Genoa (13 page)

          
“. . . there was no room to shoot up into the wind and anchor; nor was there holding ground . . .”

Carib Charybdis—such, perhaps, as Hart Crane—the ocean already in his head—leaped into . . .

          
First voyage, return: “All night they were beating to windward, and going as near as they could, so as to see some way to the island at sunrise. That night the Admiral got a little rest, for he had not slept nor been able to sleep since Wednesday, and he had lost the use of his legs from long exposure to the wet and cold.”

          
And elsewhere, contending with cannibals: “The barbarians, being only three men with two women and a single Indian captive . . . persevered in seeking safety by swimming, in which art they are skilful. At last they were captured and taken to the Admiral. One of them was pierced through in seven places and his intestines protruded from his wounds. Since it was believed that he could not be healed, he was thrown into the sea. But emerging to the surface, with one foot upraised, and with his left hand holding his intestines in their place, he swam courageously towards the shore. This caused great alarm to the Indians who were brought along as interpreters . . . The Cannibal was therefore recaptured near the shore, bound hand and foot more tightly, and again thrown headlong into the sea. This resolute barbarian swam still more eagerly towards the shore, till, transpierced with many arrows, he at length expired.”

          
Reaching Portugal, “. . . they were told that such a winter, with as many storms, had never before been known, and that 25 ships had been lost in Flanders . . .”

          
And on Española, at Navidad, a few Spaniards had been left behind, the first colonists: “These, fighting bravely to the last, when they could no longer withstand the attack of the thronged battalions of their foes, were at length cut to pieces. The information conveyed . . . was confirmed by the discovery of the dead bodies of ten Spaniards. These bodies were emaciated and ghastly, covered with dust and bespattered with blood, discoloured, and retaining still a fierce aspect. They had lain now nearly three months neglected and unburied under the open air.”

          
M
OBY
-D
ICK
:
“At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along with the White Whale’s flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its advance—as the whale sometimes will—and Ahab was fairly within the smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale’s spout, curled round his great Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to him; when, with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the poise . . .”

                                        
(Melville, elsewhere: “. . . since all human affairs are subject to organic disorder, since they are created in and sustained by a sort of half-disciplined chaos, hence he who in great things seeks success must never wait for smooth water, which never was and never will be, but, with what straggling method he can, dash with all his derangements at his object . . .”

          
“. . . he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the whale.”

          
The medical book: “Once within the periphery of the ovum the sperm’s head and neck detach from its tail which may be left wholly outside and in no case plays any part in the events to follow. The head next rotates 180° and proceeds toward the centre of the egg where the egg nucleus, having finished the maturative divisions, awaits it. During this journey the sperm head enlarges, becomes open-structured, and is converted into the
male pronucleus
.”

The head enlarges, becomes open-structured . . . I tilt forward, the front legs of the chair striking the floor, and then turn to face the far end, the western end of the attic . . . turning, then, completely around, I face the desk again, and become dizzy . . .

          
M
OBY
-D
ICK
:
“And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight.”

                                        
(Melville, elsewhere: “. . . in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril;—nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.”

          
To Hawthorne: “The Whale
is completed.”

THREE

But the waters came pouring in, rushing and filling:

          
“My dear Hawthorne, the atmospheric skepticisms steal into me now, and make me doubtful of my sanity . . .”

and

          
“. . . let us add Moby Dick to our blessing, and step from that. Leviathan is not the biggest fish;—I have heard of Krakens.”

                                        
(a sea-monster, mile and a half in circumference, darkening the ocean with a black liquid, and causing a gigantic whirlpool when it sinks . . .

          
M
OBY
-D
ICK
:
“Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.”

. . . rolled on over Herman Melville, his compatriots and descendants, who breathed and wrote, thenceforth, from within the ocean. But there was that which followed after the closing of the waters: there was the family . . .

Lizzie, wife to Herman, and counterpole to Fayaway . . .

                                        
(with Columbus—discoverer, beginner—the order was reversed: wife first, and then mistress . . .

. . . struggling to help by copying M
ARDI
(whose fogs she could not penetrate), and

          
“My cold is very bad indeed, perhaps worse than it has ever been so early . . .”

There was the bond:

Lizzie, whose mother died in delivering her, and who might have said to herself, “I killed my mother”; and who, having been thus abandoned, would have been strongly averse to abandoning Herman . . .

Lizzie, who, like Hart Crane, suffered from hay fever, and thus, wet-headed, mourned her mother . . .

and Herman, as Jonah, swallowed by a white monster—Herman, who might have said: “My mother killed me” . . .

                                        
(and Maria Melville, as Mrs. Glendinning: “I feel now as though I had borne the last of a swiftly to be extinguished race . . .”

In any case—love, prestige, privation—they were established: Lizzie and Herman . . . Mr. & Mrs. Herman Melville . . . Mr. H. Melville, & wife.

And there were the children:

Mackey,

Stanny,

Bessie,

& Fanny,

hovering at the edge of the storm, the vortex, and

killed, crippled, or withered, according to the order of birth, to how near in time (the father’s
space
) they came

to the eye of it.

Melville—as good a parent as, say, Columbus was an administrator—was more of a prophet:

          
There was the letter to Mackey, 1860: “Whilst the sailors were aloft on one of the yards, the ship rolled and plunged terribly; and it blew with sleet and hail, and was very cold & biting. Well, all at once, Uncle Tom saw something falling through the air, and then heard a thump, and then,—looking before him, saw a poor sailor lying dead on the deck. He had fallen from the yard, and was killed instantly.”

                                        
(Mackey, you shall die violently . . .

          
And the letter written by Stanny, as a little boy, to his grandmother: “Papa took me to the cattle show grounds to see the soldiers drill, but we did not see them, . . . it was too bad. But papa took me a ride all through the Cemetary.”

                                        
(Stanny, you shall die quietly . . .

          
And the letter Melville wrote to Bessie, 1860: “Many [seabirds] have followed the ship day after day . . . they were all over speckled—and they would sometimes, during a calm, keep behind the ship, fluttering about in the water, with a mighty cackling, and wherever anything was thrown overboard they would hurry to get it. But they would never light on the ship—they kept all the time flying or else resting themselves by floating on the water like ducks in a pond. These birds have no home, unless it is some wild rocks in the middle of the ocean.”

                                        
(Bessie, you shall be homeless . . .

And the children responded:

Mackey, age 18, young dog, fond of firearms, who slept with a pistol under his pillow—came home one night at 3
A
.
M
., and failed to rise in the morning.

          
“Time went on and Herman advised Lizzie to let him sleep, be late at the office & take the consequences as a sort of punishment . . .”

          
“. . . in the evening, the door of the room was opened, and young Melville was found dead, lying on the bed, with a single-barrelled pistol firmly grasped in his right hand, and a pistol-shot wound in the right temple.”

                                        
(Melville: “I wish you could have seen him as he lay in his last attitude, the ease of a gentle nature.”)

          
And the funeral: “. . . the young Volunteer Company to which Malcolm belonged & who had asked the privilege of being present & carrying the coffin from the house to the cars—filed in at one door from the hall & out at the other—each pausing for an instant to look at the face of their lost comrade. Cousin Helen says they were all
so young
& it was really a sadly beautiful sight—for the cold limbs of the dead wore the same garments as the strong active ones of the living—Cousin Lizzie—his almost heart broken Mother having dressed her eldest son in the new suit he had taken such pride & pleasure in wearing—Four superb wreaths and crosses of the choicest white flowers were placed on the coffin . . .”

And after, the family pondered whether it was suicide or accident, not thinking that Mackey had held the pistol, and Mackey had pulled the trigger—

the only question being whether he had been conscious of his actions, of his motives.

And there was Stanny:

          
“My deafness has been a great trouble to me lately . . .”

                                        
(What was he trying to drown out—the brother’s gunshot? . . . the family arguments? . . . or:

          
Stanwix: “I fear it will give you but little pleasure to hear from one, who has been guilty of so many follies, and deaf to the counsel of older heads.”

          
And: “Stanwix is full of the desire to go to sea, & see something of this great world. He used to talk to me about it, but I always tried to talk him out of it. But now he seems so bent upon it, that Herman & Lizzie have given their consent, thinking that
one
voyage to China will cure him of the fancy.”

But it took more than one voyage to cure his father . . .

          
“What have you heard of Stanwix Melville from what point did he run away? & where was his place of destination? Poor Cousin Lizzie She will be almost broken hearted.”

A shadow of his father, even to the running away . . . or perhaps, simply, escaping the disaster . . .

          
Later: “You know I left New York in April & went to a small town in Kansas, I staid there a few weeks, then I thought I could do better South so I came down through the Indian Nation, & then into Arkansas, I stopped at a number of towns on the Arkansas river till I came to the Mississippi, then down that river to Vicksburgh I staid there a few days, & then took the train to Jackson, from there by Railroad to New Orleans, I found that a lively city, but no work, so I thought I should like a trip to Central America, I went on a steamer to Havana, Cuba & from there to half a dozen or more ports on the Central America coast till I came to Limon Bay in Costa Rica.”

          
Columbus, fourth voyage, off Central America: “It was one continual rain, thunder and lightning. The ships lay exposed to the weather, with sails torn, and anchors, rigging, cables, boats and many of the stores lost; the people exhausted . . . Other tempests I have seen, but none that lasted so long or so grim as this. Many old hands whom we looked on as stout fellows lost their courage. . . . I was sick and many times lay at death’s door, but gave orders from a dog-house that the people clapped together for me on the poop deck.”

Rounding Cabo Gracia á Dios, he was able to coast southward to what is now called Limon Bay, in Costa Rica, where he anchored and rested for ten days.