Recently I have begun to doubt I should have come to this place. It is too wild for me without you; too empty. Animals, trees: one does not know their names. The birds look prehistoric. I should not advise any wifeless man to venture out here. He has too much time for reflection.
One can ride three hard days & not see a man, nor evidence that man ever existed. Five times the area of Ireland we have; and not twenty thousand souls in all. The maps are all wrong: immense regions uncharted. What maps we possess are copies of older ones, so that they replicate the old faults, &, invariably, multiply them. Nature herself disconcerts one here. The mountains astound, one cannot gainsay it – immeasurable & stark, & the gorges fathomless; the Great Smokeclouds of such an altitude that their zenith-snows never melt, & never shall, did Libyan suns appear. But there is some note of disquietude in the chord of this beauty, I cannot name what it is. Perhaps it is one’s own pitiable inconsequentiality. Every human in a thousand miles could be felled by some vulgar little pestilence & nature would not care about it but only trundle on. One thinks of that grewsome [sic] line from K.L. I suppose: The flies & the bastard boys & cet.†
Last month I captained the militia on a hunt into the Mauvaises Terres.Militia is a fine word. Rabble on horseback. It is all they can achieve not to pelt one another with nuts. But I suppose that they do their best. I bawl, I beseech them to WRITE THEIR REPORTS but they seem to think pens are for poets, or anyway not lawmen, when in fact, as I am worn to the meats of my soul telling them,no law is possible without documentation, a record . We were tracking a gang of rebels that has been raiding & murdering for months, but of course could not find them, as I suspected we should not. We never find these phantoms, for they know theterrae incognitae & have protectors in plenty out there. But there is no help for it; one has to put up some sort of ridiculous effort to show willing. I suppose that is what the desperadoes themselves are doing. Sometimes that is the picture that forms in one’s inward eye – two punch-drunk fighters holding one another up, brow to slickened brow, waiting for the bell to sound.
To be out among those pinnacles of red-brown rock, in whose mile-long shadows nothing decent can ever grow – one felt as though riding through Dante.Cañon s as deep as the turrets of Seville are tall, and the gloat of the withering sun. Subterranean caverns quite the size of Notre Dame or Saint Peter’s. Not a sound does one hear in that scorched, parched nowhere: but the wind fluting eerily through fissures in the rocks, and the clop of one’s mount, but muffled by the ubiquitous dust, so that even the rider directly behind cannot be heard when he calls out. Patk Vinson, you remember him, opined one midnight at the campfire: ‘God blesh me, I tink Hell must appare like the Badlands o’ dis Territry’, a pronouncement italicized by a brief but poignant belch. And yet, even this wilderness is not without its beauty. One morning I looked up from a peyote-strewn riverbed & saw clouds like cotton: just like wisps of finest cotton. And there was a perfume of something like crushed thyme in the heat; do you know, as in Provence, on an August night? At moments such as this – I do not know why – one wants to shout for joy at very ordinary things. But the men would have found it pretty strange I suppose. They look at me quearly [sic] sometimes.
We are so new here, we whites. We feel the weight of our unbelonging. One would have thought it a liberation; but it is not. Perhaps – even probably – we should not be here at all; yet the apple, once tasted, must be eaten. Not a building in five hundred miles is older than a decade. What few dwellings are thrown up outside of the towns are log-cabins & cabooses; nothing of stone or foundated. These are scattered about the valleys like so much box-wood, as toys awaiting the incursion of the nursery tyrant. Christ, how distant now, the cafes of New York, the avenues & squares I long to see again. Last night I dreamed that you & I were dining at Delmonico’s. Dear Christ,cara mia – I can scarcely picture it now.
The settlers are the ghastliest one has ever known, common and dirty and irredeemably vulgar; quite utterly & Swiftianly hideous. There is hardly a one of them without that dull glint of cruelty in his gaze. A toothbrush would be regarded as a burning bush among the Israelites; any sort of kindness as a weakness. One rides a thousand leagues through this desolate pit before ever meeting an act of fellowship or mercy. A dust-covered miner whipping a dust-covered mule: this should be the Territorial emblem.
Oh, it is nonsense, nonsense. Bloviating trash. Many are not so bad. My stomach has me in bitter mood – firgive [sic] me, Amor. Also sore throat this last ten days (for which Chinese apothecary advised no potion but sucking mucilaginous fruit, jujube). There are good sorts here, even families with children. One cannot reproach them for the prizes they appear to desire: gold, a clean start, a new aspect to look upon, to compose new memories that will drown the old. The Grail one craves oneself, could one only grasp it. But the closer one approaches, the more it eludes. Continuously I feel – I do not know why – that I have missed my chance; that I did not recognize my cue when it came.
And for every hardworking citizen, with the decent American spirit, we have two or three shadows & these are the rotting menace. The town is abuzz with this swarm of damnable leeches: place-seekers, land-grabbers, traitors in disguise, thugs competing for the position of official hangman. They flap about me & the men like flesh-flies to carrion; even speaking to them makes one feel the sudden want of a bath. Each supplicant has a story, a plea for one’s ear, or believes himself owed for some patriotic deed. This one has done this act of heroism in the War, the other that, his turd cousin anudder; each is a Goliath in autobiography yet incapable, apparently, of the sufficiency required to swab his own arse without my or the Government’s assistance. But this, too, is a form of posing. Few, out here, are quite what they front. All smolder with cunning, & the ambition of Lucifer. Every other in the Territory is a rebel runaway or sympathizer. And one must pretend not to know it, of course.
It is rumored that there is an entire brigade of rebel escapees to the north; ridden up to the mountains, there to plot further treasons. If – when – Lincoln wins the War, they will immediately declare ‘independence’, so it is said, & treat with Canada for sovereignty. Imagine the bloodshed. A war of the world, nothing less. The tombstones would stretch to the gates of Montréal. One argues it to the townspeople and they appear nonplussed. Some decline even to refer to the place by its legal name & instead persist in calling it ‘Arlington City’, after the confiscated plantations of Lee in Virginia. What a thing iscalled has too much import out here; every rock they mean to christen for some moldering cadaver. Backward-looking mewlers, the damn pack whole, weepy, piss-in-the-bed, corpse-adoring nincompoops, reversing into the future they hate. Better if the towns were named for letters of the alphabet. But that would satisfy none of the illiterate swine I suppose. These are brutes for whom ‘A’ is what you stitch on a harlot’s breast, and ‘B’ is the bastard that stings you.
The women would break a heart, so broken-down & poor they are. I need not tell you the manner in which many of them eke a pittance. I suppose one will always see it in a town full of men who are without the civilizing influence a wife will exert; but still, it is beastly when one does. A coin in his pocket, a drink in his belly, and conscience seems to flit like a specter. One of my deputies, English, happened on an Irish girl in the street the other night. He brought her to the jailhouse, for there was no place else for her to sleep & we fetched the drunken gawm of a so-called physician, for she was in a terrible way, quite as emaciated & broken-spirited as the famished one saw in one’s childhood. Told English she was born on a onetime slave-ship in 47; out of Liverpool & her people from W. Cork. Died the next morning & was buried in a cemetery for criminals, for we had no other place to put her. The doctor, probably having killed her, fell in the creek the following night, reportedly while attempting to relieve himself in it. Didn’t drown (worst luck) but has buggered out to Salt Lake City. So that we are doctorless, preacherless, lawyerless and judgeless. If only I could burn down the newspaper, too,
we would have the prairie Utopia.
And the Natives despise all of us, even when we treat with them. Their children fill me with dread. They remind one of how the poor of Wexford used to look when a regiment of redcoats rode in to the town – the serenity of patient hatred. They would scalp every white from here to St Louis if they could, & make drinking-bowls out of our skulls. And, though one fights them as one must, one could hardly condemn them, for we are strangers in their land, dispossession made flesh. Twenty years ago, dear God, when I believed in something fine, I would have had some feeling for their plight. But the men are quite ruined by liquor, of course. Seem congenitally incapable of continence.
I have been thinking of writing to Lincoln to request that I be released; although I know that this would end finally the prospect of any sort of government advancement, your Lear having yapped his gratitude for this dismal kennel. But even if Washington assented, which by no means is certain, I might have to remain here some seasons, even a year, until some other twittering imbecile might be located under some rock and coaxed out by a lump of opium and sent to replace. I wrakc [sic] my mind continuously for what I might do then – you know that I cannot continue to live off your father any more. It rides me so hard, I cannot sleep. Perhaps they would give me an ambassadorship – do you think it possible? France or Havana would be wonderful, or Venezuela. How the French would adorema petite negresse . I should never permit you to leave the house unchaperoned, lest some gossam-tonguedflâneur tempt you away by his blandishments.
Mon amiin the yard has abandoned his archeology & scampered, like the sawbones, for the newfound. I should like to have a drink now. But have sworn off, did I tell you? Feeling stronger, cleaner without the filth.
Another fool of a publisher has begged me to do him up a memoir. Bostonian this one, probably a crook. Have been collating notes in the evenings in a half-hearted way. Suppose it might kill the time.†
What else? Nothing (which comes of nothing). Had a bad bilious attack last week, was spewing like a geyser, but am rallied a bit now, after taking a little cherrybrandy as a physic – no more than a thimbleful, two fingersworth literally – but our mutton is all gone, & I am sorry as Job for it; still, we hope to have buffalo and mule-deer presently, which will come very good after using salt and hardtack so long. Or I will griddle that bothersome bastard that burrows in the yard. Christ, what I would give for a velvetclefted peach or a mouthful of luscious black grapes…[ ]††
…If only there were some commercial idea, some means of raising a competence that would fasten our situation for once & all. I awaken before dawn with some newfangled scheme straddling my chest like an incubus…[ ].†††A newspaper again (the one we have here is the vilest Confederate filth-sheet), or gentleman-farming, or importing stuffs from Europe, or something in Nicaragua:Je ne sais pas . By the noon, I know none of these dogs will hunt. One feels as in a maze of mirrors.
If, somehow, we could scratch up a little more capital, new mines are being opened out here all the time. There are Croesan fortunes hewn out of the rocks every hour, often on a relatively modest investment. What do you think of it? Perhaps we might set up tent out here a while? Would that interest you, my love, or is it a worthless design? I suppose that it will not always be so inhospitable a hole. Perhaps every territory in America was like this, once, & every preserve on the earth for that matter. And here it will change quickly, for already it is changing, as civilization ripens and the shoots of cultivation put forth. Even Manhattan was not so long ago a hillock-strewn kip. Oh murder, I don’t know. Do you think we should go abroad? Work at how we are to live & c.
My sweetest berry, can you not come to me for a season? I know that I should be stronger, did I have mymadrugada de amor .†We should at the least have the time to talk, & in peace, about what might be attempted, & prospects & c. There is a pleasanter settlement than this growing up not too distant, a small place called Edwardstown, seventy miles to the south. We could take a chalet down there & a servant or two? The gold-men and copper lords are building their mansions there; some are extremely fine, quite as good as many in New York. Thehacendados live well & have a kind of society.††There are groves & a park; the climate seems more temperate. There is talk of a great cathedral and of an opera house copied from La Scala, where the Midases may strut with their gem-studded Bridgets in last year’s Parisian duds. We could live quietly, & read, & talk in the evenings, & laugh at all theprovinciales if we wished. Perhaps things would come clearer in a year or two. There are no saloons. It would be a pleasant situation in which to raise a child.
How wrong I have been to have denied you even this. You know that this matter is painful to me & I think you know why. But how stubborn it has been of me, to insist so utterly. I have been so stupid; so vain. Everything seems in ruins. It’s the damnedest thing. I keep thinking I will never see you again. Or that something is very wrong.
If you will not come to me, at least send word that all is well? But please, my love, can you come out for a season? I promise, I vow on my sacred honor, to do nothing that should make you regret it. Those stupidities are past, I promise, I promise. Can you set out with me again after these terrible years? I parch without you like a frizzled old lamp, for I need once again the benediction of my Light.Stella mia ,cuore mio, amore mio .†††
Your husband, who would be better,
Con
P.S. For when you come: in my study, behind Gibbon’sDecline & Fall on the third shelf, you will find a small chest: malabar teak with brass hasps & my inits. (It contains a journal & other old papers I want.) Don’t concern yourself for the key: I have that here.
CHAPTER 13
DEMONLAND
by Lucia-Cruz McLelland-O’Keeffe†
A tale concerning the escape of James O’Keeffe
from Van Diemen’s Land, Australia, some years before Lucia
was to make his acquaintance at New York
There were three of you in the rowboat that stole out from Hobart at daybreak: you, the thief M’Carthy, and Knowles. You did not know M’Carthy, a hangdog Northumbrian; but D–––– had assured you he was solid.
You rowed close to the harbor wall as you approached the sentry-box on the cob. Your eyes you trained on the water. The prostitute would be inside with the soldierboy now. You did not care for that aspect; D–––– said it was the only way. The bump beneath the keel as you scraped across the sandbar. The quietness; the lapping of the water.
The water smelt of heat, was painful to look at. Knowles you knew to be a sympathizer; but you did not like Knowles. He was coarse in his language, boastful of his conquests, an uncouth little backslapper, ingratiating. You did not have much to say to him. He addressed you by your Christian name. You would not have suffered such a lout to be your bootblack.
Some trick of the sea meant that you could not hear the explosion. But you saw the bulge of smoke from the courthouse. Knowles rowed on. M’Carthy spat in the water. The smoke rose into the sky. You found yourself hoping that the soldierboy would not be flogged and that the woman would escape; she knew nothing, D–––– said. You imagined them standing on the flagstones of the cob illumined by the distraction of flames.
You rowed for two hours; it was painful, exhausting work. The under-tow was powerful, much worse than you had imagined, with a tugging, insistently eddying motion that tried to wrench the oars from your hands. And you were chubby by then, grown pulpy as a pupa; you looked, as D––– put it, like a well-fed farmer. You had been smoking almost incessantly in the days before the attempt, had drunk up the last of your whiskey the previous night. Those were the months when all that started. Your last season in Tasmania with Catharine.
A squabble soon began between Knowles and M’Carthy, Knowles asserting that the dory was drifting in the wrong steer, would be wrecked on the corals were she not headed north, the younger man insisting that the elder was mistaken; the horizon must be maintained to the larboard. You did not know which companion,
if either, was correct. Their sea-words grew harder to understand.
A tea clipper would be anchored, a French one. No. The vessel would be Dutch, her captain would be French. He would know your identity and that you were important, valuable, but would not ask questions of any kind. You would be given a crewman’s papers, would have your hair shorn immediately. You would permit your beard to grow out.
You were Québecois, if anyone asked. You had lived at Sydney for some years. You had a wife and a child, a son, in Nova Scotia, with whom you wished to be reunited, for your wife was not well. You drove a caleche. You knew nothing of politics. Wife: Anne Collins. Son: Richard Michael. Address: 23rd Street, Griffintown, Montréal.
You would be taken to the Cape, where a safe house had been arranged. Forged passports would be provided by an English double-agent there. He would be murdered that night so as to avoid potential compromise. It would be better if you did not know how. In six or eight weeks you would sail for Mobile. Supporters would be waiting at Alabama.
You waited seven hours, bobbing around like a bottle. No vessel appeared. You tried to remain steady. The boat was trailing a net to camouflage its purpose; you knotted the fraying oakums to pass time. Once, in the east, you saw natives oaring a pirogue; the call-and-response of what sounded a war-cry, though probably it was only a fishermen’s prayer, carrying over the surf. The argument between M’Carthy and Knowles blew back up intermittently, and they started into drinking, which made it bitterer, abusive. It was clear, at least to you, that the plan’s hope was dying. If you could have aborted it, you would have.
You were leaving a woman you loved, the only home of your adulthood, the land in which your infant daughter was buried. Two short months she had lived in the world. You would never again see her grave.
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