Ahab's Wife

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  “Why do you want to lie?” he said nastily.

  “I didn’t mean that time,” I faltered. “I meant now. Now we are safe. This ship is intact.”

  “Isn’t this a ship like any other ship?” he said. He was angry. “The only safety’s here!” And he smote his forehead with the palm of his hand. When he drew his hand away, having dislodged the scab, his palm was smeared with blood. “I’m stove,” he muttered.

  At that moment, I heard someone pass in the hall. That man’s voice, too, muttered, and he muttered the cry of the whaleboats: “A stove boat or a dead whale.”

  “Was that Giles?” Kit asked.

  “No.”

  And from outside, the voice murmured, “Break your backs, boys. Why don’t ye row till you break your backs?”

  “I’ll inspect your lovely day,” Kit said.

  So I gave him my hand and helped him to stand up and then to walk to the door. I was afraid to speak.

  “Lady Una,” he said as he moved uncertainly, “for you are a lady, Una. Giles always said so.”

  When we opened the door, the dark smoke of the tryworks and its awful stench puffed in. The hallway before us was awash in whale blood. Kit grabbed the door and slammed it shut. “You are a witch from hell!” he said. “For you, hell is heaven! But you’ll not take me there. I’ll ’bide with you no more!”

  “It’s only the trying out,” I said. “They’ve taken a whale.”

  “ ‘They’ve taken a whale,’ ” he mocked me. “It’s you with your she-eagle eye who took the whale. You feast on blood and flesh. You have the fangs of a wolf. I don’t want you. I have never wanted you. He was the one who wanted you.”

  “You did want me,” I said.

  Then he lifted his hand and struck my cheek.

  I ran from the room.

  I would not go up to that butchery.

  There was nowhere to go but deeper down. My head rang like a struck bell. Trembling with outrage, I could hardly run, my knees wobbled. You did want me. You did. I pressed my cheek with the palm of my hand to quiet the throbbing. I descended to the hold.

  In that dim space, dominated by the unadorned ribs of the ship, I climbed into a pen of barrels. I sat on the flank of one and cried upon the curve of another.

  Giving Kit the name “love” had no magic power. He hated me. At least at times. The cup of my heart overbrimmed with bitterness, sorrow, pity, anger.

  CHAPTER 66: Starbuck: Ship’s Log

  MONDAY, November 15. Having taken a right whale yesterday, of 40 barrels est., in the midst of the trying out, a naked madman, one Kit Sparrow of Nantucket, ran amongst us in the freezing air. He offered his flesh, in particular his manly member, to us to butcher and rend for oil, if we would but spare the whale. At my order, Mr. Stubb has dressed him and manacled him to the far side of this cabin where I sit writing. I do not know what he has done with his wife. Pray God he has not thrown her overboard, for he raves and curses her. Mr. Stubb is to supply him rum until he falls into a stupor. We are but three days out of Nantucket, if this fair weather hold. All of us lean toward our homes and hearths.

  CHAPTER 67: Starbuck Communes with Mary, His Wife

  EVENING STAR, forever when I sail, your name is not Venus the pagan goddess, but Mary. Though I be no Papist, that name is sacred. That name is all gentleness, steadfastness, affection. Mary means home. If ever Starbuck sink beneath the waves, may the evening star be the last of my beholding. If it be daylight, may imagination, though in me it is sluggish slow, bring to my mind this star. Gentle Mary, would that I could have spoken with your voice today! Would that I could have soothed with your hand.

  I stand in the prow of the Pequod, blessing the sails that billow above my head, for they bring me, Mary, to you.

  The madman’s wife had been missing an hour—let me think it accurately—Captain Ahab said he’d waited an hour for her to reappear (he did not consider turning back the ship, though he thought Mrs. Sparrow might have been thrown over)—Ahab called me to his quarters. Kit Sparrow lay all slumped against the wall, and the odor of liquor was thick in the room. Captain Ahab rarely drinks liquor, but his aspect was nearly as disheveled as that of Mr. Sparrow.

  “Look for her,” he ordered me.

  “Where shall I look?” I asked.

  “You know the ship. You have a wife,” he said.

  I must have been quite blank. I could not imagine you, my Mary, on a whaling ship, nor where on the ship you might sequester yourself.

  “Look in the hold!” he suddenly exclaimed.

  The Hold

  Strangely, Ahab’s intuition was entirely right. I found her amongst the barrels, blind with tears, her shoulders and back heaving with grief. It was then, Mary, that I wished for a woman’s touch upon her shoulder and womanly comfort to come from my tongue. “Mrs. Sparrow,” I said. “It’s Starbuck. We…the captain…has inquired after ye. He wishes ye to rise up now, to come back to the cabin.”

  Mary, Ahab had said nothing of the sort. I knew being in the cabin, confined with her mad husband, was no place at all for the woman. So I amended myself. “Ye are to rest in my berth,” I said. “I’ll just go tidy it for ye.” And I started to leave, but she made no move at all to follow me.

  I felt an utter fool. With all my heart, I was sorry for her and wanted to give her comfort. You, with a touch and a word, would have let her know she was not alone in her misery. But where is my tongue for speaking to any woman save my own dear wife? So I only stood and waited at the bottom of the ladder.

  Eventually, she began to speak, starting with the idea “He has cast me off.” I quickly said that was not possible and I was sure she had done nothing to deserve such treatment. Indeed, Mary, she has always tried to coax him from his derangement and to cheer him, accompanying him in his mad whirls about the deck. She has asked for nothing for herself, she has never scolded him nor addressed him in anger. In all things, I have seen her to be a sweet, resigned wife. And one with courage.

  If there had been the power in me to console, I would have added to her store of courage. But, dearest Mary, sympathetic discourse is as much a skill, a learned and trained one, as standing in the keel of a whaleboat pulled by a bull whale faster than any sleigh on land. I haven’t the legs for it. I haven’t the tongue for it. The urge is there in my heart. I do not think that it is unnatural for men to speak from the heart, but I do not know how. If in this moment, bright star, with your heavenly glitter, you could loose these lips, I would go to that poor woman, kneel beside her, and pour out your benisons.

  But then as now, as I pound my fist on the taffrail, imploring thee, what is there for me to say? The words! The appropriate words!

  Let imagination re-create the scene. In hindsight, what would I have said, as she sat on the barrel, dressed I see now, though it made no impression then, dressed in men’s attire! Brother, I would say. I would help you. Dwell not in the inner hell which is always of our own making. Inside yourself you must give up the illusion of power. That is God’s realm. Your life is like a vast ocean. Can you control the tempest? Can you make the sun to shine? ’Twere naught but folly to think so. Your despair comes from your struggle, from your vain belief that you order the sea of feeling. But despair is like the tempest, and joy is like the sun. God gives us rules for living in nature. Take shelter from the storm; stay not too long in the sun. Prayer is the shelter from despair; good works for others is the obligation of joy at home. Meditate only on the glory of God, his magnificence, his kindness in the most ultimate sense, his ever-flowing forgiveness, his warm love. Admit your lowliness before his plan. Give up the illusion that you can order either your own life or Kit’s turmoil. Trust that Kit can find his way, according to the plan of God. Look you only to your own way, which is in God.

  So it is for me, Mary, when my loins ache with loneliness, with unspent love of thee. In my berth, I close my eyes, and with one hand I squeeze the bridge of my nose. Thus, I pray, sometimes till I hear Ahab stir and know that it is
dawn.

  But soon, Mary, you will hear my knock. Soon I will open my arms to you. Already I have the taste of honey in my mouth, for you are all sweetness, all goodness.

  And this sigh? This long exuding of human frustration. It floats over the taffrail—drops into the sea? rises in the atmosphere? What difference does it make? Those were words I could have said. Yes. And so should I go now to Mrs. Sparrow and say them? They are my exhortation, but are they comfort? She has not much of the Quaker mien. I think she prefers adventuring to calm, activity to quiet. But she does not prefer pain to joy.

  Certainly she is a good, true person. And I believe that she once had hope. What I saw in her was the sudden departure of hope. So it is about hope that I should have addressed her?

  And what did I say in actuality? “Come, Mrs. Sparrow,” I said. “It is always darkest before the dawn.” Those worn-out words. But she did look up, and she did follow me to my berth, where now she lies.

  I’ll make her rose-hip tea. In the square tin with the lovely tight lidye gave me, there is yet a spoonful of crushed hip. It lasted me till home, just as ye promised.

  But do I blaspheme, Dear Star, to talk to my wife instead of to my God? I believe that in Thee, both are joined. Thou be small and isolate like my wife; Thou art ever-luminous like God.

  CHAPTER 68: In the Steward’s Pantry

  AHAB: What, Starbuck? I thought I heard a mouse in here.

  STARBUCK: It’s tea water. I’m heating tea for Mrs. Sparrow.

  AHAB: Ye’ve found a bunk for yourself?

  STARBUCK: Nay. I’ve been on deck. I’ll take his old one in the hurricane house.

  AHAB: There might be contagion there. Who knows how madness works?

  STARBUCK: My mind is clear.

  AHAB: As it ever is. Would I had thy clarity, Starbuck…. No answer? What do you use, then, for tea?

  STARBUCK: There’s still a bit of my wife’s garden in the tin.

  AHAB: After a two-year voyage?

  STARBUCK: I’ve doled it out. My wife swore it would last.

  AHAB: Not even Ahab knows the length of a voyage.

  STARBUCK: She knows I have a sense of things. If there were but one teaspoon to start with and she bade me make it last, I would do so.

  AHAB: Ye are in all things moderate.

  STARBUCK: How fares Mr. Sparrow?

  AHAB: I’ll keep him drunk till harbor.

  STARBUCK: Will his wife like that?

  AHAB: Who knows? I’ve not talked to her. Her life is pleated—there’s more gathered up and stored behind than one can see.

  STARBUCK: Aye. There’s a fullness to her sail that surprises me.

  AHAB: So those brown flakes are of a rose from old Nantucket?

  STARBUCK: Aye.

  AHAB: Let me sniff it. (Puts his nose in the tin.) Rose of Nantucket. Rosa rugosa.

  STARBUCK: Sir?

  AHAB: ’Tis but the Latin name for what is all familiar. I grew up, as did ye, with that fragrance in my lungs. All summer, how the roses bloom in Nantucket, Starbuck.

  STARBUCK: I know it well.

  AHAB: Perhaps I’ll take a house with a garden plot this homecoming.

  STARBUCK: Every man needs a hearth.

  AHAB: The water boils.

  STARBUCK: So, I scoop it out—the last shreds of home in a teaspoon. (He makes the tea.)

  AHAB: Don’t lie in the hurricane house. There’re blankets galore in my quarters. He’s drugged and quiet, manacled on the larboard side. Ye’ll not disturb me. Take the starboard wall.

  STARBUCK: Aye, my captain. And thanks to ye.

  AHAB: Give me the cup. I’ll tell her ’tis from home.

  CHAPTER 69: Ahab’s Comfort

  THOUGH HE HAD taken to calling me Una, as if I were his daughter, when he appeared in the doorway of Starbuck’s tiny cabin, he spoke formally, calling me Mrs. Sparrow and saying he’d brought me a cup of tea. I could scarcely see him because my eyelids were nearly swollen shut with weeping. Nonetheless, the steam of the cup tickled my nose and seemed to open me to breathing. Not even a syllable of courtesy came to my mind, but I sat up and held out my hand.

  He stood no more on ceremony than I, but without invitation seated himself in the one small chair, which he pulled into the doorway. Leaving his shoes in the passageway, Ahab wore only socks on his feet, so as not to soil Starbuck’s cabin with the gore of trying out. As though he were a gentleman caller, Ahab promptly asked a conversation question, whether I had ever been to Nantucket.

  I could only shake my head. My cheek still pulsed with the blow Kit had dealt me.

  “Not so,” Ahab said. “For that’s Nantucket in the cup. Rose hips from Mrs. Starbuck’s garden at ’Sconset.”

  I sipped the brew. I did not want to enter into a polite exchange. But he waited, as though I must now make some civil reply.

  “What friends on Nantucket has Mr. Sparrow spoken of to ye?”

  I cleared my throat. “Charlotte,” I said. The word sounded like a croak.

  “I think that Mary Starbuck would be a true friend to ye.”

  “They are Quakers,” I said.

  “So is half of Nantucket. And ye are not?”

  “I have no religion,” I said, gratingly pleased to be unsociable.

  “Nor I,” he said pleasantly. “Though the Quaker speech wags my tongue.”

  It was my turn to speak, but I sipped my tea. He stirred his feet on the floorboards. At last, I’d made him uncomfortable.

  “My husband regrets his marriage,” I said.

  “But he’s married all the same.” Again, Ahab’s feet scraped about on the floor. “What do ye know of the world?” Ahab asked.

  “Enough,” I answered. Feeling spiteful and audacious, I returned his question: “And what do ye know, Captain Ahab?” I was not angry with him but with my lot in life.

  “Like ye,” he answered mildly, “enough.”

  Then we sat in silence, mistrusting one another. He sat still and gave me no more satisfaction by fidgeting. I drank the tea. In its taste and fragrance was the hint to my own Island, not Nantucket but our Island, our stone home with its roof spread for roses. I thought of the day when up in the Lighthouse the bird attacked me and I fought with it. Then I thought of Giles’s long plunge into the ocean.

  “Our best friend,” I said, “fell, or maybe jumped, from the mainmast of the Albatross.”

  “Was it night or day?”

  “Broad daylight. I was looking at him. The sun stood at his shoulder.”

  “An Icarus,” Ahab said.

  Then I looked full at Ahab—his gray-white hair, his ruddy and weathered but handsome face, his strong, hard body. He seemed himself a kind of sea hawk. Had that comparison really fallen from his lips? My own label—Icarus—for Giles?

  “What did ye say?” I asked.

  “Icarus.” He looked full at me. “Our minds fit tongue-and-groove.”

  “So it seemed with Giles and me,” I said.

  “And when he died, ye married the other.”

  “I loved Kit for himself.”

  “Aye, ye would.”

  “How do ye know?”

  “If I think of the high, snow-capped peaks of Chile, rising straight up from the sea, I see ye there. If I think of the troughs of water, plowed by a gale, there, too, I’ve seen ye, strong-winged. Ye have the sea hawk in ye.”

  I felt afraid. Who was this captain? A male version of myself?

  Starbuck’s cabin seemed a too-close cage for Ahab and me. Birds with such terrible wings should not be confined together so closely. Here, we were both sent to school, imprisoned, a tiny, cramping classroom. Sea hawks, we wanted the sky, maybe some rough rock as a roost, outcropping, spray-dashed. I saw cruel beaks preening feathers, causing each other to shine.

  “I should be alone,” I said.

  “Ye’ve finished your taste of Nantucket?”

  “Aye.” His language came to my lips.

  “Your pinions are not held with wax. They are roote
d deeply in thy very flesh, they clothe a structure delicate and strong as bird wing-bone, native to thine own constitution and being. Bird bone is a lattice inside, a honeycomb filled with air. Ye know that, don’t ye?”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling stronger. The muscles tightened between my shoulder blades, and I sat straighter, readying myself to the effort that was before me.

  “Thy husband’s mind—” he said. “Do ye also know the ship’s compass, housed in the binnacle, may, if lightning strikes, reverse itself? It points wildly, has no idea of north. So it is with Kit Sparrow’s mind. But the compass needle can be taken out. It can be placed on iron, it can be struck till the shock reorganizes the element of the magnet. And again it points truly, knows itself. So it may be with Kit Sparrow. His mind could unscramble, point true again.”

  “On what anvil could Kit’s mind be laid?”

  “Land. Nantucket. Home.”

  The sea captain looked strangely excited. I did not know if land would prove an anvil for Kit, but clearly for Ahab, the idea of land, and of himself upon it, was strange and stirring. So might some landbound man appear if you spoke to him of the sea and distant voyaging.

  CHAPTER 70: Nantucket—the Faraway Isle

  FOR THE NEXT three days, I kept myself in Starbuck’s tiny cell, or I went below and sat among the barrels. The crew brought down the newly filled casks, nodded to me as they went about their work, and I watched the bins filled to their tops and more barrels stored in the walking spaces between. I did not inquire of Kit. My assumption was that he was much the same; that he lay quietly manacled to Ahab’s cabin’s wall. I was sure that Ahab had food and drink delivered to Kit, just as he had to me.