As Dudley lay dying, he still heard the sounds of that moment, the wash of waves, the stropping of the knife, the rasp of Parker’s breath as his eyes flew open—mostly whites—and held Dudley’s gaze. I am a man, the eyes said. I am a child.
Dudley had related his story to all who cared to listen (solicitors, family members, Parker’s kin) in a candid, frank manner because he believed himself to be innocent of any crime. Innocent people did not hide their actions because—no matter how vile—these were still actions and not transgressions. There was a precedent for his behavior. Was it not the custom of the sea? And in the last few decades there had been other cases much like his: the Nancy, the Euxine, the Essex. And although the survivors of the Peggy had suffered through a trial, had they not been found innocent in the end?
What the case revolved around was the fact that he and his crew did not draw lots. The issue was not that Dudley was a cannibal, but rather that he was not a gambler. Brooks, his crew member, was not involved in the suit. He lied, said that he was curled in the prow of the boat protesting all the while, and that after the vile act, he only drank a little blood. Dudley had been forced to relive the whole horror in the courtroom: the great league-high wave moving through the ocean; the keelwood springing open like a fist laid flat; the menacing snap of the shark’s jaws and crack of the oar across its head; the brief sweetness of the turnips. And Richard Parker.
“He was very low,” Dudley said, addressing the court, but he still remembered the feel of the boy’s hair in his left fist, and the knife handle in his right.
The queen withheld pardon, even when all of England, Parker’s own brother included, forgave him. How could she keep him in Holloway prison while she deliberated at leisure? And what about this cell, this isolation, was better than transportation as a convict? Dudley would have leaped at the chance to make the journey once more—successfully—to Australia, even if manacled. Anything was better than this merciless silence. Somewhere in this prison was his co-conspirator, Stephens, that poor man. He had welcomed Stephens onto his boat because of the man’s sense of humor, his tremendous winking, chuckling, warm presence, the way he delivered all the off-color jokes out of the side of his mouth, the way none of the jokes made sense but how you didn’t realize it until you were already laughing. In the silence of Holloway, Dudley thought he heard Stephens’s low chuckle. He said,
“Regina rhymes with vagina.”
He said, “Tell you what, if the Queen had been in the boat with us, we sure as heaven and hell would not have eaten Parker.”
This had made Dudley smile and he wondered if his madness, these simple soothing conversations, weren’t actually real. If this deep silence made it possible to hear the thoughts of other men.
But the pardon did come through and the cheering crowds returned—the same supportive, multiheaded beast that had been there every step of the trial, cheering him forward through the papers, coughing up their ha’pennies and tuppences for his defense. He was a local hero. Because didn’t everybody love a cannibal? Wasn’t he already half-formed at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum?
Australia did not care if he was “Cannibal Tom.” In Australia you could shake hands with a ship owner only later to learn that his first journey to the new world was in the hold, chained to his other companions. Australia was as forgiving to its transported hoodlums as it was cruel to the natives—blackies out by the pier stumbling around, their veins flowing with gin. These natives, so-called cannibals, who couldn’t catch a slow-moving wombat and make a meal from it, even less a more sophisticated quarry.
* * *
I remember asking my mother why she thought this tale fitting—important, even—to tell me. I was ten years old at the time.
“Because he persevered. He survived tremendous odds. He made a new life for himself.” I can still see her stubbing out her cigarette. “Never lose hope,” she added.
I found her reasoning funny. What was I supposed to come away with? That a world where one could escape hanging for cannibalism only to die famously of bubonic plague was a place suffused with hope? Maybe not. But now, when I think of Dudley, I remember that one’s story is never over, never finished, never predictable until one is absolutely dead.
26
The day the bed was delivered, Boris was nowhere to be found. He had tagged the furniture to be moved from the bedroom with yellow Post-its—the Shaker-style bed, the matching nightstands, a modern torchiere—and, most remarkably, the cedar chest that housed thousands of pages of manuscript. He said that he intended to mark his new life with new material, as if I had nothing to do with the new life at all. Ann arrived shortly before the movers, at ten in the morning.
“Where’s Boris?” she said.
“Good morning, Ann.”
She swept past me and into the living room. A fire was roaring in the grate, which made a convenient ashtray for her. “I suppose he didn’t want to be here when the movers got here. I’ll have to supervise.” She marched into the bedroom, leaving me alone in my socks and Boris’s T-shirt. “When’s the bed arriving?”
“At noon,” I said.
Ann came back out of the bedroom and took a long drag on her cigarette. “This apartment’s smoky as hell. I thought Boris wasn’t going to light another fire until he had the flue checked.”
I shrugged.
“You should get dressed, unless you want the movers seeing you like that.”
“I’ll dress. You make coffee.”
Boris and Ann shared a storage space in Williamsburg, and that’s where the extra furniture was going. Ann had some of her larger canvases there and, of all things, life-sized ceramic figures left over from a brief and unappreciated phase in the mid-seventies. Boris had said something frightening and odd the night before about moving out to Long Island or Westchester or Connecticut, somewhere where he could have all his furniture. He’d also said something about children, which he’d quickly replaced with the possibility of owning a dog. Or maybe a cat. He was undecided; he was drinking. I pulled on a pair of jeans. Ann made very good coffee and I was looking forward to drinking it and smoking, without Boris sending me out of the building or up to the roof.
“Did Boris say when he’d be back?”
“I wasn’t up when he left.”
“Did he leave any money for the movers?”
“I doubt it,” I said.
“Typical,” Ann responded. She shook her head, but I could tell that she was pleased that she would have to take charge.
The bed was supposed to be me my wedding gift. Giving your significantly younger wife a bed seemed, if nothing else, in poor taste. In addition the bed was a monstrosity. I’m not sure what wood it was carved from, but it was a dense, grainless variety. The bed weighed close to a ton. A dark, universal stain soaked all the wood, inexplicably sticky in places; Boris said this was due to an ancient resin sealing process, which sounded plausible, although invented. The bed was almost a four-poster. Almost, because the proportions were off, and after some thought it was obvious that at one time the bed had had a canopy, now sawed off. The posts twisted around themselves in a sort of mannerist-meets-Willy-Wonka style. At the termini of these posts was more of the “ancient resin,” which was now looking like a bold attempt at fakery. Was the thing an antique? Most likely. Was it what Boris hoped, an unappreciated Renaissance work of art? Not possible, although certain parts had been cobbled together from a time long gone. And, thrill of thrills, on one of the short stumpy legs there was evidence of the woodworm.
A mattress would have to be specially ordered, and until the thing arrived, we would make do with a futon that bent up at the end, too long by half a foot.
The movers were late, of course, and when the bed arrived they were still struggling with the cedar chest.
“What the hell’s in here?” asked the younger one.
“A life’s achievement,” I said and smiled.
“What are you smirking about?” asked Ann as she stood by the window. S
he had been watching the sidewalk on and off for the past hour, waiting for Boris to make an appearance.
“I am not smirking, Ann. I am smiling. Happy people do this.”
The bed was now filling the hallway. The movers and deliverers were in a heated discussion, first in English, then in Spanish.
“What a disaster,” said Ann, pleased.
“I’m going to take a shower.”
“Now?” Ann disapproved.
“Yes.”
“Is that your solution for everything?”
I had no idea how she’d come to this conclusion. “No. Drinking takes care of most things.” I studied her studying me, neither of us impressed. “My plane leaves in two hours. I’m already running late.”
“And what about Boris?”
“What about Boris?”
“Aren’t you going to wait for him?”
“He knows what time my plane leaves. I have to close up the house, pack my things.” I folded my arms; I was not backing down. “If he wants to spend an entire day shopping for cheese, or whatever else it is that he’s doing, that’s hardly my fault, is it?”
When the car service showed up, the bed was stuck in the hall, one of its resinated posts lost in the ceiling tile, an ominous shower of electric sparks raining down from the hole. I had to crawl on my belly, dragging my bag, to get under it. Just as the elevator arrived, a cloud of smoke (defective flue) billowed into the hall and smoke detectors began to buzz from many different sectors. I think Ann was yelling at me, but I didn’t listen. I felt free, more free than I had in months, and was nothing but happy to be leaving.
By the time I got to Newark the sky was a threatening purple. Huge, cottony cloud banks were piled up, giving the sky a deeper dimension—less of a blue flatness—walls of cloud that I imagined might hide an angry God: bolt-wielding, fickle Zeus, or Hephaestus (god of blacksmiths, gimps, and cuckolds) himself. Perhaps not the best day for flying, but probably better than snow. The flight was delayed a half hour, which was normal. I called Arthur first.
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” he said, “but it can wait until you get here.”
“What’s wrong?”
Arthur paused. “The leak in the bathroom seems to be getting worse.”
Which probably meant that the house was getting ready to break free from its moorings and float off to Turkey, like Noah’s ark.
I still had five minutes before my flight boarded, so I decided—in a generous moment—to call Boris’s apartment to see what was going on. Ann picked up the phone on the first ring.
“Boris?”
“Katherine. I guess Boris never showed up.”
“I’m worried.”
“He did this the day of his party. He’ll be there in a couple of hours, with Chinese takeout.”
“He would be here to see his bed arrive. He would be here, Katherine. I’m calling the police.”
“Ann, relax. You can’t call the police anyway.”
“Why not?”
“Actually, you can call them, but they won’t do anything for two days.”
“How do you know?”
“Law and Order.” There was a pause here as Ann lit a cigarette and I wished I could. “Ann, I don’t know why you’re so worried. I really don’t. Boris is fifty years old. He’s been gone, for what, four and a half hours? Is that really so unusual?”
“I trust my instincts. I’m going to look for him.” And she hung up.
Arthur came and got me at the airport. I’d offered to take a cab, but he wouldn’t let me. His van was at the curb, engine running. He’d decided against driving my Rabbit because of the hole in the floor. Everything was flooding and the world was loud— trickling, splatting, drumming water and the thump-wump of the wipers. Kevin was nervous, whining on the seat between us, his eye whiskers twitching with concern.
“All the snow is melting,” said Arthur. “A lot of places are in a state of national emergency.”
“Ah, federal relief.” I rubbed my head. “I’d settle for an ibuprofen.”
“How was New York?”
I shrugged. “I got married.”
“To Boris?”
“Are you angry?”
“No,” Arthur looked in the rearview mirror and then the side mirror. He stayed in his lane. “I think it’s sexy. You’re a married woman. I’m your boy toy.”
I started laughing. I grabbed his hand and held it. “I’m glad I’m home. Sometimes I get so ... tired.”
“From doing what?”
“I’m not really sure.”
“You seem sad,” he said.
“Oh I am, a bit.”
“Why? Am I not enough for you?”
“Of course you are.” I rested my head on the window. “Yesterday was my mother’s fiftieth birthday.”
“Tough day for you?”
“No, actually. I forgot. I forgot it was her birthday until this morning. I should have done something for her.”
“It’s not too late,” Arthur said. “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”
“No, she’d understand, and that almost makes it worse.”
Arthur nodded. He thought he understood, which was fine with me. “What is it with you and your mother?”
For a moment I was transported back to the hospital. I saw my mother lying in the bed surrounded by stern-faced nurses, my father’s own grim face, the lights bleeping all around her. “Her illness is frightening. Sometimes I worry that I’ll get it. I’ll find myself in the hospital, unable to eat, starved to skin and bone. She was such a beautiful woman, but last time I saw her she just looked old.”
“I thought she had lupus.”
“She does.”
“But you just said...”
“Are you listening? Because that’s all I need right now. Not an inquisition.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sometimes lupus attacks the nervous system. Sometimes it makes people irrational and violent. My mother hallucinates.”
“Doesn’t it just give her headaches and make her tired?”
“Usually,” I said. “She has a rare form of the disease.” I looked out the window and Arthur knew enough to keep quiet, that the conversation was over.
Boris had gone missing on a Tuesday. On Thursday, Ann called the police. And she called me. Almost hourly. I was involved in a constant battle against the rising water. The basement was flooded to my knees, the floor of the house was squishy, the bathroom one big, cold shower. I left my towel on a chair outside the door. I had to run from hot water through cold water, or use the umbrella. I wore a raincoat onto the toilet. The endless rain and endless ringing of the phone were conspiring to drive me crazy. But I was lucky. Many people in Maine had had to leave their homes. Animals too. The rising water table had brought an onslaught of displaced rodents, which Kevin, bless his canine heart, had taken on. After finding a mouse—dead—in my slipper with my naked foot, I had started checking all my shoes before putting them on. Still, the mice leaped from the cabinets, scuttled out from behind the coffee, scrabbled around in walls and at night, chewed at some beam right above the bed in the bedroom. Arthur and I were exhausted and Kevin’s nerves worn raw. And this after only three days of rain. The forecast predicted more.
There was some sort of open gutter that ran by the side of the house like a seasonal brook. I thought it might be full of leaves so I put on my coat and went out, with Kevin, to see if there was something I could do. Arthur had gone to Builders Square to buy some tarps. He was going to tack them onto the roof over the bathroom. The rain had washed the snow off the bushes. Birds were flying around now—fish in the air. I pulled a few handfuls of composting vegetation from the gutter, but it didn’t look like the gutter had been blocked. Then, while on my knees, I heard an ominous creaking. I looked up just in time to see a glacier-sized plate of snow sliding off the roof toward me. I jumped back just in time and the snow slid onto the ground with a massive boom. Kevin, whose an
xiety had been a problem, was taken by surprise and shot off in the direction of the woods. Two hours later, he was still at large, and when Arthur came back from town with the tarps and some groceries, I was concerned. I had a bag of Doritos in one hand and the umbrella in the other.
“Kevin’s gone,” I said. “I’ve been calling him for ages.”
“What are the Doritos for?”
“Kevin.” I must have looked desparate.
“Go inside. Take a break,” said Arthur. “I’ll find him.”
Inside, the phone was ringing again. I was feeling emotional and raw, and I suppose it made me generous. I might have some kind words for Ann, who was still searching passionately for Boris. I’d tell her that he might have gone to Russia. He had said something about his father being ill—this the father who had had two heart attacks in the last six months. Maybe Boris, in a fit of filial duty, had gone to visit him. Who knew?
I picked up the receiver. “Hello.”
“Katherine. How are you?”
My hand went numb. It was not Ann who was calling. It was not Ann, but my father. My father, who I had managed to avoid for nearly two years.
“How are you?” I returned.
“I am quite well, thank you.”
“Glad to hear it.” There was silence. “Dad, why are you calling?”
“I understand you have suffered a loss.”
“I have?”
“Silvano, your husband.”
“I appreciate your sympathy but, really ... This is not a good time for me to talk.”
“Katherine. Katherine. You must talk to me. You see, I am very concerned.”
I owed this intrusion to Rand Randley. Boris had given Rand my father’s information back when the deed to the Hidalgo Ranch had passed into my hands. Now, Rand was in possession of Silvano’s jewelry and he wanted to get it to me. Boris wasn’t answering his phone because Boris wasn’t there, so Rand, after a week had gone by, had thought to contact my father. My father had been reserved with Rand, but after getting off the phone with him, did a Google search on Silvano’s name. I suppose after reading an article in Newsday (which went into splendid detail) he had thought he should call me. Parental support and all that.
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