Ahab's Wife (33 page)

T
HERE WAS
sunshine here a moment ago. Yesterday? I lifted the corner of the blanket curtain and sunshine came in like a wedge and lodged on the floor there, just beyond the toe of my shoe. I'll touch the spot. Well, it's a blank of cold now against my palm. Yesterday, the sunshine left a warm triangle like the kiss of an iron.

My wife says Starbuck's wife and child sailed a wooden boat the size of an iron. She says she's my wife. I don't remember any church or any ceremony. Maybe she's a whore. There's something repulsive about her. Likely she's a whore and thinks that's nothing to a madman. They say I'm a madman.

But I feel the cold like a normal man. I shiver in the dark, like a normal man, like that Starbuck. I guess Starbuck is a normal man. He has a wife and child. I have a wife, they say. But I'm not the same as Starbuck. I have no child. I think I would like to have a child, though. Their child sailed a boat, Una said, in a puddle in their front yard. How would she know? Wonder any water wouldn't be frozen this time of year.

That's all the news I know. It used to be, when I worked on the ships, I would say to Giles, “Tell me something I don't already know.” And he would. When I said to Una that I was bored next to madness, she would laugh and point at the clouds. “They're always new,” she'd say. “Look up.”

She's a kind of bird. She only wants air and clouds and sky. It's not enough. If you could get your hand around it, if you could squeeze some meaning from it! My fingers are almost too stiff to close. But there's nothing to the air. Try it, I should tell her. I'll try with the other hand. Nay, neither right nor left can get anything out of air. Enough of science. I'll put these hands together, like praying hands, and clamp them between my thighs.

Starbuck wanted me to pray. Why not? Our Father, who art—where? In the clouds? No. I'll tell you who's been in clouds. Ahab, with thunder and lightning in his face, with storms piled on his brow. He gathers all electric to him, and there's only one discharging. That's with the harpoon. That's for the whales, gray and massive as clouds, but substantial. Blubber-thick. Blood-filled.

They keep me here to freeze the same way a hunter hangs up a haunch of venison in a tree. That old captain is naught but a hunter. All the whales of the sea run before him and this ivory-tusked ship. Oh, the innocence of the whales! We hung them outside the ship, peeled their flesh like a rind from an orange. Squeeze a whale! There's more than plenty in a whale. It oozes and bubbles and bleeds into every cranny of the ship. If I licked these boards, there'd be some taste of whale in the tiny cracks. I could lick it up.

No, the wind says. No, don't do that, it wails. The wind tries to make me behave. He says he'll whip me. Yes, right through my clothes. He says he'll blast me. He says he'll freeze my tears into beads. He says he'll devour me with cold.

But he won't catch me, for now I'll run. I'll run and I'll run and I'll run, like the baked brown man! And those were raisins that are his eyes!

F
ROM WITHIN
Ahab's cabin, I heard, of course, the wind, buffeting all the boards of the ship, but I heard, too, a sound like running, and then a rhythmic thud, as though a body and not the wind had slammed against a wall. Was some sail loose? A barrel rolling about the deck? Yet the sound was not the continuous scrambling over and over of a barrel, but distinct like feet. And only four steps and then the thud.

I adjusted my shoulders in the hammock, and I pulled up the covers. There was sleet in the wind, and the sleet slung against the glass of the portholes like endless needles. I thought of the two bright needles that Sallie had given me. In that tool was my livelihood! I could sew on Nantucket as well as anywhere! Yes, I preferred that to baking, for then one's work was consumed in a flash, but needlework was something that might last.
My seams would be the strongest, if it was clothes I made. The town would talk of Una's seams. A shirt I sewed might last a man and his growing son, and the next and next brother in line. One
must pay attention to the fibers and the weave in cloth and make the stitches compatible with their firmness
.

The wind grew weary and bammed itself about less frequently. They had said Nantucket was a stormy place—low and open to the ocean winds, few trees, much sand, and inland, the moors undulating like large swells on the sea, but laced with small shrubs and plants, heathers, heath, gorse. Starbuck said there was a grayness there—the twigs of the shrubs, the shingles of the houses, sometimes the sky and sea were all a quiet Quaker gray. He liked that peace. There was longing for it in his eye. I asked him was it never blue and bright, and he had said all summer it basked in the sun. We would be arriving, Kit and I, in cold weather, but I would have the sparkling summer to look forward to.

Winter or summer, I never doubted I'd make Nantucket into home. Already this place, Ahab's cabin, so borrowed and temporary, was for me a home. At the Lighthouse, in Rebekkah Swain's New Bedford boardinghouse, aboard the
Sussex
with Chester, and on the
Albatross
with Sallie, given a bed, or even just a hammock—any small center that was my own and some person at hand to exchange affections with—then I had seemed adaptively at home. But the place must have some coziness about it. I was no animal content to burrow. I wanted some artifact about me.

In Ahab's cabin, there was much of clever joinery, in cabinets and drawers, and a long piece of wood overhead, curved and carved like a simple arch, curled decoratively into a knot. Like the knot of a cinnamon roll. “Oh, reason not the need,” King Lear said. As he needed something of ceremonious retinue, so I needed something of beauty. If all around me went dull with familiarity, then I would pick up my needle and make something new.

There was no time to make a quilt for Ahab, but if I had, it would have been in shades of white, for his hair, and the ivory-plated sea chest, and the
Pequod
herself all sheathed and decorated with ivory fittings, and the gray-white sails. It would have looked like a bride's quilt, but with the feeling not of freshness but of something weathered, stark like bone.

And all the time I lay in the hammock listening to the wind and the creak of timbers, I thought of the future. Everything about the
Pequod
was headed for home. Every man (and woman) aboard her longed for Nantucket. Perhaps even the whale oil stored in great barrels below yearned toward its own destiny—bright burning in lamps and candles. But Ahab would have one more whale.

There was a gentle knock at Ahab's door, and when I opened it, Ahab, all wet and a little breathless, stood there.

“We are bringing your husband here.”

“How is he?” If about to be brought to me, Kit was surely better?

“He's not conscious. He's bruised himself against the walls of the hurricane house. He's a man who's run beyond his limit.” The excitement in Ahab's voice dropped to sadness. “He's run like a blind mind through a thick forest, punishing his body.”

I was too appalled to speak.

“You must look to him. We need all hands.”

What was this excitement, this practiced joy, returning to Ahab's face?

“A whale. A right whale off the starboard bow,” he answered my puzzlement.

“Who would raise the cry in this gale?” I knew that I would not.

Ahab looked at me curiously. “Starbuck. Upright Starbuck.”

As Ahab left, I asked to his empty place, “Do ye even have room below for oil?”

Two sailors, Stubb in front, with his pipe clenched in his teeth, and one I did not know behind, carried Kit, eyes closed, between them, his body sagging like a hammock. His head was bruised and bloody, but not broke open. Had he used his head against the wall, like Billy the goat against the Lighthouse? His sleeve was torn and blood stained the fabric.

After they laid him in the hammock, I bathed his bruised head and cooed,
Oh Kit, oh Kit
. Peace was in his face. Would it be better if Kit were dead? How bitter the idea broke in my heart; like a bad, foul egg, the shell of that idea shattered and drained out gall. What world was this to let Kit's pain drive him to nonbeing? And yet there was peace, quiet, rest, in his countenance—as though he had got through to something better.

I could not believe that. This world was our arena. This place was where we had to look for any happiness. And yet his mind was gone from me, and that place—his expression was undeniable—offered comfort.
Only the skin of his brow was scraped, and in one place cross-hatched with little cuts.

“Una.” His eyelids were open, his lips parted. Again, he spoke my name and lay perfectly still.

“You've hurt your head.”

“Not very much, I think.”

“How do you feel?”

“Peaceful.”

The tears spilled down my face. He seemed himself.

“Don't cry,” he said.

But I could not help myself. I sobbed and knelt beside him and placed my head on his chest. Before long, I felt his fingers gently on my face. “Don't cry,” he repeated softly.

“Giles is dead,” I blurted out. “We can't ever get him back.”

“I know.” Only Kit's fingers moved about my face, as though he would know me by feel.

“Kit, can you see?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. Sometimes I dream. When I see Giles in my dreams, he's hurt. He's hurt his head. His head is always bowed, held to the side as though to avoid me. But he's alive, and I call to him.”

I could not stop crying. I thought of my mother, who had lost her baby. I thought of my father, dressed in black, hanging in the barn. I thought of the fear on my behalf that must have squeezed the hearts of Agatha and Frannie when they knew me to be gone and to have deceived them.

Both Kit and I heard a boat banging against the hull and then splashing into the sea.

“They've lost a boat to the storm,” he said.

“No, they're lowering for a whale.”

Kit stirred. “I should help,” he said.

“Captain Ahab ordered you here. To be here and let me care for you.”

I lifted my face and looked into his puffy eyes. He smiled at me. “You like that, don't you?” But he was not angry. “I'm almost too stiff to move.”

I noticed the backs of his knuckles, which were whorled with abrasions and new scabs.

“I think you tried to beat down the walls of your jail,” I said.

“No. I liked the hurricane house. It was a home. All mine.”

My heart seized up at my exclusion. But had I not called Ahab's cabin my temporary home?

“It was the Almighty Wind,” he went on. “The Wind wanted to whip me. I wouldn't let him. My mother used to whip me. I always ran away from her, too.”

“Why would the wind want to whip you, Kit?” Surely gentle reason would guide him back. It had, a number of times, during our honeymoon. But now he did not seem mad but only recounting how his thoughts had run then.

He turned his head a bit to look squarely with both eyes into both of mine. His hands looked for my hands. How glad I was to give them!

“Because,” he said, “of what we ate. We must be scourged.”

I would not have that nightmare reassert itself.

“I've distressed you,” he said.

I stammered and looked away. “The wind has no volition, Kit. The wind is only a mindless force of nature.”

“I felt that something palpably wanted to whip me.”

“Suppose it had? You've paid enough. You've bruised yourself over and over.”

“Yes.”

“You yourself are the Eumenides who scourge you.”

“Perhaps if God forgave me, I could forgive myself.”

“Let me forgive you,” I exhorted. “Let me, a fellow sinner, forgive you. Who better?”

“You have a powerful love of yourself.”

“Why not?” I said, strangely angry. “I am glad. I'm glad that we have each other and a life to share between us.”

“I think you'd better find someone else.” How neutral his tone! Neither compassionate nor offending.

“I won't,” I said. “You are my husband.”

“Oh, well,” he said and closed his eyes.

“Kit! Kit!” I shook his hurt shoulder and cared little if I pained him. “Wake up!”

“I am awake,” he said, with his eyes closed. “But sleep is coming over me. I want it.”

He slid away from me. I took his hands and cleaned them with a wet cloth, rubbing the blood from around his knuckles. I looked for
salve among Ahab's drawers and found a pot whose contents were yellow and waxy, which I spread on Kit's knuckles and head. His shoulder wound could not be easily accessed, except through the torn sleeve. It was chill in the room, and I did not want to risk trying to remove Kit's jacket. I longed to take up my needle to repair the rent even while Kit lay sleeping in the hammock, but then I would have no entry to the wound.

He had known me and called me by name. He had conversed with me, strangely but pleasantly, been considerate of my feelings. But—this part I wished had not happened—he had dismissed the fact of our marriage as though it were nothing at all.

I leant over and kissed him on the mouth, but he did not awaken. Then I thought it was a violation to kiss him while he slept, for all that we were married. He had not held out his arms to hold me as a husband. No, he had soothed me like a friend.

Why should we not be happy on Nantucket, baking and sewing? Warm together in our bed at night. Suppose his mind were to come and go. There would always be a moment when he called me—“Una!”—and again our minds would meet. His beloved body would be with me in the bed. That was not an honest hope. When his mind wandered abroad, he seemed unsexed, aware neither of himself as man nor me as woman.

“Mrs. Sparrow,” the cook called through the door, which I opened to receive a tray of food. A hot soup as well as the hard biscuits and some fingers of herring from the barrel.

“There were birds,” the cook said. “Their feet frozen down to the yards. I clumb up and got them. There's almost the last of the onions in that. The men will want warmth, I says to myself, after the chase.”

“How goes the chase?” I asked, glancing back to be sure our talk did not disturb kit.

“All spray and cold. Mr. Starbuck has gone for a Nantucket sleigh ride. Well, there's snow in the air if not under him. It may be a wrong whale, Mrs. Sparrow, instead of a right whale that Mr. Starbuck sung out.”

“I hear the wind howling.”

“Aye. It's bad luck to lower in a gale, but Captain Ahab has lowered in a stronger gale than this. It's the cold, though. It's their hands I worry about.”

“It was good to think of the soup, Cook.”

“Aye, and the blessed birds frozen fast in the masts. A flock must have blown in together from the north and roosted with us. In the pot now. Every one.”

“You might have let one or two escape.”

“What would be the point in that?”

“Perhaps to tell the tale.”

“Now, Mrs. Sparrow. Eat your soup. Wake him up to have some while it's hot. Too much sleep is bad for a brain injury.”

 

I DID TRY
to waken Kit, and failing that, pulled his body more upright, and with a spoon took the broth to his mouth. I hoped he might yet swallow while he slept, but the liquid only puddled on his lower lip and then spilled down his chin. I did not want to choke or drown him in soup, so I fitted down a lid on the dish and put it aside. I took my own bowl and sat on the long narrow sofa under the portholes and tried to look out as I ate.

For Mary Starbuck's sake, I thought, let the whale tire that dragged Mr. Starbuck's whaleboat over the winter water. Let them not fall into this cold, I thought, for bundled as they were, swimming would be difficult. I could see the water rising in great swoops. Sometimes the wind dug bowls in the ocean, slope-sided, just like the bowl from which I ate, but all unstable, collapsing and reappearing. Even the large
Pequod
swayed and wallowed in the wild water. And yes, those were snowflakes, only a few, beating at the porthole.

My own comfort seemed sinful to me: men I knew out in the winter fury. I sat with my feet on a brown leather cushion. I sat with my stomach full of warm and savory soup. My clothes were dry; my welfare certain, for I had no doubt that Ahab would pilot me safely to Nantucket.

And what of Ahab's whaleboat? It, too, I knew was down on the water, lifted high on the waves and then dragged low. They would be rowing, though half the time the oars might strike only air. Ahab would have them rowing in the direction of the fleeing whale and the harpoon-tethered boat. Starbuck would not cut the line, knowing the whaleboat's weight dragged strength from the fleeing whale.

Eventually, I fell asleep, tossed and tossed by the storm; eventually it seemed to rock me. It seemed reliable.