them tightly to some inborn talent or preference or need. A little bit of it we can put outside ourselves, in hexes, but the real power is held in each person. While the Reds, they open their powers to the world around them, becoming less and less alone, more and more tied to the power of nature. It gives them great powers, but cut them off from the natural world and it's gone.”

“And Blacks?” asked Balzac.

“They learn to put it into objects, or perhaps they find it there, I don't know. Since I've never done it myself, nor has Alvin, we could only speculate. Some things I've seen in Black folks' heartfires, though– I could hardly believe it. Yet it's so. Arthur Stuart's mother– she had extraordinary power, and by making something, she gave herself wings. She flew.”

Balzac laughed, then realized she wasn't joking or even speaking metaphorically. “Flew?”

“At least a hundred miles,” said Margaret. “Not far enough, not entirely in the right direction, but it was enough to save her baby, though her own strength and life were spent.”

“This Arthur Stuart, why don't you ask him how the power of Black people works?”

“He's just a boy,” said Calvin scornfully, “and he's half-White anyway.”

“You don't know him,” said Margaret. “He doesn't know how the powers of Blacks work because it isn't carried in the blood, it's taught from parent to child. Alvin learned the greensong of the Reds because he became like a child to Tenskwa-Tawa and Ta-Kumsaw. Arthur Stuart grew up with his power shaped into a knack, like Whites, because he was raised among Whites. I think Blacks have a hard time holding on to their African ways. Maybe that's why Fishy can't remember her real name. Someone took her name from her, took her soul, to keep it in hiding, to keep it safe and free. But now she wants it back and she can't get it because she's not African-born, she's not surrounded by a tribe, she's surrounded by beaten-down slaves whose heartfires and names are all in hiding.”

“If they got all these powers,” said Calvin, “how come they're slaves?”

“Oh, that's easy,” said Balzac. “The ones who capture them in Africa, they are also African, they know what the powers are, they keep them from having the things they need.”

“Blacks against Blacks,” said Margaret sadly.

“How do you know all that?” Calvin asked Balzac.

“I was at the docks! I saw the Blacks being dragged off the ships in chains. I saw the Black men who searched them, took away little dolls made of cloth or dung, many different things.”

“Where was I when you were seeing this stuff?”

“Drunk, my friend,” said Balzac.

“So were you, then,” said Calvin.

“But I have an enormous capacity for wine,” said Balzac. “When I am drunk I am at my best. It is the national knack of the French.”

“I wouldn't be proud of it if I were you,” said Margaret.

“I wouldn't be sanctimonious about our wine, here in the land of corn liquor and rye whiskey.” Balzac leered at her.

“Just when I think I might like you, Monsieur Balzac, you show yourself not to be a gentleman.”

“I don't have to be a gentleman,” said Balzac. “I am an artist.”

“You still walk on two legs and eat through your mouth,” said Margaret. “Being an artist doesn't give you special privileges. If anything, it gives you greater responsibilities.”

“I have to study life in all its manifestations,” said Balzac.

“Perhaps that is true,” said Margaret. “But if you sample all the wickedness of the world, and commit every betrayal and every harm, then you will not be able to sample the higher joys, for you will not be healthy enough or strong enough– or decent enough for the company of good people, which is one of the greatest joys of all.”

“If they cannot forgive me my foibles, then they are not such good people, no?” Balzac smiled as if he had played the last ace in the deck.

“But they do forgive your foibles,” said Margaret. “They would welcome your company, too. But if you joined them, you would not understand what they were talking about. You would not have had the experiences that bind them together. You would be an outsider, not because of any act of theirs, but because you have not passed along the road that teaches you to be one of them. You will feel like an exile from the beautiful garden, but it will be you who exiled yourself. And yet you will blame them, and call them judgmental and unforgiving, even as it is your own pain and bitter memory that condemns you, your own ignorance of virtue that makes you a stranger in the land that should have been your home.”

Her eyes were on fire and Balzac looked at her with rapt admiration. “I always thought I would experiment with evil, and imagine good because it was easier. Almost you convince me I should do it the other way around.”

Calvin was not so entranced. He knew that this little sermon was directed at him and he didn't like it. “There's no such secret that the good people know,” said Calvin. “They just pretend, to console themselves for having missed out on all the fun.”

Margaret smiled at him. “I took these ideas from your own thoughts of only a few minutes ago, Calvin. You know that what I'm saying is true.”

“I was thinking the opposite,” said Calvin.

“That's what you thought you were thinking,” said Margaret. “But you wouldn't have had to think such thoughts if that was what you really thought about it.”

Balzac laughed aloud, and Calvin joined him– albeit halfheartedly.

“Madame Smith, I could have labored all my days and never thought of a conversation in which someone was able to deliver such a sentence and have it mean anything at all. 'That's what you thought you were thinking.' Delicious! 'You would not think these thoughts if you really thought what you think you thought' Or was it 'thought you think.'”