Ahab's Wife, or the Star-Gazer

  Shouting through a horn from the deck of the anchored Jeroboam was a man who styled himself Gabriel, after the archangel, and his news was of the Second Coming of the Shakers’ God. Except for Gabriel, the crew of the Jeroboam were not to be seen. What made the hair on my arms rise up was that Gabriel proclaimed the Shaker God to have embodied himself as a great white whale—Moby Dick! Gabriel was alone on the deck, having ordered the hands below, once the ship was in the harbor.

  Quickly I worked my way through the crowd to the edge of the wharf to hear whatever he might say of Moby Dick. Gabriel was a short man enveloped in a long-skirted coat, the skirts of which he occasionally grasped and flapped up and down. The effect was not one of heavenly wings but of a deranged man vainly trying to fly. His yellow hair and the complete sprinkling of his face with freckles made him resemble the third Mrs. Hussey, but I did not imagine such a lunatic could be kin to that sane and forthright genius of the chowder pots. The archangel professed himself to be the possessor of certain vials and seals, within which lay an epidemic that could be unleashed on the town, as it had been on that very Jeroboam. At this I saw Isaac Starbuck, who stood a distance from me, shaking his head in disapproval.

  “Bow down, ye sinners of Nantucket”—Gabriel raved—“for the Second Coming is at hand and perdition for all who—”

  His words were drowned out by the thumping down of knees upon the wharf. “Thou,” he said, pointing a finger at me, for I was among a few conspicuous for not having bent the knee, “blasphemer! Beware the blasphemer’s end!” His pointing finger moved from me to the water, as though to show me my death by drowning.

  “For shame! Thou jabbering humbug!” It was Captain Peleg from the back of the crowd.

  “This woman’s husband pursues Moby Dick. Dost deny it?” he asked me, all the while pointing at me. “At the bottom of the sea! With one beat of his flukes, Moby Dick hath sent him under.”

  Ahab lost! A storm of white passed before my eyes, and my knees buckled, even as I strove to stand upright.

  With my collapse, he trumpeted, “Behold, Mrs. Macey, wife of the drowned blasphemer, how she sinks to her knees!”

  Mrs. Macey? No. Not I. My husband pursued Moby Dick, but he was not Macey. I struggled to regain my feet and felt the helping hand of the gaoler under my elbow.

  “This be not Mrs. Macey!” the gaoler shouted.

  Had I not been faint with relief, I would have giggled.

  Another woman, who had dropped with the congregation to the injunction of their priest, slowly rose. “I be Mrs. Harry Macey,” she quavered. I knew her; she was married to the brother of Mrs. Maynard’s second husband. He spelt their name with an e.

  “Dead. Harry Macey. Dead and in the fiery pit!” Gabriel pointed to the deep, and presumably beyond.

  “Flukes and flames!” shouted Peleg. “Where is thy captain? What hast thou done, mutineer, with Captain Mayhew?”

  While this conversation was occurring, the gaoler unloosed my arm, quietly untied a dinghy from the wharf, and began to row out to the Jeroboam. Like any Nantucketeer, Isaac handled a boat expertly, and soon, while Gabriel raved about vials, seals, and epidemics, Isaac climbed a rope, hooked his knee over the rail, and approached the archangel from his rear; the summer sun glinted on Isaac’s golden curls.

  “Who art thou?” Gabriel blurted in surprise, and then, know-it-all that he was, he answered his own question. “The Archangel Michael comes to assist me! Together we bind this town with seals given by the Shaker God himself, the White Blot!”

  “I am not the Archangel Michael,” Isaac responded loudly, “but the town gaoler, come to take you to gaol!” And with that, in a single, practiced gesture, he clapped the archangel in the wrist irons which could always be seen and heard jangling from the gaoler’s belt.

  Another dinghy, manned by Captain Peleg with a crew of four, was on its way to the ship, and soon the hatches were opened and the sailors and captain of the Jeroboam released. Straightway, the gaoler and Gabriel, accompanied by Peleg, returned from the ship. The folk on the wharf appeared not at all shamefaced at how easily they had been bamboozled. As spontaneously as they had succumbed to prophecy did they recover from it. But not all were left unmarked by the return of the Jeroboam.

  Mrs. Harry Macey, with two women friends to comfort her, stood sobbing and anxiously waiting for Captain Mayhew to come ashore. Regrettably, Captain Mayhew affirmed that Macey, burning with reckless energy, had given chase, and had succeeded in landing one iron (insufficient!) in the white whale. With his lance poised, Harry Macey had been dashed from the boat and to his death by one fast, fanning motion from Moby Dick.

  As Gabriel was escorted past me, he said, “I do know thee. Thou art the wife of Captain Ahab!”

  “I am.” But I was not then afraid. One right guess out of two tries was not a winning percentage, I thought, for prophecy.

  “Now thy husband is a postman,” he jabbered. “I gave him a letter to deliver to Mr. Macey. A moldy missile addressed by yon weeping woman—yon right-well-weeping woman—and there shall be gnashing of teeth.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The letter bag. Her letter to him was in the Pequod’s letter bag, should Pequod cross with Jeroboam. Thy husband tried to foist it off on Mayhew, but I sent it back, on a boat knife, to Ahab.’Twon’t be long till Postman Ahab will go the way of Harry Macey.”

  Here Peleg gave the Archangel Gabriel a forward shove. “An all-fired outrage,” he said. Then he applied his foot to Gabriel’s backside, though Isaac did not wish his prisoner so treated. “Flukes and flames!” swore Bildad. “I’d keel-haul thee, angel, if thou wert mine!”

  A bit shaken, I watched them go. Standing beside me, I realized, was our own local madman Elijah, who regularly haunted the wharf. Elijah spoke to me quietly, and all the more sinisterly for that quietness. His face was a blazing red. “Thou knowest, Mrs. Captain Ahab, perhaps of the old prophecy of the squaw Tistig? Not mine, but I have foreseen it, too. Tistig said that Ahab’s name would prove prophetic. The wicked King Ahab of the holy Book of Kings, she had that referent in mind. That dogs, too, would lick Ahab’s blood. Who are the dogs of the sea, Mrs. Captain, but sharks?”

  I walked away, but I was afraid for Ahab, forked by prophecy. And afraid for myself and for Justice.

  CHAPTER 119: The First Part of Ahab’s Third Voyage After His Marriage

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON Captain Mayhew, a most reasonable and responsible-seeming Quaker, came to call on me at Heather’s Moor. Though Harry Macey’s letter, impaled on Gabriel’s boat knife, had been returned to the Pequod, Starbuck had tossed aboard the Jeroboam a bag of several letters, which Captain Mayhew laid out on my parlor table: three for sailors’ wives, one from Mr. Stubb to his wife, one for Mary Starbuck, and one skinny envelope for me.

  “How fared my husband?” I pressed his letter to my throat as though to give it voice.

  Captain Mayhew answered, “He pursues the white whale. That much of the mutinous madman’s tale was true.”

  “In what style does my husband pursue Moby Dick?”

  “Moby Dick can be pursued in only two possible styles.” Captain Mayhew had a quiet, sensible bearing. A short white scar sat atop one cheekbone.

  “They being?”

  “Either ignorantly, foolishly—That were the way of poor Harry Macey. Thy husband is no fool, but full of cunning.”

  “Or? The other way?”

  “Madly.”

  Standing in the double doorway of the parlor, with arms folded across his chest, was my lad of six. “Madly? What do ye mean by madly, of my father?”

  Captain Mayhew glanced at me, but answered, “I think thy father is a brave and skillful captain. Perhaps he pursues Moby Dick too hotly.”

  “I thank thee for thy answer. But, please, tell me, what ye mean by hotly.” Justice’s speech was that argot of Quaker and sailor usage that he had heard from his father, but that he never spoke to me.

  “With too much singleness o
f purpose. Too much ardor. Let me pass, lad.” And with that Captain Mayhew walked by Justice and out the front door.

  Justice crossed the room to me.

  “What is ardor?” he asked me. He squeezed my hand.

  “It is passionate feeling, great love.”

  “My father pursues the whale because he loves him? That’s not true, Mother. He hates the whale.” I was startled by my son’s logic; it seemed far beyond his years. He spoke like a man of the law—ah, he was borrowing logic from the judge. “How is it, then, that Captain Mayhew said my father pursues Moby Dick with too great love?”

  I retreated to the sofa of the parlor and patted the seat. I tried to put my arm around my son, but he would have none of it.

  “Thy father—your father—loves not the whale, but he loves the idea of revenge. That is the part of himself that he most loves now, that part that would punish the whale for taking his leg.”

  “Moby Dick is a thief.”

  “Aye, and he has stolen away more than thy father’s leg from us.”

  “Could he not forgive the whale?”

  “He burns in his heart for revenge.‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ ”

  “But Moby Dick has no leg.”

  “Thy father requires his life.” I saw Justice’s brow knit—so like his father when he was gathering thunderclouds—beneath the dark curls on his forehead. For the first time, he made me think of Chester, the little cabin boy, and his father, the good captain, who hoped to die to save his son. The waters of grief rose up in the well of me.

  “Moby Dick’s whole life?”

  “Your father feels the whale has ruined his life.”

  “Ruined!” At that the boy’s face contorted with pain, he gasped one mighty, shuddering sob and threw himself into my arms. I could have bitten off my tongue.

  “It is a temporary feeling your father has. Once he has killed the whale, your father will feel whole again.” I rubbed the boy’s back and felt it grow more still and then more stiff under my strokes. Was I hardening my son by passing on to him his father’s passion for revenge? “Of course, your father’s life is not at all ruined,” I went on. “How could any person be ruined when he is loved the way you love your father and the way I love him? Do you think it’s possible to have a ruined life when you are so beloved?” I waited for his reply.

  “I don’t know.” His words were muffled against me. He hesitated, then added, “Moby Dick has such a big life.”

  I smiled, relieved to hear him speak childishly. But I thought of the tons of blood in that great body, and how it would incarnadine the sea all around if he was slain. I had hoped that Ahab would have a change of heart, that he would forgive the whale, or forget his hatred. Ahab’s life was as intact as he wished to perceive it. “Yes,” I answered my son absently, “whales are enormous.” But I wondered, if Ahab did prove victorious, then who would Ahab be?

  Presently I reminded Justice, “Captain Mayhew delivered a letter from your father.”

  “Let’s go up to the cupola to read it,” he said, sitting up.

  I hesitated, for I did not know what grown-up news it might hold, but I agreed. “I shall meet you there, but first a trip to the privy for me.”

  I hastened down the path, and could not help but notice how nicely the berries, which Ahab loved so much for their juicy freshness and purity, progressed. Enough daylight came into the privy for me to be able to read, but, never lacking for oil, we kept a lamp there, and sulfur matches in a tin canister. Ah, the luxuries of the rich. In that clear glow, I seated myself and read, nay, devoured:

  Dearest Wife, my One,

  Sunset, and beside the ever-brimming goblet’s rim, the warm waves blush like wine. There was a time when even as the sunrise spurred me, the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely sunset light—it lights not me; all loveliness is anguish to me, thine most of all, though most beloved, since I cannot enjoy it. My high perception responds to the ethereal beauty the eye brings the mind, but I lack the low, enjoying power. Damned in the midst of the soft blush of Paradise! Good night—good night, my wife!

  But not good night, for I would share with thee what can be shared in language. The diver sun—slow dived from noon—goes down; my soul mounts up! Though she wearies with her endless hill.

  Moby Dick, a hump like a snow-hill. There my soul needs to climb. There I shall find ascendancy. Sovereignty! Remember, I whispered that word to thee in the birthing room. My human sovereignty! the same in the face of animals, angels, absent gods. The idea was born and grows into a giant—but that’s enough. This letter—the first one home—let me comfort thee and reassure thee.

  There was a prophecy—I told thee not—that I should be dismembered. Aye—I lost this leg. But I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now the prophet and the fulfiller of the prophecy shall be one. That’s more than the great gods ever were! Forgive me. Rage breaks out like a fire that dies only to leap up again.

  My pipe, Una. One evening, I lit my pipe at the binnacle lamp, as was usual for me, and called for my ivory stool. “How now,” I finally asked myself after a time, “this smoking no longer soothes.” My pipe having been so long my companion, I spoke to it. “Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if thy charm be gone!” and I threw it lit and hissing into the sea. It was a thing meant for sereneness. And that is beyond Ahab’s grasp.

  Una bade me look to the moon for sereneness, but I know there’ll be no moon tonight. The phase is wrong. Let me think of Justice.

  Tell our son that some bright days Ahab feels like a farmer who has spent his days among inland wheat fields. “What, wheat fields in the ocean?” our son will ask. “Yes. Let me tell thee where.” (Now, dear wife, assume my voice while reading to our son.) In this first part of this third voyage that I have taken since thy mother and I were married—aboard the Pequod we were married, whilst she stood at anchor in Old Nantucket harbor! didst thou know that, son?—but leagues thence, on this voyage, from the Crozets, northeastward, the sight of wheat fields was to be seen.

  All around the Pequod, as though the ship were an innocent farmer’s house, glowed meadows, an expanse of ripe and golden wheat.

  And if we were the farmer’s house, then where were the machines to harvest this great bounty? Oh, they were there. Such prodigious mowers, too! The mowers were the Right Whales.

  Whales! my son exclaims. Did ye sing out? Nay, for though they are the Right Whales for many to hunt, they are the Wrong Whales for us. Now there’s a riddle. But easily solved. For the Pequod mainly pursues the Sperm whale, whose oil is of the finest and most profitable sort, not the Right Whale, who is the right whale for some because he is easier to catch. (Though I admit I have sometimes topped off an almost brimming ship of sperm with kegs of lesser oil.)

  What appear to be meadows of ripe wheat surrounding the Pequod are in fact meadows of brit, the tiny animals that the gigantic Right Whale must have to live. Do you know the kinds of whales, my son? The sperm whale is a toothed monster, but the baleen whale has a kind of mustache inside his mouth—sailors speak of it as a wondrous Venetian blind. So the Right Whale, like a threshing machine, opens his great mouth and with the fringy fibers of his mustache filters the water (which flows back to the sea), leaving bushels of brit to nourish the whale. The sound of this harvesting operation is a grassy, cutting sound, and where a whale has made a swath through the gold, ye can see the blue of the ocean.

  It has been now some weeks since I contemplated that pastoral scene. Dear Wife and Son, do not think that though Moby Dick draws me on, I do not feel thy gentle tugs pulling me back.

  Dear boy, if up till now ye have had but a vague idea of the varieties of whales, ask thy mother to be thy encyclopedia. She has herself hunted whales, and they her. Look now at the ivory bracelet carved with whales that she wears as my wedding token. Put thy finger on their midget backs, and ask her to tell thee of their true size, habits, dispositions, and uses. Let her read thee the whales as though they were
the runes of old.

  Ahab

  Captain, The Pequod.

  In the cupola, I read of the Pequod’ s encounter with the meadows of brit to Justice. He thought it pretty—I asked him so—but he said he would prefer his father describe a chase to him. “Then you must write to him yourself and tell him so,” I said.

  “Yes, I should learn to write,” he answered. “It’s time to learn to read, too.” He looked serious, but pleased and brighter. He glanced about and suddenly knit his brow. “We will have my lessons up here.”

  That dark imperialism! I saw the stamp of my own father in his grandson’s brow. And Ahab’s stamp, as well.

  CHAPTER 120: Moon Watch

  THAT NIGHT I could not sleep for anxiety about my husband.

  Was there not a moon tonight?

  I left the bedroom and climbed to the cupola. There she was, with the cross of the mullions quartering her face. I sat in my rocking chair, then rose to open two windows a crack, so the cooling night air could visit me. Soon I adjusted a shawl around my shoulders. I rocked and watched the moon. I tried to make my mind as blank of worry as her blank face. Eventually, the moon rose above the roof of my little cupola, and I could no longer see her. Yet I rocked and rocked, incessantly as the sea herself.

  When I awoke it was morning, with the sunlight streaming in and heating up the cupola.

  To my surprise, Justice was not in his bed. I had just dressed and was about to look for him when Justice with Captain Mayhew appeared at the door.

  “I couldn’t find you,” the boy said, half sobbing. “I went to the wharf. I thought you might have gone to sea and left me.”

  “I tried to tell the boy his mother was no sailor,” Captain Mayhew explained.