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Petite Mort	By : DasTier Category: Titles in the Public Domain > Moby Dick Views: 2488 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work fiction, based on Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

Chapter List
- 1-Petite Mort
- 1
well, since there's now a whole section for Melville on AFF.net, i'll continue to be the one filling it :)

Title: La Petite Mort
Author: D.T. [http://dastier.tvheaven.com]
Fandom: Moby Dick
Pairing: Ahab/Starbuck, from Ishmael’s POV [ah the joys of voyeurism!]
Notes: the visuals still come from 199 1998 mini-series with Patrick Stewart and Ted Levine. And the title, which rencrench means ‘the little death’, in that language traditionally is a euphemism for orgasm. Again, I’m having fun with Melvillian style and embedding almost direct quotations from the novel. One hell of an intertextuality : )

They still call me Ishmael. But what is in a name except mere sounds born by the supple tongue in its fine articulations? A name is a mask, and its sounds – the pasteboard that mask is cut of. For I am no longer the Ishmael that was once carried waterward down the dreary streets of New Bedford to cross over to Nantucket – the first of the many water-filled gaps I was to sail on my long journey, taming the troubled waves as best as I could with an observant eye and a philosophical attitude.

As luck would have it, I came to be stranded again; the sole survivor to return to the point I first sallied out from. No comrade soul makes me companltholthough living things still bustle about, I am alone with my memory, which converses with me night and day in a voice distinct and yet transparent like a watercolour. I am indeed soaked in the sea, drenched in its bitter brine so that each image my mind paints drips and splatters pain and emotion as if salvaged from the ocean’s bottom. I’m all water: my heart longs to be poured out while my mind tries in vain to reason my pen and constrain the sentimental leakage. But I have chosen to flow, seeing that the pace of life is too hasty by itself, without any more constraint to be put on its already limited interval.

I am edgy about constraints. The word alone makes me rear and plunge like a freshly snared colt waiting to be broken in under the saddle of a cruel rider. I may as well have become an anarchist; for now I value life and freedom more than anything, and intend to be one person who guides my ship over Life’s turbulent waters and who tackles its ropes.

But nay to speaking about water any more. It had indeed polished me into what I am now, but the final touch was applied by a man – the Man.

They used to call him Ahab. do do no more, since Ahab no longer treads either dry land or the sturdy planks of his ship’s deck. Whether he has found consolation and eternal bliss in God’s merciful hand, or dark oblivion in the ocean’s cold depths, I hope that his final rest has brought peace to his distressed soul. I hope that wherever Captain Ahab is now, his distress lies with him; for, while he was alive, he radiated grief and anguish like the Sun radiates warmth. He was bitter leaven in God’s dough; the cause of strife and unrest.

He never touched me directly, never acknowledged my insignificant presence, but my ever alert eye paid him full attention. He drew me like a magnet draws the compass’ needle – indissolubly and inexorably. Even now, far into the mainland and away from the ocean’s shores, I can still hear his passion-driven voice through the murmuring waves. I hear his low, profound tone, and am glad he had never spoken to me thus.

“There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod.”
It was on a night; a long way to dawn, and even the watch by the steering wheel had begun to doze off to a wailful choir of the restless sea. I strolled, tired beyond sleep, along the deck, my mind dulled by the day’s toil but my senses still awake and hungry for a human word that’d be anything but a curse or a command.

“Yes, Captain.”

“And I, your lord, am a jealous master.”

I will always hear this voice, muffled by the rumbling waves and the ship’s timber creaking; and whenever my memory pronounces those words to me, my cheeks blush just like they did then. I was thankful for the night’s concealing cover to hide my embarrassment, but to turn away and leave as would be prudent – no, I wasn’t able to.

"Speak not to me about wives, and not about children – what care are those to me? I’ve gone beyond marital bonds; sacred vows dare stake no claim on me, and even the land itself, the plece they call home, doesn’t hold me in ownership. I am, now, the only owner – and where is the limit to my possessions on this ship?"

My ears drank in all sounds but my eyes were deprived, seeing but the silhouettes in the flickering light in the captain’s cabin as I froze on the steps of the scuffle. Not going to eavesdrop any more, I found myself yet trapped in the night’s silence and stood still, wary lest a plahoulhould creak under my foot. There was no retreat; and so I listened to the words, which soon gave way to a soft rustling of clothes, and my own quickened breath that seemed to me so loud that the two in the cabin were bound to discover me any moment.

But they did not.

"Ahab, you may be owner of this ship’s planks and ropes, of its boats and irons – but not a lord to its men. You are a good captain, seasoned and tested; they need your guidance to profit…"

"You talk of profit? But that is no fixed wage; only common interest, common luck, and common death."

I was beginning to curse my ill-timed insomniac stroll; but all the while my eyes were en ten to watch two shades in the unsteady light that streamed through an ajar door. A distrustful shuffle of feet, stopped short in its weak withdrawal by one strong step of Ahab’s ivory leg; two silhouettes, first separate and distant, merged into one.

"Is there a thing on the ship – a rope, a nail, a brace – that the Captain’s hand dares not touch?"

One silhouette distanagaiagain, only to be reached for by a black shade of an arm; I watched this dark tentacle as it stretched out to touch, and my lips suddenly were dry.

“You can say no, and yet you don’t. Your silence speaks for you, my First mate.”

Although I couldn’t see more through the door’s crack, the Captain’s voice was as tangible as the daring fingers of an intrepid lover. No matter how strong my resolve was not to witness anything ane, ie, it broke under the luring power of thoiceoice, much like the First mate’s resistance did.

“You’re too good a man, Starbuck. I had feared that you’d be the stubborn one; I thought hard how to conquer you – but now, now all I want is to look into a human eye – that’s far better than to gaze even upon God. Do you feel it, too? You’d never feel it looking into the eyes of anybody else on this ship – they are expendable, only means to an end. Only here you will find the strength and splendor you seek when you think about God. I am your God, Starbuck, and I want you to look at me as you do in the church: from below. Kneel.”

My spirits trembled as I waited impatiently, more and more involved in the scene, for the First mate’s response. I was no longer an accidental onlooker: I felt that on that onseonse my very fate depended, and the fate of everyone on this ship.

“You are obsessed, old man. Obsessed and blasphemous.”

“Am I? But obsession doesn’t do me justice – I’m madness maddened. But even if you condemn and hate me, you still love this ship too much. Is there anything you won’t do for its sake, given there’s a slightest hope to appease its mad Captain? Aye, you’d sail it through unknown seas, you’d fight all underwater beasts to guide it safely to its home harbour – now, is what I ask of you not a mere trifle in comparison?”

I saw how one of the silhouettes lowered before the other one that now was looming over it in victory, and my heart sank.

“Does that soothe you, Ahab?”

“Yes. Yes.” The two shades of Ahab’s hands came to rest on his First matheadhead with such calm fulfillment that even the candlelight seemed to stop flickering. “But that is not enough.”

“Not enough? What else should your deluded mind wish that could mean more than this sign of submission?”

“A bond.” I saw the contour ofb’s b’s crippled figure bow, lower and lower, till his face must have been near his mate’s, and then still closer until the shades merged again, and then there was silence, and a short gasp of the First mate. “Ah, but does my kiss burn you like a hot brand? Do you now feel the electricity that is in me? A bond – do not look away! – a bond is what I need to be sure you won’t rebel.”

“I have pledged…”

“No! Words mean nothing. That day on the deck, you didn’t share in my communion. They drank their rum mixed with my blood, hot as Satan’s hoof, and their wolfish eyes met mine – the eye of their leader. But you didn’t drink. You shunned my offer, and so I’m making you another one: flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, my very man’s essence to your lips that will be my chalice.”

“If only I could hope that this would swerve you from your wretched path! You want a bond – but I’m bonded already to this ship and its crew, and - you are right - what the fall of one soul means to the prospect of salvation for thirty?”

I admit with shame that I turned away at that moment. I knew what was to come, for I have sailed the seas already and knew the sort of connection that is oft to be established in the tight confinement of the ship’s life – a connection intimate and confidential at its best, and humiliating and enslaving at its worst. The best, I had experienced with Queequeg, a strange bedfellow that made me sleep better than ever in my life. The worst, which I had averted my eyes from, had just happened in Ahab’s dark cabin.

“Ahab…”

“Speak not. Your actions are louder than words. Louder and stronger than the vows my young wife gave me before I embarked on this voyage. And do not think that my heart is hardened too much not to understand it. You’ll stay on board: when Ahab gives chase to Moby Dick, that hazard won’t be yours. We have just shared life; but you won’t share my death.”

My heart pounded in my chest, partly, I confess, with a sudden loneliness and fear I had been excluded from this queer transaction, that this intimate communion had been bestowed not on me. I wasn’t worthy; and Ahab’s strangely tender voice almost made me weep from abandonment and jealousy. But the First mate’s voice then made me weep just as much in shame for my sordid and cowardly longin
“M
“My Captain, don’t think that you’ll be sparing me death, for I have died tonight.”
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Petite Mort