by John Pipkin
“It's in the last scene.”
“I've wanted to stage a conflagration for some time. Joan of Arc, or a Hindu funeral pyre. But this is better. An entire house! You don't extinguish it, do you?”
“No, well, I mean … I don't know.”
“You don't know?”
“I haven't quite finished the scene.”
“Let it burn. Right in front of the audience—we'll burn an entire house to the ground. Think of the spectacle, Calvert! We'll fill every seat in the hall.”
Kimball drummed his fingers on the manuscript, lifted it between thumb and forefinger as if trying to gauge the thickness of the paper.
“We'll need to shorten this a bit. No sense making people sit through what they haven't come to see. Once the fire is done, they'll want to leave.”
“It's at the end.”
“Then we'll shorten the beginning, but not too much. We'll make 'em wait a little bit, build the suspense.”
Eliot watched Kimball riffle the pages and divide them in half like a deck of cards.
“There's your edits. I should think that these remaining pages will provide dramatic tension enough.”
Eliot struggled against the urge to rescue his manuscript. “I'm flattered by your interest, but I'll need to mull this over before I can give you a final answer.”
Kimball returned his forefingers to the tip of his nose and studied Eliot from the apex of the little pyramid. “Let's not dally, Calvert. We both know why you've come. You've taken this play to every theater in Boston. And you've been turned down every time. I am your last resort. Am I right?”
Eliot fiddled with the chain to his watch and looked at his fingers. When he looked back at Kimball, the man was adjusting the stiff collar of the bloody wax figure seated next to him.
“Here at the Boston Museum,” Kimball said, as if speaking to the wax figure, “we paint our drop scenes in broad strokes. I know my customers. They have no curiosity for fancy speeches. We'll need a moral, a lesson. Have you got one?”
“Well, the main character is a man enslaved to his own prevarication.”
“What does that mean? You need to think Old Testament, Ten Commandments, or, better yet, Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack—you need a moral that people already know by heart. Reassure them there's nothing new they need to learn. You get the idea.”
“I'll work on it.”
“Good man. Now, let me show you something.”
Kimball leaped to his feet and led Eliot back through the foyer to the exhibition hall where the play would be performed. By the stage was a device resembling a pipe organ.
“It's called an orchestrion,” Kimball explained. “With this I can replace an entire orchestra. We'll have a score written for The Burning House.”
“It's called The House of Many Windows.”
“The Burning House is better. I'll have lyrics written as well. People want songs. You see, Calvert, with a device like the orchestrion I need not argue with temperamental musicians. It does just what I ask. No grumbling. It cost me a fortune, but it's repaid me time and again. I always spend wisely. Do we understand each other, Calvert?”
“Certainly.”
“We'll divide the profits fairly. Which brings us to the important matter of expenses. If you intend to burn an entire house in my museum every night, there will be considerable expenses …”
After jotting down his new thoughts for the play's conclusion, Eliot puts away the memorandum and pencil, picks up the ax, and continues his march toward the fire. He looks up through the barren branches and sees that the smoke has changed direction again, curling around itself, doubling back the way it has come. Eliot traces the new shape against the bright sky. He alters his course and picks up his pace. He knows he must be getting closer, but he feels that he is walking in a broad arc.
Certainly, he thinks, Margaret will agree to some of the small changes he has in mind, though it might require substantial effort to persuade her. He is encouraged when he thinks of the freedom he would purchase simply by reducing their expenses. Patrick Mahoney will not be pleased with his decision, but Eliot also knows that once his play is successful, once it is performed to packed houses, his father-in-law will understand, too. There are not really so many obstacles to his happiness as he once thought. All he needs is a quiet room, a chair, and a small table. He can make his life as simple as this and still count himself a man of infinite riches.
Eliot emerges from the trees at the edge of a sloping field and sees that something is not right. He puts on his spectacles and discovers that the trail of smoke he has followed for nearly a mile has misled him. On the far side of the field, a coal-black plume snakes over unmolested treetops, weighed down by its darkness. Eliot traces its source to where the smoke swallows a slice of the horizon. In the distance, at the bottom of a rocky hill, rows of blackened trunks stand like limbless sentinels before a fierce, menacing glow. The blaze is much larger than Eliot expected. Even from a distance he can tell that this fire is a wild, angry thing. Eliot grips the shovel resolutely and trudges toward the green hill he sees rising through the distant smoke.
21
Emma
Emma listens to the far-away skillet clang of the bell in Concord's town hall, and it is a relief to her to know that Oddmund has delivered the news, though now she wishes she had not sent him away. The smoke has grown heavier since he left, and her chickens have all returned to the coop, fooled by the darkening sky. She does not want to imagine the monstrous things taking place in the woods. She stands at the back of the kitchen, in front of the last open window in the house, and tries not to worry.
Mr. Woburn said he would not be away long, but still he has not returned, and Emma dislikes being alone. Sometimes when she is left to herself she can feel her worries gorge themselves on the empty space around her. She closes the window to keep out the smoke and goes to the basket of unfolded bedclothes sitting on the kitchen table. Then she remembers the undergarment she left hanging on the line to dry. She is sure that it already smells of the burning and will need to be washed again before she can try to wear it. She considers fetching it, but she is afraid to go outside; the sight of the black clouds, rolling toward Woburn Farm like a blight from the heavens, would be too much for her to bear. She knows that she ought to fold the laundry and tend to the mending that awaits her needle and thread, but her mind is so full of worry, she thinks it best to distract herself for a few moments with the new book tucked behind the others on the top shelf of her bookcase.
A few weeks earlier, Emma had overheard two young women in Concord discussing a book by Allan Poe. She heard the women say that his book was filled with stories of murder and spirits and mysticism, and when they said that it was a wholly inappropriate book for ladies she could not help but find her curiosity stirred.
She asked Mr. Woburn to purchase the volume for her the last time he traveled into Boston, since she knew that any respectable bookseller would have refused her outright, and recommended that she purchase the latest volume in the Eclectic Reader series instead. And she also understood that Concord's new library would never afford her the opportunity to run her fingers over the scandalous pages, for the venerable Squire Hoar—whose conversion to novels, it was said, came only after he found himself snowed in at a distant tavern with nothing to occupy his time but an abandoned copy of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe—would never approve of the inclusion of Mr. Poe's work. Emma was not overly fond of frightening tales, but she simply could not stand the idea that a book might be forbidden to her, whatever the reason.
Under her bed, Emma kept a jar of coins earned from the piecework she still took in, and out of this she purchased books once a month for her little library. Despite Mr. Woburn's promise before they wed, he regularly grumbled about the money she spent on books that she could barely read. He complained about the time she wasted staring at the pages as if the words might suddenly announce their meanings to her. Emma seldom asked him to buy books for her, but she had hande
d him the money with a slip of paper bearing the title, and she was surprised that he consented to purchase Mr. Poe's book after only a brief show of displeasure.
She has not looked at the book since Mr. Woburn returned with it last week, and now, she thinks, it might be just the sort of thing she needs to take her mind off her worries. She stands at the bookcase, retrieves the little volume, and runs a penknife under the first set of uncut pages. This is her favorite moment with a new book, cutting open the pages to look on the fresh ink seen only by a handful of people. The title page of Mr. Poe's book holds three lines of poetry in a language that looks to her like German, followed by the name “Goethe.” She turns to the opening story and slowly mouths the first words, expecting to be appalled from the start. But in the first few dozen lines there is no mention of murderers or ghosts or demons of any kind.
Emma cuts the next set of pages to see if there are any illustrations, and when she slides the knife through the open end a card slips out and flutters to the floor. At first Emma thinks it is an etching that has come unglued, but there does not seem to be a missing space on the front or back boards. She retrieves the card from the floor and finds a skillful drawing of two men threatening a kneeling woman with short, curved daggers, a scene no doubt spawned by Mr. Poe's grim imagination. All three of the figures have heavy-lidded eyes, dark hair, and dusky skin. The men grin like devils, and the woman appears frightened, as one would expect. But Emma can tell that something about the scene is not quite right.
She takes the card to the window to study the picture in the gray-filtered sunlight, and then she realizes that what the men are clutching are not daggers at all. She feels the blood rush to her face. The shock of what she holds settles in slowly, but her curiosity will not allow her to put it down. The men wear short robes that stop at their waists, and below this they wear nothing at all. The woman's robe is thrown back over her shoulders; her small breasts stand out straight, the nipples pointed like darts. One of the men wears a little hat with a limp tassel. For some reason, the inclusion of the tassel strikes Emma as supremely ridiculous.
Emma's hands are trembling, and she wishes now that she had decided to tend to the laundry. She stares at the smiling woman until the two men fade away and all that remain are the woman's face, her unreasonably pointed breasts, her round hips, and the hidden ends of the men's impossible curves. Emma stares at her face, trying to puzzle out the expression she finds there. At first glance she thought the woman was frightened, but now what Emma sees on her face is not fear but something else, a kind of pleasure, perhaps, for which she can find no words.
These are not acts that Mr. Woburn requires of her, she thinks. He never makes any demands other than that she lie still while he dutifully grunts above her once a month. In his exertions she can hear the expectation that his joyless efforts will again prove fruitless. She knows that he blames her for their childlessness. Once, in a drunken rage, he went so far as to tear her precious books from their shelves and scatter them across the floor, telling her that too much reading had rendered her barren. After that episode, she made him swear that he would never again touch her books, and he promised to cease his indulgence in drink, though she could tell he did not mean it. She knows he keeps bottles hidden in the barn, and she suspects that today's business has led him to a tavern. She has learned to tolerate his drinking, but she promised herself that she would never again suffer his abuse of her books.
Emma checks the bookseller's stamp inside the cover: “Eliot Calvert, Bookseller, Boston.” There is no stamp on the card. She imagines her husband's dirty, blunt fingers clutching the vulgar illustration and she quickly slips the card between the pages and places the book back on the shelf. Her face burns as if she has done something wrong; she knows she should not have looked at the etching for so long, and she cannot keep from thinking of it and wondering if the smiles were genuine, if the depicted figures were indeed happy to be coupled thus. She thinks of the woman, naked and unashamed before two men. What other varieties of bliss, Emma wonders, would be forever unknown to her? She has learned not to want kind words or caresses, but sometimes she cannot help but wish that the grunting might go on a bit longer.
The card is Mr. Woburn's doing, she knows, but she blames herself. He would never have set foot in a bookstore in the first place were it not for her. Emma had hoped that his willingness to purchase Mr. Poe's book signaled a softening of his feelings toward her, but the card suggests otherwise. She realizes that he must have had his own reasons for visiting the bookshop, and then it at last occurs to her that this is probably not the first time he has purchased such things. She looks around the room and through the doorway into the next and she takes note of the many nooks at every corner, dark places that she has never noted before. And she wonders, then, how many cards just like this one may already be secreted within the paper-thin crevices of her home.
22
Oddmund
The chatter of the angry men, the bump and jostle at his elbow, the gritty scrape of shovels and ax heads dragging in the dirt— none of this keeps Odd's mind from drifting elsewhere. Odd knows he must take greater pains to concentrate on matters at hand. He looks around at the men briskly walking toward the fire. If he were to allow any of them close enough to eavesdrop on his errant thoughts, he knows they would surely have him pilloried. Odd trudges along in the middle of their little army, but even now, with the danger before them and the town of Concord in peril, his thoughts return to the undergarment on the clothesline, to the image of Emma's breasts giving substance to its shape. He sees her bending low to brush away the chickens pecking at her feet. In his mind he peers into the shadowy cleft at the scoop of her dress. He thinks of her lying on her back.
There are too many scraps like this in his memory, and with each passing year he finds it harder to separate the real from the imagined. Things he has witnessed sometimes prove more peculiar than what he invents. The images of things he should never have seen creep along the dark folds of his brain: his father disappearing in a flash, his mother looking up at him from the burning deck, the deific heart engulfed in flames, his uncle's grin before the rope goes taut, Emma's full lips rounded open in pleasure, her eyes hidden in dark shadow, his own wet hair plastered to his forehead and the feel of a splintery window frame beneath his fingers. Images overlap in his mind. Faces displace other faces. He manufactures memories from fragments that have no bearing in the world: his father and mother walking the streets of Boston, his sister fully grown and playing with her children, Emma on board the Sovereign of the Seas, squeezing his hand, surrounded by flames that do not consume, the ship turning from America back to the open sea. It is foolish to desire the world other than it is, but he believes there have been moments when he might have rendered the present more tolerable had he simply looked away, for no amount of regret can excise the hard lump of memory.
Odd had once clung to the pallid hope that Emma's marriage to Cyrus Woburn was just a convenience, a partnership built on sweat and chaste respect. There were no children, and Odd let himself think the marriage was unconsummated. It was a simple fiction to attend, since he already found it unlikely that people actually did the things he imagined them doing when they were alone. He dared not ask after Emma's happiness and had not the boldness to confess his feelings for her, but it mattered little. He has always known that they would never be together; it was the one certainty in his world. From the first time they met he understood this, simply by the way that Emma sprawled on top of him in the mud. He could tell she was familiar with the immediacy of other bodies; she sank into him unashamed, even as he felt his own skin retreat from the intimacy.
One of the men walking in front of Odd begins to chant a marching song about a forlorn lover, but no one else joins in and he gives up after the first stanza. There is some nervous laughter, then silence, and then the angry chattering resumes. Odd's thoughts wander back to the night, a few months earlier, when he had allowed himself to hope for something mo
re between himself and Emma. Mr. Woburn was not at home the night that Emma stood in the rain and knocked on Odd's door to ask him to carry a load of firewood onto the porch. It seemed a strange request. Odd thought he had brought in plenty that afternoon, but Emma felt that the stormy night called for more. The rain had soaked through his clothes by the time he was finished, and she insisted that he sit by her fire until he dried. Mr. Woburn was not expected until morning, she said, and she did not wish to be alone while the storm raged. The thunder shook the windows and the lightning made the shadows of trees dance along the walls like shuddering marionettes. She asked that he stay until the storm weakened, and Odd could not refuse. He followed her inside and stood cautiously by the fire. Emma removed her wet bonnet and shook it out. She draped her wet shawl near the hearth, and Odd saw how her pale arms shown through the clinging damp sleeves of her dress. Her skin shone like fire in the orange light. She insisted he remove his boots and jacket, and she placed them near the fire next to her shawl. Odd allowed himself the fantasy that they were behaving as husband and wife.
“Do you play whist?” she asked Odd, as she crossed to the other side of the room. She came back holding a deck of cards decorated with bluebirds and little blue boats.
“I don't know.”
Emma laughed. “You don't know? Have you ever played cards before?”
“I don't think so.”
“Well then, Oddmund Hus, let's find out.”
She pressed several cards into his hands; the cards were covered with perfect red hearts on one side. Emma's fingers felt soft against his palms. He listened to her patient explanations.
“Really, we're each supposed to have a partner for whist,” she said, “but I think we'll do just fine by ourselves.”
He showed her the cards he was supposed to keep hidden, and he listened to her laugh at his mistakes until he felt an ache behind his ribs. To hear her laugh like that, he would have been content to make a lifetime of errors. She showed him how to fan the cards, and when he could not master this simple skill she placed her fingers on his and spread the cards for him.
