by Jeffrey Ford
My foot hit the razor and it skittered across the floor to Madi, who retrieved it and brought it in an arcing motion away from himself and across the throat of our attacker. A five-inch gash opened in Bartleby’s neck and his head flopped back. A fierce, steady stream of air issued from the opening followed by plumes of fine dust. As Bartleby sank to the floor, Madi threw the razor away and we ran. From above came the calls of the boys peering through the opening in the ceiling. “Get them, Bartleby,” they chanted in their sweet high voices.
Around the corner and up James Street, we found Ahab sitting on my front steps, smoking a pipe, looking dejected. Once I’d stopped shaking, I told him the story of our encounter with Bartleby.
“I wish I’d been there,” he said. “If ever I needed to thrash someone with the boarding ax, it was today. I followed a contingent of the Jolly Host through the Five Points this afternoon and studied them. Five boys, scurrilous louts, made oblivious to life by opium, without respect or cheer for anything. I had to weigh in when they assaulted a young girl selling hot corn on the street. If I’m to rescue my son, I fear I’ll have to keep him in captivity and train him like an animal.”
I let Ahab’s statement go unanswered and entered my house. I’d had enough for that day and for the next year to follow. I still hadn’t come to grips with the fact that we’d just killed a man—albeit a very strange and strangely put together man, but still.
Only a drink would do followed by two more. Madi even joined me.
He took a sip, wiped his mouth, and said, “Where was the blood?”
I had no answers.
Eventually, Ahab came inside and joined us. He still looked dejected by the prospect of his son having been transformed into a beast. To cheer him, I told him what we’d learned from Arabella Dromen, and that we knew where Malbaster would be the next evening. Ahab got up and began pacing. He was filled with a nervous excitement at the prospect of encountering the man who’d led his boy astray.
“You must promise me, Madi, that you won’t kill him until I inquire as to the whereabouts of Gabriel.”
“I’ll do my best, Captain, but I want you to remember that I’m not along on this spree to find your boy. I honestly don’t give a fig about your boy. I have the deaths of two innocents on my conscience. If you wander away again and waste any more of my time, I’ll be gone off on my own.”
“Aye,” said Ahab and he sat down heavily.
“All right,” I began. “Tomorrow, we go to the Palace and enact surveillance before the dinner hour. We have to see where the best opportunities will be to trap Malbaster. All I ask is that you leave me out of any killing. You two have business with him. I’m along only to record the events.”
Misha brought us tureens of oyster stew. After we ate, Ahab retired, obviously exhausted by thinking far too much about his son. I’ve noticed this with my friends who have children, even ones who have not run far afield and afoul of the law. Worry for them ages you, sometimes overnight. I like seeing my niece and nephew when I go to visit Ivy and Tommy for Christmas, but other than that I give the little bandits a wide berth. They’ll sap the very life out of you. Not unlike Ahab, I thought.
Once Ahab was gone, Madi and I had one more drink to wash the image of Bartleby from our minds. I offered him a cheap cigar and we sat in silence, smoke filling the room. Remembering that I had to write another Ahab piece by the end of business tomorrow, I took a chance and asked Madi if he could tell me something about Ahab that wasn’t something the captain might tell me. I was surprised when he answered.
“Ahab, by all accounts of the men who’d previously shipped with him, was a good captain as captains go. Everyone on the ship, unlike on land, was treated equally. Ahab was smart enough to know that out there in the middle of the vast ocean, huddled together in an insignificant craft, we were all one another had. He expected every man to do his job and he was demanding. Even on our fateful voyage, we harpooneers, an Indian from Martha’s Vineyard, Queequeg from the South Seas, myself, none of us white, dined before the others on board since no one else could do the job we did when it came to harvesting the behemoths.
“It was no doubt that the loss of his leg caused the madness to overcome Ahab. Once he sought revenge against Moby Dick, revenge against no less than the world, he was driven by a rage that would cease only with the loss of his ship and the deaths of all his crew. He was, from what I’d heard, different back in those days, different than he is even now that his world has been shattered and he is little more than a walking ghost.”
“Are you, having survived it, not yourself then a walking ghost?” I asked.
Madi nodded. “I’m shattered not by Moby Dick, but by something equally as large and white and ominous. What’s slain me is the treatment of the African in America. You, who’ve been everywhere in the city must know what I mean.”
It wasn’t something I wanted to spend a lot of time thinking about, but it was true. I’d seen it all around town, even though the city and the state had abolished slavery in all forms by the late 1820s. The ruling class’s tendency toward cruelty was as inexplicable and undeniable as a lush’s need for a drink.
“You do know, Mr. Harrow.”
“Yes, Madi.” It was clear he wouldn’t give me a story without my admitting my complicity.
“Do you know that pale thin scar that runs the length of Ahab’s body?”
“I wasn’t aware it traversed his whole being.”
“Yes, I have a story from an old Wampanoag Indian from Gay Head who oversaw the cutting room on the Pequod, an older uncle to my fellow harpooneer, Tashtego, about how the captain acquired that scar. In Ishmael’s book, he gives nothing but vague notions and misdirection on the subject. This is what really happened and perhaps it’s where Ahab’s troubles began.”
The following is what he told me.
14
The ship Ahab shepherded then was the Quincy, a reputable old whaler out of Nantucket. At the end of a proposed three-year voyage, they had made a killing in the Indian Ocean, their hold full of spermaceti oil. They were heading home early, passing through the Timor Sea between the island of that name and Australia. Even the lay of the greenest hand would be a fat pay packet. At the clip they were moving, they stood to reach Nantucket six months early. If Ahab could bring the ship in on that schedule, he would draw a sizable bonus as well.
On a beautiful Thanksgiving morning, the sea calm and the sun beating down, one of the men aloft called attention to a small vessel off the larboard side. The captain was notified, and eventually he appeared on deck with his spyglass. After a brief time spent studying the craft, he gave orders to bring the ship around in order to investigate. He handed the glass to his first mate and said, “Have you ever seen another ship like that?” Something like a cross between a miniature Dutch frigate of old and a Chinese junk. It was painted entirely black and bore black sails.
“It seems abandoned,” said the mate.
“Aye. Tell the men to arm up in case it’s a pirate’s ploy,” said Ahab. The seas around Timor were well known for pirates.
The Quincy was brought around and right up next to the odd ship with two large ribbed, fanlike sails, an exceedingly lofty stern deck, and a tiller instead of a wheel left unmanned at the mercy of the currents. Once the Quincy was close enough so that those on board could look down upon the other ship’s deck, Ahab called, “Ahoy, there.” He called out many times and then had a loaded pistol brought and fired it into the blue sky.
Eventually, a figure did stagger up onto deck, and all were surprised to see that it was a young woman. She had dark hair and a deep tan from the sun and was wrapped in a dress and shawl as black as the sails. She put her forearm across her brow to block the sun and looked up at the Quincy that loomed over her. Ahab called a greeting.
“Help me,” she said, speaking perfect English.
“Where’s your crew?” asked the captain.
“All dead,” the woman replied. “The plague on board.”
The captain drew breath and sighed, for in that instant he knew that this was going to test his ability to get back in time to collect his bonus. “Where are you from and where are you headed?” he called.
“We come from there,” said the woman and pointed to the north. “We’re going there,” she said, and pointed to the south.
“What is the name of your destination?” asked Ahab.
“That way,” she said and pointed.
“I think the poor woman is confused,” the captain whispered to his first mate. “Get the physician.”
Doctor Gasnold, the ship’s surgeon, was summoned and he asked the woman the symptoms of those who’d died. When she was finished describing the bleeding through the eyes and pores, he turned to Ahab and said, “Don’t take this woman on board. I’ve heard about these exotic exsanguinary diseases. They’re virulently contagious. We’ll pull into port in Nantucket a ghost ship.”
Ahab called for Alfred, the half-deck boy, to bring food for the woman and lower it down to her. In the meantime, he weighed what to do. He wished he’d never approached the damned ship. As it was, he couldn’t abandon her. In the end, as night came on, he gave orders for his men to secure a small boat by a long line to the aft of the ship, so that they might tow her at a safe distance behind them. He tried to explain to her what his decision was and why he’d made it, but she didn’t seem to understand.
Still, when the time came, she knew enough to abandon the black ship and climb into the lifeboat. As night approached, Ahab, his first mate, and the surgeon watched the poor woman from the quarterdeck of the Quincy. The dark finally obscured her from view. The captain went back to his cabin and tried to calculate how much time would be added to the voyage by dint of the small boat’s drag.
All that night the woman, just out of sight, wept terribly, and her moans could be heard in the forecastle, spiraling their way into the sailors’ sleep like worms into wood. Ahab woke every half hour from the same dream of white enormity. After the second night, the first mate was found drunk on watch. The captain said to the surgeon, “If she had some illness, wouldn’t it have presented itself by now? How long must the poor woman put up with this? How long can she?”
The days passed, it poured rain and the naked equatorial sun beat down. Her sufferings changed the tone of the nightly lament to a low echo that seemed to come from everywhere at once and make the air cold. Before long, her skin had tanned to leather. She would only eat meat and there wasn’t much given as two of the barrels of salted pork left for the return voyage had gone green. She took whatever water they managed to reach to her in a skin at the end of a long cutting spade. As for the biscuit, she fed it to the fish that followed her boat.
After a night of otherworldly cries, Ahab told the doctor, “I’m going to give her three days more, and if she doesn’t exhibit any signs of illness, she’s coming aboard ship. This is inhuman.”
“You have the safety of the Quincy and her crew to keep in mind, Captain,” said Gasnold.
“My order stands. She’s to come aboard in three days’ time.”
Ahab worried that the woman might not survive the three days. That afternoon he explained to her that if she could hang on for three more days, he would take her aboard. She could sleep in his bunk and he would move elsewhere, and she could eat at his table at night with him. While he spoke, he looked down upon her from the quarterdeck and he saw a wasted figure with a skeletal affect. Her black hair fell out in hanks at a time, and her stare pierced the boat and spotted at the very reaches of the horizon something enormous bearing down upon the captain.
How she managed the energy to keep up her anguished cries, he couldn’t fathom. The ship’s carpenter sidled up next to the captain and whispered that she must be either a witch or a demon. Ahab sent the man packing. “Save your nonsense, sir. You’re not being paid to give spiritual advice.” The man slunk away and no one else dared approach the captain or make a comment about the woman in the boat, although most of them had daydreamed of cutting the rope that towed her.
Before sundown that very day, she began vomiting over the side of her boat. Her body shook. It was hard to believe she was a living woman. The wailing she sent up that night seemed animal in nature. Her every utterance was an ivory needle to the spine. The night was made endless by her weeping. Another night passed, and all on board were hollow-eyed from lack of sleep. On the third afternoon, Alfred, the half-deck boy, who shared a good relationship with Ahab, came to him and told him a secret.
“It ain’t right what the sawbones is having me do, sir,” said the boy. The captain and the lad stood by themselves in the bow just as the ship was clearing the Solomons and heading into the Pacific proper.
“What are you saying, Alfred?”
“He had me feed the poor woman the meat from the spoiled casks for the last three days.”
Ahab was stunned. He told the boy to tell no one. That night in a sea as calm as glass, amid the horrible keening, the captain walked to where the rope was attached to the aft of the ship and taking out his iron knife with the whalebone handle, cut the tether. The instant that line was severed, the livid line of a scar appeared on Ahab, smoking as if he’d been struck by lightning and stripped like a tree. More than one man witnessed this remarkable occurrence. The captain stumbled backward and was caught by two sailors, one of them being the Wampanoag Indian.
More men gathered round the captain and lifted him. They carried him to his cabin and put him in bed. Before leaving, each thanked him for having saved them from the siren. He woke from a fever two nights later to the sound of crying. He staggered forth from his cabin to see what the commotion was and witnessed a crowd gathered round the aft of the ship. He approached his men and said, “What’s the meaning of this?”
“Aye, the meaning,” said Gasnold. “That’s what we’d like to know.”
“She’s out there,” said Alfred. “Just beyond where we can see.”
“It’s not her,” said Ahab. “She’s gone. It’s the death throes of a sperm whale.” No one had the courage to disagree, but all knew exactly what it was. Across the Pacific, round Good Hope and into the Northern Atlantic, they heard her every night. The curse ended only when the Quincy came in sight of Nantucket. It was upon the captain’s return that he discovered his wife was pregnant.
* * *
By three o’clock the following afternoon, we were at the Crystal Palace. It was the first I’d seen it up close, an enormous iron skeleton supporting panels of enameled glass, all a-glimmer on a frosty afternoon. It looked like something from a fairy story. I’d read that it was built in the shape of a Greek cross, four arms radiating from a central dome that rose 123 feet above the two-story structure. Behind it loomed the Latting Observatory, a 315-foot tower from which those who braved the winding stairway could peer through telescopes and see New Jersey, Long Island, and Staten Island.
“The maw of Leviathan, indeed,” said Ahab. The boarding ax was in his coat pocket, and the pistol in his belt. I had no idea what he was talking about. He crossed Forty-Second Street, his top hat slightly askew, and we followed. I’d left my satchel at home to prevent it again being snatched and felt rather naked without it.
We entered the vast structure and it was as if we’d stepped from one dream into another. Behind us was Forty-Second Street. Ahead of us was the future. The crowd around us whispered in awe of the exhibitions; displays of minerals from around the world, the Marsh Brothers’ line of saws, new tools for use in medicine, the marble sculptures of Christ and his apostles, the beds of botanicals, the fossils of ancient monsters. There were so many wonders to behold, all under one roof.
The machines, large and small, whirring, sighing, blowing, grinding, put Ahab in a state. His eyes shifted rapidly side to side, tracking the actions of the unhuman. When I saw him reach for the boarding ax, I caught up to him.
“Ahoy, Captain,” I said.
He turned to look at me but kept walking deliberately forward.
“Slow down. You’re calling attention to us. We need to appear pleasant and unremarkable. Madi’s less conspicuous than you are.”
Ahab slowed. “It’s a strange world they’re growing in this greenhouse,” he said. “The displays of energy from lifeless objects, energy without conscience, it puts me on the razor’s edge.”
“You mean the machines?”
“The damn machines,” he nearly bellowed and I shushed him.
Madi caught up to us and we managed to divert Ahab’s unease by taking a position on either side of him. Eventually, the three of us moved along trancelike, and when our sight fell upon the wonders of the world, we looked right through them as if they were merely colored lights. A half hour after entering the Palace, we found the French restaurant, Amberine. It was situated on the main floor about halfway down the eastern arm of the cross, a dark place with muted gas lighting and two mechanical fans. It was fronted by a large plateglass window through which one could see the deep blue shadows where a handful of people dined at candlelit tables.
We wandered around the exposition for hours until the sun went down. As we walked, we planned. The instant it turned dark, we were back at Amberine. Without stating the reason, we insisted on a table with a good vantage point of the rest of the dining area. I feared they might not let Madi join us, but I’d forgotten that in the confines of that establishment, American intolerance didn’t reign. The new money from Garrick would come in handy as I realized we might be waiting a while before Malbaster made an appearance.
I bought us a bottle of Royer cognac and a few cheap cigars. The waitress brought three glasses. We sat in the dim light, Madi and Ahab across the table from me. The tension was high while we waited for Malbaster to come through the door. Who knew what might happen then? The prospect of mayhem made me nervous. Madi and the captain joined me for the first round. Ahab even smoked one of the cigars and the unusual sight of him forgoing his pipe calmed me for some reason.