The Whale (17 page)

At the end of January, Sophia Hawthorne wrote Herman a brief letter saying that Nathaniel had finished
The House of the Seven Gables
but was too busy shepherding it through the press to visit Arrowhead, as he had promised to do. Herman wrote to Hawthorne immediately demanding the visit anyway, in a plain letter without rhetorical flourishes; and, much to Herman's surprise, this unadorned, bold, simple note was answered with a confirmation that Hawthorne would, indeed, come soon. Melville had to laugh at himself: he had spent so much energy in the past divining exactly what he should write to Hawthorne, crafting ridiculous prose and devising stratagems, none of which had coaxed so much as a hello; and now, the simplest of notes in the simplest language, jotted off in haste, had proven effective. Taking this success as a cue, Herman formed a habit of writing some simple thing to Hawthorne every few days, whenever the weather allowed mail—observations about his cow or the grandfather clock or something that had happened in the village, largely unembellished; and he saved all of his flights of fancy for
The Whale
. Herman's progress on his novel accelerated still more; and, in place of the silence that had reigned between them for the entire autumn, Hawthorne responded to Herman's pettifogging notes with dry little everyday communications of his own, so that it began to seem very natural that they were friends again. With each successful exchange, Herman's mood lightened, and
everyone at Arrowhead became encouraged at the prospect of his finishing the book and earning some money again.

At the beginning of March, a sudden thaw melted so much snow that the black earth reappeared from beneath its wintry blanket and Pittsfield awoke, a Sleeping Beauty kissed back to life by the sun. Carts began to pass regularly on the road in front of Arrowhead, and the Melville ladies joined the daily promenade into town. Herman dashed off a five-word message to Hawthorne, “Come now if you can,” and Hawthorne replied the next day that he would soon be on his way with his daughter, Una, by his side, that they would leave young Julian to stay at home and care for any needs Sophia might have while they were gone, and that Melville should look for him in a day or two. The detail of this response seemed warm and chatty to Herman, disarmingly congenial, and he was filled with an affection that felt fraternal and almost, he thought, appropriate.

Perhaps, Herman reasoned, my obsession with Hawthorne has been governed entirely by my need for an obsession—any obsession—to feed the creation of my monomaniac captain; perhaps, with
The Whale
nearly done and our communications quite normal and easy now, Hawthorne and I can actually become friends, real friends, and I can leave all of this torment behind. In preparation for the visit, he went to town and stocked up on brandy and cigars and bought a case of Heidsieck champagne on credit.

He was feeling quite calm, even optimistic—until he answered a knock at his front door and found Hawthorne himself on the porch. As usual, he was dressed simply, in a red shirt, red-and-black checkered scarf, and a black overcoat. The simplicity of his attire accentuated the ethereal beauty of his face and the magnificence of his high forehead, and his luxurious chestnut hair swept over his collar. Herman's knees jellified with panic and desire.

Hawthorne set his leather satchel down and stepped aside, revealing Una, who stepped forward and curtsied. “Thank you for inviting us to your home, Mr. Melville.” She looked up at her father, who nodded his approval.

“It is my pleasure. Thank you for coming. Shall we tend to your horse, Miss Una, or would you like some refreshments first, after your journey?” He looked over Hawthorne's shoulder for the carriage that had brought them.

“As you'll no doubt conclude,” Hawthorne said, with a sweep of his arm toward the road, “we have no horse, so we cannot tend to him. I suppose we could ‘pretend' to him, but that would be a horse of a different color.” Hawthorne smiled warmly.

For a moment, Herman struggled with the desire to kiss him. He even leaned forward a little but caught himself and said, with a blush, “Did you take the train?”

“I dislike trains. They make you look at everything from unnaturally straight lines. From a train, the whole countryside seems like the wrong side of a tapestry.”

“Has Una walked the entire way from Lenox, then?”

“We hitched a few miles here and there in the back of a wagon,” said Hawthorne. “But Una has the fortitude of a soldier, and marching alongside her in the mud was rather pleasant, after all the snow we've had.” Hawthorne wiped his shoes on the porch and picked up his satchel again. “What about those refreshments?”

Una ran in and gave Mary the cook an unsolicited report about her adventures on the road from Lenox. Herman introduced Mary, then knelt down in front of Una and said, “We have water for your thirst, and milk and shortbread for your soul, and birch candy for your dreams. Which would you like first?”

“Birch candy!”

“Dreams first, then. A wise choice.” Herman patted her on the head.

“Mary has gone to let the others know that your guests have arrived,” said Mary.

“I thought
your
name was Mary,” Hawthorne said.

“The housemaid is also named Mary,” said Mary.

Hawthorne pulled Herman aside and whispered, “Do you mean to tell me, in all seriousness, that you retain a housekeeper
and
a cook and both are named Mary?”

“I would not say anything in
all
seriousness, but it's true. They're both Irish, as well—it isn't so unusual.”

Overhearing this, Una said, “Mary Mary Mary Mary Mary Mary. Now I'm a Mary, too.”

“We can all be Marys,” said Herman with a wink. “In our own ways.”

They heard steps on the landing, and soon Mary the maid appeared with Maria, Helen, and Augusta from upstairs, and Lizzie came through the back door with Malcolm, so that the entire company of Melvilles and their servants suddenly stood crowded around Hawthorne and Una in the kitchen. As everyone was being introduced, Malcolm—resting on Lizzie's hip—swiped at Hawthorne's hair but missed and ejected a trail of snot down his mouth and chin and onto the floor.

 • • • 

They drained three bottles of champagne by way of a reception and became so jolly that they even served the Marys a glass each, as well. Una gorged herself on shortbread. Malcolm covered several large rocks of birch candy with slobber before flinging them across the room. Herman then gave Hawthorne a tour of the estate, while Una helped entertain Malcolm.

Nathaniel complimented the design of Arrowhead—“a stately hive compassing a brooding hearth,” as he put it—and Herman welcomed him with great ceremoniousness into his study, where the
other members of the household were almost never allowed. He showed Hawthorne the tiny closet of a room that opened off the study, explaining that that was where he slept when his back pain was too bad to allow him to rest peacefully next to Lizzie (he failed to mention that it was also the bed where his fantasies of Hawthorne turned most frequently from his mind to his body), and he proposed stationing Hawthorne and Una there during their visit. Hawthorne said he would be honored to sleep wherever Herman would suffer him to lay his head, a comment Herman found excruciating.

By the time they had returned to the parlor, Una was engaged in a game of checkers with Helen, while the rest of the Melville women stood around them and quizzed Una about her life, which Una enjoyed as if she were a princess holding forth in her own court. Hawthorne smiled broadly and mussed her hair, while she declared, apropos of nothing, “Massachusetts became a state on February 6, 1788.”

“She's like her mother in that way,” Hawthorne said. “Answering questions that no one has posed.”

Herman led Hawthorne back into the dining area, where Mary the cook was encouraging the hearth fire with a bellows. He took a bottle of brandy and two glasses from the shelf and motioned for Hawthorne to follow him out the back door. The air was bracingly cold, and the setting sun seemed watery and weak, as if it were shining through beveled glass.

“My barn is the most pleasant spot on the property,” Herman said. “I'll introduce you to Zenobia.”

“Zenobia?”

“My cow.”

“An excellent name.”

“I borrowed it from the queen of Palmyra.”

“I must remember that. Have you used it in a book yet?”

“No, it's yours,” Herman said. “With my blessings.”

Melville and Hawthorne entered the barn through its huge yellow double doors, and then Herman shut them in. It was quite dim, the loft window letting in only a tiny square of wan daylight. Chickens clucked from their pen in the far corner, and a pig, invisible in the deep darkness, grunted deliberately three times, as if ordering from a menu. They patted Herman's horse and petted Zenobia, who nuzzled them both affectionately. The sweet smell of hay and the rankness of drying manure mixed pleasantly in the back of their throats. Herman found an oil lamp on a bench and lit it, then produced two cigars from a wooden box.

“Do you often smoke with the animals?” Hawthorne asked.

“Only Zenobia smokes, but the pig likes his liquor.”

They lit their cigars and poured some brandy and drank. Herman directed Hawthorne to a bale of hay, where they sat down; and Herman spread a horse blanket across their legs. A mild but persistent draft produced a constant precipitation of hay dust that mingled with their cigar smoke, creating halos over their heads in the lamplight.

To Herman, the house seemed a thousand miles away, and his body seemed airy and full of light, so happy did he feel to be sitting once again beside this man of such ennobling beauty, who was in such good humor. Hawthorne was the most beautiful creature Herman had ever seen, perhaps the most beautiful creature that had ever existed. He felt like Icarus flying defiantly toward the sun.

“To sunny journeys through stormy lands,” Herman toasted.

Hawthorne clinked his glass. “And vice versa.” He reclined against the bale behind him, and little stalks of hay nestled into his hair, like strands of spun gold in a fairy tale. It required all of Herman's will not to brush it gently from Hawthorne's hair. “I have been reading a great deal of Balzac.”

“Balzac?” Herman exclaimed. “Beef and gravy!”

“He does enjoy his own descriptions, doesn't he? Sometimes, though, I want a good story more than I want a proper moral, and he tells good stories.”

“Good stories are sometimes enough,” said Herman. “Sometimes.”

“I like writers who write very unlike I do,” said Hawthorne. Herman thought he detected a significant look in Hawthorne's eye, as if he might have been talking about Herman himself. “I enjoy books that I could not possibly have written. Would it not be a relief to give up one's normal preoccupations with morals and sins?”

“You mean, wouldn't it be a relief to know all the answers, so as not to have to write stories about the questions?” Herman drained off his brandy and poured himself another.

“Perhaps. But I believe that one inherits one's preoccupations as much as invents or discovers them. I have a yen for exploring the past, for instance, not because I am fascinated by historical reality, but because I believe the past governs us, in the present, in ways that are subtle, and insidious—one might almost say that the past is a supernatural power. I believe our impulses are handed down to us, even more than our morals.”

“Even the impulse to love another?”

“How can one decide, with the mind, whom to love? And if the lover hasn't decided love, then it must be inspired by some other agency. Call it Divine Providence, or the collective weight of history, or the supernatural—call it what you will. We individually make choices in reaction to the whole weight of history, which has been created collectively through the power of traditions we never fully understand. That is the true supernatural—the ungovernable complexity of history, stretching infinitely back in time.” Hawthorne gazed past their lamp into the shadow, at the cud-chewing Zenobia.

“I cannot tell if you are an atheist or a true believer,” said Herman.

“I am often unsure myself. But I have just been meditating anew on the influence of the past in
The House of the Seven Gables
. It concerns the reactions of people who find themselves influenced by secret histories that they feel in their hearts more than they understand with their minds, and how incomprehensible longings may still compel decent people to act immorally.”

Herman topped up Hawthorne's brandy and scooted closer to him. He felt the warmth of Nathaniel's thigh radiating under the blanket.

Hawthorne smiled ruefully. “To be honest with you, Melville, I sometimes don't have the faintest idea what I'm trying to say with my damned allegories. I feel as if I'm writing with invisible ink.”

Something profound happened to Herman as Hawthorne said this, as if Hawthorne had turned a mystical key and the tumblers of Herman's soul had aligned. The feeling delighted him; yet, in contemplating what Hawthorne had said, he discerned nothing extraordinarily profound or witty: he simply felt that, in some subtle but critical way beyond the reach of the rest of the world, Hawthorne thought as he thought. It was a divine sympathy. Herman puffed up a great volume of cigar smoke.

“When will your seven-gabled house be erected for us to see?”

“It will be published next month. Fields, my publisher, assures me that it will be a great success. But what else can a publisher say?”

“I'm sure everyone will flock to read it, but you should not give a damn what the public thinks. Even if the world passes it by, you shall have at least one avid reader who will enjoy it immensely. And I am a special reader, you must remember: I can read between the lines on the page and I see invisible ink, as well. Nothing escapes me!”