Oscar Hijuelos - Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

“THE OTHER DAY, MISS TENNANT,” he began, “when I first came in, you happened to comment on how ‘well’ I looked; and, yes, I would say that on the whole, I am feeling somewhat more fit and better than I have in recent times; just a few months ago, I made a visit to the Swiss Alps to restore my vigor, as, you see, with each of my expeditions a little of my vitality is drawn from me. This is a result not only of the rigors of such expeditions and the want of food and the strange infections that can come over one from a simple cut in the wilds but also from malaria, Miss Tennant, which in Africa is called the mukunguru, or seasoning fever. Even as I sit here, I figure by my own estimation that I have had it at least a hundred times: I never know when it will come upon me. I can be well in the morning and by night laid up in my bed with the fevers and then the chills. The shaking is terrible, and so are the many bad dreams that come to one. In such states, Miss Tennant, one never knows what is real, for many an apparition and demon come visiting the sufferer. In Africa, I heard of an officer attached to one of Cameron’s expeditions blowing his brains out because of the fever, and it has sometimes driven men to deeds of violence toward others or to lewd and lascivious and sometimes blasphemous behavior. Of such madness I have been largely spared, though I have had my share of incredible waking dreams, as it were.”

“And of what kind?” Miss Tennant asked, her interest piqued.

“Oh, I have seen myself as a child, sitting in my own tent, staring at myself; I have seen my dead grandfather Moses and the very great Livingstone, who died of malaria himself, coming seemingly from the afterlife to offer me some words of comfort. But as you can see for yourself, I am here before you in one, admittedly weary, piece; this I owe to the wonders of modern medicine. Livingstone himself invented a remedy that, in his own case, at least put off the worst effects of the disease for many years — his remedy being called a Zambezi rouser — a concoction of calomel, quinine, jalap, and treacle; but lately, thanks to the efforts of a very fine young American chemist, Henry Wellcome, who has come up with a very useful antimalarial pill.

“Still, if I have survived this disease for so long, I think it is because of my early exposure to malaria as a young man in Arkansas. In other words, Providence intended that I have malaria to later protect me.”

“By ‘Providence’ you mean God?”

“I don’t know about that, Miss Tennant: To me, it’s a matter of luck, largely, but after a time, when so many incidents of survival mount up, one sees a pattern and wonders if one is protected. When I was a young soldier with the Confederate forces at the Battle of Shiloh, I saw many of my fellow men shot dead or blown to pieces within a moment or two of my having stood by their side: I could have easily been killed on at least one occasion. Not long afterward, when I was captured during that battle and sent off as a Yankee prisoner of war to a disease-ridden camp outside of Chicago, I survived when so many others, more hardy of body than I, did not. I should tell you, Miss Tennant, that surviving such early experiences — and numerous others — made me feel somewhat fearless when it came to matters of physical courage. Through it all, I learned to maintain a coolness of mind under duress. That, Miss Tennant, is one of my greatest talents, and it has served me well over the years, though”—and here he looked at her woefully—“it has apparently left strangers, who do not know me, with the impression that I am a distant sort.”

“No, Mr. Stanley,” she said. “I would not consider you distant at all; rather, I find that you have much warmth, in your way. From the things you have told me, with your workhouse upbringing and the very difficult path you had to take in this life, it is a wonder to me that you are so remarkably open.”

“Dare I say, Miss Tennant, that there is something in your gentle nature that calms me?”

She sketched the contours of his symmetrical Welsh face: He was rather handsome, though if she were to judge his age, on the basis of his careworn wrinkles and the frown lines that crossed his forehead she would judge him to be a man in his late fifties, though a very fit one. She drew his very sad eyes; they must be beautiful when not rheumy, she thought, and she wondered about what he was thinking as he withdrew into himself during those periods of silence.

“You once mentioned your mother to me, Mr. Stanley; and you said that she did not treat you very well at the workhouse. May I ask if you have since made your peace with her, as I imagine you must have?”

“As I have intimated to you, Miss Tennant,” he began, “Mother was a very hard case. She never cared too much for me, which I blamed on some very great faults of my own. Of the very few conversations I ever had with her as a boy, I can remember her once telling me that she was not really my mother at all but had found me as a swaddling infant in a refuse bin in London. Why she would invent such a thing I cannot say, but I took it as the truth for a very long time. Harsher still was that she had not spoken to me at the workhouse during her stay there — the small substance of which I earlier related to you — and though it was hard for my young mind to comprehend, I attributed her indifference to her shame about her fallen and lowly state; still, I felt as if I could very much love her, and the truth is that a mother is of very great importance to a child, no matter how callous she may be. And so it was, Miss Tennant, that I continued to love her very much, despite the fact that she never answered any of the letters I wrote to her during my years in America.”

“IT TOOK ME A MONTH to arrive in Liverpool. Forty miles south of Liverpool lay Denbigh, Wales, and as I was determined to get there, I walked most of the way, some carriage drivers taking me for small distances along the route. I came to the district of Denbigh looking like a disheveled and unkempt young beggar. In Glascoed, inquiring after my mother, I was told of the whereabouts of her inn and cottage: And so it was that under the watchful eyes of many suspicious-minded villagers I knocked on her door one afternoon.

“‘Do you not recognize me? I am your son, John,’ I pleaded, but she closed the door on me quickly and sent me away. Having no place to go, I lingered for a time, until her husband, an earnest-seeming sort of man, came out to tell me that she was in a particularly bad way, since one of their children, a boy, had recently died of meningitis; but it was Mr. Jones who invited me in for the night. I was given a meal and a bed, and while my mother’s husband treated me with the greatest of courtesy, I could see that my mother, with her own brood of children to contend with, had neither the time nor the patience to deal with my misfortunes. ‘We barely get along as it is,’ she told me. ‘You are welcome here for the night, but in the morning you must go,’ she added. Shortly, with some very great agitation, I forlornly lay down in a bed, a great feeling of dejection having entered my mind.”

At this point, Dorothy Tennant, looking up from her canvas, asked, “What did you do?”

Stanley, thinking seriously upon this comment, then said, “I decided to become Stanley, for good, if you must know. If there was any one moment when I decided to put my past completely aside, that was it. If I was already known as Henry Stanley in America, I resolved to become Henry Stanley in Wales.”

“FOUR YEARS WOULD PASS before I would see her again. By then I had become a journalist in the American West and had taken up further travels. I was on my way back to America from Turkey when I decided to make a visit to Denbigh by coach from Manchester. By then I had some money in my pocket. Surely an observer who had seen my pathetic self in earlier days would have noticed the marked improvement in my circumstances. I was well groomed and smartly dressed in a naval officer’s uniform and brand-new shoes. This time, when I knocked on her door, I am happy to say that I made a much better impression on her. The dear lady was so taken by my distinguished manner and the evidence of my progress in life that she invited me to spend the night with her family — even insisted that I do so — instead of staying in a room in their inn. Ah, but I made her proud then: As she was very pleased by my air of success, she invited some of her neighbors to hear me speak of my adventures in the Civil War and of my recent travels. Afterward she cooked me a good stew, and for that night, at least, I found that I had a little family: my half sister Emma, Mr. Jones, and two of my mother’s little children. Altogether I had a most congenial time with her, and though we were far from close, Miss Tennant, I was deeply pleased by the advances I had made upon her by way of our relations.”