Theory of Slavery | Hamilton

V

A drizzling and seemingly dirty rain had been falling on the street outside the car window. I felt so small within the automobile's gigantic proportions and, leaning my forehead on the cold glass, could only observe the glowing city. As we sped along the blinding advertisements and balconies lined with the dark, I could form no coherent thought. Figures kept flitting through my brain, incidents came back to my memory, now vaguely, now very distinctly, the tunes of some foolish songs kept ringing in my ears...

'I'm so unhappy,

What'll I do?

I need somebody who

Will sympathize me...'

I reached for the radio and turned it off. Hamilton glanced at me sideways and returned his gaze to the road once again.

"Do you not like this song?"

"It depresses me."

For a moment I entertained a desperate idea of telling him how bad I felt, of telling him that I had so much regret; I wished we had no background, that he was just a stranger who emerged from the night, so that I could speak with him sincerely. But I survived the temptation to confuse all values and forced myself to concentrate on city lights.

"Are you crying?"

"I'm not."

I broke down completely and covered my face with my hand. Everything was topsy-turvy and aching in my soul.

"Stop," Hamilton turned the wheel. "I don't like it either, but you don't see me crying about it.

I forgot myself altogether.

"You don't like it? What could you possibly not like?" I wiped the tears with my fingers. "And what the devil do I care for you? You reproach me..."

"That's not so, and not for that reason. It's because I see no difference between you and other people. I treat everyone alike because everyone's alike in my eyes."

"Oh, you are funny, so funny!" I said, affecting to laugh.

"Of course, people are all different in one way or another, but differences don't exist for me because the differences between people don't concern me; all of them, all of them..."

All of a sudden he hit the wheel several times with his fist.

"Idiots! I'm surrounded by idiots, goddammit!"

I can't express how my heart ached. Why he had so suddenly lost his temper, and what insulted him I couldn't say now; nor could I at the time, of course. And how pale he had turned! And who knows, perhaps that paleness was the expression of the truest and purest feeling and the deepest sorrow, and not of anger or of offense.

Hamilton pressed his forehead against the wheel and muttered:

"Of course, I am an insignificant link..."

He breathed hard as though after some difficult achievement. I cut him off.

"I thought you were... A Treasury secretary, or something of the sort."

"Of course. I am actually the President."

I had to laugh.

"You laugh, you are dumb," he added with incredible simplicity. He was abrupt and bitter, quite unlike himself. "It's not funny. But I dare say you're right. Of course I know nothing of real life; that's what Jefferson tells me; and indeed everyone says so; I should be a queer sort of politician. Fuck!"