Ahab's Wife (23 page)

P
ERHAPS
I
SHOULD
admit that the prospect of actually harpooning a whale (though I was not assigned a boat), bringing it shipside, and butchering it appealed to me less and less. All the while everyone else grew more eager. Beginning to feel like an
isolato
in my new home, I tried to talk only to my most immediate “family.” When exchanges were required of me with the larger crew, I looked down and mumbled,
hoping to make less of an impression that way. Once someone had said in a teasing way that rounding the cape would put hair on my chest and whiskers on my face, but Harry, hearing the remark, said sharply to let me alone. The cook is a rather placated member of a ship's company, and Harry's injunction was obeyed.

He had told me about the butchering, with language full of blood and gore. Harry spared no details: the peeling away of the blanket of blubber; the cutting of that into horse pieces in the blubber room, which was between decks in the waist of the ship; the mincing of the horsesized pieces into pages connected by a black spine of whale skin, these pieces being called “Bible leaves” because they were thin like pages; next the continuous pitching of the Bible leaves into the boiling try-pots. According to Harry, the stench was beyond description from the try-pots and also from the decaying animal, which oozed a black tar tracked all over the ship, the decks so oily and splattered with gobs of black blood everywhere it was difficult to walk.

Because we had been at sea a long time without taking a whale, all the mastheads were furnished with lookouts, and we took short turns to be sure our eyes were fresh. A whale ship being much overmanned in comparison to a merchant ship, there was no shortage of people to send aloft, though Captain was certainly as selective about the task as he could be. He seemed to feel that my eyes were both sharp and lucky, and often he would ask me if I felt like taking a second or third duty. Even my morning walk with Chester was shortened so that I might spend more time aloft.

Surely the captain could sense that I was reluctant to target a whale for butchering. Yet, he trusted me to do so, and, in good faith, I would not have let one of the brutes go his innocent way unheralded.

One other detail of life on the
Sussex
I feel compelled to mention—being on the subject of innocent blood—because it is never a part of men's narratives, they having little reason to think of it. How did I manage my monthlies, since I did not dare to put my own bloody rags in a washpot? I had brought a supply of rags in my duffel, some of them left over from the cutting up of my eight-yard blue dress. And whenever there was any stray rag about the ship, I snatched it up and laundered it clean, then stowed it away against the time of the month when I should have need of it. My monthlies ran with the moon quite regularly, and when the crescent moon appeared over the masts, then
I knew to look to my needs. Innovative Aunt had shown me how to contrive a kind of oilcloth diaper to hold my rags and contain any accident, so I never had the embarrassment of bleeding through on my outer clothing. As for my bloody rags, I simply crept out to the stern at night and tossed them overboard. It was a waste of good cotton cloth, but the public washpot was out of the question.

As for the innocent blood of the whale, it was, indeed, through my cry from the masthead, off the coast of Brazil, that the
Sussex
made her first kill of the voyage.

I did but do my duty.

I suppose many a soldier tells himself the same, and thus assuages guilt.

Having stayed aloft after my sighting, I was already sorry as I watched the lowering of our sixteen-foot whaleboats and the frantic chase with men bowing their backs so rapidly they seemed in danger of permanent injury. I watched the strange dance when the mate changes places down the length of the boat, grabbing heads as hand holds, with his harpooner, just as Chester and I had pretended by moonlight in the decked whaleboat.

The way the harpooner stood there poised to hurl at the gigantic animal reminded me of stories of knights and dragons—so unequally matched they seemed. But, as in the fairy tales of monsters and men, the man prevailed—in this case assisted by other men and his conveyance to the battle place first by mighty whale ship and finally by lesser whaleboat. But I do not think dragons drained such sad blood. Nor were dragons ever female, and this whale evidently was, for I saw her calf, who had been hiding under her like a dark chick, grow frightened and swim away.

At last Harry hailed me to descend. Before I did, I turned and looked straight across at the lookout in the next mast over. The tawny mountain-lion eyes of Kit locked with mine. He did not seem to recognize me, or rather, the recognition between us was focused on only the ungendered sadness that we saw in each other's eyes. The whale discovered, his death was sure to follow. Had Kit, too, spied the whale, but chosen not to sound the cry? Already Kit anticipated that a bloody reality would replace his fantasy of whaling. We descended our masts at a parallel rate. When my feet touched the deck I quickly moved to the companionway and effected my disappearance.

My whale was estimated at sixty barrels. The labor of reducing, or literally
rendering,
the living animal with lungs and bones and heart and skin down to an essence of whale oil, stored in casks and barrels stacked in the hold of the ship, occupied us all, myself included, for two weeks.

What was my job in all of this? It was I who held the bucket when after the severed head of the beast was divided into the case and the junk, and after a hole was bored into the case, it was time to scoop out the clear, fine oil. It was I, posted with Chester in a whaleboat slung from the starboard quarter, who watched for particularly aggressive sharks. Yes, the sharks came almost at once. They watched the man on the monkey rope thread the heavy blubber hook into the end of the scarf that must be hoisted off and boiled for its load of oil. They watched his feet in particular, as we did, for he stood on the slippery carcass of the whale. The corpse was broader than the bole of the mightiest oak, but it was completely greased by the blood and slime exuded by the animal. And we watched the feet of the mates, too, who were all lined up on a kind of narrow stage pivoted down beside the animal. Standing on that board, they poked and prodded at the juncture between the detaching blanket piece, pulled up through the action of the windlass and chains, and the place where the layer of blubber still adhered to the animal.

And it was I, as well as other slight crew members, who kept empty tubs supplied at the edge of the hatch to receive the horse pieces cut in the blubber room. I watched those full tubs dragged to the mincing board to be fine-sliced into Bible leaves, the horse pieces dripping blood and oil set free by the between-decks heat trapped in the blubber room. Oil poured in fountains from the horse pieces and partly filled the tubs and dripped all over the deck.

Captain Fry did not have me tend the tryworks flames, but I ladled oil from the boiling cauldrons into cooling tanks. From these the storage casks were filled, and the casks were then lowered on massive chains into the hold, but again, I was spared the heavier work.

Who was who in all this work? We were all so covered in grease and blood and dirt that I recognized men only by their voices.

It was this circumstance, Kit told me later, that led to his discovering me. He was standing at the tryworks (though I did not know it was he) taking out the rinds left from the rendering and using these portions of the whale to feed the flames (which rendered oil from new Bible
sleaves) when I, at my job of ladling off the oil, bumped Kit and without thought said the phrase “Pardon me.”

Only two words, but there it was, he said, unmistakably, the voice of his female friend from the Lighthouse, though the speaker be covered with black grease, even the face a mask of soot.

We finished the rendering and storing of oil, we finished cleaning the ship, using the whale's ashes from the tryworks to concoct a strong lye for the job, before Kit made himself known to me.

The crew had cleaned the ship of its guilt; the hold cradled the purified, barreled-up profit. I was asleep in my hammock only a few feet away from Chester when I was awakened by a whisper in my ear. “Una!” My name sank through layers of consciousness, past all the fatigue of the last two weeks, to rouse me. It was a happy awakening. I rolled silently from the hammock and silently but wholeheartedly embraced Kit.

Summoned by my own true name, it was not in me to deny my identity.

“It's my watch, but never mind,” he said. “Come aloft with me.”

K
IT SLIPPED
his hand into mine and led us upstairs and across the deck.

“The mizzenmast,” he muttered. “Let others take the lead in this bloody business.”

Although we were as attached together as could be, hand in hand, I felt a distance from him, and I shuddered. His hand itself was smooth as moonlight, as soft as milk.

“Your hand?” I said.

“I was set to squeezing spermaceti at the end. Giles and I.”

The boards of the deck, scrubbed down to a creamy color with the lye from the tryworks ashes, gleamed in the light of the full moon. Shadows fell westward from the three masts, from the rigging, from the deckhouse, the davits, and the waiting whaleboats so that we seemed
to walk through a jumble, but it was insubstantial shadow. The deck itself was clear, and to my bare feet the planking had the nap of brushed denim.

“The spermaceti is like a ladies' emollient.” He stopped and took his hand, still clasping mine, to my nose, with the urging “Smell.”

I did, and breathed in sweetness like violets. Over his knuckles, I glanced at him, with the moonlight in his eyes. Had I ever seen such hurt? There was no physical wound on Kit, but it was as though there were a gash behind his eyes. Instinctively I took his hand to my lips and kissed it.

He burst into a suppressed but spontaneous laugh.

“You make a good gentleman,” he said. He turned to the rigging and said, “But do you want to go first?”

I commenced ascending for an answer. I had never climbed at night before. It happened that the full moon was lodged near the top of the mast, and I fancied that I was climbing to it, with Kit as shadow to me, for he was dressed darkly. First I, then he, popped through the hatch to the crow's nest. He did not ask permission but encircled me in his arms. His breathing changed to deep and hoarse. It was not frightening, in fact I enjoyed the sense of his proximity, but there was something distraught about him.

“As sure as you are a woman, Una, tell me you were repelled by that butchery.”

“I was.”

“I pardon you, Una. Now you must pardon me.”

“I, Una, pardon you, Kit.”

“Say it again. And hold me.”

I did both. His mien was full of streaming stars.
Are those stars that were your tears?
I thought.

“Crouch down,” he said, “so no one will see us.”

We closed the hatch and sank down on it, I kneeling, Kit squatting on his haunches.

“This is the devil's ship,” he said.

“No,” I answered. I would not be quiet for such a wrong reckoning. “Captain Fry is a good captain.”

“He's not good at finding whales. We should have taken at least one before we crossed the Line. Now there's no going back.”

“Would you go back, Kit?”

He snorted that thorough, spontaneous suppressed laugh.

“Wouldn't you?” he asked.

I thought before I answered. I thought of the immensity of the Pacific, of Japan and China and India beyond. “No,” I said. “No, I would not go back.”

He laughed again. “They've made a man of you, and they've tried to make a woman of me.”

He spoke with such contempt of being a woman that again I tried to steady his thinking. “I have always loved—”

“—being who you are,” he insisted. But there he stopped and, squatting, merely stared at me. In a moment he held out his hand to me again. “So you like a soft paw?”

I stroked the back of his hand. “Kit, Kit, you know your hands will return to their natural way.”

“How many days have we been now scraping with the jackknives, scrubbing with the lye?” His voice was a low hiss.

“Three,” I said. I didn't know what to make of his question.

“ ‘The third day he rose again from the dead…”'

“ ‘He ascended into heaven—”'

“Do you think, Una, that we are in the ascendant? Is this heaven?”

“Kit,” I said, full of alarm. “It was only the blood of an animal.”

“I walked in it. Didn't you?”

I remembered too vividly. I had felt that I was rolled in blood and grease.

“Every night I soak my hands in a jar of spermaceti,” he said. “No, I wash my hands in it. I wring my hands in it. If I had salvaged the heart of the whale, I would curl up in it as though it were my coffin case.”

Was his reason unseated? I answered as sensibly as I could, “The unction is keeping your hands soft.” When he made no reply, I asked, “How do you come by your own spermaceti?”

“I stole it.”

The words seemed to drop downward like three stones into a well. They made a hollowness surround their fall.

“I want to stand up,” I said. “My legs are cramping.” So I stood and felt the rocking of the ship come up my legs. Even a gentle swaying
below is amplified by the long lever of the mast, so that the crow's nest transcribes a sizable arc. “Stand with me,” I said, for I hated seeing him all huddled and crouched.

We stood there together; Kit's breathing gradually became normal, lulled by the swaying and the calm of the night. “It's beautiful,” I said. The light from the full moon suffused a portion of the sky and obliterated the stars; beyond that glowing haze, tiny stars studded the blackness.

Kit put his soft hand over mine and whispered, “You're beautiful.”

In that moment, I felt myself a part of the night, and as a part of the night, it seemed true: that I was beautiful. Attendant on that notion came the conviction that I had chosen and would choose my own life. Yet I was afraid. I was afraid of Kit's passion for me, so apparent.

“You mustn't tell my secret,” I said.

“I won't.”

“Giles?”

“Giles and I are no longer friends.”

I felt dashed with cold water. “What happened?”

“I don't want to say.”

“You'll make up. Surely, Kit, you'll make up?”

“No.”

I was cold. The night that seemed so full of light was smitten.

“Don't tell him I'm here, then,” I said, angry at them both. “If I want him to know, I'll tell him myself.”

“You have to promise to meet me every night. Just for a little while. After I fix my hands. To talk.”

“Every night?”

“No, I'll come wake you up when I want you.”

“Suppose you're discovered out of the forecastle?”

He laughed again, that surprising, too-thorough laugh. “I'll say I was lost.”

 

W
HEN
I
RETURNED
to my hammock, I lay awake. I was still cold, and I got Chester's peacoat and determined to sleep in it. I thought about one of my recent tasks, the bailing of the case. You let the bucket down again and again into the severed head, and again and again it
comes up brimful of the clear oil. But finally you let it down, and there is no sense of the bottom of the pail resting on a surface of liquid. No, it has bumped all the way to the bottom, and the well is empty. As you retrieve the pail you feel its brim knocking against the sides of the fleshy cavity, occasionally catching there. The pressure of the little scooping collisions causes a few drops more to be forced from the walls of the case, but the retrieved container is pitifully empty. So it was with Kit's laughter. It went down to the bottom of his being, but it brought up precious little mirth.

 

B
ECAUSE
I
HAD
difficulty sleeping when I needed it most, after those weeks of straining labor, I felt tired and deprived during the day after my moonlight reunion with Kit. But there were duties to resume. All morning I wondered what had occasioned so serious a falling-out between Kit and Giles. When I could not solve the conundrum by thinking, I decided to leave their quarrel to them. It seemed childish to me that adults who knew each other well and who had been devoted friends could allow a breach in their friendship. But I was too sleepy to think of it further, and my bewilderment itself seemed to be soporific.

During the afternoon stint in the crow's nest, I almost fell asleep. Here I had stood with Kit, and now Kit was not here. Here were light and air and sunshine, and Kit's mind was enwrapped in a cloak darker than night. I thought of my having been blinded with the brightness of the lightning—but that was a temporary, physical condition, healed by time. Perhaps Kit's spirit had been drowned by blood. Perhaps time away from the carnage would restore Kit just as naturally.

I resolved to see no new whales that afternoon. When a plume arose far to the east, I closed my eyes and then turned my back. I numbed myself to the idea that I was cheating my captain. When I saw another whaler from New Bedford, the
Reconciliation,
I did sing out, and Captain Fry consented to a gam, since we had now taken a whale. I asked to be relieved of my station and scurried down to add a paragraph to my letters to the Lighthouse and to home. I added again how sorry I was to have deceived them. I asserted again how much I loved them. I assured everyone that I was safe, that Kit and Giles were also aboard the
Sussex
and would help me, if I ever needed it.

That night I hoped that Kit would not call on me. Would my confession to my loved ones be enough? The question wrung me. The whale butchery haunted me.

Perhaps Kit read my thoughts, for I slept undisturbed that night and the next one, too. The next night, I wanted him to come, and I lay awake waiting for him.