He might have given up his position on the
Pearl
and left Nantucket on another vessel; he could have left the Island for some reason he didn’t wish to share; he may have been injured or disabled by some accident. It was the last that her imagination seized upon, and she suffered the idea that a hot iron spar had impaled or dismembered him; that a stray spark had flown into his eye and blinded him; that he’d been run over by a wagon or knocked unconscious in a brawl he had nothing to do with.
These scenarios—and the emotions they brought with them— had made her nauseous with anxiety, especially when compared with her cold reaction to George’s proposal. She’d cycled through dozens of memories, but recounting the many ways in which George had gone out of his way to assist and enlighten her, or otherwise counter her isolation over the years of their friendship, did nothing to inflame any kind of passion in her. All it did was deflate her indignation about his motives. George hadn’t been false; she simply hadn’t noticed his interest, if it existed, because it wasn’t reciprocal.
Her thoughts about Isaac, on the other hand, tormented her, rising at odd intervals, furtive as dreams. After two weeks of swatting them away like flies and muttering to herself in public, she paid a boy to go to the boardinghouses in New Guinea and to Prison Lane, to make inquiries, but he reported no residents of either by the name of Isaac Martin. She walked by Mr. Vera’s shop a half dozen times but didn’t see her student, and each time she’d rushed off, embarrassed, whenever someone came out or passed her on the street.
Then she began to wonder if he’d simply given up, overwhelmed by the drone of her voice and the march of equations. The warm rush of relief she felt when she saw him sitting on her step at six o’clock in the evening, in the second week of May, combined with the sudden pounding in her chest, unnerved her so that she was almost rude.
“Did we schedule a lesson for this evening?” She clutched the tub of butter she’d just borrowed as if it were a priceless curio.
He clutched a worn copybook in one hand; the other was tucked into the pocket of his loose white shirt. His hair was shorter, the tiny curls wired close to his skull. Hannah followed the angular line of his jaw to his chin, then his mouth.
“I am sorry for not being in contact,” he said.
Nobeyn contaque.
His voice was gentle as a lullaby.
“I see.” Hannah stepped around him and opened the door. Her father’s hat was not upon the peg.
Why did you not send word?
she wanted to ask, but stopped herself, not wishing to pry. Nor did he need to know she’d been thinking of him. Now that it was obvious he was unharmed, her worry felt humiliating. She hoped he hadn’t heard that she’d been asking after him. Perhaps she should send him away.
He followed her inside and stood like a humbled schoolboy, head bowed, as if he expected to be dismissed. But she was the one who’d insisted he continue the lessons, after all. Sending him away wouldn’t serve any purpose.
“I hope you remember where we left off,” she said when they were upstairs, trying to keep her voice neutral. She’d prepared lessons weeks ago, but where were they? When she glanced at Isaac, he reached into his pocket, drawing out a stone the size of a quail egg, and placed it on the edge of the desk by her arm.
The stone was a deep, iridescent green. Luminous white waves marbled through it in parallel. Hannah picked it up and cradled it in her palm.
“Malachite. How lovely. Where did you get it? It isn’t native.”
“From a friend.”
Hannah raised one eyebrow.
“He say it is jade, but I am knowing no. Still, I am wishing to . . . possess it.”
Isaac seemed to be struggling with his words more than usual, watching her turn it in her fingers and place it back on the desk.
“It’s very nice. You can begin your collection with it.”
“Nooo,” he said, drawing the vowel out. “It is for you.”
“For me?” Hannah looked at it again, then at Isaac. He nodded.
“It is a gift.”
“I cannot.” It wouldn’t be appropriate for her to accept. As it was, he had yet to pay her anything for the lessons, and she hadn’t asked. Maybe he meant it in lieu of the sum he owed. The stone had no such value; still, a tickle of pleasure ran up her spine at the idea that he’d thought of her in his absence. She shook her head.
“You can. It is yours.” The sudden urgency in his voice was unexpected, and Hannah glanced at him, surprised. This was his apology, then. She picked it up again and weighed it in her palm, then sighed.
“Well. I thank you.” Hannah carried the malachite to the specimen shelf and nudged aside a chunk of pyrite and a faded peacock feather to make room for it in the center. She blew a veil of dust from the logbook hanging nearby, and added:
Malachite. Unknown origin. A gift of Isaac Martin, 1845.
She made her way back to her desk and rummaged around until she found the lesson she wanted. Looking over her notes in the margins, she found one to herself:
Wanderers
, she’d written.
“Have you seen anything since last time?” he asked, peering up at the small window.
His interest was gratifying. Since she’d returned from Cambridge she’d not had a single conversation about her observations. It was like devouring a feast and then starving for weeks. The words tumbled out.
“No. Although at Cambridge they have an instrument made specifically for comet-seeking. An enormous telescope, with a huge field. I did think I saw a comet from here a few weeks back— it behaved like a comet—but then it turned out to be nothing. Well, not nothing—a portion of a nebula, probably—but not a comet.”
“Uma cometa,”
Isaac muttered, and shook his head. “You are looking for this?”
“Yes. Are you unfamiliar with comets?”
“Only that we are wishing not to see. It is—for the men—a bad thing. A dark sign.”
Hannah sighed, amazed that such notions persisted in modern times.
“Superstition and myth. There’s no such thing as a bad omen. Though it’s not uncommon to believe in them,” she added, in case he felt slighted. “I’ll explain.” She looked around for her pointer, which had gone missing, and had to settle on a pencil stub.
Tap, tap.
The rhythm was soothing.
“A comet is a celestial body of eccentric orbit,” she began. “It appears and sometimes reappears at regular intervals, but always has a bright nucleus, brightest toward the center, and often a long train which trails behind it like fire as it crosses the Heavens. They’re sometimes referred to as wanderers. You can see it without a telescope if its orbit comes close enough to our own. In fact, I’m certain you’ve seen one. A spot of light traveling across the sky at a steady pace, much slower than that of other igneous meteors—shooting stars, for instance.”
Hannah peeked at Isaac to see if he understood, but was met with an inscrutable gaze—somewhere between bemused and bewildered.
“A comet nearly always has a tail,” she added, and, thinking he might not know the word, looked around for something with which to demonstrate; finding nothing, she tugged at one of her long, coiled knots of hair until it released from its mate and unwound in her hand. She held it out to one side.
“A tail of light, like this,” she said.
Isaac nodded, and his gaze went from her hair to her neck, exposed to the collarbone where she’d unbuttoned it earlier. Hannah felt like her corset strings were being yanked tight, but she wasn’t wearing any such contraption. As she rewound the tresses and hid them away again, she hoped that he couldn’t see her hands shaking with fear. Not of him, but of the blood that rushed to her belly, and lower, when he looked at her.
He turned his gaze back to the little window above the desk.
“Why do you look for this?”
Hannah paused. How could she explain the desperate beauty of that blazing arrow careening across the Universe on its own unique course, inexplicable yet predictable? If she could locate it, chart it—understand its geometry and the play of gravity and the composition of elements working upon it—there were any number of doors it might unlock, ideas it could unleash.
“We’ve been trying since the beginning of Time to understand them,” Hannah said. “The early Christians thought they were fireballs flung at Earth by an angry God. Thomas Aquinas thought they were portents of revolution, or war, or bad weather. The Chaldeans thought they were a sort of planet.”
She shook her head, trying to order her thoughts. Isaac had an odd look on his face: surprised, amused, she couldn’t tell. He probably thought she was a fool. Perhaps she was.
“Yet we still know so little about them. Do they never cease to carve the elliptic? Where do they begin? How do they end?”
The desperation she heard in her own voice made her want to cry. Whether it was for the comet or for his understanding wasn’t clear. But the swell of emotion was bracing, clarifying. It occurred to her that she hadn’t answered his question. She took a deep breath.
“The truth is that anyone may see a comet, Mr. Martin. Anyone who is diligent, who watches carefully, night after night, might see something that no one has ever beheld.”
She raised her eyes to his.
“Even a woman with no formal education. Even here, on this Island. With a simple telescope, and no assistants, and no support. Do you understand now?”
Isaac nodded. When he spoke, his voice was gentle, but serious.
“Close your eyes,” he said. “We will look.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“We will imagine it. The
cometa
.”
“Oh.” The idea was so puzzling, she paused to be sure she’d understood him. Then she shook her head. “Why?”
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t make any sense. What’s the point?”
“It is a kind of preparation. Like imagining the whale, just below the surface. Her life, her habits, her dark, her light. Until you can feel her movement. She is rising to the surface. She is coming to the air. It is a kind of . . . calling.”
I don’t believe in this,
Hannah thought. It felt worse than nonsense. Closer to heresy. She felt as nervous as if he’d suggested that they dance.
“My grandmother is saying that the present is a shadow on our soul,” he offered, sensing her hesitation. “The future, shining, is calling our attention. So we must be welcoming what we desire. In the mind.”
He reached out his hand, and she opened hers to it before she had time to think. The shock of contact vibrated through her entire body. His hand was warm and dry. When he curled his fingers through hers, she stared at the pattern of their fingers, dark and light.
Piano,
she thought.
Zebra.
These common words grounded her, lifting the net of fear. She felt as if she might float away.
“All right,” Hannah whispered. It would be no different from silent worship. Opening herself to unseen revelation. Perhaps his way would yield what hers never had. “Show me.”
“Close your eyes.”
Hannah did, but reopened one a crack to be sure he was doing the same. He was. At rest, as if in sleep, his face was peaceful and beautiful. She shivered a little, her pulse thrumming where he touched her.
“Are we in a boat?” Hannah asked.
“Yes. We are in the Pacific. So it is warm. And very dark. No moon. Many stars.”
At first there was nothing but the odd sensation of midday stillness. Then, as she settled, warm air seemed to flood her body. A wind whose name she did not know lapped at her cheek, tickling her nose with the jasmine and citrus of green islands impossibly distant.
“We are looking to the stars,” Isaac said.
Hannah looked. The boat rocked. She felt the creaking in her ribs. She knew, from books, what the sky over the South Pacific would reveal, and she saw it entire, as if she’d been beneath it a thousand times. There was the Southern Cross; there was Eridanus and Hydra.
Isaac uttered something sharp in his language. She could feel the scurry of boots across the deck, the squeal of the rigging as the limber boys climbed and called.
Some men cried out in fear; others laughed. Hannah could see the comet so clearly it burned the insides of her eyelids. Seized by a sudden fear, she opened her eyes. As if on cue, he did the same, then reached for her other hand, gathering it softly in his own.
“Before Pope Urban IV died, in 1264, a comet appeared,” Hannah whispered.
Heat radiated from her fingers up through her wrist, twisted into her forearm, elbow, shoulder, throat. She swallowed, sending the warmth into her core.
“It disappeared when he died. The people thought the two events were connected. Scribes recorded the event. The tail was over one hundred degrees of arc. Half the elliptic.”
Her hands were hot under his touch. Was he burning, too? Was she imagining it?
“Tu acharás,”
he said. “You will find.”
Hannah shook her head. Her mouth was dry, but her brow was damp. She wanted to lick her lips. She wanted him to lick her lips. She felt her face contort, flinching from the lewd image.
They broke apart. Isaac put his hands on his thigh, then into the pockets of his shirt, and looked up toward the little window.
“Nebuloso,”
he muttered.
Hannah left hers where they were, paralyzed by fear.
This should not have happened,
she thought.
I should not have allowed this
.
“We should look at logarithms,” she muttered.
He nodded, but neither of them moved.
She stared at her desk and cleared her throat.
“Or perhaps that’s enough for today.”
The heat of her desire and her shame did not lift, though she tried to focus on work. What had she meant to do before he came? Was there something she’d been reading?
Right ascension,
she thought.
Meridian altitude. Eclipse.
He nodded, then rose, the chair squawking on the wood floor. He took a few steps toward the door, then paused.
“About the payment.”
Hannah put her hands on the desk and studied the candlelight playing upon them. Dark, light.
Piano. Zebra. Cometa.
“Yes?”
“I am having . . . It is difficult. I am working on the mainland. This is why I am not coming. Before.”
Hannah pressed her lips together, relief coursing through her. So he hadn’t abandoned her. He’d been away. She peeled off her words one by one, like wet clothes. The effort of revealing herself was mighty.
“You might have told me,” she said to her hands.
She wiggled her fingers. The light played on and off the surface of the desk like sun upon waves.
“I know.”
Before he could say anything else, something that could not be forgotten or changed or ignored, she spoke again. This time she made certain her statement left no room for an answer.
“Pay what you can manage.”
She didn’t look up again, and when the garret door clicked shut behind him she sank into her seat, all her strength gone.