Not Quite Dead (6 page)

For a sense of America’s true position we have only to look to France, America’s sister in freedom, whose citizens have proclaimed a New French Republic and rid themselves of the autocrat who stole the throne.

Or let us look to Prague, Rome, Berlin—where the spirit of liberty has set explosions in the streets. Or Vienna, whose emperor fled in terror and whose serfs have been set free.

As Mr. Washington said,
Liberty
,
when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth
.

But how thrives liberty in the United States of America? What can one divine about a republican government led by a party whose members unashamedly refer to themselves as
Whigs?
And how thrive the serfs on this side of the ocean— America’s niggers, black, red, and white?

Tyranny, it seems, when it begins to take root, is also a plant of rapid growth.

Irish-Americans, you were taken to these shores by Almighty God for one purpose—to kindle the New American Revolution. That is the meaning of our suffering. That is our God-given task.

My associate, Lieutenant O’Reilly, will now pass among you. Think upon your homeland and what she has suffered, and give as your heart, your courage, and your patriotism dictate …

CHAPTER
SEVEN

Baltimore

I
t has been observed by Gerber, among others, how a sudden injury or shock to the system can strain the mind to the point of delirium—symptoms resulting not so much from the disturbance itself as from the subsequent flight of the imagination into realms of terror that have little to do with the instigating event. This, and the concentrating effect of the cocaine, would account for the behavior of my friend: long stretches of total lucidity, followed by a sudden collapse into delusion and disarray, like a man in a whirlpool.

“Forgive me, Eddie, but you have spent the past hours dropping dreadful hints, with no evidence other than a nameless female cadaver and a bag of someone’s teeth.”

“I was about to explain when you collapsed. You really must have that seen to.”

“I shall see to myself if you don’t mind. This is about the cadaver and the teeth.”

“I warn you that it is horrible …” His face briefly assumed the expression of a man in the throes of great distress, genuine or not.

“If you are going to become fevered and excitable, as your doctor I cannot permit you to continue.”

Nodding agreement, he produced from his valise a number of envelopes, in bundles wrapped with twine. He opened one bundle and extracted an envelope. Opening each envelope, he withdrew several squares of newsprint, which he carefully unfolded and laid out on the tea table side by side.

“What is this, Eddie? Are you about to tell my fortune?”

Poe shook his head with a bitter laugh and turned one of the clippings to face me. It was from the
Baltimore Sun
. “Read this, and tell me if you see any mention of missing teeth.”

BODY FOUND

FELL’S POINT——
The corpse of a woman was discovered Wednesday morning by workmen in an alley near the City Dock. It has been learned by the
Church Times
that the victim was a “fallen woman” and that she had been “interfered with.”

   “A most disturbing incident,” said Constable Dilts, the officer at the scene. “And a reminder of the wages of sin.”

On the back of the clipping had been written, “Berenice”—the title of one of Eddie’s more tasteless efforts, in which a monomaniac becomes obsessed with the teeth of his once-beautiful, ailing wife, and pulls them out while she is in a cataleptic condition and he in a trance. Reading it caused the hairs on my arms to stand on end, and for a time I developed an unhealthy fascination for women’s teeth.

“Answer me this, Willie: Who would know about the poor woman’s missing teeth, other than her murderer?”

I
T HURTS A
man’s dignity to think that a friendship (or a marriage for that matter) can endure simply for lack of an alternative. Yet that is possibly what determined our long-standing association, at least from my point of view.

I had no boyhood companion other than Eddie Poe. Were it not for his company I might never have left the house. Part of my attachment must have stemmed from simple gratitude, for including me in the Butcher Cats; and I can still summon up a lingering aftertaste of the elation I experienced, the day he swam from Ludlow’s Wharf to Warwick.

Yet I despised him too, and not only for his theft of Mother’s affection. When I was not blaming myself for her death, I blamed him. Nothing in our house—certainly not Father nor I—inflamed her imagination the way Eddie did. Except for Eddie, our house was a
model of restraint and responsibility and self-control. He was the rat in the henhouse, the one who created chaos.

Yet our association continued through school, and though he graduated a year before I did, we exchanged letters thereafter and remained, outwardly at least, the best of friends; so that upon my own graduation I joined him at United States Military Academy, West Point, where we arranged to room together.

However, only a few weeks into our first term I began to observe an alteration in my friend’s temperament, and from that point my spirit struggled to wriggle free of his grasp.

During our year’s separation Eddie had acquired an overbearing sense of his own intellectual superiority. In conversation, his manner was aloof and dismissive. He delighted in gulling anyone he regarded as his inferior (there were many), and was soundly resented for it. For a time a rumor circulated about the college that he was a descendent of Benedict Arnold, such was the popular estimation of his character.

In the short time we roomed together at West Point, I saw that his boyhood habit of exaggeration and falsification had swelled to grotesque proportions—sea voyages he had never taken, famous people he had never met, political and theological insights he did not possess.

Physically, though still decidedly handsome, his deportment took on an inappropriate languor for a young cadet. And he was perpetually short of funds, for which he blamed (with good reason) his niggardly guardian. This funding imbalance he sought to remedy through gambling, with only intermittent success. And he had begun to drink. And, as always, he wrote lugubrious poetry, which he insisted on reciting whether you wanted to hear it or not.

It is to my regret that I never found the grit to rebuke him for these unfortunate traits. Instead, ever the loyal second, I nodded at his arguments, laughed at his jokes, applauded his tales—and planned my escape.

(Lest I appear vindictive in describing Eddie at West Point, note that the Conduct Book of 1830-1831 lists a total of 106 conduct points against him, for lack of attendance in parades, roll calls, classes, and for refusing to attend church.)

For a young man who sought only to do his duty and thereby succeed, Eddie Poe became a dangerous cadet to know. Halfway through
the term I gathered my courage and applied for another room, for the stated reason that my roommate and I practiced incompatible study habits—which was, in a sense, true. Eddie accepted that explanation with an equanimity I shall never forget. Nothing he did or said galled me like his indifference to my absence.

In the act of writing that last paragraph, suddenly I begin to realize why Eddie Poe continues to stir up such resentment:
it was because of him that I became a doctor
.

In witnessing Mother’s mental deterioration in my friend’s company, I came to sense the danger to my own reason. As their mutual transport grew more intense, I spent less time listening to their verses and more time out-of-doors, adding to my collection of rocks and insects. I took refuge in science.

When father brought Dr. Emory to explain to me why Mother would not be living with us in future, my faith in science enabled me to take heart from the logic it represented. When she died, it never occurred to me to put her death to her scientific mistreatment, nor did it seem appropriate, under the circumstances, for me to weep.

In later years, science served me well—up to a point. At Resaca de Palma I removed men’s legs and arms by the dozen with hardly a qualm—not because I felt indifferent to their plight, but because I refused to give free reign to my imagination. I did not ask what the procedure might feel like were it to happen to me. Had I indulged in such imagining, I should have succumbed earlier to mental infirmity, or killed more men through medical blunders than I probably did.

My nervous collapse, when it occurred, was the result of simple exhaustion, though some had it otherwise, pointing to my family history of mental instability. According to an alienist assigned to my case, I was not driven mad by what I saw at Monterey, I was driven mad by my mother.

My honorable discharge from the service remains sketchy in memory. I have a bronze medallion on a green and white ribbon, labeled
1846 MEXICAN WAR 1846
, with an eagle clutching a snake on one side and an eagle with wings spread on the other. I once wondered why I earned only the one decoration, but later read that it was the only one issued from that ugly conflict:
you were there. Let us leave it at that
.

For his part, Eddie Poe left West Point in disgrace during my second term, under circumstances having to do with gambling debts.
Opinions differed as to his activities afterward. Some said he had taken a ship to England under the name Henri Le Rennet; others had it that he joined the United States Army as Richard A. Perry.

I made every effort to avoid keeping track of his subsequent life and career—not an easy task in later years with “The Raven” on display on every magazine cover, every bookstore window, every repetition of the word
nevermore
. I wanted no part of the inward stirrings he evoked in his admirers. Despite his artistic gifts, he was not going to do to me what he did to Mother.

Now he sat before me, sipping medicated tea with the delicacy of an aesthete, taking white powder from a salter he carried in his valise (he took it up the nostril like snuff, something I had not seen before), and giving voice to the most outlandish suspicions, in tones resonating with apparent truth.

“Well now, Eddie,” I said. “Let us assume for the moment that the victim in the newspaper is indeed the unfortunate woman downstairs. I fail to see where that leads us. And as for the teeth you produced— how are we to know they were her teeth? They could have been anyone’s teeth, don’t you see?”

“Whether or not they are the same teeth is entirely beside the point. It is part of an ongoing, deliberate attack on the validity of my work.”

“Please explain that last bit, for it is gibberish to me.”

“Surely you are familiar with my
Collected Tales.”

“I regret to say no.” This was a lie, for in fact I read and loathed every page, some more than once.

“Even you, Willie? In America, has the written word become debased to such an extent that old friends cannot be bothered to read one another?”

I found this line of thought more than a little pompous—that a reluctance to read the tales of Edgar Allan Poe sounded the death knell of the language.

“You needn’t put it that way,” I replied. “It happens that I prefer fact to fiction.”

“And what of art, Willie? What of the imagination?”

“I like a good painting. I enjoy a fantasy as much as the next fellow. I dream preposterous events every night for five to eight hours. But when I wake up I am pleased to do so, and I find nothing so tiresome as hearing about the dreams of others.”

“Even your oldest friend?”

“Especially so, Eddie.”

“I suppose you took no notice of the publication of my tales in
Grahams
and the
Southern Messenger
—Not even ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’?”

“Have you ever been to France, Eddie?”

“No.”

“Then why should I wish to read it? Besides, I read a report that was unfavorable.”

“Oh really? And who was the butcher on this occasion?” The expression on Poe’s face was one I would describe as an unbecoming sneer.

“If you must know, the review was actually the introduction to your
Collected Tales
. Yes, I did purchase it, but was discouraged from reading further by your own editor. The essay painted you as a madman in the vein of de Sade. Not so much an artist as a symptom. I thought he made a valid point.”

Poe immediately became so agitated that I feared he would fall into a fit of apoplexy. “Griswold! How hideously appropriate that you should mention him now!”

“I am not aware that I did.”

“There is only one
Collected Tales
, and it is edited by Griswold.”

“I believe it might have been he. A man of considerable repute, I’m told. A man of character and good sense.”

“It is Griswold behind this whole affair. I am certain of it. His entire life is directed against me and my work.”

“I see.” Indeed, I did—that his mind had again slipped into delusion. “What is your evidence, Eddie? And if you have evidence, why not present it to the police?”

He shook his head wearily, as though dealing with an inferior pupil who had failed to grasp a fundamental point.

“I understand that you think me mad, Willie. Sometimes I think so myself. Yet I beg you, listen to what I have to tell you. At the end, I will abide by your judgment. If you consign me to a madhouse, so be it. If I require medicines and enemas and ice baths, bring them on. But I implore you to hear me out, if only as a tribute to the memory of your mother, and the sentiments we once shared.”

Mother. He would bring her into the discussion. How base of him, to use her memory (of which I retain hardly a shred) to influence me!

I refreshed my cup of tea, sat back in my chair and, in spite of everything, listened.