Ahab's Wife, or the Star-Gazer

  “ ‘Justice,’ ” Maria read. “Did you know the medallion is engraved with the word Justice?”

  “Mrs. Maynard,” I asked softly, “you do think my babe will live?”

  “I have never seen a more alert or robust child. Unless illness or accident befall him, his own dear body is as sturdy a vessel as soul could hope to sail in.” How much alike in shining expression were the faces of Mrs. Maynard and Maria.

  “Then I shall name him Justice, for he comes to balance the loss of my frail Kentucky baby.”

  “What was that baby named?” Maria asked.

  When my lips tried to form the word, a lump stoppered my throat and I could not speak.

  Mrs. Maynard answered Maria’s question for me; she named the dead babe and rushed on to speak of the living one: “Oh, this Justice is a prince, a king!” she declared. “Just look! He listens to us. And look at the little boat the Indian brought him.” She held up a tiny birch-bark canoe.

  We heard the flap of the brass pineapple knocker, and Maria crossed the room to look down at the stoop. “It’s the Husseys,” she said.

  Mrs. Maynard joined her at the window. “Oh, a pot of white flowers! I must go down and bandage up the knocker. Don’t stay long,” she added, instructively, to Maria.

  But I made her stay long enough to listen to my thanks, again, for the baby’s embroidered dress, for I knew Maria hated to sew. Indeed, she viewed the needle to be no less than a ball and chain for women.(We disagreed on this, I having found independence through my needle.)

  I slept with my babe by my side. There he was, contained by his own soft skin, breathing, his heart beating beneath my fingertips. Thus assured, I fell asleep, and in my dream I drank milky chowder from crocus cups, presented on a silver circle reminiscent of the moon.

  I NEVER TIRED of teaching my babe or tending him. Every moment I felt that if his father should appear, my happiness would overflow. Time was defined by the skills my child acquired. His first word was big, and he used it as a synonym for beautiful. My new dress with large flowers on it was greeted with cries of “Big, oh big!” His feet were ones that loved to dance, and if I put him on any new surface, he knew it by dancing on it. He loved all exotic foods, which he ate without hesitation, particularly my imported jellies made of guava, mango, and pomegranate; his little hand approached an open jar as slowly as a starfish and disappeared into the rim with an inevitable calm.

  Before he was two, he applied physics to our various chairs; that is, by grasping a leg close to the floor he found any chair could be levered up and over. When Mrs. Maynard saw him pitchpoling the chairs, she said, “Una, you must yell at him when he does that,” but I could not bring myself ever to raise my voice at him. I did explain about the fragility of chairs, and he ignored me till he had dominated them all.

  Once, he was perhaps two and a half, I entered the chamber painted a sunny yellow, while the real sun poured through the window, to see him smile, open his eyes to the happiest of worlds, and ask, “Mother, what is death?” The truth was that I had already wondered and dreaded when he would become acquainted with the idea, but still I was unprepared for it to enter so abstractly. I pointed out the difference between what moved and what did not, and said that people and all that lived—plants and animals—might change and become still and that to become a mere thing was to die. “Some people believe,” I added fairly, “that there is an invisible part of us that goes on to live without a body, but we cannot know about that.”

  Each time he returned from Boston, the judge brought Justice a gift, but he seemed rather ill at ease with my child, as some old bachelors are, while others are the most comfortable of substitute fathers.

  “Children are not quite civilized,” I remember his saying, as though he feared for his china.

  “Of course not,” I replied. “If truth be known, neither am I.”

  Sometimes the judge suggested we go to a lecture or some festivity and leave Justice behind; Mrs. Maynard’s report was that he usually slept through our absence. But as he grew older, I noted that Justice did not count it just that he should be left behind, and so in the spring when Justice turned three, we took him with us to the sheep-shearing festival.

  Outdoors, Judge Lord was, indeed, less tense, and Justice was full of delight at the animals and loved plunging his hands down into their oily wool. He loved, too, the rough texture of their horns, and I told him about my old friend Liberal who liked to challenge the Lighthouse.

  In great curly curds, the wool fell from the sheep, who emerged from the shearing pen naked and shivering. All of this fascinated Justice, as I knew it would. “Cottage cheese, cottage cheese,” Justice chanted at the billows of wool. But his best delight was the boy in the woolsack, who pranced on the wool and packed it down.

  Later a stranger from the Vineyard suddenly appeared with Justice by the hand. “He was in with the animals, petting and playing.”

  I snatched him to my bosom, but Justice held out his arms to the judge, who took my boy clumsily to his chest.

  CHAPTER 113: Chowder Swirls

  SUCH WAS the full and shining face of joy. And on the backside—sorrow. Not the loss of my babe. Not that. But darkness and loss all the same. No ship brought a warning word of the mishap in the Sea of Japan. That first moment!—I was ravaged by the sight of my husband, in terrible pain, raving, on the stretcher. I had not seen him for more than four years, but letters had reached me. I had waited patiently, happy in the mothering of my child.

  Spinning a tale is sometimes like stirring a chowder. Steam and mist will rise up, different particles are whiffed from the broth. When Ahab came home still bleeding, his soul raging, it was the Husseys’ chowder, fortified with sweet butter, for which he had the best tolerance. The hard time, Ahab’s homecoming while Justice was still a little boy, swirls up from memory.

  DURING THE NIGHTS I was tortured as well as Ahab. I thought of the long white shape that, as a girl dressed like a boy in the rigging, I had seen sliding like ice under the frigid northern waters and how I had not cried out. Had that lookout’s betrayal led to this bloody stump, the face contorted in pain, the fever that left only to come again?

  “Fedallah,” he said in his delirium. “Bring me Fedallah,” and he scribbled on a piece of paper where I might find an old and hair-turbaned Parsee.

  “My husband asks you visit him at night,” I said.

  “My master summons,” he replied mysteriously. “My old master calls his servant at last.”

  But this Bombay man seemed far older than Ahab. I found Fedallah in our bedroom one night. I never knew how he got in; he had emerged like an evil vapor through a crack in the flooring.

  As I entered, Fedallah brushed past me. “Let him find his way out,” Ahab said. As I watched the fire-worshiping fiend leave, walking on two feet, I would have cut his leg away from him, if my husband could have used his parts—withered, yellow, and old though Fedallah was. And it seemed I had seen a future Ahab projected in Fedallah’s haunted, plotting eyes.

  When Starbuck tried to visit, Ahab said, “Tell him I’ll see him aboard the Pequod, the day after we sail.” The Parsee had fanned the flame of vengeance in Ahab. He was tortured with obsession as well as pain. Ahab asked, during those first weeks, to be moved to the birthing room so that little Justice would not hear his groans. While still at sea he had been fitted with various ivory legs, but the wound was not sufficiently mended, and the appendage had chafed and torn the flesh again. The small room was kept dark, at Ahab’s insistence, though I tried to convince him that air and light would better promote healing.

  “You’d best send for the minister,” Mrs. Maynard said, nodding toward the room.

  “He’s getting better. He’s not dying. Don’t say that.”

  “Something’s dying in that room. Something like a human soul.”

  How the fear cramped me! Was Ahab to go the mad way of Kit?

  As though my friend had read my thought, she said, “It’s not his mind,
my dear. Best send for the minister.”

  But the next day, when I glanced toward the birthing room, I saw Ahab standing in the doorway. He leaned against the doorframe; one leg extended a certain distance, wrapped in linen, and ending in emptiness, but he stood. Justice saw him, too, and retreated up the steps. It was the first time he had ever seen his father upright.

  “Disheveled Ahab,” I said merrily, as though I had been expecting him. Then I went to my husband and kissed him, and he returned the kiss. His cheek was gaunt, and pain had left its print on his brow, but there was affection in his eyes.

  “Papa,” Justice said, peeking around the corner. He was then four years old.

  “Come to me.” Ahab jumped one-legged to the nearest chair, sat, and patted his knee. “Come, sit. I have but the one knee to offer thee.”

  Justice came promptly to his father.

  “Be careful not to bump his hurt,” I cautioned.

  “Aye, son. Ye might start it to bleeding, for it bleeds sometimes even if the sheet rubs it.”

  “Where is thy other leg?” Justice asked, immediately using the Quaker speech in addressing his father.

  “Like Jonah, it is in the belly of the whale. And what do ye think it’s doing there?”

  “Resting and getting well.”

  “Nay. All day and night, between which there is really no distinction in that dark belly, the leg kicks the whale—else, in thunder, it be not Ahab’s leg.”

  “To punish the whale.”

  “Aye, lad. And the rest of me shall, next voyage out, pursue the monster with our ship and our harpoon. Dost know Tashtego, the Indian? And Daggoo, the black tower? We shall all pursue Moby Dick.”

  Suddenly Ahab threw back his head. He gazed beyond, it seemed, at the offing, and had forgotten the little lad on his knee and his wife who stood by. With his lifted, outlooking gaze, Ahab had the mien of a weathered god. What sight did he envision? His arm quivered involuntarily, and I thought, He is striking the whale with his lance. Finally he muttered, “Now back to thy nap.”

  Justice jumped down and ran up the stairs. After I helped Ahab back to the birthing closet, I found Justice waiting for me at the top of the stairs.

  “Take me higher, so I can see the Pequod.”

  Many afternoons, in the cupola, his nose against the glass, Justice worshiped his father’s ship.

  CHAPTER 114: The Birthing Room

  I STOOD OUTSIDE Ahab’s door to listen to him breathe. Rapidly, pantingly, like a man at hard labor, he gasped the air and spat it out. So savage his breathing was, I thought his teeth grasped air and gnashed it into his lungs. I heard myself whimper, as though I were nicked. No leak of light escaped from under the door; darkness sealed the seam. Not Kit, not Kit again. My knees weakened, and I feared I would buckle in prayer before his closed door.

  He must have heard my whimper, for he said, “There is a kind of divinity in madness. You have it in you. The password’s ‘Madness.’ ”

  “Madness. May I come in?”

  “Aye,” he whispered. And then more to himself than to me: “My wife makes me say Aye, when I would never say the word again. No, in thunder. No! But not to Una. No, for her, Ahab says No to No. Come in.”

  I saw him on the narrow bed. Disarrayed. New blood on the bandage of the stump.

  “Ye must close the door,” he said, “and abide with me in darkness.”

  I closed the door and waited in the Stygian gloom.

  “Speak, goblin.”

  “No goblin. Una, your wife.”

  “There are only goblins here.”

  “Then I am a goblin.” I could see nothing at all. One line of light behind my heels. “Let me stay.”

  We were silent a moment, he on the bed, I standing. I heard him moving in the covers.

  “I’ve made a place,” he said, so gently I trembled. He patted the bed. “Here, wife, come sit beside me.” My hand found his hard-as-brick hand, and I remembered how he had comforted me on the moor merely by taking my hand.

  “I would not be afraid to die”—the truth blurted from me—“if I held your hand.” Like a vise, his clamped mine and took it to his lips.

  “I would kill Death,” he murmured, “before he could take ye. No, I’d not wait like Orpheus and then try to harrow hell. No, I’d stand before Eurydice. No death for ye, Una.” And he kissed my hand and fingers again. His breath was hot. He began to pant, and a groan like a low surf filled the room.

  “Let me touch thee, and heal thee,” I implored.

  “Ah, Christ visits in the darkness.” His tone bit like vinegar in a wound.

  “No, as a wife. I would soothe you as your wife.”

  He held my hand even tighter, took my fingertips between his lips. “Beyond the visible,” he murmured, “the whale has dismasted me.”

  I leaned over him and kissed his face, but he became still as a corpse. I sat erect again. A gasp like a sob escaped him, and my chest heaved with sobs I stifled as best I could.

  “Una,” and again his voice had the quality of the purest, quietest brook in the woods. “I would tell ye a thought of mine.” He hesitated.

  “I would listen.”

  “There is a tragicalness in being human. In the mere being—”

  Yes, I wanted to say, but that is only one way. There are many ways. We choose.

  “Because,” Ahab went on, “we are imperfect in strength and power. Without that, choice is an eyeless socket. The promise that man was given dominion over the beasts, the fowls of the air, and the fish of the deep is a false promise. There are secrets God keeps from himself. Perhaps his omnipotence is a sham. We need the Zoroastrian model, or perhaps the Parsee’s. The wounds of Christ speak of his compassion for humanity, but what message would my wound impart? I have the spark of an idea. In this dark hole, I’ve seen a spark of Reason in the chaos of Unreason.”

  Again he hesitated, then mused, “Is this fear of Una I am feeling?”

  “Fear of me?” I felt the cube of blackness around me.

  “Two brave fingers can snuff out any spark. Ye have a mind stronger than any thumb and forefinger. I would not have ye snuff out my little idea. It must be fanned into a flame, a conflagration. Remember, we stood above time, at South Tower, and watched the world burn.”

  “It rained.”

  Ahab sighed. “And so ye’ll not listen?”

  “I’ll listen.” I fastened my eyes on the slender light burning under the door. I had promised silence, acquiescence.

  “Man perishes, but so long as he breathes he insists on dealing with all Powers on an equal basis. If any of these other Powers choose to withhold certain secrets—why we err, suffer, die—let them. That does not impair my sovereignty in myself; that does not make me tributary.”

  Ahab stopped. I was forbidden to cross his speaking, nor would I extinguish any consoling idea. He listed to my silence.

  “No addendum?” he asked. Then he mumbled to himself. “He has astonished me. But I will yet astonish him.” He paused. “Astonish. What’s its Latin root? Tonare: to thunder. There’s thunder in astonishment.” He turned his mouth toward me. “That lance of light—it blinds me.”

  “I’ll cover it.” I reached to the foot of the bed for an unused blanket.

  “Go out,” he said. “Leave me to think, dear One. Cover the crack from the outside.”

  As I obeyed, I wool-muffled out the light and sealed in his words: “Madness is undefinable—it and right reason extremes of one. Ego non baptizo te in nomine Patris…”

  CHAPTER 115: The Leg

  WE SOAKED the tender flesh of the stub in seawater to help it toughen and callus. My pride when he could bear to be fitted again with the ivory peg! My pain to see it there, more permanent-seeming than any real leg, it and the generations of ivory legs to follow. Ahab could walk again, but how angrily he trod his world! That he had once been whole and competent and now was imperfect and clumsy all but brought despair. Anger, it seemed, was his only antidote to despair. Not love
. Not even pride in Justice.

  As soon as he could, he stalked the beach. “If I see water, I am there,” he told me. “I am about my business. In the white foam I see the forehead of Moby Dick.”

  I begged to walk with him.

  He replied, “Revenge is ever solitary. Isolating.” He looked at me as though I grew strange and remote.

  But ten days before the Pequod was to sail, he fell on the rocks and was brought home bleeding again.

  “Carry him upstairs. To our bedroom,” I directed.

  Treacherously, my heart rejoiced: now he could not sail. Not on schedule. I could try again to calm, distract, dissuade, persuade—beg—him to be content that he was alive.

  The bleeding of the stump bloomed like a rose through bandage after bandage.

  “Stanch it,” he cried. “Stanch it with fire!”

  Mrs. Maynard, horrified, backed up against the door.

  “Throw wood on the fire,” I ordered, and I set the poker in it.

  She fluttered about the room, her hand at her throat. Seeing her consternation, Ahab said calmly, “Leave my wife and me alone.”

  She was glad to flee.

  As I pressed a pad to his wound, Ahab and I watched the glow of the metal.

  “It’s white now,” he mused. “White as Moby Dick.” I could not move. “Now!” his voice rang. “Now!”

  And I grabbed the iron and rolled its hot tip over the flesh, searing and sealing the rawness.

  That roar—myself, not Ahab.

  When he was better, I begged him to wait at least till the New Year, a mere week later, but he would not. He said, “How do ye know I will improve? I may fall again and be utterly wrecked, my vengeance never accomplished.” He spoke propped up in bed. I thought his head seemed grateful for the soft pillow behind it. He was beautiful in the white bed, his head framed by the lace of the pillowcase.