MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE, 1833
As a good journalist should, I began to wander among infamous ports with waters agitated by vile undercurrents, even among hovels housing ancient seamen now overburdened by the years and by sad misadventures, and among wharves packed with sailors awaiting either comfortable or uncomfortable ships. I was asking left and right if anyone could give me some reliable information about that old captain, a fine figure at six feet tall and with the severe look of a man wounded by oppressing old age who had embarked in 1833 on a vessel that resembled a ghost ship.
A ship that sailed without human intimacies or secret desires, under the command of that captain overwhelmed by the desire to be acknowledged as a diligent and imaginative sailor because he was able to follow an order that seemed incomprehensible. Indeed it was necessary to sail at a time that made no sense, in a space of adverse and highly ambiguous configuration, and among sailors with vacant eyes in an extent of time and space not belonging to a tradition consolidated by common habits.
I began to wander without logical purpose until I had the fortune to find the old Mammy who, with unexpected sweetness and a singsong accent, gave me accurate information. Hence I began to frequent, albeit with ambiguous convictions, rough streets by the ocean which seemed to caress shores excavated by the vehemence of torrential rivers descending from the Blue Ridge Mountains.
I found Mammy a few steps away from a shack of rotten wood next to the Machipongo River toward Cape Charles where the froth of the water curled into restless waves amid narrow islets teeming with fish. Large nets lowered into the water were tied by ropes to vigorous trees so as to lure tasty lobsters. Close by, the acrid smoke of a brazier cooked huge carapaces while Mammy, sitting by a group of noisy children and adults with skin shriveled by untoward prostrations, sucked the meat from the burnt shells of the lobsters and took large gulps of a mushy mix of alcohol and herbs.
Mammy said nothing wonderful or disconcerting. Perhaps she guessed the reasons for my presence, sincere motives that might provide me with factual information about Edgar's restless life, that might clear up the sordid ambiguities spoken and divulged after his death. I wished nothing else and Mammy sensed it immediately. I only wished to transcribe appropriate notes or even a short account about Edgar, longing to explain as best possible the reasons and methods of writing that had fascinated me beyond reason. To come to grips with women and men who had been protagonists and interpreters of his enigmatic and arcane works. All of this to protect them from the precarious image that his detractors and false friends had of him. To understand a life, that of Edgar, so tragically and ambiguously lived after that ill-fated 1831 when he was expelled from West Point, an event that also led to the ferocious breakup with his foster father, John Allan.
I spoke with Mammy about the "manuscript found in a bottle" and about my strong desire to meet the old captain of the ghost ship, the silent and mysterious protagonist of that story. She gave me knowledgeable indications which, without hesitation or doubt, I hastened to follow slavishly.
I then began to walk briskly, distancing myself as much as possible from the shack where Mammy lived. I walked through rude streets full of water and dirt, and leaving the Machipongo River islands behind I sailed in a rolling ship for two and a half miles through Chesapeake Bay of which Captain John Smith stated in 1607 "Heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation". An estuary infamous for its beauty. Hence I was moving up the waters of this fluvial valley that go on to engulf an ocean. The Atlantic, it's true, and because of the Chesapeake. Chesepiooc, as the Algonquins called it. A group of tribes that dwelled there when they owned those lands. They referred to a village near a great river. And indeed it was. Then it was lost in the dark hours of the conquests. Horrible memories. Slaughter and death.
In truth I held well-founded fears since the bay suffered horrendously impetuous currents. Often threatened by swift and bloody incursions by topsail schooners manned by Barbary pirates. Truly almost ghost ships. Nothing left but to emulate the fearless buccaneers of those times. Times long past. Now obscure and indecipherable cruelty. Seeking to revive the times of heroic boardings. Living by stealing the memory of others. Copying them? Playing with ourselves and with a senseless, unreliable ferocity. These waters were once sailed by Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, by the legendary Jean Lafitte and by the merciless Micajah and Wiley Harpe. Men of uncommon courage. Enriching themselves at the expense of others. Galleons loaded with gold. Also slave ships. Human trade and inhuman certainties.
Once landed I found myself on a dreadful path amid the grueling asperities of a treacherous terrain and foolish anxieties gnawing at my mind. Alone with myself. No other sign of life. Thoughts. My thoughts. How to capture the old captain's attention so as to arrive at a plausible and discreet account of Mr Poe's ambiguous life? And more questions. Plausible ones? Perhaps. Requesting truths, or presumed realities. Again and again. Toward what destination was the captain's ship heading, sailing over a sea not unlike a pure abstraction, exposing its sails to winds that seemed to be born of an imponderable and random spell? More questions. Perhaps plausibly imprudent. Would he ever respond to my question about what madly indefinable secret was concealed behind that concise narrative of events that Mr Edgar Allan Poe had made so disconcertingly real?
Leaving the York River behind and beginning to cross valleys that disappeared from sight between the broad banks of two watercourses abruptly cut by brooks and streams that met furiously when they flowed into terrains swollen by water. Giving vent to underground torrents? A landscape imagined or truly marked by dreamt searching gazes? A place of colonial settlements. In fact. A bit beyond Richmond. The War of Independence. Thus I renewed for a moment my thoughts about the sense of national identity.
I bore swiftly to the right to reach the waters of the Rappahannock River that flowed for 190 miles from Chester Cap at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Swampy terrains left and right. When I reached the banks of the Rappahannock, I discovered ragged villages of cottages set among squalid church towers marking a place of worship, towers made of decrepit wooden planks often painted a Navajo white. Odors as well. Ancient signs of infinite poverty. I shunned the brutality of these appearances. Going, going. Beyond, in fact.
I then chose the fastest way to Port Royal to find a ship that could take me to the rocky inlet that penetrated for about a mile into a thick forest which should have been, according to Mammy, the captain's reclusive refuge. An insidious place hidden to most where one could, in comfort and without pain of recriminations, come to terms with one's past life, or if appropriate also with one's crises of conscience, with sardonic wills, and be able to forget it.
I saw very little from the barge I had rented, which I had to sail myself because nobody wished to encounter the captain. I advanced through the undergrowth and luxuriant canes. A waterway agitated by irregular waves becoming murkier the further I travelled. Very little light really since twisted branches of shading trees and bushes formed a thick and oppressing mesh. I thought then that nothing was by chance when suddenly I left that hostile waterway and found myself in a narrow circular space created by monumental boulders.
To starboard was a dark cave hidden among rocks accumulated by time and packed with foul animals and empty shells of marine parasites. At the entrance an old man was drawing smoke and pleasure from a long cornstalk stem of a filthy pipe. I recognized him immediately. The captain of course. A sturdy figure, albeit excessively massive, while his facial features revealed a profound and hard old age.
He was awaiting me, that was certain. I did not know, nor ever knew, how he had knowledge of my arrival. He greeted me with a wave of his hand and invited me to sit next to him on a smooth rock sheltered by intertwined canes.
I ascended hastily but with difficulty. I moved quickly even though the climb was quite laborious. As soon as I was there before him I greeted him with a nod and sat beside him in silence. He took a long puff from his pipe. He looked at the tobacco chamber with malicious calm. Stirred the embers with a straw. Took another puff in silent meditation and then abruptly said: "Cholera. unknowingly it was due to cholera!"
"Cholera?", I asked perplexed as I observed his gaze lost in the surroundings while his hands rhythmically fiddled with the bowl of the pipe, weighing it, fondling its form.
"Why did I go to a space with no tangible signs and at a time that had no temporal value when Edgar wished to meet me and then narrate about me in such unusual circumstances? Nothing was more ambiguous than the will to create a hypocritical mysteriousness that was uncertainty for the senses, but above all an indefinable will to practice the impracticable. Escape then. And we escaped. Edgar and I. Although for different reasons. And we met in that nothingness within the consciousness of both of us. Nothingness as a purpose to hide from the desperate anxiety of a fear much stronger than terror of the...
