Mobius Dick

by Andrew Crumey

  When he first stayed at the Villa Herzen, stricken with tuberculosis, Schrödinger had completed only two short papers in a period of seven months. One of them was about electrons orbiting atoms, and their quantized energy levels which he had mentioned to Hinze during dinner. Schrödinger had applied a discovery made by his colleague Weyl – his wife Anny’s lover – concerning an ambiguity of nature called gauge invariance, and Schrödinger found that for electrons, this led to the introduction of terms involving the so-called imaginary numbers, such as the square root of minus one. What did it mean, for these unreal objects to enter into physical descriptions?

  Then Schrödinger heard a noise. It came to him through the sealed door behind the curtain, and it was unmistakably the kind of sound that earlier in the evening he had summoned only in fantasy, while relieving himself in the small toilet beyond the kitchen. It was a woman, moaning in sexual ecstasy. Schrödinger, frozen at his desk, listened to the silence that followed, until it came again, rising like a wave that swells and discharges itself against the shore in a burst of rolling foam.

  ‘Ooooo-AHH!’

  Schrödinger softly drew back the red curtain. The door, he realized, led to an adjoining room. If he were to pull the desk clear in order to investigate more closely, he risked disturbing the woman, whom he took to be the waitress, finally enjoying the completion of an act that had been teased out over a span of hours. The neighbouring guestroom, he supposed, lay empty and hence available to the more adventurous members of staff. Or else it was indeed a cupboard in which the waiter and waitress had managed to install themselves, there to howl like cats on heat throughout the whole long night!

  Schrödinger gently pulled his chair aside, careful not to scrape it on the floor, and switched off the light. He now could see that another light still glowed beyond the door, its luminescence seeping round the thickly painted edges. This time, however, there was no space through which Schrödinger could study the waitress’s copulation; instead he was left to imagine it, seeing in his mind her large, soft breast, kneaded in her lover’s hand.

  ‘Ooooo-AHH!’

  There was something almost forced about it; like an exercise meant to improve the capacity of the lungs. Perhaps this was Schwarzkopf’s latest gimmick. And then Schrödinger heard a knock so loud he thought the door being struck was his own. It came from the next room, however; an abrupt rap, followed without pause by the rattling of a key, the door’s opening, and then a voice that Schrödinger recognized at once.

  ‘Very good, my dear.’ It was Hinze, closing the door behind him and advancing, Schrödinger surmised, towards the room’s solitary female occupant.

  ‘Ooooo-AHH!’ she repeated, as if for his benefit.

  ‘Now then, Clara,’ he heard Hinze say. ‘That is enough for the time being. You can practise again later. Meanwhile, let us go back into the mountains. Let us ascend the stony path together … That’s right, watch it sway to and fro … let your limbs relax. One … two … three … There, it’s done. Where are you?’

  ‘Walking.’ Schrödinger heard her voice for the first time, and it was like the heavy murmur of one who has been drugged. Hinze had hypnotized her.

  ‘Where are you walking?’ Hinze asked her.

  ‘In the mountains.’

  ‘That’s right. And it’s a beautiful sunny day, isn’t it? You’re very warm, Clara. Let me help you cool down a little. There … it’s easier to move now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re walking along the path. Can you see the bare, grey rocks?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And can you see the withered tree?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And are the clouds like white fingers against the sky?’

  ‘Yes. Like fingers.’

  ‘Very good, Clara. But now what’s this in front of you? Go on, look at it. Can you see what it is?’

  ‘A snake.’

  ‘That’s right, Clara. Are you afraid of it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And do you know what you must do with it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go on, then. That’s right … yes … oh, yes. Thus says Zarathustra.’

  Schrödinger listened with horror as the sounds of sexual gratification from the next room became unambiguously Hinze’s own.

  ‘Taste your fate, Clara. Is it not sweet? All of human history is in your mouth, my child. Mind your teeth, though. Don’t want to be too much like that shepherd boy, do we? Yes, my love … that’s right … Ahh!’

  After a moment’s silence, Hinze spoke with complete nonchalance. ‘Well, where have you been today? Was it the sick man again?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was still as flat and lifeless as before.

  ‘And was there a piano nearby?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Your hallucination makes a great deal of sense. Now, were you able this time to see the features of any person present? Was there a man with a big moustache?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Hinze sounded dissatisfied. ‘We really must try a little harder, Clara. Next time this particular vision of yours occurs, I want you to try and take in as many details as possible. I’m quite sure you ought at least to notice the music that’s open on the piano – I’m certain you’ll find it says Manfred somewhere.’

  ‘No music,’ said Clara. ‘Only pages near bed.’

  ‘Oh, not all that again,’ Hinze said with growing impatience. ‘Clara, you really must understand that the only way to resolve your problem is to trust my judgement, not your own. I suppose you saw the old lady again?’

  ‘Leaning over sick man in bed.’

  Hinze was exasperated. ‘It makes no sense at all, Clara. There was no old lady when Nietzsche saw it, so I’m damned if I’m going to let you get away with making one up.’

  ‘Old lady,’ Clara repeated. ‘Two men. And the third one, sick in bed. Schumann.’

  ‘Are you talking about the music on the piano, Clara? Well, at least we’ve got the right composer at last!’

  There was another knock, only this time it was on Schrödinger’s door. Hinze must have heard it too, since he fell silent. Schrödinger quickly pulled the curtain back in place, moved away from the desk and switched on the light. ‘Come in,’ he said, speaking softly so as not to alert Hinze to the ease with which sounds were shared between the adjoining rooms.

  Schrödinger’s door opened and he saw Frau Schwarzkopf, holding a sheet of paper in her hand and bearing in her features the expression of one who had not long ago been crying. Her eyes were rimmed with sadness, her make-up blurred; the lines of her handsome face were etched deeper than before.

  ‘I hope I am not disturbing you, Herr Professor,’ she said meekly.

  ‘Not at all,’ he told her, straightening his necktie as she walked into the middle of the room, there to inspect it briefly with a few quick glances from her sorrowful eyes.

  ‘I brought you the letter,’ she said.

  ‘Letter?’ Schrödinger thought for a moment she meant the one he had left on the train.

  ‘I told you about it earlier,’ she said. ‘From the American writer.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Schrödinger. ‘How kind of you to bring it so promptly. It could have waited until tomorrow.’ He had no interest in seeing it, and would have preferred to listen for further activity in the next room.

  ‘Well,’ Frau Schwarzkopf said with a note of disappointment, ‘perhaps I should put it here on your desk for you to look at another time. I’m sorry to have bothered you.’ She laid the letter beside Schrödinger’s notebook, then withdrew towards the open door, pausing there.

  ‘No, please,’ said Schrödinger, ‘I’d be very interested to read the letter now.’

  Frau Schwarzkopf closed the door behind her. ‘As you wish,’ she said, leaning back into the door so as to seal it. As she did so, her bosom swelled beneath her silk gown in a signal Schrödinger thought unambiguous. And at almost the same moment, he heard the op
ening and closing of the neighbouring door, as Hinze slipped away from Clara’s room.

  Frau Schwarzkopf came towards the desk where Schrödinger stood. ‘Please, sit down,’ he told her. There were three chairs in the room, but she chose the edge of the spare bed, crossing her legs when she placed herself upon it. There was no need for subtlety, Schrödinger reflected. They were both old enough to know that once the sexual contract has been agreed, even by the merest glance, completion should not be delayed. He lifted the page on his desk, noticing it to be typewritten.

  ‘It’s a transcript of the original,’ Frau Schwarzkopf explained. ‘The handwriting was very hard to decipher. For all I know, it’s full of mistakes. But then, life is full of mistakes.’ Schrödinger looked round at her and saw how carefully she had positioned herself, the better to display her cleavage. He came and sat down next to her, and a moment later they were kissing.

  Her lips tasted of alcohol and cigarettes; her breasts, when Schrödinger reached for them, were as full and heavy as the waitress’s, only drier, he fancied, reminding him of fine leather. The necklace was still there, that had once hung round an old woman’s gizzard; but Schrödinger, like Frau Schwarzkopf, was too preoccupied to worry about removing it. The two of them were soon stretched fully on the bed, pulling at whichever items of clothing formed a hindrance to the sex act. He had never expected anything like this to happen; he had never in the past found Frau Schwarzkopf particularly attractive, nor had he received any previous suggestion of interest from her. But everything in this world is an accident; and through sex, we can momentarily break free of Maya, allowing us a glimpse of Brahman. In sex, Schrödinger had always firmly believed, all men become one man; all women become one woman. Thus it was the young waitress beneath him; it was Clara he was penetrating, and also the distant beloved who should have been here with him now, and who was instead being serviced by her own husband, freshly harassed from a parliamentary debate and thinking about his mistress. In such moments of transitory delight, visions flit between lovers everywhere, joining them in a secret union. This, for Schrödinger, was life and death in purest form, a brief taste of the infinite.

  Too often, though, the act falls short of its mystical potential. As Frau Schwarzkopf clutched him with her thighs, his mind chose to portray for him the complex phase factor of the electromagnetic gauge transformation. And then he was finished.

  They both got up, neither looking at the other as they each restored their dignity. Frau Schwarzkopf made use of the washstand while Schrödinger contented himself with his handkerchief. Then from the next room came a sound he’d heard before.

  ‘Ooo-AH! Ooooo-AHH!’

  He looked round towards Frau Schwarzkopf, who was now more naked than when they were making love together, and the two of them broke into a laugh.

  ‘Do you know what that noise is?’ Frau Schwarzkopf questioned him.

  ‘I think I can guess.’

  ‘Oh no you can’t,’ she said. ‘It’s not what you think. According to Otto, it’s the sound of a whale. He makes Clara pretend to be one.’

  ‘A whale? What on earth for?’ Schrödinger asked.

  ‘So that she can rediscover the species memory, or something like that. Apparently we all evolved from sea creatures.’ Frau Schwarzkopf clothed herself once more, and as she checked herself in the mirror to the floating accompaniment of Clara’s marine vocalizations, said casually, ‘Have you read Tomcat Murr?’

  Schrödinger froze. It was the novel he had left on the train. ‘Why do you ask?’ he said, wondering if he was about to be blackmailed.

  Frau Schwarzkopf, still looking at the mirror, directed her gaze towards his reflection. ‘It’s why we call her the Invisible Girl,’ she said, then turned. ‘It comes from the book.’

  Schrödinger could not recall having reached that part; he remembered only the philosophical musings of a cat, which had sent his mind along paths of its own during the slow, meandering train journey to Arosa. The coincidence, far from being dramatic, was merely laughable.

  ‘We all know what Hinze does with her,’ Frau Schwarzkopf added.

  ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘Why should I?’ On Frau Schwarzkopf’s tired face there was a look of indifference bordering on callousness. ‘It’s his business.’ She made a final adjustment to her gown, then pointed to the letter on the desk. ‘Shall I take it now?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said Schrödinger. ‘I really would like to read it.’

  ‘As you wish.’ She walked to the door. ‘Goodnight, Herr Professor.’ Then she went out, and from the next room, the whale-moan rose as if in farewell.

  Schrödinger sat down at his desk, and began to read the letter.

  Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne

  November [? illegible] 1856

  Our meeting, friend, was not as I had wished it. Liverpool, your home, was as welcome to me, as colourful and as strange, as an Arab bazaar, but there are regions of this island stranger still. I told you of my intention to find out, for the benefit of the little book that is my harmless diversion, the ancestry of the Melville line, which task has taken me to the mountains and rivers whose praises Scott has sung so finely. I mean Scotland, where my forebears were born, and from where I write.

  Let us feud no more, Nathaniel – or are we to become like the heathen clans who spilled their brothers’ blood in this wild place? You were unsuccessful in your efforts to win me a consular appointment like your own. What of it? Believe me, friend, I feel no resentment. Such honours are like robes, and whose shoulders they fall upon is the domain of fortune, and of fate. Yes, your star remains in the ascendant: I see everywhere the works of the good Mr NH, and am glad of it, for your renown is well deserved. I see my Typee disappear from every shelf, and with it the last of the fame I knew ten years ago. That saddens me – but do I blame you for my misfortune? No more than sinking Sirius loathes the ruby light of Antares! When we spoke together in Liverpool about Moby-Dick, now five years closer to being completely forgotten than when first the public were granted liberty to spurn it, I was not so dismayed as you would have it. The tale was botched, as all mine are, but better books will come. Nor was its dedication to you, as you hinted, made in any hope of advancing its cause. No, a book must fight its own campaign, and if my Whale be bloodied, I wager it will sink and rise again, for ne’er was monster so incapable of being killed by critic’s feeble barb!

  I envy you, friend, yet still love you. Is it not the highest praise, to be envied? Were a thousandth of your gift within my grasp, would I not be blessed?

  Such dark thoughts need not cloud friendship’s skies. I recall the happy gathering at Stockbridge where we first met five years ago – we were already acquainted through reading one another’s books, long before the shower of rain that brought us sheltering together: two souls separated in Platonic chaos, now rediscovering each other at last! Must we return to the darkness of estrangement? Alas, in Liverpool of late, I offended you, and your family. Sir, if a million apologies would make good the rift that one, it seems, can not, then you would be shipping apologies by the bushel.

  I speak too much of myself and my misfortunes. Forgive me, friend, you know my foul habit of introspection well enough already. In truth, my journey from Liverpool to Scotland was made not only for purposes of historical inquiry. I desired moreover the solitude and tranquillity in which a man may weigh himself as on a scale – may judge his worth before the court of Nature, with the swoop of eagles as his counsel, and annihilation his threatened sentence.

  It matters little, then, that my search for Melvilles past has turned to such a merry chase. Many there are, in every town, but what have any of them to do with me? Does the fiery blood of Andrew Melville course my veins, who sent heretics to their flaming end? How many books would I likewise put happily on the pyre! Or Jessie Melville, seamstress? Her grave is but a bookmark in the dictionary of the forgotten. And there too go I! Typee will outlast me, and perhaps my new Confidence-Man, b
ut what else? Moby-Dick, as gravestones go, is light and easy to misplace.

  The family threads, I’ve found, are roots innumerable and too fine to trace. Why seek them, if the plant be barren of fruit? Yet I have toiled, in the few short days since I saw you, on the book that will be my best. I do not mean the family history, that is but a trifle, nor The Confidence-Man, which is done and no longer my concern. It must blast its cannons beneath its own ensign. No, a finer book has unfurled its sails – and it is called Agatha.

  Yea, this will be the work that saves me – I am filled with its promise. And do you not recall that I offered you the tale four years ago? I gave you the plot and told you to write it out, since I feared myself inadequate to the task. And you refused! Yet I bore no ill feeling on account of the matter. Instead the heroine Agatha has slept patiently and now is ready to come into the world – not on your arm, though, but on my own, and decked in all the finery I can give her. I shall write this tale; and if you would but clasp the hand of friendship one last time, my new book will be dedicated to you.

  I have found myself in a hamlet called Ardnahanish. There once were Melvilles here, they’ve fled like rats, and not a tombstone marks their passing. The churchyard is romantic and overgrown, though the church is of but recent make, subscribing to a local Presbyterian sect more unfathomable than the Messina straits. The minister, seeing my dark and thoughtful countenance, sought to know my business in the town, and when he heard my accent, found it something comical. Even village children flock to hear the American tongue, as though I were a travelling circus inside my own coat. As for their speech, it has the thundercrack of Ossian about it – the ring of myth and legend, the hardness of winter rain. Thus speaks Carlyle, in London parlours, hammering his words as though they were rocks to be broken. Here they call a lake a ‘loch’, saying it like the Germans – and when the minister first spoke to me, I thought he was using Erse, which is the normal language of these parts.