My Clockwork Muse (3 page)

There I found a group of young boys gathered
outside the door. When they saw me approaching, they began
squawking at me, cawing like crows and flapping their arms.

"Nevermore!" they cried expectantly.
"Nevermore! Nevermore!"

I normally enjoyed their playful
solicitations, but I had no time for the Raven-boys today.

"Yes, yes," I muttered, pushing them aside.
The joy left their faces and even after I had collected myself
sufficiently to give them a quick "Nevermore!" in reply, they
merely backed away in fright.

My appearance shocked more than just the
boys. Inside, one of the girls gasped when she saw me. Briggs came
rushing out of his office.

"Edgar! By God, man, you look like you've
seen a ghost!"

"I have!" I cried as I weaved past desks
towards my darkened room.

I threw the door open and locked it behind
me. Fumbling for a match, I lit a lamp. I knew just what I was
looking for and went straight to the top drawer of my desk and
snatched it open. There was the object I sought, a copy of
Burton's Gentleman's Magazine
, permanently creased open to
the offending page.

I brought it out and laid it on the desk,
scanning the text quickly. There were no pictures, and I was about
to start thumbing through the pages when I found my eye drawn to
the obnoxiousness of the words.

'...faulty construction and poorness of
style...'

I gritted my teeth. An anonymous review of my
story 'A Narrative of A. Gordon Pym'. Anonymous indeed. I knew
whose words these were. Had I written such a vile criticism of
his
work, I would have had an enemy for life. And yet I was
supposed to accept it, to shrug it off as legitimate literary
criticism, this anonymous hatchet job?

'...I regret to find Mr. Poe's name in
connexion with such a mass of ignorance and effrontery.'

Forgetting my task for an instant, I slammed
the filthy rag onto the desktop. By God, the man was the basest of
scoundrels, without even the courage to attach his name to his
repugnant review. Clearly, the scoundrel's aim had been to inflict
injury, to insult on a personal level before the entire literary
world.

Someone began pounding on my door. In my
highly anxious state of mind, I was sure it was Gessler's men
again, come to drag me back into that loathsome tomb. I even
thought for a moment of escaping through one of the shuttered
windows when I heard Briggs' voice calling out from the other side
of the door.

"Edgar!" he cried, as my door rattled in its
frame under his frantic pounding.

I quickly flipped to the front of the
magazine and found what I was looking for: an engraving of the
villain himself. The fleshy countenance of Billy Burton stared back
at me from the page. My heart leapt into my mouth. When last I saw
him, his face had turned a shade of green and his rotting tongue
protruded between teeth exposed by receding dead lips, but there
could be no doubt.

The corpse bricked up in the wall of the
boarding house was none other than Billy Burton.

"Edgar! It's me, Briggs! Open up, I say!"

I was now eager to see Briggs. I rushed to
the door and flung it open.

"Damn-it-all, Briggs, come in!"

I jerked him inside and, first glancing
around the outer office, closed the door behind him, latching it
against the inevitable Gessler.

"What is the meaning of this?" Briggs
blustered, his lean, rugged features contorted by outrage and
fear.

I grasped him by his shoulders and held him a
bare arm's length from my face. "What is the latest news of
Burton?" I asked. "Has he been found?"

"Burton? What has this to do with
Burton?"

I shook him to focus his mind. "
Has
he?" I implored. "Has there been any word?"

Briggs stammered for a moment, his dark brow
knitted in thought. "None that I know of," he said. "It is thought
he has traveled to England on some personal errand. The man is an
eccentric...Edgar, what is it?"

"I have just seen him," I blurted out.

Briggs flashed a smile. "Well, he is back
then," he said in a bright tone, "and all is well. Edgar, I tell
you, you are overwrought. Did you have words?"

"I didn't see
him
, but his body.
He
is dead
." I felt my fingers tighten on his shoulders. "I saw
the man dead!"

I could feel my eyes burning into his. Having
confessed to what I had seen, I waited for Briggs to take up my
burden, to save me from it. Instead, I felt his muscles relax under
my fingers. He closed his eyes and heaved a deep sigh. His lips
vanished beneath his heavy whiskers and his jaw muscles flexed
under the flesh of his coarse cheeks.

"Edgar," he began gently. His reaction
confused me and I allowed him to lead me to my desk chair and sit
me down. I saw his eyes examining my room. When his gaze alighted
upon the open magazine on my desk, his face hardened. "Why do you
do this to yourself?" he asked.

"I have done nothing," I asserted. "But what
I have
seen
—" I clutched the arms of my chair and tensed to
stand, but suddenly felt that I did not have the strength for it.
Instead, I watched Briggs as he brought the magazine to his face.
His eyes darted back and forth as he read.

"It's that blasted
'
Pym' review, isn't
it?" he asked, throwing the magazine down sharply. He turned on me
with anger. "It is the only unfavorable notice your story ever
received.
The only one
. And yet here it is, prominent among
all your things. You have no doubt memorized it by now."

"It is the injustice of Burton's attack that
haunts me," I said, clutching anew the arms of my chair.

"Where are all the positive reviews, Edgar?
Why do you not collect them? After all, they are far more
numerous." He began throwing open the drawers of my desk, drawer
after empty drawer, as if he would find magazines and clippings
from newspapers stuffed inside. He left the drawers gaping and
stood aside for me to see, their yawning emptiness accusing me.

"The injustice—"

"Haunts you, yes. By God, can't you see,
Edgar, that it is this...this
muse
of yours that causes your
melancholy, your bouts of delirium?"

"My delirium?" I asked in astonishment. "You
cannot be serious. You would assign Burton's corpse to a
vision?"

Briggs pursed his lips, saying nothing. His
eyes were as troubled as I had ever seen them. His silence
condemned me.

"A periodic fever of the brain," I explained
after a moment, "and nothing more."

In fact, it was a bout of melancholy that had
driven me to this room when Gessler's men interrupted me. These
attacks of despair were debilitating in the extreme, and led
inevitably to severe headaches accompanied by fits of delirium.
This maddening condition had only grown worse since the death of
Virginia earlier in the year.

But the death of my wife was the cause of
true
sadness, I reminded myself, an authentic spiritual
malaise quite different from the blind interaction of chemicals
that was the cause of my usual torment. I often felt as if I could
sense a nugget of rot within my dysfunctional brain and supposed
that if I could reach inside my cranium and pluck it out, all would
be well.

Alas, apart from being an impossible fancy,
such ruminations were themselves more symptom than cure.

"Whatever the cause, these musings of yours
over slights and insults..." Briggs paused, shaking his head. "They
are affecting your work, Edgar. You must see that they are
affecting your life."

But what of the murdered Burton?
I
wanted to shout, but had not the strength. I merely slumped in my
chair instead.

"You make them sound trivial," I began, but
lost heart before I could begin to make my case. In truth, I would
have been afraid to calculate the number of hours in a day I
devoted to the contemplation of my many injuries. Regrettably, I
had spent a year working with the villain Billy Burton—until his
slanders became intolerable and his magazine an embarrassment to my
reputation. I secretly knew he was the author of the anonymous
review and I seethed about it still.

I began to fear Briggs was right, and the
budding certainty of it seemed to drain the life out of me.

"You have produced very little fresh material
for the
Journal
," Briggs continued in a stern, but
sympathetic, tone. "We have promised our readers only original
work, but have delivered nothing but reprints—dozens of your tales
reprinted for the third, fourth and even fifth time."

I would have reminded him of the reviews and
the myriad short articles, book reviews and squibs I had written;
of my 16-hour days; and of spending my nights in this very room and
not seeing home for days or a week at a time. Who could work up
fresh tales under conditions like these, conditions of
near-slavery? I would have, but my strength to argue was as feeble
as my capacity to produce literature.

"Burton..." was the only word that could
escape my lips.

"Stop it!" Briggs cried. "This talk of Burton
is madness!"

I bolted from my chair, crying, "Madness?" I
told him of Gessler and the corpse in the cellar. I told him of
Fortunato and the jingling of his fool's cap. "You call that
madness?" I asked when I had finished, my chest heaving.

Briggs made no reply. He merely stared at me.
In the silence, I heard the ticking of a clock, loud as church
bells.

"It is your delirium, Edgar," Briggs said
gently at last. I tried to argue, but he quieted me with an
upraised hand. "It is your delirium that puts the faces of your
enemies on the dead. Do you remember the man run over by the milk
wagon?"

The man who had heckled me during my lecture
at the New York University.
Did I remember him?
He had come
by the office the next day to deride me further when he was struck
down right outside my very door.
"Oh, poetic justice!"
I had
cried when I saw who it was. And I made some remark of a similar
vein to Briggs now.
Did I remember him
? I considered it a
great triumph!

Again, the ticking of the clock...

"Edgar, you need rest," Briggs said after a
moment. He grasped me by the shoulders, steadying me. "You're
tired. You've been working too hard. And now this business with the
police! It has you on edge. I beg you, Edgar, go home. Get some
sleep, eat well, rest... Perhaps you can write a new tale! Bring it
in fresh when it is done..."

As he went on in this manner, I allowed him
to lead me out of my room and through the office toward the front
door. Briggs wasn't often right about much, but I would give him
this: I
was
tired.

"Yes...Yes..." I nodded. "Perhaps you are
right..."

I assured him that I would go home and
rest.

And I would.

Just not right away.

~ * * * ~

I walked along the sidewalk a few steps
before looking back. Briggs was still watching. I gave him a wave,
and he waved in return. When next I looked, he was gone. So I
immediately turned and dashed into the street. Burton's office was
no more than three city blocks from where I stood. I stopped to let
a cab pass, dodged another, and then scampered through the throngs
that crowded the pavement on the opposite side of the
boulevard.

I could feel peoples' eyes on me and heads
turning in my direction as I ran, but I was frantic for news of
Burton. We would see whose delirium was producing visions! As I
neared the headquarters of his
Gentleman's Magazine
, I grew
certain that I would find the place in mourning, black armbands and
veils. Another thought occurred to me, however, almost causing me
to abandon the enterprise altogether. Would I alone carry the
burden of knowing the man's fate? How could I face his associates
when shown his empty chair, desolate artifact of a missing man,
when I had just seen him moldering in his tomb? I no longer trusted
my senses. Briggs had so planted the seed of doubt in my mind that
I dared not confess what I had seen. I would be forced to hold my
tongue and did not know if I could.

But I was determined to learn the truth, so I
dashed on without hesitation. I burst through the door without
pausing to compose myself. A man at a desk immediately rose to meet
me. Seeing the horrified look in his eye, I remembered where I was.
I stopped and took a deep breath.

"I am here to see Mr. Burton," I said with as
much dignity as I could muster. I straightened my coat and smoothed
my hair. I was still breathing hard from my mad dash and my words
came out clipped. Behind a half-wall topped with frosted glass to
my left, I could hear the sounds of people working at their desks.
"If you would be so kind as to fetch him for me."

"I'm afraid that is quite impossible, sir,"
the man said, and I felt my pulse quicken.

"And why is that?" I inquired, fearing the
answer. I waited with trepidation.
Because he is dead
, I
expected to hear. Or
No one has seen him for nigh on three weeks
now...
No one but me, that is. I did not know what I wanted to
hear. I seemed to fear every outcome.

But the man said none of these things.

"He is a busy man, Mr...?"

"Poe," I blurted out, failing to think of an
alias in time. I cursed my feeble brain. "Tell him it is Mr. Poe to
see him."

"An appointment is necessary," the man said,
gesturing vaguely toward a book that lay open upon his desk. In it,
he had penned the day's appointments in a flowery script.

I took a couple of steps forward and the man
jerked back as if I meant to bite him. I noticed that the sounds
from behind the frosted glass had ceased. "Does that mean he is
here then? Billy Burton is here? Look! These appointments are for
this very day! Are these Burton's appointments?"