The Rope Eater Read online

  Beware, you who crave release from the work of making order, for you see chaos truly only when fires are burning and blood running, and you will find your hope is a weak thing; I stooped and closed my hand around the coolness of a stone. I ran with the horde, hurled rocks into the darkness, flowed down the shuttered streets.

  Some ran terrified before us, searching frantically for sanctuary; some joined us, exhilarated and ravenous. A streetcar halted, we charged; it leaned, and toppled, its windows shattering onto the cobbles; we beat it with axe handles and iron bars. More men seemed to pour from every street, and mob joined to mob. Trapped in the clogged streets, the crowd set upon itself in senseless frenzies, group turning on group and man on man. I was wedged against a wall by the crush of sweating bodies; I could feel the mass of men writhing against me like a river in flood. I struggled for the breath to cry out. I lost my footing and was pinned up to the wall, my feet kicking vainly as the mass of heads and the flames began to waver before me.

  The wall behind me sagged and gave way. I tumbled back, bricks clattering on top of me. I was buried, trampled, struck at; faces loomed over me. I lost consciousness, and when I opened my eyes, I found myself lying on my back alone inside a large warehouse. Through a jagged opening in the wall I could see the mob rushing past. I slid back into the shadows. Retreating deeper into the warehouse, I found a set of stairs that led down into a tunnel strung with lanterns. I hurried down, listening for the swell of the mob behind me.

  As I went down, however, the noise of the riot subsided in the distance. The gentle light of the lanterns and the cool smell of dirt soothed me; my panic faded. The tunnel led to a network of others and I sped through them. I emerged deep underground in a much larger tunnel that was crisscrossed with railroad tracks. It curved away in the distance and its roof arched into darkness. I sat on the tracks and wiped my head with the sleeve of my shirt. It came away damp with blood, still slightly warm in the cool of the tunnel.

  I unstrapped my bag and pulled out a packet of letters, spread them on the ground before me. In the dim light, I could not decipher their scrawls—some small and cramped, some large and expansive, barely fitting onto the envelopes at all. Each scrap of paper seemed to be part of a pattern that should resolve or reveal itself as I stared. I moved them about, scrutinized them, put them into piles, and laid them out again. Nothing. I selected one and opened it, as if it somehow held an answer, the answer, as if this particular man, by dying, had come to know something and that I would receive it, deserved to receive it because I had rescued his letter. I saw before me the man with the scatter of cards who had grabbed me. His face had in it no peace, no wisdom; he had found no answer, had merely died.

  I was roused by a low sound in the distance, the sound of panting breath. I peered down the tunnel, looking for the flickering torches of the mob. A train appeared, clouds of steam billowing from its stack. It moved toward me and as it drew abreast I ran alongside and threw myself into an open door. I made my way among stacked crates and collapsed gratefully onto the bare floor. For once my heart ceased to riot and released me into a gentle sleep.

  two

  The train pulled into New Bedford in the early morning. The chaos of the previous night had drained away and I was left tired but uncleansed. The rail yard, scattered with lumps of sooty snow, and the gray, indeterminate sky both seemed unreal, as if they were a stage set behind which the riot continued unabated. My arms ached as I struggled with my bag; my head throbbed and itched where the blood had dried. Men like ants in the distance moved to unload other trains. I rubbed my face, shouldered my bag, and started the walk into town.

  The air was cold, but with remnants of warmth; winter was hovering, reluctant. I made my way to the post office. The letters felt dead to me now, mere weight, and I wanted to be rid of them.

  The New Bedford post office had an elaborate marble facade with high windows, a large, elegantly lettered sign, and broad steps that led to a massive door. Inside, the postmaster swept the floor of his office and adjusted the papers on his desk. I went to the counter and leaned on it, watching him with no particular interest. After a few minutes he saw me, and made his way over. I hefted my bag onto the counter and let it spill out.

  “Been robbing the postman?”

  I reached into my pockets and brought out other letters, shook them from the lining of my coat, pulled them from the sides of my boots, from the inside of my hat. He whistled a low, tuneless whistle.

  “They’re soldier’s letters,” I said, “and I don’t suppose there’s much rush to get them delivered.”

  He shook his head slowly and began to run his hands through the stacks.

  “How’d you come by them?”

  “I just . . . I never . . . they were everywhere.”

  There was a long pause as he put his spectacles on and started to read the addresses; I watched in silence as he sorted them. He kept his head tucked low and turned his face to the side.

  “There’s still a charge to send them,” he said quickly. “I don’t suppose that you . . .” I stared dully at the top of his head for a moment, waiting for a flash of anger, but it never came. I dropped my threadbare pouch onto the counter and left.

  I don’t know what I expected to feel—angry, relieved, cleansed, free?—but I didn’t feel it. The air outside had turned bright and razor clear. Before me the streets were rawly waking; men straggled from sleep, brows furrowed in pale yellow sunlight, the young with faces of worry or ignorance or false cheer, the older with faces of resignation or bewilderment. I sat on the steps, waiting for nothing, only a dull pounding in my chest to remind me that there was no rest in this finishing.

  At first I did not notice the man standing staring at me, but he persisted until I did. Then he dropped his head as if he were deep in thought, and rushed into the post office. I watched him go in, then turned blankly to the road, to the sidewalk, to the patch of step between my dusty boots.

  I don’t know how long I had been staring, nor, by extension, how long he had been standing in front of me again, waiting for me to take him in.

  “You’re the man with the letters.” Not a question.

  “Without the letters,” I said, trying to summon a laugh.

  He leaned forward, squinting behind thick glasses, until his face was just a few inches from mine, poring over my face with a fierce glare. He had a hat pulled low over small, thick glasses; a gray nose protruded over a wiry, sparse, colorless beard. One of his eyes had a milky spot on it, from which a delicate webbing spread over the whole of his eye. I found myself staring at it, leaning even closer with curiosity. He straightened up abruptly— which changed little, as he was very short.

  “Hmm. Yes. Well.” He seemed to be in conversation with someone else, someone who was doing most of the talking.

  “So,” he said at last, apparently satisfied with the appraisal of his invisible companion, “what now?” I must have looked lost, because he added, with a hint of exasperation, “Now, now that you’ve delivered the letters. You haven’t got a job, have you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Family?”

  Again.

  “What sort of—I mean, have you much—are you—you have things? Possessions?”

  I spread my arms to show my thin coat.

  “Hm. Yes, well, good. Not good. I mean, well, yes, in its own way, quite good indeed.” And so he sank back into silent conversation, turning his head slightly to the side to study me further. I expected him to prod around in my mouth or poke my shoulder with a stick. At length he pulled his hands from his pockets and rubbed them, preparing to speak, as if he were starting to get impatient with his silent companion. Resolved, there was no stutter in his voice.

  “I have a job, if you’d like it, on a boat. Two years of work, steady wages, but the work’s hard. Extreme cold, months of darkness and isolation. It is quite an opportunity,” he said entirely without irony.

  Again he leaned forward, as if to press this thought
into my brain. I waited for him to elaborate, but it was clear that he was through. I suppose in other circumstances I would have laughed at this peculiar man squinting behind his glasses, his webbed eye, this bizarre interview. But I could see that I would be told little else, and in my blankness I realized that it made no difference. I could not see the afternoon take any shape before me, much less a month, a year, two. It was a relief not to have to find my own way.

  “Yes,” I said, “fine, I’ll take it.”

  “Excellent,” he replied, not at all surprised. “We leave tomorrow morning. Be at the dock by seven to catch the tide.” He scribbled an address on a piece of paper, handed it to me, and left with a low, gliding shuffle.

  I roused myself and made my way down to the shore beneath the docks to rinse my face. Feeling the sting of salt in my gashes, I shuddered; I tried to summon the feeling of the night before, the maniacal energy the mob had ignited in me, but in the bright, bland light of day, I could find no hint of it. I sat back from the water’s edge, watching the lap of waves over the rocky beach. Overhead, I heard the clump of feet on the wood, the crash of crates, and the creak of ropes. Above them I could hear the faint squalling of the gulls. I rested my head against a pier and, lifting my face to the sun, drifted again to sleep.

  I awoke to find that the tide had shifted and the wavelets were now lapping at my feet. Birds with wet wings fought to escape the gray grasp of the sea. The sun had moved over the pier and I shivered. I rose and stretched and climbed back up to the streets.

  Aimless rather than curious, I wandered along the docks to watch the whalers set out. New Bedford was a whaling town and its every industry and service was tied back to the massive whaling ships that arrived and departed in constant streams. Men were singing as they loaded barrels and tied off lines, and calling out in loud voices. In their quick hands and eager faces, one could see all the promises of the ocean—of the action of the hunt, the endless novelty, and the assurance of wealth; it was the promise of tests through which each man imagines that he will be proven worthy. I remembered those faces from the marches; boys put them on in the days before we fought, when they knew we would be fighting and that men would die, but before they realized it could be them. For each in his heart refuses to connect that death to himself—it remains as scenery for the great stage of his heroism, the consecration of his success through the blood of less important men. The excitement and the fear are the anticipation of being measured and revealed— or unmasked. And after the battles, as they lie bleeding, they are shocked to discover that death includes them, that the glorious story they told to themselves the night before was wrong, that the nameless, faceless death that had decorated their stage was their own.

  The Marlinspike was a tavern down by the water, its timbers gray with salt and saggy, listing toward the sea. I entered, stooping beneath the massive lintel. The ceiling was low and heavy with beams, and the floor canted unevenly. Two small windows, oddly high in the walls, let in a greasy, diluted light. The thick, familiar scent of tobacco and rum seeped into me like molasses. Men took their supper at the bar, and a few set out to drink in earnest. As the evening wore on, the latter displaced the former and the bar was filled with beery laughing. Around me, men talked without listening and listened without hearing; some tried smiles and abandoned them. They guzzled their glasses to avoid speaking, looked away in their swallowing pauses, then filled them because they were empty. They looked over each other’s shoulders for other distractions, for other, better entertainments. The same few men told endless stories, boring even themselves in the middle, but forging ahead until they had launched into another. Mouths moved and heads nodded and shook; men gestured and prodded their listeners, each unintelligible to the others, each pretending to understand as he waited his turn to speak. They seemed to be crabs, nestled in their clumsy shells, protected and isolated from their companions, shuffling and clacking their claws noisily.

  Tired but not sleepy, I passed my last coins to a silent bar-tender and retreated up the narrow staircase to the bunk room. I pulled myself up into a free bunk and gathered a mothy blanket around me. Beneath the steady chorus of snoring, men whimpered and cried out, a word or name emerging from soft, insistent mumbling, a short curse or bark of laughter. I lay awake for a long time listening to their unconscious discontent until I slipped away into my own dreamless discontents.

  In the morning, bolstered by a bowl of gluey oatmeal, I headed out to find the dock. The day was cold but clear, the sun just dawning. It took me several inquiries to find the address, a private dock some way out of town, and I rushed to get there before seven. Finally I headed out a side road that opened onto a bracken-filled field leading down to the water. A low dock stacked with crates sat at the head of a narrow cove. Out on the mooring was a small and squat ship, its hull rounded like a salad bowl. The wood was jet black, with copper sheathing the lower sections, and the sails were a dark reddish brown. On the side, in red script against the black, it read: Narthex. It had none of the ornamentation of the whalers, just bare wood with grim lines. There were two masts, a main and a foremast, which were placed far forward. In place of a mizzenmast, there was a small smokestack rising from behind the deckhouse. In the low light of morning it was a gloomy and dismal introduction to my new home.

  On the dock, a group of men huddled around a stack of bags and boxes. I could see others ferrying a load out to the ship in a small bark. The men on the dock sat silent as I approached, so I sat. Finally, one spoke:

  “So, what do you think, eh?” This question was addressed to me by a beefy, red-haired giant of a man who sat opposite me. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” He nodded toward the water.

  “Well, she’s . . . I’ve . . . I’ve never seen one like her.”

  He roared with laughter.

  “That’s an honest one, that one,” he said, to no one in particular. “She’s a beast, if ever I’ve seen one.” He rose and walked with elaborate solemnity to the end of the dock. “I christen thee Toad,” he said, “and may your voyages add to your warty splendor.” He cast a last few drops from a flask toward the boat and turned back, chuckling.

  “Well, not the queen, boys, but I’ll have to do.” A few of the men laughed. He returned and sat next to me.

  “I’ve spent my life at sea, and I’ve never seen a monstrosity like her, not even close. I’m just as glad we’re leaving from up here. The jeering we’d take at the town docks’d sink her for shame.” He shook his head and spat. “Still, boat’s a boat as long as she stays business side of the water, I suppose. You been out before?”

  “Just along the coast, some trading, before the war,” I lied.

  He grunted. “Reinhold,” he said, not coldly, and offered up a giant hand. He had a meaty face, not fat, but cut in rough, crude strokes below a thick crop of red hair. His face was scarred heavily, especially around the eyes, so much so that he seemed barely able to see out of them.

  “Brendan Kane,” I said as he crushed my hand. “A pleasure.”

  The other men sat and smoked; one slept with his head against a stack of crates.

  “Pulvis Creely,” said a white-haired sailor.

  “Philip Pago,” said another, with dark skin and dark hair and eyes that he did not bring to meet mine.

  “Will Adney,” said a fair-haired young man from atop a set of crates.

  “Preston,” Reinhold told me, pointing to a small, pale man sleeping in a pile of bags; the man started to cough, gently at first, but then more violently, eventually shaking himself awake. He wiped his hand across his mouth, blinked at us, and resettled himself.

  “What’s this all about exactly?” I asked, trying to sound casual. “I just signed on and didn’t get the whole story.”

  “Not much to get,” said Reinhold, shaking his head. “Two years of work, maybe more, low wages, but a shot at some real money if it goes well.”

  “Whaling?”

  “It’d be mighty small whales we’d be hunting in
that boat,” Creely said. “One good-sized right and we’d have to tow her back in just to cut her up.”

  “It’s a mine,” said Adney, with a shine in his eyes. “Up in Canada. Gold, and West knows where it is. He won’t say anything because he doesn’t want anyone to follow us up. He figured out where a river of gold comes gushing out into the air.” He whirled his hands to demonstrate, his face held gravely. Then he burst out laughing. “And besides, I saw a load of picks and shovels being loaded last night.”

  “It’s not mining,” said Pago, “it’s whaling, sure enough. There’s a fjord on the western coast of Greenland where the whales get trapped every year. It’s long and deep enough to draw the whales up into it; but there’s a huge glacier at the mouth, so when the wind shifts, it blows a load of icebergs down and blocks off the mouth. You can just walk out on the ice and spear them when they come up for air. We don’t need a big ship, because we’re building a camp up there to clean them and try them out. Once we’re established, West’ll send back for a fleet of cargo ships to haul it all back. He’s already got a gang of Eskimos scouting it out. They won’t hunt there—they think it’s cursed. West figures he’s damned already, so he might as well turn a profit on it.”

  This was greeted with a sprinkling of laughter. We fell silent as men rolled these ideas around in their heads.