Ahab's Wife (37 page)

A very narrow red rag rug covered the strip of floor so exactly that it surely had been manufactured to its dimension. It was the color of cranberries and likely dyed with them. Probably Starbuck had been comforted hundreds of times by the color, but never with any conscious association to the cranberry bogs of Nantucket. I thought well of Mary for making her husband a red rug. If he could not have a hearth fire to cheer him, at least he could have the color red.

I thought of my mother's log-cabin quilt, with the red square in the center, though that was a redder red—a red the color of blood. And I had never associated the color with the idea of the bloody land. Nor could she have intended me to.

To lie on this bed was like lying in the drawer of a well-made cabinet. Here I was contained. And the container ordered my confusion. Far too small for two people, for the lone person the room fit almost as well as a shell fits a turtle. It seemed protective. And my toes found a hot brick wrapped in flannel.

I blew out the candle that I had set on my chair, and I listened. Would I ever hear these sounds of wooden ship, of passage through the waves, of night wind in the sails, again? Would I ever make my way alone over the sea again? What had happened was terrible beyond anything I could have imagined, and yet…and yet…I had lived. I would manage. I touched my face, the still-sore cheekbone. I would not be struck again.

I listened far into the night. Then I rose, dressed, and tiptoed to Ahab's cabin. Ahab and Starbuck snored peacefully; from Kit there came a low, continuous moan, at the same pitch as the wind in the sails, but with a human timbre. One wrist was manacled to the wall in a low place, and he was lying down. I sat beside his head with my back supported by the wall and lifted his head and shoulders into my lap. I cradled and comforted him and kissed his face.

I shall take care of you, Kit, my lovely,
I promised.
I shall pick you berries and plums. You shall have a radish as big as a washtub. I'll get fishhooks and stand on a smooth rock beside the ocean and fish for you. I'll dry fish and I'll pickle them. I'll sew plain and fancy while I wait for fish to bite. We shall have jams and jellies, quince and elderberry. We will harvest seaweed till we have a great stiff stack of it. I shall get us a sheep and shear her and spin and knit from her. What needs anyone a large house? Ours will be like a double cupboard, built warm and hugely thick. And you shall do just as you please all day long
.

 

W
HEN
I
AWOKE
, both Ahab's hammock and Starbuck's pallet were empty. Kit still slept in my lap. Gently I slid from under him. As quickly as I could tidy myself, I ran to the deck.

Land! A hundred masts in the harbor! Buildings! The high tower of the Unitarian Church, its dome wrapped in gold leaf!

“ 'Morning, Mrs. Sparrow,” Starbuck called out.

“ 'Tis no longer the far land,” Ahab called, “but the near land—Nantucket!”

K
IT AND
I packed our clothes inside the pillowcase I had borrowed from Sallie and the
Albatross
. Standing at the prow with Kit, among the sailors, I watched the island festooned with buildings grow larger. Ahead of us sailed another whaler, the
Boar,
and the airstream behind her bore a horrible odor. It seemed a combination of rotted fish and rancid grease.

“She's coming in dirty,” one of the sailors said.

“Her flag flies lowered,” another said.

And others spoke disparagingly of the filth, till Starbuck put in an explanation: the captain must have died during the voyage, and the first mate had lacked the authority to make the crew clean up as they should have. He pointed out, too, that she was from Australia, and it made little sense for her to be docking here.

They seemed scarcely competent to steer the ship, and we closed on her. The deck was in disarray with ropes and spare sails, harpoons; even a dangerous cutting spade lay in the rubble.

“Look up,” I said to Kit, “at the church spire.”

He quietly took my hand. Then he meekly asked, “What do you notice, Una?”

I had only noted the sunlight on the golden dome, but quickly I supplied ideas for Kit to chew. “See, the clock portion is a cube, a square, but the next level, the one all louvered, is hexagonal, and there the square is moving toward curving. And the third level is the round
drum of the cupola, and that is topped with the dome, which is almost a hemisphere.”

“You would have me transform like that building?”

Some unintended correspondence had dashed up in his mind. I tried to ride the wave. “I only mean we all change by degrees,” I said. “Neither in good architecture nor in nature is there any abruptness, but gradual modulation, requiring planning and patience.”

“Would you lecture me, Una?”

The land approached, ever nearer, and nearer. When I looked at the water day after day from the masthead, the ocean had seemed to go on forever. Yet any journey across the widest sea led to land, and the limitlessness of the sea was illusion.

Now I half regretted the ending of my journey. Again I savored the rise and fall of the boat beneath me. As I have often done, I watched a black-backed gull riding the waves, up and down, exactly fitted to the sea. I watched how the small whitecaps folded over, just as the fingers of a raised hand may fold down over the palm. Little foam good-byes, they waved to me.

Suddenly two men, one black and one red, leapt from the stern of the
Boar
. Huge men, their arms were stretched over their heads, their bodies taut as harpoons. They entered the water without a splash, and then they breached and hallooed at us.

“Throw lines,” came Ahab's command. There was relish in his voice.

He was obeyed at once, and soon the two giants had pulled themselves like twins over the railing, where they stood half naked and dripping before Ahab.

“So, Pisces,” Ahab addressed them. “We have fished you up from the ocean, and you are ours.”

“Daggoo,” said the black man, the water glistening in his tight black curls.

“Tashtego,” said the Indian, with a voice that seemed to come from the bottom of a muddy river. His muscles lay long and flat in his upper arms. “We harpoon whale for you.” The Indian spoke in a sullen manner, suggesting it was his right.

With excited vitality, the black man repeated the sentence exactly: “We harpoon whale for you.”

“Who am I?” The captain of the
Pequod
spoke as though he were God before whom appeared two souls petitioning admission to heaven.

“Ahab sails
Pequod,
” the Indian said.

“You be the Ahab?” the black man said, squinting and lifting his chin.

“Cut round the
Boar
!” Ahab commanded. “Starbuck, bring the book. We'll sign them on.” Ahab was all erect pride, vainglorious in his power. Indeed, he was lord of the
Pequod
.

The crew stood back, in some awe of the red giant and the black giant. Daggoo's nostrils flared as we passed the
Boar
.

“Him stink,” he said, jerking his head to indicate his former ship.

Mr. Flask was passing out chits to a few of the sailors—apparently extra pay for having seen whales or other accomplishments. “What's this?” he asked, reading a name. “Mr. Sparrow?”

Ahab took the chit from Flask's hand and stuffed it into Kit's pocket.

“Your pay,” Ahab said.

“Did I work here?” Kit asked. I saw the confusion in his face.

“Aye,” Ahab answered. “I say ye did. Put in at Captain Peleg's office to redeem your wage.”

I was dumbstruck.

“What did I do?” Kit asked.

“Ye swept the winter wind out of the hurricane house.”

“I sold you a pound of my flesh for your dinner table, didn't I, brother?”

“Sir,” Starbuck said, “there's not a jot in the log of his work.”

“I say there is,” Ahab thundered. “Give me my book.”

He took the pen and the book from Starbuck, and before us all, wrote several lines in it.

“Now, Tashtego, now, Daggoo,” Ahab said more calmly, “ye are entered here, too. We sail again in the early spring.”

“You sail close to Africa,” the black man said, “Daggoo swim home.”

“When we sail next,” Ahab said, all mildness, “ 'twill be for the Sea of Japan.”

“Tashtego home now,” the Indian said.

He turned and raised both arms ceremoniously, as though to embrace the island.

“Are ye?” asked Ahab. “I took ye for a Gay Header.”

“Yes,” Tashtego said. “Vineyard is home.”

Then he turned again and walked across the deck, as though he owned it, to us. Placing his fingers on Kit's brow and hair, he stooped his tall head and looked wonderingly into Kit's eyes. Kit held his gaze.

“Mad,” Tashtego said reverently. “Indians to the west, very far west, great Rockies. Duwamish. Their word. Mad—‘I am going home.' Tashtego also mad.”

Tashtego reached behind his own head and unfastened an ornament from his hair. With a movement so swift and sure that I never saw it, he placed something in my right hand and turned away. When I looked down, I saw that he had given me an eagle feather.

I felt that something lost had been restored to me. I opened the drawstring I had sewn into the mouth of the pillowcase and dropped in the feather. Tashtego's feather was naturally rounded on the tip, but a few slashes of a knife would quickly fashion a point for my new pen.

 

I
TOOK
K
IT
by the hand and together we walked the gangplank that bridged the sea with the land. How strange to walk upon the earth herself again! After the fluid sea, land seemed stiff and unyielding. My muscles strove to adjust to this new rigidity, and I whispered to Kit, “Walking seems so odd,” but he walked straight ahead without speaking. I was glad that he moved with authority and purpose.

In five minutes, walking down the wharf and onto the streets of Nantucket, I saw more people than I had seen in over a year's time upon the sea. As in New Bedford, here were people of the most varied sort—every race and every shade of color, some with mahogany and purple tints to their skin. Their horse conveyances, too, people's shoes and clothes, even their languages, existed in bewildering multiplicity. I felt overcome by this multitudinousness—what did my single self matter in a world so crowded and varied? I looked for a place to mail my letters to my loved ones.
I was safe. I was back
.

“Look at that man,” Kit said, and I followed his nod to a well-dressed black man. “That is Absalom Boston. A success.”

“Kit Sparrow,” Mr. Boston called. “You've come home.”

“Aye,” Kit answered in a way that seemed wonderfully normal, “with my wife.”

“You need a place to stay,” he said, “come over to my side. I have a rooming-inn.”

“Thank you,” Kit said. He put his hand under my elbow for us to journey on, but I lingered.

“Sir,” I said, “will you help me?”

Mr. Boston answered slowly and carefully, “In any way I can, madam.”

“I need to mail my letters,” I said urgently.

“If Madam would honor me with her trust, Absalom Boston will see to it.”

I gave him the letters. Good, I thought. Our first test, and we have passed for normal.

We walked on a bit farther and saw an old Indian holding a bunch of fishing poles. His gray hair was parted over the crown of his head and softly braided beside his cheekbones. He stepped into the path in front of us and asked if his son had landed.

I said we had but one Indian aboard, and he was from the Vineyard.

In the old days, he told us, his cloudy eyes fixed on the sky as though it held another time, the whales came to men. Men did not go to the whales. The blackfish, he said, washed ashore to die and be butchered.

“What is your name?” Kit asked.

“I knew you when you were a boy. You never noticed me. Abram Quary.”

“That is not possible,” Kit said.

“Maybe I forget,” the man answered, immediately humble. He looked down as though ashamed.

“Take this to Sailor's Pay,” Kit said, reaching for the chit in his pocket. “The
Pequod
paymaster. Tell him you are my representative.”

I remonstrated, for it was all the money we had.

“Was it pay for my work, or for yours?” Kit asked me.

I felt uncertain of his meaning and could not answer.

Taking pity on me, he added mysteriously, “It was my pay for sweeping.” And to the Indian, he added, “Maybe we forget.”

Again Kit put his arm to my elbow, and we continued down the street of Nantucket and on beyond to the outskirts.

The third person who hailed us was walking toward town along the Madaket Road. This was a man who smelled most wonderfully of fish
and who commenced to rub his eyes with the backs of his hands when he saw us.

“Are you real?” he asked. “My eyes says, ‘Why, that's Kit Sparrow!' and my mind says, ‘But he went down with the
Sussex
.' ”

“Mr. Hussey, smelling of the Try Pots Tavern,” Kit said, whereupon Kit was wonderfully embraced by his old friend, who had a face as deeply grooved as a steamed prune. I was duly introduced, and the man swept off his hat, out of which flew a few fishbones.

“We'll go back, we'll go back,” Mr. Hussey exclaimed, “and Mrs. Hussey will feed you chowder till it flows from your ears. Why should I go to town when Kit Sparrow has rose from the dead with a mermaid for a wife? All lost, the
Hemlock
said. Nothing but flotsam. A floating chest. But here you are!” He continued to marvel over us, repeating several times, “But here you are!”

“And how is your cow?” I asked Mr. Hussey, in an effort to divert him.

“My cow, alas, the fish have gotten the better of her.” His face changed from genuine joy to mock tragedy. “She coughed up the whole skeleton of a sole, and perhaps it was her soul, for she fell on her side and expired after that.” He poked Kit with his elbow. “But why does she ask after my cow?”

“I told her once,” Kit said, in perfect equilibrium, “that your cow was shod with the heads of codfish.”

“But who would shoe a cow?” Hussey asked. “Especially one that is part dog?”

Then I noted that trotting down the road to meet us, just as a dog would follow her master, was a brindled cow. She came right up to Hussey and with her giant head gently butted against him and nuzzled his chest, all the while turning her head on one side and being most considerate of not hooking him with her horn.

“So you, too, are rose from the dead, Bessy,” he said softly. “Maybe she has as many souls as she does stomachs, and there's a sole swimming in each of them.” The man narrowed his eyes, pretended to peer into the mysteries of philosophy.

“What makes your cow so affectionate?” I asked.

“Why, Mrs. Sparrow, don't you know the laws of nature yet, and you being a wife? She is affectionate to me because I am affectionate to her. And why shouldn't I be? It's her milk that makes the chowder
famous. Oh, never mind the fish. They are quite secondary, in my opinion, though Mrs. Hussey would say otherwise.”

On the right side of the road, I could now see the Try Pots Tavern, built with actual try-pots steaming in the front yard. A woman stirred the chowder. Smoke and fragrance rose off the pots in the November air, and the aroma was just as wonderful as that of Mr. Hussey, for when I said that he smelt wonderfully of fish, I meant no irony. Here was the mother of his fragrance. I cannot say how cheerful I felt. Perhaps we were home.

But no sooner did my body relax in that aroma as though it were a warm bath than I felt Kit convulsively grab my hand.

“That is not Mrs. Hussey,” he said. “That is Charlotte!”

“Yes,” Mr. Hussey said. “The first Mrs. Hussey did strangle on a fishbone. I missed her terrible. But later, when the
Hemlock
reported the
Sussex
gone down, Charlotte cried her eyes out, and then she married me.”

“Charlotte!” Kit called and ran toward her.

She brought her hands, spoon and all, to her face, which registered first disbelief and fright and then pure pleasure. She had a round, kind face with pretty pink cheeks and dark hair like mine, but her curls were short and well controlled.

“Kit, you've come home! You've come home!” she cried in a lovely, high, sweet voice. “And I am married to Mr. Hussey.” This last statement seemed to her no grief but a source of merriment.

“And I am married to Una,” Kit said, indicating me.

And then they both laughed, and Mr. Hussey joined in, as though the very best of cosmic jokes had been played upon them.

I managed to smile, since
they
all took our circumstance with such good humor. Perhaps it was because of the odor of heavenly chowder that constituted our most immediate atmosphere, for the wind had shifted so that we all stood in the midst of airborne chowder particles.