The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(57)

Reynolds wrote to Allan at length, telling him how much he had enjoyed his novel, and tried as subtly as he could to find out the meaning of that strange, allusive ending. But, to his astonishment, the writer himself did not seem to have the slightest idea what awaited his characters on the edge of that waterfall. My novel’s abrupt ending has given rise to all manner of speculation, my dear friend, he wrote. Some critics maintain I did not know how to end it, and so I gave up at the climax, possibly owing to indolence, or because the wellspring of my impoverished imagination had dried up, or because the story itself somehow obliged me to end it there. Let them speculate, poor wretches. The truth is, even I do not know the answer, for I wrote those final pages in what can only be described as a state of intense delirium, while being assailed by terrible nightmares in which a hideous creature invariably appeared, of which I remembered nothing upon waking but the horrific impression it had caused me. But do not worry yourself on my account. I know you well enough to suppose you are afraid your friend is losing his mind. Rest assured, that is not yet the case. Although I will not deceive you of all people: in some strange way I sense I am drifting ever closer to insanity. My nightmares have invaded even my waking hours. There are times when I ask myself: Am I sick? What will become of me? And I know you are the only one who can guess at the answer.

Reynolds read Allan’s last words with a sense of foreboding, as he revisited the doubts he had had about his friend’s mental health during the journey back to America. Perhaps the gunner’s brilliant, fragile, complex mind had been unable to cope with a life built upon a conscious act of forgetting. Such a life had posed no problem for Reynolds. Perhaps he had succeeded in forgetting because the workings of his mind were far simpler than those of the gunner, Reynolds thought unashamedly. Had he not managed to forget that he had murdered Symmes? In contrast, Allan was incapable of expunging those memories voluntarily and had been forced to wall them up behind a carefully constructed barricade, even though he had been unable to stop them seeping through the masonry and spilling onto the endless white expanse of the blank sheets he placed on his desk each day. Yes, that was where Allan had exiled all the monsters he wished to banish from his life. And yet, Reynolds feared his friend was finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between real life and his imaginings. Despite these disturbing conclusions, Reynolds filled his reply with clichéd words of comfort: he knew there was little else he could do to help his friend except to pray to God (in whom his belief was steadily waning) that the huge white figure awaiting Allan on the edge of the waterfall was not the specter of total madness.

Allan’s next letter was sent from Philadelphia, where the gunner had gone to try his luck after his continuous drinking had irreparably damaged his situation at work. Yet like a faithful dog poverty has followed us here, too, he wrote, and I have been forced to employ my pen in more mundane activities than I would have wished. I was even commissioned to write a textbook on conchology, and you can imagine how little pleasure that afforded me. Although happily I still have time to write tales, tales so dark and menacing that I myself am horrified by them. Yet, I know they could not be otherwise, my friend, for they are fashioned from the sinister stuff of my nightmares. Not even the Auguste Dupin stories, which I strive to make less baleful, escape from the inevitable horror that envelops them all, like a dank moss. Only my beloved Virginia is able to cast a little light into my dark soul, when each day upon my return from work she greets me with a spray of freshly picked flowers.

Unhappily, that light proved as fragile as a candle flame, for it was soon extinguished. Allan’s next letter was terrible and harrowing, penned by a man who had lost all belief in life. My dear friend, it began, I write to you on the brink of the deepest abyss of despair, for I am at last convinced that my miserable soul is the plaything of Fate. Virginia, my delicate nymph, is gravely ill. A few days ago, while she was entertaining me with some of my favorite songs, accompanying herself on the harp, her voice broke on a high note, and in a gruesome spectacle arranged by the Devil himself, blood began to pour from her sweet mouth. It is consumption, my dear friend. Yes, that vile harpy has come to snatch her from me in two years’ time, or less, according to the doctors, mindless of the fact that no one can take her place. What will become of me when she is no more, Reynolds? What will I do when she begins to fade, when her gentle beauty starts to lose its bloom, like so many petals falling into my clumsy hands as I vainly try to reconstruct the flower of her youth?

Deeply moved by the illness of the young woman he had not even met, and the terrible suffering it caused his friend, Reynolds resolved to do whatever was in his power to help. He offered them the solace of a farm in Bloomingdale, on the northern outskirts of New York, a rustic paradise where the fresh air and soft grassy meadows could breathe new life into Virginia’s slowly deteriorating lungs. The couple apparently enjoyed a brief respite and even managed to squeeze a little happiness out of life, until the fierce winter forced them back to the city.

Shortly after his return, Allan threw the literary world into a stir with the publication of “The Raven,” a poem he had been working on for some time, and which their peaceful sojourn in the country had enabled him to finish. The explorer was told that people came in droves to listen to him recite those dark verses, which struck fear into their hearts. Intrigued, Reynolds attended one of those performances and was able to see for himself the effect Allan’s reading had on the audience, particularly on the impressionable ladies, as he sat stiffly in his chair, his face luminously pale. When the function was over, Reynolds invited him to dine at a nearby restaurant, where, after clumsily dissecting his meat pie, the gunner broke down and confessed that the continual veering between hope and despair caused by Virginia’s illness was having a worse effect on his soul than if she had died outright. And the only relief he could find was in alcohol and laudanum. Naturally, they no longer spoke of the distant days spent together in the Antarctic fighting against the terrible creature from outer space intent on killing them. All that seemed unreal now, perhaps imaginary, and of no consequence. As they gave each other a warm farewell embrace, it no longer mattered to Reynolds whether or not Allan had lost his mind. The love of his life was dying, Virginia was slowly being taken from him, and there was nothing anyone could do. Somewhere someone had decided at random that those two good, generous souls would suffer for no apparent reason. This and this alone was what made the world a truly terrifying place.