The Steampunk Trilogy (21 page)

They had stepped outside. A newly erected pen dominated the backyard of The Evergreens. In this makeshift corral, six or more ostriches sat. Watching over them with soft clucking tones was the personable young man she had first seen.

“Hen!” called Austin. “Where’s Walt?”

Before Henry could answer, a resonant voice came from behind them.

“The green globe’s favorite loafer stands firm right here.”

Emily spun around with pounding heart.

Ever since Father had terminated her schooling at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary on the grounds of “constitutional weakness” (in that same year the Fox Sisters were first emitting their rappings), Emily had longed for a renewal of the intellectual companionship and stimulation so fleetingly tasted. When, not long ago, she had begun seriously writing poetry, the need had grown even deeper, an ache that the dull and fusty correspondence with the Reverend Wadsworth could not appease.

And now, standing before her (clothed, thank God!) in full corporeal splendor, was perhaps her first, last, only and best chance for such communion: a living, published poet.

Trembling, Emily thrust forward her basket of flowers.

“My introduction, sir!”

Walt accepted the offering gently. She saw his keen eyes alight on the neatly stitched and ribbon-trussed leaflet of her poetry half-hidden at the bottom.

“Something more than it first appears, I think,” said Walt, and winked.

Emboldened, Emily said, “My Basket contains Firmaments, sir!”

“But is it big enough,
ma femme
,
to contain me?”

4

“INEBRIATE OF AIR—AM I—”

O
N THE WALL ABOVE
the piano that stood on the flower-decorated Brussels carpet in The Homestead’s front parlor hung an engraving called “The Stag at Bay.” The noble venison—caught out in the open and surrounded by silently yapping dogs, the mounted hunter aiming his perpetually poised spear at its chest—was plainly ready to expire from sheer terror.

Precisely so had Emily felt, as soon as Whitman had uttered his veiled challenge regarding the capacity of her trundle.

A sweat had sprung out upon her forehead and her limbs had seemed not her own. The sky—the sky seemed to weigh so much, she was suddenly convinced that Heaven would break away and tumble Blue on her—

So she had fled.

Like a child affrighted by shadows, she had run from the backyard of The Evergreens, through the intervening copse, and into the shelter of her bedroom in The Homestead.

There she had stayed for the next two days, huddling beneath her quilts. Even Carlo had been excluded.

(And what of all further possible embarrassments should come upon her at the same time but her dreaded menses! That Doctor Duponco’s French Golden Periodical Pills had somewhat alleviated the curse was small comfort. Where was the Pill she could take for her Nerves?)

Between bouts of self-chastisement and tears, Emily in her head had molded a poem, that the period of pain be not entirely a loss.

A Wounded Deer—leaps highest—

I’ve heard the Hunter tell—

’Tis but the Ecstasy of death—

And then the Brake is still!

The Smitten Rock that gushes!

The trampled Steel that springs!

A Cheek is always redder

Just where the Hectic stings!

Mirth is the Mail of Anguish—

In which it Cautious Arm,

Lest anybody spy the blood

And “you’re hurt” exclaim!

She had intuited Whitman’s allegory as soon as he had spoken. The double meanings which tripped so easily off her own tongue and pen still had the capacity to startle her when issuing unexpectedly from another.

Whitman had been proposing—nay, commanding!—a full and open relationship with her. It is not enough, he might as well have plainly said, that you give me these scribbled-over scraps of paper, expecting my opinion in return (valuing what you earlier slighted, in the light of my newly discovered fame). No, if you approach me, you must do so nakedly. You must deal with me as woman to man, as soul to soul, holding back nothing, if you would have the real juice of my fruits, the true meat of my tongue.

And this was just what Emily doubted she could do.

Although she longed to.

Only once had she opened herself up wholly to another.

And look how that had turned out.

Not that dear George had been at fault. There were few men who could stand up to Edward Dickinson’s displeasure, and dreamy, intellectual George Gould—Emily’s senior, Austin’s friend and a crack student at Amherst—had not been one of them. When the Squire had discovered their innocent yet fervid affair and banished George, neither he nor Emily had found it in their power to protest, though both their futures were at stake.

And then had come Emily’s self-imposed White Election: her Celestial Wedding, symbolized by her unchanging snowy attire, in place of the earthly one she swore she would never now know.

How, with such a trial behind her, could she find the strength to give to Whitman was he was obviously demanding?

No, it was impossible. . . .

A peremptory knock sounded at Emily’s door. Before she could reply, the door swung open.

In stomped Lavinia, bearing a supper tray.

“I swear, Emily—you and Mother will be the death of me! Two bigger babies I’ve never seen! I’ve a good mind to marry and be shed of you both! Then we’d see how long this household would stay afloat!”

Emily sat up straight in bed, intrigued by her sister’s indignation. “And who would you marry, Vinnie? Is there a potential suitor I should know about?”

“Humph! Don’t you worry, I could scare up a husband if I put my mind to it. And I might just yet. Well, here’s your supper. And mind you—no complaints that my Indian bread’s not as fine as yours!”

Vinnie deposited the tray and turned to leave. At the door, she paused.

“I don’t suppose you’re interested in news of Father?”

“Is he still in Boston?”

“Further away than that. Although the Party could not convince him to run this year, they prevailed upon him to help their Presidential candidate, John Bell. The Squire’s on his way to Washington, and points south and west. There’s no telling how long he’ll be gone. And we should all be thankful for his absence. If he were here, and forced to witness what Austin and those loco cronies of his are up to, he’d be positively apoplectic! Why, the whole town’s in an uproar as it is.”

Emily’s pain had almost driven from her mind Austin and his wild plans for a journey to the beyond. Now all the strange atmosphere at The Evergreens enveloped her again.

“What’s Austin doing?”

Vinnie tilted her nose up and sniffed. “If you want to find out you’ll have to get up. I’m not
Harper’s Weekly
.”

And with that, Emily’s sister slammed the door.

Five minutes later, her supper uneaten, Emily was dressed and on the staircase.

At the rear entry, she hesitated. Could she really nerve herself up for another expedition to the mad menagerie her brother’s home had become? What if that bestial Madame Selavy grabbed her again? What if the dapper Mister Crookes essayed another buss upon her hand? What if the fanatical eyes of Mister Davis transfixed her once more like a Butterfly upon a Card? What if she met Sue, her Lady Macbeth sister-in-law? What if she met Whitman!? How she regretted now giving him her poems, those Keys to the Inner Chambers of her Heart. . . .

Forcing herself to subdue all these jeering mental demons, Emily threw open the back door.

Heavy-blossomed clumps of lilac, white and purple both, flanked the portal, their sweet scent diffusing like a cloud around the stoop.

With his shaggy bare head buried deep within the drooping clusters, inhaling great ursine snuffling draughts of their inebriating fragrance, stood Whitman.

Motionless, Emily froze and burned simultaneously. It was not Frost alone, for she felt Siroccos crawl upon her Flesh. But neither was it solely Fire, for her Marble feet could keep a Chancel cool.

Whitman withdrew his head from the flowers. Tiny perfect florets clung to his hair and beard, rendering him a veritable Pan. His open-necked workman’s shirt revealed a pelt of chest hair—last noticed by Emily in a soapy state—similarly bedizened.

“When lilacs in the dooryard bloom,” declaimed Whitman, “I exult with the ever-returning spring!”

Then, replacing atop his crown the floppy hat he had been holding, and gently taking Emily’s hand, he said, “Come,
ma femme
,
let us stroll a bit.”

Helpless, Emily followed.

They meandered for a short time among the flower beds—the children so lovingly pampered by their mistress—without saying anything. Then Whitman spoke.

“Those were not merely poems you gave me. Not a book alone. Whoso touches them, touches a
woman
.”

These words were more than Emily had ever hoped to hear in her lifetime. Willing herself not to faint, she conjured up an ingenuous question in reply.

“You would say, then, that my poems are—alive?”

Whitman gestured widely, to take in the whole green scene through which they promenaded with hands so implausibly conjoined. Would any townsfolk, seeing her now, not think her the Belle of Amherst indeed?

“Is what you see before your eyes this minute not indisputably alive? Are you yourself not alive, the blood pulsing in you and the smoke of your own breath steaming forth? How could anything that issues truly from one alive not itself be alive? Have no doubt! They live indeed! The divine afflatus surges through them as surely as it does through the song of a lonely thrush.”

Emily felt her whole being filling with confidence and vitality. The constant anxiety that dwelt behind her breastbone began to diminish. But Whitman’s next words brought her up short, deflating her new elation.

“And yet, like the sad piping of that lonely mateless bird, your poems exhibit a grave deficiency, a morbid strain that threatens to wrap itself around the living trunk of your songs like a clinging vine, until it brings the whole tree down.”

Emily stiffened and tried to withdraw her hand, but Whitman would not permit it. She was forced to speak roughly while still in intimate contact with him.

“I am not aware of any such grievous flaw as you adduce, sir. But of course, I await the instruction of one so
learned
.”

Whitman took no offense at her cold tones, but smiled instead. “I am far from ‘learned,’ Miss Dickinson, save in what I have gleaned from the streets of Brooklyn and the shores and paths of my native Paumanok. And as my purse and my reviews both well attest, I am no favorite of the academies! Yet my eyes are keen enough to find letters from God dropped everywhere. And what these old eyes—and my heart—tell me about your poetry is this: it is too cloistered, too rarefied, too much a product of the head and the hearth, as if you had no body, nor a world to walk in. You have that fine facility for ‘seeing the world in a grain of sand,’ as Mister Blake would have it. But you seem unable to see the world as the self-sufficient miracle of
itself
.
Everything must represent something ethereal to you. Sunsets, bees and rainbows—self-existent perfections which you insist on cloaking in your own fancies! Nothing can stand for itself alone, but you must bend it to represent a ‘Truth.’ If you should continue on in this vein, you will, I predict, gradually refine yourself and your poetry entirely out of existence!”

Emily made no immediate reply. So sincere and vibrant had Whitman’s voice been, that she was forced to consider the validity of his remarks.

Could it be possible that her constricted life—half chosen, half imposed—was really threatening her poetry with its limited scope? She had been so convinced till this moment that she had a clear vision of what was ultimately important. Were there marvels and wonders beyond her ken? Was she like a color-blind person who thought she knew what color was, but knew not . . .?

Haltingly, Emily tried to voice her apprehensions.

“What you so glibly condemn, Mister Whitman, might indeed be so. Yet, what if my faults be as you itemize? They are part and parcel of my very nature, a crack that runs through me like the Liberty Bell’s. And perhaps that very crack gives me my distinctive timbre. In any case, it is too late for me to change.”

Whitman halted and turned to gaze deeply and sincerely into Emily’s eyes. “You are absolutely wrong on that score, Miss Dickinson. I know whereof I speak. For all my early manhood, I moved in a fog of false feelings and shoddy dreams, only dimly sensing that I was missing my mark. It was only in my thirty-seventh year that I awoke to my own true nature, and began to shape my songs. It is never too late to change and grow.”

“For a man, perhaps, that may be true. Your sex is permitted to test yourself, to hurl yourself into clarifying situations that enlarge your spirit. But we women are not allowed such liberties. Bride, mother or sterile crone these are the limited roles society grants us.”

“There is an iota of generally accepted truth to what you say—as much as there is in the assertion that a common prostitute is not a queen!”

Emily gasped at the foul language! But Whitman continued unabashed.

“But I say that a common trull
is
a queen! And I say that a woman is not less than a man, and may do whatever she pleases! Listen to me, Emily!”

The sound of her own given name practically unhinged her. The smell of lilacs was in her blood like wine.

“I—I don’t know what to say. How can I venture out into the world? I’ve been hurt—”

“Do you think the dark patches have fallen on you alone? There have been times when the best I have done has seemed to me blank and suspicious. My great thoughts—as I supposed them—were they not in reality meager? Nor is it you alone who knows what it is to be evil—if that is what troubles you. I am he who knows what it is to be evil! I’ve blabbed, blushed, resented, lied, stolen, grudged! I had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak. I was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant! The wolf, the snake, the hog were not wanting in me! But I contain them all! I do not repudiate the evil, I affirm it! My poems will produce just as much evil as they do good. But there was never any such thing as evil in this world!”

“Your words, Mister Whitman, contradict themselves—”

Whitman’s face was scarlet. “Contradict myself! Very well, I contradict myself! I am large, I contain multitudes!”

Seeking to calm him, Emily said, “But you have not hit on my Deepest Wound, sir. It was—an affair of the Heart—”

Her words seemed to have the desired effect. Whitman grew calm and pensive. “There too I have sad experience. Miss Dickinson—Emily—if I share something private with you, may I ask a favor in return?”

“What?”

“Would you leave off this undesirable formality between us, and call me ‘Walt?’ I know the difference in our ages traditionally demands such modes of address, but I abide by no such conventions.”

Feeling the warmth stealing into her cheeks, Emily hung her head. “It seems a small enough thing—”

“Very well, then. Please, look—”

Emily lifted her eyes. She saw Whitman taking a small loosely bound homemade notebook (much like one of her own chapbooks) out of his pocket. He opened it to a center page, then turned it toward her.

From the notebook stared a tintyped face, that of a handsome woman with dark ringlets, her hands clasped over the back of the chair in which she sidewise sat.

Whitman turned the book back toward himself. He kissed the picture, closed the leaves, then repocketed the precious keepsake.