Laurie Sheck

by A Monster's Notes (v5)

  Beneath the threatening thoughts a calm so pure nothing could rip it.

  I told myself I didn’t care what she was thinking, just wanted to calm myself with books, didn’t mind if she listened. But more and more I imagined the words traveling to her as I read, surrounding her like the whale calves’ sleek, or a loose shelter of breath. Is it possible for beings to breathe and think in proximity to each other, hear the same books, think the same words, and for nothing bad to pass between them, nothing harmful seep in?

  She sat barely moving, fidgeting a little, face down-turned, eyes as if cast inward. But her mother was different, her voice, though it was sounds without sound, or sound transposed into form—even now it’s hard to speak of what it was or how it came—was a small storm or fever with no body to belong to:

  William, Who will take care of my daughters?—I won’t see them grow up—I remember my room behind the castle walls. The field outside called Ghost’s Field. I worked as a governess. At night read pamphlets and books. Knew I must educate myself—Began to write—What is mental comfort, how does it come into the brain? Joseph Johnson let me live above his shop in London. I was frugal, spent nothing on furniture or clothes—Fuseli called me “a philosophical sloven.” I was 29. Remember how after the poor in Paris marched on the King and Queen demanding bread, walls went up all over England?—and ditches, hedges, to protect the great estates—I only ever wanted to be an experiment—it’s justice not charity that’s needed. I never wanted gorgeous words. Wanted language stripped. Plain as undraped windows. Such hatred of the poor—hatred of what suffers and what’s other. Thomas Paine wrote, “Man has no property in man.” “This is an age of Revolutions in which everything may be looked for.” No stillness in nature or the world—

  Claire,

  Sometimes I’d imagine I was the only one left alive, then try to feel whether I’d miss him. That hidden, companionable voice … all the stories he brought me, the ideas, the ways of thinking. The buildings around me intact—mansions, palaces, libraries, hospitals, hovels, all of them empty but still standing. And I washed up on the narrow shore that was myself, only myself. There was no hope of finding anyone alive, the plague had wiped everyone out, yet I went into a painter’s shop and with paint and brush left messages on walls—”Friend if you’re alive come find me in____.” (though I had no friend in mind). I wrote messages on paper scraps, left them on benches, tucked them into windowsills and doors.

  At those times the words I’d heard him read out loud came back, but scrambled, rearranged for this new world emptied of all human breath but mine:

  “To have been born emanates from thought itself;” “each outcry almost imperceptible;” “each damaged design.”

  I’d lie in my bed like that, thinking. Then I’d think how it might feel to be like him, alone behind those bushes. Was he angry? Scared? What did he want what did he dream of? And what to make of the world when every impulse is infected with recoil?—

  I started to wonder if she wanted some glimpse of me again, some sign beyond my voice (I’d guarded my face when I stepped out, kept my eyes and mouth largely hidden) but couldn’t bring myself to step forward, was perplexed I’d ever done it to begin with. Felt angry at the thought she might want this. Every now and then, searching eyes through the bushes, hands very gently parting branches, though mostly she stayed to herself, didn’t try to see me.

  Still, I read and she listened:

  “Isabelle de Montolieu was born on May 7, 1751, in Lausanne, Switzerland. Author of the novel Caroline de Lichtfield and translator of Jane Austen into French, as a child she knew Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In her tale The Canary of Jean-Jacques Rousseau she describes visiting his tomb, and finding at its foot a small box containing a stuffed canary and a manuscript by a child named Rosine.”

  ∼ ∼ ∼

  “Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions. A large bulky figure has as good a right to be in deep affliction, as the most graceful set of limbs in the world. But, fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will patronize in vain,—which taste cannot tolerate,—which ridicule will seize.”

  ∼ ∼ ∼

  “Caroline wrote the letter to Count Waldstein, but ripped it up many times. Finally she gave it to him with shaking hands. She didn’t mention his twisted appearance, and had always showed toward him the deepest respect and what he wanted to believe was affection. Nevertheless, he knew she couldn’t bear to look at him or be near him; she was asking him to let her go. Years later when she returned of her own free will she was surprised to see that his body, damaged since birth, had mysteriously healed itself. From that day on, they lived happily together, reading and talking by the fire in the evenings.”

  ∼ ∼ ∼

  “I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first in Hull… Being the third son of the family and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts. My father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning, as far as house-education and a country free school generally go, and designed me for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea …”

  William, They’re storming the Bastille—The revolution is finally beginning-Then it’s years later and Robespierre’s saying, “Terror is nothing other than prompt, severe, inflexible justice.”—Everything turned ugly, harsh—Hope and goodness poisoned at the core—I’ll never hear our new daughter speak her first words—The mind injures itself resists itself—So much twisting and turning in me now—But the people fought for justice, wanted justice. I lived under the Law of Suspects—Fled Paris for Le Havre where a wall held back the sea. Even then my carriage full of books— Signed my name Mary Imlay—Everything blood-soaked. Thomas Paine was in prison, a white X on his cell door for execution but the guards didn’t see it and passed by—So many chains again and walls nothing stops them— Then I’m alone beneath the river—my heavy clothes pulling me under, I don’t want to live—

  Those night-words formed in air. But in the graveyard I didn’t repeat them, didn’t want the girl to know of her mother’s despair. She’d started bringing me things—hunks of bread, chocolate, oranges, a pen, but I left them on the stone untouched.

  One time she left a note: Why won’t you come out?

  Meanwhile I kept reading:

  “I… Robinson Crusoe, being shipwrecked during a dreadful storm in the offing, came on shore on this dismal unfortunate island, which I called the Island of Despair … I had neither food, house, clothes, weapon, nor place to fly to …

  “Yet how wonderfully we are delivered when we know nothing of it: how, when we are in a quandary, as we call it… a secret hint shall direct us … I made it a certain rule with me, that whenever I found those secret hints or pressings of my mind … I never failed to obey the secret dictate …”

  ∼ ∼ ∼

  “Soundness of understanding is inconsistent with prejudice.

  “Soundness of understanding is connected with freedom of enquiry.

  “Soundness of understanding is connected with simplicity of manners.”

  ∼ ∼ ∼

  “Let us cast our eyes over the history of man, and we shall scarcely find a page that is not tarnished by some foul deed, or bloody transaction. Let us examine the catalogue of the vices of men in a savage state, and contrast them with those of men civilized; we shall find that a barbarian, considered as a moral being, is an angel compared with the refined villain of artificial life. Let us investigate the causes which have produced this degeneracy, and we shall discover that they are those unjust plans of government, which have been formed by peculiar circumstances in every part of the globe.”

  ∼ ∼ ∼

  “David’s Deer live on the eastern coastal plains of China. Although they are very beautiful, many of their parts resemble the parts of other animals: their tails are sim
ilar to that of the horse, their hooves to those of the cow, their antlers to the deer’s, their body to the donkey. Hence, they are also called ‘non-descript animals.’ Their normal life-span is twenty years.”

  ∼ ∼ ∼

  “This want of tools made every work I did go on heavily, and it was near a whole year before I had entirely finished my little pale or surrounded habitation … Having made me a table and chair, and all as handsome about me as I could, I began to keep my journal…”

  Claire,

  The more he included Robinson Crusoe among his reading, the more I spent nights picturing a world more desolate and unsalvageable than Crusoe’s. There was something about Crusoe that bothered me—his faith, his belief that things could be “for the best,” though I admired how he forged tools, built a table, explored the island, gathered grapes to dry and store as raisins. Part of me wanted to be like him but part of me didn’t. I’d say to myself, “It’s the year 2094. The plague has spread through the entire world. There are riches but what’s the use of riches? Crusoe could hope to be rescued, but there’s no hope of rescue here. And after a while Crusoe had Friday, though he called him a ‘creature,’ not a man. And yet he loved him. But here there’s only the empty buildings and the ruins …” Yet you were sleeping nearby, and our father, your mother, Fanny and others nearby. But in the bushes, he was all alone. If he were the product of such solitude, such unrelieved withholding and recoil, what would that do to him, what violence might that carve in him, what would he become? Sometimes I wondered if I hit him with my fists would that forge a connection between us stronger than the one we had which felt like the most tenuous thread, as if at any moment, without warning, his voice could disappear forever—

  William, I’m underneath the water and don’t want to come back up. Plunder. Vengeance. Atrocities. All this talk of “political liberty” while we build walls and more walls—Walls to enclose, walls to pummel, tear down, build back up again—And even though they’ve had their revolution the Americans still trade in slaves, thousands each day. What stubborn ignorance cuts the name of hope with cruelty?—Thomas Paine returns to America distraught and sickly. You don’t know me yet—I have a child by Imlay. I lay her on the shore then wet my shoes and dress to help me sink more quickly. I’m wrong to do this, I know—But everything’s in ruins— Somehow a boatman finds me unconscious washed up by Putney bridge. Brings me to Fulham for help and I start breathing, decide right then I’ll write more Vindications—Man preys on man. Such misery demands more than tears—

  Those days in the graveyard I traveled across many pages which frequently ended in mid-sentence—the books I found were mostly torn—so my travels were wayward, random, disrupted, though maybe the mind mostly travels in this way. Sometimes a page’s beginning was missing, or part of a paragraph remained while another part was gone:

  “The first use of zero as a fully formed number seems to have appeared around the time of Brahmagupta in the seventh century, when this great Indian mathematician tried, but failed, to explain how zero could be divided by itself. The Maya”

  The Maya what? I couldn’t know—

  Or:

  “hdad a city that would have rivaled Rome at its height. But the truth is that no one will ever know for sure the splendor that was Baghdad, for it was utterly destroyed, almost to the last brick, first during a period of civil war among the later Abbasids, and then in 1258 by an invading”

  Or:

  “The southern part of the city of Aosta

  deserted, and seems never to have been greatly

  ulated. One sees ploughed fields there, and mea

  bordered on one side by the ancient ramparts ere

  by the Romans to serve as the city’s enceinte, a

  the other side by the walls of a few gardens.

  Solitary site may, however, be of interest to tr”

  Mostly I tried to read from books that were at least intact for long stretches:

  “In a little time I began to speak to him, and teach him to speak to me. And first, I made him know his name should be Friday, which was the day I saved his life. I called him so for the memory of the time. I likewise taught him to say Master, and then let him know that was to be my name. I likewise taught him to say Yes and No, and to know the meaning of them. I gave him some milk in an earthen pot, and let him see me drink it before him, and sop my bread in it. And I gave him a cake of bread to do the like, which he quickly complied with, and made signs that it was very good for him.”

  And of course I read the paragraphs in air, Mary’s mother’s words, that came like wounded soldiers, determined, emphatic, unafraid:

  William, it was cold under the water but I didn’t care—Cold the way the deepest convictions of mind are cold, the deepest contradictions—Rights aren’t favors—Why should the poor, should women, be expected to act grateful’? I’m accused of inflaming their minds. But my voice is almost nothing—I can’t tell if I have a body anymore, can’t see you—Justice mourns in sullen silence. The river a struggle of mind. Accountings of privilege aren’t history. Where is my writing desk, my—Torn pages of light—Out of ideals of liberty and equality-terror, bloodshed—Nothing makes sense. And still one needs to try—This has been such a period of barbarity and misery I shouldn’t complain of having my share. Such pictures in my mind: the King’s head buried under mounds of lime. Marat dug up, re-buried in the Pantheon—At least Robespierre’s finally gone but what of the 7, 000 market women who rose up with such hope, what do they have now? Burke called them “the vilest of women.” Yet they wanted justice, wanted a world that made sense—I don’t know if I have a body anymore—My baby’s hungry I must go into the air—

  Claire,

  Over time I brought him things, biscuits, chocolate, some bread. Sometimes I imagined we were friends. But often he felt more like a kind of infection to me than anything else—something awful that I’d caught—that burned me yet I didn’t want it to stop. And even though I didn’t fear him, I came to believe I sensed beneath that steady reading voice something I began to tell myself was hatred. Was it hatred of me? Years later when I got smallpox it was as if that hatred was finally writing on my face. Scrawling all over it. That it had been waiting all those years—brewing, taking root, increasing. That he’d planted it somehow, those hours in the graveyard. My ugly, ruined face. I remember walking through the streets glad, finally, to be damaged in that way. The harm visible, overt. The disgusted looks of strangers. Lowered or averted eyes. The giddy justice of it then. Did he hate my fresh-scrubbed skin, the fact that I had a bed to return to every night? Yet he read to me such wondrous things, so why did I even think of hatred? Why did I dream of guillotines, of shredded, mud-stained dresses? Corpses. Atrocities. Bodies floating face-down in the river. Guns. Sabers. Severed limbs—

  Week after week of rustling pages. Hush of the river. Clicking of pebble against pebble in her hand. In my mouth the threatened shelter of each word, outlaws, vagabonds, chained yet wildly tender, weirdly free. My voice for hours on end from the bushes, she listening from the other side:

  “Curse on all laws but those which love has made.”

  ∼ ∼ ∼

  “Ideas are to the mind nearly what atoms are to the body. The whole mass is in perpetual flux; nothing is stable or permanent.”

  ∼ ∼ ∼

  “An infinite number of thoughts passed through my mind in the last five minutes. How many of them am I now able to recollect? How many shall I recollect tomorrow? Some may with great effort and attention be revived; others obtrude themselves uncalled for; still others are perhaps out of reach of any power of thought to reproduce, having never left their traces behind them for a moment. If the succession of thoughts be so inexpressibly rapid, may they not pass with so delicate a touch as to elude forever?”

  ∼ ∼ ∼

  (I’d lost my Crusoe, which was, in any case, missing its last fifty pages. I could no longer read of making tools, planting corn, and finding Friday, couldn’t
know how they’d fared.)

  ∼ ∼ ∼

  “Kue-lin-fu contains three very handsome bridges, each one more than a hundred paces in length and eight paces in width. The women there are also very handsome. The people live in a state of luxurious ease, as the city possesses much raw silk and exports large quantities of ginger and galangal. The city is well-known for a species of domestic featherless fowl clothed in black hair resembling the fur of cats. Its eggs are of a pale violet tint, and are said to taste of rose-petals mixed with fresh rain.”

  ∼ ∼ ∼

  “When thou cam’st first

  Thou strok’st me, and made much of me; wouldst give me