Classics Mutilated

by John Shirley

  The door banged open, and the storm arrived. She was tiny, with her red hair pulled into two smooth bands. Her plain white dress made her seem young—it was a girl’s dress—but the blue net worsted shawl over it was an older woman’s affectation. She clutched two day lilies in one fist.

  He would have thought her childlike if not for her eyes. They glowed. His breath caught, and he stood a half second too late. He had seen eyes like that before, although not nearly as manic, when he sat across from the militant abolitionist John Brown, whose raid on Harper’s Ferry had helped start the war.

  Higginson, along with five friends, had funded that raid. He would not have done so if he hadn’t believed in Brown and his extreme methods. Most people had been frightened of the man, but Higginson hadn’t been. He had thought then that Brown, whom some later called crazy, had the light of God in his eyes.

  Higginson did not think God existed in Emily Dickinson’s eyes. An odd silver light looked through him, and even though she smiled, she did not seem warm.

  She thrust the flowers at him and said, “Forgive me if I’m frightened—”

  She didn’t seem frightened to him. She seemed excited, like a child about to receive a treat for good behavior. She held part of herself in check, but the excitement overpowered her control, making her jitter.

  “—but I hardly see strangers and I don’t know what to say.”

  That didn’t stop her. She started talking, but he had trouble listening; all he could do was focus on those eyes. Killer eyes. He had seen eyes like that in some Rebel soldiers as they bayoneted his men. He made himself breathe, made himself listen, made himself converse, but he scarcely remembered what he said.

  She introduced him to her father—a colorless old man, without much humor—and invited her sister to join them, but her sister demurred.

  Instead, Higginson was stuck with Emily. He felt something drain from him as she talked, a bit of his life essence, as if being around her took something from him. It took all of his considerable strength just to hold his own against her.

  The comparison to a storm wasn’t even apt. She wasn’t a summer storm, filled with rain and thunder. She was a tornado, sweeping in and seizing all around her. Only his encounter with her did not last an instant; it lasted hours.

  And when it was finally finished, he staggered out of that strange house, relieved to be gone, and thrilled that she had not touched him. It took all of his strength to hold the day lilies she had given him. The day lilies and the photograph of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s grave.

  Emily had smiled at him, a strange, sad, pathetic little smile, and said she was grateful because he had saved her life.

  He hadn’t saved her life. He hadn’t done anything except read her poetry. He had even told her not to publish it because he thought it undisciplined, like her. Or so he had initially thought.

  But that evening, as he sat alone in his rented room, trying to find words to express to his wife the strangeness of the experience, he realized that Miss Emily Dickinson hadn’t been undisciplined. She hadn’t been undisciplined at all.

  In fact, it seemed to him, she was one of the most disciplined people he had ever met, as though explosions constantly erupted inside her and she had to keep them contained.

  I never was with any one who drained my nerve power so much, he finally wrote to his wife. Without touching her, she drew from me. I am glad not to live near her.

  He couldn’t write any more. He didn’t dare tell Mary that he felt Emily Dickinson had taken something vital from him, that talking to her had made him feel as if he were one step closer to death.

  December 18, 1854

  The West Street House

  Amherst, Massachusetts

  Emily woke up in his arms, cradled against his chest. This man, who seemed so otherworldly, was warm and passionate. His breathing was even, regular, but try as she might, she could not hear his heart beat.

  She tried not to think of that, just like she tried not to think about what she was letting him do, sneaking into her room, lying naked in her bed. Her father had never caught him here, and she used to be afraid of what her father would do.

  But now she didn’t have that fear. Now she was afraid of what this man would do, this man who carried silver light with him as if he held a lantern.

  The light did come when he summoned it, just like he had said to her. And it fled when he asked it to leave. The darkness around him without the light was absolute. She felt same with him, in that darkness, but when he left, terror came.

  And he always left before dawn.

  He could not handle the light—real light. Daylight.

  Her time with him would lessen as summer came, just like it always had. They lived best in winter, together.

  She knew what he was. She watched him, after he left her, fading as his light faded, disappearing into the absolute darkness he created. Over time, some of his silver light spilled into her and she could see in the dark better than a cat could.

  She could see him don his cowl, and pick up his scythe.

  The nights he left early, the nights he arrived late, changed Amherst as well. The days after those nights she heard stories of breathing ceased, and hearts stopped, and sometimes she saw the funerals in the graveyard beneath her window, and she knew they happened because he had been there. He had touched someone.

  Not like he touched her.

  She was different, or so he said, had been different from the day they met. She should not have been able to see him, not until she was nearly dead herself.

  But she was beginning to think she was not alive, not really, that something inside her had died long before she had found him, that her spirit had vanished, that she had no soul.

  Surely, she did not feel the stirrings her family felt at revivals, and she did not feel the call of God. She understood He existed, but at a distance, not as someone who could live within her heart.

  In earlier times, less enlightened times, here in Massachusetts, they would have called her a witch.

  She knew this, and this man, this man who held her, he confirmed it, declaring himself lucky to have found her.

  “Love,” he said, “does not come to us often.”

  And by "us,” he did not mean her and him. He meant himself and others like him, those whom everyone else called Death. She was not sure whom he worked for—the Devil? Or some unnatural demon? Or Heaven itself? For as she had said to him in their first conversation, Heaven would not exist without him.

  Death had to occur before it could be overcome. And she could not die.

  Or so she believed.

  She pressed herself against his warm skin, losing herself in his familiarity.

  To remain alive forever—to live for Eternity—to be Immortal: those things terrified her. She did not discuss them with him, because he thought them good, and she did not want to hurt him.

  But he wanted her at his side forever.

  And forever, to her, was much too long.

  There are, he said to her once—just once—a thousand ways to live forever. The soul must be preserved.

  Caught like a butterfly in a jar? she asked.

  He shook his head, and smiled his beautiful smile at her fancy. Recorded, he said. The soul must find permanence somewhere. Memory fades and eventually souls do as well. Except for a select few, kept alive in word or deed or a powerful magic.

  Have you that magic? she asked.

  Sometimes, he said. I could preserve you.

  No, she said too quickly. Then calmer, as if it didn’t frighten her, No. I prefer to sleep. I don’t want Eternity.

  You are the only one then, he said.

  Do you have it? she asked.

  Yes, he said. And I would like to share it with you.

  She shuddered. Promise me you won’t. When the time comes. Promise me.

  But he wouldn’t promise. And that silence lay like ashes inside her heart.

  May 24, 1886

  The Homestea
d

  Amherst, Massachusetts

  The room had become a pile of papers. Vinnie covered every bare surface with poetry, all written by her sister. Vinnie had finally counted the sheets—counted and recounted and counted again.

  Each time, she got a different number, but each time, the number staggered her. At least a thousand.

  At least.

  And such poems! About things Emily should not have known. Secret things. Intimate things.

  Things that made Vinnie blush as she read them, hearing—despite her best intentions—Emily’s voice:

  You left me, sweet—Emily never called anyone sweet, and yet here it was, an endearment, casual as if she spoke it often—two legacies. A legacy of love a Heavenly Father would content had He had the offer of….

  Emily, writing of love, the kind of love that men and women had, not love that friends or family had. Vinnie knew that, not because of the word love, but because of the other legacy, the one she could hear clearest in Emily’s voice, the one that made her sound bitter and frightened and just a little lost:

  You left me boundaries of pain, Emily said, capacious as the sea. Between eternity and time, your consciousness and me.

  Emily was so afraid of eternity, so averse to time that she did not learn how to read a clock until she was fifteen. Time scarcely touched her, not even near the end. She always looked like a girl. Others aged, but Emily remained as youthful as she had been when they moved from the West Street House to the Homestead. She had been perhaps twenty-five or so, a young woman surely, but one trapped in amber.

  Vinnie aged, going from a plump young woman to a matronly old maid. Austin had become serious, his face falling into lines that aged him prematurely.

  But Emily, in her white dresses, remained the same—at least on the outside.

  And who knew what had gone on inside? Clearly Vinnie hadn’t. And Vinnie thought she had known her sister as a maid, not as someone who could write, Wild nights! Wild nights! Were I with thee, wild nights should be our luxury!

  What had Vinnie missed all those years? Were the townspeople of Amherst right and Vinnie wrong? Had Emily locked herself in the house because she pined for a man who left her? Had she truly been one of those women who, like Miss Havisham of Great Expectations, had lost herself because of a man?

  How could Vinnie have not known that? How could Vinnie have not known about the man?

  She sat among her sister’s papers, and tried to remember. But the poems were undated and gave her no clue—except that her sister, whom Vinnie thought she knew well, had become a mystery, one Vinnie was beginning to think she would never understand.

  October 30, 1855

  The West Street House

  Amherst, Massachusetts

  He sat on the edge of her bed, splendid in his nakedness. Was he splendid because he was immortal? Or had he been splendid in life?

  Emily was afraid to ask him. She had learned that direct questions made him glare at her with those empty death-filled eyes.

  Some questions she left unasked. Others she danced around, got answers to. Sometimes he just told her unbidden, told her of his extreme loneliness, and how pleased he was to have found a kindred soul.

  That was what he called her. A kindred soul.

  And of late, Vinnie told her that in certain light, her eyes turned silver.

  Emily shuddered and pulled the blanket around her before leaning against his naked back. He bent at the waist, his hands in his thick black hair.

  “You have to stop it,” he said in desperation. She had never heard this tone in his voice before.

  “I can’t,” she said. “We’re moving. Father has decreed it.”

  He shook his head. “You have to change your father’s mind.”

  “It’s not possible,” Emily said. “My grandfather built that house. He lost it. My father has waited his entire life to buy it back.”

  His tone frightened her; his whole demeanor frightened her. She had never been frightened of him before.

  But she continued to lean against him, trying to draw strength from his warm skin.

  “I can’t visit you there,” he said, his voice shaking. “Not until….”

  “Until?” she asked.

  “Not for a very long time,” he said. “Unless….”

  She didn’t like his use of the word unless. But the idea made him sit up, and turn toward her, taking her face in his hands. He often did that before he kissed her, but he didn’t kiss her now.

  Instead, he peered into her eyes.

  “I could take you now. We would be together. We could work together,” he said.

  And she felt something—a pulling, a change.

  She wrenched her face from his grasp and looked away from him.

  “No,” she said.

  “No?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want to live like you do. I’ve told you that.”

  “But you are already half in my world,” he said. “Come the rest of the way.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Then tell your father to stay here,” he said.

  She shook her head, resisting the urge to scramble off the bed. As long as he didn’t peer at her like that again, he wouldn’t be able to pull her life from her.

  “You made that impossible,” she said.

  “Me?”

  She nodded. “I am an unmarried woman. I am subject to my father’s commands. I cannot influence him. So I will move with him.”

  And she felt—triumphant? Relieved? She wasn’t sure. But not unhappy, like she might have expected. Part of her had always hoped this would end.

  “You could come to the burial ground,” he said.

  She imagined it for a half moment—safe inside alabaster chambers, cradled in his arms—and then she shuddered. She would lose herself there. Lose herself, and lose track of time.

  She didn’t want to say no directly. He would get angry.

  Instead, she said, “Is that why you can come here? The burial ground behind the house?”

  He nodded. “I belong here.”

  “And I belong with my family,” she said, wondering if that were indeed true. If it were true, why had she been able to see him? If it were true, why had he fallen in love with her?

  “Emily, please,” he said. “I won’t be able to see you again, except fleeting glances at funerals.”

  “Or deathbeds,” she said, wondering if, in some ways, that was what she sat on. A deathbed.

  “Or deathbeds,” he whispered.

  She closed her eyes, not willing to see his anguish. And when she opened them, just a moment later, he was gone.

  So was the strange silver light.

  And something else—a part of her. A part she had not realized she’d had.

  She went to the window and looked out. He was walking among the graves, like he had the first night she had seen him, his robe over his arm, his scythe carried casually in his left hand.

  Walking away.

  She wondered when she would see him again. How many years? How much time?

  Would he again sit on her bed and tell her he loved her? Or would he be angry?

  She wasn’t sure she ever wanted to find out.

  May 24, 1886

  The Homestead

  Amherst, Massachusetts

  Vinnie clutched a pile of poems in one hand. So many about death. Perhaps those were even more shocking than those about love. And the death poems—they weren’t typical reminiscences. They were odd, like Emily had been odd, and a bit unfathomable.

  Vinnie had even heard Emily speak some of them aloud. Only Vinnie had not realized they were poems at the time.

  Like this one, which Emily had spoken late one night, almost unbidden. She looked up from her scratching pen, and smiled sadly at Vinnie. Emily didn’t speak the poem exactly as written. She added a bit to make it conversational. But Vinnie remembered it as if it had happened just a week before instead of decades ago.

  “Sometim
es I think a death-blow is a life-blow to some,” Emily said, “who, until they died, did not become alive.”

  Vinnie had stopped walking by, looked at Emily oddly, and then shrugged, wondering what had provoked that outburst. She still did not know.

  Had someone died recently? Had Emily been reacting to something? Or had she simply felt an inspiration?

  Except that it felt true, as if something provoked it. Emily often broke into strangely structured speech when provoked, and now Vinnie knew why.

  She had been reciting her own poems.

  Vinnie wished she could go back, wished she could recapture memories of all of those recitations. Maybe she was; maybe that was why she heard Emily’s voice whenever she read a poem. Maybe Emily had spoken them all.

  Vinnie clutched the poems against her chest. How could she burn them? They had bits of her sister in them, clinging to them, as if she had not yet died.

  March 8, 1860

  The Homestead

  Amherst, Massachusetts

  They were calling her crazy and maybe she was, maybe she was. Certainly she felt wild-eyed and broken, her thoughts swirling in her head. Emily had taken to writing them down, capturing them in bits of paper, and then sewing them into bound booklets like she had done her herbs just a few years before.

  At the West Street House, when she used to roam the garden, when she wandered the burial ground.

  Emily buried her face in her hands. Her room here in the Homestead was larger than her room in the West Street House. She had a conservatory and a better kitchen. She should have liked it here, in the best house in Amherst.

  She should have liked it.

  But she didn’t.

  Her room here overlooked the street. The house was far enough back so that street sounds seemed faint, but through the trees, she could see the horses, watch the carriages, see the life.

  She let her hands fall. Then she grabbed a sheet of paper, its smoothness soothing to her fingertips. She stared for a moment at the windows, then grabbed her pen and dipped it in ink.