Authors: Paul Metcalf
“Thought, under attack: I must recap the birth of the universe . . .”
(from the medical book: “A patient who invariably dislocated his right shoulder as he fell, explained this by saying that he would see a star before him for which he would reach . . .”
and Carl: “A dream: conjure up a chorus, with the director (thinfaced) telling them to start the theme, god damnit, on the
UP
beat! Chorus furious, marches on him, on the
strong
beat . . . feeling of horror . . .”
(the medical book: “The authors present the case of a woman aged 44 in whom extensive clinical investigation failed to reveal an acquired cerebral lesion, but which represented a case of musicogenic epilepsy. The patient experienced increases of blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration while listening to music. Fits could not be induced by pure tones, although the patient felt emotional to a tone of 512 cycles which persisted and was varied in loudness. Different kinds of music were invariably followed by a fit within five minutes.”
The period in which Carl had attacks lasted only a few months, terminating as abruptly as it started; and for this, the doctors had no explanation. Nor would Carl himself speak of it, then or thereafter . . .
Melville, collapsing the world of Pittsfield and the Pacific, salvaged the remains, hoarded them into 104 East 26th Street—fortunate to be taken on as outdoor customs inspector (badge #75), Port of New York, at a reward of $4 per diem (later reduced to $3.60). Reduced, circumscribed, and aging, he still thrashed . . .
From
D
ANIEL
O
RME
(and perhaps he meant
D
ANIEL
O
R
M
E
):
. . . his moodiness and mutterings, his strange freaks, starts, eccentric shrugs and grimaces . . .”
and from a contemporary review of Melville’s verse: “Mr. Melville has abundant force and fire . . . But he has written too rapidly to avoid great crudities. His poetry runs into the epileptic. His rhymes are fearful . . .”
M
OBY
-D
ICK
:
“But now that he had apparently made every preparation for death; now that his coffin was proved a good fit, Queequeg suddenly rallied; soon there seemed no need of the carpenter’s box: and thereupon, when some expressed their delighted surprise, he, in substance, said, that the cause of his sudden convalescence was this;—at a critical moment, he had just recalled a little duty ashore, which he was leaving undone; and therefore had changed his mind about dying: he could not die yet, he averred. They asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a word, it was Queequeg’s conceit, that if a man
made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort.”
I experience an abrupt relaxation, a lifting of tensions, and, with this, a restoration of vision, so marked, the dark corners and recesses of the attic stand out so sharply—that I seem to have gained new powers. Random motives, impulses to shift and rearrange limbs and muscles, occur throughout my frame. I am restless, moving, wanting to move in ways I have never tried before . . .
Melville: “Let us speak, tho’ we show all our faults and weaknesses,—for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it . . .”
Reviving within myself, I am aware also of external motion, motion of my body as a whole, from the outside, and there are the two: inside and outside, working with and against one another . . .
Stretched loosely in the chair, giving the sensations full play, I am aware of fresh sources of energy opening in me, opening barely in time to be poured into the increasing demands, both in action and duration, that are to be made upon me . . .
Melville, after
M
OBY
-D
ICK
:
“Lord, when shall we be done growing? As long as we have anything more to do, we have done nothing.”
and Las Casas, describing Christopher, embarking on the third voyage: “. . . wherefore it appeared to him that what he already had done was not sufficient but that he must renew his labors . . .”
I remember the three occasions—but especially the first—of Linda’s pregnancies . . . our watching and wondering as the end of her term approached, what day or night it would be when we would hurry to the hospital . . . the obvious pleasure with which she allowed me to place my hand on her, to try to anticipate, as husband,
father, and doctor, the exact hour . . . her figure, short and broad, so exquisitely designed for childbirth, carrying the weight lower and lower, as the head approached the cervix, the ultimate part of its pear-shaped world, until it seemed that the infant must drop at any moment—in the kitchen, the bathroom, or on the bed where he began . . .
Columbus: “. . . it is impossible to give a correct account of all our movements, because I was carried away by the current so many days without seeing land.”
and from the “Libretto”: “. . . not very far from there they found a stream of water from east to west, so swift and impetuous that the Admiral says that never since he has sailed . . . has he been more afraid.”
I am shaken—head, ribs, and limbs—by a tremendous effort . . .
Columbus: “At this time the river forced a channel for itself, by which I managed, with great difficulty, to extricate . . .”
and Las Casas: “Arriving at the said mouth . . . he found a great struggle between the fresh water striving to go out to the sea and the salt water of the sea striving to enter the gulf, and it was so strong and fearful, that it raised a great swell, like a very high hill, and with this, both waters made a noise and thundering, from east to west, very great and fearful, with currents of water, and after one came four great waves one after the other, which made contending currents; here they thought to perish . . .”
“It pleased the goodness of God that from the same danger safety and deliverance came to them and the current of the fresh water overcame the current of the salt water and carried the ships safely out, and thus they were placed in security; because when God wills that one or many shall be kept alive, water is a remedy for them.”
T
HE
O
DYSSEY
: “Here at last Ulysses’ knees and strong hands failed him, for the sea had completely broken him. His body was all swollen, and his mouth and nostrils ran down like a river with sea water, so that he could neither breathe nor speak, and lay swooning from near exhaustion; presently, when he had got his breath and came to himself again, he took off the scarf that Leucothea had given him and threw it back into the salt stream of the river, whereon Leucothea received it into her hands from the wave that bore it towards her. Then he left the river, laid himself down among the rushes, and kissed the bounteous earth.”
I am invaded by a great warmth, my entire skin surface tingling . . .
(Melville: “. . . as we mortals ourselves spring all naked and scabbardless into the world.”
. . . and with it, an indescribable relief, satisfaction, and well-being. Reaching for the cigar butt, I lean back, stretch my legs, and light up again, relishing the warmth of the match flame, as it nearly burns my face. Drawing lungs full of smoke, I tilt my head against the back of the chair, and watch the clouds, floating in the yellow lamplight to the rafters. I recall the cigars I smoked and gave away at the plant on the occasions of Mike Jr.’s birth, our firstborn; and, with the tobacco smoke, I taste again the pleasure, the pride that I enjoyed at that time—pride such as a man might feel at the mouth of the Mississippi or Amazon, sharing in those waters that push back the ocean, the waters they are in the act of joining . . .
BATTLE PIECES AND ASPECTS OF THE WAR
“I
T WAS ON A BOMBER RUN
that Rico and I cracked up near a hospital in China—a small outpost hospital—and discovered that Concha was assigned to it. Christ, we didn’t even know she was out of the states . . .
“We bailed out and no one was hurt except Rico, who had stayed behind to shoot out the bombsight and set the ship afire. He tore a shoulder pretty bad, but he clamped the cut himself. By twos and threes the Chinese took us to the hospital, where they assured us Concha would smuggle us back to HQ. Seems she’d been doing this for months . . .
“We arrived at the same time the Japs captured the hospital and surrounding town. Rico had cautioned us before we bailed out to destroy our insignia and not to admit to being officers, so the Japs would think us privates and not try to pump us. However, the Japs seem to base seniority on age, so Rico and I, not being in our twenties, were stuck—as well as a fifty-year-old sergeant, who they thought must be a general: he was tortured, and when he wouldn’t talk—because he didn’t know anything—they cut his head off, to scare the rest of us.
“Rico raged and cursed when he was tortured, but appeared more angry than hurt. I wish I could say as much for myself . . .
“Concha, I guess, didn’t know what to expect . . . she was only thinking of her patients. This was a general hospital, and among other things she had women in labor, and some who had just delivered. The Japs explained, through a Chinese doctor. that they were going to take over the hospital for billets . . .
“They started evacuating the patients at sword point. One of the privates threw a baby up and caught it through the belly on his bayonet; Concha didn’t move, but when the C.O. laughed, she lost her head and struck him. It wasn’t a ladylike slap, but, well, you know Concha—she just rifled one off the floor and planted it on him, and he went down for the count. It was beautiful . . . but we all knew she would suffer for it. At his command, they grabbed her, yanked her back and forth among them, until we couldn’t always keep sight of her. When the crowd thinned out she was naked, her skin in ribbons, her long hair hanging down—and several handfuls trailed from many hands. Her knuckles were bleeding, her eyes flashed, her head was up and she was mad clear through. I was proud of her. She had given a good account, too, being outnumbered—had blacked several eyes, and quite a few men had lumps appearing on their jaws.
“The Chinese doctor groaned aloud when he heard the C.O. say that he would rape her first, and then the others could have her. He explained that she was in for a bad time, she was such a small woman . . .
“We were invited to watch, with our hands tied behind our backs. They threw her to the ground and when they twisted her legs behind her shoulders, and her hips came out of joint or broke, Rico yelled curses and tore at his bonds until his wrists were bleeding. The officer, of course, couldn’t get into her and he seemed to be in a hurry. He gave a command and a soldier jammed his rifle barrel into her three or four times until he broke through . . . She blacked out at the first jab . . .
“He raped her then . . . some of us declined the invitation to look and closed our eyes and turned our heads—but they went around our circle and cut off a few pairs of eyelids.”
(M
OBY
-D
ICK
:
“That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun . . .”
Carl . . . from notes made during and after his captivity, and secreted in his duffle, until finally, in a backhanded gesture—placing them where I and no one else would discover them—he let them fall into my hands.
Early in the war, he had tried to enlist in the Air Force, but, for some reason, had been turned down. Cabling Rico—the only survivor of the Spanish brothers—in Havana, he arranged to meet him in England: he assumed the pose of some sort of civilian technician, and managed to hitchhike on military craft, in a matter of only a few hours, from Indianapolis to London. Together, Carl and Rico enlisted in the
RAF
.
For months we heard nothing—until a card came from Concha: she was trying to trace Rico through Carl, and Carl through me. I didn’t know until years after, when I read Carl’s notes, that, with my reply, she had headed for London, and, with her medical training—she had specialized in surgery—had been taken into the British Army, and given an assignment in China.
There were others who made notes—the Chinese doctor, Concha’s adjutant, was one—and these I found with Carl’s:
“I once asked Concha where she had gained her knowledge and technique in gunshot wounds (she was too young for the first war) and she told me that she had had ample experience during the various revolutions in Cuba. (In one of these, her father and twin brothers were army officers, and she fought with the students against them—as I believe she fought against her father in Spain. When her father and Rico’s twin were killed, she may have suffered more than any of us realize . . .