And in the moment of Queequeg’s seizing the sailor to bend him across his knee and murder him, why then, would this not be a perfect time for, at last, oh, my Lord, yes, at last, the arrival of the White Whale!?
Again, yes.
And the whale is sighted and shouted to view. Moby Dick heaves in sight, as Ahab pounds across the deck and the men gather at the rail to stare at the great white wonder, and Queequeg, in this moment of delivery, cannot possibly return to his self-nailed coffin, as Ahab cries to the men to row, row, and row again, out of his silence, this stillness, this damned and becalmed sea.
The men row out, following Moby Dick, and they row into a wind!
Good Grief, the lovely wind.
And I had rowed there, all in a single day.
Starting with the coin on the mast and the wind at last in the high limp sails and Moby Dick leading them off across around the world.
What followed, as metaphor, seemed inevitable in that single day of writing.
Ahab dares to row out of the calm.
So? The typhoon arrives to punish him for his sin!
And with it the certain destruction of the Pequod, and Saint Elmo’s fires, which ignite the masts and Ahab’s harpoon. “It but lights our way to Moby Dick!” cries the captain.
Ahab defies the storm and thrusts his fist down along the harpoon, shouting, “Thus, I put out the fire!”
The Saint Elmo’s fires are destroyed and the storm dies.
And the stage is set for the final lowerings for Moby Dick.
So I kept hammering away with the sailor falling from the mast, the sea becalmed, the arrival of the Whale, the almost-deaths of Queequeg and Ishmael, the lowering, the pursuit, the harpooning, the roping of Ahab to the Beast, the plunge, the death, and Ahab arisen, dead, beckoning from the side of the Whale for his men to follow, follow … into the deep.
And all the while hungry and bursting with the need to bound off to the bathroom and back quickly phoning for sandwiches and, at last, six, seven hours later, midafternoon, falling back in my chair with my hands over my eyes, sensing I was being watched and looking up at last to see old Herman still there but exhausted, fading to a ghost and gone and then I telephoned John and asked could I come out?
“But,” said John, “you sound funny. Doesn’t sound like you.”
“It’s not. It’s him.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. It’s over.”
“What’s over?”
“Tell you when I get there.”
“Move your ass, kid, move your ass.”
An hour later I threw the forty new pages in his lap.
“Who was that on the phone?” he joked.
“Not me,” I said. “Read.”
“Go out and chase the bull around the field.”
“If I did I’d kill him, I feel so good.”
“Go have a drink, then.”
I did.
Half an hour later, John came into the study with a bewildered look, as if he had been kicked in the face.
“Jesus,” he said. “You were right. It’s finished. When do we start shooting?”
“Tell me, John,” I said.
“Did old Herman whisper in your ear?”
“Shouted.”
“I hear the echoes,” John said. “Goddamn.”
“By the way,” he said, as an afterthought. “About our trip to London?”
“Yes?” I stiffened, eyes shut.
“Take the ferryboat,” said John.
Chapter 33
Half a year older, I came into Finn’s a day later, with rain bringing me to the door and rain waiting to take me away.
I set my luggage down by the bar, where Finn leaned over to blink at it, as did Doone and Mike and all the rest.
“Is it going away you are?” said Finn.
“Yes.”
The inhabitants of Finn’s turned and did not drink from their glasses, large or small.
“A remarkable thing happened,” I said. “It was a surprise.”
“The sort of thing that is always welcome here.” Finn laid out a Guinness. “Let us in on it?”
“After all these hours and days and weeks and months, I got out of bed yesterday morning,” I said, “walked to the mirror, stood there and looked at myself, ran to my typewriter and typed steadily for the next seven hours. At last, at four in the afternoon, I wrote ‘Finis’ and called Courtown House and said it’s over, it’s through, it’s finished. And found a taxi and came out to throw the forty pages in himself s lap. And we opened a bottle of champagne.”
“Here’s another,” said Finn, and popped a cork.
He poured it for all and filled my glass.
“At this very moment,” Doone asked, as everyone waited, “are you that one who moved your hand and did the scenes?”
“Am I Herman Melville?”
“That’s the one.”
“No,” I said. “He was waiting to visit and could not stay. I was gathering him up all those days and months, reading and rereading, to make sure he got into my bloodstream or nerves or behind my eyes or whatever. He came because I called. Spirits like that don’t stay. They give of themselves and go.”
“It must have been quite a feeling,” said Doone.
“No way to describe it. You’ll see it on the screen someday.”
“God willing,” said Finn.
“Yes,” I said, nodding. “God willing.”
“Well, here’s to Herman Melville inside or out of this young man,” said Doone.
“Herman Melville,” said all.
“Well, now,” said Finn, “it’s goodbye?”
“Will you ever come back?” asked Doone.
“No,” I said.
“A realist,”said Finn.
“It’s just,” I explained, “I live so far off and I don’t fly. And chances are I’ll never work in Ireland again. And if too much time passes, I wouldn’t want to come back.”
“Aye,” said Timulty, “and all of us old or dead or both and no sight worth seeing.”
“It has been,” I said, nursing a final glass, “the greatest time of my life.”
“You have improved the weather around here,” said Doone, tenderly, wiping his nose.
“And for the hell of it,” said Mike, “let’s pretend that someday you’ll return, and by that time, think of the stuff we’ll have saved up to tell, and you the richer for it.”
“Aye,” said all.
“That’s most tempting.” I smiled. “Dare I say I will miss all of you?”
“Aw, the hell,” said Finn quietly.
“Damn,” said some others, looking at me like a son.
“Before you go,” said Finn. “On the Irish, now. Have you crossed our T’s and dotted our I’s? How would you best describe …?”
“Imagination,” I said quietly.
Silence. They waited.
“Imagination,” I went on. “Great God, everything’s wrong. Where are you? On a flyspeck isle nine thousand miles north of nowhere!! What wealth is there? None! What natural resources? Only one: the resourceful genius, the golden mind, of everyone I’ve met! The mind that looks out the eyes, the words that roll off the tongue in response to events no bigger than the eye of a needle!
From so little you glean so much; squeeze the last ounce of life from a flower with one petal, a night with no stars, a day with no sun, a theater haunted by old films, a bump on the head that in America would have been treated with a Band-Aid. Here and everywhere in Ireland, it goes on.
Someone picks up a string, someone else ties a knot in it, a third one adds a bow, and by morn you’ve got a rug on the floor, a drape at the window, a harp-thread tapestry singing on the wall, all starting from that string! The Church puts her on her knees, the weather drowns her, politics all but buries her … but Ireland still sprints for that far exit. And do you know, by God, I think she’ll make it!”
I finished my champagne and then went about shaking each hand and buffing each arm with a gentle fist.
“Goodbye, Timulty.”
“Lad.”
“So long, Hannahan.”
“Boy.”
“Mr. Kelly, Mr. O’Brien, Mr. Bannion.”
“Lad.” “Yank.” “Boyo.”
“Mr. Doone, keep sprinting.”
“I’m on me toes.”
“Mr. Finn, keep pouring.”
“The well will never run dry.”
At the door I turned to see them as in a picture lined up there. I was glad they did not come along to see me out. It was as in the old cinema scenes. I looked at them, and they at me.
“God speed you, Yank.”
“God bless you, Mr. Finn.”
They waved, I waved, and went out the door.
Mike got behind the wheel of the 1928 Nash.
“Pray that it starts,” he said.
We prayed. It did. We drove off down the road toward the Irish Sea and the port, away from 1918 and 1922 and 1929 and 1945 and 1953, and I did not look back as Finn’s vanished in the past. I saw with wet eyes that, God, the hills were green. Oh, yes, the hills were green.
Dublin Revisited
I had never thought about visiting Ireland. I had never thought it could possibly be anywhere in my future. On the other hand, I had always responded to people who said, “When are you going to write a screenplay?” with “When John Huston asks me.” So the two things came together: one, not wanting to visit Ireland necessarily and two, wanting to work with John Huston.
It all came about because I gave him a copy of The Golden Apples of the Sun in early 1953, little realizing that one story, “The Fog Horn,” read by Huston, would cause him to call me to his hotel in August of that year.
When I arrived at his hotel he put a drink in my hand, sat me down, stood over me, and said, “How would you like to come live in Ireland and write the screenplay for Moby Dick?”
I was stunned. My response was, “I’ve never been able to read the damned thing.”
Huston, in turn, was stunned. He’d never heard anything like that from any screenwriter. After a long
