Kraken in a Coffee Cup: 9
Chapter 9
I missed a week due to my stepfather’s memorial. That wasn’t even intentional, but with everything, scheduling the post was overlooked.
Table of Contents
If you’re new to the story, I suggest beginning with the table of contents so you’ll understand the origins of the text and why I say it was co-authored by Herman Melville.
A reminder:
Our lad was rescued from the street by a black-eyed widow and sent to sea to sail with her late husband. That journey ended with him landing aboard the Shade, a ship that sails beneath the waves, claiming the souls of drowned sailors.
For Sheol leave, the Shade has traveled to the city of the Sireners, built from the cast of debris of the top-side world.
And now,
Kraken in a Coffee Cup.
Chapter Nine
Fiery pit! fiery pit! you insult me; past all natural bearing, you insult me. Say again I’ve signed my soul to deliver humanity unto hell. Flukes and flames! Start my soul-bolts, but I’ll swallow a live goat with all his hair and horns on.
(I am alone in my thoughts and careful not to loose them adrift into these open waters; lock them away at the Inn, in this room where I’m a new-born, a lubber, unsteady and unsure.)
Fiery pit. (Now weaker than before.) Sea of flames. I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, wherever I sail. I’ll chart the path of my own ship and not be directed to hell by her own demons. {In truth, I chart nothing but go where I must by maps of charity and kindness.)
Somewhere above, by an ever-brimming goblet’s rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun—slow dives from noon—goes down; and souls mount up! But not mine; she wearies with her endless hill. Time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred me, so the sunset soothed. No more. Her lovely light, it lights not me; all loveliness is lost. Gifted now with truth’s perception, I am damned, most subtly and most malignantly! damned in the midst of paradise, for here no paradise be.
I’m demoniac. That wild demon that’s only calm to comprehend itself! The path to my fated purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run.
{I ease over the transparent, glowing mattress, thinking I will sink onto its surface, but it consumes me and holds me in a womb of comfort and light. Calm washes over my anguished soul, and the impossibility of sleep rolls in like waves gathered in the storm.)
What now I might wish, has no bearing; the course I’ve set cannot be changed.
(I wake to tranquility and think myself at peace with fate, but when risen from my cocoon, I find my miseries waiting.)
Oh, God! to sail with such a hellbent crew that have so small a touch of human mothers in them! Hark! the infernal orgies! their revelry wakes the city! mars the unfaltering silence of the day! But there is no day on ocean’s bottom. Sireners set out to sea to escape the drink, but our crew, whelped somewhere in the sharkish sea, come here to drown. Dionysus is their demogorgon.
(Again, I flee the endless night of Sirene and sink into sleep’s warm glow where mind-numbed dreams come undisturbed and undisturbing, a gentle breeze to counter a real-world gale; but wakefulness won’t be put off forever.)
#
Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!—I’ve been dreaming over it ever since, and that ha, ha’s the final consequence. Why so? Because a laugh’s the wisest, easiest answer to all that’s peculiar; and come what will, one comfort’s always left—that unfailing comfort is, it’s all predestined. I heard none of this talk upon the Shade; but to my poor eye, Ligeia looked like truth, in sympathy speaking despite all I, the other evening, felt; for no emotion arisen in me caught her by surprise; she might readily have prophesied it. I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing. Such a waggish leering as lurks in all your taverns, I will there join the crew and drink my madness numb. Come, give a party to the soulman last-arrived, I dare say, happy as a frigate’s pennant.
SOULMEN OF THE SHADE:
Now let ev'ry man drink his full bumper,
And let ev'ry man drink his full glass;
We'll drink and be jolly
And drown melancholy;
Here's to the health of a true-hearted lass.
SIRENE SAILOR: Oh, boys, don’t be sentimental; it’s bad for the digestion! Take a tonic, follow me!
Seek thy rest on fortune’s chest,
And find fate’s circle closing;
And meet thy end,
Where thee begin;
Thy heart’s true wont exposing.
THE CABIN BOY: There at last, our newest soul reborn!
MYSELF: (A fresh mug risen)
We’ll drink tonight with hearts as light,
To love, as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim, on a beaker’s brim,
And break on the lips while meeting.
A brave Bacchus that, who saves the stove from drowning in his sorrow by drowning him in drink.
#
For several days after leaving my room, I see nothing of the captain and think nothing of it, my own seclusion being culprit aplenty. The men rally each other out of one spent tavern and into another with boon to spare, and for naught to the contrary, we’re the only crew in town; only the men on occasion issue from a tavern with such sober haste, it’s plain our commander keeps his separate company, to which we’re not invited. Yes, our supreme lord and dictator is here, though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted to penetrate his most sacred retreat.
Except, there comes a day when I’m at the head of the movable feast; we stumble up the captain and those Sireners with him and excuse ourselves and retreat to the door, an army out-manned if not outnumbered, when he calls out.
“Lad, come. Sit with me.”
I stand still while the others make their exit. “Me, sir?”
As one body, the Sireners move, and now there is only the captain at the table and only me approaching.
“You’ve not earned your name, lad.” He pushes out a chair.
I take the chair, and a mug is supplied beside me. “No, sir. Did they give you one?”
“When you have your name, you’ll know all others. I’d heard tale you disappeared with Ligeia.”
“I disappeared alone for a while but am better now. I think there’s a tavern or two we’ve actually visited twice.”
“Were you ill?”
By his face, I can see he knows I was not, but poorly can I understand the solemnity and whimsicalities of his insight, our own prophet of the wharves and waves. Whatever my apprehension, his look is firm but kind; it seems against all warrantry to cherish such emotions.
“It’s been explained to me,” I say. “The voyage we’ve taken isn’t the voyage that was proposed.”
“As above, so below; all that is, we’ve not supposed.”
“The crew misbelieves that we deliver to one hell, and the Sireners, another; one good and the other evil, when they are, in fact, the same.”
“The great body of the crew is far too barbaric, christianish, and motley to understand the vagaries of truth,” he says. “Even the Sireners have made no attempt to persuade them.”
His description of the crew makes me pause; better men could not readily be found, each in his own way, and they hold him in such lofty admiration. I wonder should the belittling warrant the jolt which rattles me; had I the experience, perhaps it should’ve been expected. He despises the merchant service, but he’s no different; calling each man to serve for a deceptive portion. A captain who renders a lying wage must recite that it’s his crew’s true earnings.
“Was there anything more?” he asks. “Ask anything but the way back home. There may be a going home for some of us, but what way remains, you won’t find it. I’ve journeyed longer than I can remember and wouldn’t be here if disembarking this fate were as easy as sailing into port.”
“My purpose here, sir; I’m told you mean me to fill the role left empty by your fallen first mate.”
For a time he only shakes his head, such that, when finally he answers, the sound of his voice is a relief. “He was an American, a Cape man. It was Christmas, and a ship sailing to escape the winter was capsized by a storm’s rogue wave; all hands lost. A soul or two may escape notice, but that many at once stirs hell’s hunger; the beast caught us in our duty. My first did not survive.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Ligeia was misleading; you are not meant as his replacement.”
In my chest, I feel the bite of polar weather and its merciless winter; no fair wind blows in all the earth, and every morning is gray and gloomy and forever will be.
“I understand,” I say.
He levels his gaze. “You’re meant as mine.”
(Go to Chapter 10)
—Thaddeus Thomas
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