Ahab's Wife

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  “If you would but watch at night with me sometimes!”

  “Indeed, I promise.”

  “There is a prize,” she confided. “The king of Denmark has offered a medal, a gold medal, to the first person in the world who discovers a comet with the aid of a telescope. No one has ever done so. Every night, with the telescope, I watch for a comet no one has ever seen before.”

  “But that would not be Halley’s comet,” I said.

  “Oh, no. It must be a comet never before seen, and one first seen with a telescope,” she reiterated. “I think if any new celestial object appeared in my field of vision, I would know it was new. I’ve learned the known sky so well now. Father thinks I am ready.”

  “Perhaps he will make the discovery.” I pulled my shawl about me and gazed reverently at the comet I had never viewed before.

  “I think not. I think it will be I, for Father is not so ardent as I.”

  “At least I will look at Halley’s comet with you some night,” I assured, and Maria assured me in turn that the phenomenon would be visible for many nights.

  As I walked home, I thought of how the comet was traveling past, even as Ahab was traveling away. My child would not see such a sight till he was an older man than Ahab was now. And our lives would be gone. I glanced up to see that bright spark again, but the tops of dark buildings obscured the view.

  I wonder if Maria’s life was less content and complete than I had thought. If she was not the first to spy a new comet telescopically, would it be a great loss to her? Perhaps she would discover another, if not the first. A Nantucket woman to win the gold medal from the king of Denmark! A woman in her observatory on top of a bank. Would they even let it count? I decided to ask Maria exactly how the king’s announcement was worded.

  When I entered the parlor, Mrs. Maynard said that comets had ever been heralds of disaster and that she wished I had not looked at this one on the night of my husband’s sailing.

  “But it’s there,” I said, “whether I look at it or not.”

  She announced that she herself did not ever intend to even so much as glance at Halley’s comet.

  CHAPTER 106: Frannie’s Letter from an Inland Lighthouse

  WHAT HALLEY’S COMET ushered in, despite Mrs. Maynard’s misgivings, was a blessed connection reestablished at last. Having stopped at the post office, Maria appeared at the door again the next morning (her eyes as dark-circled as a raccoon’s from late stargazing) with letters from Frannie and Aunt Agatha.

  Dearest Una, cousin and friend of my childhood,

  Mother says I am not to write to you because you are not to be trusted. Father climbs up the tower when she talks about you that way, but he says nothing. Butch is now four years old, which is the age I was when you came to the Island Light, and I always remember how kind you were to me and how you played with me, and I try to be as good to Butch.

  Butch is not so isolated here as I was, since we are on the mainland and there are farms not too far away. It is as though my childhood landscape has been turned wrong side out, with the land surrounding the great water instead of the sea encircling the island.

  I hope you do not think too bad of Mother. She was worried to death. We all went to New Bedford looking for you. Captain Maynard said he did not know anything about where you had gone. He said he had not taken you to the boardinghouse to wait for your mother as he was supposed to do, and Mother reached out and grabbed down on one of his mustaches. She was furious, and I have never seen her so angry before or since. However, she is angry with you because she said you betrayed her trust. She says it is a Sin to leave home and leave your loved ones behind to worry about you. Father said that he had never heard her speak of Sin with a capital S, and she said that it was Warranted (I could hear the capital W in her voice) because you had not been considerate of the people who loved you most and you had thought only of what your own heart told you to do.

  This is part of why I write to you. I wonder what you think now, many years later, of that issue. But I have to say you must not write the answer to me, for Mother would then know that I have disobeyed her by writing to you. Perhaps I too have betrayed her.

  I do not want to go to sea, but I want to travel west. Perhaps you could write here without referring to this letter, but give me some advice. I don’t think you have forgotten what it was like to be young. I am now twelve years old, but I know that my maturation has not been as rapid as is probably normal. Still, you left your Kentucky home at twelve and left us when you were sixteen.

  I want to travel west because I believe that Kit is there. I heard from a young man who comes to help clean the lens—we have only the old type here, not a Fresnel—that a strange white man among Indians passed through the town. Why do I think it was Kit? For one thing, the description, but also, it is what he said. They asked him why do you, a white man, travel with Indians? Kit answered, “My skin may be white, but my heart is red.” Do you remember when he said that at the Island Light? I remember everything Kit ever said. Then he said it about black people and attending the black church in Nantucket—that he felt at home there because his heart was black. It has to be Kit.

  I was surprised that you and Kit did not get married. The letter we have from you referred to the fact that Giles had gotten killed in a fall from the masthead. It did not tell what had happened to Kit. You said that you were expecting your second child, that you were married to Captain Ahab, and that you were rich and happy. I am sure letters have been lost. That is all I know about your life, except that the first baby died, and your mother died in the wagon accident. I am truly sorry you lost them.

  My mother cried and cried for her sister. She said that was your fault too, that when you betrayed us by running away you started a long chain of consequences. Father quoted, “As in Adam all die, so in Christ are all made alive.” It made Mother so mad that she burst into tears, because she could see the parallel bad logic. Even I could see that it was wrong to blame you for every bad thing that happened to any person you knew.

  I know that I do not want to upset my mother by leaving. She doesn’t deserve to go through that again. I would like to convince her that I am smart enough to take care of myself, even in the West. But at some point, everyone must become independent, I think. I found out recently that Mother’s father did not want her to marry my father! And he is, as always, the best father in the world.

  You are the best friend I ever had. I do forgive you for worrying us so much. I cried every night for a month when you left. Finally, your letter came, explaining what you had done. But we had already been missing you so terribly. I guess, like Mother, I am a little mad at you about that. But I still trust you and love you more than anybody almost.

  Frannie, your devoted kinswoman

  CHAPTER 107: An Angry Letter from Aunt Agatha

  Una,

  Frannie has confessed to me that she has written to you for advice. My heart sank like a diving bell. Why does she ask you for advice? You who betrayed not only me but all of us at the Island. We had been entrusted by your mother with your care. Do you have no concept of the anguish you caused us? First, for love of you. Yes, we loved you. Loved you as though you were our own child. You were a gift to us. We longed for another child. You were so bright. So in need of a fatherly love such as Torchy freely gave you. Your own father’s mind had turned black with religion. Torchy was the keeper of the light, of enlightenment, of tolerance. Surely you felt that when you were here.

  And my love for you! Little sister you seemed, part woman and part child. Insofar as you were not my child, I loved you the way a teacher might have loved her student. Your qualities stood objectively before me. I appreciated and admired you. I took pride in who you were and who you were becoming under our guidance. Let Frannie find a model in Una—that was my thought. I hoped my own child might aspire to your honesty with yourself, your ability to puzzle about large issues, your generosity and care for others, your self-reliance and inventiveness, your unstinting co
mmitment to do your share and beyond, your brave vivacity.

  But where was your honor? Did you not think it dishonorable to sneak away?

  I cannot account for your thinking on this matter.

  If I prayed to God, I would give thanks that Frannie has had a sense of honor, that she felt guilt over having written to you. Her disobedience has gnawed at her for five days. It has not been two hours since she confessed to me.

  Three days have passed. Torch and I have talked much of you these three days. Of your grief when we heard your father was dead—the night of the bonfire on the headland, while the lens was being installed. How you struggled earlier with your homesickness and we tried to make you merry at Christmastime. How you visited with your parents in New Bedford—you were fourteen—but were happy to come home with us and climbed to the top of the lighthouse as though you were lord of all you surveyed. It was the midpoint of your stay. Torch and I spoke of your great anxiety, after Boston, for Frannie when she was ill. How you were bewildered by the arrival of not one but two eligible young men in the Petrel.

  It is enough that I have told you how I felt and suffered. To be free of this, now I have another need. And that is to tell you, or at least myself, that I forgive you. I do believe that you wronged us. But my rage is over. I wish you every happiness.

  I know that you would not give bad advice to my daughter. Torch agrees with me.

  And so I end with another wish. First that our letters do reach you. Second that you will respond. If you do respond and then hear no reply from us, know that your letter simply did not reach us. Write again. We wish to claim our Una. My words begun in anger and anguish have ended in good wishes for you. We hope you will want to claim us.

  Your Aunt Agatha

  CHAPTER 108: Letter to an Inland Lighthouse

  Dearest Aunt Agatha, Uncle Torch, Frannie, and Butch,

  First and foremost, I beg you to forgive me for the pain and anxiety I caused you by my precipitate leaving. At the time, I did not think of it as running away. But, as an adult, I can easily imagine the anguish it caused all of you who loved me. I am heartily sorry. I ask forgiveness.

  I am especially grateful to you, Aunt Agatha, for arguing with yourself about me and for finding an abiding love in your heart as well as the justly deserved anger. If I have learned to be honest with myself about the nature and origin of my own feelings, it is due in no small part to the example I had before me in you. My gratitude also to Uncle Torch and to Frannie for their love and faith. Dear Butch, I have long wondered what kind of boy you are and hoped that someday I would know you.

  Frannie, I believe you should content yourself till age sixteen. We will all exchange long letters till that time. Then I will send money, and a guide to bring you to Nantucket, if Aunt and Uncle approve.

  With all love,

  Una

  CHAPTER 109: The Minister in the Woods

  IN OCTOBER, I thought how I must now keep my promise to Margaret Fuller and visit her again, before the winter set in. I made the crossing alone, on the Camel, with Captain Maynard, who was a little huffish with residual embarrassment over having once proposed to me. But such standoffishness did not trouble me. Mrs. Maynard had very much wanted that her husband be selected to transport me; of course, I never told her that Captain Maynard had once approached me with a marriage offer. I occupied myself with reading from my old volume of Wordsworth.

  Although I had sent Margaret a note of my intention to visit, when I reached the city I found she had not received it, and, in fact, her housekeeper said she had gone to Concord, to visit with Mr. Emerson, Mr. Hawthorne, and Mr. Alcott. It excited me to think of Margaret among three famous men. Concord was nearly a day’s drive away by coach, but having come so far, I determined to go on. The housekeeper fed me, noted that I was pregnant, and advised me not to go, but I did it anyway. I left my larger bag in Margaret’s Boston apartment and took only a valise.

  After hours of jouncing through the autumn countryside, a new coachman had me exit the coach too soon. Through inquiry at the crossroads, I learned that Mr. Emerson’s house was but on the other side of the forest and that if I took the footpath through the woods the walking would be much shorter than going by the road. The path was fairly clear, and I might walk there in less than an hour. Scarlet and gold with the fall colors, the woods beckoned me.

  There was no such forest on Nantucket, and the Concord fall display of hardwood forest thrilled me and reminded me of the crimson dogwoods in Kentucky. I felt scarlet come to my own cheek in an attempt to fit in with the autumn splendor. As I walked along and the trees grew more dense, the light became more muted. I relished all the color about me and loved the great thickness of the tree trunks and the pleasing shapes of the oak and maple leaves. I thought of my passion with Ahab, and the flamboyance of the colors engulfing me seemed an emblem of ardor.

  Squirrels were about, and their chattering and the scurrying of their little feet pleased my ear. At one point, I thought I heard a larger animal moving, but I did not see him.

  I stepped over a little stream, using the flat creek rocks for stepping-stones, and then I seemed to be in a somewhat different realm. The moving water of a stream has a freshness that the ocean, for all its inspiring movement and size, can never suggest, and I was glad to baptize the tips of my shoes in the gurgling water. Beyond the stream, the woods were cooler, and again the light seemed to dim. There were more evergreens here, and I saw fewer squirrels, but I could hear birds in the upper boughs. To my surprise, I heard the hoot of an owl, which is not common in late afternoon.

  Then I came to a branching of the footpath. My informants at the crossroads had said nothing of a fork in the path, so I felt disconcerted. Perhaps I had already taken the wrong path. Still, my heart was light, I was not very tired, and being alone among the sort of trees I had known as a child made me feel I had traveled back a bit in time. I would linger in the timeless zone. My baby, still so small, rode comfortably within me, and my shoes and clothes were perfect for the walk. The valise had grown heavy, and I considered abandoning it at the fork. The valise was not worth the weight. I could borrow nightclothes from Margaret when I needed.

  Thinking that most folk would choose the right path, I chose the one on the left hand. I do as I please, I thought, and a lovely thought it was. The feeling of independence that accompanied me when I was on the road with Milk and David came back to me; but now I was more independent, for I traveled by myself and on my own feet. And I was blessed with four months of loving between Ahab and me, and the fruit of that love within my body.

  Again I heard an animal, perhaps a fox or badger, perhaps as large as a wolf, move to my right over the crackling leaves. All such creatures would be shy of me, a human, and I felt more curiosity than fear. A great scolding of jays and mockingbirds occurred in the trees. Just so had I heard them squabble in Kentucky, for their territories are mutually exclusive.

  Then I saw a man coming toward me on the path. He was well dressed, all in black; I took him for a minister at once, but he had an odd black veil over his face.

  “Good day,” I called ahead so as not to startle him.

  “What’s this?” he replied.

  “A traveler, like yourself,” I answered.

  “But you are alone in the woods, my good woman?” There was a sternness about him that I did not like. He seemed to be critical that I was where I was, but he himself was alone in the woods.

  “Aye. I seek Mr. Emerson’s house. My friend Margaret Fuller visits him.”

  “Farther on,” he said. The veil swayed. I assumed he was not Mr. Emerson.

  “My name is…” And then he stopped. “Can you guess my name?” What a sudden whimsy, for a man so encased in blackness!

  “Nay, sir.” I was amused that he would want me to guess. “Mr. Alcott?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “Mr. Hawthorne, then?” I spoke a bit impatiently.

  With his identity tendered (though not acknowl
edged), he rattled on, “Where do you come from? Shall we sit and talk? It’s not every day that I meet an unattended woman on this path.” While he spoke, the lightweight veil puffed about on his face, but he made no effort to remove it. Perhaps, I thought, he’s blind—he had spoken almost as though he had no sight, or perhaps he was disfigured. The eternal zone of solitude, nature, and childhood airs being violated, I hesitated to take time to talk.

  He went on, “Let me assure you, I come from Mr. Emerson’s house, and I am a friend of his, and I know your friend.”

  “I would be obliged if you would point the way to Mr. Emerson’s.”

  “What is your name?” Again, his voice had the chill and authority of an Inquisitor.

  “Una.”

  “That is not possible. I plan to name my daughter Una, named from Spenser.”

  “And so, sir, was I.”

  “And have you read Spenser?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then I see you are, indeed, a friend of Miss Fuller, part of her coterie. Please, you must be tired—if you don’t wish to retreat to a fallen log, let us stand here in the path a bit and swap philosophies.”