“I do not consider compassion and forgiveness a duty,” Brother Jarvis told him.
“Of course not. Yet you are so much better at it than most of us.”
“Perhaps because I try a bit harder.”
“Touché,” the man said. Then, “My point, Edgar, and I have small doubt that a man as worldly as yourself will agree, my point is that even whores have a place in our society.”
The gasps that issued this time were not fraudulent.
“Mr. Vernon, if you please!”
“I apologize if my language offends you. I only wonder why it should. The word I employed is in fact a very serviceable word. And are we not all here lovers of words? The word I employed describes precisely who these women are, and just as precisely what they do. If we could learn to tolerate the word with a bit more compassion and forgiveness, perhaps we might learn to tolerate the service provided as well.”
Brother Jarvis said, “Why do I suspect that your call for compassion and forgiveness is in this case not wholly altruistic?”
“I am an unmarried man, sir. So if I—”
“You have had your opportunities, Mr. Vernon.”
More laughter. Vernon nodded and grinned. Then continued. “The human male is no different than the male of any other species. His physical needs are the same. And if those needs are not routinely satisfied, whether in the brothels of Manchester or elsewhere, he is likely to revert to even baser instincts. This is the nature of every male animal. And for which the animal himself cannot be blamed.”
“By this logic,” a pale young woman said, her first words of the day trembling with either timidity or anger, “even if the seven girls now missing are discovered to have been murdered, the man who did so is not to be blamed.”
Vernon asked, “Would the murderer have resorted to such acts were other avenues of release readily available to him?”
“Are you implying that they are not? You who know the alleys of Pittsburgh and Allegheny City as well as anybody here?”
“I am saying that if a man were allowed to frequent such venues openly, without censure from society, he would never be driven to extremes.”
“The young women in question were not prostitutes, sir.”
“Were not. But can we now say, with the same authority, that they are not?”
After this, silence. Several women sat shaking their heads. A few of the men looked as if they wanted to nod in agreement with Vernon but did not care to be apprehended in the act by the women.
I, for one, became aware of an increasing animus toward Vernon. He was a distasteful man, brimming with the self-righteousness of the powerful and well-to-do. How ready he was to excuse his own excesses simply because they were his own. His every argument possessed an oily smooth quality, and it was easy for me to picture him skulking about the streets of Pittsburgh at night, waiting in a darkened doorway to lure a passing girl with his leisurely air of luxury.
But before I could further develop my appraisal of him, Brunrichter drove the conversation onward. “What is your opinion of all this, Edgar?”
Poe continued to stare at the shallow pool of claret at the bottom of his glass.
Brunrichter added, “Should we exercise our compassion, and allow the murderer to escape detection?”
Poe said, “As has been stated already, we do not know that a murderer exists.”
“Very true. Perhaps he acted only as an abductor.”
“Imagine,” Vernon said, “seven young concubines all to oneself!”
“Mr. Vernon!”
“One for each day of the week.”
“Dr. Brunrichter, please, you must make him stop.”
“He loves to shock, my dear. He is doing his utmost to shock you.”
“And succeeding very nicely.”
Vernon said, “Come home with me and I will do even better. I too can excite muscular contractions, my dear—and I for one do not rely on galvanism to do so.”
“Were you within reach, sir, I would slap your face for that.”
“Come home with me and I will present both cheeks. In exchange for access to your own, of course.”
The young lady’s cheeks flamed red. “You should be careful of the way you talk, Mr. Vernon. Some of us might begin to suspect you as the abductor of the missing girls.”
“I invite you to search my chambers,” the banker told her. “And when you tire of the search, I will be very pleased to read something soothing to you while you rest. Are you familiar with the works of the Marquis de Sade?”
I felt my eyes narrowing as I studied the man. Would a true murderer or abductor be so foolish as to call such suspicion upon himself? Only, I reasoned, if he thought himself far craftier than his audience.
“All right, now,” Brunrichter said. “We mustn’t give Edgar the impression that we are all hedonistic fools. Not just yet, in any case.”
Brother Jarvis said, “Might I suggest that we steer the conversation back toward the spiritual? The pursuit of art is a kind of spiritual quest, wouldn’t you agree, Edgar?”
“Now Brother Jarvis,” Brunrichter said, and waggled his finger at the monk, “as you know, I invite you along on these outings only as an object of ridicule. Not to introduce such tiresome subjects of conversation.”
The doctor then turned to Poe. “Brother Jarvis and I have known each other since boyhood.”
“Alfred was constantly catching small animals and taking them apart so as to see what was inside.”
“I kept Brother Jarvis very busy with his prayers and burials!”
“It was probably you who turned me into a monk.”
“Society should thank me for that. One less zealot roaming the streets.”
This exchange was conducted without any trace of true malice. I could almost see the men winking at each other with every new insult. Until finally Brother Jarvis declared, “Life has not and never will be fully understood or explained through science.”
“So you have argued ad nauseaum. But perhaps we should bring Edgar into this discussion. Can you end our stalemate, sir?”
“Now you will lose at last!” said the monk. “For what is art if not a manifestation of the spiritual urge?”
Brunrichter leaned back on his elbows. “Edgar? Have you an opinion on this?”
Poe stroked his chin. He raised his eyes sufficiently to ascertain if the adoring young lady was still gazing on him adoringly. Of course she was.
“In point of fact,” said Poe, “I have of late been coming more and more to a formulation of the importance of science in our lives. The merely poetic, art for art’s sake, does not move me as it once did. Perhaps because I have experienced too much that is antipoetic.”
“Precisely!” said Brunrichter. “The more of actual, unsheltered life we are exposed to, the more we perceive that only science can save us.”
“Yet science is nothing,” Poe went on, “is as common as the rocks and the dirt, until it is elevated by the imagination.”
“Hmmm. Please continue,” said Brunrichter, the perfect foil.
“Would you not agree,” Poe asked Brother Jarvis, “that the universe is a plot of God? Just as a poem is a plot of the poet? And as a tale is a plot of the writer?”
“Life as a construction of the Divine imagination? Yes, I see what you are saying. And it’s a reasonable analogy, to be sure.”
“And yet,” Poe said, “is it not a construction that, though highly imaginative and original, is founded on science?”
“Aha!” said Brunrichter. “The laws of nature! The laws of physical science!”
“Many of which we do yet comprehend in their full complexity,” said Poe. “And so, if we are to understand this science, if we are to unravel this plot, as it were, we must indulge our own imaginations. We must look beyond the syllogism. We must make great leaps of speculation. Because what is provable and observable is, alas, an insufficient explanation.”
“In time,” said Brunrichter, “science will explain all
things.”
“Has it explained gravity?”
“We know what gravity does. We do not know why it does so. Or by what mechanism. But give us time and we will know it.”
Brother Jarvis, however, was intrigued by Poe’s premise. I, on the other hand, was more impressed with the increasing clarity of Poe’s thoughts. Evenings and early mornings of late seemed to find him muddled and lethargic, but now, as the afternoon wore on, I detected more and more of the acumen with which I was most familiar. I noticed too that he spent more time staring into his wine glass than in lifting it to his lips.
“You are proposing,” Brother Jarvis asked, “a merger of science and art?”
“I am not proposing it as much as I am suggesting that this is the nature of the universe. Let us look again at gravity, if you will. It is an invisible force that, so far as we know, is a kind of magnetism between all material bodies. The larger bodies exert their pull on the smaller ones—agreed?”
“Agreed,” Brunrichter said.
“Is it true of our own bodies here on this hill? Of the relationship between the Earth and the moon? Of all the planets as they orbit the sun?”
“Of course it is.”
“Then is it not reasonable to imagine that it must also be true of all suns, and of all the planets and moons that orbit them?”
“A perfectly logical assumption,” said the doctor.
“And what of the larger suns to the smaller ones? Are their positions fixed? Are they immune to the forces of gravity?”
“Well, to our eyes—”
“To our eyes,” Poe repeated. “Science says yes, the solar systems are more or less fixed in place.”
“They move throughout space, perhaps, but otherwise … .”
“This is what science tells us, yes, because this is what our perceptions have told science. But our imagination tells us something else. Our imagination tells us that if gravity exists within this solar system, it must also exist without. Which means that all heavenly bodies are being pulled one toward another, the smaller to the larger. And if we continue to apply our imagination to this formula, we see that at some point in time, far in the future perhaps but inevitably so, this process of attraction must, owing to the increased proximity of heavenly bodies, accelerate.”
Brunrichter said, “You are talking about an end. An absolute collapse of the universe.”
“Ah, but will it be an end? Must it be? Or might it be, instead, a unification? Might it, in fact, be a return to that original and singular entity from which all existence began?”
Brother Jarvis grinned. “Commonly referred to as God.”
Brunrichter ran a hand through his hair and rolled his eyes. “Edgar, Edgar, Edgar. You have become, in one fell swoop, a poet, a scientist, a theologian, and a heretic.”
Poe smiled at the adoring young woman. “And a thirsty one at that.”
She blushed, but she did not drop her gaze from his, not even when he raised his glass to her and sipped. A part of me was happy that Poe might have some tender company for the evening, though another part of me was repulsed by his flirtatiousness and the girl’s easy acquiescence. Truth be told, I was no doubt jealous of his success with the fairer sex. And especially with a girl not much older than I.
In any case, as the wine bottles went’round again, I told myself that I had better things to do, and, though I could not articulate what those better things might be, I wandered away from the gathering. What I wanted, of course, was not debate or argumentation nor wine-enhanced frivolity, but the serenity I had glimpsed in Susan’s smile. There was an aestheticism there as well, by which I do not mean a stinginess but its opposite, a fullness. A fullness of purity. Of simple and unadorned truth. Her smile to me was like the beauty referred to in Coleridge’s poem; it was all I knew of life, and all I needed to know.
I am not making myself understood in this, and I apologize. It is a difficult concept to impart. Certain holy men, in far flung places, have a word for it, however. To them it is called satori.
To me it was, quite simply, contentment. It had struck me unexpectedly, a glancing blow. It goes without saying that, having experienced it once, I could never be happy until I found it again.
To that end, I slipped away from the picnic. Murderers, prostitutes, poets and scientists and monks all be damned—I needed only Susan.
15
“YOU BACK?” Buck Kemmer called to me from the dock. He was unloading bales of rags from a flatboat, standing with one foot in the boat and one on the dock, reaching out with his baling hook to grapple a bail and drag it close enough that he could swing it onto the dock.
“Don’t you ever get tired?” I asked in reply.
“Ain’t always that a weak mind and a strong back is an asset. Best to take advantage of it when I can.”
I nodded and grinned, but said nothing.
“You know anything about work yourself?” he asked.
“Such as?”
“Such as how to do it.”
“I’ve done my share.”
“I see your mouth moving but you’re still just standing there.”
I went down to the dock and said, “What do you want done?”
“Slide these bales back on the dock some. Give me a little more room to work.”
As I did so I asked, “What’s the pay for this job?”
“You only just started and you’re worried about the pay already?”
“A fair wage for a fair day’s work, that’s all I’m after.”
“How about no pay for five minutes’ work?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time I worked for nothing.” I busied myself then clearing the dock around Buck, dragging each bale well out of his way. That done, I hefted a bale—it was all I could do to lift it off the ground, seizing by both hands the thick cord wrapped around its middle—and toted it, awkwardly, up the steps to the street.
When I returned to the dock, Buck said, “Keep that up and we’ll maybe renegotiate your wages.”
“Now you’re talking. How much will I get?”
“How about this: You get to ask me what you came here to ask.”
“Who says I came to ask you something?”
“I’m a fascinating character, all right. You came back here’cause you think I’m so pretty, is that it?”
“Well …”
“I’d advise you think twice before you answer that.”
I toted a second bale to the street. Then, on the dock, I asked, “She have a beau?”
He said nothing, so I moved a third bale. When I returned he said, “She’s got a lot of beaus. One of them’s even a professor.”
The floor dropped out of my stomach. Somehow it had never dawned on me that Susan and I had not been waiting all our lives for one another.
Buck, no doubt, saw me sag. “Prissy fella,” he said. “Walks around with his chin up in the air. Like he’s inviting everybody to have a look up his nose holes.”
“Is she serious about him?” I asked.
“She’s sixteen. It ain’t her job to be serious about her suitors. It’s mine.”
“And are you?”
“About him? Yeah, I’m serious. I’m serious about wanting to give him a good arse-kicking every time I lay eyes on him.”
I understood suddenly that he was taking the measure of me, watching how I handled myself with physical labor, the one thing he understood inside and out. Did I think myself too good for sweat? That’s what he was asking himself. Because decent, honest men want for their daughters a man just like themselves, only better.
I picked up my pace, stepping more lively as I toted one bale after another to the top of the stairs. By the time Buck emptied the flatboat, I had moved a third of the bales. It was then the wagoner arrived. He sat at the reins, calming the horses, while Buck tossed the bales up to me and I stacked them securely in the bed of the wagon.
“You almost look like you know what you’re doing,” Buck told me.
“It’s
like I told you; I’ve done my share of work.”
Within twenty minutes the wagon was loaded, Buck was paid his dollar, and the horses clopped off, straining at their traces. I remained standing there, sweaty and aching, while Buck returned to the dock, where he dipped a handkerchief in the river and washed his face with it. He returned to clap a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“Feels good to put in an hour’s work, don’t it, Gus?”
The name still sounded strange to me, but I nodded all the same, and rubbed my shoulder. “Felt better than that slap did.”
He laughed. And then, an unimaginable thing—he started to walk away!
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I’m going home, laddybuck. Home to my supper. You got a home to go to, don’t you?”
Desperation made me bold. “I’d rather go to yours.”
That one took him by surprise, I think. It surprised even me. He blinked once, rubbed his cheek, then came marching toward me, long quick strides that made me think he was about to throttle me. Before I could so much as flinch he wrapped five fingers around my bicep and yanked me up close, his face only inches from mine.
“You say what’s on your mind, don’t you?” he asked.
“Only when there’s something I want.”
“Wanting ain’t getting.”
“I’ve got to try, don’t I?”
He pulled me even closer. “You lay a finger on her, or even think of doing so, I’ll tear this arm right off and beat you senseless with it—you understand?”
“Truth is,” I told him, “I’m feeling pretty senseless already.”
His laugh was so explosive that were I not anchored by his grip I might have been blown backward across the street. As it was he spun us both to the left, tossed a heavy arm around my shoulder, and sent us striding north.
“What is it makes a fool in love so lovable?” he asked, and I grinned dopily, too woozy to reply.
WHAT CAN I tell you about the next two hours? Does it matter that their house was neat but small? Many are. The truth is that I cannot describe the features of those rooms with more than the sketchiest of details. I cannot tell you the color of the sofa I sat upon, or the texture of the fabric over which my nervous fingers ran a thousand times. Now, as then, when I see myself in their living room, or seated at their table, I see only the two of them in any light at all, as if they radiated their own illumination, Susan the brightest, smiling always, and her father in a softer light yet basking in hers as well.
Disquiet Heart Page 15
