Pym: A Novel

by Mat Johnson

  By the time I got back to the Hudson Valley, I could laugh at some of it as I told Garth what had happened. Garth had his copy of Chesapeake Cabin rolled out on the coffee table, along with printed out driving directions to possible site locations. It wasn’t till I’d finished my story and he looked up at me that I realized he was pissed.

  “So that’s it, everybody has to play their roles, right? Black people can’t be Indians, don’t matter what’s in their blood or how they was raised or what the freedman did for red folk. You just got to be on Team Negro if you got any black in you. Even your octoroon ass.” Garth took a bite of a Little Debbie fudge roll so big it seemed to end the conversation right there, as a matter of physics.

  “Look, I didn’t mean to offend, okay? I’m just saying it like it happened.” Garth claimed a line of Seminole on his mother’s side, I forgot about that. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to judge.”

  “Oh, you judging. Don’t back down now. You let me judge back first. You so scared someone’s going to kick you off Team Negro that you think everybody’s got to stick to some crazy one-drop rule. That’s me judging now.”

  I wanted to ask him about his paintings then. I wanted to ask him if there were ever any black people in them, or did they look to him like a window to a Eurocentric fantasy world where black people couldn’t even exist, like they did to me. If that was the attraction. But I took my lumps because he was my boy and I wanted to walk away from this.

  “A guy called for you. Booker Jaynes.” Garth’s tone eased, which in its way was its own apology. “Left a New York number, said he’s in the city next couple of days, recruiting a job for the place you called about. Said he wants to meet you. Yo, he ain’t looking for drivers, is he?”

  I smiled at my unbelievable luck. Finally.

  “Oh, this is big. This is very big. We’re going to Antarctica,” I told Garth. Our conflict was forgotten, smothered by the decades of friendship.

  “You on your own there, dog. Ain’t nothing for black folks down there in the cold.”

  “White people don’t own ice, Garth. I’m pretty sure they didn’t even invent it.”

  * To my surprise the Miller Beach Senior Center was not actually in Miller Beach but in an adjacent community that merely aspired to appropriate the airs of its more reputable neighbor.

  † No relation.

  ‡ By “somehow,” I mean that I don’t know if Mahalia Mathis had emailed the other members or called them, or rather I have no proof of this. But as to the source of this information I, personally, have no doubt.

  § As a child growing up in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, I remember one such gentleman who regularly strutted through my predominantly black neighborhood clad in a brown suede pantsuit and a matching strap tied around his forehead. You could hear him coming because he would sing “powwow” songs to the beat of the many beads that hung from him. We used to tauntingly say, “Howdy, Tonto,” to him when he passed, to which he invariably smiled, raised his open palm, and replied, “How.” For years I wondered just that: how? How the hell did that brother end up like that?

  DIRK Peters was not a stupid man. He knew. He knew he was bad. Peters didn’t come to this conclusion on his own—he lacked even the talent for literary judgment—but from the written reactions of the few publishers he failed to entice with the manuscript, he could tell. Faced with this reality, Peters thought it of “considerable good fortune” that he knew of a man purported to be an exceptionally good writer, a friend of his former shipmate Arthur Pym. During their long and eventful tenure together on the wreck of the Grampus and those days on the Jane Guy, Pym had often reminisced about the fellow, a prankster he had come to know during a prospective visit along the Hudson to West Point. The two found an immediate intellectual kinship. They even looked the same. When they were walking the campus together, many assumed them to be reunited twins. To Peters, a resident of the sea and therefore a believer in fate, his own path was clear:

  Way I figure, I figure he writes good. So I’m going to use him. I make a stop on the Green Goose in Baltimore City. Stop into a general store, what’s known to sell reading things and what. Got subscriptions and such. And I ask for this Poe gentleman, ask they got something by him. Man tells me, they knows this man real well, then pulls out this thing, this magazine, turns to the page to show me, and that’s it, that’s the man’s name. They won’t let me buy just those pages, they want 20 cents for the whole thing. I says, them the only 13 pages I need, I’ll pay you 3 cents and you just rip them out. They say no. I open it up and there Pim [sic] name right there. I know this my man, this Poe he can’t wait to see me.*

  It was Peters’s great fortune to happen upon Issue 34 of the Southern Literary Messenger, in which Edgar Allan Poe’s first telling of the beginning of Arthur Gordon Pym’s story was delivered. It appeared that the influence of the friendship had gone both ways, and Poe was now exploring the life of his friend who at this point was thought to have disappeared, presumably lost at sea. Poe seemed to be creating an homage† to a cherished associate, which would weigh in Peters’s favor when he attempted to retain Poe’s services. Dirk Peters, of course, was the only one who could solve the mystery of what happened to the missing Nantucketer, a bit of information Peters had never considered of much worth before that moment.

  Interestingly, what remains of the letter that Dirk Peters sent Edgar Allan Poe is a heavily corrected first draft in an unknown hand. In addition to numerous basic grammar corrections, the unknown party—presumably a member of the officer class on his merchant vessel—adds into the text more elegant lines such as “it is my desire to commune with you about that most able gentleman, Arthur Gordon Pym, with whom we are both so pleasantly acquainted.” More linguistic embellishments followed, creating an altogether different impression of the letter’s author than Peters’s own literary voice was capable of. This was a particularly shrewd strategy considering Poe’s attraction to the upper classes, which Peters may have deduced from his former shipmate’s stories. Aside from his promise to share the information on the fate of the absent Mr. Pym, Dirk Peters made no further reference to the fate itself, deciding instead that it would be better to bait the storyteller. With this in mind, Dirk Peters included a segment from his manuscript along with the letter. It was a chapter he didn’t seem to think was particularly special, one he wasn’t worried about sending the sole copy through the post to a stranger who might not ever hand it back. It was “far from my good good work,” Peters lamented in the margins, but he sent it with the letter anyway. His intent was to entice Poe into ghostwriting his autobiography.‡ The segment’s sole strength in Peters’s eyes was that it contained mention of his and Poe’s mutual acquaintance. The selection began when the two met after the mutiny on the Grampus, and ended with the two of them sailing toward a chasm in Antarctica. All in all, from the opening sentence to the final letter, the piece measured three handwritten pages.

  In basic substance, the tale that Dirk Peters told, in his throw-away little note, is the same as the one told in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Of course, there are differences in style. For instance, from Peters’s “we caught some big animal in the water, floating, not the best eating I will say,” we get Poe’s fascinating description of the misplaced polar bear. From “They got these fish down there what looks like that what comes out the buttocks,” Poe springs forth with the culinary ravings on the bêche-de-mer. And most fascinating, from Peters’s skewed, identity-denying perspective, comes the following:

  Going further south, we came to an island full of niggers. Niggers just everywhere, black as night. More niggers than I could count. Coming up to the boat, making a big fuss. If I’d wanted to be around this many niggers, I would have stayed in Michigan. Acting such the fool that the white men just relaxed like they was a bunch of black babies. Don’t trust a nigger what’s acting like a nigger, any damn fool tell you that. I know that. Didn’t trust them one bit. One day, they started marching us up a mou
ntain for no good reason. White folks just kept walking along like this made a damn bit of sense. I slowed down, just kept looking at these niggers, waiting for them to try something. Sure enough they did, let slide half a mountain on the white folks’ head. Damn near killed me.§

  It is at Tsalal that we get more of the richness that is a monument to Poe’s greatness. Where Dirk Peters sees mere “smelly water all dirty and with slimy stuff in it,” Edgar Allan Poe imagines liquid of a variety of shades of purple veins, each separate like the fingers on a hand yet similarly connected, inseparable. From “The guide that chief stuck us with was clearly a dimwit, his teeth rotting dark in his head,”‖ we get Poe’s vision of a people so black that—breaking with the rest of humanity—their very smiles were denials of whiteness.

  It is certain that Dirk Peters read the first and procured the second selection of Poe’s early Pym narrative. It’s clear that Peters enjoyed them both, and excitedly considered the man worthy of helping him convey his own ongoing saga. What is less clear is what Dirk Peters made of the rest of the Southern Literary Messenger. It was, as one would expect of its period and location, a somewhat pro-slavery publication.a If in fact Dirk Peters took this fact into his assessment of Poe, he made no note of it. What, however, should be made note of here is one rather large and integral piece to the Peters puzzle: Dirk Peters was an Uncle Tom. This was a particularly impressive achievement, considering that Uncle Tom’s Cabin had not yet been written. But Peters managed it anyway.

  While Peters did think Poe to be an important enough writer to sculpt his own life story, he didn’t bother to keep Poe’s corresponding letter for posterity. In Peters’s own record of the subsequent events, which like the Pym narrative alternates between first person and journal format, we are told that Poe was eager to hear more of his lost associate, giving thanks for the intriguing three pages included. Astutely, Peters also discerned that Poe might be even more interested in the chance at a paid commission. Poe was broke.

  On April 17, 1837, Dirk Peters, now on the merchant ship the Armitage, landed in Philadelphia along the Delaware River. His meeting with Poe had been agreed upon months ago in their correspondence, only the exact date was uncertain. Peters found 1342 Pine Street a little more than a mile and a half from where his vessel was docking. When Peters reached the address and knocked, the door was answered by a man who declared himself landlord of the property. On mention of the name Edgar Allan Poe, the owner became immediately agitated and proceeded to lecture Peters on the lack of responsibility in the modern world and the interest that can accrue on a debt of eleven dollars and forty-three cents in a short time. From the grocer up on Spruce Street (owed $3.21 himself), Peters learned that Poe was rumored to be residing another two miles up the Delaware in a settlement known as Northern Liberties.

  “How shall I know him?” Peters had the foresight to ask.

  “Drunk as a bee in honey and a head like one of these melons,” the grocer said, holding up a particular round one and making bags under where the eyes would be with his fingers.

  “And he’s got a mustache,” the merchant cried after Peters had turned the corner.

  Once Peters made his way into Northern Liberties, it didn’t take long to locate his prey. The first public house he stopped at pointed him straight at the door in question, the bartender giving directions with the wearied confidence of a man who’d been forced on occasion to take some drunk home to that very address.

  The door of 532 North Seventh Street was opened by a small, mousy young woman who seemed so frail that Peters’s immediate inclination was to step in the foyer and close the door behind him lest she be swept away by the breeze. It was a brazen move that must have alarmed the lady, for she began nervously repeating, “My husband is not on the premises, sir, and I assure you there is nothing for you here.”

  Peters then did some assuring of his own, explaining he was not a creditor but a prospective business associate, but the poor Virginia kept stepping backward as if Peters was preparing to spring upon her.

  “I have a shared associate with your husband. Arthur Pym?” Searching frantically for some way to authenticate Poe’s presence, Peters glanced into the room beyond and looking at the small table spied pages with his own distinctive binding and handwriting. Charging into the room, Dirk Peters quickly explained himself to a shocked Virginia, “See, I sent your husband a business proposal, for him to do the telling on my own tale.” To his surprise, grabbing the pile of papers and waving them at her did nothing to improve the situation.

  “Edgar doesn’t like Negroes,” she blurted out. Dirk Peters was not put off by this, for aside from himself, he didn’t care much for Negroes either. But then Virginia told Peters what bar she thought her husband might be in. Peters left with a bounce in his step, perceiving a victory in having proven his character to the woman. Wrongly.

  My feet were hurting, fierce, when I come to the public house that was suggested. I figure I will have a drink, regardless. At the bar I see him, him that was in daguerreotype at the house. At first I wondered, because he was wearing his coat inside out and showing the stitching, though he don’t seem to know this. But still I am very happy to see Mr. Poe. He sits at the table deep in his cups, a fellow about the same build as I. I approach him with my widest grin, hands at my sides, explain myself and my business. What he says back to me is “Who is your master?” To this I tell him again who I am and that I have no master. Mr. Poe, who is Mr. Poe because I asked him and he told me so, he says, “Off with you, boy.” I says again, I’m the friend of Mr. Pym, but he makes no motion, keeps drinking. Then I says it again, and removes from my pocket the pages I’d reacquired. Well then, he takes notice. His face, the color goes out of it, there being not much there to begin with. He starts to say something, but it not coming out, he grabs my papers and begins to balling them. Them being my property, I pulled them away and made haste away from him.b

  If Dirk Peters perceived any possible racial implication to Mr. Poe’s reaction, he took no note of it. Peters was accustomed to being on ships, and he was accustomed to others accepting his own racial explanation. But Poe, of course, was a southerner of the planting class. If not by birth, then by upbringing and inclination. His preoccupation with the gentility of Europe simply further solidified this classification. And an astute southerner, particularly one as conscious of caste as Mr. Poe, could discern negritude in the palest of those mixed in race. Even if Poe did not make a conscious discovery of Dirk Peters’s race at the moment, and Peters’s treatment was simply the irrational act of an alcoholic stewed in his poisonous tastes, the evidence of Poe’s reaction to the man can be found in Poe’s Pym itself, where, again, Peters’s head is described as having an indentation “like that on the head of most negroes.” The reality of Poe’s insight seeps forth, held in check solely by the demands of the narrative.

  On my desk, those three balled and flung pages of Peters’s narrative were still rumpled from Poe’s coarse handling, permanent planes giving depth to pages that were, nearly two centuries later, as brittle as the leaves of November. They showed the orbiting stains from whatever mug was once placed down repeatedly upon them, revealing the reality of Peters’s later description of the event during which he repossessed them. Most important, it is within the final paragraph of these pages that Dirk Peters, inadvertently, hints at the greatness of his discovery, which he described again in a second version:

  Just Arthur Pym and I weren’t dead. The heathens blew up the Jane Guy the next day. So we got a canoe, got out of there. Took one of them niggers for rowing, but he ended up dead. Pym wanted to cook him up right then, but the tide had pulled us all the way down to the bottom of the world land by then and we come to the end of the ice. The current pulled us towards the ice shelf, but being as high as it was, there was nowhere to go to. Then a big piece just falls out, down into the water, and reveals a hole inside. Tekeleli I keep hearing, just like those island niggers used to yell when they saw white things. Then thi
s really big pale guy in a white robe comes out.c

  So ends the final crumpled page. This was to be all that Edgar Allan Poe would see of Peters’s narrative, all that his imagination would have to draw from.

  But in Peters’s manuscript, there is more to the story. Sewn together with a thick purple ribbon reduced to pale lavender by time, there it is: the fourth page. An unrumpled, withered, yet clean sheet that clearly shows none of the harsh use of the other three. And on that fourth page, in Dirk Peters’s signature liberally inked chicken scratch, is written the following:

  He points at us to land our boat and Pym got out first, and I went to follow and this big thing makes like I’m not welcome, pushes me back in the boat and gives it a kick. At this time, I don’t even mind, because this white thing gives me the shivers. He ain’t born right, I can see. I was far down there, about longitude 3.34 and latitude 34.3 by my calculations. And being as weak as I was, and as tired as I was, I assumed death was waiting at sea for me. But the same tide that pulled me down from the Tsalal Island in a few days pulled me back again. I came in at night, gathered up some of them dried sea turds fishes, and in a few days I sailed off again. Picked up by the crew of the Blue Fortune on what they said was November 17th.d

  Longitude 3.34 and latitude 34.3. What we today know as Morter’s Point on the Ross Ice Shelf. Longitude 3.34 and latitude 34.3; on the map it was a rather big place. It was the size of a small city, actually. But in the right place, at the right time, aimed in the right direction, what Dirk Peters’s notes told me is that you could sail from there off this frozen continent to a hidden tropical utopia within a few days of floating. I knew this in my heart: that if I found the right place at those coordinates and launched a vessel from it at the right time of the month, that regardless of global warming or centuries, the path to the isle of Tsalal would still be viable. That just as it did for Dirk Peters, the current would pull me to the island, and to discovery.