Genoa (7 page)

          
“It should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping the body of the leviathan, he was beheaded. Now, the beheading of the Sperm Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced whale surgeons very much pride themselves: and not without reason.

                
“Consider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a neck; on the contrary, where his head and body seem to join, there, in that very place, is the thickest part of him. Remember, also, that the surgeon must operate from above, some eight or ten feet intervening between him and his subject, and that subject almost hidden in a discolored, rolling, and oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea. Bear in mind, too, that under these untoward circumstances he has to cut many feet deep in the flesh; and in that subterraneous manner, without so much as getting one single peep into the ever-contracting gash thus made, he must skilfully steer clear of all adjacent, interdicted parts, and exactly divide the spine at a critical point hard by its insertion into the skull. Do you not marvel, then, at Stubb’s boast, that he demanded but ten minutes to behead a sperm whale?

                
“When first severed, the head is dropped astern and held there by a cable till the body is stripped. That done, if it belong to a small whale it is hoisted on deck to be deliberately disposed of. But, with a full grown leviathan this is impossible; for the sperm whale’s head embraces nearly one third of his entire bulk, and completely to suspend such a burden as that, even by the immense tackles of a whaler, this were as vain a thing as to attempt weighing a Dutch barn in jeweller’s scales.”

There is this about Carl: all the evidence indicates that he was conceived out of wedlock. There was the hasty wedding, and his birth in less than the full time thereafter. Mother’s only comment was that he was a fast baby, but perhaps that’s the way she wished to
think of him. The only mystery to me is that she ever consented to conceive and bear another—myself—after the time she must have had in delivering Carl.

There was Tashtego, dipping sperm oil by the bucketful from the whale’s head:

          
“. . . but, on a sudden, as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came suckingly up—my God! poor Tashtego—like the twin reciprocating bucket in a veritable well, dropped head-foremost down into this great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling, went clean out of sight!

          
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“‘Stand clear of the tackle!’ cried a voice like the bursting of a rocket.

                
“Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass dropped into the sea, like Niagara’s Table-Rock into the whirlpool; the suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering copper; and all caught their breath, as half swinging—now over the sailors’ heads and now over the water—Daggoo, through a thick mist of spray, was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous tackles, while poor, buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to the bottom of the sea! But hardly had the blinding vapor cleared away, when a naked figure with a boarding sword in his hand, was for one swift moment seen hovering over the bulwarks. The next a loud splash announced that my brave Queequeg had dived to the rescue. One packed rush was made to the side, and every one counted every ripple, as moment followed moment, and no sign of either the sinker or the diver could be seen. Some hands now jumped into a boat alongside, and pushed a little off from the ship.

                
“‘Ha! ha!’ cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging perch overhead; and looking further off from the side, we saw an arm thrust upright from the blue waves; a sight strange to see, as an arm thrust forth from the grass over a grave.

                
“‘Both! both!—it is both!’—cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout; and soon after, Queequeg was seen striking out with
one hand, and with the other clutching the long hair of the Indian. Drawn into the waiting boat, they were quickly brought to the deck; but Tashtego was long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk.

                
“Now, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving after the slowly descending head, Queequeg with his keen sword had made side lunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there; then dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards, and so hauled out poor Tash by the head. He averred, that upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well knowing that that was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great trouble;—he had thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a somerset upon the Indian; so that with the next trial, he came forth in the good old way—head foremost. As for the great head itself, that was doing as well as could be expected.”

As a boy, Carl went through a period of monumental hay fever marked by no ordinary sneezes, but by explosions, one following another in rapid succession so that they seemed continuous, his eyes, nose, and mouth become fountains. I see him now as I came upon him one day, where he had gone to isolate himself during an attack, in an unused room of the house. Glancing at me, through bloodshot, aqueous eyes, he turned, in sequence, to the four points of the compass, saluting each with a shattering blast that doubled him over, scattered spray to the walls, and brought his forehead nearly to his feet. Subsiding a moment, shoulders and head hanging to one side, he turned to me and spoke, the words running together in his wet mouth:

          
“I must have the ocean in my head.”

And there were allusions, legendary in the family—to a difficulty immediately following his birth. The doctor diagnosed
Hydrocephalus Internus:

          
“In
infants,
the most notable symptom is the progressive enlargement of the head. The fontanels remain open and are tense, and
often the sagittal suture fails to close . . . The bones of the skull are thin. The face of the child appears small because of the cranial enlargement and the bulging overhanging forehead. The hair is thin. The skin appears to be tightly stretched and the veins are prominent. The thin orbital plates are pushed downward, with displacement of the eyeballs, so that each iris and often a part of the pupil is covered by the lower lid, and the sclera is visible above. Optic neuritis, followed by optic atrophy, results from pressure of the distended third ventricle upon the chiasm. Strabismus is usually present. The child’s head has a tendency to fall backward or to one side, and cannot be held erect. The extremities and trunk are thin and there is rigidity, especially of the abductor muscles. Late in the disease there is spasticity. Convulsions are caused by pressure on the cortex. If the child walks at all, it is with difficulty. Mental development is usually arrested and varying degrees of mental deficiency result, depending upon the amount of ventricular distortion and the severity of the pressure.”

But the condition disappeared, as mysteriously as it had arrived, and the doctor could only assume that there had been a rupture or absorption of adhesions. This was the beginning—the headwaters, perhaps—of a series of unique medical phenomena that occurred throughout Carl’s generally robust life.

Shifting in the chair, I get to my feet, stand up, and look down at the row of books: the medical books. I think again of my diploma, unframed, and of the back-breaking burden of dollars and hope—my own and my parents’—invested in my education. There is the sound of television and children from downstairs. Sitting again, leaning on my elbows, I recall a visit to a hospital ward, when the doctor, knowing me for a medical student, pointed out a crippled youth, and asked me, half-facetiously, what I would do for him:

                            
there was the face, the

                            
white-blue face, and the body,

                            
the young man, band leader,

                            
he had sleep-walked out a

                            
second-story window to be found

                            
legs paralyzed

                            
from the hips down,

                            
hands stove,

                            
and the eyes,

                            
the pale blue watery

                            
eyes . . .

                            
they sent him home, and

                            
he lives now, on a narrow board

                            
of a bed, day and night,

                            
smoking,

                            
attended by a mother who

                            
shuts the door . . .

What would I do:

                            
to bring back,

                            
to save,

                            
to return,

                            
a not very talented musician . . .

And there is Melville, in W
HITE
-J
ACKET
:

          
“Strange! that so many of those who would fain minister to our own health should look so much like invalids themselves.”

And Carl, reading Melville:

          
“In the case of a Sperm Whale the brains are accounted a fine dish. The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two plump, whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large puddings), they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable mess . . .”

And, again, the way he held the book, possessing it, as though the open halves of it were themselves two plump, whitish lobes . . . he smiled broadly, smacking his lips.

Letting my eyes close, and my arms hang over the sides of the chair—I experience motion once more,

not this time as the house pitching, the stocks dragging, but as a thing, familiar, expected; as a man might climb into his berth before his ship is underway, and then the motion, the departure, the gentle slipping away from the wharf, comes as a thing good and confirming.

Melville, regarding M
ARDI
, in a letter:

          
“. . . proceeding in my narrative of facts, I began to feel an incurable distaste for the same; & a longing to plume my powers for a flight, & felt irked, cramped & fettered by plodding along with dull commonplaces,—So suddenly abandoning the thing altogether, I went to work heart & soul at a romance which is now in fair progress . . .”

The illusion I have is of being split from head to toe, as in hemiplegia or an imperfect twinning process—with separate circulation on each side, the blood rushing furiously. There are no recalls, no flashing images, no digging in and rooting of the body—rather, the beginning of a journey such as I have never before taken

GENOA

ONE

T
HERE WAS THE MAN
from Genoa, who went to sea at fourteen, and

          
“I have been twenty-three years upon the sea without quitting it for any time long enough to be counted, and I saw all the East and West . . .”

A Man

          
“. . . of a good size and looks, taller than the average and of sturdy limbs; the eyes lively and the other features of the face in good proportion; the hair very red; and the complexion somewhat flushed and freckled; a good speaker, cautious and of great talent and an elegant latinist and a most learned cosmographer, graceful when he wished, irate when he was crossed . . .”:

Christopher Columbus.

The wind rises again, sifting through the cracks at the eaves, and I draw close to the old chimney. My head seems large, and my legs feel as though joined, wedge-shaped. I read

that twenty-five thousand years ago Cro-Magnon man invaded Europe, from unknown origins. He was tall, averaging above six feet, and had a large brain case, larger than any known man of the present. Settling in southern France, he pushed over the mountains, to the Spanish Peninsula. He worshipped bulls, and buried his dead facing west,

the direction in which he migrated, moving, perhaps, all the way to the brink, the eaves of the unknown ocean, to Cabo de Sao Vicente, which Columbus called “the beginning of Europe.”

Eastward on the map, there is Genoa, at the northernmost pitch of the Ligurian Sea, with land and water falling away southwestward,

just as, beyond Gibraltar, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, from Palos the ocean falls away from the land, again southwestward,