Pinkerton's Sister

by Peter Rushforth

  One of the two quotations she could remember from De Quincey was the one about crocodiles; the other was one about dreams. She would have thought that the words were not especially memorable or significant, but they had remained in her mind, speaking to something inside her, random as all things remembered. They were: It gave him pleasure that he could reach me in the very recesses of my dreams. Each time she brought these words to mind, she saw the face of Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster – with an expression of drooling pleasure on his face (“You tell me your dream!” Snuffle! Snuffle!) – snuggling up close beside her, he become the crocodile, about to kiss her lingeringly with cancerous kisses, sucking out all her breath, and embracing the most private thoughts within her.

  In the second half of the sentence – she abruptly remembered (the words must have lain dormant within her) – De Quincey imagined himself lying amongst reeds and Nilotic mud (she’d enjoyed discovering the word “Nilotic”) with “unutterable slimy things,” and in that last phrase – unmistakably – was Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster being described yet again. She couldn’t remember the identity of the “him” to whom De Quincey referred, the taker of pleasure from the secret dreams of others (it may even have been the crocodile), but she always thought of “him” as a fervent-faced father, rampant with twitching, overgrown with beard, avid for the most inaccessible of recesses, though De Quincey’s father had died when he was very young.

  Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster was seeing himself as a Joseph, a Daniel, a biblical dream-reader from one of those Old Testament stories thought most suitable for children, once taught each week to her Sunday-school class by Kate, and now taught – Alice still felt a sensation of baffled incredulity – by Mabel Peartree. Alice should follow the lead of Joseph’s brothers, for whom she had a certain sneaking regard, as she had for the Prodigal Son’s brother. She knew just how they felt.

  Maggie Tulliver had merely pushed the irritatingly pink-and-white Lucy into cow-trodden mud. When Alice Behaved Worse than She Expected – she had felt, as a girl – she intended to get full value. If there had been a convenient pit in the wilderness of Longfellow Park, her sisters Allegra and Edith would have been cast into it – it would have been deep; it would have had steep sides – at regular intervals throughout childhood. A passing company of Ishmaelites from Gilead would have been offered two trussed bundles to strap onto their camels, alongside the spicery and balm (“Miss Stein! Miss Stein! This is surely symbolic!”) and myrrh. She would have killed a kid of the goats of the Misses Isserliss with enthusiasm and dipped the wine-colored woolen coats of her sisters in the blood. An evil beast hath devoured her; Allegra is without doubt rent in pieces: she had found these words wonderfully satisfying to repeat to herself, especially “rent in pieces.” She should – like Joseph’s brothers with Joseph – hate Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster yet more for his dreams, and for his words.

  It gave him pleasure.

  Yes.

  Oh, yes.

  Alice was the butler, the baker, Pharaoh (she had certainly experienced her seven years of famine at 11 Park Place), Nebuchadnezzar, describing her dreams to the one man who could interpret them. Avoiding the risky “You tell me your dream,” and the ever-present danger that she would enthusiastically relive Miss Etta Butler’s triumphs, he should echo Jacob’s words, “What is this dream that thou has dreamed?” (“Behold, this dreamer cometh,” he would utter unto himself as she arrived for her consultation.) Verily, she should reply in Joseph’s words to the butler and baker: “Do not interpretations belong to God?” This would not have had the desired effect, however, this would not have prevented the eternities of fifty-five minutes in which clouds, pictures, and dreams were interpreted. Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster was – in his own view – a God of gods, a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, listening to the thoughts of her heart. His patriarchal Old Testament beard – well gritted from desert sandstorms, sand trickling down and mingling with the talcum powder beside his bookcase – marked him out as a man at one with the prophets, his visionary eyes searching the clouds on the horizon for camels, weasels, whales. Shepherds with beards as big as sheep watched their flocks by night, clutching their crooks in case crooks came rummaging through their rams.

  One of the blue Dutch tiles around the fireplace in her room showed Daniel in the den of lions. The picture – in reversal of the Elphinstone Dalhousie Barton technique – showed a very large Daniel, and three very small lions, looking like Chinky-Winky in triplicate, a sulky Cerberus. Not even Daniel would have survived a night in a sealed den (Darius’ signet came down on the stone like Papa’s Roman coin on Kate’s forehead) with three farting Pekinese. On the tile next to Daniel – standing in a row in the burning fiery furnace – were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, with their legs firmly planted, like the bottom layer of a troupe of acrobats, waiting for others to clamber on top of them. The little figures moved in the flickering of the flames, as if the furnace were lapping at them uselessly, unburning, unconsuming.

  She should consult What’s in a Dream and Pearson’s Dream Book and see what they had to say about the sheaves; the sun and the moon and the eleven stars; the vine and the grapes; the baskets of bread and the birds; the fatfleshed and the leanfleshed cattle and the corn; the great image of gold, silver, brass, iron, and clay. She would see which of the interpretations Joseph and Daniel would have favored if they’d had those books to guide them in their seeking. The pictures of the dreams were bright on the walls of the Sunday-school room, with the ark, Jonah and the whale, Moses in his little ark of bulrushes among the flags, the crossing of the Red Sea, the nativities, the crucifixions, the fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, the Sermons on the Mount, the miracles. She’d felt quite superior in Sunday-school when most of the other children had made the usual mistake, and drawn baby Moses lying amongst bulrushes, not lying amongst flags in an ark made out of bulrushes. Sobriety Goodchild – not properly grasping what “flags” meant – had gone one stage further, and patriotically drawn a gigantic red-faced baby almost smothered by a massed Fourth of July display of Stars and Stripes, using up most of his red and blue crayons in the process. Moses (very odd to see a Moses minus a beard), a presidential candidate in the making, flourished a flag in each hand, and – mouth agape – looked as if he was giving his all to “And this be our motto, ‘In God is our trust,’/And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave …” How remiss of John Philip Sousa not to have written The Stars and Stripes Forever yet; here was the perfect illustration for the front cover of the sheet music. There’d be massed flags in the windows of Columbarian & Horowitz, patriotic bunting cheering along with this jingoistic juvenile. (“Very – er – interesting, Sobriety,” Miss Augusteena had commented faintly. “Why don’t you show it to Dr. Odom, Miss Augusteena?” Alice had asked, a teacher’s pet of helpful suggestion – “Er … Er …” from Miss Augusteena – and Sobriety had smirked proudly.) The Star-Spangled Banner would have suited Moses as his little personal anthem, like Mrs. Albert Comstock and her “See the Conquering Hero” chiming clock. Huckleberry Finn had thought it was Moses and the “Bulrushers,” probably envisaging cowboy-like rodeo cavortings, stampeding crowds of check-shirted matadors throwing themselves upon rearing Brahman bulls. He lost interest when he heard that Moses was dead. He didn’t take no stock in dead people. Alice had had to resist a Miss Watson-like shudder at the double negative when she first read the novel. A tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on. That was Miss Watson. No need to search too far to find Mark Twain’s source of inspiration for that character. Longfellow Park fairly hummed with literary richness. Semicolons were utilized with a comma-like profligacy, and the pluperfect tense was readily employed in the most casual of conversations.

  First you had a dream, then you looked in a book. This, more or less, was Alice’s understanding of what would be involved in reading dreams. Instead of being locked away behind glass, the books consulted – grease-spotted, flour-dusted – would be spread out like recipe books across a
well-scrubbed kitchen table, the corners of the pages turned down like overshuffled playing cards. The dream was described, a Dream Book was consulted, and the dream was interpreted. Dreamers of cameo brooches would play the piano superbly, or they would be overwhelmed with sadness.

  (“Alice …”

  (Faintly, she heard a voice calling her name, the dreams drawing her toward them, embracing her into their many-leveled immensities.)

  It was as simple as that.

  This was how Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster had made it sound, though he seemed to suggest (by what she could grasp from his Swanstromian vagueness) that dreams were images of the past – what had already been – and not of the future. Nothing could be changed, and things would remain as they were. This was hardly encouraging. It sounded all wrong. Depressed cooks and servant-girls would be deprived of their dreams, forced back into the past from which they had been struggling to escape.

  (“Alice …”)

  “I had a dream last night.”

  (“Alice …”

  (The voice was singing.)

  Annie had always sounded hopeful, as if the dream had been something given, a little gift from which better things might begin.

  Peep, peep!

  M.

  Peep, peep!

  S.

  I see a “D”!

  I see an “R”!

  I see an “E”!

  I see an “A”!

  I see an “M”!

  I see an “S”!

  And what can I see?…

  (“Alice, where art thou?…”)

  Caliban at the window, she waited for the clouds to open and show riches ready to drop upon her as she dreamed.

  She waited.

  (“… I’ve sought thee by lakelet …”)

  She waited.

  (“… I’ve sought thee on the hill …”)

  What could she see in those clouds?

  (“… And in the pleasant wild-wood

  When winds blow cold and chill …”

  (The wild-wood was not very pleasant now, and the trees were tall and dark, shutting out the light, grouped closely together so that the paths could not be seen, a maze grown to rankness, uncontrolled thickets spilling over onto – and blocking – the way out into the open air. The winds were rising, with a low moaning, agitating the branches into restlessness.)

  The electrotherapy, the baths (hot), the baths (cold), and the massage had failed to cure her.

  The hypnotism, the reading of the clouds, and the reading of pictures and dreams had failed.

  She knew what would be coming next.

  Soon.

  On Wednesday.

  On Wednesday morning she’d walk through the looking-glass into the cold dark room beyond, dark and cobwebbed (she’d be caught in Webster’s web like a sucked-dry housefly’s drained and rattling corpse), with the wall lined with fake books. The time would have come to take her away to the Webster Nervine Asylum in Poughkeepsie for an extended stay of weeks, months. It would be time for the rest cure, the S. Weir Mitchell method. That would be the new shape discerned in smoke and shadows. After the talking cures that were not cures, it would be the turn of the silent cure, in which she did not speak, was not spoken to, was not allowed to read or write. If she mentioned that she wrote she’d probably have to burn all that she’d written. That was what she felt. There’d be a cleansing blaze to burn the past out of her, like cauterizing a wound, a moment’s pain for lasting health. A smell of burned flesh, fragments of black burned paper falling from the sky. She’d be freed from the malady of thought.

  Like Mrs. Archbold in Hard Cash, like Dr. Severance of Staten Island, Dr. Wolcott Ascharm Webster knew that a whistle was an essential piece of equipment when you were grappling with loonies. He’d blow upon it – when the necessary time arrived (it was only a matter of waiting) – and two men would come quietly into the room.

  One of the men would begin to speak to her.

  “Be calm, my dear young gentlewoman …”

  “Shh! Shh!” the other man said to her soothingly. (He should be patting her on the back. He should be saying, “There, there!”)

  “… Don’t agitate yourself. You have been sent here for your good; and that you may be cured …”

  “What are you talking about? What do you mean?” she’d cry. “Are you mad?”

  “No,” one of the men would answer. “No …”

  “Shh!” said the other man again. “Shh!”

  (Pat, pat. “There, there!”)

  “… We are not …”

  They’d advance toward her, their arms extended on either side of them, like farmers shooing their animals down the tunnel into the slaughterhouse, cutting off the avenues of escape. Now they’d both be making little “Shh! Shh!” sounds, men attempting to calm a troubled sleeper. There! There! There was where they wanted her to go, down into the dark, brick-lined straw-strewn tunnel that was the entrance to the labyrinth, pat, pat on her back as they guided her the way they wanted her to go.

  (She would not – in fact – be walking across to 11 Park Place on Wednesday morning next week.

  (She would not be surrounded by men who had been summoned by a blown whistle.

  (She would not be taken away to the Webster Nervine Asylum.

  (She would be traveling there voluntarily, carrying her bags, a woman setting off for an eagerly anticipated and much-needed holiday, walking down the zigzag path to the Hudson – crossing and re-crossing, slightly further down each time, the places where she had already been – on her way to the tunnel under the railroad-track that led to the boat landing. The last time she had made this journey, her mother had gone with her. This time she would be alone.

  (S. Weir Mitchell’s method was waiting for her. Then she would be alone no longer. By electing to make this journey, by choosing to go to what she knew would be waiting for her, surely she was providing the definitive proof that – despite her private protestations – she was mad, mad in a way that could not ever be cured?

  (At the rail of the boat, as it began its journey up the Hudson, she’d look back the way she had come. News – as it had a habit of doing at Longfellow Park – had got around, and the zigzag path was lined with crowds, fluttering with white handkerchiefs.

  (“Goodbye, Alice!” Mrs. Albert Comstock was booming, her handkerchief flapping like the mainsail of an Indiaman. “Have a nice time with the loonies!”

  (“Goodbye, Alice!” Mrs. Goodchild was shouting. To demonstrate her sadness, she dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief between waves.

  (Dab.

  (Wave.

  (Dab.

  (Wave.

  (Each brisk flick of the handkerchief dried it efficiently in time for the next dab.

  (“Goodbye, Alice!” the Reverend Goodchild bellowed beside his wife. His handkerchief was so squelchily soiled, so heavily cargoed with unidentifiable lumpishness, that it was incapable of waving. Like a flag in mourning, it tastefully demonstrated the sincerity of his sadness. It hung heavily from his hand, swaying slightly, a dangling and dangerously overloaded diaper, like several hundredweight of cheese curdling slowly into full-flavored maturity.

  (“Goodbye, Alice!”

  (“Goodbye, Alice! Good luck with the gibbering!”)

  “Be calm …”

  “Don’t agitate yourself …”

  “Shh!…”

  “Shh!…”

  “You have been sent here for your good …”

  “You may be cured …”

  “We are not mad …”

  “Shh!…”

  “Shh!…”

  “Listen to my voice …”

  “Be still …”

  “Empty your mind of all thought …”

  “Sleep …”

  (There was a buzzing, like the electric bell at 11 Park Place. The door opened, and she was in the dimness of the hall, the lesser light on the other side of the looking-glass. Max and Theodore – bekannt bei alt und jung im ganzen Land –
scampered closer at her approach, fingers rummaging thoughtfully up their noses. Long-legged and disheveled-haired, skipping and leaping, rich in dubious habits, they looked like the illustration for a new set of verses in Struwwelpeter. What was going to happen to them would not be good.

  (Good.

  (Each Vogelfänger faced an uncertain future, a dark fate.

  (Cheerful Stories and Funny Pictures for Good Little Folks. That’s what Heinrich Hoffman – a man who obviously understood what brought a smile to the faces of young children – promised, as he lopped and mutilated and drowned and, especially cheerful and funny, this one, set light to entire classrooms full of naughty juveniles.

  (Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

  (Cooee! Max!

  (Cooee! Theodore!)

  All night long in the dark and wet,

  A man goes riding by …

  (“Alice …”)

  Late in the night when the fires are out,

  Why does he gallop and gallop about?

  (Buzzzz!

  (The buzzing intensified.

  (It was …

  (It was …

  (It was their electric bell.

  (It was …)

  Loud and clear, shrilly insistent, it finally burst free from the brackets that had muffled it.

  It was Charlotte, ringing at the front door, singing “Alice, where art thou?”

  Arm in arm, she and Charlotte would walk to All Saints’. That afternoon they would say goodbye to Ben. It might still be light.

  It was time for church, time to brace herself for Dr. Vaniah Odom (“back by popular request”) and the Reverend Goodchild.

  It was time for the last service in All Saints’ before the church was demolished.