Genoa

FIVE

The New York Central train, westbound for St. Louis, rumbled out of the Indianapolis station, and I settled myself by the window, with little thought of sleep.

Slumping, I let my shoulder and the side of my head rest against the window. My bag was in the rack overhead, and in my pocket, my breast pocket, was the letter from Carl: I had, at long last, an address, and I was using it quickly, before it passed, like all the others, into obsolescence.

He had written of his discharge from the institution—and had taken the trouble to enclose a letter from the staff, proclaiming him cured. He announced, further, that he had opened a one-chair barbershop, in the old section of St. Louis, on 4th Street—and he went so far as to invite me to spend the weekend. Coming off the swing shift at midnight, I had packed my bag, and headed for the first train.

I thought of Carl as a barber, and wondered where and how he had learned this skill—or if he had taken the trouble to learn at all. My eyes closed, I became numbed, insulated, like the dim interior in which I was riding. I may have slept, I’m not sure; I had the sense, in any case, of entering and passing through something . . .

When I opened my eyes, there was gray in the sky. It was not dawn—just a dull, general lifting of the dark. We were in southern Illinois, the tracks slicing diagonally across flat, squared-off farm land. Snow remained on the ground, and occasional gusts of sleet and cold rain washed the outer glass.

I may have slept again. When I looked through the window, it was full day, though still overcast. But the land had changed, and I didn’t quite understand how . . . the flatness was there, but there was a different tilt to it, a kind of flow, an imminence. Sitting up straight, I bought coffee and a dry cheese sandwich from a vendor. As the hot, strong liquid went down my throat, I realized that we were approaching St. Louis, and the river . . .

All at once, I understood why Carl had come here, to St. Louis, of all places; why California had been only a stopping place, and this, the Mound City, had become his inevitable destination. I could see ahead, in the distance, some elevations of earth: I couldn’t tell whether these were part of the original Indian mounds, or railroad embankments, or perhaps part of the levee system. In any case, the contour was low, level, and smooth; with the knowledge of the location of the city on the river, and the river’s place in the face of the land, I realized that St. Louis was “home,” the very eye and center of centripetal American geography, the land pouring in upon itself. I thought of China, and recalled that Carl’s journey from there, from all that had happened there, was an eastward voyage, across half the globe; and, perhaps like Ishmael on board the Pequod, he was hunting back toward the beginnings of things; and, like the voyage of the Pequod,—or of any of the various caravels of Columbus that struck fierce weather returning from the Indies—perhaps Carl’s eastward voyage, his voyage “home,” was disastrous . . .

We entered East St. Louis, and the train slowed, as we passed through mile after mile of factory, tenement, dump, and slum, an abandoned industrial desolation . . .

Rising over the earth mounds, the tracks entered a bridge, and we approached the river. The cold rainy wind blew waves onto the surface—dark black and purple, the wind squalls rushing across it, here and there turning a white cap. Through the steel girders I watched the water as long as I could see it. When we reached the other side, I felt that we had passed over a great hump . . .

Leaving the train at Union Station, I headed for 4th St., and had little trouble finding Carl. Tucked in a corner, in an ancient loft building, it looked like a poor spot for business. But the shop was open, and he was busy.

The sign read CARL AUSTIN MILLS, MASTER BARBER, and underneath, “I Need Your Head In My Business.” As I opened the door, he looked up from his work, and I detected in his glance only surprise—I had not told him I was coming—and pleasure. Stepping forward, he offered me his hand, and his grip was familiar and sturdy—warmth and affection in it, such as he had seldom shown me, but nothing patronizing: it was the glad warmth of an animal. Returning to his customer, he gestured me to a chair, the sweep of his arm embracing and offering his hospitality, making rich and desirable the confines of his shop. He asked many friendly questions . . .

I looked around. Every inch of space, beyond what held his equipment, was taken up with pictures, decorations, objects of one sort or another. I had no idea how he had made such a collection. There were rocks, minerals, semi-precious stones of all shapes, sizes, and colors, some of them shining. There were souvenirs and toys from every carnival and circus in the land. Airplane parts hung from the walls, a split half of a propeller was suspended on thin wires from the ceiling. Pictures, paintings, and textile fragments appeared everywhere, the subjects ranging from Mayan, Aztec, and Inca stone and art work, to movie stars, nude girls, and pornography. Relics from Alaska, and other Indian artifacts were stuck on shelves. The magazine table included the morning newspaper, and thirty-year-old copies of the National Geographic and the Police Gazette. There was a settled look, a look of age . . .

Hanging in front of the mirror, directly back of the chair, so that strands of black hair descended among the bottles of oil and tonic, was the shrunken Indian head that he had won in a poker game in Alaska. Carl stepped back to survey his customer, his own great cranium coming close to the shrunken one . . .

He began telling a story—a wild tale about barbering among primitive Eskimos in Alaska, the natives being confused between haircuts and scalping. The customers seemed to know that he was lying, and this added to it . . .

I listened to him talk, watched him cut several heads of hair. The warmth of the shop entered me, became quieting. In addition to being a storyteller, he had a skill at his trade; his hands moved deftly over the men’s heads, weaving a phrenological spell.

The city of St. Louis, with the advent of the railroads after the Civil War, had turned its back upon the river and faced westward, had abandoned the old continental blood stream . . . Carl, setting up in this section, hugging the river, now drew warehousemen, truckers, straggling barge- and riverboat-men from blocks, perhaps miles around . . .

I became sleepy, began to drowse in my chair. Carl gave me the key to his room, suggested that I take a nap . . . I was almost asleep, as I stumbled out the door.

He lived in a furnished room, not far from the shop. It was small, poor, and bare, with the simplest furnishings—as barren of his personality as the shop was rich with it . . . too tired to look further, to dig beyond this front, I stretched across the bed and fell asleep.

When I awoke, it was midafternoon. Shaking myself, I sat on the edge of the bed, took a slower look around. On the floor, by the bed, were three books: a volume of Sappho, one of Homer, and the poems of Hart Crane . . .

Washing at the hand basin, I headed again for the shop. The rain had stopped, but cold wind blew off the river, pouring down the streets that led away from it.

A customer was just leaving and Carl was alone when I arrived. He suddenly decided to close, hustled me out, and locked the door, before anyone else showed up.

For several blocks we walked aimlessly, Carl—without coat or hat, his shirt open—sniffing the air like a dog. Then he stopped, clutched my elbow, and pointed . . . we turned and headed east, toward the river. A summer excursion boat was drawn up on the brick embankment, tilting at an angle. Together, just for the hell of it, we clambered aboard, laughing like kids, getting our feet soaked. I almost fell overboard when my foot slipped: Carl’s hand flashed out, thrusting for my arm, and I got up safely.

Arms outstretched, balancing ourselves on the tilting planks, we made our way to the prow, and stood for some moments. The wind drove down on us from the north . . .

Melville:

“Natives of all sorts, and foreigners; men of business and men of pleasure; parlour men and backwoodsmen; farm-hunters and fame-hunters; heiress hunters, gold-hunters, buffalo-hunters, bee-hunters, happiness-hunters, truth-hunters, and still keener hunters after all these hunters. Fine ladies in slippers, and moccasined squaws; Northern speculators and Eastern philosophers; English, Irish, German, Scotch, Danes; Santa Fe traders in striped blankets, and Broadway bucks in cravats of cloth of gold; fine-looking Kentucky boatmen, and Japanese-looking Mississippi cotton planters; Quakers in full drab, and United States soldiers in full regimentals; slaves, black, mulatto, quadroon; modish young Spanish Creoles, and old-fashioned French Jews; Mormons and Papists; Dives and Lazarus; jesters and mourners, teetotallers and convivialists, deacons and blacklegs; hard-shelled Baptists and clay-eaters; grinning negroes, and Sioux chiefs solemn as high-priests. In short, a piebald parliament, an Anacharsis Cloots congress of all kinds of that multiform pilgrim species, man.

“As pine, beech, birch, ash, hackmatack, hemlock, spruce, basswood, maple, interweave their foliage in the natural wood, so these varieties of mortals blended their varieties of visage and garb. A Tartar-like picturesqueness; a sort of pagan abandonment and assurance. Here reigned the dashing and all-fusing spirit of the West, whose type is the Mississippi itself, which, uniting the streams of the most distant and opposite zones, pours them along, helter-skelter, in one cosmopolitan and confident tide.”

Carl faced north, his whitened knuckles gripping the rail. I turned away, headed toward the vacant cabin, the river flowing south. In a moment he followed me, put his arm on my shoulder, and I felt again an animal affection. Huddled in my overcoat, tilted against the angle of the deck, I stood by him . . .

All at once, his body drew in upon itself; he gathered his jacket to his throat, clutched it with his free hand . . . he was chilled and threadbare, and the scrubby look of poverty came over him . . .

Melville:

“In the forward part of the boat, not the least attractive object, for a time, was a grotesque negro cripple, in towcloth attire and an old coal-sifter of a tambourine in his hand, who, owing to something wrong about his legs, was, in effect, cut down to the stature of a Newfoundland dog; his knotted black fleece and good-natured, honest black face rubbing against the upper part of people’s thighs as he made shift to shuffle about, making music, such as it was, and raising a smile even from the gravest. It was curious to see him, out of his very deformity, indigence, and houselessness, so cheerily endured, raising mirth in some of that crowd, whose own purses, hearths, hearts, all their possessions, sound limbs included, could not make gay.

“‘What is your name, old boy?’ said a purple-faced drover, putting his large purple hand on the cripple’s bushy wool, as if it were the curled forehead of a black steer.

“‘Der Black Guinea dey calls me, sar.’

“‘And who is your master, Guinea?’

“‘Oh, sar, I am der dog widout massa.’

“‘A free dog, eh? Well, on your account, I’m sorry for that, Guinea. Dogs without masters fare hard.’

“‘So dey do, sar; so dey do. But you see, sar, dese here legs? What ge’mman want to own dese here legs?’

“‘But where do you live?’

“‘All ’long shore, sar; dough now I’se going to see brodder at der landing; but chiefly I libs in der city.’

“‘St. Louis, ah? Where do you sleep there of nights?’

“‘On der floor of der good baker’s oven, sar.’

“‘In an oven? whose, pray? What baker, I should like to know, bakes such black bread in his oven, alongside of his nice white rolls, too. Who is that too charitable baker, pray?’

“‘Dar he be,’ with a broad grin lifting his tambourine high over his head.

“‘The sun is the baker, eh?’

“‘Yes, sar, in der city dat good baker warms der stones for dis ole darkie when he sleeps out on der pabements o’ nights.’

“‘But that must be in the summer only, old boy. How about winter, when the cold Cossacks come clattering and jingling? How about winter, old boy?’

“‘Den dis poor old darkie shakes werry bad, I tell you, sar. Oh, sar, oh! don’t speak ob der winter,’ he added, with a reminiscent shiver, shuffling off into the thickest of the crowd, like a half-frozen black sheep nudging itself a cosy berth in the heart of the white flock.”

Moving to the down-tilted side where we had climbed aboard, Carl and I clambered ashore, soaking our feet again. At the top of the embankment we turned, shivering in the wind, and looked back at the boat . . .

. . . it seemed shrunken, a toy, helpless on its perch of bricks.

We headed back into the city, chattering, half-running with cold. Carl made straight for a neon sign, with the word BAR . . .

We had some drinks, and wandered on . . . I tried to talk with him, or get him to talk, but his eyes looked beyond me, his mind held to no thought . . . he took one drink at a bar, and was off again.

Then again he turned to me, all warmth and consideration, his hand on my shoulder, the gesture affectionate, and firm . . .

As we wandered, the buildings became poorer, dirtier, more populous. Strange figures huddled in hallways, clustered around the doors of taverns—their lips thinned, thirsty, bitten back with poverty.

. . . at some time in the evening, we stood at the stage door of the burlesque theatre, while Carl tried to talk his way in . . . there was a glimpse of a near-naked girl . . .

Later, Carl ran out of money. I tried to loan him or give him some, offered him my wallet, everything I had—but he protested fiercely, the evening was to be his. The penurious, pinched look came over him . . . he reached into his pocket, took out a couple of linty crackers, and shared them with me . . .

(and on the 4th voyage of Columbus the supply of biscuits became infested with worms . . . the men, refusing to remove these animals for fear of reducing the volume of food, took to eating only at night so they wouldn’t have to see them . . .

We passed another bar, and Carl brought me to a halt. He stood for a moment . . . then cautioned me to wait outside, while he went in.

I watched him approach the first customer, standing at the rear end of the bar. They shook hands, Carl slapped his back, put a foot on the rail. The man gradually warmed, his body shifting, his coat hanging looser . . . they had a drink together, and the customer turned his back suspiciously to the rest of the room, drew something from his pocket, and he and Carl talked. After some moments, Carl drew back, placed his hand familiarly on the other’s shoulder, his great head nodding assurances . . . and turned and came out the door. He said nothing. . . but at the next bar, he paid for drinks with a new $50 bill . . .

I have an image of the two of us—Carl stocky, broad-chested, jacket and shirt open to the rain, and I, slight, limping, hat and overcoat hanging sloppily on my frame—the two of us ambling side by side, drunk and speechless, a clown pair . . .

(“Good friars and friends, behold me here / A poor one-legged pioneer . . .”

The Melville line came to me as I pushed back the heavy door of a tenderloin tavern, the room cluttered with derelicts, sleeping, drinking, haranguing one another . . .

“. . . a limping, gimlet-eyed, sour-faced person—it may be some discharged custom-house officer, who, suddenly stripped of convenient means of support, had concluded to be avenged on government and humanity by making himself miserable for life . . .”

“. . . a lean old man, whose flesh seemed salted codfish, dry as combustibles; head, like one whittled by an idiot out of a knot; flat, bony mouth, nipped between buzzard nose and chin; expression, flitting between hunks and imbecile . . .”

“. . . a singular character in a grimy old regimental coat, a countenance at once grim and wizened, interwoven paralysed legs, stiff as icicles, suspended between rude crutches, while the whole rigid body, like a ship’s long barometer on gimbals, swung to and fro . . .”

Soaking, drinking in the words of THE CONFIDENCE-MAN, I leaned heavily across the bar, and turned to Carl. He seemed attentive, and I tried once more to get him to talk—asked him about the war, the POW camp, about Rico, Concha, and California . . . for a moment, he was serious and sad . . .

Then he pounded me on the back, waved his arm, and presented to me one of the characters, crippled and bearded, who had come to beg a drink . . .

Carl ordered for him, swerved himself to the old man’s misery:—a relation of hollow vowels, toothless and full of beer . . .

“After three years, I grew sick of lying in a grated iron bed alongside of groaning thieves and mouldering burglars. They gave me five silver dollars, and these crutches, and I hobbled off. I had an only brother who went to Indiana, years ago. I begged about, to make up a sum to go to him; got to Indiana at last, and they directed me to his grave. It was on a great plain, in a log-church yard with a stump fence, the old gray roots sticking all ways like moose-antlers. The bier, set over the grave, it being the last dug, was of green hickory; bark on, and green twigs sprouting from it. Some one had planted a bunch of violets on the mound, but it was a poor soil (always choose the poorest soil for graveyards), and they were all dried to tinder. I was going to sit and rest myself on the bier and think about my brother in heaven, but the bier broke down, the legs being only tacked. So, after driving some hogs out of the yard that were rooting there, I came away, and, not to make too long a story of it, here I am, drifting down stream . . .” (Melville)

Other derelicts left their tables, sidled toward us, clustering, jostling gently . . . Carl’s arm swept out, gathered them in . . . every glass in the house was filled . . .

We passed the ruins of a cheap hotel, gutted by fire. Dark figures, cold and wet, stood about, staring at the stalagmites of charred wood . . . Carl spoke to one of them—he had been the night clerk, was still hovering over his job; he told us about the fire, about the man who drank rubbing alcohol, canned heat, and the like, and had managed to get his clothes soaked with the stuff, and then lit a cigarette—the bedding caught fire, the clerk had heard and seen him, screaming from his room, folded in blue flame . . .

Melville:

“. . . to the silent horror of all, two threads of greenish fire, like a forked tongue, darted out between the lips; and in a moment the cadaverous face was crawled over by a swarm of worm-like flames.

“. . . covered all over with spires and sparkles of flame, that faintly, crackled in the silence, the uncovered parts of the body burned before us, precisely like phosphorescent shark in a midnight sea.

“The eyes were open and fixed; the mouth was curled like a scroll, and every lean feature firm as in life; while the whole face, now wound in curls of soft blue flame, wore an aspect of grim defiance, and eternal death.”

Past midnight, Carl’s manner became secretive, mysterious. For the first time, he began to move as though he had a destination, and this assurance made him the more devious, so that he acted

like Columbus, 4th voyage, treating the Indians with suspicion, misleading even the Sovereigns as to his navigations and discoveries . . .

(“The seamen no longer carried charts because the Admiral had taken them all . . .”

or like Melville’s Benito Cereno, a man trapped . . .

We walked down alleys and across vacant lots, pausing with grandiose watchfulness at the corners . . . more than once we doubled back on ourselves . . . at the corner of a narrow street, among warehouses, we stopped, smoked a cigarette, appeared casual . . . then moved slowly down the street, turned into an alley, and knocked at a lighted door. A man—short, bald-headed—opened after a moment, recognized and admitted Carl, and stared hard at me. I was passed, on Carl’s word, and we moved through a long corridor, down some stairs, and, opening another door, entered a large, low-ceilinged room, filled with men, mostly middle-aged and beyond. Packing cases were set up at one side, serving as a bar, and there was a rudimentary stage, a raised platform, with overhead lighting, at the far end of the room. Nearby, a man beat notes out of a decrepit piano. Tables and chairs were scattered about, facing the stage. A few whores circulated among the men. We took a table, and I waited, looked around, while Carl went to the bar for drinks. The place had a familiar aspect, and I recognized it, from movies and TV, as a duplicate of the old western music hall and saloon—bar along the side, tables and chairs in the middle, stage across the end of the room. The girls were in character.

Carl picked up a girl at the bar, brought her back with him, sat her between us. She was a gorgeous negress. The lights in the room flashed and went out, leaving only the stage lights. The men applauded, took their seats . . .

In a moment, a girl appeared on the stage. Tall, blonde, she wore a green evening dress, covered with tiny spangles, and her equipment included various accessories—gloves, scarves, fake fur, a jacket—to be handled, manipulated, shifted, and disposed of. She came to the front of the stage, so the light fell directly on her head and shoulders, creating shadows under her curves; she was still, hands held before her, her eyes, not calculating, not innocent, taking in the room.

The piano began to thump . . . the girl tapped her foot, her knee shaking the vertical lines of the gown . . . finger by finger, she removed one glove . . .

I sat back, the liquor, the closeness of the room, the people, the negress at my side, filling me. Carl and I lit cigars. There was satisfaction in the show, in the girl’s presence on the stage, and I realized that in the flat gray of movies and television I had built up a hunger for just this: whatever the medium, just the flesh, here, in the room . . .

(I recall, now, that, here in Indianapolis, the one burlesque theatre has been closed, to be converted into a revival hall . . .

(as, in England, the Puritans closed the Elizabethan theatres, before getting to that other menace, the naked American Indian . . .

One by one the girl’s accessories were removed and tossed aside. She stood in the strapless gown, at the very front of the stage, the light slanting on her from behind. There was, in her erect figure, an illusion of beauty, dignity, judgment, wisdom—of all desirable and satisfying values . . .

She turned, ambled upstage, and her hand went to the zipper in the small of her back . . .

(and I thought that this was as intimate, as naughty as A Peep At Polynesian Life, Melville’s TYPEE . . .

Turning again, she held the now unsupported gown with her fingers, cupping her breasts, practicing all manner of delay and ruse, before revealing herself.

Carl leaned in front of the negress to speak to me, and I tilted toward him, so that our heads met over her breasts . . . the liquor had gone to his voice, as well as to my head, and I couldn’t make out all that he said, but his manner was professorial, instructive—something about the importance of revelation, as opposed to objective study—the loss, in a society with a scientific bias, of the art of discovery . . . the negress remained immobile, her eyes flashing, a smile rich on her face . . .

Little by little, the performer’s gown came off, to the applause of the hard-breathing men . . . she stood, displayed herself, in a g-string . . . the applause grew harder,

and my body froze: a negro, full black, appeared on the stage, stripped to the waist—the girl went to him, stood before him, facing front, and in the white light, his large, magnificent hands moved over her . . .

The quality of breathing in the room, the girl’s eyes, all changed . . . I couldn’t look at the dark girl beside me . . .

(Daggoo, in MOBY-DICK: “Who’s afraid of black’s afraid of me! I’m quarried out of it!”

(and Melville, elsewhere: “. . . as though a white man were anything more dignified than a white-washed negro.”

I turned to Carl, just to see him rise, move to the back of the room, and the door . . . following him, I reached the door after he was already gone . . . I paused, glanced once more at the stage . . .

the girl was naked . . . the negro dropped to his knees before her, clutched her buttocks with his hands, and drew her toward him . . .

I found Carl on the sidewalk, his feet shifting, almost dancing, his eyes wild . . . as soon as I came up, he took off, and I struggled to keep up with him, following his back as fast as I could, down deserted streets and alleys . . . I ran as I had not run in years, perhaps never before, the light and heavy beat of my stride echoing from the buildings, the cold air burning in my lungs . . .

When I woke up, it was early morning, and I was sprawled across Carl’s bed, hat and overcoat still on, my head hanging between bed and wall. I sat up, discovered Carl sitting on the floor, his head propped against the wall. He was surrounded by books and comic books, smoking a cigar, and reading

SUPERMAN

in startling

3-D,

holding to his face the 3-dimensional glasses that come with the book—a bit of green cellophane before the left eye, and red before the right . . . turning the pages, laughing. Beside him, open at various places, were the volumes of Sappho, Homer, and Crane that I had seen before, a good many more comic books . . . and a copy of Melville’s CLAREL.

Seeing me awake, he lit another cigar, handed it to me. I smoked, held my head in my hands, tried to reconstruct the evening. Carl finished SUPERMAN, picked up CLAREL, and

all at once, the tobacco went to my stomach . . . I made a rush to the hand basin, was violently ill . . .

(Melville: “While for him who would fain revel in tobacco, but cannot, it is a thing at which philanthropists must weep, to see such an one, again and again, madly returning to the cigar, which, for his incompetent stomach, he cannot enjoy, while still, after each shameful repulse, the sweet dream of the impossible good goads him on to his fierce misery once more—poor eunuch!”

Staggering to the bed, I was galled to see Carl unmoved, reading. Shifting himself, expanding his diaphragm, holding CLAREL before him, he read aloud:

“And he, the quaffer of the brine,

Puckered with that heart-wizening wine

Of bitterness, among them sate

Upon a camel’s skull, late dragged

From forth the wave, the eye-pits slagged

With crusted salt.”

I made it to the basin just in time, hung over it a long time . . . there was nothing in me. When I got back to the bed, Carl had changed: not considerate, or even interested, he was watchful . . . then his eyes went back to CLAREL, and he read:

“. . . Sequel may ensue,

Indeed, whose germs one now may view:

Myriads playing pygmy parts—

Debased into equality:

In glut of all material arts

A civic barbarism may be:

Man disennobled—brutalized

By popular science—”

. . . he was declaiming, posturing outlandishly . . . and he threw down the book, picked up SUPERMAN again, with the little red and green glasses . . .

Squeezing my head in my hands, I closed my eyes. When I looked up, all color had vanished. Carl, the furniture, the room appeared in shades of gray. . . I blinked several times, my eyelids serving as the shutter of a movie camera, then closed my eyes . . .

and behind the closed lids, I saw the room in color, but in disconnected, monocular images, one for each eye . . . in addition, there was a partition, a wall, reaching from the wall of the room to the vertical center of my face, separating the two images . . .

I opened my eyes again, and was at once dizzy: everything that I saw was inverted, upside down . . . rolling onto the bed, I buried my face in the pillow . . .

I slept through most of the day . . . when I got up again, it was late afternoon, and I was alone. Though weak and hungry, I was slept out . . . my body was quiet. I stood by the bed for some moments . . . emptiness and loneliness—the loneliness of public rooms, of personal things used and not loved—entered me. Books were put away, basin washed, ashtrays clean . . . Carl had erased himself from the room . . .

I found him at the shop—busy, loquacious, crisp—with no sign of fatigue. But his manner to me had changed . . . the warmth, the cordiality were gone, not deliberately, but in spite of himself, against his own will . . . I sat for some minutes, listening, chatting with him, trying to find what was there when I had first arrived, the morning before . . . but it was gone, the episode finished.

When he was between customers, I got up, prepared to leave. He followed me to the sidewalk, and we stood for some time at the corner, looking at the curb, at the street, at the gray darkening sky. It was already early evening, another night beginning—the streetlights and neon signs flickered on. Once more I tried to reach him, if only in a direct look from his eyes . . . he held my glance for an instant, and then changed—his posture, his manner, the very structure of his face—something kin to the look of poverty that I had seen before, but not quite the same . . . his shoulders collapsed inward, his eyes were downcast, his face troubled, his head moved restlessly . . .

I thought of the purpose of this visit, of my coming to St. Louis: that I was trying only to reach him, to open a channel . . . of how I had failed, how he had swept me into his own condition, and I had permitted it, allowed myself to become a part of all that he was caught in . . .

(Melville: “From being cast away with a brother, good God deliver me!”

I thought of Melville, separated from Hawthorne . . . and of Columbus, at Valladolid, no longer able to reach the court . . .

I thought of China, the POW camp, of California and Joey: . . . I thought that what is more terrible, even, than all that Carl had done, was the original misery of his being, of his coming to be in a condition that made it possible . . .

Melville: “So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affection; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill.”

I remembered the letter Carl had sent me, from the institution, announcing his complete cure . . .

“So far may even the best men err, in judging the conduct of one with the recesses of whose condition he is not acquainted” . . . Melville

I put a hand on his shoulder, took his hand into my other . . . he looked up, raised a smile, a little warmth . . . but it was not Carl . . .

The wind swept around the east corner . . . he looked cold . . . I gave him a squeeze, he slapped me on the shoulder, his chest expanding once more, and we parted . . .

Some days later, back in Indianapolis, I got a postcard from him.

“Dear Herman: The Gin got here!”

and I didn’t understand the significance, until I read Melville’s letters to Hawthorne—the passionate pouring-out, the reach of one man to another—written in the froth of finishing MOBY-DICK:

“It is a rainy morning; so I am indoors, and all work suspended . . . Would the Gin were here!”