Imp: Being the Lost Notebooks of Rufus Wilmot Griswold in the Matter of the Death of Edgar Allan Poe

by Douglas Vincent Wesselmann

  “God forbid,” said Jupiter.

  Poe ignored the interruption. “Saranella herself grew to love the pleasures that he gave her. She reveled in the lusts they shared, for she was a goddess and not subject to the petty commandments of lesser society. But death walked even in that island city. Death walked in his fine satin jacket, wearing the sweet perfumes of the grave. Death touched Saranella, and life began to fade in her eyes. She swooned with the release of Death’s touch. A new lust was upon her – a passion that none can resist. Saranella took Death to her bed and opened her legs to the cold stone of …”

  “Enough, Poe! Enough! Why do you torment me?”

  “Do I?” Poe mocked me. “Do I torment you? Why, Griswold, it’s only a story. A fiction.”

  “A cruel parable.”

  “The truth,” he said.

  “A slander of my wife’s memory.”

  “Pure shit,” laughed Jupiter.

  Poe returned to his narration. “But the great man caught her in her infidelity.”

  “Stop.”

  “And he was consumed by jealousy. He sought to prevent the consummation of Saranella’s tryst with Death. So he took her to a secret room, and he brought in his mesmerist.” Poe stopped, thinking. “Did I mention that he had a mesmerist, Jupiter?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Well, it’s only a first draft. No matter.” Poe took another mouthful of brandy. He chewed on the coca leaf.

  Jupiter pointed at my bowl of oysters. “You’re not hungry?” I shook my head, and he took my meal for himself.

  “He called in his mesmerist and had him cast a spell on Saranella. And so, after many incantations, the mesmerist placed his charmed ring on Saranella’s finger and spoke a word of binding. In a flash of unearthly power, she was suspended in her marital bed over a crevasse that yawned open to the center of Earth’s bubbling molten core – an illusion that would trick Death’s eye. Floating out over this pit, Saranella could not be touched. For even Death could not reach her there. The mesmerist bade that the door to the secret room be sealed. And that seal never be broken. For the spell was locked in that seal.”

  I found that my cup of brandy was empty. I had finished it without thinking as Poe spun his sharp-stringed web. My head was swimming with the effects of the spirits.

  “Locking the door, and watching as the mesmerist placed his seal on the portal, the great man left Saranella there over the abyss. Untouchable – alone, but safe from Death’s embrace. But as the days passed, the man grew troubled. If Saranella could not be touched, neither could he feel her touch, her forbidden touch, on his skin. The man was haunted by his loneliness. He could not sleep or eat. He wept for his Saranella.”

  “I did weep for her,” I said.

  Poe turned to me, and in his distorted pupils, I saw a hint of empathy – a subtle relaxation in his brow. “Believe me, Griswold. I know that you did.”

  “I wept.”

  “And the great man could stand those cold tears no longer. He rushed to the secret room and broke the seal. He opened the door and went into his Saranella. He would free her from the spell. But when he entered the chamber, Death was standing within. And Death was weeping. ‘Where is my love?’ asked Death. The great man looked out over the pit and saw Saranella’s bed where the mesmerist had suspended it in his unholy spell. The bed was empty.”

  “Here, chew this.” Jupiter offered me a leaf of the Erythroxylon Coca.

  I took the blade-like dried leaf from his hand and put it in my mouth. The taste was bitter.

  “The bed was empty.” Poe paused. He took a breath and shuddered. “More brandy, man! More brandy!”

  “Keep your fucking shirt on,” was the waiter’s reply from beyond our nook under the basement stairs.

  There was a curious tingling in my mouth and then, soon after, in my brain. “Go on, Poe. Finish the story,” I said. Though I knew the tragic ending, I was now almost hypnotized by the telling – and the brandy – and the leaf.

  Poe sighed. “The bed was empty, save for a ring. There on the coverlet, now empty, was the ring – the mesmerist’s ring. The great man and Death wept together. Saranella had been stolen by the wizard. And though they searched a thousand years, they could not find her.” Poe reached eagerly for the new glass of brandy – not even giving the surly man in the apron a chance to put it down on the table.

  “Here.” I tossed some coins at our server again. Again, he caught them without a blink. I took a long drink, and where before I had felt fire, now I felt comfort in the bite of the brown liquid. “Not quite the end, Poe. Not quite the end.”

  “No, it’s not.” Poe chewed lazily on another leaf.

  “I made a terrible bargain.”

  “I do not condemn you,” said Poe. “I heard the story. That your wife was dying. Then her sad demise. I heard the gossip. That you had, some three weeks after her funeral… was it three weeks?”

  “Almost a month. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “That’s the story that passed from mouth to mouth in New York. You went to your wife’s tomb and spent the night there. You opened her coffin and placed your cheek on her purplish, icy forehead. You kissed her and embraced her and wept. You emerged from the vault a tortured soul – your soul ripped by her death. That was the story they told.”

  “Everyone heard the story.” I took another deep draught of brandy.

  “Sick and perverse – pure shit.” said Jupiter.

  “But oh so full of the Romantic sensibilities of the age, eh, Griswold?”

  I could only nod agreement.

  “That was the clue. You never denied the story. In fact, my friend, you encouraged its dissemination.”

  “I did.”

  “That’s what led me to my deduction. Who was the mesmerist you hired, Griswold?”

  “I never knew his name. I had only heard that mesmerism offered a chance for her. That a powerful mesmerist could place my wife into a trance just before death could take her. She could be held there between life and death, that I might still have her with me.” I blurted it all out. There was no denying Poe’s intuition.

  “You never met him?”

  “No, Helen Whitman spoke of him during one of her séances. She referred to him as ‘The Preacher.’ She acted as go-between. He was to come to my wife’s room, and I was not to be there. Afterwards, I found my wife entranced. I was to wait a month before opening her casket. Then she was to be with me as long as I lived.”

  “You paid him?”

  “No, that was the strangest thing. The Preacher wrote to me in a note that he would do this as a favor to a great man. Save for one small item.”

  “The Prince of Lies.” Poe muttered under his breath. “He wanted her ring, didn’t he?”

  I almost choked. “Yes, but how could you know?”

  “I would tell you that it’s deduction or induction or some trait of my imaginary Dupin. But I will not lie. He asked for her ruby ring.”

  “I had given it to her on our wedding night.”

  “And yet when you went to her after The Preacher’s visit, she was still wearing that very ring.” Poe did not ask. He stated a fact. “She still wore the ruby ring.”

  “I thought the mesmerist had shown me a mercy.”

  “But you could not wait the full month to possess her again.”

  “I went to her vault…”

  “It was empty.”

  “Yes.” I confess I was amazed. Poe was like a priest – the unlikeliest of ministers – and he freed me with the sacrament of my confession. “Yes, I opened her coffin and found nothing. Nothing.” All my secrets were known.

  “There was not even a ring left behind.”

  “No.” I had to will myself to breathe. The memory of opening her coffin and seeing the white satin lining, the lace trimmed pillow, empty, still had a power over me.

  “Of course there was no ring. You gave him the right to take the ring. He took that wedding night ring, and her finger was still
in it. That had been the bargain.”

  “I could not… I could not…”

  “But you could not tell this to anyone. When you emerged in terror and shock from the tomb, you invented this tale of your night with the corpse of your beloved. A fiction that, though it reflects on you poorly – giving you the patina of grief-induced mental imbalance – conceals the true depths of your transgression. ”

  “I could not let anyone know of the bargain I had made.” I grabbed at Poe’s lapel. “I had been snared by the devil himself.”

  “Your soul at risk.”

  “God forgive me.”

  “And now I have brought you to Baltimore.” Poe put his hand on mine. “I know all about your great sin.”

  “Mrs. Whitman said…”

  “What I told her to say. I knew my letter would not suffice.”

  “She knows?”

  “Only a version that she would believe. Far from the true facts of the matter.” Poe grasped my hand. He took it from his lapel and placed it down on the table. “Have another drink, Griswold. Have another leaf.”

  “I don’t understand. You above all should want revenge on me.”

  “For your petty gossips about me?” Poe laughed. “Yes, I suppose I should. You made me out a rake and a scoundrel.”

  “So you are, Poe.” Jupiter joined in the joke. “So you are.”

  “I regret…”

  “Long past time for regrets, Griswold. Regrets are for the living.” Poe’s eyes sparked. “Now is the time for redemption.”

  “You will…?” I did not know how to finish the sentence. What was Poe talking about? I was confused, puzzled then by the nature of the company with whom I found myself.

  “I will not judge you.”

  “But…”

  “Hear me out.” Poe drained his flagon. “I understand the bargain you made.”

  That is when I understood. “Virginia – your own bride? Dead two years of consumption. Poe, you have…”

  “…Made the same bargain, Griswold. I, too, found the mesmerist. I, too, paid for the enchantment. Only there is one difference.” Poe shuddered.

  “Difference?”

  “I know his name.”

  “The Preacher? Good God, you know his name? Tell me.” I grabbed at Poe again.

  “Didn’t you meet him? Didn’t you see him get off the steamer?”

  My memory needed no more prompting. The black, too-small clothing, the green spectacles, the Rituel Catholique – I had met the devil that very day. “Fox!”

  “I have met him twice.” Poe’s words had incompleteness to them. There was more he could say, but for that moment he left the truth there.

  I did not press him. “And my wife? Tell me. What of my wife?”

  “Show the man, Jupiter.” Poe took his angel-headed cane and tapped it on the tabletop three times, as if he were a sorcerer invoking some dark spell. “Show the man. Show the man. Show the man.”

  “Sure.” The Negro had been picking at his teeth with the needle. “It’s about time he knew.”

  “What?”

  Jupiter reached into his vest pocket. His hand emerged, and he rolled the object onto the planks of the table. For a second, it spun like a top, then bumped into my unused spoon and stopped with a small clink. My heart stopped.

  It was such a beautiful red ruby ring.

  Chapter 11

  September 28, 1849 10:45 p.m. - Bitten by the Tarantula -

  It had become my obsession, when my dear Caroline lay dying, that the encroachments of death might be arrested by the new science of our age. That, as a body approached the inevitable plunge into the afterlife, as the soul of the intellect prepared to flee this plane, its intent might be frustrated by the imposition of a trance.

  Poe himself had been the serpent in the garden, for in one of his stories, he himself popularized the notion. I had clung to the idea and forgotten any menace in the ending. Caroline hovered with the reaper’s blade at her throat, and I succumbed to my selfishness. The Good Preacher did his work and took his fee.

  I deluded myself that, held here on earth by the imperative of the hypnotic command, some cure might yet be sought in the delay. In truth, I realized in my horror upon finding her sarcophagus empty, that I had sought only to spare myself the pain of her loss.

  It was my deepest shame – that I had blasphemed against the divine plan and set myself up as a jealous god seeking to posses that which was forbidden and unholy. And my sin compounded. I avoided my penance in forgetfulness. Or rather, I denied my own memories, and with her shawl perfumed on her chair, I hid myself behind a fable. Poe and the ring had shattered that flimsy barrier, and I saw my own inevitable damnation could not be denied any longer.

  I drank of the watered brandy. I clutched the ring in my hand with such a grip that it pierced my palm, and blood trickled from my fist to the table as I drank again – deeper.

  “How did you come by the ring?” I hoped their revelation might fade into a drunken fog. I hoped that it was all some alcoholic dementia. “How?” I asked, and my blood dropped like a red pearl onto the planks.

  Poe took another leaf and chewed. He told another tale.

  “This last month, I was in Richmond, courting my true love,” he laughed – a cruel little sound.

  “You mean, your plum,” said Jupiter.

  “Yes, my plum. I courted a dowry. It is true. Sweet Elmira Royster accepted my proposal. I shall not dwell on that business, save to say that in seeking the aid she and her inheritance might do me, I did not recognize the hand of fate.”

  “Justice,” muttered the Negro, slurping at some broth.

  “As you will.” Poe chewed. “During my stay, I had occasion to attend a performance at the Concert Room of the Exchange Hotel. In fact, I had given my own presentation there but days before.”

  “And ridiculed my own work, of course.” That such resentment would pour out of me at that moment, when I faced my own sin, was more evidence of my moral collapse. But I confess that minor flaw.

  “Of course. Ridiculing you was my tonic, Griswold.” Poe laughed again and then, dismissing the charge, continued, “I will not describe the exhibition I witnessed that night at the Exchange, but I will name the performer.”

  “Fox. The Preacher.” I blurted out the name. My head was starting to muddle. My tongue thickened, and my vision blurred.

  “Yes. Fox.” Poe took a drink. “In shock, I slipped out of the audience without him recognizing my presence. I waited for him in hiding, intent on killing him.”

  “You are so full of shit, Poe,” said Jupiter.

  “Forgive me, dear Jupiter. I spin my tale.”

  “You spin on your tail.” Jupiter shook his head.

  “Shall I tell it my way, sir?” Poe asked the Negro.

  “As ever you fucking want to. It makes no difference.” Jupiter picked up his beer.

  “An artful fiction makes all the difference.” Poe turned back to me. “Where was I? Yes, I was waiting to kill him. But in the waiting, a new intent formed itself in my mind. He had stolen my Sissy, my cousin, my wife. I would have her again. Instead of striking at him, I followed. He had lodgings in Calisto’s Inn, just in the lee of Church Hill. I stalked him, plotting my opportunities, when I was touched by cholera.”

  “Justice.”

  “Yes, perhaps it was. I recovered as best I could with large doses of calomel. I hurried out of my sick bed when I could and discovered that Fox was preparing to leave Richmond. On the last night of his stay, I invaded his rooms.”

  “Such a dashing rescue.” Jupiter belched.

  “Rescue? Your wife was with him?”

  “There was no rescue. I entered Fox’s rooms and found he had already departed. Only the luggage remained, stacked and ready for the innkeeper to have it carted to the dock. And worse, I had been beaten to the punch. For there was a big nigra there ahead of me.”

  “At your service, sir.” Jupiter smiled a mirthless smile.

  “You
?” I asked.

  “Me, sir,” replied the Negro. “I had been on Fox’s track for a month.”

  “You were after him. An African chasing a white?” It was such an amazing world I had been dropped into.

  “Our friend here has his own quest.” Poe nodded as he chewed another leaf.

  “Justice.”

  “Did you catch him at the Richmond wharf?”

  “A fresh wave of fever took me, and I could not follow him that night.” Poe was lying – it was apparent. “I later discovered he had gone up the James on some nefarious business.”

  “He’s a kidnapper.” Jupiter’s words were more than an accusation.

  “Yes, it seems Fox deals in stolen Negroes. His associates steal free blacks and resell them into the comfort of my Southern heritage.”

  “A crime.”

  “The least of his transgressions.”

  “You spin the tale any faster, Poe, and your arse will be as threaded as a bolt hole.” Jupiter’s meaty hand crushed the flagon he held as if it were paper.

  “But you wrote me to meet you in Baltimore. There was no time for such a letter to reach me.”

  “This was two weeks before I headed north,” Poe said. “We found Fox’s tickets for that passage in the luggage.”

  “Oh, this is such shit.” Jupiter wiped his hand on his vest and signaled the waiter for another beer.

  “Interrupted?”

  “The innkeeper came upon us and raised the alarm. We fled just ahead of the watch. Shots were fired.” Poe’s face clouded with the memory. He repeated himself as if he were recalling some nightmarish dream. “Shots were fired. The sting of the bullets. The sting.”

  “Such fucking drama, Poe. I congratulate your stagecraft,” Jupiter laughed.

  “Enough,” said Poe. Then he shook his head as if to clear away the pain of some wound. He went on after a short drink of more brandy. “Jupiter helped my escape.”

  “Such help as I could offer, Poe.” The man’s face was grim as he spoke.