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

by Douglas Vincent Wesselmann

  “I have heard the name. It is my understanding that he occasionally deals in slaves right here at the Barnum with Mr. Bates.”

  “Bates?”

  “James Bates – he’s a broker of sorts and holds court in the lounge off the lobby or on the veranda in the summer months.”

  “You’ve seen Fox?”

  “Yes, but not in some time, sir.”

  “Do you know anything of where he frequents?”

  “No.”

  At that juncture, I risked lowering my blanket and exposing myself to the morning. At first the mere act of opening my eyes produced a flurry of rumbling in my stomach, but it passed quickly, and through the blur of my half-raised lids, I saw Jupiter standing by the window and Jeffers near the door. They looked at me in some surprise.

  “Do you know of the Odalisk?” I asked.

  Jeffers’ eyes darted away from mine. “The Odalisk? Nothing of note.”

  Jupiter walked towards me. “The Odalisk? Is that the name of the house?”

  “The house?” I was unsure of the Negro’s meaning.

  “Where he keeps her.” Jupiter towered over the side of the bed. “The Odalisk? Is that the name?”

  “Yes.” My head was throbbing, and I cradled it in my hands, hoping to still the ringing in my ears. “That is the name. Poe and I discovered it from…” I stopped before using O’Hanlon’s name. “We found out that Fox frequents the Odalisk. That he does his business there.”

  “Where is it?”

  “We don’t know. We searched in vain the day you were taken, or that night, I should say.” I closed my eyes and moaned as my head exploded in another flash of agony.

  “Here, sir.”

  I opened my eyes to find Jeffers at the bedside, holding a silver tray with a goblet of yellowish steaming liquid set upon it.

  “What is that?”

  I sat up in the bed, hoping that my blood had begun to move in at least a sluggish enough stream to give me enough faltering strength to maintain that posture. I tried to focus my blurred vision on the glass. “What is it?” The gorge rose in my throat, and I tasted of yesterdays misadventure.

  “The bellman’s remedy,” replied Jeffers. “Straight from Tunis Campbell’s ‘Guide for Hotelkeepers,’ the recommended cure for intoxication.”

  I took the glass and sniffed at it from a distance. There was no need to bring it nearer, for the acidic tang reached my nose from the length of my arm. “Vinegar? This is vinegar, Jeffers. Hot vinegar.”

  “Yes, and in the suggested dosage.”

  “I’ll not drink that.” I set the glass down.

  “Perhaps you are right, sir. It is a barbaric idea. Perhaps true to its purpose medicinally, it lacks in any aesthetic pleasure.” Jeffers smiled. “Mr. Campbell is a scientific man, the curse of our future. Should I pour you a whiskey?”

  “Please.”

  Jupiter stepped in as Jeffers left to fetch me my misguided antidote. “You don’t know where it is? Poe didn’t know?’

  “Forgive me, Jupiter, but we did not find it, though Fox nearly found me – beneath his wheels, that is.”

  “The cipher?”

  “Poe has it still, I assume. He gave me no hint that he’d solved it.”

  “Then…”

  “But Molly knew where the Odalisk was.”

  “Molly knew? Who is this Molly?”

  I had forgotten that Jupiter was uninformed of what had transpired in his regrettable absence. “Molly is a whore.”

  “Fuck!” Jupiter was enraged. “You’ve found a whore. My wife is… and you’ve found a whore. Poe is the devil himself.”

  “She found us.”

  “She works at this Odalisk?”

  “Yes. Or she did.”

  “She did?”

  Jeffers returned. This time he brought a crystal glass with a good measure of red-brown whiskey. “Here. Drink this.”

  Looking beyond the bellman, I could see the occasional table had been restocked. There were now five or six decanters of various hued liquids, including apothecary vials and a fresh bottle of Kentucky whiskey in addition to the one opened by Jeffers to dispense my dose. I quickly emptied the glass.

  “Another, sir?”

  “Yes.” My sobriety had lasted but minutes. The burn of the Kentucky corn began to work almost immediately.

  “This Molly whore worked for Fox?”

  “I think, that is, probably at one time, but Fox killed her sister. She was going to take us to the Odalisk. We might have gone last night, but we had to save you.”

  Jupiter turned away from me and returned to the window. Looking down on the street he repeated, almost to himself, “Save me. Save me. Save me.”

  Jeffers delivered my second glass of whiskey.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll be about some business elsewhere. You two remain in the room. There are eyes about, and it’s best if you’re unseen.” He opened the door.

  “Thank you, Jeffers.”

  “I’ll let you know if there is any news of Poe.” He closed the door behind him.

  I salvaged what I could from my ruined wardrobe in the closet. A quick splash of water and a hasty shave brought me to some semblance of suitability. In half an hour, I found myself standing next to a silent Jupiter, sipping on another whiskey, staring out into the city. Low gray clouds swept in from the bay, and a fog lingered even at that late hour down by the basin. The scene harkened my mind to an Ellsinore far away, and like Hamlet, the sense of a haunting surrounded me.

  With no conversation and the tense silence that ruled the room, I was left to contemplate the Battle Monument, but a stone’s throw from the hotel. A tall column, though much smaller than the Washington Monument up on Baltimore’s hill, the shrine to the heroes of 1814 was stained by soot and corrosive rivers of corroded bronze that marred its base. Atop the memorial stood the city’s genius – a statue of Lady Baltimore. Her back was to me, and her right arm was raised, pointing me towards the city – a city I had as soon never seen.

  “Do you have your money, Griswold?’ Jupiter asked.

  I didn’t answer him at first – instead I downed the last of the whiskey in my glass. Then with an effort I replied, “What good will money do us?”

  Jupiter sucked on his teeth. “Perhaps we can buy the information we need.”

  “I have come to the opinion that this knowledge, regarding the Odalisk, might be difficult to purchase.”

  “Today it is cold in Baltimore. Tomorrow will be colder. I must find them soon, Griswold. My time is short.”

  Suddenly, anger burst into flame through my melancholy. “Your time? You must find them? Your wife? What of mine, Jupiter?”

  He looked at me, taken aback for a moment by my outburst. His eyes found mine, and I saw a sadness in them. Had I known then whom the sadness was for, I might have simply left that room and that city before the shaking walls of my delusions tumbled into ruin – for ruined they were to fall.

  “Perhaps… No. Never mind.”

  “What? Go ahead, Jupiter. Damn you! Say it.”

  “Perhaps you should go.”

  “Go?”

  Jupiter turned and took me by the shoulders. In his grip, I felt like a pygmy. Should the Lord Gorilla choose, I could be shaken like a frond at his pleasure. “Listen to me, Griswold. I have wronged you in bringing you here. Go now. Go so that your fate will not be on my account, as well.”

  “You brought me? I don’t understand.”

  “Pray you never do. Now go.”

  He released me, and I near fell to the floor, for he had lifted me off my feet without strain or notice.

  “Jupiter, I want to…”

  “Go!” he shouted.

  “But Caroline… My wife…”

  His shoulders shaking, the Negro took a step towards me. Then he stopped and with a visible effort composed himself. When he spoke, his voice was quiet but no less terrifying. “Griswold, you should know this. Your wife…”

  The d
oor to the hotel room burst open, and there standing in the doorway was Poe. His clothes were bloody and torn. His face was a mask of madness, the eyes distended and wide, the nostrils flared, the lips pulled away from the teeth in the rictus of the grave itself.

  Jupiter spun around and went to the poet. Poe collapsed into the black man’s arms. “Poe, are you…”

  “I need your ministrations, my Lord, my God.”

  Jupiter picked him up as if he were weightless and put him down on the bed. Poe looked at me. “Ah, the hero of the night.”

  “Poe, where is Molly?”

  At the question, his face distorted. He choked out a meaningless sentence. “Evil things in robes of sorrow assailed the monarch’s high estate.”

  “Poe,” I asked again, “Where is Molly? Is she dead?” At the word ‘dead,’ he sat bolt upright, his eyes darting around as if he were to be trundled off to a gallows at any moment.

  “Dead? Have we put her living into the tomb?” He closed his eyes, fell back on the bed again and began to thrash about in some seizure as he had that night on the wharf.

  Jupiter went to the table and began mixing up his ingredients with the clatter and clink of glass bottles and crystal stoppers.

  I grabbed Poe by the hand and squeezed down with all the strength my grip could muster. The pain of his finger bones and tendons grinding together must have brought him some focus, for his eyes opened, and the purpled black pupils, reflecting some unearthly light that was beyond my sight, looked at me.

  “Where is Molly?” I twisted at his hand.

  Poe settled for just a moment, long enough to give an empty smile and then utter an ominous answer. “I tell you, she now stands without the door!”

  “Mr. Griswold.” It was Jeffers. He stood in the doorway, holding an ill-clad burden, limp in his arms.

  “Molly!” I rushed from the bedside to see her. Her black hair had fallen loose, and it dangled near to the floor. Her olive skin had turned to ivory, her lips to blue. A bit of red foam bubbled at the corner of her mouth. She breathed.

  But barely.

  Chapter 24

  September 30, 1849 12:30 p.m. - The Speculations of the Sophist -

  Again, these few years later, I behold her in my imagination. Once more, her form and face rise before me. I can see the sheen of the mist form on her olive skin and recall the easy motion of her walking. As some sweet virgin of a hymn to the Mother of God, I see her – her soft hands extended in a benediction. In bright hours that fly by me in joy, I hear her voice like a song that reaches up into an unmarked sky of deepest blue and warming sun.

  Of course, that is not how it ever was. The years have bent the rays and transmuted her being into deathless clay that I have molded in my reveries. This journal is no place for such delusion. The truth must now be written. No blessing ever came from her. No sunlight illuminated that day. No holy song was sung. No innocence spared. And her skin was stretched like scorched paper over the bones of her face.

  Molly was placed on the floor at first. She was completely still. A rag was wrapped around her neck. It was dark red and wet with her blood. I went to her and felt for a pulse. Though the rusty foam on her lips flared and bubbled with her shallow breath, I sought the evidence that would confirm her fragile state. Like a trembling worm, I found it moving through her wrist – a rapid, threading circulation.

  Jupiter ministered to Poe with his concoction of powders and laudanum, and soon the poet was pacing as if no assault had been done him. I alone moved Molly as gently as I could to the bed. I sat beside her, helpless. I gazed upon the ruined youth of her face and prayed for her eyes to open, but they did not.

  I believe that Jupiter and Poe had been engaged in a heated dialogue for some minutes before my consciousness was turned to them by the smash of a glass into the stone of the hearth. Jupiter was holding Poe by the collar.

  “And why have I brought you here, Poe, for you to fail? I might have soon left you in that grove near Church Hill.”

  “Such a blessing that would have been.” Poe showed surprising strength and jerked himself out of Jupiter’s grasp. He went to the marble-topped table and, taking up a crystal decanter, poured out a good measure of a thickish-green liquid into a small snifter. “Join me in an absinthe?” His manner was almost gay.

  “Time is short, Poe.”

  Poe drained the snifter in a single tilt. “Kind solace in the dying hour!” he shouted. “Such solace, Father, is not now my theme. I will not madly deem that power of Earth may shrive me of the sin my unearthly pride has reveled in.” He poured another measure of the green thujone.

  “We are not in your world of poetry.”

  Poe took a sip of his drink, paused, and then, with almost a plea in his dark eyes, turned to Jupiter and said, “Then what world are we in?”

  “You must find her.” Jupiter was not begging. He was commanding.

  “So, I must.”

  “We must find the Odalisk.”

  “The Odalisk,” Poe mused. “Shall I dress as a concubine and play the lute for her? Will you hold her peacock fan?”

  Jupiter might have struck the ragged man. The Negro raised his hand and started to advance towards Poe, who did not flinch, but rather, smiled as the blow approached.

  Molly moaned. A long, slow, piteous keening came from her cracked and bloody lips. She stirred and cried again. A small tear ran down her desiccated cheek.

  Jupiter stopped mid-stride. “She knows.”

  “Yes, she does.” Poe drained his glass.

  I brushed away the tear on Molly’s face and sucked the salt of the water from my finger. “Can you not help her?” I asked.

  “He can help us,” said Poe.

  “I will not do it, Poe.”

  “Help her,” I repeated.

  A loud knocking came at the door. It opened from without. Jeffers stood there with an alarmed expression on his already lined face. “You must leave here!”

  “What is it?” Jupiter went to the bellman.

  “Two men are downstairs. And connected men they are.”

  “Sharply dressed?”

  “Regulators or Rat tats, one or another.” Jeffers was trying to catch his breath. “One by the name of Tom.”

  “Ready Tom?” I remembered the men from our first day’s excursion in the street.

  Poe had opened his trunk and was transferring as many of the bottles on the table that fit to the luggage. “And he works for Fox.”

  “Big Billy.” Jupiter’s brow was knit in concentration.

  “Quickly.” Jeffers came into the room and went to the bed. “You must take her as well. Thaddeus is bringing a wagon to the back. Hurry.”

  “She won’t survive another move,” I said.

  “No help for it now. Quickly.”

  I gathered what I could of my ruined wardrobe. Poe locked his trunk. Jupiter picked up Molly’s limp form, and we hurried down the back way even as we heard steps on the main staircase coming up to the fourth floor.

  We found ourselves again at the heavy oak alley door. In the narrow lane awaiting us was Thaddeus, holding the reins of two mud-marked drays hitched to a lorry. I jumped up into the back box as best I could with my carpet bag stuffed full of what I had been able to gather. Poe tossed up his trunk, and I heard some glass breaking within. Jupiter lifted Molly’s slight weight up to us, and we laid her, as gently as we could onto a pile of old rags. I covered her with an oiled tarp, and we were moving before Jupiter could even loosen the side flaps and close us off in some slight concealment.

  ‘Yah!” shouted Thaddeus. “On there, Plodder.”

  What little light the day offered leaked through the flaps as the wagon rumbled and bumped out of the alley and into the Sunday traffic. There were no shouts of pursuit, but I wondered what was transpiring in the Barnum. I sensed Jeffers had taken a great risk and may even at that moment have been paying the price.

  After what seemed an interminably long period of time, but what can have only been a
matter of a quarter-hour, the wagon turned again into an alley. There was the loud blast of a steam engine’s whistle, and the lorry’s wheels bumped over some debris or loose pavers. We came at last to a halt. The flap by the driver’s seat opened, and Thaddeus leaned in.

  “We have reached the Bradshaw.”

  “The Bradshaw?” I asked.

  “A hotel of modest reputation,” said Poe.

  Thaddeus hushed us. “We have friends here. Go in the back door and follow the boy to your room. The arrangements have been made. You are registered under the name of Mr. Dupin.”

  “Ha!” laughed Poe. “A good joke.”

  We eased Molly out of the wagon, and unobserved, we went to the rusted iron doorway at the back of the building. Opening with a protest, it revealed a small black boy of about thirteen years.

  “This way,” he said. The child was composed and matter-of-fact, as if he were merely directing a party of workmen to a contracted task. His eyes seemed too old for his smooth coffee face as he examined us with an air of calculation. He turned without any further greeting and started up a back stairway similar in design to the Barnum’s servant’s passage. Unlike that prosperous hotel’s halls, the Bradshaw’s floors were dusty and webbed. Litter was clumped into a corner where it had been kicked, and a slight but offensive odor of old vinegar filled the stagnant air.

  We made our way without conversation to the third floor, and then exiting the landing into a dark hallway, made our way to room number 33. The dark little escort unlocked the door and gestured for us to enter. As we passed him, he gave us a final instruction.

  “Don’t be coming down the front. Use the back door. Here’s the key.”

  Perhaps because I was closest to him, he handed me a large iron fang with two teeth at its tip.

  “Don’t lose it.” I offered him a penny in thanks, but he refused the awkward gesture. “Don’t use the lobby. I’m Johnny. Hop-Frog some call me. Ask for me if you’ve a strong need. But don’t go into the lobby.” He turned and was gone.

  I closed the door to the room as quietly as I could and made sure of the lock on the latch. Turning to my companions, I took in the nature of our new accommodations. The room was small with a bent bronze bedstead holding a thin mattress covered by a tattered duvet next to a cracked vanity with pitcher and mismatched basin. The plaster was cracked around the narrow window that overlooked the alleyway and admitted only enough light to illuminate the motes of dust that we had stirred on entering. Two rudely mended cane chairs sat by a battered desk. A potbellied stove with a crudely wired flue occupied a corner of the room, and a coal bucket held only half its capacity in salvaged chunks of black bitumen.