Ahab's Wife (38 page)

Charlotte held out her hand to me and said happily, “You are Una of the Lighthouse then. Kit spoke so fondly of you.”

Her hand was sure and kind as she pulled me closer to their circle. I don't know whether it was her mention of the Lighthouse or the generosity of her greeting that made me think of Frannie and how she had welcomed me when I was twelve. But this was a woman's greeting,
not a child's, and it included a mature measure of content that I could not but wish were mine. Yet it was I who was married to Kit, whom doubtless she had loved, and not she.

“Lad, you must have some ale,” Mr. Hussey put in.

“We all must,” Charlotte said cordially, “and I have bread ready to take from the oven.”

“Shall I stir here for you?” I asked.

“Nay,” she said, laying the spoon on the brickwork next to the bubbling pot. “If it needs stirring, Bess will come and do it for me.” She laughed and pulled me toward the tavern. As we passed through the door, I could not help but imagine the affectionate cow taking up a post before the pots. I envisioned her holding the spoon in her soft lips and commencing to stir away as she switched her tasseled tail.

It was, indeed, the very moment for taking out the bread, and Charlotte pulled it out on her long-handled bread spade exhibiting a bread-crust as brown as any could be without a speck of black or bit of burn on it. With her knuckles she knocked on the crust, and the good hollow sound came back.

“Bread and butter?” she said, indicating a golden pat as big as my fist on the long tavern table.

“I've told the world about Mrs. Hussey's chowder,” Kit said.

“She makes it just as good as the last one did,” Mr. Hussey said appreciatively.

“Sit you down, sit you down,” Charlotte urged, and thick-sided, heat-holding bowls of thick, creamy chowder appeared before us.

And so we ate our first shore meal, in every way enjoying every crumb and swallow of the food, and with my feeling, too, for the first time, that Kit and I were a proper husband and wife.

In every exchange, Kit was as cordial and convivial as ever he had been at the Lighthouse. I thought myself that perhaps he was, more than most, a person defined by his society, and when good cheer and hospitality surrounded him, the inner weather became for him a reflection of that outer glow. Perhaps that tendency accounted some for his absorbing the horror of what had happened in the open whaleboat.

“I saw a shadow pass your face just now, Mrs. Sparrow,” Charlotte said.

“Let it begone.” But in my mind, even in my body, I felt a ceaseless
rocking, the motion of a small, frail boat floating on a vast sea. It seemed that nothing but a whim kept us afloat. Then under the table fur brushed my ankle, and then a short sharp nip!

“Ouch!” I jumped.

In a flash, Charlotte was under the table. She came up with a vixen cradled in her arms, its long bushy tail hanging down before her apron.

“She's more mine than yours now,” she said to Kit.

The fox lifted her lip and showed me her needlelike teeth, but she did not growl.

“She won't have forgotten me,” Kit said. “I nursed her when she was a kitten.” He held out his arms to take her, and, in fact, the vixen went right to him. In a quick motion that scared me, lest she bite, the fox stretched her head up and licked Kit's chin. Then she turned and settled into his arm, just as she had with Charlotte. She looked quickly at me, and again, she showed her teeth.

“We'll have none of that,” Charlotte said, and she reached over to hold the sharp little muzzle and jaw together. “She's jealous of you,” Charlotte said.

“She's very pretty,” I said. “What's her name?”

“Giles named her Folly,” Charlotte said.

“Did you know Giles, then?” A dart tipped with pleasure and feathered with pain passed through me.

“And Giles gave Charlotte the nickname of Miss Jolly,” Kit went on. “It's easy to see why, isn't it?”

I thought that our hostess would then surely ask about Giles, but she did not. Instead, she contemplated the scene before her as though it were complete and perfect and there were neither past nor future.

“You must stay with us,” Charlotte said.

“We've an extra room,” Mr. Hussey added, “if you'd like to stay, Kit.”

I thought that perhaps Kit and Charlotte had truly been nothing but friends, since her invitation was so without misgivings. I didn't find her exactly jolly, but she was certainly lively and of good cheer.

“Will you tell us, Kit, how you survived the
Sussex
?” Mr. Hussey inquired. “What caused her to be lost?”

“Only if you'll let me make a short story of it,” Kit answered.

“Perhaps he'd rather not tell,” Charlotte said.

“Hush now,” Mr. Hussey said. “I want to hear.”

“The
Sussex
was rammed by a whale. I floated in a boat for ten days, with five others—where they are now I couldn't say. Then we were picked up by the
Albatross
.”

“When did you marry?” Charlotte asked me.

“We are but newly wed.”

“She was a passenger on the
Albatross,
” Kit said, “and the captain married us.”

I let Kit lie without contradiction. Perhaps he was ashamed I'd dressed as a boy, sailed with the
Sussex
.

“But you are Una of the Lighthouse, aren't you?” Charlotte asked.

“Well, it was a coincidence,” Kit said. “As so much of life is. As you have always said, Charlotte. Were others found?”

“There was a whaleboat of the
Sussex,
” Mr. Hussey said, “adrift near the Galapagos. A boat of bones and human rot. They starved.”

A silence fell for a moment, but Kit was far too sociable to let it settle in a heavy way. “Have you taught Folly any tricks?”

Charlotte put the little fox on a stool before the fire. “Sing, Folly,” she said, and the little fox lifted her nose and yipped two syllables. “Higher,” Charlotte commanded and pointed to the ceiling, and the animal howled at a higher pitch. “And higher.” Was she approximating a tune? Was I hearing the old church tune my father liked, “Holy, Holy, Holy”? I held my breath. Would the uncanny animal be able to continue? Following the jabbing of Charlotte's finger in the air, the fox stretched her mouth open and yawned a syllable rather like “Lord,” but the entirety of the next phrase, “Lord God Almighty,” was beyond her. Or beyond my imagining. Then Charlotte held open her arms, and the fox leapt into them. With her bare fingers, Charlotte fished right into her bowl and brought out a nice piece of milky cod to reward her pet.

“Now go outside,” Charlotte commanded. The vixen ran like a streak across the floor, under the table, where we sat, toward the door, at the bottom of which was cut a small hole hung with a flap of leather.

“When the real cold comes,” Mr. Hussey said, “I'll have to stopper it up, but she knows how to ask to go out.”

I nodded appreciation and smiled. I did not tattle on Folly, who as she passed under the table had taken just time to nip my ankle again, but that night as we got into bed, I showed the punctured place to Kit and whispered what had happened.

“You shouldn't complain,” he said and looked at me strangely.

The remark made me shudder, but I was happy to be on land, so beautifully fed and kindly received. And we were about to lie in a real bed together, on land, for the first time.

“I want to take you from behind,” he said.

I was uncertain of his meaning, but I quickly said, “No.”

“You don't understand. You need to let me.”

“No,” I said. “I don't want that.” And I thought of what I had heard of the practices of some soldiers and sailors long without women.

“I need you to let me. It's what Giles did to me.”

“Giles?”

“Giles wanted me. It surprises you, doesn't it? I hadn't meant to tell. It was why we couldn't be friends any longer.”

I would have thought he was delusional, except for the last sentence. The hiatus in their friendship, while we were on the
Sussex,
had stood an open question. Kit's explanation did not so much answer the question as engulf it.

“Giles said for me to pretend I was you.”

“Stop,” I cried, almost too loudly.

“Now you must be you for me.”

My defense, smaller than a child's sand wall, seemed swept away, and I rolled onto my stomach. I began to cry into my pillow as he lifted my gown.

“Now you are my friend,” he said.

My body was not made for this, and it was cruel. Kit gnashed his teeth behind my ear and groaned.
Giles?
Was that the word I heard? When Kit lay spent upon me, he whispered in my ear, “I love you. Rest now.”

Who was that “you” to whom he spoke? And of what rest?

 

A
S WE AWOKE
in the morning, he pulled my head to his chest tenderly and held me there. “Thank you, Una,” he breathed. “Sometimes when a husband and wife don't want to conceive, they love each other like that.”

I did not believe this notion had motivated Kit in the least, but still I kept my ear against the soft thuds of his heart. My body contracted with the painful shame Kit had inflicted on me in that bed.

Kit stroked my hair as though I were his pet. Perhaps he would be less tortured now. Perhaps he needed to pass on the pain, to do to me what had been done to him. How was it that he knew I could not refuse if he told me Giles had wronged him? No, not for Giles had I lain with my face in the pillow. Because I knew the depth of Kit's injury, I could not deny him.

I heard the Husseys stirring in the next room. Suppose life had sent a Mr. Hussey to me as a spouse? I would have said no to that. But because Kit spoke to me from the land of pain, I could not say no to him. I hoped he would not ask that of me again and wondered if Giles had asked him many times.

I was glad in our stillness together, but our thoughts were separate. Yet he held me as though I were dear to him. My letters home! Inadequate apologies, pale explanations! But Absalom Boston had posted them.

I wished it were night and we could now fit together with the passion of husband and wife. Should we have a child, might we name him Giles and thus seal up a wound and a loss that each of us bore? We three might form a healed and healthy unity. But when I sat up in bed and looked into Kit's eyes in the morning sunlight, I saw on their horizon the sure storm clouds of gathering madness.

S
UPPOSE
there were an assemblage of musicians whom one was used to hearing in the front chamber of such-and-such a house. And suppose you were a thousand miles, no, leagues, a whole
ocean width
away, and you yet heard those same instruments tuning up. Without going to look, as first a low note and then a squawk and next a toot came to your ears, then, no matter how unlikely it was, you would entertain the hypothesis that these so familiar sounds must be emanating from that same group that you thought yourself to have left in another life.

So it was that when I heard a great stamping of feet and an entering
of certain voices into the Try Pots Tavern, I concluded fifteen bulls must resolve themselves into something like the able-bodied seamen of the
Pequod
.

And so also concluded Kit.

“The devils have followed us,” he said.

I came close to laughing, but instead I replied, “That's the hortatory tone of Mr. Flask. Only instead of urging the men to break their backs a-rowing, he's demanding a swift passage of porridge and codfish gravy.”

“I think they're speaking of us. Or they're going to.”

“Not unless we have assumed the names of porridge and gravy.”

“What do names matter? They're only code.”

I thought of how Captain Ahab, a man far saner than Kit, had said much the same of words. My ears had detected no evidence that Ahab was with his former crew, and, indeed, I was sure that he did not hobnob with them, for all of his respect for, say, Mr. Starbuck (whose voice was also missing from the company).

“That's Mr. Stubb's pipe I smell. Come, Kit, let's go down and have breakfast, too.”

“We won't be able to stay here if they talk about us.”

“What's to say?” I asked defiantly, though I knew an answer:
Ye have Kit Sparrow, do ye, Mr. Hussey? Had to be chained to Ahab's wall. And his wife…

“They don't know anything about me.” I was surprised to hear my defense, as though I were afraid.

“I think you told Captain Ahab. I heard you at his dinner table. You drank blood together, didn't you?”

A plume rose from my heart. Red, as from a whale harpooned in a vital organ. “No, Kit,” I stammered.

“I won't see them.” His voice was growing louder.

“Let's, then, take a walk. They'll leave and then we'll breakfast with the Husseys.”

And holding him by the hand, I coaxed him out of the room and down the stairs. It had seemed warm upstairs, but when we stepped out the back door, the November chill of Nantucket washed over us, and I did not dare suggest we go back for coats. “Let's run,” I said, and we rushed down a small hill behind the tavern.

The distant, hushed sucking of the surf charmed my ear, and before
long I had led us to a desolate beach and to the sea, which we had but so shortly quitted. We walked beside that heaving, and it was a gray heaving that day, though the waves turned over in whiteness. Close to our feet, it was as though pitchers and pitchers of foaming milk were being poured out on the sand.

What colossal, relentless waste it all was—this pouring and pouring, this rush to nothing, a few bubbles sinking into the ground. And the heave and fling of it, till I wanted to tell it to hush, to rest. Sometimes I chose a surge and thought to myself, “There, that was the last.” And there would be a deceptive pause, as though my will had worked.

“I'm trying to stop the waves,” I said.

“I wouldn't,” Kit said.

“You tried to stop the sun.”

“Well, it is gone,” Kit said quietly, “today.”

I felt his warm hand in mine, and I wondered if I would go mad with him this time.

“Try to be well,” I said to Kit urgently.

“I
am
all right now.”

I stopped our walking and inspected him. “Shall we have breakfast then?” While I waited for his reply, I watched the sea and its processes. In long gray rolls the water built itself higher, and then at one end, the shape broke over into foam, and the froth came traveling across the top of the roll, and all went to flatness, flowing white fringes. As though they had pushing knuckles of water behind them, the fringy white fingers came scampering up the sand.

Kit knelt down. With both hands, he formed the sand into a little mound, a cake. “Una?” he said, looking up at me shyly. “Will you squat down with me?”

I did, wrapping my skirt across the tops of my knees.

He stuck his finger in the little sand heap and held some grains toward me. “Would you try my cake? Cinnamon and sugar.”

“No, Kit,” I answered gently, as one might to a child whose fantasy of mud pies had carried him away.

Kit slowly put his finger in his own mouth.

“It's gritty,” he said.

I stood up and held my hand out to him. “Let's walk again. I'm cold when we stay still.”

We stood up and walked. In answer to my need for warmth, he put his arm across my shoulders.

“Look at all the skate egg cases,” I said. The beach was littered with the small black, leathery rectangles, from each corner of which extended a kind of hook. “My uncle called them mermaid's purses.”

“I liked your uncle. He was a merman himself.”

“Why do you say so?”

“He escaped the ordinary.”

“So have you, Kit.”

He did not dispute me, nor speak at all, but kissed my cheek. I felt a bit of pride; at last I had given him something good.