The Wreckage of Eden

by Norman Lock

  The mere names of the tortures—too inhuman to be called “ingenious”—are likewise sufficient: the Judas chair, the head screw, the Spanish boot, the breast ripper, the tongue ripper, the iron maiden, the brazen bull, the pear of anguish, the strappado, the Spanish donkey, the knee splitter, the heretic’s fork, death by sawing a man or woman down the middle—let this last brutality stand for the rest in its supreme terror and ineffable cruelty. It makes the Romans seem kind for having only crucified Christ.

  If Emerson had meant his gazette of horrors as a parable, it fell on thorns. I was in no mood for conundrums or cautionary tales. I had reached the point at which a man can go no further without tumbling into an abyss. The Sage of Concord invited me to hear him speak that night, but I excused myself. I would rather have gone to a barn dance or gotten drunk like an ordinary man unconcerned by the evil that men do.

  A thin, well-dressed negro came into the room. He had just arrived by train from Boston. Emerson introduced us, and, when I shook the stranger’s hand, I noticed that the left one was missing.

  “Reverend Winter, I would like you to be acquainted with my friend and colleague Mr. Samuel Long. Mr. Long, the Reverend Winter, recently returned from Zion, in the Territory of Utah.”

  We shook hands solemnly, and I hoped there would be no ensuing discussion of the Mormons or their unsuccessful rebellion.

  “Mr. Long will also be addressing the society tonight. He has his own story to tell——”

  “As does each of us, Waldo.”

  I marveled at the negro’s familiarity, but Emerson appeared to take no notice.

  “You are right to remind me, Samuel. Each writes his own autobiography, if not with ink, then with some other medium equally impermanent.”

  “With blood?” asked the negro.

  “If the occasion calls for it, but even blood and the memory of blood fade.”

  The other man seemed as though he would disagree, but the moment passed.

  “Your thoughts, Reverend Winter?” asked Emerson, turning his penetrating gaze on me.

  “I’m sure Mr. Winter would have much to say on the subject of blood, but I am famished for something more substantial than words,” said Long. “Even yours, Waldo.”

  I felt obliged to Long for the diversion. The disadvantage of experience is that one is constantly asked to describe it to the curious. The man who stays at home is seldom pestered by his neighbors, and rarely by biographers.

  I excused myself to both gentlemen and, having bid my host and his other guests good-bye, left the Evergreens. Before going home to dine with Tess and Charlotte, I stopped next door at the Homestead.

  “Why weren’t you at your brother’s?” I asked, standing with my back to the hearth fire. A book lay open on your lap like a charmed bird.

  “I feared there would not be oxygen enough for two luminaries of the age to burn brightly,” you replied mischievously.

  “You were missed.”

  “I’m sure they mistook a shadow in the corner of the room for me and smiled in its direction, as though it were the wallflower of Amherst, wilting at the sight of Canova’s Cupid and Psyche being naughty on the green marble mantelpiece. My brother is a connoisseur of objets d’art, some of which can make a lady blush.”

  I sat on the ottoman and glowered.

  “Is Mr. Emerson fascinating?” you asked.

  “He’s a good man, I think, and persuasive.”

  “I have the better part of him on the bookshelf upstairs next to Euripides, whose work was also subversive for its time.”

  “You would have enjoyed the afternoon,” I said impatiently.

  “He is too magnetic a personality, I am told; I would have fainted to hear him speak, and his eyes, had they fallen on me, would have made me evaporate into a cloud. I might then have distilled a little rain to water Austin’s plants—he and Sue are neglectful of their green charges.”

  Annoyed, I wanted to pick up the bowl of nasturtiums and send it flying. Instead, I asked you what you were reading.

  “George Sand’s Mauprat,” you replied, taking the book from your lap and, having laid the silk ribbon between the pages, closing it.

  “Ah, the lady novelist who wears men’s trousers!” I said to spite you.

  “I should like to wear men’s trousers, too.”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or rebuke you. “Whatever for?”

  “To shock Father.”

  “Do you hate him so very much, then?”

  You set George Sand beside you, smoothed your dress, and said, in the offhand manner of a woman remarking on the milliner’s newest fabrics, “There was a surgeon in Philadelphia, Dr. Mütter, who had learned to reconstruct the human face in Paris.”

  “All things novel and obscene begin in Paris,” I replied peevishly.

  “I didn’t realize you are such a Calvinist, Robert! You should retire your sack coat for a Geneva gown.”

  I uttered a few syllables indicative of disapproval.

  “If I were brave enough, I’d have the telltale warrants of my sex amputated.”

  Your fantastic notions often embarrassed, but never before had they appalled me.

  “I think living shut up in this house has driven you mad.”

  “If I were a man,” you said in a kind of reverie, “I’d kill my father, as Oedipus did his.”

  “I think you are in earnest!” I cried, feeling afraid.

  “I am in earnest, Robert. How else am I to escape? And poor Vinnie—and Austin, too, whom Father installed in the Evergreens to keep him close. A fitting name for a cemetery! And yet . . . and yet, I love him, for I must. It says so in the covenants.”

  “What covenants?”

  “Those that bind by a gravity more imperative than Isaac Newton’s, which concerns the attraction of apples and of planets, but not that of one human heart to another.”

  “Love . . .” Because Ruth and mine had been brief, I sensed that I’d missed its fullness and peace.

  “That, or its opposite,” you replied with a shrug of your narrow shoulders.

  Always the ironist!

  I studied your diminutive frame, your weak chin, your wan face and was sorry to have sneered at you. I’m sorry now, Emily, though, despite your smallness and reclusiveness, you are no more vulnerable or timid than an asp.

  “Fathers have their place in the universe,” you said. “And we, their children, are pilgrim planets in orbit around them. That, sir, is the way of things—reprove them as I might.”

  You stood abruptly and went into the kitchen. I heard an iron door creak open and close.

  “I have a roast in the oven,” you said upon your return. “The kitchen is a domain where male tyranny dare not show itself.”

  “There was a negro man at your brother’s . . . Samuel Long. He lacked his left hand.”

  “The manumitted and mutilated slave, yes, I know of him. His story is dreadful, and Mr. Emerson and Mr. Thoreau were the saving of him, or so Austin insists.”

  “He seemed disinclined to tell his story.”

  “It is written on his back. I’m not being fanciful, Robert. If you want the translation, he’s in town to give his testimony before God and the abolitionists. They say he speaks most movingly of his bondage and escape.”

  “I’m going home tonight to see if I have a father’s instinct. I’ve neglected my child.”

  “She may blossom in your absence,” you said thoughtfully as you picked a nasturtium to pieces with nervous fingers.

  I recalled Emerson’s allusion to Goya’s ghastly painting of infanticide and shuddered.

  “Still . . .” My voice trailed off toward an admission of helplessness.

  “Of course you must try,” you said perfunctorily.

  Silence settled on the room like a shroud.

  “Do you like Poe’s things?” I asked, because my mind had been tending toward the grim atmosphere of his tales.

  “One does not care to be reminded.”

  “
Of what?”

  “One can have the bird or else the shadow it leaves upon the lawn.”

  “Poe, also, believed in affinities,” I said.

  “His are knit of iron cables, mine of gossamer. You may judge for yourself which is the stronger.”

  I wished that you were still with me, Ruth. I longed for your plain speech and common sense.

  That night, when Aunt Tess laid a serving platter on the dining table, laden with white potatoes encircling a shank of lamb, Charlotte recited a stanza from Wordsworth.

  “Rest, little young One, rest; thou hast forgot the day

  When my father found thee first in places far away;

  Many flocks were on the hills, but thou wert owned by none,

  And thy mother from thy side for evermore was gone.’”

  Tess gathered Charlotte into her arms and called her “dear child.”

  “Did you teach her to say that?”

  “Heaven’s no! It was Miss Emily, of course.”

  “Aunt Emily did,” repeated Charlotte, nodding her pretty head.

  “She’s always teaching the little one something or other.”

  I should have been grateful, but your repellent fantasy of metamorphosing into a man under the surgeon’s knife oppressed me. You had meant to provoke because of my disdain for George Sand, but that you could conceive of anything so monstrous dismayed me. I would have forbidden you to see the girl, but what reason could I give Tess or Charlotte, who adored you? I hadn’t the words to tell the cause of my uneasiness.

  You once told me, “In a storm, we can shed words, as a tree does leaves, until we stand naked and mute before our God.” Naked and mute in spirit, I had none before me, save that of the Aztecs or of the Spaniards—gods with teeth that gnashed and rent.

  After supper, Charlotte and I drew pictures on her slate, played hide-and-seek, told each other what shapes we saw in the fire, and sang “Pretty Maids All in a Row.” Having grown tired at last, she went upstairs with Tess to prepare for bed. When I went to kiss her good night, she asked for a story, but I couldn’t think of any except as might illustrate a homily or an admonishment. She wouldn’t let go of my hand until I’d told her one, so I made up a tale about a girl who returns home from far away every first of November and eats barley sugar candy.

  Later, sitting beside Tess on the sofa, I wondered aloud what judgment would be passed on me, what punishment meted out for my neglect. There was no answer either from her or from the silent ones who judge and punish—only the steady click, click, click of knitting needles.

  –4–

  THE FOLLOWING WEEK, AUSTIN INVITED ME to accompany him to Boston. We traveled on the Amherst and Belchertown line to Palmer, where we made our connection. I hadn’t been on an excursion since Ruth and I had gone to Hannibal, and the unspooling view of fields, meadows, hamlets, and towns outside the window held me rapt.

  “The Minotaur escaped the Golden Age into one of rust and soot,” you once remarked. “Like Father, the poor creature has become saturnine and out of sorts.”

  Maybe so, but I thrilled to ride the degenerate minotaur of iron and smoke, even though a speck of grit blew into my eye and made it weep for nothing but itself.

  Your brother had an appointment with William Ticknor, of Ticknor and Fields, at their office on Washington Street. At Emerson’s recommendation, Hawthorne had made Austin his plenipotentiary in matters regarding his published works. Hawthorne and his family were then living in England. Arriving early, we waited in the anteroom. Austin perused a contract, and, in the silence of the thickly carpeted room, I could hear snatches of a conversation issuing from Ticknor’s private office. At two o’clock, the door opened, and a negro gentleman emerged, his hand clasping that of Ticknor, who stood behind him in the doorway. The negro’s other cuff was empty.

  “Mr. Long!” I said, very much surprised. “I hadn’t expected to meet you here.”

  “Mr. Ticknor and I have known each other for some time. Mr. William Ticknor, please be acquainted with the Reverend Winter.”

  “Good day to you, sir,” said the publisher cordially.

  “And to you, sir,” I replied.

  “Austin,” said the negro, giving his hand to your brother, who took it warmly in his own. “I hope you and Mrs. Dickinson are well.”

  “Tolerably so, thank you, Samuel.”

  “I am glad to hear it. Please give Sue my regards. And now, gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Garrison will be champing at the bit for his article,” said Long, winding a scarf around his neck and turning to leave. At the time, he was a correspondent for The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist paper, also located in Boston.

  “I have not given up hope!” called Ticknor as the other man went out the front door.

  “I’ve been trying to persuade him to let us publish his reminiscences of Thoreau when they were neighbors in Walden Woods,” he said to us in explanation. “He’s a stubborn and self-effacing man.”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I’d like a word with Mr. Long.”

  I went outside and caught up with him on the sidewalk.

  “Mr. Long . . .”

  “Yes? Do you wish to speak to me?”

  “I must apologize for having missed your testimony on the day we met in Amherst. I was not myself.”

  “We cannot always be ourselves,” he replied graciously. “It is the times we live in.”

  He shrank from the curb when a cab swerved toward him to avoid a newsboy in its path.

  “I read an excerpt from your remarks in the Amherst paper. I thought what you said was very fine indeed.”

  “I would do better were I fiery, but I have not John Brown’s gift for oratory.”

  “I overheard you and Mr. Ticknor talking about John Brown just now.”

  “He is a man often talked about these days.”

  “What do you think of him, besides his oratory?”

  “I don’t think they can be considered apart.”

  “Yes, but what do you think of him?” I repeated, perhaps too insistently.

  “Are you asking me because I am a negro?”

  “Yes.”

  My frankness must have appealed to him, because he answered my question with equal candor.

  “I think he is insane.” I opened my mouth to speak, but he went on. “But insanity for such a man is not that of the Bedlamite or the poor deluded souls locked up at Bellevue. It is nearer to that of ecstatic visionaries, such as Saint John of Patmos, Christopher Smart, Christ—if you’ll forgive me, Reverend, for my blasphemy—and my friend Thoreau, although he’s more likely to go into fits of ecstasy over a Jesus bug than the Lamb of God.”

  “I’ve been troubled by Brown ever since Pottawatomie,” I said doggedly.

  “Tell me, Robert, are you also troubled by the sacking of Lawrence and the burning of Osawatomie? Are you—I take it we are speaking of your conscience?” I nodded yes. “Was it troubled by Nat Turner’s rebellion but not by the four million souls who suffer bondage as if it were their just desert?”

  Until that moment, the contradiction had been felt like a rash, general and unfocused. Till then, I’d never heard the matter put so simply; a child could have taken Samuel Long’s point.

  “I will miss my deadline if I don’t hurry,” he said.

  “Did you ever meet him?” I asked, grasping his elbow to detain him a moment longer.

  “In the fall of 1857, when he spoke at the Concord town hall.”

  “Did he move you?” My vehemence surprised us both.

  “As if he’d been the Baptist come again. Now, I really must go, Mr. Winter!”

  I let go of his elbow. He tipped his hat and walked toward the Liberator offices.

  “Godspeed!” I called after him.

  I went back inside and waited for Austin to conclude his business. I took a manuscript from my case; I’d brought what I hoped would be the making of a book of my own about my experiences during the Mexican War, augmented by reminis
cences of the Mormon Rebellion. Yes, Emily, the same narcissistic foolishness I mentioned earlier.

  Their business at an end, the door to Ticknor’s office opened, and the two men came into the anteroom.

  “I have a manuscript!” I blurted, holding the papers in my hands as though they were the stone tablets of Moses or the gold plates of Joseph Smith.

  Frowning, Austin snuffled in disapproval; I had kept the pages a secret from him during the train ride. “Coals to Newcastle,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Does it have a title?” asked Ticknor with a smile.

  “A Chaplain’s Journey.”

  “You were a chaplain?”

  “I’ve been one since the Mexican War.”

  “If you’ll leave it with me, I’ll read it when I can.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I make no promises. We receive a number of manuscripts, since it is our business to publish them, if they should happen to interest us.”

  I nodded like a simpleton. Vanity of vanities—the itch to inflict one’s every gripe and flutter of the heart on a reader, as if writing were a sickness and, at the same time, its cure!

  If you were here with me now, Emily, I would say, “You have offered up your days and nights to the vainest of vanities”—as have I, though mine is of a different sort.

  Ticknor bid us good afternoon and returned to his office, carrying my sheaf of papers.

  Your brother was good enough to make no further mention of my presumptuousness, which had clearly embarrassed him. We dined and made desultory conversation, as two people will who have talked enough for one day. We walked to our hotel near the Common and, before going inside to bed, lingered on the sidewalk, looking at the blooms of gaslight shining coldly through the bare trees.

  “They are a splendid sight!” I said, letting a ghost of warm breath escape into the night.