Ahab's Wife (61 page)

“Many of the forces pondered by scientists are quite as invisible as God.”

The visible, audible world surrounding us imprinted itself continually upon my senses, while he talked. It was good to stand still in the woods and not simply move through them.

Yet, I would keep up my end of the discourse for a while: “Those invisible, scientific forces have measurable, observable effects.”

“Some would say that all of your nature is the measurable effect of God.”

“But you would not?” I could not see his face, for the veil hung from the hairline of the forehead down to his mouth, stirring constantly and slightly with his breathing and speaking.

“Nature is not good enough to be purely the work of God. The pilgrim fathers felt that the devil lived in the deep forest, with the savage Indians. The body in all its lust is as natural as animals are natural. Even a man of God could be corrupted in his admiration of the female.”

“You said that you are a married man, that you have a daughter who bears my name. Do you not think the marriage bed a holy place?”

Here he covered his veiled face with his hand. “I am not yet married. I speak of a daughter who is ethereal, potential. Yours is the very question that torments me. When I saw you coming on the path toward me, I thought,
I must speak to her
. You seemed yourself full of color, a cousin of these scarlet trees. Your ripening body said that you had been one with nature. The very way you trod the path said that you
were unafraid in the woods—even though, I learn, you were uncertain of the path. There is about you a terrible well-being.”

I saw a tiny chickadee light on a twist of bittersweet vine. How light the bird, for that thread not to break under its weight. “How completely you observe in a glance,” I said. Although the gloominess of the man repelled me, I felt that within him imagination shone like a star.

“Carnality is surely the enemy of the spirit,” he said. “But Margaret Fuller disputes that. It is an irony, for despite her careful, nay, fashionable dress, she herself is repugnant, with her eyelids ever fluttering up and down, her long neck like a serpent's.”

“Sir! Her neck reminds me of a swan's. She is my friend, and I think her beautiful. I will go at once if you wish to insult her.”

His chest heaved in a long sigh, and he stepped back. “You are conventional in your loyalties,” he said. “You cannot brook an honest opinion.”

I thought of Giles and Kit, determined and hurtful, in their honesty.

“Honesty, like any inclination, can become a ruling passion, a monomania almost,” I said.

“Greek ideas—balance, tolerance, moderation. I think the world did not know true passion till Christianity.”

“And in its name forever have the Moor and the Jew been slaughtered!” I felt myself growing passionate. Whether he was minister or writer, his smugness offended me.

“I see overweening pride in you,” he said.

“I see confusion, darkness, repression, and cruelty in you!” My face felt on fire. “Go your way, and I'll go mine.”

“You speak in clumsy allegory,” he murmured.

I started down the path, boiling with opposition. Over my shoulder, I called back, “May your daughter Una more resemble me than her natural father!”

It was this last sentence that rang in my ears. But I had not gone far before the splendor of the woods dissipated my anger, and again I felt amused. But now I laughed at myself instead of him. I had engaged in an absurd as well as heated exchange.

Why did he wear the black veil? I mused. Then I speculated—it was to filter, to strain out, to obscure all this glory.

W
HEN
I
REACHED
the home of Emerson, I found that Margaret, too, had gone off in a huff, taking the coach. Mrs. Emerson supplied me a room for the night, but I did not see the great man more than for a moment, when he said, “Two of my guests have shot off from here like Independence Day rockets. I hope you find good repose.”

Some years later I heard Mr. Emerson speak at the Atheneum in Nantucket—I found him very thought-provoking, though not more so than my own minister—and I was sorry that he had not wished to engage me in conversation that night when I stayed at his house. Perhaps his other guests had exhausted him.

 

I
N
B
OSTON
, Margaret was again not at home. She had apparently gone to the Alcotts' instead of returning. I returned to Nantucket. The Indian summer of October being brief, I did not try to see Margaret again, but we corresponded.

 

T
HE ODD AFTERMATH
of my encounter with the phantom in the woods was that I received a package and a note from David Poland. He said he had found a valise at the forking of a path in the Concord woods, where business (of an undisclosed nature) had taken him. He recognized the volume wrapped in clothing to be the Wordsworth that had been my mother's and was herewith returning it, though not the valise, thinking, too, that the nightdress was not precious to me—I could easily stitch up another—“probably quicker than making jam cake”—and postage was dear.

David wrote that he had hoped to catch up with me, and he had chosen the right fork of the path in pursuit. At times he had thought he heard human footsteps far to his left, but he could not see me.

What a pity! I thought. I would very much have liked our paths to cross again. I wondered if he would have had the pelt on his shoulders, and if I would have mistaken him, at first, for a wolf. In his letter, David mentioned that a minister had come along as he was opening
the valise and offered to purchase the nightgown from him. David had accepted the money—characteristic!—which I did not begrudge. But that my intimate garment had fallen into the hands of that dark man made me color with shame.

I
N DEEP WINTER
,
in January, when new snow had freshened already deep drifts, when Halley's comet had turned round the sun and was headed back to darkness, its tail blown out before it, then a profound restlessness came upon me.

I had had Christmas with the Unitarians, and a very satisfactory celebration it was, not insisting on the exclusive divinity of Jesus, but allowing all births to be miracles, all babies holy. It suited me in my pregnant state. The minister had spoken of animals and angels in a way very congenial to my own sense of human beings. During the service, I admired Isaac, the gaoler, who was also a Unitarian, and his family—now two girls, his own little sisters (with golden ringlets and wicked-merry dark eyes), his wife, the toddler, and a new infant. Toward me he always had a friendly smile, but he never attempted to chat, though we both felt that we were friends.

And then the congregation had a shared feast. How well Unitarians cook! and savor all the good things of this life! The minister's recipe for plum pudding was one he had gotten from his mother in Maine, and half the church had turned out to mix and pour the batter in its forms, to watch the ovens, to cool and wrap the puddings till Christmas came.

Despite the satisfactions of the season, with its aftermath and the deep snow came my own dissatisfaction. In a fit of whimsy, I asked Pip to build me a snowman behind the house, and he did so—three great balls, topped with an old hat and a parsnip for a nose. Next I gave Pip a broomstick and took one myself, and together we knocked
the snowman into powder. Pip said, “Pip hate to be your boy, Miz Una, you pack a wallop like dat.” But creating and destroying the snowman was a quixotic whim. And it did not satisfy my restlessness.

 

A
SSUMING
my new wool cloak, edged with wolf fur, I walked carefully through the snowy street to visit the Mitchells at their apartment in the rear of the Union Pacific Bank. Maria being out at a lecture, Mr. Mitchell sat down with me for a bit of conversation. “What is the history of snow here on Nantucket?” I asked him.

A thorough meteorologist, he immediately turned to his record books. “How long it has been,” he said playfully, “since someone has asked me such an important and fascinating question.” He could not have been kinder to me if I had been one of his own daughters. I wished I had been.

William Mitchell was only beginning to age, and he had about him a natural peppiness; aging, in him, seemed to have added zest for every fact. Zestfully, he embedded his spectacles over his nose; zestfully, he placed his ledger on a round table; most happily he drew up two chairs to the table for himself and me. He had a fine, smooth complexion and a beautiful resonant voice, which Maria had inherited from him. Both had the ability to look you unflinchingly in the eye and to monitor not merely if you were paying attention but how much of what they said was actually penetrating the consciousness. Mr. Mitchell did not expect perfect absorption in his listener, but if one let her mind stray too often, he would politely change the subject to one less taxing in detail. Detail, detail—how the Mitchells loved it, and if numbers attended the detail or constituted its bulk, then they were among the happiest of mortals. No, I was not of this family, after all.

“Well, not so long ago, we had a fine old-fashioned snowstorm, hmmm….” He perused his records. “January eighth and ninth it was, to a depth of two feet, three feet in the drifts. Continuous snow with winds.”

“How deep are we today, officially?”

“But six inches, though it will snow again about midnight. We're getting more moisture, you see, to feed the ravenous nuclei upon which condensation depends.”

I ventured that Maria would not like to lose another night of telescopic
inquiry to bad weather, but William was not ready to be diverted from the History of Snow. “The Great Snowstorm was in January of 1831, not merely locally, but all along the Atlantic. Three feet deep in the groves, four feet in other places. Very fine sleighing, and the harbor was frozen out to Brant Point. I do remember the sleighing. We were all like children again. Let's see….” He flipped the pages. “Three severe snowstorms in the winter of 1829 with a shipwreck, perhaps a foot deep in places, but because of the terrible wind, some places left bare—so it is with money, eh, my dear? Prodigious heaps of it in some places, others quite barren of that commodity…. Do you get a bit sleepy? Next big event, going backwards of course, was in 1806—somewhat before your time, I believe, my dear. Una, have you thought of acquiring a cat? We have an extra one someplace here about.”

“Cat?”

“Shall I walk you home, dear? Maria won't be back for another hour, I'd guess.”

“Whatever shall I do with my restlessness?” I wailed.

He peered at me over his half-glasses. “Well, we shall walk it home.” He unhooked the glasses from behind his ears. “You shall crawl into bed. Is Mrs. Maynard there?”

“No.”

“At any rate, you'll sleep well and awake tomorrow refreshed. Now come along.”

W
ILLIAM
M
ITCHELL
was quite adept at predicting the weather—at least three more inches came down during the night—but woefully wrong in his prediction that I would awake refreshed. No sleeping position was comfortable. And then I remembered that it had been so when I was pregnant before. I determined that I would go for a fine walk, perhaps all the way to 'Sconset to see Mary Starbuck—seven miles or so—and spend the night with her. I pulled on woolen stockings, determined to try the hike.

In brighter spirits, I set out into the bright morning. Yet I felt gay with purpose, and the sparkling of the snow invigorated me. The children of the town filled the streets with their snow forts and snowballing of each other. Once I had passed the town, the road was hard to discern, for no one had walked out.

As I walked on, my merry mood was replaced by a more solemn one. Occasionally I passed a house and saw other human beings, but much of the island was draped in snow, and I felt my smallness in the unbroken fields of white. At length, I saw the rise of hill atop which I knew to be Altar Rock. Except for the cliffs at Sankaty, north of 'Sconset, it was the highest point of the island. I do not know why, but in an instant I decided to change my destination to Altar Rock. Perhaps I knew I was growing tired, and I had scarcely traversed half the distance to Mary's house. So I began my climb.

The slope was gradual, like the back of some giant beast. I thought of David's pursuit of Susan in Ohio up the snow hump of a hill. As I climbed the snow hill, I found myself praying for Susan, praying that she lived in freedom and that life had brought her many good things. Not Susan but Mrs. Maynard would attend this next birthing, and no doubt the judge would produce the doctor at the very moment if he should be needed. I thought of Susan emerging from beneath my mattress and smiled.

How bleak the climbing of that last, futile snow mound must have been for Susan.
That
was alone. And yet she used her wits, and the money had been enough. When I gave it to her, I had wondered why I was giving her so much. I had not thought it necessary for her journey, but it had been a way not to pay her—for that could never be done—but to honor her. And where was David now? For him, too, I prayed, as I struggled to climb the hill.

When I paused to pant, I saw two field mice running hard over the top of the snow, and then the shadow-wings of a hawk. But I think I was too imposing an upright for the raptor to stoop, and I waved both arms at him. Yet I knew that the hawk, too, had his rights.

Bigger than any whale, the slope rose skyward. Suppose my babe should die again? But he would not. He would not. My legs churned in the snow, and I thought of the froth that billows up around a whale swimming on the surface, and the flakes of foam that fly back continuously from the prow of a ship. I plowed and struggled upward, my
feet and legs cold to the shins. I would attain the rock; I would attain it. Was it in homage to Susan and her struggle that I first decided to climb the hill?

Whence comes this pilgrimage?
I mused. Surely a futile act. I might as well scrub the stone floor of Chartres Cathedral with my knees. I should not have let my restlessness drive me to punish my body this way. Yet I could not turn back.

When I reached the top, I dropped to my knees; I placed my elbows on the rock and looked out over the vast white sea of snow. Only the distant hawk violated the silence with his scream. I knew why I had come. My pilgrimage was not for Susan or for David or even for my unborn babe. I sank to my knees in the snow to pray for Ahab.

God of strange and extended whiteness, God of heights, who lurks around the crow's nests of ships, who circles the tops of lighthouses, who inhabits the high crags of Norway, God of frost and nothingness, love thou my Ahab!

When I turned the knob on the door of my own home, I was very tired, and my restlessness was gone.