Ahab's Wife, or the Star-Gazer

  “Perhaps. In some symbolic but nonessential way.”

  “But consider if it really was the same spot, or a thousand miles off the mark?”

  “Scarcely that. How could it be?”

  “You and Kit were married far out to sea. The Pequod moved away from that place, even while you were wed. What is the nature of a spot, a place? Can it remain the same? Is it adequate to give a place only a local definition? Ought it not be global?”

  I smiled, pleased with the question. “This is a new line of thought for you.”

  “While you were away, I spent a good deal of time with the astronomers, with William and his daughter Maria Mitchell.”

  AND SO I climbed the stairs toward my room with the happy thought that Nantucket, for all its smallness as an island, had yet new and interesting people with whom I might make an acquaintance. I hoped that Charlotte would find Kit in the wilderness, since she wished it so ardently. I would miss her. Kit seemed scarcely real to me. Nor the horror in the whaleboat. Sorrow for the loss of my mother and child was covering all of that—a new sediment.

  I did not stop my climbing with the second floor. I climbed to the third level, to the cupola. There I picked up the brass telescope and swept the horizon for the sails of the Pequod. From that line, my eye traversed a zigzag path across the ocean, coming closer with each sweep, scanning the waters for my homeward-bound Ahab. At length my telescopic vision, unrewarded, came to harbor.

  How dear a place it was. I could see the gestures and expressions of people disembarking, pleased they had come to port. I put down the spyglass, and the harbor moved away from me. Now the scene was landscape instead of portrait. The ships and wharf seemed a size to hold in my hand. Dear home, beautiful home.

  CHAPTER 98: To Summer

  FROM THE CUPOLA, I came to my room, and then BLAM BLAM BLAM went the pineapple again, and when I dragged myself again to the front door, there was my third set of visitors. And a set they were, that is, a pair: Captains Peleg and Bildad. Two stern old Quakers, Bildad carrying his Holy Book and Peleg a small black satchel. No bearers of sweetmeats, these two.

  I bade them sit in the parlor, and I was glad to see that Mrs. Maynard had carried off our cups and plates before she quit the house. She wished to move back to her own place now that I was home.

  “We’ve come to see ye at the very first possible moment,” said Peleg.

  No, I thought, you’ve been preceded twice. There was something perverse in me that made me want to contradict whatever truth these righteous people presented.

  “As we were instructed to do by our friend, thy husband,” added Captain Bildad.

  “Blast ye, Captain Bildad,” put in Peleg, “we would have come to see the lady in any case, instructions or no.”

  “He fears ye dead,” Bildad went on in a dolorous tone.

  “Yet she’s all as sweet and pretty with black curls as she was before she ever voyaged to the wilderness.”

  “She’s drawn and pale,” intoned Bildad. He sat very upright on my flowered sofa, with his hands, lest they be contaminated by colorful chintz, resting on the black cloth of his trousers.

  “I’m but back from my travels.”

  “We know,” Peleg said, “and we’ve come to call, by our own inclination as well as by the request of Captain Ahab, communicated by letter, to deliver letters to you at the soonest possible moment. And they are here in my satchel.”

  “You’d not give them all to her at once?” Captain Bildad turned harshly to his partner. “She’s wan and sickly.”

  “Oh, no,” I spoke up for myself. “I’m quite well. You have letters?” I felt swept with joy, that tide quite replacing the sluggishness of fatigue.

  As Peleg reached inside the dark satchel, which he had set at his feet, Bildad grabbed his hand. “No, ye don’t!” Bildad ordered. “Have ye forgotten the ways of the sea so soon? When a shipwrecked sailor washes ashore, a-clinging to his board, do ye thrust a whole cask of biscuits down his throat? Nay, ye careless devil! Ye ration! Ye ration! Look at her. Shipwrecked if ever I saw a shipwreck.”

  Peleg looked at me anxiously. “Hast thy life been hard?”

  “I would much appreciate and be grateful if you delivered my husband’s letters to me from your satchel.” I spoke as politely but firmly as I could, yet I was shaken.

  “Resign thyself to tell the truth,” Bildad said. “Where did thy ship flounder? Where was she stove?”

  “Thou, Bildad!” Peleg roared. “Her journey has been by land!”

  “I speak all metaphoric,” Bildad said serenely, peering at me through his spectacles and crossing both hands over his chest. “And Mrs. Captain knows it well.”

  “Thou shalt not torture her with piety,” Peleg said warningly. “We’ll have no talk of what is good and what is best, of what is meet.”

  “Thou shalt not kill her with too much joy. I see thy soul, Peleg, sinking down in the fiery pit, a murderer of innocence, a persecutor of Mrs. Captain, who is a lamb of sweetness and resignation.”

  “How do I persecute her?”

  “With too much joy!”

  “Blast ye, Bildad—”

  “No need of profane words. Impatience is thy sin. Prodigality—”

  “Prodigality of biscuits! Blast ye, I mean letters. ’Tis thou wilt kill her. Look, she’s likely to faint with wanting of her rightful letters, which Captain Ahab commissioned us to bring so that when she came home she should not be alone! And I’ll give them to her, if ye bite my hand for it!”

  But lank Bildad, though the satchel sat at Peleg’s feet, bent himself as fast as a trunk lid could close and snatched the satchel into his own lap. “It was never my intent not to give her something,” Bildad pronounced sanctimoniously. “But thou shalt not kill her with too many biscuits.” He slowly reached his hand into the satchel and drew out a precious envelope. I recognized Ahab’s handwriting, large and flowing with crests and valleys like the waves of the sea.

  I sighed with happiness and held out my hand. Very grateful, I took my letter and pressed it to my bosom.

  “Now, brother Bildad, old shipmate,” Peleg said, quite appeased, “we must cast off and leave her to her reading.”

  The letter felt like a dove at my breast.

  As they stood up, I said, “Please, how many letters are there?”

  “We have received three,” Peleg answered in a kindly voice. “In a few days, I shall bring thee the second.”

  “After thou hast had time to masticate and safely digest the first,” Bildad explained, persisting in his biscuit analogy.

  I walked with them to the door, still cradling my letter against my throat.

  In a quiet, confidential tone, Bildad inquired, “Thou wert where? when thy boat was stove?”

  “Kentucky.”

  “How many lost?” Bildad murmured.

  “Two.”

  “God bless ye and have ye in his holy keeping,” old Bildad mumbled, as they left.

  I flew up the stairs, pulled back the white covers, and ensconced myself in my plump bridal bed. My hands shook as I opened the envelope, and upon reading his greeting words—“Una, One, My Dearest One”—a great scoop of feeling swooped me up.

  Una, dove and eagle, I could quote thee Shakespeare, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments,” but I think we are not of two minds, but only one. And I think marriage is too tame a word for the union that we have known. Also, I must dismiss “impediments.” We have cast aside any impediment by the force of our own will. Notice I do not become inconsistent and say “the force of our own wills,” for our will, like our mind, is one. Neither ye nor I would name the ocean as an impediment. Oh, no, it is the great flowing connection, second only to the air itself, participating in our unity. Why our souls were forged in the same smithy, deep in the bowels of the earth, I cannot know, but you and I, Una, are made of the elements named by the ancient Greeks—fire, water, air, earth. Those elements and their myriad manifestations are not impedim
ents but minions; they do our bidding and will transport our thoughts to one another and finally be the means of our reuniting.

  I cannot admit impediment, for it would drive me mad. If there were any real thing that kept me from my Una, then I would destroy it. All things are means by which to come to thee, are angels of facilitation—else I would name them devils and send them to the pit of hell. Ah, old Bildad liked to talk of the pit of hell. I used to ask myself what need he had of that. Was not the loneliness of this earth enough of hell?

  I have felt my power before, but now, loved, loved, I could sail this ship into the heavens, harpoon the moon. Do you think I rave? Do I frighten my Una? It is only that I have never been complete before, never felt the stretching out of my completeness. I am full of life, not madness. Surely at this moment, I am not restless in my cabin, forever peering out the portholes, but held in your blessed arms.

  The last morning, when ye opened your arms to me—poetry fails Ahab, for the comparison may not please thee. But, yes, I have known that rapture many times in the hunt. In the hunt there is a kind of marriage.

  Was I with thee before the world began? Will I be with thee after death? Our union is too perfect to think that it can be rusted by time.

  And so if Shakespeare has not adequate language to tell thee of my love, what use the ravings of old Ahab? Ye know all that I might say. So, then, if I cannot tell thee of my love, let me tell thee of my labor—for we have had a bridegroom’s luck.

  The first whale the Pequod saw—’twas Daggoo who sang out—was shriveled and sick, very nigh unto death. Perhaps ye did not whale long enough to know that there can be treasure in such animals. But any experienced whaleman knows—AMBERGRIS, at $200/lb. Baleen oil is at 33 cents a gal., and sperm oil at 88c./gal. The case oil, the finest lubricant known to man, so light, slick, and slippery, is at $1.38/gal., but ambergris, the fixative in the finest perfumes, is at $200/lb. And I saw a great whorl of it, a spot like a healed scab where a tree has lost a mighty limb, a little in front of the side fin. Not that the whale had lost his fin.

  No, the ambergris forms very much as the nacreous pearl forms in an oyster. Ye know that the chief diet of the sperm whale consists of giant squid, which the whale fetches from its lair in the greatest depths. The squid’s body was never built to survive at any other pressure, and when the sperm whale ascends, the squid, clamped between the toothed lower jaw and the bony sockets of the sperm whale’s upper jaw, explodes. And the sperm whale feasts. But sometimes the horny beak of the squid lodges all indigestible within the whale. There’s impediment! The whale cannot disgorge the final sword of his foe, it festers its new scabbard, and despite the whale’s internal bandaging of the irritant with a material that is rather golden and cheeselike in texture, the whale dies. It is that cheeselike glob that can be extracted, through floating surgery from a whaleboat drawn up beside the leviathan, which is called ambergris.

  Yet, for all my joy at recovering this treasure, for like any new groom, I would bring to my wife all my worldly treasure with the determination that it should ever increase, there was little challenge in the action. But let not Ahab turn up his considerable nose at luck!

  Later in the day, we gave chase to another sperm whale, which we took, and the try-pots burn now, even as I write.

  —Hark, Una. Faithful Starbuck has just now appeared to say that the Coriander, homeward bound for Nantucket, is in the offing. We are off the Cape Verde Islands. He himself has a letter for his wife, and he asks that he might take one of the whaleboats and deliver our letters to be relayed home. I said, “I’ll go myself, and thee with me!” Though this page be but brief, it is the flag and ensign of a bounteous love.

  Ahab, Captain, the Pequod

  BAM! BAM! BAM! The pineapple again. Had I dreamt, or had I read and slept? All exhausted, I crept, half clinging to the stair rail, down toward the front door. There stood Aunt Charity, the sister of Bildad.

  “Thou art pale as a ghost,” she said. She held the other two letters, one in each hand. “My brother and Captain Peleg came to me swelled up and proud as peacocks that they were managing thy business so well. ‘Ye intend to ration her letters?’ I asked. ‘I have never been married, nor ever even hoped to marry’—I said to them—‘but I am not lacking in imagination. Do I not fill up thy boats with all the goods of the land that anyone could ever imagine having need of at sea? Yea, I do. And has imagination ever been found wanting in me? Has anyone ever said, “O, if Aunt Charity had but imagined my need of beeswax with which to coat my bunion”—Nay, for I did imagine bunions, beeswax, and blister powder. And now only the slightest consultation of imagination on my part tells me’—I informed those old bachelors—‘without doubt that all her letters must be delivered, and I shall surely do it.’ ”

  With that she clapped me on each cheek with the letters, followed by two little kisses, soft as butterfly wings, in the same places, then put the envelopes tenderly into my two hands, and left. I walked into the dining room to surround myself with seascape.

  Una, of my Heart,

  We have rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and so now the continent of Africa hangs pendulous between me and thee. Has ever a captain been so impatient for a voyage to end? I hope this letter finds thee happy with thy mother, or that this linen page, now swept with my hand as I write, will be waiting, in Nantucket, for thy return. May this be a happy day for thee, dear one. I know only that for thee it is an autumn one. My restlessness is unbounded, and that seems the only thought or feeling that I have to communicate to my beloved. I pace as unceasingly as the waves slap the bows of the ship. My feet and legs want mountains to climb, and, lacking that, I sometimes mount the lookout myself. Air seems the better connector than water now, for it can sail quickly toward India and skirt China, easterly blow over the Pacific, whirl up the North American coast to the Arctic cap and then southward, inland, to find thee. If air from Canada plains touches thee now, it is my breath. Many times, aloft, have I blown it easterly to navigate the atmosphere in search of thy soft cheek.

  Words I have few of—and no passing ship has brought me any words of thine—but feeling festers and boils in me like something molten. I cannot really write, but I will send this attempt to write, when next there is opportunity.

  Bridegroom’s luck, indeed: we have taken a second treasure trove of golden ambergris.

  Ahab

  And the third letter:

  Una, whose second name, this night, is Luna—

  Starbuck, noting my impatience this evening, said merely that it was hard to be far from home. “Why have I created a hearth only to abandon it?” I asked him, for the anguish broke out of me. He told me that when his loneliness was almost beyond bearing he meditated on the evening star and thought of Mary.

  There being a large, shining moon tonight, she instantly took my eye, and I thought Una, Luna. The words were very beautiful and soothing to me. The whole night became lovely to me, and I will describe to thee how the prow of the Pequod turned back the water in silver scallops. Small, phosphorescent fish were jumping to starboard, and they seemed a marine reply to the blurry Pleiades.

  —More he wrote, for this was a long letter, when he took up pen and put it down and took it up many times. He had hopes for our baby and wishes for my health and safety; to my mother Ahab had penned greetings both polite and sincere. But the best of the letter was the closing:

  We have taken ambergris yet a third time, as though we lived in a blessed fairy tale. The hold is nearly full of oil as well—and we may take another whale or two as we sail home. Yes, home! for it is in my authority to say we set sail for Nantucket, and I have done so. With three caches of ambergris we shall not lack for profit. This letter will be saved and sent ahead when I spy the fastest of Yankee clippers; and before midsummer I shall greet thee, wife.

  CHAPTER 99: Wife

  WHAT MAGIC there was in the word when it named all that I would be! Mother, daughter, neighbor, friend—I let go of all those names, except my ow
n, for that of wife. I drank the word as though it were wine. Every night as I pulled up the coverlet, I let myself have one sip, “Wife,” and I fell asleep intoxicated. For breakfast, before I broke my bread, I murmured “Wife” to myself and smiled down at my blurry reflection on the mahogany tabletop.

  Twice a day I climbed to the cupola and swept the sea with my spyglass. I visited that little glass-sided room upon awakening, and then again during the last light of day. My impulse was to run aloft every hour, but I would not allow it. I kept my house as though my husband were there so that when he did come, every household task would be practiced and perfected. All day I cooked and cleaned, and occasionally I purchased some new item from town. When housekeeping work was done, I read or sewed.

  I had the judge to many a meal, and also the sweet, practical, imaginative Aunt Charity, and good Mrs. Maynard since her captain was usually away, so I did not lack for company. Some of the richer citizens from Main Street came to call, but I had not known them when I was poor, and I did not encourage them now. I wanted my world, even the people I knew, to be intact for Ahab. I did invite each month Mr. Hussey and the new Mrs. Hussey, who was far less refined than my dear Charlotte, and each month he brought to dinner a small bag of gold coins which he said was my share of the Try Pots earnings. “That it is,” Mrs. Hussey would boom out, “to the penny!” I always served them beef, knowing they must be saturated with chowder.

  From Margaret Fuller, I received a few letters and also an invitation to visit her in Boston, which I declined, as I did not want to miss Ahab’s return by so much as a day. He must find his wife at home. But I promised Margaret that after Ahab set sail again—alas, I knew that was inevitable—I would promptly visit her.

  My judge did insist that I make the acquaintance of the Mitchell family, and I have been forever glad I did. “Word of the Pequod would come up from the wharf,” Judge Lord said, “in plenty of time for you to scurry down, or to wait at home, if you can contain your eagerness.” If Margaret Fuller was the preeminent woman of letters with whom I was ever so fortunate to make a connection, Maria Mitchell became the preeminent woman of science.