I remained seated against the far wall where I had collapsed. My breathing was regular again – if shallow – and I took in the sour air of the room through my open mouth. I felt separated from the events taking place in front of me. I had the most curious sensation of being on the ceiling of the chamber looking down on the entire scene. There I was with my knees against my chest on the floor. There was O’Hanlon’s emaciated body, obscenely naked, flecked with foul fluids, stretched across the cloth-covered table. And Poe – Poe was holding the knife in his right hand, the arm stretched out over the sacrificial body. He circled the table in a clockwise direction with a steady, monotonous gait. A small yellow stream ran across the uneven floor from the edge of the sailcloth. It grew slowly. A thin tendril of piss stretched out in a straight line like the hand of a clock. I saw it all from my omnipotent floating mind. I watched it all happen from a safe distance.
O’Hanlon begged. “I’ll tell the truth. I can answer your questions.”
Poe orbited the table, the knife held high over O’Hanlon’s stomach – over his navel – centered – descending. “I already know the answers, Mr. O’Hanlon.”
What?”
“Oh there are some things I do not know. Mostly they are unimportant.”
“I don’t…”
Poe never stopped moving and with each orbit, the knife, with the cruel hawk-bill blade point down, moved ever lower in almost imperceptible fractions. “You live on Sugar Alley with Molly. My guess is that she is your partner’s whore as well. And he is your cousin, most likely.”
“Yes, she is. He is. But…”
“You come from an incestuous breed, O’Hanlon.”
“Wait. I…”
“I do not condemn you for that. Cousins are so sweet.” He lowered the knife and began another circuit. “I am not so different than you.”
“My partner’s name is Allie Nabbity. We…”
“Rob graves. Steal the dead from their eternal rest. I know that, Mr. O’Hanlon. The muddy boots flecked with tombstone dust – and most obviously, Mr. Screed’s plain reference to your line of work. Ghouls do not get that epithet undeserved. Tell me, do you sell the bodies to Washington Medical School?”
“I can’t…”
“No need. A business finds a market. No fault in that, Mr. O’Hanlon.” The steel edge of the blade dipped lower. “And no fault in you doing your employer’s bidding.”
“I’ve got no employer.”
“And so the blade comes closer.”
“Please!”
“Do not lie to me anymore, Mr. O’Hanlon. As I said, I already knew the answers. Would Jupiter approach such a man as you – the rogue nigger in the Irish cribs? Of course not – nor would Jupiter learn about you on East Pratt. But that’s where you’ve taken him, isn’t it?”
“I don’t…”
“Do not speak the lie, O’Hanlon. Ah, too late, the blade descends again.”
“No!”
“Fox set you on the Negro, that’s clear.”
“Fox? Don’t ask me about Fox.”
“Oh, I won’t. Fox would never let someone of your status know anything of import about his true business.”
“The Odalisk. Fox stays at the Odalisk. Montgomery Street behind Camden Station.”
“My, how quickly this worm turns.”
“Please, let me go.”
“But you say the Odalisk is behind the Camden Station?”
“Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”
“My arm is tiring,” Poe sighed. The blade was now but an inch from O’Hanlon’s belly. “You followed Jupiter and waylaid him. You and Mr. Nabbity then trundled him off to Pratt Street. Pratt and Water actually.”
“He’s a nigger. That’s a good place for him.”
“True. You did do Jupiter that mercy. You took him to the pens and you sold him. It seems certain to me that Fox ordered you to simply kill him. You, being an enterprising young man, chose a bit of extra profit. No blame in that. How many times did you kick the Negro?”
“Kick him? I didn’t…”
“Your boots, O’Hanlon. Your boots tell that tale. The flecks of dried rust – Jupiter’s blood, I’ll wager. The little, short pike in the toe. You plugged him with a kick, eh? What do they say in Baltimore? You plugged him ugly.”
“I’m no Plug Ugly. Those are the New Market men.”
“You deliver up the dead, and you kidnap the living.
Poe stopped walking. The hawk-bill’s needle sharp tip had reached O’Hanlon’s skin. A bead of bright crimson formed where the flesh had been pierced ever so slightly. I saw all this from my safe vantage above it all. I saw the liquid ruby of O’Hanlon’s blood. And I saw the ghoul’s manhood engorge.
“My sweet God.”
“You were to bring us to the Odalisk at midnight, I presume.”
Only a whimper answered.
“There we would be in Fox’s hands. Pity.”
I snapped back into my own body, crouched against the wall. I spoke. “Yes, pity him, Poe.”
He looked at me with those black-pupil eyes and smiled. This time the smile on his face froze. Poe looked at me for an eternity that may have lasted three seconds. Then he turned to O’Hanlon.
“I do have one more question.”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Have you seen her black tongue?”
O’Hanlon started to scream, but Poe’s left hand covered the man’s mouth. And Poe’s right hand plunged the blade through O’Hanlon’s taught belly-skin. With a twist left, then right, Poe’s hand disappeared up to the wrist in a well of blood. The Irishman only twitched once. It was over.
I wanted to float away again, but I could not. I could only mutter, “Poe. Poe. Poe.”
He answered me. “Would you do that for me, Griswold?’
“Kill for you?”
“No. Would you kill me, Griswold?”
I took a swig of whiskey straight from the bottle and watched the dark blood spill off the table, down the sailcloth, and run across the uneven floorboards straight towards me like an arrow. “No,” I answered him
Poe laughed again – a very strange, deep laugh. “You will be compelled to kill me, Griswold.”
“How could I be so compelled?”
“Oh, Griswold. That’s simple. I will beg you.”
The thin river of O’Hanlon’s blood reached the toe of my boot. I got to my feet and rushed out of the room, through Ryan’s main room, and out into the street. There was an oily mottled puddle in the gutter. I sat down and washed the stain away.
As best I could.
Chapter 16
September 29, 1849 8:45 p.m. - Gods and the Rumor of Gods -
Should I now condemn Poe’s brutality? I have considered this question in the years that have passed since that day in Ryan’s Tavern. I always find myself wondering which was the true sin – the murder or the pleasure? Before I fled the slaughter for the puddle and the gutter, I felt the ecstasy of my own little death. And more, in the midst of the slaughter, I felt transcendent. Yes, preserve me Lord, I felt like a god. But there is little wonder in that for students of divinity. Gods are the source of all brutality.
Zeus devoured his wife, Metis, fearing the child that grew within her. What an Olympian feast, as he ripped her swollen belly, swallowed her ripe womb, and gnawed on her entrails. But the unborn progeny was not destroyed. Like a devilish cancer, the babe crawled into the head of Zeus and afflicted him with great agony until the God begged piteously for relief from his pain. A Titan answered the deity’s entreaties. Prometheus took up his mighty axe and cleaved Zeus’ skull, and Athena emerged from Zeus’ forehead in a bloody spray of ochre mist.
Even the Muses, minor among the divine, are cruel in the extreme. When Thamyris, lover of the boy Hyacithus, challenged them to a duel of poetry and was defeated, the goddesses of inspiration took pay for the wager by ripping out his eyes.
If the gods can commit such crimes, then where is the blame when men do justice? If I was willing
to smother, can I condemn the poet when he butchered? No, I am not a god, but I shall not judge Poe for fear of judging myself.
It would not be true to say that we fled from Ryan’s Tavern. Though Poe, when he finally emerged, grabbed me by the collar and hoisted me to my feet, pushing me along down the block until I could will my feet to move myself. Our pace was halting as Poe led the way. He would take us down a block, then turn and down another, then another turn followed by a long pause as he stared off into some internal distance.
“Poe, where are we going?”
“Quiet, Griswold. Quiet.”
“Are we going to the Odalisk? O’Hanlon said it was…”
Poe spun on me. You fool. O’Hanlon lied. The Odalisk is not here.” He turned back and pointed the cane, silver handle first, in front of him. “But something is.”
“How do you know he lied?” Then I realized. “Poe, the cipher. You solved the cipher!”
“Quiet.”
We turned left, then right – up an alley, across a street, there seemed to be no sense in our steps. We almost ran at times and then slowed until we barely moved at all. Poe would close his eyes at those moments, and with his cane in his hand, he waved the tip in the air. The Malacca shaft glistened with moisture, and the silver angels on the handle seemed almost to glow. The oscillations of the stick would lessen and then stop, then Poe would open his eyes, and off we would go again.
On one of these pauses in our pace, Poe again extended the cane and instead of wavering in any direction, he began to spin in a tight circle. Faster and faster he spun about with the cane swinging wildly, like a broken clock freed of its stops. I stepped back into the middle of the street to avoid being hit.
Of a sudden, a black one-horse cabriolet came around a corner ahead of us and rushed, clattering across the damp cobbles, hurtling towards me. The lane there was narrow with little more than a curbstone and a pace to either side for foot traffic. I might have jumped quickly to the walk, but the figure driving the light-wheeled vehicle passed under a streetlamp, and I saw above his scarf and under his hat the sure green of wrapped spectacles. I froze – confused. Fox!
He shouted at us, “The little ape and his mule! Seeking inspiration, poet?”
His eyes, filled with the maddened tint, were turned on me, and he wielded his whip with a fury. The black prancer leapt in his rigging, and the cabriolet sped down on me. My legs were heavy and slow as if I were caught in a fevered dream. I could not move, and still the carriage approached. My eyes were full of Fox’s green reflection.
Then there was a disorienting collision. Poe tackled me from the side and we staggered and fell over the curb just as the hooves of the black steed sparked past us and the razored-wheels spun by. My head struck the stonewall of the squat warehouse that bordered the street.
The cabriolet raced on into the night, the steel rims of its wheels buzzing as it accelerated away. I remember that noise, and the wild sound of the stallion echoing off the city canyon walls.
“Are you all right, Griswold?”
“I think so.” My head was sore, and a damp trickle of blood ran sticky down the back of my neck. “I think so.”
“Get up man. We must find him.”
“Fox?”
“None other.” Poe got to his feet and pulled me up until I was able to lean against the wall and collect my thoughts. “Come, man. He is close ahead.” Poe’s eyes were looking down the street in the direction Fox had sped away.
For a moment, I felt that Poe had been following some scent that was beyond the living world itself. But I had little time to consider the insight as Poe was off again.
“Come, Griswold. The house is close.”
“What house?” I felt again that I had stepped into a reality that was beyond my comprehension.
“The house where he keeps our brides.”
“You know where Fox keeps them?”
“We need not solve the riddle of the note if we can move fast. It’s close, I tell you. The Odalisk! Close!”
“You know where they are?” I asked again.
Poe did not answer. The silver angels led us again. We set off at a run. My boots slipped on the slimy stones, and I near fell on more than one occasion. But I kept up as best I could, and on we went in the dark, empty streets.
I had no sense of direction as we wandered about the dark streets of Baltimore. If there was a moon, the low clouds hid it from view. One moment, a smattering of raindrops would fall about us, then the rain would stop, and gusts of wind begin, first from the west – then from the north. Poe held the silver angel handle of his cane in front of him as if it were a dowsing stick. The angel swung this way then that, and we followed.
After much walking and backtracking on our path, I heard water lapping against pilings and got a strong whiff of fish, sewage, and coal smoke. We were back to the basin. A ship’s bell rang out to our left, then others answered, proceeding down the line of boats docked at the wharves in a receding sonic procession of iron clappers striking bronze – forged birds calling out to one another in the night.
Poe picked up his laggard pace, and I struggled to keep up. Staying out of the dim light of the hydrogen street lamps, we kept to the water’s edge on the Light Street Wharf. Soon we were back where I had first found Poe only a day earlier, wrapped in canvas. Poe hustled behind some crates stacked near the wharf master’s shed. The awning I had sheltered under the day before flapped in the random gusts of wind that came and went.
The wall of boxes offered some shelter. With a gap of ten feet from cargo to a high run of bricks that acted as a retaining wall for Lee Street, we crouched down on the rough planks of the wharf. Poe put his back up against the crates, and I took my place next to him.
The poet was breathing with some difficulty. He stretched his legs out in front of him, and I noticed a tremor.
“Are you all right, Poe?” I asked.
He did not respond. Rather, he brought his hand to his mouth – the hand that he had plunged into O’Hanlon’s belly. It was stained with blood. Poe began licking.
“Poe? Are you mad?” I grabbed at his hand, but he snatched it away from me and began sucking at the clot-covered fingers. “Poe?” I moved away from him.
He was frantic. His tongue darted. His mouth nursed on each hint of dark evidence. The licking stopped suddenly. Poe held his hand out in front of his face. Shadows were deep where we crouched, and all was colorless save the blood that seemed to glow on his hand. Poe turned his hand before his eyes – back, then palm – and, after the examination, with a startling rapidity, returned it to his mouth. Licking, slurping, even chewing on the fingers and the meat of his thumb, he had his obscene supper.
Cold to match the horror in my soul slipped into my legs through the cracks in the wharf’s boards. Finally, Poe’s frenzy calmed. He leaned back against the boxes and panted like a wounded hound. The air entering and leaving his lungs made a gurgling sound.
“Poe?”
A deep shuddering breath and a whispered, “ Griswold, help me.”
“What is it? What must I do?”
“My pocket. My pocket.”
“What is it?”
“In my pocket.” Poe painfully opened his jacket.
I reached carefully – fearing that Poe might grab at my hand – into the inner breast pocket behind the lapel. I pulled out Jupiter’s folded envelope and the brown paper-wrapped bundle of opium. “Is this what you need?” I offered him the opium.
“No. You must mix them together.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Jupiter is not here. You must do it. I am failing.”
I remembered the scene in the apothecary. Jupiter had mixed some of the powders in the envelope with the laudanum. Laudanum was a solution of morphine and alcohol. “I am to mix Jupiter’s concoction with the opium.”
“Yes.” Poe’s entire body began to shudder. “Renard! Renard! Ou sont vous?” He shouted into the muffling fog that had begun to gather abou
t us.
“Poe, what am I to do?”
“Help me.”
“But mix them in what proportions?” I was panicked. I could see beyond any doubt that Poe was in crisis. His legs jerked. His arms started to flail about. This was some seizure like to a grand mal, yet somehow unearthly in its manifestations.
“I shall be married,” he gasped.
“Poe? Poe?”
He did not answer me. But instead, his arms began madly brushing at his sleeves and his legs, as if he were brushing off some unseen horror.
Left to my own inexperienced devices, I did as best I could. I unwrapped the opium. In the dark, I could hardly make out the reduced ball of tar that Poe had smoked potions of in the hotel some hours past. There was still some half of the narcotic remaining. I unfolded Jupiter’s envelope and sniffed at the contents. Some of the residue was taken up into my nose. I smelled incense and acid. Immediately, there was a bitter taste that overwhelmed my tongue.
“Renard! Renard!” Poe was delirious. “Renard!”
“Poe! Speak to me. Tell me. Who do you call for?”
“Renard!” His voice was weak.
The taste on my tongue spread into my throat and rushed into my blood. My head began to spin. I dropped the envelope and fell back against the cargo boxes, striking my head with some force. Perhaps that saved me. The impact delivered to my skull snapped me into clarity again.
Poe’s convulsions had driven him down until he was flat on his back. He shook with a final wave of inner disquiet, then lay still. His face was framed by one beam of streetlight that cut through a crack in the retaining wall. Dimly illuminated, it seemed as I had first encountered him, here on this very wharf the day – or, as I felt it, an eternity – before. Poe was insensate. Completely still, I could not even hear him breathe.
I looked for the envelope. Where had I dropped it? There! But some of the powder had spilled. Carefully I picked it up, using the flap to scrape up what little I could out of the cracked boards. Much of the white powder had slipped into the uneven grain of the old wood. Examining the remaining substance in the envelope, it seemed that I had lost half the amount that had been in the packet. Was it enough? I cursed myself.
Imp: Being the Lost Notebooks of Rufus Wilmot Griswold in the Matter of the Death of Edgar Allan Poe Page 11