By the time the train approached Lenox, the afternoon had turned ashen gray, and the day seemed to share Herman’s exhaustion. His love for Hawthorne and the energy he had squandered on it for so long, day and night, had worn him down to a state of nervous fatigue, which seemed permanent to him now. He felt Captain Ahab charging madly through the pages of Moby Dick, raving and ripping, a howling caricature of pain—his love turned inside out. Had it been worth it? Oh, Hawthorne, why could you not have talked to me more, and more openly, instead of damning me alone to my pages?
Though Hawthorne was moving only the relatively short distance to West Newton, he might as well have been going to the moon. Herman only ever traveled to the Boston area these days to visit the Shaws, and he could imagine no excuse that might take him to the suburbs during a stay with his in-laws. And Hawthorne had demonstrated with painful clarity, again and again, that he would be making no special efforts to visit Herman or even communicate with him. This was farewell, and as a parting concession from the Fates, Melville would be allowed to present Hawthorne with all of his love and obsession and despair bound in leather. Hawthorne would carry away Herman’s soul, set in type, and Herman would be left out in the Berkshires, loveless, with his botched English copies of The Whale. Under the circumstances, Herman almost did not want to see Hawthorne again, but this meeting was now the only thing he had left.
The train pulled into the Lenox station and huffed to a stop. Herman left his box of books with the Lenox stationmaster, taking with him only the Moby Dick he would give to Hawthorne, and walked up Main Street toward the Curtis Hotel. He tipped his hat to the few people he met on the street. The town seemed so different now from the sunnier aspect it wore in summer, when happy vacationers overwhelmed the locals; today, the breeze was frigid, and low clouds threatened rain, or snow; and Herman met only gray old-timers shuffling along, huddled into their coats.
Herman had sent a messenger to precede him into Lenox—it was a luxury he could not really afford just now, but he needed the peace of mind that came with this expedience more than he needed the money—a messenger who had arranged for Hawthorne to meet him at the Curtis. Herman could not face another visit to Hawthorne’s cottage with Sophia and their children, and he could think of nowhere better for a rendezvous than the grandest hotel in the center of town. It would be mostly empty now, with the holiday season over, and no Lenoxite with a home of his own would eat dinner at a hotel. He hoped they would have some solitude, right out in the open.
He arrived and stood outside for a moment, looking up at the hotel’s three stories of rough, red clay bricks. Shiny black shutters framed every window. He wondered if Hawthorne was already inside—but this prospect caused him no palpitations of the heart now, no sweating of the palms, no nervous tics. He was exhausted; and he dared not allow himself to hope for anything from their meeting, to wonder what Hawthorne had meant by apologizing so heatedly at Catharine Sedgwick’s party. He was grateful simply to have the opportunity to present his book to Nathaniel, and that’s all he expected from this afternoon—if, indeed, Hawthorne appeared at all. He reminded himself that Hawthorne had disappointed him many times in the past, and Hawthorne’s hypervigilant conscience could conceivably keep him at home with Sophia again today; or, for all Herman knew, he might have silently recanted his vow to wait for Moby Dick and already moved to West Newton. No, Herman could not afford to hope. He walked up the stone steps and a valet opened the door and escorted him to the dining room.
Melville ordered a coffee with whiskey and settled into a table near a window with a view of downtown. The table linens were real linen, the coffee cup, when it arrived, was actual china, the silverware was genuine silver, and the coffee and whiskey were both first-rate. The ghoulish specter of the cost of all this finery emerged from the steam of his drink, but he exorcised it immediately by saying out loud, “Who steals my purse steals trash,” and he took out his wallet and placed it on the table. If anything merited a trip to the poorhouse, this occasion did. He sipped his expensive coffee and watched the sun set.
• • •
Half a dozen diners had wandered in and taken tables by the time Hawthorne arrived, just after dark; and despite his earlier despair and exhaustion, Herman felt a jolt of energy just from seeing Nathaniel’s tall, elegant figure in his black double-breasted frock coat striding across the dining room. Hawthorne slung his satchel off his shoulder and threaded hastily between tables, upsetting an empty chair so that it teetered. His cheeks were red from the cold, and he seemed somewhat out of breath, as if he had been hurrying, which pleased Herman. His wavy brown hair fanned out like a lion’s mane, windblown and lustrous. Herman stood to greet him, and Nathaniel shook his hand warmly and swept into his seat. The waiter came immediately, and Hawthorne asked for “whatever my friend is having,” and the last of Herman’s weariness lifted. Hawthorne seemed entirely present: he seemed almost the same as when they had first met, eyes twinkling and cheery, and Herman cautioned himself to take some care with his own heart, even as he fell helplessly once again into those luminous brown eyes.
“Do you know,” Hawthorne said, “I have lived here for nearly two years and never dined in this hotel? It’s quite splendid, isn’t it?”
“It is now,” Herman said. He could not help himself. He blushed and looked down into his empty cup.
“If I had known about this place,” said Hawthorne, “I might have come here often and sent myself to the almshouse. Perhaps it’s better if this memory is the only one I take from it.”
Herman wished he could ask about that night they had spent drinking in Hawthorne’s cottage, about how it had ended, about his feelings now, but he dared not. Hawthorne’s reaction was clear—he was moving away—but his presence across the table indicated that the matter remained far from simple. Oh, Nathaniel, he thought, would I love you less if you spoke more openly?
He held out the copy of Moby Dick—as far as he knew, the first American copy available—and Hawthorne took it, passing his hand sensuously several times over the front cover, caressing the spine with his fingertips.
“New books feel special,” said Hawthorne. “They’re like babies born into the skin of old men.” He turned it over and hefted it several times and then reached into his satchel and withdrew a copy of his Wonder Book, a slender tome that had also just been published, which he handed to Herman. “I don’t pretend it can compete with your whale,” he said, “but I thought it would please you.” Herman took the book, and Hawthorne opened it even while it lay in Herman’s hands, so their fingers touched. Hawthorne flipped the pages until he found a particular passage. “Here,” he said, and he pointed to a line a couple of hundred pages in. “A little tribute.”
Herman read aloud: “On the hither side of Pittsfield sits Herman Melville, shaping out the gigantic conception of his ‘White Whale,’ while the gigantic shape of Greylock looms upon him from his study window.” Herman had to read the sentence three more times, silently to himself, before he could believe it; and even then, he turned the book over and read the spine and the cover, trying to convince himself that it was real. He felt his eyes welling: Hawthorne had mentioned him in a book! He set A Wonder Book aside and opened Moby Dick in Hawthorne’s hands. He used a butter knife to cut the opening pages apart and pointed to the dedication.
Now Hawthorne read aloud: “In token of my admiration for his genius, this book is inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne.” Hawthorne fell back into his seat; and now it was Hawthorne’s turn to read the sentence several times and reheft the volume in his hands. “After all I made you endure!” The tear in Hawthorne’s eye did not quite crest onto his cheek before he wiped it away.
Herman was acutely aware that the other diners were now staring at them, surreptitiously, gawking over their menus and cups and talking behind their hands—two men crying over books! He caught the amused eye of one of the waiters, who must have recognized Hawthorne as a local residen
t; and for once Herman felt protective of Nathaniel’s reputation, even while two big happy teardrops rolled down his cheeks. But if Hawthorne noticed the effect they were having on those around them, he seemed not to care. The waiter came while they were both wiping their eyes, and Hawthorne ordered a bottle of their best champagne.
“Had it not been for you,” said Herman, “I could never have written this book. Not as it is. It is your book as much as mine.”
“Be careful—I may ask for a share of the royalties.” Hawthorne busily cut the pages and opened randomly to chapters here and there, scanning paragraphs and nodding appreciatively. “Don’t worry,” said Hawthorne. “I will also read it in order.”
The waiter came back with champagne, and the uncorking of it caused even more of a stir among the other diners. Hawthorne and Melville made a pact with their eyes to ignore everyone, and they ordered a luxurious meal of roasted beef, potatoes with gravy, carrots, and biscuits, and a bottle of Bordeaux to follow the champagne.
“Have you had any reviews yet?” asked Hawthorne. Herman said that he had not but feared the worst because of the mistake in the English edition, which he explained morosely. Hawthorne said, “The American reviews will be out before anyone here reads the English magazines. The mistake will become known, and it will reflect badly on Bentley, when all is said and done, not on Moby Dick.”
“I wish I could be as optimistic. But I feel almost as if the spirit of Moby Dick himself is rising up to sabotage me. Have you heard about the sinking of the Ann Alexander?” Duyckinck had sent Herman the newspaper article about it, and now Herman related the story of the ship, stove and sunk in the South Pacific by an enraged sperm whale. “The incident happened on the very day in August that I sent my final pages to New York to be typeset,” said Herman. “And the first news of it appeared in the papers four days before my book was published in England. The crew survived but the whale escaped with two harpoons in its head. It is a powerful coincidence.”
“So you think your novel conjured this ferocious living whale?”
Herman felt genuinely superstitious about the incident. “Whales destroy whaleboats all the time—whaleboats being the tiny rowboats that the crew lower from the ship to give chase to their prey—but rarely does a whale attack an entire ship, much less sink it.”
“Like the Essex.”
“And like my Pequod, the account of which you hold in your hand—which, though fictional, has anticipated the real-life attack on the Ann Alexander. It is a story that should not have been told, perhaps—in the same way that the Hebrew name of God should never be uttered, lest it unleash an irresistible fury.”
“You are more constantly in thrall of divine augurs than any religious person I know, my dear Melville. One might mistake you for devout, if one were not paying close attention.”
“The Ann Alexander lies at the bottom of the sea, stove by a whale—an event which, in all the annals of seafaring, has happened only three times. The book you now possess was being typeset at the very moment that ship went down. Draw your own conclusions.” He lifted his glass. “To the crew of the Ann Alexander.” They drank and poured out more champagne.
“And to whales,” said Hawthorne. “And to Moby Dick!”
Their platters of roast beef arrived, and their waiter brought new glasses for their Bordeaux and poured it. Hawthorne asked for a candle, and they soon were dining by candlelight.
“A sperm candle,” Herman noted. “See how cleanly it burns, without dripping. The spermaceti is the only part of the whale not tried out aboard ship.”
Herman launched into a detailed explanation of spermaceti, blubber, whale oil in general, ambergris, the tryworks, and the shipboard processing of materials harvested from butchered whales. He did so mainly because he could not bring himself to ask Hawthorne about his feelings, yet he could also not keep quiet; and something in him still believed that, if he could reduce the world by enumerating and explaining the concrete properties of it, he could still make it real to his own mind—which it was not quite, somehow.
When Herman had finished his disquisition, Hawthorne said, “It seems you have, at least, convinced yourself of the reality of whaling,” and Herman felt completely understood.
“In truth,” Herman said, “I remain unconvinced about reality in general, because the most real thing, the human soul, violates every principle of the known world. What is more real than the soul—the internal experience we have of ourselves—yet what is less substantial and less subject to proofs? Inquiring after the soul leads only to fairy dust and moonshine. It is real only according to our experience of it, and nothing else; but this one unprovable thing is so real that it makes me question the reality of everything else.”
“My dear Melville, the very method of such inquiry destroys its object. One must begin with different questions, as I have said all along. The world itself is the soul of God, and that is the truth so clumsily expressed in the parable of Adam and Eve: it is the alienation wrought by inquiry without heart that causes man to suffer. That is the unpardonable original sin.”
“You mean pride? Pride divorces us from the very nature of reality?”
“Yes. Your inquiry itself is the source of your alienation.”
“And what should I do, instead? Pretend that these questions never occurred to me?”
“No. Just accept the mystery. Explain the whale until there is nothing left to explain and express your soul until there is nothing left to express, and know that both remain mysterious.”
Herman nodded at his book. “But I have already done that.”
“Then be happy.” Hawthorne held up his glass and toasted.
“You are least credible when you speak of happiness, Nathaniel.”
• • •
As their dinners disappeared—and, more to the point, their second bottle of wine—their metaphysics became more circular and their toasting more frequent, and their waiters stood in the kitchen doorway laughing at them. A few guests came and went, dining in much more purposeful ways than the two authors, and by the time Hawthorne ordered blackberry cobbler and Herman asked for apple pie, they were alone in the grand dining room. They finished their desserts over a heated but friendly disagreement about Thomas Aquinas and then ordered brandy.
Herman asked if they might smoke cigars in the dining room. The waiter assented, and Herman produced two cigars from his coat. They lit them at the spermaceti candle and smoked in silence until the waiter returned with their brandy and an ashtray.
“It is all very well to talk of whales and Thomas Aquinas,” said Herman, “but I have a rather particular question about our meeting at Catharine Sedgwick’s party. What did you mean when you said that you had led me to believe things that were not true or that you did not wish to admit? I have puzzled over these words without coming to the bottom of them.”
“I apologize for that, Melville. I was speaking in haste, and I did not choose my words well.”
“You may take your time now.”
Hawthorne stuck his nose into his brandy snifter and took a long drink. Afterward, he did not quite lower the glass, so that, when he spoke, his words reverberated off the inside of the glass before they found their way to Herman’s ears, resounding like a statement and an echo at the same time. This doubling effect—as much as the words themselves—would remain with Herman for the rest of his life, becoming more and more ghostly as the years passed.
“If I told you I loved you, Herman, it would change nothing.”
The words rebounded around Melville’s brain like a prayer said in Latin, its meaning almost comprehended but its words foreign and magical. It was a declaration without an assertion, a misdirection without true bearings: had Hawthorne just declared his love? They were alone, yet still he would not speak plainly.
“If you told me you loved me, Nathaniel, it would change everything.”
“No. Nothing would change. I would still be leaving for West Newton with my family. And you would still be staying in Pittsfield with yours.”
“Everything would change for me.” Herman leaned in. “Surely, you of all people must know that a change of heart means more than any change of circumstance or anything society holds valuable. Isn’t that ultimately the moral of The Scarlet Letter? Be true? Love is not a material change—it is a change of heart—and feeling love at all, especially the mutual and expressed love of one true heart for another, changes everything forever—for those hearts, even if not for the rest of the world.”
“But it is the feeling itself that changes it. Not the telling of the feeling.”
“No. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ The feeling and its expression are not separate.” Herman pounded his fist on the table. “Why will you not say what you feel?”
The waiter returned to the table, with a disapproving frown for Melville. “Will there be anything else, gentlemen?”
Hawthorne said, “No, that will be all.” The waiter left the check, and Herman looked at it as if it were written in Aramaic. “Come, let us be on our way,” said Hawthorne.
Herman refused Hawthorne’s proffered cash and laid his own money on the table. The waiter came back immediately and watched them gather their things and put on their coats.
Hawthorne led the way through the lobby and into the icy night, Herman unsure quite what to do next, beyond following him. Their breath materialized like spirits wispily fleeing their bodies. Down the steps of the hotel, left on Main Street in the direction of Hawthorne’s cottage—they walked slowly, Hawthorne half a step ahead, Herman staring at him in a confusion of alcohol and tobacco and love and exasperation. The street was empty. They were utterly alone now. And still Hawthorne would not speak.
The Whale Page 24