Disquiet Heart Page 7

  We retrieved our bags. Poe said, “Our host will be expecting us to come by way of the canal. We will find him just off the aqueduct, no doubt.”

  We made our way up the same stairway the strong man had used, and in fact met him coming down. He offered me another wink in passing. I had the strangest urge to reach out and seize his hand. But I restrained myself. I nodded and continued on.

  Then to the foot of Liberty Street, where a small crowd stood waiting for the next canal boat to arrive. We had beaten the canal boat by a full twenty minutes.

  I spotted Brunrichter almost immediately. To claim that he was a mirror image of the man at my side would be claiming too much, but the resemblance was obvious. Though Brunrichter was starched and boiled where Poe was rumpled, and clean-shaven, but for his side whiskers, where Poe was bristled, both men shared the same slight physiognomy, the same broad forehead, thin mouth and tapered chin, the same fiery darkness in the eyes. I grasped Poe by the arm, then raised my finger to point his gaze toward Brunrichter. “That must be him,” I muttered.

  Poe, too, was taken aback, so much so that we came to a halt some ten yards from where the doctor waited, patiently watching across the aqueduct. “I am at a loss as to whether to be flattered or vexed,” Poe said. “A man likes to think that he is unique in all the world. It is a bit unsettling to behold oneself in the face of another man.”

  The truth is that Brunrichter appeared a good bit more presentable than Poe. The doctor’s clothes were finer, his carriage more aristocratic. He looked healthier and stronger, and certainly better groomed than Poe. But in Poe’s mind’s eye he no doubt saw himself (as we all tend to do) in a light more flattering than the one reality cast over him, and I said nothing to disabuse him of the notion. Instead I answered, “It’s just like in your story, William Wilson.”

  “It is not at all similar,” Poe said abruptly. “I need no conscience to haunt me.”

  Saying this, he seemed to recover all at once from the shock of Brunrichter’s appearance and started forward again, his chin thrust high and a smile on his face. I remained a pace behind him, just so I could watch when he stepped up to the doctor and spoke.

  Poe told him, by way of introduction, “You remind me of my brother Henry.”

  Brunrichter turned, saw Poe, and grinned broadly. “You remind me of myself,” he said.

  I joined them, standing just to the right of Poe, waiting to be introduced or at the least noticed. But Poe and Brunrichter continued to smile at one another, each looking like a man amused by his own reflection in a mirror. And then, for a moment, the strangest thing occurred. A dizziness swooped down on me, and I felt myself engulfed in a slow swirl of adumbrated air. This was no doubt due to the rigors of our trip, the sleeplessness and fatigue, the random and unhealthy diet. Or perhaps it was the smokiness of the Pittsburgh atmosphere, and the heavy palpitations it engendered in my chest. In any case, as I looked at Poe and the doctor smiling at one other, I was unable, just for a moment, to remember who was whom. For just a moment I experienced the peculiar vertigo of thinking that Brunrichter was the Poe I remembered from seven years past, vital and strong and optimistic, and Poe himself was the shadow image, aged and depleted, as half mad as a character created in one of his tales.

  “And this?” Brunrichter said, noticing me at last. “Your valet?”

  I bristled at the assumption.

  “My protégé,” said Poe, which prompted me to feel for him a resurgence of affection. “Mr. Augie Dubbins.”

  Brunrichter’s eyebrows shot up. “Any relation to the venerable Auguste Dupin?”

  “Dupin is Augie’s namesake,” said Poe.

  Brunrichter reached for my hand. “I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, sir. Anyone who could inspire the genius of Dupin must be a fascinating individual in his own right.”

  He turned back to Poe. “Does he also share Dupin’s powers of ratiocination?”

  “He has a good mind,” said Poe, “when he is not chasing after elephants.”

  “Elephants, sir?”

  “It turns out that he has a great fondness for wildlife.”

  Poe’s smile struck me as somehow sinister.

  “Then you have come to the right place, young man. No city has a wilder life than Pittsburgh, if that is what you crave. As for your good mind, we can use that as well. Yours and Mr. Poe’s especially.”

  He turned back to Poe, suddenly somber again. “Have you heard the news of our calamity?”

  “I have heard of the cholera. We rode in with a boatload of coffins.”

  “And of our lost young ladies?”

  “Lost how?” said Poe, and made an awkward attempt at a joke. “Misplaced?”

  Brunrichter shook his head. “Vanished! Gone without a trace!”

  Poe, at last, grew serious. “How many in all?”

  “Six in as many weeks.”

  Poe closed his eyes for a moment, his thin mouth falling into a frown. I knew in that instant that he was thinking of his own Virginia, also gone without a trace. I felt something in my own heart sinking away with him, being drawn under.

  When he opened his eyes again he said only, “Unhappy news.”

  To which Brunrichter replied, in a voice just as gloomy, “Unhappy news indeed.”

  I looked from one of them to the other, from Poe’s gray eyes gazing downward, dull and weary, to the doctors eyes of a similar hue but brighter, even lively as they stared at Poe, and again the dizziness swooped over me, but stronger and more violently this time, a smoky whirl of weakness in my brain, and I felt my legs collapsing but could do nothing to strengthen them, saw my field of vision blur, both men becoming ghost images half layered one atop the other, neither looking my way while the noise of the city swelled and came close, smothering me, and I gasped reflexively, sucking in the charcoal sky, and I felt myself falling, sinking down, sliding into a darkness miles and miles away.

  7

  I DREAMED the dream of a seventeen-year-old boy, a warm and velvety dream of nearly stupefying pleasure in which Lula and I sat side by side wrapped in a rough Indian blanket, the campfire crackling, its heat paled by the heat of her hand beneath the blanket … .

  And I awoke to find Poe leaning over me, his face close to mine, mouth smiling. Immediately I remembered my dream and slid a hand down to cover myself, felt a blanket there and pulled it up to my chest.

  The moment my eyes had come open, Poe drew back and stood erect. Only then did he come into clear focus, and only then did I recognize that he was not Poe at all, but Dr. Brunrichter. He was quick to explain himself.

  “No fever,” he said. “And your heart is strong and regular. A day of rest will set you right as rain again.”

  I turned my head away from his smile. I would not call what I saw on his face an unctuous expression, but it was disconcerting still to see Poe’s countenance on another man.

  Pushing myself up on an elbow, I looked around. This was no hospital ward in which I lay, but the most luxurious quarters I’d ever found myself in, the bed a wide fourposter with a vaulted canopy of brocaded silk, the mattress thick with goose down, as were the pillows. The room was wide and spacious, brightly lit by a long row of windows. The walls were covered with a flocked material more like damask than mere wallpaper, a cream-colored background with a pattern of green climbing vines and tiny purple flowers. Over the length of the floor ran an intricately cut and colored Berber carpet.

  I thought of my boots and how they must be dirtying the coverlet, and touched my feet together to ascertain if the boots had been removed. They had, much to my relief, though the relief promptly blossomed into embarrassment over the state of my soiled stockings.

  “Am I in your home, sir?” I asked.

  “You are indeed. And very welcome to be here.”

  “I fainted?”

  “And in the bargain whacked your head on the cobblestones. Edgar and I loaded you into the carriage and brought you here. To the best doctor in town.”

>   I put a hand to my head and felt a pad of gauze atop the knob above my left ear. “How much brain juice did I lose?”

  Brunrichter laughed. “Not enough to worry about. There’s plenty of juice left in you yet.”

  I started to sit up, but he held out a hand. “Lie there and rest for a while. I’ll have tea and soup brought up to you soon.”

  “You needn’t wait on me.”

  He leaned closer, as if to push me back down, but stopped short of touching me. “My advice is that you remain in bed. It will do you no good to be up and about so soon.”

  “Poe will be wondering.”

  “Edgar has already been apprised of your well-being. He is enjoying his bath just now, after which he will take his supper with me so as to discuss his presentation tomorrow evening. So, you see? There’s nothing for you to do but to rest and heal yourself. In the morning I will introduce you and Edgar to my city.”

  I sensed, even in his gracious manner, that he wished to have Poe to himself for the evening. And that was fine. It was Poe who had been invited here, not me. I was a man of no distinction, no special genius for anything yet discovered. Besides, the bed was soft and inviting, and I had hopes of finding Lula hiding somewhere in all that goose down.

  I eased my head onto the pillow. “As you wish,” I told him.

  He gave me a strange kind of bow then, almost Oriental, with his hands pressed together, thumbs against his chest. I fidgeted for a moment, feeling awkward, for it did not seem right or proper that this wealthy and accomplished gentleman should be bowing to me like a servant. In the end I attributed the gesture to his profound respect for Poe, and as a consequence I was made to feel even more remorseful over my earlier treatment of Poe, my churlishness and childish arrogance. If ever I could provoke a man like Brunrichter to be so admiring of me, only then would I have an inkling of the breadth and depth of Poe’s gift. I resolved to make it up to him as soon as I was on my feet again. For if a man like Brunrichter could feel humility then a man like me, spawned in a gutter and raised knee-deep in cow shit, should be its epitome.

  It was a simple enough realization, and a simple enough objective. And it would be the last uncomplicated thought I would entertain inside that house.

  TEA AND consommé arrived within minutes of Brunrichter’s departure from my room, brought to me by a waddling, cherub-faced woman who introduced herself, with profuse apologies for disturbing me, as Mrs. Dalrymple. She had a wreath of white hair that seemed about to fly away like dandelion fuzz at any moment, and she sported a few white whiskers on her chin. But her mouth was kind and soft, and her eyes, though a bit too small for the roundness of her face, were still as hopeful as an infant’s.

  She set the tray across my lap and asked if she should feed me.

  “It was just a knock on the head,” I told her. “Not the first and probably not the last I’ll receive.”

  “I thought you might be discombobulated from it. Can you manage a spoon?”

  I took the soup spoon from her hand. “To be honest, I can’t even remember fainting.” I was suddenly so hungry that I barely got the last word out before shoving a spoonful into my mouth.

  “Oh, this is heaven in a soup bowl,” I said. “This is exquisite.”

  “It’s not too hot?”

  I shook my head only briefly, unwilling to interrupt the rhythm of my spoonwork.

  “If that goes down all right,” she told me, “I’ve got some chowder left from this afternoon. If you’ve a taste for something more filling, that is.”

  I pointed toward the window. “What in the world is that?” I asked.

  She looked, squinted, stared at the glass for five seconds, then turned just in time to catch me lowering the bowl from my lips, the last of the broth drained away. Heretofore a bit shy, she now fixed me with a scowl that, because of the merriment of her eyes, could not conceal her pleasure.

  “Is that the way your mother taught you to eat your soup, young man?”

  “You wouldn’t want to know the things my mother taught me.”

  “Oh I wouldn’t, would I?”

  “Not if you believe in an afterlife,” I said, and held out the empty bowl to her. “Now then, as to that chowder … ?”

  “And I suppose you wouldn’t mind a few slices of roast beef to go with it?”

  “I would indeed. Because a few is only half enough.”

  “And maybe you think you should have all of it?”

  “I’ll tell you what. Lift this tray off me and I’ll follow you down to the kitchen. You won’t even need to slice that beef for me. I’ll chew it right off the cow.”

  She was trying hard not to laugh as she came for the tray. “I keep no cows in my kitchen, young man.”

  “You wouldn’t mind a young bull poking around though, would you?”

  She laughed so violently that she snorted. “Is that what you think you are, a young bull? My, my, we have a fine notion of ourselves, don’t we?”

  She reached for the tray then, but I held tight to its short stubby legs so that she could not lift it away. “Truly, Mrs. Dalrymple, I would prefer if you would allow me to join you in the kitchen. Truth is, I’m not comfortable being waited on.”

  “Used to it or not, if you want my chowder and meat you will let go of this tray and behave yourself.”

  I held fast to the tray. “This bump on the head is nothing. I’ve taken worse knocks than this in my sleep.”

  “I’m sure I have no desire whatsoever to know what a young man does in his sleep.”

  I leaned close to her and whispered, “I’ll bet sometimes you do.”

  She gasped at that and, releasing the tray, clamped shut her mouth, held her breath, and retreated from the room as quickly as she could waddle, her pale cheeks blooming suddenly like cherry blossoms in full sunlight.

  “YOUR APPETITE for knowing things is near as big as your appetite for my beef,” Mrs. Dalrymple said.

  She had returned to my room not ten minutes after her abrupt departure, this time carrying a crock of corn chowder and a platter of sliced beef so mountainous that it had surely been constructed so as to shame me into submission. But I scraped every drop of chowder from the crock and forked one juicy slice of meat after another into my mouth. And all the while kept her there, perched primly on the window seat, with a steady stream of questions.

  She enjoyed my informality, I think, and my playfulness. Her day was long—from six in the morning until seven at night, and even longer when she cooked for one of Brunrichter’s frequent dinner parties. In any case she liked me and I liked her. (Did she remind me of Mrs. Clemm? Perhaps so. In fact now, when I look back on those days, I have to wonder if I am seeing Mrs. Dalrymple not as she was but as an imagined hybrid of Virginia and Mrs. Clemm, of Mrs. Clemm’s compassion and generosity in the stout, soft body of a woman who had once looked like Virginia.)

  What matters, however, is that Mrs. Dalrymple and I were comfortable with one another. As a result she answered my every question about that magnificent house in which I found myself, and about Dr. Brunrichter himself, his work as a surgeon at the Allegheny Hospital, his love of poetry and theater and music and science, his bottomless admiration for Poe. She told me that she was one of five employees all told, including Dr. Brunrichter’s manservant Mr. Tevis, Mr. Keesling the stable master, and Marcus, the twelve-year-old stable boy. The fifth was Raymund, the Negro who maintained the grounds, but I was not likely to see much of him, nobody did, not even the rest of the staff.

  “But his handiwork, now that’s another thing entirely,” she told me. “Come May he’ll have this place ablaze with flowers and bushes. Mr. Keesling says that Raymund’s an escaped slave, hopped off the Underground Railroad right here at this house. Course Mr. Keesling has seldom been known to be right about anything that doesn’t apply to horses, so you can take that piece of information for what it’s worth.”

  None but Mr. Tevis resided in the mansion, or Gingko Castle as it was called by Pittsburghers be
cause of the pair of majestic Chinese gingko trees on the estate. Brunrichter was as rich as Croesus, she said, Teutonic by birth but related in some ambiguous way to the DeBeers diamond family. He easily could have afforded a staff of twenty if he wished, but he was an unassuming man, said Mrs. Dalrymple, who saw himself as a member of the working class, a man who drove his own carriage and despised such extravagances as footmen and valets.

  “Which leaves all that extra work for me to do,” she told me in a whisper. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you. As long as I can do it I’m happy to have the work. And he pays me well. Not that I have much need of money anymore. But I take it all the same.”

  She told me about her life as a widow who now shared her small home with two other widows in the neighborhood of Bayardsville, “twenty minutes away by foot. By these feet anyway. And all of it uphill no matter which direction you’re going or coming from.”

  I wiped my mouth on a napkin made of finer cloth than the best of my two shirts. “And as to the young women … ,” I began, only to be cut off by her laugh.

  “Oh and that’s what this has been about, is it? That’s why you’ve been buttering me up with your nice words and all your questions. You’ve been working up to this, haven’t you, Mr. Augie Dubbins? Well, if you’re looking to me to help you bring a woman up here—”

  “Mrs. Dalrymple! I’m shocked. I am shocked and offended. How could you ever suggest such a thing?”

  “Why, I … I’m sorry … .”

  “On the other hand, if you want me to bring a woman up here …”

  She shook a stubby finger at me. “Keep it up, young man. I’ll warm your bottom yet.”

  “And now who’s flirting?” I asked.

  “Oh my goodness! Now you just stop it!”

  She was embarrassed but enjoying herself. And I enjoyed watching the rush of color to her cheeks and imagining how she would recount this conversation later that night to the other widow ladies with whom she lived.

  “But honestly,” I told her, “I was referring to the young women Dr. Brunrichter mentioned earlier. He said something about six young women who have disappeared.”