We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name.
Charles Lamb, Dream Children.
Mary could not bring herself to like Mr. Coleridge, but she was glad of his visits for two reasons. One, her brother was clearly made happy by them; and two, he had a beautiful voice for Shakespeare.
“If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die…”
As the poet's rich yet slothful tones filled their little parlour, Mary gazed at her brother’s face as he waited to read the servant’s rejoinder. Charles’ features bore their customary look of muted adoration in the presence of his old school mate. As usual Mary somewhat bitterly reflected, with envy she tried to restrain, on the nature of such friendship between men. How unfair life was; she herself could ‘pay the debt of love but to a brother’. She turned her mind away from these reflections with a sudden resolve, determined to focus on the story. These shared readings had a powerful way of clearing her mind for the writing to come. Art was the important thing; just like the Bard himself she would create meaning in the world through her words.
As for Coleridge he was glad to be in company, though he despised himself for his desperate need for it. Mary’s gaze he found unsettling, but it was undeniably agreeable to see Charles again. What an admirable fellow he was, how selfless. What other man did he know who would have given up so much to care for a sister, especially one infamous for matricide. He wondered, not for the first time, if in fact there was not a touch of Lady Macbeth in his old schoolfellow’s sibling. He began to feel the old trembling then, the craving. As pleasant as the activity was, he longed for the final act when he could retreat to his room and consume laudanum privately.
Charles had a voice somewhat higher in tone than usual for a man. A fine voice certainly, but was there not a certain smooth and womanly quality to it? How fitting thought the poet, with a dawning awareness of an afterlife from this tale in the very place and time he was in.
“…I had a sister,
Whom the blind waves and surges have devour'd.
Of charity, what kin are you to me?”
Charles had to suppress unease when acting this part,. Of all the tender emotions his sister inspired in him was there not also in his heart a kind of incredulity? A kind of horror? He banished such thoughts as he looked at her face, and saw his own features there, his own life in a woman’s form, the deep and thrilling sincerity of her need and dependence on him.
They got to the end of the play, finally, and Coleridge had to physically restrain the shaking of his hands. With the clown’s closing song still rolling around his head, he bade them a hasty goodnight and retired at once to his chamber, ignoring Mary’s offended look and scarcely glancing at his old friend as he hurried from the room and climbed the stairs. Having closed the door he immediately poured an inch of the red-brown fluid into a small glass and downed it in a single gulp. He sank onto the bed fully clothed, his upper body propped against the pillows, and so his consciousness began to float like a mote of dust in a sunbeam, as if hovering between this world and some other that he could seldom quite see clearly nor name.
After an hour or an age he was distantly aware of a chill that passed through the room. He believed the door opened, and he felt the entrance of some personage. He found he could not move and lay paralyzed on the bed; not with dread, but only agonized amazement, some species of awe. He finally managed to turn his head, and saw the figure of an elderly woman. Her face was of a greenish hue emitting a pale and ghastly light, long white hair hung loosely around the shoulders, the knife wound in her chest a gaping mouth oozing a deep and shocking scarlet. For what seemed an eternity she merely stood in the moonlight falling through the casement, gazing dolefully upon the supine poet, making no motion to speak or communicate, but finally laying a choppy finger upon her skinny lips before melting into nothingness.
The following day, Coleridge had no wish to linger; his stash of laudanum was in any case running low. But Charles pressed him to take a walk beside the river, and he felt unable to refuse. After an hour of tiresome tramping beside the odorous Thames he was glad to persuade his friend to sit for a while on a lonely bench.
“You really should walk more, take more exercise, Samuel. You seem to grow a little stouter these days.”
Coleridge felt somnolent, disinclined to speak, though suffused by a feeling of gratitude and tenderness towards his old classmate, who gazed for long ponderous minutes at the flowing murk with a sad eye.
“I think I see my mother, Samuel,” he finally said. This was shocking and unexpected.
“Where? When do you see her?”
Charles fixed his friend with a knowing and reproving look.
“In my mind’s eye, Horatio.”
Moments passed as the foolish panic subsided; the poet's brain boiling with the image of his ghastly visitor of the night before. He felt bound to follow suit, giving voice to a simple truth: “Give me that man that is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him in my heart’s core… as I do thee.”
© M. Talion 2020