by Jeffrey Ford
To keep myself awake as I waited for Mavis, I poured a gin. Funny how drink makes you more tired and yet unable to sleep. I quaffed the crystal poison and wondered what had become of Madi. He hadn’t shown up in my vision of the final days of Ahab. Did that mean he was dead? Had Malbaster killed him because he was colored? Or had he escaped and was somewhere in the city waiting to strike?
In an effort to save my mental health, I decided to contemplate what my future would be from that point forward. “Best to forget about the whole bleeding affair,” I said aloud. I pictured myself on the trail of some new story, following it into the future of Manhattan. The next thing I knew, Misha was at my side shaking my shoulder. “Mr. Harrow,” I heard her voice pulling me up from the bottom of the Sea of Sleep where I rested. I roused and stretched my arms.
“Mavis?” I asked, bleary and a tad confused. I slowly moved to get out of my chair.
“No, George. There’s a dead man at the front door.”
That brought me around in a trice. Of course, the first thing I thought was that Bartleby had come for me.
“I spied him through the front window,” said Misha. “Emaciated, pale, and a shock of wild black hair.”
“Black hair?” I asked perplexed. “I remembered it as white. No matter, get me the pepperbox. I’m not opening the door without that pistol.”
Misha ran to get her weapon. As I stepped into the hallway and headed for the front door, she met me on the return from her errand, slapped the gun into my hand. “After every shot, you spin the barrel to the next bullet with your thumb. Percussion cap. It’s ready to fire now.”
I nodded and as I stepped to the door, she stood away, lighting the lantern we kept in the foyer. I pulled the door back, keeping the barrel pointed straight ahead at eye level. The sight of what stood before me very nearly made me pull the trigger. A pale, starving fellow with a pained expression, much like a skeleton who’d stubbed his toe, his black hair tangled. Those bony hands went up, and only then did I see that it wasn’t Bartleby.
“Harrow, it’s me,” said a weak and reedy voice.
“Who?” I yelled, thinking it a trick.
“Your old copy editor,” he said and Misha thrust the lantern past me and illuminated the visage of Ishmael, who if not yet dead, soon would be. His eyes seemed two huge glass marbles in the shriveled flesh of his face.
“Is Malbaster somewhere nearby with the Jolly Host, waiting to ambush me?” I asked my old colleague.
Ish managed a burst of energy and shook his head vehemently, whispering the word, “No.”
“What do you want with me?”
“Please, let me come in. If they know I’ve come to see you, they’ll kill me. I’ve something important to tell you.”
I stepped away from the door and let him enter. While I wasn’t worried about him being a threat—wrestling a pipe cleaner would have been more of a challenge—I’d learned not to trust in anything Malbaster or his associates did. I kept the gun trained on him as we made our way back to my office. We’d spent many an evening there when he worked with me at the paper, when we drank and discussed his book, or the goings-on of the city, or what an anomalous creature old Garrick was.
He sat in his usual seat, and I spun my chair around and sat, my back to the desk. Ishmael was frail and shivering with the cold he’d brought inside with him. His head was down, as if he was studying his shoes. I asked Misha to make us coffee and sandwiches.
“You seem to be quite in the thrall of the dope these days, my old friend,” I said.
Ish nodded and looked up to make a glassy eye contact with me. “I’m as fond of the dream stick as I used to be of the pen.”
“What happened to you?”
“After I wrote the book about Ahab and the whale, I fell apart. I initially thought I deserved some rest, having labored so assiduously to unburden myself of that mythic tragedy I witnessed.”
“You were a bright lad suffused with a glow of health and morality. What in hell became of you?”
“Well, in my convalescence, and I use that term most appropriately, from Moby Dick, I fell in with a bad crowd. I attempted to expunge the image of the white monster from my memory by taking up the bottle. But I found alcohol was ineffective. I was introduced to the pipe by one of Malbaster’s young assistants one night after leaving a groggery, and from that moment on the spirit of the poppy flower put its arm around my shoulders and drew me in. It’s been a constant companion.”
“I thought you wanted to be a famous novelist. What happened to that ambition?”
“You must know, Harrow, how using the imagination can be a sort of drug unto itself.”
“I can’t say that I’m immune to its joys,” I told him.
“I used to marvel at the stories you concocted for your articles. Wonderful stretchings of the truth and occasional outright lies. Well, writing is work, and mining the imagination is work, and I discovered how much easier it was to smoke the tar and sit back. The daydreams flowed without lifting a metaphorical finger. They materialized out of thin air and danced before me. I didn’t even have to hold a pen.”
“It sounds like a trap,” I said.
“Now the yellow smoke brings me visions of nothing but demons and the dead. Now I dread life. In addition, throughout my brief periods of wakefulness, I am witness to the atrocities committed by Malbaster and his horde of young criminals. I’m forced to lick his boots so as not to be cut off from the flower. Murder, torture, theft, rape. Killing children is not beneath them. And they’re in league with those who’d exterminate all the Irish and Germans in Manhattan. They fear them as papists. The Catholic Church has become a bugaboo for their ilk. But the colored have it the worst. This unfounded fear of the papacy will pass in a decade, and when it does, the Irish and the Germans will, after all, be white. Not so the blacks.”
I thought he was going to continue explaining his descent into the slough of despond, but he simply trailed off and again took to staring at his shoes. Afraid he might doze off before I could get from him the main reason he was in my home, I said, “Which brings us back to, ‘What are you doing here?’”
“I come to tell you that I know where Malbaster is keeping Ahab.”
“What do you mean, ‘keeping him’?”
“He has the old lunatic held captive. I think he means to make him a puppet with sawdust brains.”
“Like Bartleby,” I whispered, barely able to respond. I felt bewilderment at hearing my own fictionalized scenario of Ahab’s last days spoken out loud as truth.
“I’ve come here tonight, put my life on the line. No, far more courageous—I’ve put my access to the smoke on the line to tell you where Ahab is being held.”
“You’ve seen him since his kidnapping?”
Ishmael nodded.
“And Madi? What of him?”
“Who’s Madi?”
“The African harpooneer. You knew him aboard the Pequod.”
“Oh, you mean Daggoo.”
“His name isn’t Daggoo. That’s what you called him in your book.”
“I never knew his true name. I thought ‘Daggoo’ a splendid character name.”
“Forget it,” I said. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know. Malbaster kills the colored with impunity. He fears being infected by them.”
“Infected with what?”
“I don’t remember,” said Ishmael.
“Back to Ahab then. Where is he?”
He struggled out of his chair and plunged a hand into the pocket of his greasy trousers. There were holes in the knees and the cuffs were frayed. He’d at one time been a man of scrupulous hygiene. From his pocket, he pulled a piece of paper.
“Here,” he said. “The address is written here. If you are going to help him, you’d better act quickly. I’ve been told his mental state is tenuous.”
I took the scrap of paper from him and he sat back down. Misha arrived with coffee and sandwiches. He thanked her and took a sip. But as s
oon as she left, he looked at the sandwich and gagged. He hunched his shoulders, his hands began to tremble, and I could hear his teeth chatter.
“You don’t mind, Harrow, do you?” he said and took a long pipe—bamboo stem fitted with a clay bowl—from his stained and tattered coat. “This still has a pinch of the tar in it.” He pulled a wooden match from his shirt pocket, struck it on the bottom of his chair seat, and lit the pipe. The aroma that emanated was not the floral scent of the underground I’d smelled when I’d last encountered him, but a sharp stink of vinegar.
17
The transformation in my old colleague was rapid. His entire body, which appeared to be composed of a bent skeleton wrapped loosely in white parchment, seemed to deflate. His shoulders came down, his head dropped forward. He took another long draw on the pipe and raised himself just high enough to look up into my eyes. What I beheld were two gazing balls, as glassy and opaque as any you’d find in a wealthy man’s garden.
“I’m turning Ahab and Daggoo over to you, Harrow,” said Ishmael.
“What are you talking about?”
“They’re yours. You’ll do better by them than I will. You’re a better man than I, George.”
“Ish, you’re talking utter nonsense.”
“No, they’re yours. I spent too long with them. Since they survived, they should have a chance at a different future.”
The sight of him made me nervous. I lit a cheap cigar to combat the sinister stink of the tar. “Ishmael,” I said, “are you saying Ahab and Madi are characters you’re giving to me?”
He nodded.
“That’s lunatic. You’re lost in some other place now, aren’t you?”
Again, he nodded, then closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair. He set the pipe down on the side table. I found his situation wretched—a reminder of how quick the trip to Purgatory—and wanted to get him out of my house. I wished Misha were awake as I could summon more coffee . . . I poured myself a gin instead.
I began to fear that I was about to make a rash decision. I fought it, but it was strong. Reaching out to the table, I picked up the scrap of paper Ishmael had given me, supposedly the address where Ahab was being held captive. Before I could unfold it, though, I heard a knocking at the front door.
Turning around quickly, I saw the first light of dawn outside the window. I knew it must be Mavis. I put the paper in my vest pocket and took the article in its envelope out of my jacket pocket. Sure enough, when I got to the front door, Garrick’s Mercury was standing before it. I let her in and we went back to the kitchen to talk. She sat down at the table, and I handed her the envelope.
“For Garrick,” I said. “I thought it was going to be my last piece about Ahab, but it seems we’re back in the hunt.”
“Word is your friends were abducted outside the Crystal Palace.”
I nodded. “I think I know where Ahab is being held. If I decide to go for him, do you want to join me?”
“Me and you against the Jolly Host insane with the midnight oil? How much?”
“Name your price,” I said. “We get Ahab and we get away.”
She looked around for a moment as if the answer to my question were floating in the air. “Forty dollars,” she said.
“Fine.” I shook her hand.
“Ten up front.”
I gave her ten.
“What about Madi?” asked Mavis.
“He seems to have disappeared. My friend thinks he might have been murdered straightaway by Malbaster.”
“Very possible,” she said. “But Madi is resourceful.”
“For his sake, I hope so.”
“When?” she asked.
“I have to consider the situation,” I said. “I just tonight got a tip on Ahab’s whereabouts. It’ll no doubt be within the next day or two.”
She tapped the envelope on the table and stood to leave.
“Wait,” I said. “I’ve got the address right here. You might know it.” I dug the scrap from my pocket, unfolded it, and brought it up to read. “Indian Caves.”
“Where’s that?” she said, squinting.
I shook my head. “I should have known better. It was given to me by Ishmael. You remember the Mirror’s old copy editor?”
“Of course, I remember him,” she said.
“It seems, he, himself, is on the smoke.” I left the kitchen intending to go rouse Ishmael and attempt to learn more about the Indian Caves. But the front door was ajar and my office was empty. It appeared that Ishmael had fled and left me with nothing more than a location straight out of a bad pirate novel.
I turned to face Mavis who had followed me from the kitchen. “Meet me back here just after dark in two nights, ready to go,” I said. “I’ll do my best in the next two days to find out where the captain is.”
By the time Mavis left, the sun was well up. I was exhausted from lack of sleep but knew there could be no rest until I discovered the location of Ahab’s prison. In a matter of eight hours I went from resigning the captain to his ill fate, writing him out of my life, to now trying to save him. It struck me then that this foray into madness would be my ruin. The unremitting fact was that I was going to have to write an article now in which Ahab rises from the dead like Lazarus. It was a corner I’d painted myself into out of my desire to be rid of him. The only way out of the dilemma was if I were to be killed by the Jolly Host. There wasn’t much solace in that direction.
I cleaned up, shaved, and put on new clothes. Taking my satchel, which held both the fid and Misha’s pepperbox, I struck out on my self-appointed mission. I told myself I was out to rescue a friend, Ahab. But deep down, I knew that what I desired more than anything else was to regain my place in the story. Earlier I described the captain as “a character rent free from his pages,” and now that could easily have applied to me.
There was no precipitation yet, but I could smell snow in the air. The day was gray and ice had formed overnight in the puddles at the sides of the street. I should have been, without sleep, drooping along like Ishmael. Instead I ran on breakfast gin. As I dove into the new day, I knew somewhere along the line there’d be a reckoning and I’d no doubt pass out from fatigue. The question of where and when made each successive hour more fraught with trepidation. I had great doubts about my plan, but as I’ve done for years in my journalistic pursuits, I pushed on, ignoring the obvious inanity of their origins.
All I had to go on were the two words Ishmael had scrawled on that scrap of paper: Indian Caves. Did they refer, perhaps, to a drinking establishment? A tourist destination? A historic site? I decided to follow my first instinct. “The Indian Cave” wasn’t such a bad name for an out-of-the-way groggery. I knew most such places on Manhattan but had never heard of one by that name. There was a way to find out, though. I went directly to the offices of the Gorgon’s Mirror. In the farthest back room, beyond the one where Ahab had slept on the fainting couch, there existed an unusual resource.
Luckily, when I arrived, Garrick was out, and the place was nearly empty save for the illustrator, Jack Coffee, bent over his elevated drawing board.
“Hello, Jack,” I said.
He looked up and shook his head. “I’m drawing poor Ahab withered by the effects of the yellow smoke. Sorry to see he’s through after this one.”
I didn’t stop to view the results but kept walking straight to the back. “You might see him again,” I called over my shoulder.
“Harrow, you’re shameless,” I heard him say as I passed into the room that held the presses. The printers were there, setting type for the upcoming run. Beyond that room was the one with the fainting couch, and I saluted that rescue craft as I headed toward yet another room. I opened a final door and entered into a large, dimly lit space. Wooden apothecary cabinets, with their hundreds of drawers, lined the walls from floor to ceiling.
“Mrs. Pease?” I called into the gloom.
I scanned the room but could see only so far into the shadows. Presently I heard the sound of soft foot
steps, and I turned in time to see an old slender woman shuffle out of the dark, carrying a lit candle in a shallow holder. She glowed as she came toward me, wearing a purple day dress with a starched white collar. Her snowy hair was cut short as a boy’s and a pince-nez dangled from a chain around her neck. “What brings you, Harrow?”
“A question concerning groggeries. I’m seeking expert advice.”
“I should think you’d be an expert.”
Looking around, I asked, “Why doesn’t Garrick get some light for you in here? How do you see anything?”
“I’ve gotten used to it,” she said.
I squinted and looked closer at her face. The color of her irises had blanched for want of light. “You need to get some fresh air, Mrs. Pease.”
“I arrive in the morning and leave at night. It won’t be long now. Garrick said that when I go, he’ll install another cabinet in here for me, and I’ll become part of the archive.”
I laughed. “This seems a good prospect to you?”
“Of course,” she said. “Now, what do you want?”
“Ever heard of a groggery or perhaps something less legitimate than that called the ‘Indian Caves’?”
She was still for a moment and then shook her head. “There’s ‘The Indian’s Wife’ over on Albany Street and ‘The Green Indian’ some blocks north of that on Vesey. There was once a place called ‘The King’s Indian,’ on the southern end of the old collect pond, but that was back in the day. Story goes it was visited one night by an infestation of blue moths so thick that in order to clear them out, the owner set fire to his own establishment and it burned to the ground.”