Hawthorne carried with him this morning a book wrapped in brown paper and twine; and when they had established themselves on the bale of hay in the barn—again with cigars but this time with steaming tankards of tea—he handed the book to Herman. “A gift,” he said. “Which I hope will prove most useful in the writing of your whale story.”
Herman unwrapped the book greedily and discovered a well-worn and roughly used copy of Archibald Duncan’s The Mariner’s Chronicle; Being a Collection of the Most Interesting Narratives of Shipwrecks, Fires, Famines, and Other Calamities Incident to a Life of Maritime Enterprise. His eyes welled, and he leaned over to embrace Hawthorne, an impulse he checked immediately with an embarrassed, jerky movement; but Nathaniel put his arm around Herman and gave him a warm squeeze anyway, and then left his arm around Herman’s shoulder. Herman leaned into him and opened the book. It was autographed by Richard Manning, dated 1812, and then again by Hawthorne himself, dated 1832.
Hawthorne said, “Richard Manning was my uncle. I used to spend summers in Maine with him as a child, and I read this book while I was there. I had a fascination with sea disasters because of how my father died, and I read the stories over and over again, for some reason inserting my father into every calamity, killing him in fires and explosions and pirate attacks. I suppose it was because his death, and even his very existence, had seemed unreal to me then, so I attempted a kind of magic to make him more substantial somehow. It didn’t work, of course; but this has been a very important book in my life, and I hope it will be of some value to you.”
Herman could imagine no greater or more thoughtful token of love. He managed to say “thank you” but could muster no other words for a long time. He paged through the volume, wiping away his slowly rolling tears as he read the chapter titles—The Loss of the Hector Frigate; Shipwreck of Madame De Bourk; The Distress and Providential Escape of the Guardian Sloop; Extraordinary Famine in the American Ship Peggy—he felt so loved.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. When he finally looked up, he was surprised to see that Hawthorne had teared up, as well.
“It is filled with definitions of things one might find at sea,” Hawthorne said. He took the book from Herman and found a particular passage. “‘The Maelstrom: This dreadful whirlpool is so violent that everything which comes near it, is drawn in and dashed to pieces.’ That might also be the definition of Melville.” He offered the book back to Herman, and they sat for a long moment staring into one another’s eyes.
“If we are to be friends,” Herman said, “you must not say such things to me. You know that I love you, and you cannot toy with my affections. I will go mad.”
“I’m sorry,” said Hawthorne. “You’re right.” He stood up and walked toward Zenobia, puffing his cigar. Zenobia mooed.
“I don’t understand, Hawthorne. I don’t understand what you want from me.”
“Don’t you?”
“You came close to me last summer, and then you wouldn’t speak to me or even write a friendly word all autumn, and now you offer me tokens of . . . well, I don’t know what. Can’t you just say plainly how you feel?”
“I could, if it were plain to me.” He turned around to face Herman again. “I know that you are unlike anyone I have ever met. When I am around you, I feel at liberty to express myself completely as I see fit, because I am quite sure you will understand me. It’s a freedom I have longed for, but I also know that what you want from me, I cannot give.”
“No,” Herman said. “That’s not true. What I want from you is to know you.”
Hawthorne waved his hand dismissively. “Are we speaking plainly or aren’t we?”
Herman wilted somewhat and gripped the book of seafaring disasters more tightly. “What I want, given that no other possibility seems available, is to be your friend.” He stood up, as well. “I wish there were another name for it, a name that captures the essence of it.”
“You wish to be my lover. That’s the name for it. But I am a stranger to that form of love.”
Herman thought that, by his tone, Hawthorne might have meant that he had simply never acted on his desire for a man and not that he had never felt such a desire—but he couldn’t be sure. Herman said, “Your heart cannot be so overfilled with love that there is no place in it for me.”
“It is not my heart that matters,” said Hawthorne. “We are both married men, and you know that Sophia has another baby on the way. Nothing about that has changed.”
“But has your heart not changed since last summer? Has something not happened in the meantime, that you feel you want to give me gifts and compare me to a maelstrom that might dash you to pieces?”
A fluttering of wings and bock-bock-bocking signaled a disturbance in the chicken coop, which the rooster quickly put down. A feather floated up into a beam of light and then spun down and landed on Zenobia’s head.
“I am not as steady as I may appear,” said Hawthorne. “And things do change. Since last summer, I have started and finished writing a new book, and that always alters me. Perhaps I have simply gained a new sympathy for your position, upon long reflection. I have thought of you a great deal. Perhaps,” Hawthorne swallowed hard. “Perhaps, I have just missed you more than I thought myself capable, these last few months.”
Herman’s heart beat wildly, but he managed, like a ship’s captain standing steady in a gale, to speak calmly. Nathaniel’s openness allowed Herman, for the first time, really, to consider the situation from his friend’s point of view. “Admitting a fondness for another man would sully you and mark you, just like Hester Prynne was marked.”
“Worse than Hester. I don’t know how it is aboard a ship in the South Seas, but you know as well as I do that they don’t merely brand you with a scarlet S for such an offense in New England—they beat you bloody, or tar and feather you, or hang you. You might rather sell yourself into slavery than admit you love another man.”
“But you don’t have to admit it to anyone but me!”
“Melville, I am not trying to be merely respectable—but to be honorable. Not just for my own sake but for Sophia’s, as well—and yours. We have been through this already, have we not? Don’t let my sympathy now persuade you that I am any less committed to my wife than I was before. I want to make room in my heart for your friendship, and I believe a friendly affection for you can coexist with an honorable and true love for my wife; but please do not press the issue. Must I recant every honest thing I say because of your insistence on the impossible?”
They heard Una shouting orders outside, directing some sort of game, and the women were laughing along with her. They were having such joyous fun in the snow! Herman felt chagrined: he knew that his work and his moods tormented his sisters and his mother and his wife, and he wished he could find some peace with them, or at least provide some peace for them. But he was not convinced, as Hawthorne seemed to be, that happiness in such a life could really exist, either for him or his family.
“Very well,” said Herman. “Thank you for the book. And thank you for your loving words. I will treasure them both.”
He hesitated for some moments before yielding to the temptation to walk over to Hawthorne and take him in his arms. Nathaniel embraced him warmly, and Herman was careful not to press too firmly against him. He recorded every impression, every feeling, every smell, so that he could return to them later; until, finally, Hawthorne broke their embrace and stepped away.
A knock came at the door. “Philios, then,” Herman announced. “Friendship.” Una pushed the barn door open.
“Come play, Papa, come play!”
They followed Una outside, where the snow-dusted women stood beckoning and calling them. Una dragged her father by the hand until he gave in and ran to join them. Una threw herself into Helen’s arms, and Helen lifted the girl up and awkwardly installed her on top of a snowman.
Herman met Lizzie’s happy gaze, and h
er face reminded him of the days when they had first been courting, when she had been vivacious and not yet resigned to eternal days of idle unhappiness. The sadness and regret in Herman’s heart burbled up into his throat, and he thought he might cry again. Oh, why can’t I be happy? he thought. Lizzie waved to him, inviting him to join in the fun. A look of hope appeared on her face. Herman sprinted out to join them, as well.
• • •
After lunch, Hawthorne announced that they were off, back to Lenox. Over Melville’s objections, Hawthorne said, “It’s but a short tramp into Pittsfield, and we’ll catch the evening train home. This much snow will not bother a steam engine.”
“I thought you disliked trains,” said Herman.
“I promised Sophia that I would not be away long.”
The Melvilles expressed their concern for Hawthorne’s wife, whose generally sickly condition and particular difficulties with pregnancy Hawthorne had confided to them in surprising detail over lunch. As they parted on the doorstep, Herman clasped Hawthorne’s hand between both of his and fixed him with a look as full of meaning and affection as he could make it. “Thank you for the book,” he said. “It means the world to me.”
“I hope you will enjoy it as much as I have,” Hawthorne said warmly.
He and Una walked as briskly as they could through the snow toward Pittsfield. The Melvilles watched them until they were completely out of sight.
“What a lovely man and a delightful little girl,” said Herman’s mother.
Lizzie put her arm through Herman’s and kissed his cheek affectionately, and they all returned to the parlor, which seemed suddenly quite empty. Herman and Lizzie took chairs close to the fireplace, holding hands and staring into the flames.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to have a little girl around the house?” said Lizzie dreamily.
“Perhaps it would,” Herman conceded.
Spring–Summer 1851
Chapter 15
Hope
By early April, it was clear that Lizzie was pregnant again and had been for several months, a condition that lightened her day-to-day mood considerably, in spite of her morning sickness. One evening, as she and Herman were climbing into bed, Lizzie said, “If it’s a girl, I would like to name her Hope.”
“After your stepmother.”
“Yes, but also because that’s how I feel when I think of her. Hopeful.”
“A nice idea.” He blew out the bedside candle and pulled the blanket around his shoulders. Lizzie snuggled into him.
“Herman, when we were first married, we talked of having a large family. Is that still what you want?”
Herman grunted. “I suppose.”
“Meaning that you have reconsidered some part of it?”
“I had not envisioned having my sisters with us for so long.” He yawned. “They might live with us indefinitely, so our household . . . ”
“But our own family,” Lizzie persisted. “I mean, Malcolm, and the new baby.”
“Yes?”
The night was unusually warm for April. They heard the chirping of katydids below their window.
“I would still like to have a much larger family,” Lizzie said, “but I wonder if it would satisfy you. Honestly, you hardly seem interested in any of us anymore. I sometimes feel that you don’t even know Malcolm exists.”
“Who could be in our house for an hour and not know Malcolm exists?”
“He should not always be so unhappy. None of us should.”
“Please say plainly what you are thinking, Lizzie.”
She sat up. When her dark silhouette momentarily blackened the moonlit window, Herman thought of a dolphin arcing out of a silvered sea. “What do you love about Malcolm?” she said.
He considered his son. Malcolm cried constantly and still walked as if he had just taken his first step. He was sickly and lacked curiosity. What does one love about a two-year-old, Herman thought.
“He is my son,” he finally said.
His eyes lost focus in the darkness. He became transfixed by the sky behind Lizzie’s head, the crystalline looking glass of God that reflected only emptiness.
Lizzie took a deep breath. “Herman, what do you love about me?”
This question snapped Herman out of his exhausted reverie, and he sat bolt upright. At first, he saw an army of angry Lizzies behind his wife’s eyes, marching toward him, and he scurried behind his battlements. His mind exploded in a volley of blank cannon shots, loud explosions that launched no artillery, for he had no ready answer; but when this first moment of habitual defensiveness passed, he saw that Lizzie was not attacking him but rather seriously asking about the state of their marriage, from a position of practicality and vulnerability, and he pondered the question carefully.
He remembered the early days of their courtship, when they had sat in the Shaw parlor with the whole family, and Lizzie had often asked the most insightful questions and made the most telling remarks; and though she had objected strongly in the beginning to his irreverence, she had ultimately come to accept it as a genuine expression of his desire for the truth. He thought of her long-suffering patience with his mother and her utter dedication to Malcolm during the many nights when he himself could no longer endure his son’s crying. He remembered the countless hours she had spent hunched over his manuscripts, copying his impossible script, which she did more out of love than duty. She was an admirable person, he thought, but his feelings did not amount to love in the way she meant it.
He wished that she could be happy with their marriage as a fond social compact; or that he could summon the kind of love she desired; or he wished that they could speak of the differences in their expectations honestly. But how could he honestly tell her that what he truly wanted was a man who wrote dark, quixotic fiction full of allusions to a forbidden inner life that no one else understood?
“You have a superior mind,” he finally said. “You are sympathetic, to a fault. You put up with my mother.”
“I knew your mother would find a way into it,” she said. “Though you are right that my tolerance of her is admirable. What else?”
“You have a fine sense of humor.”
“One would have to have a sense of humor to be with you.”
“I should have said an ironic one.”
Herman lay back again, and Lizzie snuggled in against him. She exerted a little pressure with her pelvis, which forced the growing life in her belly against Herman’s side. Herman drifted in and out of sleep, while Lizzie stroked his cheeks and neck.
“You do still love me, don’t you?” she asked.
“Of course,” he muttered.
“Not of course. Sometimes I can’t tell. I would not want to have this baby with a father who didn’t love its mother.”
“You may rest assured,” Herman said, more petulantly than he intended.
“I don’t want you to feel only a sense of duty to me. I can always return to my father’s house.”
He groped for Lizzie’s hand under the covers. “Please don’t talk nonsense when we’re falling asleep. In the day, nonsense is the only kind of sense, but at night it summons demons.” He kissed her forehead.
“Why don’t you ask me, Herman?”
“Ask you what?”
“Why don’t you ask me what I love about you? Or do you take it so much for granted that I do?”
He woke up a little yet again, alarmed. “No. What do you love about me?”
“You are contemptuous and patronizing and ill-mannered, and you think you are better than everyone else.”
“I see. You have extremely low standards.”
“I have not said all. You are not always entirely honest, especially with yourself. Nor sensible. Nor kind. But you see things about me that no one else sees, when you bother to pay attention, and about the world, which is even more important. I know
something about you that you don’t know about yourself—that you could never love a single, individual person even if you wanted to, but that somehow you love all of creation in a way that is far beyond what most of us conceive as love, far beyond what they teach us from the pulpit. You are so very far from perfect, but when it comes to the world and to me, you will only accept absolute love, and that’s why you always feel unsatisfied, most of all with yourself, because you are incapable of the thing you desire most. That is why it isn’t easy to love you, but also why I do.”
He had never heard the term absolute love before. Unconditional love, yes—an equally impossible concept—but absolute? He turned it over in his mind: it seemed more aggressive than grace, more demanding than acceptance, the complete opposite of resignation, something austere and grand—even literary. He kissed Lizzie on the cheek and felt a great deal more love for her than he had in a long time, an inkling that, perhaps, he was not quite as alone as he had imagined.
Lizzie said, “You know that we’re running out of money again, don’t you?”
Herman sighed heavily. “I will handle it.”
“How? My father won’t lend us anymore.”
“I will write to the Harpers and ask them for an advance on The Whale.”
“The last time you wrote them, they would not give you eight dollars’ worth of credit. What makes you think they will advance you money now?”
“The quality of the work itself. I will send them some chapters.”
The Whale Page 17
