by Paul Metcalf
“By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable.”
These shapes and forms finally resolved into a set of mammary rudiments—a mere suggestion of nipples, appearing in lines from the crotch to the true breasts, to the armpits. They remained for some time, and then disappeared.
Later, during the summer—with the intense heat beating up from river, brick, and asphalt, as it can only in St. Louis—he reported what appeared to be Elephantiasis of the Scrotum—the scrotum swollen and hanging to his knees, the penis enveloped, with only an invagination to indicate its presence. Whether he treated this condition, or allowed it to pursue its course, in any case, he eventually recovered.
Over a considerable period of time, he lost several teeth. Nothing seemed to happen to them, they didn’t decay or cause pain—they simply fell out. And, in every empty socket—after an extended delay—he grew a replacement; so that, by the time the process ended, he had, to a large extent, a third set of teeth.
At one time, he developed an abdominal swelling, so marked and painful it could not be ignored. For this, he went to the hospital, and underwent surgery. The result was the removal of a teratoma, or dermoid cyst—containing bits of skin, hair, nails, teeth, and tongue, fully developed. The only explanation was the predatory conquest by Carl, at some very early prenatal stage, of an unfortunate, competitive twin. The lesser organism, attacked and overcome, had nevertheless managed to place random cells within the folds and envelopes of the conquering embryo; and these, now fully developed, had waited until Carl’s full growth to present themselves.
Recovering from the operation, he became involved in a drunken brawl. The trouble started in a tavern, spread to the sidewalk, and eventually to the whole block, and Carl, resisting the police, turned on an officer and attacked him. I never discovered the nature of the attack, but it put the officer in the hospital and Carl in jail.
Locked in solitary, in a cell remote from the others, Carl remained out of control, raving and screaming long after he was sober.
Then he suddenly became quiet. He began chatting with the guards, and, through them, sent messages to the other officers. In a short time, he was in a front office, having an interview . . . and a little after that, he was on the street, a free man, all charges dropped. He had simply conned his way out . . .
Once when I asked him about this, he laughed, put his arm on my shoulder, and quoted Melville, with appropriate flourish: “. . . men are jailors all; jailors of themselves.”
. . . and added, matter-of-factly: “I liberated myself . . .”
For a while, Carl seemed to desert Concha, or at least two-time her. He took up with his final companion, a creature named Bonnie—fat, blowsy, alcoholic . . . she would sit in a rumpled bed, drunk, dirty, her stringy hair falling down, and quote Wordsworth and Keats . . . sneezing and weeping violently, lamenting that she suffered from “Rose Fever”: unconsoled when Carl told her that Hart Crane, American poet, was similarly allergic . . .
Carl once bragged to me, confidentially, that he had accomplished intercourse with Bonnie twelve times during thirty hours . . .
Whatever else he did was mysterious . . . but the law was on his heels again—his position in St. Louis became untenable. Expecting to hear of his arrest, I was surprised to hear, instead, that he had committed himself to a private institution. It was a shrewd gesture: the police gradually lost interest in him, and yet, the commitment having been his own act, he was free to leave whenever the heat was off.
I tried very hard to locate him, but could find no trace—as usual, he had left no address. For many months, I knew nothing of him, and I began to feel that he was passing, or had already passed, into institutional oblivion.
FIVE
The New York Central train, westbound for St. Louis, rumbled out of the Indianapolis station, and I settled myself by the window, with little thought of sleep.
Slumping, I let my shoulder and the side of my head rest against the window. My bag was in the rack overhead, and in my pocket, my breast pocket, was the letter from Carl: I had, at long last, an address, and I was using it quickly, before it passed, like all the others, into obsolescence.
He had written of his discharge from the institution—and had taken the trouble to enclose a letter from the staff, proclaiming him cured. He announced, further, that he had opened a one-chair barbershop, in the old section of St. Louis, on 4th Street—and he went so far as to invite me to spend the weekend. Coming off the swing shift at midnight, I had packed my bag, and headed for the first train.
I thought of Carl as a barber, and wondered where and how he had learned this skill—or if he had taken the trouble to learn at all. My eyes closed, I became numbed, insulated, like the dim interior in which I was riding. I may have slept, I’m not sure; I had the sense, in any case, of entering and passing through something . . .
When I opened my eyes, there was gray in the sky. It was not dawn—just a dull, general lifting of the dark. We were in southern Illinois, the tracks slicing diagonally across flat, squared-off farm land. Snow remained on the ground, and occasional gusts of sleet and cold rain washed the outer glass.
I may have slept again. When I looked through the window, it was full day, though still overcast. But the land had changed, and I didn’t quite understand how . . . the flatness was there, but there was a different tilt to it, a kind of flow, an imminence. Sitting up straight, I bought coffee and a dry cheese sandwich from a vendor. As the hot, strong liquid went down my throat, I realized that we were approaching St. Louis, and the river . . .
All at once, I understood why Carl had come here, to St. Louis, of all places; why California had been only a stopping place, and this, the Mound City, had become his inevitable destination. I could see ahead, in the distance, some elevations of earth: I couldn’t tell whether these were part of the original Indian mounds, or railroad embankments, or perhaps part of the levee system. In any case, the contour was low, level, and smooth; with the knowledge of the location of the city on the river, and the river’s place in the face of the land, I realized that St. Louis was “home,” the very eye and center of centripetal American geography, the land pouring in upon itself. I thought of China, and recalled that Carl’s journey from there, from all that had happened there, was an eastward voyage, across half the globe; and, perhaps like Ishmael on board the Pequod, he was hunting back toward the beginnings of things; and, like the voyage of the Pequod,—or of any of the various caravels of Columbus that struck fierce weather returning from the Indies—perhaps Carl’s eastward voyage, his voyage “home,” was disastrous . . .
We entered East St. Louis, and the train slowed, as we passed through mile after mile of factory, tenement, dump, and slum, an abandoned industrial desolation . . .
Rising over the earth mounds, the tracks entered a bridge, and we approached the river. The cold rainy wind blew waves onto the surface—dark black and purple, the wind squalls rushing across it, here and there turning a white cap. Through the steel girders I watched the water as long as I could see it. When we reached the other side, I felt that we had passed over a great hump . . .
Leaving the train at Union Station, I headed for 4th St., and had little trouble finding Carl. Tucked in a corner, in an ancient loft building, it looked like a poor spot for business. But the shop was open, and he was busy.
The sign read CARL AUSTIN MILLS, MASTER BARBER, and underneath, “I Need Your Head In My Business.” As I opened the door, he looked up from his work, and I detected in his glance only surprise—I had not told him I was coming—and pleasure. Stepping forward, he offered me his hand, and his grip was familiar and sturdy—warmth and affection in it, such as he had seldom shown me, but nothing patronizing: it was the glad warmth of an animal. Returning
to his customer, he gestured me to a chair, the sweep of his arm embracing and offering his hospitality, making rich and desirable the confines of his shop. He asked many friendly questions . . .
I looked around. Every inch of space, beyond what held his equipment, was taken up with pictures, decorations, objects of one sort or another. I had no idea how he had made such a collection. There were rocks, minerals, semi-precious stones of all shapes, sizes, and colors, some of them shining. There were souvenirs and toys from every carnival and circus in the land. Airplane parts hung from the walls, a split half of a propeller was suspended on thin wires from the ceiling. Pictures, paintings, and textile fragments appeared everywhere, the subjects ranging from Mayan, Aztec, and Inca stone and art work, to movie stars, nude girls, and pornography. Relics from Alaska, and other Indian artifacts were stuck on shelves. The magazine table included the morning newspaper, and thirty-year-old copies of the National Geographic and the Police Gazette. There was a settled look, a look of age . . .
Hanging in front of the mirror, directly back of the chair, so that strands of black hair descended among the bottles of oil and tonic, was the shrunken Indian head that he had won in a poker game in Alaska. Carl stepped back to survey his customer, his own great cranium coming close to the shrunken one . . .
He began telling a story—a wild tale about barbering among primitive Eskimos in Alaska, the natives being confused between haircuts and scalping. The customers seemed to know that he was lying, and this added to it . . .
I listened to him talk, watched him cut several heads of hair. The warmth of the shop entered me, became quieting. In addition to being a storyteller, he had a skill at his trade; his hands moved deftly over the men’s heads, weaving a phrenological spell.
The city of St. Louis, with the advent of the railroads after the Civil War, had turned its back upon the river and faced westward, had abandoned the old continental blood stream . . . Carl, setting up in this section, hugging the river, now drew warehousemen, truckers, straggling barge- and riverboat-men from blocks, perhaps miles around . . .
I became sleepy, began to drowse in my chair. Carl gave me the key to his room, suggested that I take a nap . . . I was almost asleep, as I stumbled out the door.
He lived in a furnished room, not far from the shop. It was small, poor, and bare, with the simplest furnishings—as barren of his personality as the shop was rich with it . . . too tired to look further, to dig beyond this front, I stretched across the bed and fell asleep.
When I awoke, it was midafternoon. Shaking myself, I sat on the edge of the bed, took a slower look around. On the floor, by the bed, were three books: a volume of Sappho, one of Homer, and the poems of Hart Crane . . .
Washing at the hand basin, I headed again for the shop. The rain had stopped, but cold wind blew off the river, pouring down the streets that led away from it.
A customer was just leaving and Carl was alone when I arrived. He suddenly decided to close, hustled me out, and locked the door, before anyone else showed up.
For several blocks we walked aimlessly, Carl—without coat or hat, his shirt open—sniffing the air like a dog. Then he stopped, clutched my elbow, and pointed . . . we turned and headed east, toward the river. A summer excursion boat was drawn up on the brick embankment, tilting at an angle. Together, just for the hell of it, we clambered aboard, laughing like kids, getting our feet soaked. I almost fell overboard when my foot slipped: Carl’s hand flashed out, thrusting for my arm, and I got up safely.
Arms outstretched, balancing ourselves on the tilting planks, we made our way to the prow, and stood for some moments. The wind drove down on us from the north . . .
Melville:
“Natives of all sorts, and foreigners; men of business and men of pleasure; parlour men and backwoodsmen; farm-hunters and fame-hunters; heiress hunters, gold-hunters, buffalo-hunters, bee-hunters, happiness-hunters, truth-hunters, and still keener hunters after all these hunters. Fine ladies in slippers, and moccasined squaws; Northern speculators and Eastern philosophers; English, Irish, German, Scotch, Danes; Santa Fe traders in striped blankets, and Broadway bucks in cravats of cloth of gold; fine-looking Kentucky boatmen, and Japanese-looking Mississippi cotton planters; Quakers in full drab, and United States soldiers in full regimentals; slaves, black, mulatto, quadroon; modish young Spanish Creoles, and old-fashioned French Jews; Mormons and Papists; Dives and Lazarus; jesters and mourners, teetotallers and convivialists, deacons and blacklegs; hard-shelled Baptists and clay-eaters; grinning negroes, and Sioux chiefs solemn as high-priests. In short, a piebald parliament, an Anacharsis Cloots congress of all kinds of that multiform pilgrim species, man.
“As pine, beech, birch, ash, hackmatack, hemlock, spruce, basswood, maple, interweave their foliage in the natural wood, so these varieties of mortals blended their varieties of visage and garb. A Tartar-like picturesqueness; a sort of pagan abandonment and assurance. Here reigned the dashing and all-fusing spirit of the West, whose type is the Mississippi itself, which, uniting the streams of the most distant and opposite zones, pours them along, helter-skelter, in one cosmopolitan and confident tide.”
Carl faced north, his whitened knuckles gripping the rail. I turned away, headed toward the vacant cabin, the river flowing south. In a moment he followed me, put his arm on my shoulder, and I felt again an animal affection. Huddled in my overcoat, tilted against the angle of the deck, I stood by him . . .
All at once, his body drew in upon itself; he gathered his jacket to his throat, clutched it with his free hand . . . he was chilled and threadbare, and the scrubby look of poverty came over him . . .
Melville:
“In the forward part of the boat, not the least attractive object, for a time, was a grotesque negro cripple, in towcloth attire and an old coal-sifter of a tambourine in his hand, who, owing to something wrong about his legs, was, in effect, cut down to the stature of a Newfoundland dog; his knotted black fleece and good-natured, honest black face rubbing against the upper part of people’s thighs as he made shift to shuffle about, making music, such as it was, and raising a smile even from the gravest. It was curious to see him, out of his very deformity, indigence, and houselessness, so cheerily endured, raising mirth in some of that crowd, whose own purses, hearths, hearts, all their possessions, sound limbs included, could not make gay.
“‘What is your name, old boy?’ said a purple-faced drover, putting his large purple hand on the cripple’s bushy wool, as if it were the curled forehead of a black steer.
“‘Der Black Guinea dey calls me, sar.’
“‘And who is your master, Guinea?’
“‘Oh, sar, I am der dog widout massa.’
“‘A free dog, eh? Well, on your account, I’m sorry for that, Guinea. Dogs without masters fare hard.’
“‘So dey do, sar; so dey do. But you see, sar, dese here legs? What ge’mman want to own dese here legs?’
“‘But where do you live?’
“‘All ’long shore, sar; dough now I’se going to see brodder at der landing; but chiefly I libs in der city.’
“‘St. Louis, ah? Where do you sleep there of nights?’
“‘On der floor of der good baker’s oven, sar.’
“‘In an oven? whose, pray? What baker, I should like to know, bakes such black bread in his oven, alongside of his nice white rolls, too. Who is that too charitable baker, pray?’
“‘Dar he be,’ with a broad grin lifting his tambourine high over his head.
“‘The sun is the baker, eh?’
“‘Yes, sar, in der city dat good baker warms der stones for dis ole darkie when he sleeps out on der pabements o’ nights.’
“‘But that must be in the summer only, old boy. How about winter, when the cold Cossacks come clattering and jingling? How about winter, old boy?’
“‘Den dis poor old darkie shakes werry bad, I tell you, sar. Oh, sar, oh! don’t speak ob der winter,’ he added, with a reminiscent shiver, shuffling off into the thickes
t of the crowd, like a half-frozen black sheep nudging itself a cosy berth in the heart of the white flock.”
Moving to the down-tilted side where we had climbed aboard, Carl and I clambered ashore, soaking our feet again. At the top of the embankment we turned, shivering in the wind, and looked back at the boat . . .
. . . it seemed shrunken, a toy, helpless on its perch of bricks.
We headed back into the city, chattering, half-running with cold. Carl made straight for a neon sign, with the word BAR . . .
We had some drinks, and wandered on . . . I tried to talk with him, or get him to talk, but his eyes looked beyond me, his mind held to no thought . . . he took one drink at a bar, and was off again.
Then again he turned to me, all warmth and consideration, his hand on my shoulder, the gesture affectionate, and firm . . .
As we wandered, the buildings became poorer, dirtier, more populous. Strange figures huddled in hallways, clustered around the doors of taverns—their lips thinned, thirsty, bitten back with poverty.
. . . at some time in the evening, we stood at the stage door of the burlesque theatre, while Carl tried to talk his way in . . . there was a glimpse of a near-naked girl . . .
Later, Carl ran out of money. I tried to loan him or give him some, offered him my wallet, everything I had—but he protested fiercely, the evening was to be his. The penurious, pinched look came over him . . . he reached into his pocket, took out a couple of linty crackers, and shared them with me . . .
(and on the 4th voyage of Columbus the supply of biscuits became infested with worms . . . the men, refusing to remove these animals for fear of reducing the volume of food, took to eating only at night so they wouldn’t have to see them . . .
We passed another bar, and Carl brought me to a halt. He stood for a moment . . . then cautioned me to wait outside, while he went in.
I watched him approach the first customer, standing at the rear end of the bar. They shook hands, Carl slapped his back, put a foot on the rail. The man gradually warmed, his body shifting, his coat hanging looser . . . they had a drink together, and the customer turned his back suspiciously to the rest of the room, drew something from his pocket, and he and Carl talked. After some moments, Carl drew back, placed his hand familiarly on the other’s shoulder, his great head nodding assurances . . . and turned and came out the door. He said nothing. . . but at the next bar, he paid for drinks with a new $50 bill . . .