Chapter 27: Cold Damage (4)
Chapter 27: Cold Damage (4)
Even now, ten years after that day, when I closed my eyes, everything came back vividly.
From the green carpet spread across the floor, to each and every face of the people seated in the chairs—everything became a single picture embroidered into my mind. The sensation of gripping the pen with a trembling heart and scrawling my name onto that crude parchment, which had now become the Declaration of Independence, echoed at my fingertips.
Livingston, Franklin, Washington, Hamilton—and even John Adams, that unlucky bastard whose face I could not stand but who was there anyway. The parchment bearing all their handwriting and signatures still flickered before my eyes.
The smell of gunpowder I breathed in at Saratoga, the smoke I saw, the shouts of the militia I heard—those memories made my heart pound. The salty tang of the sea I smelled at Yorktown, the warships I saw, the news of victory I heard—those memories carried that thrill from my chest to the very tips of my limbs, making my whole body tremble.
But once I opened my eyes, those sweet memories scattered into the sky, no more than a fleeting spring dream.
The blood, sweat, and ideals we poured out to build a truly free and just nation ended up kneeling before the wall called reality.
[All men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.]
Even the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, which my comrades and I wrote with all our hearts, were blocked by that reality and never saw the light.
Was that not so? The people of the New World who fought to escape enslavement under the British and seek freedom now became masters themselves and oppressed the freedom of others instead.
Once they loosened the chains strangling their own necks, they took those very chains and fastened them around the necks of others. How laughable a spectacle that was. And all for the shoddy, irrational reason of mere skin color.
It was a reality created by greedy capitalists and vicious slave owners obsessed with filling their own pockets, and by the indifference of the masses concerned only with their own self-preservation.
This world was nothing like the ideal nation I, Thomas Jefferson, had dreamed of.
Then how was one to change the New World into a proper nation founded on reason, common sense, and universal principles?
A coup?
No. It was a frail country barely stitched together after managing to repel Britain.
To turn guns and blades on fellow Americans and reduce the Constitution—into which the hopes of countless people of the New World were poured—to scrap paper? What a barbaric and immoral act that would be. That could not be done.
So it had to be an election.
The first president to be elected would, in any case, be Washington.
Ah, of course, he would complain endlessly, saying things like, “Ugh, what a hassle. Do I really have to do this?” and talk as though he would never take on something as troublesome as the presidency—but what of it?
He knew the expectations and support Americans placed upon him, so even if he disliked it, he would have no choice but to accept the position.
Unless he suddenly went mad and became a tyrant king, the second president would also be Washington, and the third president would be Washington as well. If he wished, he might even become president for life.
The name Washington carried that much value. He was a hero who had achieved that level of dignity, the ideal guardian in the eyes of the American people. Was that not what Jefferson himself believed?
That being the case, I would have to run in the election to choose the fourth president, to be held roughly twelve years from now.
The competitors would probably be John Adams, that unlucky dwarf sack of shit, or, regrettably, the kind Madison whose M-shaped baldness was progressing badly.
Madison was fine. He was trustworthy and intelligent.
The problem was John Adams, that violent bastard. If the naïve Madison ran, he would clearly be helpless against that filthy, slick tongue of his.
So I had to run.
I had to run, knock down that eccentric bastard Adams, and wade through the mud to fight those damn slave owners, laying the groundwork of freedom and reason.
Then, if I set Madison up as my successor, the United States of America could truly grow into a nation of liberty and democracy as written in the Constitution!
But elections were, in the end, battles of votes. Battles where, regardless of how noble one’s intentions were, one had to satisfy what the voters wanted.
In that sense, I, Jefferson, was starting the fight already half defeated.
I had already made enemies of those at the very top, holding vested interests—the vicious capitalists and vicious slave owners.
If Jefferson ran for president, those greedy bastards would use every evil trick at their disposal to get the opposing candidate elected, and, regrettably, the simple masses would be tossed about by them without understanding a thing.
Then what had to be done?
I had to create people who truly sympathized with and shared the values I believed in—reason, morality, common sense, and universality. I had to help them seize vested power by pushing aside the corrupt.
Those people would be the ones to support me in the presidential election twelve years later and to truly uphold the Constitution.
In that sense, France was the perfect place.
There were young, capable talents everywhere—people who resonated with the words of men ahead of their time like Diderot, d’Alembert, and Rousseau, yet were constrained by the limits of the era of absolute monarchy and the old Ancien Régime.
If even one out of ten of them arrived at Boston Harbor and settled down, it would become a great source of strength for Jefferson.
And the one I had my eye on among them was Guillaume de Toulon.
From what I learned through private investigation, he was an Enlightenment thinker and a raw diamond—born the illegitimate son of a provincial noble, yet having built a major business in the capital, Paris, before even reaching full adulthood.
If someone like him, who shone even after succeeding in conservative Europe despite his status, were to set foot in the free New World, he could sweep away the vicious, low-grade capitalists in one stroke and seize the vested interests.
He, too, would surely prefer to cast off discrimination and oppression and soar freely in the New World rather than remain trapped in this stifling Old Continent.
“I’m sorry, but I will gratefully accept only the offer itself.”
I quietly but clearly spoke as I gently slipped my hand out of the grasp of the massive man—nearly 190 centimeters tall—who filled the room with his charisma.
At my words, Jefferson briefly furrowed his brow with a regretful expression, then sat back down and spoke with a gentle look once more.
“I know… I know my proposal was sudden, Mr. Guillaume. But our United States truly needs a talent like you. If an intellectual like you—someone who puts people first and reason first—were to remain bound to this Old Continent, there could be no greater waste.”
Jefferson’s eyes gleamed again as he tried to persuade me.
No. Sir, why are you so obsessed with me? What makes you think I’m so great, anyway?
And more importantly, why would I go to America? I have no foundation there, no connections, and no idea what might happen.
For all I know, I could go to America and get shot dead by a pistol in the hands of some rampaging outlaw in the wilderness. At least in Paris, I won’t get shot dead by a pistol while walking down the street.
And besides, I roughly knew what was going to happen in France from here on out.
A revolution was coming.
And I was already well prepared to survive that revolution. If things turned out worse than I expected and it became impossible to preserve my life, I could pack up and flee elsewhere then. There was absolutely no reason to abandon everything I had built and go to America right now.
Do you know how much hell I went through to build this foundation? Sir, do you know how many consecutive days of overtime I worked? Let’s see—it was already well into the double digits, and since it was triple digits…
Perhaps sensing my reluctance, Jefferson continued speaking without pause.
He said he would be my solid backing, asked if I had never felt frustrated by suffering under the old system—anyway, he kept talking passionately until his face flushed, trying to sweet-talk me.
Even so, I wasn’t going. Sir.
More than anything else, if I left, what would happen to the people I had been trying to protect from the revolution all this time?
Napoleon would be fine—he became an emperor in history anyway, so he would rise through the chaos of the revolution rather than die. But what about my father? Bishop Serge? Mme Pluie? Grouchy? Mathieu? Mr. Florian? The employees of Ears of the Nation?
Would the ordinary people around me, who never appeared in history books, really have been able to preserve their lives?
So I couldn’t go.
My foundation and my business were important, but I never would have been able to build them without those people. The whole point was to protect them and myself from the waves of the era.
If I only wanted to live well by myself, I could have assassinated those two bastards, Pierre and George, and been done with it. Why would I have chosen a life drenched in overtime like this?
When I stubbornly refused despite his continued persuasion, Jefferson looked at me with an even more regretful gaze than before, then sighed and spoke.
“Very well… if that is your opinion, Mr. Guillaume, I can say no more. Then let me say just one thing. Whenever you wish, if you ever want to come to the United States, please come and find me at any time.”
I replied stiffly.
“Yes… well, I understand.”
As if that would ever happen.
“Then it’s late today, so please stay the night, Mr. Guillaume.”
I had been refusing nonstop until now. It wouldn’t do to refuse this as well. Above all, I didn’t even want to imagine that huge man getting angry.
“Yes, gladly.”
Only then did Jefferson’s face finally break into a smile.