Poe must die

SEVEN

“I shall be blunt, Mr. Poe.”

“Which means, Mr. Standish, that you are prepared to beat me about the head with unpleasant truths while expecting me to admire your courage in doing so. We despise each other, you and I, and having established that let us proceed.”

Miles Standish, plump, red bearded and well groomed in a suit of orange and green plaid, continued as though he hadn’t heard. “I shall be blunt, Mr. Poe. You have ambitions-”

“A contamination which afflicts you as well.”

“You seek money, sir. A great deal of it. I am referring to your attempts to finance a magazine which you would publish and edit. ‘The Stylus’ I believe you propose to call it, and I ask you now, is it your intention to squeeze money from Rachel-”

“Sir, you are objectionable!” Poe was on his feet, soft southern voice trembling. The part of him that loved violence wanted to take a whip to this pompous fool and slice him into bleeding strips. Poe’s nostrils flared with rage; a vein throbbed on his high pale forehead.

He fought for control, forcing himself to speak slowly. “You are accusing me of using my relationship with a lady for personal profit. That is something I cannot forgive.”

Miles Standish touched his steel-rimmed spectacles with manicured fingers, then hooked his thumbs into the pockets of a green silk waistcoat. Poe was poor, a walking bundle of rags, the writer of unprofitable books. Failure is the only crime, thought Standish and Poe was guilty of it and therefore should be despised.

Standish said, “She is a woman quite rich. Need I say that she is also vunerable at the moment, having lost her husband both in life and in death. I am given to understand that you prefer she not pay the ransom-”

“The money to be snatched from the outstretched palms of the ghouls and pressed into mine. I believe that is your train of thought.”

“It is no secret, Mr. Poe, that you have tried for years and failed to get the money to publish your own magazine. Your personal problems are, of course, your concern. But we are discussing my client and she represents a possible upturn in your, let us say, sorry fortunes.”

Standish inhaled snuff from between his thumb and forefinger, sneezed to clear his head, then wiped his nose with an orange silk handkerchief. “That is, if she agrees to help you and let me say I shall do all in my power to see that she does not.”

Poe looked down at his worn, snow-wet boots. Battered leather on a spotless, pearl gray carpet. He and Miles Standish were in the billiard room of the lawyer’s Washington Square mansion, a large room with a billiard table, rocking chairs, huge desk, fireplace and stained glass windows alive with the morning sun. The room represented money, something which had eluded Poe all of his life. He didn’t need Standish to remind him of this.

Poe stared at a stained glass window, losing himself in its sensuous beauty, in its bright green, red, purple. He’d always been poor. Practically all of his writing had been short pieces-stories, poems, criticisms, journalism. Quick writing for quick money; he’d never known the luxury of enough cash to attempt longer works. Fast Eddy. Do it in a hurry, collect your few coins and stand ready to do it all over again. Run like a frightened deer. Live from dollar to dollar and watch your wife starve because you couldn’t feed her.

His eyes went to the walls covered with red wallpaper, expensive oil paintings and several highly polished gas jets. No cheap tallow candles for Miles Standish. No oil in a wooden dish with a wick tossed in to furnish the most meager of lights. He had excellent lighting and now he wanted the best of women. He wanted Rachel and that’s why he was attacking Poe. He wanted Poe to know his place. Miles Standish was a fleshy fool who believed himself better than Poe, and Poe, always with a need to prove his superiority, was now going to show Standish that he’d made a mistake with this assumption.

Poe sat down. “I assume you know what a Barnburner is. If not, allow me to enlighten you. A Barnburner is a member of that fool faction of the Democratic Party who is against slavery. These rather meddlesome fools are quite willing to destroy this country by seeking active conflict with slave interests. They are like the farmer anxious to rid his barn of rats and does so by burning the barn down. So much for the origin of the name. ”

Poe steepled his fingers under his chin. “How much money would it cost you, Mr. Standish, if those southern cotton growers you represent on Wall Street for high fees were to learn that you, sir, are a Barnburner, that you contribute money, secretly of course, to anti-slavery causes? Would they be pleased to hear that their New York lawyer is a hypocrite, that he only pretends to favor slavery while secretly doing whatever he can to bring it to an end.”

Standish frowned. Some of the arrogance was gone from his voice. “And you, sir, are in favor of slavery?”

“Indeed. Now and forever more. I was raised in Virginia where my family owned and sold slaves and I say to you that there is no shame in this. Had God preferred the Negro to be freed, he most certainly would have done it before now. Since our darker brethren continue in servitude, it is logical to assume that this is in harmony with divine providence. Negroes represent a danger-”

“Danger?”

“Insurrection, sir. Insurrection. There have been more than a few in the history of the republic and each one has meant hazard to the white man and all that he holds dear. Servitude is preferable to the dangers of insurrection. I might add most slaves are loyal and most masters responsible. I see no reason to damage this acceptable balance.”

“And you now threaten to expose what you refer to as my abolitionist sympathies.”

“I remind you, sir, that I am neither your dog nor the carpet beneath your feet and your attempts at putting me in my place go unheeded.”

Standish, standing near the fireplace, took another pinch of snuff. God above, the man was indeed “mad, bad and dangerous,” which is what they said of Byron, who at least had the decency to be dead these past twenty-four years and consequently was less of a burden than he ordinarily might be. Poe was very much alive, unfortunately. And how did he find out about Standish’s anti-slavery activities? How.

He said, “Rachel says you are not pleased about her association with Dr. Paracelsus.”

Poe snorted. “Spiritualism may be as new as the morning sun but I believe it to be fraud. Complete. Utter. Fraud.” With each word, he slammed his right palm down hard on his knee. “Your spiritualism, sir, thrives on those possessing open mouth, open eyes, open purse. These parasites, for what else can one call them, present more jeopardy to your client than I do.”

“You have not met Dr. Paracelsus.”

“An honor I am prepared to forego.”

Poe sneered, making no attempt to hide his contempt for Miles Standish. Here stands a lawyer in clothing the color of carrot and cabbage telling me of his belief in table rattlings and ghostly noises emanating from avaricious charlatans. Said lawyer then draws a breath or two and uses it to push forth freedom for Negroes. Stupidity compounded.

Poe said, “Are you still entertained by watching the medical profession carve rotting cadavers?”

Standish clenched his fists at his side. He aimed his red-bearded chin at Poe and spoke from behind clenched teeth. “You morbid little bastard. How dare you? How dare you! The world knows you crawl about in the night on your hands and knees baying at the moon like a crazed hound and your own soul is none too stable. You live in a most peculiar world, which is why your writings have failed to fill even your belly.”

“Rachel will never love you, Standish. Even supposing you lacked a wife, which you do not, Rachel would not love you.”

Standish fought for control. He snorted, aiming a trembling forefinger at Poe. “What does a freak like you know of love. Everyone is aware that you bow before every woman you meet, like some whimpering schoolboy. You adore them, worship them, place no other gods before them and we men laugh at you, yes laugh. Behind your back, when you leave the room, when you walk towards us. We laugh, for you are a romantic ass.”

Standish took one step forward. The corners of his mouth were white with saliva. His eyes gleamed with menace. “You married your first cousin did you not?”

Poe blinked.

Standish whispered, “She was twelve years old, a fact concealed from authorities at the time. And you, you were twenty-six and her own mother consented to this bizarre arrangement. Bizarre, I say, for it is known that the two of you never lay together as man and wife should. You are not a man to lay with any woman so do not talk to me of love.”

Poe, rigid with rage, gripped the arms of the dark brown leather chair he sat in. “From this day, you have made of me a most unforgiving enemy.”

Miles Standish smiled and bowed from the waist. “An honor I am prepared to accept.”

Poe said, “And are you still involved with prostitution?”

Standish quickly straightened up.

Poe, dangerously angry at what Standish had said about his relationship with Sissy, showed no mercy.

“You seem to know an extraordinary amount about me. Can I do less for you? You, sir, are paying church deacons to purchase property which is then turned over to you. Using your legalistic abilities, you make sure that the property remains in the name of clergymen but the real owners are whoremongers, flesh peddlers, men and women engaged in the most loathsome trade of prostitution. Thanks to men such as yourself, this diabolical business does not lack a roof over its head.”

Standish shrieked, “Leave! Leave my home immediately!”

Poe’s gray eyes were bright with triumph. “And what shall I tell Rachel concerning my abrupt dismissal from your presence this morning?”

Standish, hands over his ears, looked up at the ceiling and blinked tears from his eyes. He wanted to kill Poe. It was true, all of it was true.

Quickly running to his desk, the lawyer opened a drawer and removed a bottle of brandy. Uncorking it, he drank from the bottle, gripping it with trembling hands. Poe dug his nails into the leather arms of the chair. I shall never forgive nor forget what he said about Sissy and me. He desecrates her name with his foul mouth, and he stands before me to support freedom for black flesh and slavery for white. I condemn him for his pitiful judgment and lack of mercy.

Standish wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “We were to discuss my client’s difficulty.”

“She wants the ransom paid and I will not oppose that. It is her belief, as you know, that this Dr. Paracelsus can be of some aid and comfort to her. She desires the body of her husband to be returned and I shall do all possible to see that it is. She claims that the dead can live-” Poe thought of last night and Virginia. Had he seen his wife? Had he dreamed it?

Poe continued, “She claims the dead can be made to live but I do not subscribe to this and you may inform Dr. Paracelsus of my conclusion. The dead cannot be reached in this life. They exist in an uncharted world which as yet can only be imagined and this sir, is how I feel on the matter. I do not believe.”

Miles Standish, still shocked by what Poe knew of his business dealings, turned his back to the writer. Damn him, damn him to hell. He knew. But how? Did he truly have mystical powers or was he merely a snoop who knew too much about too many things? Why had he been brought into this matter of Rachel’s husband? Because Rachel trusted him, because like so many other women she was drawn by the image of self-destructive poet. Standish had never hated anyone in his life as much as he hated Poe.

The lawyer spoke with his back to Poe. His voice was hoarse and that of a beaten man. “You will be made to believe. You will be forced to believe.”

Poe, remembering last night, shivered. His dead wife had appeared and called to him. But hadn’t that been a dream?

He stood up. “What did you say?”

Standish turned quickly to face him. “I, I said one is forced to grieve. I meant that life and circumstances leave one no choice but to grieve when death strikes. Uh, Rachel and her husband, her sadness at his death. I, I must leave you. Please excuse me, I shall return shortly.”

Poe watched Miles Standish, still clutching the bottle of brandy, hurry across the carpet. When the door to the billiard room slammed behind the lawyer, Poe was alone and still wondering if he had heard Standish correctly. Believe. Grieve. As the eternal fear of insanity came down on him once more, he went suddenly cold. He would never stop fearing it. Insanity. Where one laughed but smiled no more.

He walked to the red papered wall in front of him, to stand before three paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, a sixteenth-century Dutch artist in oils. Bruegel was vigorous, earthy, with strong, bold colors and figures. You could smell his peasants and barnyard animals, you could touch their clothing and skin. There was power in Bruegel, a vulgarity that was overwhelming and stunning.

The first painting showed peasants shearing sheep in front of a thatched cottage. The second showed three men in colored doublets and thigh boots, hands tied behind their backs and hanging from a gibbet. Their heads hung at an angle possible only in dead men. The third painting was the most striking. It was of a Renaissance carnival blended with a nightmare. There were dwarfs holding snakes and death heads, whores soliciting customers, a juggler, sword swallower, knife thrower and off to the side horned demons lay in wait for anyone foolish enought to enter the carnival. The painting was a powerful portrayal of a sinister world and time. It was alive with an intimidating energy.

Poe blinked his eyes several times. He was dizzy, sweating and it was hard to draw breath. Warm, too warm in the room and he heard noises, laughter, but he was alone, wasn’t he? He opened his eyes wide, closed them again and tried not to be sick to his stomach. What was happening to him?

He staggered backwards, coughing, his hands pressed against his throat and his eyes were closed. He smelled incense and he heard a harp. There was a harpist in the carnival painting.

Poe opened his eyes and saw two dwarfs standing in front of him. Living dwarfs. Both were dressed exactly as the dwarfs in the painting and each held a death’s head, a grinning skull. One shrieked, hurling his skull at Poe, who backed into the billiard table. The skull bounced off his knee.

Both dwarfs rushed him and as an unseen harpist played, Poe screamed and kicked at the dwarfs, driving them back. He turned to his right to see a woman dressed as one of the whores in the painting walk slowly towards him, snakes entwined around her neck and both wrists. She was wet lipped and open mouthed.

The painting had come to life!

A dizzy Poe edged away from the whore, one hand behind him and on the billiard table. He was in hell. At last his mind had betrayed him.

“Noooooo!” Poe’s scream filled the room.

A sound made him turn in time to see the knife thrower, two hands around the handle of his knife, bring it down towards Poe’s face. Poe’s left hand went up quickly and the knife slashed him across the palm. He screamed, falling to one knee, hands clinging to the billiard table, his blood smearing the polished wooden edge. The pain was real. The blood was real.

“Nooooo! I am not insane! I am not mad!”

Driven by a frenzy to survive, Poe grabbed a cue stick from the billiard table and swung with all his strength, breaking the cue stick against the knife thrower’s face. The man, thin, bearded with a flat nose, staggered backwards and fell. A crazed Poe, no longer sure of real and unreal, used the remaining part of the cue stick as a short spear and jabbed down at the dwarfs pulling on his legs. He was not mad, he was not mad.

A dwarf squealed, both hands going to an eye and the other dwarf spun around, hands covering a slash running from his ear and down the side of his neck. Poe was living a nightmare and could do nothing but lash out at the world. His head was light and his heart threatened to tear itself loose from its strings. The harpist sent gentle notes of music into the room and Poe fought to breathe. He heard the whore laugh and when he turned to face her, she threw snakes at him and laughed louder.

He felt the cold, wet body of a snake against his face and Poe couldn’t stop screaming. He was on his knees, hands pulling the long, green snake from his face. His head was filled with the noise of his own shrieks and when it seemed certain that he would never breathe again, Poe fell forward on his face, into a blessed darkness that alternated with a pain redder than the sun. The last thing he remembered was two horned demons reaching out for him.

He awoke lying flat on his back and gazing up at a tall, thin woman with a small, round head and black hair parted in the middle. She wore all black and no rouge on her unsmiling face and she clutched a bible to her bosomless chest. She was Miles Standish’s wife.

“I shall read over you, Mr. Poe, for the word of the Lord has power-”

Poe sat up. “The painting. It was alive.”

“I shall read over you, Mr. Poe.” She opened the bible.

Behind Poe, Miles Standish’s voice was again calm and sure.

“Nonsense from a quill pusher who survives by lecturing on the metaphysical. Conclusions springing from whiskey. Sound and fury signifying nothing.”

Mrs. Standish read from the Book of Revelations and Poe, clutching the billiard table, raised himself to his knees. “It was alive.”

He was on his feet, breathing heavily through his mouth. “It was alive.”

Miles Standish stared down at the backs of his own hands. “I believe in being blunt, sir. You are a drunkard, a man with a known mystical turn of mind. You reek of alcohol-”

Poe sniffed the air, touched his clothes. He did reek ofwhiskey. His shirt and coat were wet with it. A half-empty bottle and a glass stood on the side of the billiard table. Was he losing his mind?

A Negro servant held out Poe’s cloak, hat, walking stick. “I suggest you consult a physician,” said Standish. “I know of several. Perhaps Dr. Paracelsus would consent to-”

Poe shoved his left arm at Miles Standish, causing the lawyer to lean away. “Demons stretched out their hands for me and I say to you, this is blood, my blood!”

Poe showed his slashed left palm.

Both of Standish’s eyebrows crept slowly up his forehead. “I would agree. And do try not to break any more cue sticks. They are handmade and expensive. His eyes went to the floor and Poe followed his gaze. A broken, bloodstained cue stick lay on the gray carpet.

A silent, stunned Poe left the billiard room with the sound of Mrs. Standish’s bible reading following him into the hall and out into the cold. He heard Miles Standish say that all arrangements for the ransom would be made, but Poe paid no attention. He clenched his left fist to stop the bleeding and he wondered how much longer he would be able to function before his mind snapped and he joined his brother and sister in that world of permanent horror known only to the hopelessly insane.