Ahab's Wife

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  “Philosophies! I would but learn the way.”

  “Your face is flushed”—he was not blind—“and you are with child. Chat a bit.”

  I sighed. “Because I am pregnant”—I said the word boldly, and he stiffened—“my feet may swell if I stand still. Let us walk toward Mr. Emerson’s house and chat as we go.”

  “But I was going the other way,” he protested. “This will take me back along the way that I have come. I don’t wish that.”

  “Then point the way.”

  “I will walk back partway,” he conceded.

  And so we started off, slowly, through the brilliant woods. We both were silent.

  “There is a particular reason I don’t wish to return to Mr. Emerson’s house.”

  “What is that?”

  “We have quarreled. Your Margaret Fuller and I have disagreed.”

  “To disagree is not necessarily to quarrel,” I answered.

  “She is exasperatingly opinionated. She is too vivid, too bold and tenacious, too instinctual!” He thundered these words as though he were behind a pulpit instead of treading on the fallen leaves through the woods. “Even Mr. Emerson says that she is addicted to the superlative. ‘The grandeur of this fall is unmatched by any other.’ ‘The crimes against the red man and the black man are the greatest possible national sin.’ ‘The body is the most wondrous gift bestowed by God on man.’ ” He mocked her with his tone of voice as he pretended to quote my friend. Yet she did hold such views.

  “And what is your opinion of her opinions?”

  “Jesus Christ is God’s greatest gift to sinners. The body embodies and perpetrates Original Sin. It is the very vessel of the devil.”

  “I think not,” I said coolly. “Are you a minister?”

  “Nay. I am a writer.‘Nothing from America has yet to match the literature of mighty Europe’—she says that, too. She reads German and French, Latin, and even some Greek as though they were English.”

  I smiled, for I recognized my own envy of Margaret’s erudition in languages. I said nothing. Here was a man who resembled my father, philosophically, but I did not feel intimidated. He amused me, whoever he was.

  “What do you write?”

  Here he apparently quoted a sentence he had written or intended to write: “ ‘I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale’s jaw bones.’ ”

  “What a pretty sentence! It touches me, beyond its internal charm and coherence, in two quite strange ways.”

  “What associations does it set to resonating?”

  “My husband is the captain of a whaling ship, and he sometimes brings home ivory artifacts. And Susan. Susan is the name of the best friend I ever had.” Here I would very much have liked to be able to see the expression in his eyes, to have some clue to what degree of respect he was willing to grant my private associations. I would have liked to talk about my dark sister Susan to this black-clad man. Perhaps we were all congenial beneath the outer layers.

  “But when you speak of the intrinsic coherence of my little sentence—what are you thinking of?”

  I sighed. “Recite it again.”

  “ ‘I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale’s jaw bones.’ ”

  “Oh, I do love the sentence,” I said.

  “Please, speak! Just ramble on as you like. I won’t criticize whatever you say.”

  “Well then, I like the concepts. A cottage for two people—especially one built by one person for the other—is as cozy and contained as can be, but straightway you give the place a gateway and the outer world is admitted, after all. Then you surprise me by moving from humble, domestic architecture to a term used for the great cathedrals of Europe—the Gothic Arch. But then comes a totally surprising idea: the Gothic Arch is made of whale’s jaw bones. There’s nature, most unexpectedly and grandly evoked. If man has produced Gothic architecture, well, nature has produced the whale.”

  “Perhaps now you’re straying into associations with your husband’s domain?”

  “Anyone knows that whales are mammoth. That no greater creature exists on earth and that man has had nothing to do with creating that wonder.”

  “I grant your point. You do speak impersonally about the sentence itself. I thank you.”

  “I have not finished. But perhaps man is not ascendant in your sentence after all, for the whale is out of his element, rendered useful inland by man. Ah, but the bones suggest death, and in that, man is very much a part of nature, his cottages—or cathedrals—notwithstanding.”

  “Has Margaret instructed you in literary analysis? But you are not only more concise than that long-winded, superlative-addicted lecturer but more precise, too.”

  “I grew up at the knee of a mother who loved poetry, and I have tried to understand not just what it means but how it achieves its meaning, all my life. Your sentence gleams like poetry.”

  “Go on.”

  “I wanted to speak of the sounds in the sentence. Please say it again.”

  “ ‘I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale’s jaw bones.’ Proceed, please.”

  I confess I felt a bit heady with the writer’s attention. “Well, from the first hearing, I noted what a nice phrase ‘Susan and myself’ is. Because there’s an s right in the middle of Susan and in the middle of myself, the two seemed linked, a sort of internal congeniality. And then Susan is so s-rich in herself, and the last phrase, ‘setting,’ et cetera, starts with an s and the last word ends in s—bones. Then there’s the middle phrase, ‘made a gateway in the form of a Gothic Arch.’ The m of made is tied back to the m of myself that ends the first phrase—”

  “Are you a musician?”

  “No. And made and gateway, both have long a’s in them, and gateway and Gothic both start with g, and the o-sound in Gothic ties it back to the o-sound in cottage. And so it’s all knit together, the three phrases, so well. Oh, that b-sound in built right at the beginning and the b-sound in bones at the very end—I suspect that helps to contain the whole utterance.”

  “We will stop and talk,” he muttered and took me by the wrist. “I cannot walk through these hideous colors and talk of deep philosophy. Let us turn to that.”

  All amusement left me. Never since my father had a man held my wrist by force.

  “I will talk,” I said, “only if you let loose my wrist.”

  He dropped my wrist. I noted that beneath the dark cloth his chest was heaving. “Why do you wear the black veil?” I asked softly. “I am not used to speaking to a man alone in the woods who covers his face.”

  “But you are not really afraid, are you? You are of the tribe of Margaret.”

  “I am her friend, as I have said.”

  “How rightly I call you a tribe. There is a pagan element in your souls. You trust nature when you should trust God.”

  “It is somewhat easier, rather more scientific, to trust what you can see rather than what you cannot see.”

  “Many of the forces pondered by scientists are quite as invisible as God.”

  The visible, audible world surrounding us imprinted itself continually upon my senses, while he talked. It was good to stand still in the woods and not simply move through them.

  Yet, I would keep up my end of the discourse for a while: “Those invisible, scientific forces have measurable, observable effects.”

  “Some would say that all of your nature is the measurable effect of God.”

  “But you would not?” I could not see his face, for the veil hung from the hairline of the forehead down to his mouth, stirring constantly and slightly with his breathing and speaking.

  “Nature is not good enough to be purely the work of God. The pilgrim fathers felt that the devil lived in the deep forest, with the savage Indians. The body in all its lust is as natural as animals are natural. Even a man of God could be corr
upted in his admiration of the female.”

  “You said that you are a married man, that you have a daughter who bears my name. Do you not think the marriage bed a holy place?”

  Here he covered his veiled face with his hand. “I am not yet married. I speak of a daughter who is ethereal, potential. Yours is the very question that torments me. When I saw you coming on the path toward me, I thought, I must speak to her. You seemed yourself full of color, a cousin of these scarlet trees. Your ripening body said that you had been one with nature. The very way you trod the path said that you were unafraid in the woods—even though, I learn, you were uncertain of the path. There is about you a terrible well-being.”

  I saw a tiny chickadee light on a twist of bittersweet vine. How light the bird, for that thread not to break under its weight. “How completely you observe in a glance,” I said. Although the gloominess of the man repelled me, I felt that within him imagination shone like a star.

  “Carnality is surely the enemy of the spirit,” he said. “But Margaret Fuller disputes that. It is an irony, for despite her careful, nay, fashionable dress, she herself is repugnant, with her eyelids ever fluttering up and down, her long neck like a serpent’s.”

  “Sir! Her neck reminds me of a swan’s. She is my friend, and I think her beautiful. I will go at once if you wish to insult her.”

  His chest heaved in a long sigh, and he stepped back. “You are conventional in your loyalties,” he said. “You cannot brook an honest opinion.”

  I thought of Giles and Kit, determined and hurtful, in their honesty.

  “Honesty, like any inclination, can become a ruling passion, a monomania almost,” I said.

  “Greek ideas—balance, tolerance, moderation. I think the world did not know true passion till Christianity.”

  “And in its name forever have the Moor and the Jew been slaughtered!” I felt myself growing passionate. Whether he was minister or writer, his smugness offended me.

  “I see overweening pride in you,” he said.

  “I see confusion, darkness, repression, and cruelty in you!” My face felt on fire. “Go your way, and I’ll go mine.”

  “You speak in clumsy allegory,” he murmured.

  I started down the path, boiling with opposition. Over my shoulder, I called back, “May your daughter Una more resemble me than her natural father!”

  It was this last sentence that rang in my ears. But I had not gone far before the splendor of the woods dissipated my anger, and again I felt amused. But now I laughed at myself instead of him. I had engaged in an absurd as well as heated exchange.

  Why did he wear the black veil? I mused. Then I speculated—it was to filter, to strain out, to obscure all this glory.

  WHEN I REACHED the home of Emerson, I found that Margaret, too, had gone off in a huff, taking the coach. Mrs. Emerson supplied me a room for the night, but I did not see the great man more than for a moment, when he said, “Two of my guests have shot off from here like Independence Day rockets. I hope you find good repose.”

  Some years later I heard Mr. Emerson speak at the Atheneum in Nantucket—I found him very thought-provoking, though not more so than my own minister—and I was sorry that he had not wished to engage me in conversation that night when I stayed at his house. Perhaps his other guests had exhausted him.

  IN BOSTON, Margaret was again not at home. She had apparently gone to the Alcotts’ instead of returning. I returned to Nantucket. The Indian summer of October being brief, I did not try to see Margaret again, but we corresponded.

  THE ODD AFTERMATH of my encounter with the phantom in the woods was that I received a package and a note from David Poland. He said he had found a valise at the forking of a path in the Concord woods, where business (of an undisclosed nature) had taken him. He recognized the volume wrapped in clothing to be the Wordsworth that had been my mother’s and was herewith returning it, though not the valise, thinking, too, that the nightdress was not precious to me—I could easily stitch up another—“probably quicker than making jam cake”—and postage was dear.

  David wrote that he had hoped to catch up with me, and he had chosen the right fork of the path in pursuit. At times he had thought he heard human footsteps far to his left, but he could not see me.

  What a pity! I thought. I would very much have liked our paths to cross again. I wondered if he would have had the pelt on his shoulders, and if I would have mistaken him, at first, for a wolf. In his letter, David mentioned that a minister had come along as he was opening the valise and offered to purchase the nightgown from him. David had accepted the money—characteristic!—which I did not begrudge. But that my intimate garment had fallen into the hands of that dark man made me color with shame.

  CHAPTER 110: The History of Snow and Restlessness

  IN DEEP WINTER, in January, when new snow had freshened already deep drifts, when Halley’s comet had turned round the sun and was headed back to darkness, its tail blown out before it, then a profound restlessness came upon me.

  I had had Christmas with the Unitarians, and a very satisfactory celebration it was, not insisting on the exclusive divinity of Jesus, but allowing all births to be miracles, all babies holy. It suited me in my pregnant state. The minister had spoken of animals and angels in a way very congenial to my own sense of human beings. During the service, I admired Isaac, the gaoler, who was also a Unitarian, and his family—now two girls, his own little sisters (with golden ringlets and wicked-merry dark eyes), his wife, the toddler, and a new infant. Toward me he always had a friendly smile, but he never attempted to chat, though we both felt that we were friends.

  And then the congregation had a shared feast. How well Unitarians cook! and savor all the good things of this life! The minister’s recipe for plum pudding was one he had gotten from his mother in Maine, and half the church had turned out to mix and pour the batter in its forms, to watch the ovens, to cool and wrap the puddings till Christmas came.

  Despite the satisfactions of the season, with its aftermath and the deep snow came my own dissatisfaction. In a fit of whimsy, I asked Pip to build me a snowman behind the house, and he did so—three great balls, topped with an old hat and a parsnip for a nose. Next I gave Pip a broomstick and took one myself, and together we knocked the snowman into powder. Pip said, “Pip hate to be your boy, Miz Una, you pack a wallop like dat.” But creating and destroying the snowman was a quixotic whim. And it did not satisfy my restlessness.

  ASSUMING my new wool cloak, edged with wolf fur, I walked carefully through the snowy street to visit the Mitchells at their apartment in the rear of the Union Pacific Bank. Maria being out at a lecture, Mr. Mitchell sat down with me for a bit of conversation. “What is the history of snow here on Nantucket?” I asked him.

  A thorough meteorologist, he immediately turned to his record books. “How long it has been,” he said playfully, “since someone has asked me such an important and fascinating question.” He could not have been kinder to me if I had been one of his own daughters. I wished I had been.

  William Mitchell was only beginning to age, and he had about him a natural peppiness; aging, in him, seemed to have added zest for every fact. Zestfully, he embedded his spectacles over his nose; zestfully, he placed his ledger on a round table; most happily he drew up two chairs to the table for himself and me. He had a fine, smooth complexion and a beautiful resonant voice, which Maria had inherited from him. Both had the ability to look you unflinchingly in the eye and to monitor not merely if you were paying attention but how much of what they said was actually penetrating the consciousness. Mr. Mitchell did not expect perfect absorption in his listener, but if one let her mind stray too often, he would politely change the subject to one less taxing in detail. Detail, detail—how the Mitchells loved it, and if numbers attended the detail or constituted its bulk, then they were among the happiest of mortals. No, I was not of this family, after all.

  “Well, not so long ago, we had a fine old-fashioned snowstorm, hmmm….” He perused hi
s records. “January eighth and ninth it was, to a depth of two feet, three feet in the drifts. Continuous snow with winds.”

  “How deep are we today, officially?”

  “But six inches, though it will snow again about midnight. We’re getting more moisture, you see, to feed the ravenous nuclei upon which condensation depends.”

  I ventured that Maria would not like to lose another night of telescopic inquiry to bad weather, but William was not ready to be diverted from the History of Snow. “The Great Snowstorm was in January of 1831, not merely locally, but all along the Atlantic. Three feet deep in the groves, four feet in other places. Very fine sleighing, and the harbor was frozen out to Brant Point. I do remember the sleighing. We were all like children again. Let’s see….” He flipped the pages. “Three severe snowstorms in the winter of 1829 with a shipwreck, perhaps a foot deep in places, but because of the terrible wind, some places left bare—so it is with money, eh, my dear? Prodigious heaps of it in some places, others quite barren of that commodity…. Do you get a bit sleepy? Next big event, going backwards of course, was in 1806—somewhat before your time, I believe, my dear. Una, have you thought of acquiring a cat? We have an extra one someplace here about.”

  “Cat?”

  “Shall I walk you home, dear? Maria won’t be back for another hour, I’d guess.”

  “Whatever shall I do with my restlessness?” I wailed.

  He peered at me over his half-glasses. “Well, we shall walk it home.” He unhooked the glasses from behind his ears. “You shall crawl into bed. Is Mrs. Maynard there?”

  “No.”

  “At any rate, you’ll sleep well and awake tomorrow refreshed. Now come along.”

  CHAPTER 111: Altar Rock

  WILLIAM MITCHELL was quite adept at predicting the weather—at least three more inches came down during the night—but woefully wrong in his prediction that I would awake refreshed. No sleeping position was comfortable. And then I remembered that it had been so when I was pregnant before. I determined that I would go for a fine walk, perhaps all the way to ’Sconset to see Mary Starbuck—seven miles or so—and spend the night with her. I pulled on woolen stockings, determined to try the hike.