Beyond the attic is the wind, and beyond that, the sounds of the city, a general hum, a background, through which breaks the midnight whistle at General Motors, announcing the graveyard . . .
“Twelve o’clock! It is the natural centre, key-stone, and very heart of the day. At that hour, the sun has arrived at the top of his hill; and as he seems to hang poised there a while, before coming down on the other side, it is but reasonable to suppose that he is then stopping to dine . . .”
Melville, describing the other twelve, the sunny one . . .
Linda will soon be home—she gets a ride in an old Plymouth, the back door hanging loose from the hinges, with some people who live beyond us, in what may still be described as country . . .
The wind turns the north corner, and whistles under the eaves . . . leaning back in the chair, stretching my limbs, I experience well-being, as though I had just dined . . . I reach for an inner pocket, and take out a fine cigar, given me yesterday by the superintendent at the plant. I prolong the ritual: removing the cellophane, sniffing the weed, and lighting up . . .
Las Casas: “. . . and having lighted one part of it, by the other they suck, absorb or receive that smoke inside with the breath, by which they become benumbed and almost drunk, and so it is said that they do not feel fatigue. These muskats, as we call them, they call tobacco.”
Withdrawing the cigar, holding it before me, I inspect it, the craftsmanship of it, and think of the Indian canoes, made of “very tall, large, long and odoriferous red cedars . . .”
Leaning forward again, the cigar now fixed in the corner of my mouth, I read
of dexter and sinister: the old words for right and left . . .
to the Greeks, whose gods resided in the north, the word for right also meant east, the word for left west . . .
and in Mayan mummification, white was associated with the north and the lungs, yellow with the south and the belly, red with the east and larger intestines, black with the west and the lesser intestines . . .
There was Columbus, making the “Pilot’s blessing”: arm raised, with flattened palm between the eyes, pointing at Polaris, the North Star . . . the arm then brought straight down to the compass card, to see if the needle varied . . .
. . . or telling time, by checking the rotation of the Guards, two brightest stars of the Dipper, around Polaris . . . the time being determined by where the principal Guard appeared on the chart: West Shoulder, East Arm, Line below West Arm, or East Shoulder . . .
As I sit here, facing east, crouching over the desk, north and south at my elbows, my back to the west, I read
(Columbus)
“. . . that the world of which I speak is different from that in which the Romans, and Alexander, and the Greeks made mighty efforts with great armies to gain possession of.”
Columbus, extending himself, stretching against the contractile tensions of the known world, became a world to himself,
exasperating his fellow-pilots, in any navigational dispute, because he invariably turned out right, even his errors, gross as they were, being more accurate than those of the others; and his unreasonable and least accurate presumptions had a way of meeting compensations, that made the results of these presumptions correct . . .
. . . proud and arrogant, demanding (second voyage) more honors than those by which he was already overwhelmed . . . suspicious and distrustful, breaking, one by one, with all his associates: Pinzon, Fonseca, Buil, Margarite, Aguado . . .
(as Melville broke with Hawthorne,
Duyckink . . .
. . . unable to understand the Spaniards, who clamored to join him on the second voyage out, and who must therefore (he thought) desire to establish a permanent colony in the Indes . . .
(but who only wanted to get their rape, gold, slaves and the hell home to Spain, so that on the second voyage, return, the Niña and the India, each designed for a complement of 25 men, carried a total of 255 . . .
Stranded,
like Melville (whose family all made attempts to “bring him out of himself”:
“I am as deeply impressed as you possibly can be of the necessity of Herman’s getting away from Pitts. He is there solitary, without society, without exercise or occupation except that which is very likely to be injurious to him in over-straining his mind.”
Lizzie: “The fact is, that Herman, poor fellow, is in such a frightfully nervous state . . . that I am actually afraid to have any one here for fear that he will be upset entirely . . .”
There is a commotion on the stairs, voices: one of them seems to be Linda, and I get the sense that she is going in two directions—her footsteps ascending (the old stairs creaking under her weight), while her voice goes down the stairwell, to one of the children.
I am confused, the midnight whistle has only just blown, Linda couldn’t possibly be home . . . off-balance, I stumble as I get up, nearly tipping the chair,
pause to set the cigar carefully on the table-edge, and then go to the door . . .
“Michael . . .”
There is at once, as I open the door, before the word is spoken, the view, the perception (the door swinging darkly, from right to left)—what I see:
Linda, standing midway on the stairs, perhaps a little nearer the top, her feet close together, her body, her attention turned (as I had felt) in two directions: not twisted or unnatural, but, in the disposition of her feet, her hips, her shoulders, her head, a tendency of motion: partly upward, toward me, and partly down the stairs, toward Mike Jr., the oldest child,
who stands near the bottom, his motion or rather his stillness likewise tentative: ready to climb or withdraw, so that he seems peeking from behind himself. His right foot is advanced to the tread above, his head tilted slightly; and I guess at the look in his face, hidden within the oversized plastic space helmet (he insisted on getting the large one), which makes his head seem a great gray globe, nearly as large as his trunk, with vast space between the plastic and the boy. In his hand he holds (I remember the cereal boxtops collected and squirreled away on kitchen shelves until the necessary accompanying dimes and quarters could be accumulated) the cosmic atomic space gun, green, with concentric circles on the handle and the barrel—the gun pointed upward, not directly, but vaguely, toward his father.
“Michael, what have you been doing? What’s the meaning of this?”
“What . . . ?” (still holding the door, my body erect, so that an ironlike firmness runs up from the clubfoot through the knee-joint, the hip, the shoulder, and down through the arm, to the brass knob) “. . . the meaning of what?”
“Michael . . .”
. . . and as she begins to speak, to act, moving her body, swinging her arm in a small arc (as large as the stairwell permits) I endeavor to sort out the feelings, the emotions that slam into me. There is her appearance: short, like myself, a little shorter than I, and getting stout, so that her stomach protrudes, just below the belt of her dress—protrudes further than her breasts; her feet small, her feet and legs that seem to go so well with any floor, pavement or ground on which she stands, so that however tired she may become, however sagging her posture, she seems to belong to and celebrate, be it in grace or in weariness, the act of standing; her arms, seeming to grow shorter as they gain more flesh; and her head, her face, not pretty now because she is complaining, but, in all its plainness (the blond-auburn curls hanging in disarray over the steel-rimmed glasses, and her eyes, blue, set wide apart, not angry, but simply committed to an act, a gesture, committed to and facing and participating in it) a great delicacy that, even now, as so often in the past, I find compelling . . .
“Michael, every light in the house is burning, the children are in an uproar, the television going . . .
Mike Jr. (gains confidence, takes a step up—the voice muffled): “Jenifer’s crying!”
Linda: “What have you been doing?”
and, not waiting for an answer,
“I came home early, I had to tell the foreman I was ill, because I knew something was wrong, I just felt that things weren’t right . . .”
and
“I suppose we’ll have to hire a sitter . . .”
Relaxing my hold on the doorknob, I shift balance to the other foot, take a step, gesture toward her,
“Linda . . . I’m sorry . . . I didn’t know . . .”
and before I say more she turns away from me, careful to reject what I have to say before I say it, and for this I feel no annoyance, neither at her failure nor mine, but only a great stupid sort of pity for both of us . . .
Linda (turns downstairs, her voice snapping): “Mike Jr.! Get down there! Get into your bed!”
. . . angry now, because she doesn’t want to, will not, cannot face what is with me . . . The boy vanishes with the crack of her syllables, and
Linda (turning at the bottom of the stairs, her words pointed, not directly, but vaguely, toward me): “After all, the kids have to get up for school tomorrow, and you have to work . . .”
Without speaking, I start down the stairs, but again, quickly, she stops me:
“Never mind . . .” (her back turned toward me, her feet now on the floor below
and I: “Linda . . .”
then she, turning partly toward me again): “I’m home now . . .” (and closes the door at the bottom of the stairs).
Pausing, pivoting on the club, my hand on the rail, I stand in the near dark—the only light being that which spills, many times reflected and diminished, through the open doorway above.
For some moments, I am still.
Turning, then, completing the half-circle pivot, I glance at the stair treads above, and take a step upward, the right foot leading, the left dragging heavily behind . . .
(Melville: “But live & push—tho’ we put one leg forward ten miles—it’s no reason the other must lag behind—no, that must again distance the other—& so we go till we get the cramp . . .”
Reaching the upper floor again, the old planks, I pause and look around, to recreate the dimensions of the attic. Walking to the desk, I am conscious of the act, the motions and sounds I make, as on a voyage: the few steps across the boards, from the head of the stairs to the desk. I pick up the cigar, draw on it, and stand for some moments. I recall that
Columbus at first thought he had discovered India . . .
(“They found a large nut of the kind belonging to India, great rats, and enormous crabs. He saw many birds, and there was a strong smell of musk . . .”
. . . thereby lopping off, roughly, one-half the globe: a hemisphere gone . . .
Melville, describing Hawthorne: “Still there is something lacking—a good deal lacking—to the plump sphericity of the man.”