Ahab's Wife (59 page)
Authors: Sena Jeter Naslund
So we talked our nights away. My dozing to sleep was with the blue and red of swaying flowers. But I dreamed more deeply that night of
stony, time-gnawed Chartres; I was inside the vault, crawling on bloody knees, but no window and no light pierced those lofty white-dark ribs.
That morning I found some spots of my blood on the sheets. Mrs. Maynard said it meant nothing at all, yet Ahab stayed on, well into September, to be sure that I would not miscarry. “Fear not,” he said. “I shall not leave thee with an empty womb.” Those days he cuddled me and brought me treats and books, and even, when I asked it, hummed a lullaby for me.
When he was assured that all was well, there being no more bleeding, Ahab prepared to sail. Little Pip was deemed too young to go as cabin boy, but in the presence of Captains Peleg and Bildad, the judge, and Maria Mitchell, Ahab promised that if Pip would wait patiently and be obedient, he would go on the next voyage. Like a whirling dervish, Pip beat on his tambourine and danced for joy, till Ahab caught him and sent him outside to the pavement (where there were no Irish teacups about) to do his spinning.
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“P
RETTY SHIP
, thee hast thy ballast within thee,” Ahab said to me.
“Do not kiss me, but smile at me once more,” I entreated for our good-bye on the wharf.
“Let time be a pleasant wind, Una, in thy sails.” Long his gaze at me, and long my eyes on him. “Send thy thoughts of me to the moon, Una, and Luna will beam thy serenity back to me. Every night we will see the same moon. But write letters, too.”
“I shall use my eagle quill till it is short as a sewing needle.”
Then, Ahab smiled at me. But he could not stop at that and took me again in his arms. I trembled, as alpine flowers do against their mountain.
M
Y HAND
on my belly, only so slightly swelling, I stood on the dock and waved my Ahab off. Then I rode in a buggy with Mary Starbuck out to 'Sconset, and we stood on the sandy beach and saw the last of the
Pequod
rounding Nantucket, far out to sea; finally its sails blended to a single white handkerchief against the sky, and then a dot, and then gone.
Mary asked if I should want to spend the night with her at 'Sconset, but I said I wanted to return to town. And I invited her to visit me soon, and she returned the invitation. Superficially, I had not gotten to know her very well. Ahab seemed to feel that he saw quite enough of Mr. Starbuck at sea. The toast of Nantucket, we had visited 'Sconset not once. But I did know Mary anyway, profoundly, from that day in the rain on the wharf when she had seemed my double.
When I got home, Mrs. Maynard opened the door for me. “My captain is away tonight, too,” she said, “I thought I might spend the night with you. Here's a hot toddy for you to sip.”
Gladly did I share the parlor with her, she knitting and I sewing. We were pleasantly and cheerfully at work, but as I heard the clock bong through the night, I could not help but think how many strokes of that hammer would fall before Ahab came home again.
Shortly after ten, Mrs. Maynard and I were both surprised by a late-night knock at the door, which I opened to an excited Maria Mitchell.
“Halley's comet's visible tonight to the naked eye,” she said. “Come see it.”
Mrs. Maynard declined, but I put on a wrap and hurried out with Maria. A number of people were coming out of their houses and pointing up. “Don't look yet,” Maria instructed, as she and I walked beyond the houses to the old mill hill. “Wait till we get to the top.” From the crest of the hill, with the sound of the creaking timbers of the mill at my back, I viewed the celestial visitor, a beautiful bright streak in the sky. I wondered if Ahab was watching it.
“Come home with me,” she urged, “and see it also through the telescope.”
“The Comet”
I did not want to leave Mrs. Maynard alone too long, but I hated also to disappoint my excited friend. “Some night, soon,” I promised, “I'll come at night and watch with you through the telescope.”
“Would you?” She clutched my arm.
“Maria,” I said, “you are overwrought. I've never seen you so stirred.”
“If you would but watch at night with me sometimes!”
“Indeed, I promise.”
“There is a prize,” she confided. “The king of Denmark has offered a medal, a gold medal, to the first person in the world who discovers a comet with the aid of a telescope. No one has ever done so. Every night, with the telescope, I watch for a comet no one has ever seen before.”
“But that would not be Halley's comet,” I said.
“Oh, no. It must be a comet never before seen, and one first seen with a telescope,” she reiterated. “I think if any new celestial object appeared in my field of vision, I would know it was new. I've learned the known sky so well now. Father thinks I am ready.”
“Perhaps he will make the discovery.” I pulled my shawl about me and gazed reverently at the comet I had never viewed before.
“I think not. I think it will be I, for Father is not so ardent as I.”
“At least I will look at Halley's comet with you some night,” I assured, and Maria assured me in turn that the phenomenon would be visible for many nights.
As I walked home, I thought of how the comet was traveling past, even as Ahab was traveling away. My child would not see such a sight till he was an older man than Ahab was now. And our lives would be gone. I glanced up to see that bright spark again, but the tops of dark buildings obscured the view.
I wonder if Maria's life was less content and complete than I had thought. If she was not the first to spy a new comet telescopically, would it be a great loss to her? Perhaps she would discover another, if not the first. A Nantucket woman to win the gold medal from the king of Denmark! A woman in her observatory on top of a bank. Would they even let it count? I decided to ask Maria exactly how the king's announcement was worded.
When I entered the parlor, Mrs. Maynard said that comets had ever
been heralds of disaster and that she wished I had not looked at this one on the night of my husband's sailing.
“But it's there,” I said, “whether I look at it or not.”
She announced that she herself did not ever intend to even so much as glance at Halley's comet.
W
HAT
H
ALLEY
'
S COMET
ushered in, despite Mrs. Maynard's misgivings, was a blessed connection reestablished at last. Having stopped at the post office, Maria appeared at the door again the next morning (her eyes as dark-circled as a raccoon's from late stargazing) with letters from Frannie and Aunt Agatha.
Dearest Una, cousin and friend of my childhood,
Mother says I am not to write to you because you are not to be trusted. Father climbs up the tower when she talks about you that way, but he says nothing. Butch is now four years old, which is the age I was when you came to the Island Light, and I always remember how kind you were to me and how you played with me, and I try to be as good to Butch.
Butch is not so isolated here as I was, since we are on the mainland and there are farms not too far away. It is as though my childhood landscape has been turned wrong side out, with the land surrounding the great water instead of the sea encircling the island.
I hope you do not think too bad of Mother. She was worried to death. We all went to New Bedford looking for you. Captain Maynard said he did not know anything about where you had gone. He said he had not taken you to the boardinghouse to wait for your mother as he was supposed to do, and Mother reached out and grabbed down on one of his mustaches. She was furious, and I have never seen her so
angry before or since. However, she is angry with you because she said you betrayed her trust. She says it is a Sin to leave home and leave your loved ones behind to worry about you. Father said that he had never heard her speak of Sin with a capital
S,
and she said that it was Warranted (I could hear the capital
W
in her voice) because you had not been considerate of the people who loved you most and you had thought only of what your own heart told you to do.
This is part of why I write to you. I wonder what you think now, many years later, of that issue. But I have to say you must not write the answer to me, for Mother would then know that I have disobeyed her by writing to you. Perhaps I too have betrayed her.
I do not want to go to sea, but I want to travel west. Perhaps you could write here without referring to this letter, but give me some advice. I don't think you have forgotten what it was like to be young. I am now twelve years old, but I know that my maturation has not been as rapid as is probably normal. Still, you left your Kentucky home at twelve and left us when you were sixteen.
I want to travel west because I believe that Kit is there. I heard from a young man who comes to help clean the lensâwe have only the old type here, not a Fresnelâthat a strange white man among Indians passed through the town. Why do I think it was Kit? For one thing, the description, but also, it is what he said. They asked him why do you, a white man, travel with Indians? Kit answered, “My skin may be white, but my heart is red.” Do you remember when he said that at the Island Light? I remember everything Kit ever said. Then he said it about black people and attending the black church in Nantucketâthat he felt at home there because his heart was black. It has to be Kit.
I was surprised that you and Kit did not get married. The letter we have from you referred to the fact that Giles had gotten killed in a fall from the masthead. It did not tell what had happened to Kit. You said that you were expecting your second child, that you were married to Captain Ahab, and that you were rich and happy. I am sure letters have been lost. That is all I know about your life, except that the first baby died, and your mother died in the wagon accident. I am truly sorry you lost them.
My mother cried and cried for her sister. She said that was your
fault too, that when you betrayed us by running away you started a long chain of consequences. Father quoted, “As in Adam all die, so in Christ are all made alive.” It made Mother so mad that she burst into tears, because she could see the parallel bad logic. Even I could see that it was wrong to blame you for every bad thing that happened to any person you knew.
I know that I do not want to upset my mother by leaving. She doesn't deserve to go through that again. I would like to convince her that I am smart enough to take care of myself, even in the West. But at some point, everyone must become independent, I think. I found out recently that Mother's father did not want her to marry my father! And he is, as always, the best father in the world.
You are the best friend I ever had. I do forgive you for worrying us so much. I cried every night for a month when you left. Finally, your letter came, explaining what you had done. But we had already been missing you so terribly. I guess, like Mother, I am a little mad at you about that. But I still trust you and love you more than anybody almost.
Frannie, your devoted kinswoman
Una,
Frannie has confessed to me that she has written to you for advice. My heart sank like a diving bell. Why does she ask you for advice? You who betrayed not only me but all of us at the Island. We had been entrusted by your mother with your care. Do you have no concept of the anguish you caused us? First, for love of you. Yes, we loved you. Loved you as though you were our own child. You were a gift to us. We longed for another child. You were so bright. So in need of a fatherly love such as Torchy freely gave you. Your own father's
mind had turned black with religion. Torchy was the keeper of the light, of enlightenment, of tolerance. Surely you felt that when you were here.
And my love for you! Little sister you seemed, part woman and part child. Insofar as you were not my child, I loved you the way a teacher might have loved her student. Your qualities stood objectively before me. I appreciated and admired you. I took pride in who you were and who you were becoming under our guidance.
Let Frannie find a model in Unaâ
that was my thought. I hoped my own child might aspire to your honesty with yourself, your ability to puzzle about large issues, your generosity and care for others, your self-reliance and inventiveness, your unstinting commitment to do your share and beyond, your brave vivacity.
But where was your
honor?
Did you not think it dishonorable to sneak away?
I cannot account for your thinking on this matter.
If I prayed to God, I would give thanks that Frannie has had a sense of honor, that she felt
guilt
over having written to you. Her disobedience has gnawed at her for five days. It has not been two hours since she confessed to me.
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Three days have passed. Torch and I have talked much of you these three days. Of your grief when we heard your father was deadâthe night of the bonfire on the headland, while the lens was being installed. How you struggled earlier with your homesickness and we tried to make you merry at Christmastime. How you visited with your parents in New Bedfordâyou were fourteenâbut were happy to come home with us and climbed to the top of the lighthouse as though you were lord of all you surveyed. It was the midpoint of your stay. Torch and I spoke of your great anxiety, after Boston, for Frannie when she was ill. How you were bewildered by the arrival of not one but two eligible young men in the
Petrel.
It is enough that I have told you how I felt and suffered. To be free of this, now I have another need. And that is to tell you, or at least myself, that I forgive you. I do believe that you wronged us. But my rage is over. I wish you every happiness.
I know that you would not give bad advice to my daughter. Torch agrees with me.
And so I end with another wish. First that our letters do reach you. Second that you will respond. If you do respond and then hear no reply from us, know that your letter simply did not reach us. Write again. We wish to claim our Una. My words begun in anger and anguish have ended in good wishes for you. We hope you will want to claim us.
Your Aunt Agatha