Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

She looked straight out at the darkness and did not respond. “Miss Peabody, I’m going in now. I hope… I hope that we can resume our conversation tomorrow.”

“Yes,” she said in a thin voice. “That would be nice.”

“Good night, then, Miss Peabody.”

“Yes, good night, Mister Brown.”

I drew myself away and returned the long way around the bow towards the stairs that led belowdecks to our cabin, where Father lay snoring in sleep. She was right, I knew. My troubles were as nothing compared to hers. And much as I wanted to believe that my life, my fate, was sealed and that I was trapped as fully by my character as she was by her pregnant female body, in fact, my fate was not sealed, and I wasn’t trapped. For I was, indeed, my mind. As were most men. And I could change it. I could simply change my mind, as she said.

I could believe the lie that I had told Father and become, like him, a man of religion. Perhaps belief could be willed into existence, just as unbelief could. It would not be entirely a lie anyhow, if, like Father, I was obliged to struggle against unbelief and sometimes, perhaps slightly more often than he, failed. Had he not, especially as a young man, now and then failed to sustain his faith in God?

And I could become a man of action as well. In the war against slavery, I had a wonderful cause, a wide field of worthy endeavor; and in Father I had a fearless and energetic model.

The wind had picked up slightly, and the ship had begun to slip and chop some, and the sails were snapping and the lines crackling overhead. My nausea was edging back. I grabbed up my empty chamber pot where I had left it and quickly descended to our cabin, and I went at once to my bunk and lay down to ponder these new and important matters.

I remember lying in my bunk the next morning, happily re-visiting the scene of the night before and making plans to see Sarah again that day, so that we could pursue the several strands of our conversation further. I was rehearsing sentences to say to her, repeating them to myself, as if memorizing a poem. It was a gray, blustery morning, and Father had earlier gone above for breakfast and to lead the daily prayer service, both of which I had begged off, due to my persistent nausea, which, because of the wind-roughened sea, had worsened somewhat.

He did not return to check on me at his accustomed time, and it was not until late in the afternoon that he finally hove into view at the door of the tiny cabin, holding to the jambs for support against the tossing of the ship. I was lonely and glad to see him, for we had not spoken when he left, and I wanted to tell him about my meeting with the remarkable Miss Peabody.

I had no intentions, of course, of telling him what of her private condition she had revealed to me, or of her beliefs and their profound effect on me, but I thought that he would be interested in hearing about her connections to the New England abolitionists. Actually, I simply wanted to talk about her, to put her into words — to think about her in a concrete way, so that I might be emboldened to seek out her company a second time and then pursue a true friendship with her.

Father sat heavily at the foot of my bunk and placed his Bible upon the narrow shelf beside him. “How goes it, son?” he asked.

“About the same. Worse since the weather turned” I said truthfully. I lay on my side with my knees pulled nearly to my chin.

He stared down at his hands on his lap and seemed oddly preoccupied. “Can I get you something to eat? Have you been drinking water? You must drink, son,” he said in a low, disinterested way.

“I’ve taken my sips, what I can handle, at least. Nothing to eat, though, thanks.”

He sat in silence for several moments, until I asked, “What’s the matter, Father? Is something wrong?”

He sighed. “Ah, yes. There is. The girl I spoke of earlier. The one traveling with her aunt from Salem?”

“Yes? What of her?”

“Ah, the poor, distracted thing. She’s gone and thrown herself into the sea.”

I sat bolt upright and stared at him in disbelief. “What? Miss Peabody? No, that can’t be true! Not Miss Peabody!” I cried. “How could she do such a thing?”

My first thought was that I had abandoned her. Then that she had gone off and left me behind, that she had abandoned me. All my thoughts were accompanied, as if prompted, by anger. And all were of myself. I should not have left her alone. I should have stayed with her the whole night long. I might have protected her against the darkness of her mind. I might have been able to keep her here in this world, for me. I and me.

“Yes, the same,” Father said. “A sad and very disturbing act. I was obliged to preach a good while to the company this morning. I took my text from Jonah. It’s a vexed and anxious company up there today. And the poor aunt, she’s struck down with grief for her niece. I don’t understand it. She must have been a bitter, angry child. I had to struggle just to make sense of it for the others. For her troubles, to shade her against the blazing sun of a woman’s troubles, the Lord God had prepared her a gourd, and she sat beneath it and no doubt was glad of it. But when God prepared also a worm that smote the gourd and made it wither away, she was like Jonah, who wished more to die than to live. Angry as Jonah in Nineveh was that young woman. Even unto death. You know her name, Owen. How’s that?”

“I believe… I believe that you told it to me,” I said, and lay back down.

He slowly let his breath out. “Yes. Well, I really can’t understand it. Suicide always escapes my understanding. Wherefore is light given to her who is in such abject misery, and wherefore is given life unto the bitter in soul? Wherefore, to one who longs for death and digs for it more than for hidden treasures, to one who rejoices exceedingly and is glad when she can find the grave? Wherefore, Owen, indeed? She was a pretty, smart young thing, Owen. I liked talking with her. A little too much educated by Transcendentalism, though. But despite that, I liked her. She talked right smart to me.”

“Did anyone see her go? When did she do it?”

“Sometime in the night. No one saw. Her bed wasn’t slept in, and when her aunt woke, she sent up the alarm, and the ship was searched stem to stern. But the girl was nowhere aboard. Her aunt has collapsed into grief. And regret. And shame, no doubt.”

“Why? I mean, why regret and shame? She didn’t drive the girl to suicide. A man did that. A coward.”

“I know, I know, but her niece was in her care, and she seems to have loved the girl very much, and now she’ll have to report the sad news back to her parents in Massachusetts. The man, well, whoever he is, he’ll burn in hell. That’s for certain.”

“Maybe she’s still somewhere aboard the ship. There must be places they haven’t searched yet. No one came looking for her here, for instance.”

“I vouchsafed this place, Owen. So you wouldn’t be disturbed. No, she threw herself into the sea, poor child.”

“Horrible.”

“Yes. Horrible. She believed not, and she died in her sins.”

Father went on like that for a while longer, as he often did after preaching or following a particularly upsetting event, muttering scraps and bits of Bible afterward, like sparks flaring in a dying fire. But I barely heard him. I drew into myself and tried to shut my eyes against the vision of the young woman dropping into the black sea, where she is cuffed and rolled and then embraced by the waves, until she is drawn down by the awful weight of her soaked clothing, her long, dark hair coming undone and fanning out above her head as she descends, her arms extended as if for balance, head thrown back for a last glimpse of the starry night above, and when she has no breath remaining, she opens her mouth, and the cold water that surrounds her rushes in and fills her, and her icy body plunges unresisting through the ocean like a shaft of light.