Ahab's Wife, or the Star-Gazer

  “I ask because I would like to know your mind.” Her expression was so merry that I began to wonder if she was mad. But would my mother send me to a madwoman? And could a madwoman own a house and run a business such as a hotel?

  “How did you come to be here?” I asked.

  And at once, she began to tell her story.

  “Your bed was once my bed,” she said. “This house was a great house for one family, not a hotel, and I was a maid. I came from India”—she touched the caste mark on her forehead—“abducted by a whaling captain. I was as tall as you, and like you, as slender as a reed. The captain kept me locked in his cabin, and sometimes I was tied into the bed, which itself was suspended from the ceiling on gimbals. He treated me as a whore.”

  Whore. I watched her mouth go round as she said the harsh word. The world as I knew it seemed sucked into that mouth. With the sound of the word, whose meaning I knew by instinct and the puckered rounding of her thick lips, I lost my innocence.

  “Then my face,” she went on, “was sweet as the moon, and my eyes like almonds.”

  Certainly her face was still round, her eyes still slanted up at the corners.

  “I was very quiet. I did not have the language to speak to my captor. My father was an African, from the great grasslands, a killer of lions. My mother was from Tonga—Polynesia. They met in India, and I spoke their languages, and Hindi, and the language of my part of India, Calcutta, which is Bengali. And English, of course.”

  Yes, the flow of her speaking was natural, as though she’d always known it, but her language had a lilt to it, a slight crispness—as though her words had a thin, silver edge.

  She rolled up the sleeves of her dress. Her very body was imprinted with pictures of strange people, of spears and crisp hair, the mane of a lion and a long tasseled tail.

  “Was the captain the owner of this house?”

  “He was not, but his friend was. ‘She is a sweet, resigned girl,’he told his friend. ‘Take her as a servant, for my wife will not want to see her.’ They were Quaker captains, and their wives believed them moral.”

  “Quakers do not believe in war, at least,” I said.

  “There is no axis on which all turns,” she said. She rolled her hands over each other, round and round, as though her hands were a ball of yarn rolling loose across the floor.

  “Did you ever go home?”

  “Home?” she chuckled. “I have made my home wherever I am. A gimbaled bed, a maid’s room, the howdah atop an elephant.” She stopped smiling, tilted her head back, and looked majestically at me over the bulges of her cheeks. “And I advise you to do the same.”

  “I have lived in a lighthouse.”

  “I know.”

  “Before that, I lived in the woods, in Kentucky, close to the Ohio.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t know which is more nearly home.”

  “I know.” With that, she heaved herself up from the windowsill. Her skirts whispered their silk secrets as she passed, but I thought them to say, Welcome to the world.

  THUS I BEGAN my wait for my mother at the Sea-Fancy Inn of New Bedford. I positioned the spindly chair close to the window of my room and watched the street. I wondered if I would ever hear the rest of the innkeeper’s story—how she rose from maid to proprietor—and I can say now that I never did.

  The afternoon light began to fade, and lamplighters lit up the street. I did not want my mother to have to travel in the dark, and I began to grow anxious and hungry. I pictured her as yet contained in a stagecoach, her trunk tied up on the rack, and a box on her knee full of the ashes of my father. When a knock came at my door, it was a maid with a small basket and a cup of milk in her hand, saying that Mistress Swain had sent up some victuals.

  I thought of all the other women in the house and wondered if I should join the common table. I imagined them a happy group, convivial, but I wanted to stay at my window and look out. I was watching for Giles and for Kit, as well as for my mother. As night drew on, I expected more to see the men than to see her, for surely she was too tired to travel at night. Now I could see shops go dark, and I saw a store owner thrust the key into the lock of his chandlery and then shake the knob to be sure it was fast.

  The street lamps burned whale oil, and the odor of it wafted about on the late-summer air. My own candle I extinguished so that I might watch the street unseen by those below. I seemed a kind of Rapunzel, though my hair was dark and gypsylike and by no means long enough to let down as a golden ladder for my suitor. If Giles but saw me at the window, though, he would have thought of Rapunzel. And Kit? I could not guess. He was as likely to see me as a sea witch, wild and free—not an imprisoned princess. Again, I asked myself whose vision I preferred. And this time, I was not sure.

  Still, it was Giles who stirred my own depths. When I wrote the letters to him, I found thoughts and feelings that were hidden to me until I conjured up his mind as attentive. Suppose he was not attentive, and I only imagined him so? Darling—he had written the word. I did not imagine it. How had it been between Uncle and Aunt when they were courting? What was their degree of certainty? And my own parents?

  The flash of my father’s teeth between the black of his mustache and the black hairs of his beard. Sometimes that smile had been kind and jolly. Is our life determined for us, or do we choose? Some of both. Some of both—the answer came clean and simple to my mind.

  My father himself: perhaps two handfuls of ashes—perhaps six. Contained in a wooden box? some of him in the corners? some sifted into the crevices? We take him to the Lighthouse, and there, on the end of the island dock, we slip him back to the sea so that he might reassemble his grains of dust as a fish, a small black fish, perhaps with golden bars on his sides, a gold ring around his eye, a transparent tail. No. I take him high in the tower. I fling his dust in the air. Eagles! Here is one of your own. Let him float and soar with you. Let the sun, like a magnet, draw him to its fiery heart.

  What did one do with one’s father when he was dead?

  Full fathom five, my father lies,

  And are those pearls that were his eyes?

  If I spoke such modified Shakespeare to Giles, I was sure that his glance would be quick and liquid.

  But what was it that Giles wanted of me? That I could not imagine. He does not want anything of me. He simply sees a congruence in our shapes, knows our rightful, luckily found matching. And Kit? Oh, he wants. He wants what he cannot have of me. But I like his wanting and am drawn toward it.

  WHEN NIGHT was almost settled on New Bedford, when the street was illumined by only the nimbuses of light surrounding the lamps and by the chunks of light falling through the windows of the Spouter-Inn across the street and from the windows of the Sword-Fish down the way, I saw them walking, arm in arm. Without a glance at the Sea-Fancy, they shoved open the door of the Spouter and disappeared. Now I was glad! Now the tempo of my heart accelerated. Now I would see them in the morning.

  And so to bed.

  Under the woven counterpane, green and white, a pattern of houses, my fingers found a quilt. I explored the puckers around the stitches, found the edges of the pieces as they were seamed together, but I could make no sense by touch alone of the pattern. I could not compose an overview of the design. I watched my thoughts unhinge from logic and reality. So it always is for me, before sleep—if I care to observe the passage. Some part of the mind slips into error and distortion—like a moving face on the curve of a shiny surface, and some higher part of the mind observes the melting away of pattern. The whale’s footprint. I thought of Torchy’s image. No, it was Kit who told me that.

  CHAPTER 24: The Sussex

  WHEN MORNING LIGHT like happiness filled my room, I hurried to the window in my nightgown to look across at the Spouter-Inn. Silly me. It was but a building like a wooden box, just the same as yesterday, only sitting in early sunlight. Ah, in that box were my friends! How could life have seemed complete at the Lighthouse, on the Island, for four year
s! And I had had no knowledge even that Giles and Kit existed. Here was the great world! And it was full of houses and streets and people hurrying about their business, and Giles and Kit. Probably yet asleep.

  The bong of a church bell shook the air. Where was that sound yesterday? Dimly I could pull it out of memory, but yesterday I had been only eyes. No, the rattling of the carriages, I had heard that. And the melodious voice of Mrs. Swain. Now I heard my own feet crossing the painted boards, a pearly gray those boards, to the nail where hung my navy dress. And my bonnet. Today the grosgrain ribbons showed a crimp where they had been tied yesterday. For the first time they were tied yesterday. Never again for the first time. I thought it gaily. I was in the city. I might do as I liked.

  I could go out! If my mother came while I walked the sidewalks which yesterday had belonged to other women and men, she would find a note or message. Today I could not stay high up and waiting. I must be among the world. It was the new sunlight that told me so. And that single clap—bong! That was what had smacked my heart awake.

  Quickly I put on my dress. Why wash my hands and face? They weren’t dirty. My comb glided, glided, and my fingers found the old curves of the last braids and wove all together so nimbly and smoothly that I thought New Bedford should hold a contest for which maiden could braid her hair the quickest, and I would win!

  Silly me! Why, I liked myself best when silliest!

  But would Giles? I didn’t know. But would Kit? Yes!

  “Breakfast all! Breakfast all!” It was the voice of Mrs. Swain from two stories below. I pictured great piles of fluffy eggs. Sunshine incarnate! Sunshine beaten with milk and piled high in a china bowl. All of us women, all the women of the world feasting on scrambled sunshine! And toast! Yes, the rough-sided, crunchy-edged toast in my mouth, with a slick of butter.

  I went to the window to inhale the world. Why was there this pane of glass between me and it? Then, through the wavy glass, I saw Giles and Kit step out of the Spouter. I raised my hand to wave hello, but they did not so much as glance at the Sea-Fancy. Were they confused of the day? Didn’t they know this was September 16, and I had already been waiting a day? I raised the sash, dropped to my knees, and angled my head and body out into space. But now their backs were to me, and they were walking away!

  Should I shout? A cry rose in the column of my throat and then sank down again. No. I withdrew from the crisp morning air. It had had a wetness to it. I lowered the window. I hesitated. Then all at once, I decided to follow them and know their business.

  Down the steps—I tried not to clatter, but only to hurry. Mrs. Swain was at her post behind the receiving desk.

  “Breakfast in the dining room, Una.”

  “I’ll eat later.”

  “Then you must eat out.”

  “Tell my mother I’ve arrived.”

  And out I went. Behind my head floated some impression of Mrs. Swain, a large purple orb this morning. Were her fabrics always of a slippery texture? Perhaps it helped her to slide through the air—less friction! There! Ahead—Kit and Giles. And carrying sailor’s duffels on their shoulders. But they would not ship without seeing me. Of this I was absolutely certain.

  They turned the corner, and I hurried along. When I turned the corner, I saw the street led downward, and at the bottom of the street were the docks, the water, and the forest of sailing ships. The street was like a chute leading to the sea.

  How well dressed I was! I smoothed the good cloth of my navy dress. But the soles of my shoes seemed thin on the hard cobblestones. Our island paths were softer. Soon I would be hungry, and I half regretted having never seen a breakfast table that perhaps held besides the golden eggs a platter of pancakes, a tureen of grainy grits. Surely Mrs. Swain’s table would hold most that was delicious and nutritious in the world. I passed a meat shop, but the uncooked meat hanging from the rafters had no appeal for me. There was the smooth, glistening end of a knucklebone. My father, hanging! A rope around his neck.

  No.

  And where was my mother? I thought of her jostling and jouncing in a carriage. Perhaps she, too, was hungry. I knew she was anxious, fretful that she was tardy. I looked ahead at Giles and Kit and wished that I could walk between them. I did not want to choose between them.

  The voice of my mother said to me, Then, Una, perhaps neither of them is really for you. But who else was there in the world? I meant who else that I would want.

  The docks of New Bedford held much of the world, for here were sailors with all manner of complexion and hair and clothing, according to the custom of their homeland. I saw men so black their skin had a tinge of purple to it, like an eggplant, and I saw Chinese and heard languages that were guttural, or slippery, and some with clicks and sounds heaved up from the chest, or r’s rolled in the back of the mouth. One face was pockmarked, and I thought again of Frannie. I saw a man with a lifted lip, as though an invisible hook were pulling it upward.

  Kit and Giles walked across the plank leading to a ship named Sussex. I waited beside a wagon of barrels—there seemed to be thousands of barrels around the dock, and their shape preoccupied me this morning the way the cobblestones of the streets had when I first arrived.

  The Sussex, I knew, was a whaling ship. Its smaller whaleboats hung from the davits, three on a side. The shape of the Sussex was boxy, built for strength and stability more than speed, for she must be able to withstand the strain of hoisting a whale enough out of the water to be stripped of blubber. Could I do such work? I thought not. But I could mop the deck, or climb to a masthead. Yes, the Giant had trained my legs for any amount of climbing, but how would it be to step up the openwork of ropes? I remembered the minister’s nimble ladder-run to the pulpit of Seamen’s Bethel Chapel. And would my eyes serve as sailor’s eyes? Surely they were among the keenest. Had I not seen to push a needle through miles and miles of fabric, a twelfth of an inch at a purchase? Could not these same eyes see far as well as near? Might not the head of a whale surface for an instant from the water the way the tip of a needle broke through fabric? If a ship had furnaces for trying out, could not one boil her monthly rags, the same as at home? And the men could look away, as they did on land.

  The Harbor of New Bedford

  Thus absentmindedly did I grumble to myself as I stood beside the wagon of barrels and wondered about my friends and the Sussex. When one is feeling fine and free, sometimes a grumble seems to express it, or to provide a necessary brake on a feeling that might run pell-mell downhill, off the edge and into the water, if something didn’t check it.

  To think no one in the world knew exactly where I was on that fine morning! And here I was! in my navy blue dress, wearing my bonnet, and now, in this moment, I fingered the little ridges in my grosgrain ribbon.

  When Giles and Kit left the Sussex, they walked without their bags, and thus I knew that she would be the means whereby Kit would satisfy his ambition to go a-whaling and Giles would gratify the part of him that needed to sail wide waters before settling at the hearth. I felt sobered by the idea that they knew so definitely what they wanted and knew so clearly the means to fulfill those ambitions. My life had not been like that.

  I moved in a way that kept me hidden when they passed. A shop behind me had a sign in the window: Seamen’s clothes, mended and made. The window displayed a pair of canvas trousers, and a sewing kit such as a sailor might purchase for his own use on a voyage. I turned to risk a glance at my friends. I checked the shapes of their noses and cheeks for familiarity, the texture of their skin to match my memories from the Island. They were chatting to each other, pleased, good comrades. What did they need of me?

  Nonetheless, I followed them up the cobbled hill. But at the corner, when they did not turn back toward the Spouter, I pointed myself toward home. Home? Was I as portable as that? The room I had stayed in for one night now might be called home? I thought of Mrs. Swain’s advice. There had been a first day for her, too, in New Bedford. I slept in the bed that will be yours. I was once as slender
as you. I was hungry.

  When I walked under the oval sign and into the Sea-Fancy, I smelled the aroma of cloves and sage. The Indian woman passed through the lobby, the fringe of her buckskin skirt hanging below the calves of her legs, her moccasins also fringed and decorated with tiny beads. Behind her swept the world—I mean Rebekkah Swain.

  “Una, your mother has not come, but here is a new letter from her.” Mrs. Swain’s face was smooth with seriousness. “I knew your mother when she was your age, and your auntie.”

  I took the letter and ran lightly to my room. It seemed I hardly touched the risers of the steps but hummed up like a bumblebee.

  Again, the heat had gathered at the top of the house, but I passed into my room to sit on the unmade bed to read:

  Pittsburgh

  My Sweet Daughter,

  Do not be alarmed that you hold this piece of paper and not myself in fond embrace. With my heart and with my words I do embrace you. This, my representative, is as real as I myself.

  Yet I know you are alarmed. Be assured I am living and shall continue to live. Here, at Pittsburgh, though, I turn back for home. The dear babe that I carried is no more. I have suffered a miscarriage, yet I myself will soon gain strength and be the same again. Why I have miscarried I cannot say. Was it all a fancy, I ask myself. So it seems to me too, sometimes, when I think of your father. I have parted with his ashes. I scattered them here where the three rivers come together to form the Ohio. Thus his ashes will flow back home, and perhaps that is for the best. He shall accompany me, whisper beside the steamboat.