Eternity to Thee

Maine, 1848

“Call me Rachel,” the woman insisted. The bankman nodded in acknowledgment as he gestured her forward. The pair began walking down a yellow hallway with high ceilings and flush mounted lighting. The bank had been at the heart of the city for only the past handful of years and already showed its age. Rachel was still unsure of what was ahead of her, as she only held a few details of why she had been summoned to this place. The secrecy—whether intentional or not—did not sit well with her.

“Here we are, madame,” said the bankman as he removed a long, brass key from his suit jacket and inserted it into a heavy, leaden door. It was clear to her that the bankman was uncomfortable with the idea of calling her by her first name. She was not born into money; she had only recently inherited the kind of disingenuous respect that came with money when she married her husband nearly a year ago. Jonathan openly insisted upon that consistent respect from strangers, and Rachel suspected that he quietly enjoyed her rejection of it.

The bankman opened the door with the weight of his shoulder and stood perfectly upright as he nodded her in. The bankman was an older man and his suit jacket was a size too big. He had a long nose, and what he had left of his thin, white hair seemed as if it had been combed in a rush. He was quite slender but maintained a broad-shouldered posture. He reminded her of a waiter at one of the restaurants downtown. She stepped forward and the man closed the door behind them. As he locked the heavy blockade, Rachel was reminded of the mystery that was before her.

“I’m afraid I am a little unsure what it is exactly I’ve come to do as the letter I received only detailed that there was a safe deposit box that was being transferred into my name,” she said as she ran her pointer finger along the wooden table that was in the middle of the small and uncomfortable room. Two people and a small table barely fit within its walls and she found herself worried that the key the bankman used would not work again on their way out. The air was thin, and she was suddenly aware of the heaviness of her bell-shaped dress.

“Apologies, Mrs. Shaw. We did not mean to seem cryptic or secretive in our letter, but we do prioritize healthy respect for privacy and discretion for our clients.” The bankman turned and reached for a smaller key in his suit jacket. He ran his middle finger along the many numbered metal boxes that composed the vaulted walls of the small room. Rachel noticed that the room was entirely boxes as if it were outfitted with grey wallpaper that held a consistent rectangular design throughout it. His finger stopped at a numbered box that she could not quite make out and in a quick and easy motion the bankman inserted the smaller key, twisted, and pulled the long box from the wall. He turned and placed the grey box upon the wooden table in the middle of the room.

“The reasons for our communication rest within this box. We’re unsure of its contents, but we were informed by a local lawyer that the man that had invested in it has died. I’m terribly sorry for your loss,” the bankman said as he looked down and paused.

Rachel was not aware of any deaths in the family or any deaths of close friends for that matter. She began to feel uneasy. Had she missed something in the paper? Had she not been informed of a death in the family? A sudden fear began to rise within her chest like seawater rises as a storm begins to near.

“I’m unsure of whom you speak. I’ve not been informed of any deaths within my family,” she communicated. The bankman looked back up at her with a canvassing look and reached for a small piece of paper from the inside of his suit jacket. He read it silently and then iterated the information.

“We have been informed that the man who kept this deposit box died nearly two weeks ago in the south of the city. We do not have a full information card on him, but we do know he was a teacher and perhaps even a failed writer. The lawyer described him as a “pirate”, but we cannot confirm that. His payments are made each month to the bank, and in case of his demise, the name Rachel Shaw had recently been updated to become the sole proprietor of the contents. You are the Rachel Shaw of Girard Avenue, yes?”

“That is correct,” Rachel agreed.

“This box and its contents now belong to you, Mrs. Shaw,” the bankman said as he reached down and inserted the small key into the box. “It is not uncommon for strangers or misplaced family or even lost loves from long ago to leave behind securities for their family members or friends. I’ll leave you to your investigation. Please leave the box unlocked. As for the contents, we are unable to dispose of any of them for you. Please retain them on your person as you exit the room and building.”

And then the bankman was gone. Alone in the room, Rachel handled the box carefully and gently slid it towards her end of the wooden table. She heard the small click the box made as she turned the key. She wondered what was here for her—what was all of this about, exactly? Perhaps she was to be the unsuspecting victim of a prank from Johnathan. She half-suspected a group of snakes under the lid ready to strike her upon their freedom from the metal coffin.

She lifted the lid to reveal a rather ordinary group of belongings. She held each item up one-by-one to inspect them. First was a cashier’s check made out to her for twenty-thousand dollars. Her eyes widened and she reflexively placed her other hand on her chest. This was a considerable amount of money to her and although her husband would not be especially impressed—she still understood the value that this money afforded her. There was a short and scribbled signature, but she was unable to decipher its writer.

She placed the slip of paper upon the table and reached for the next item. She removed a thick, navy book with a binding that had noticeable wear to it. In faded, white ink was a title to the book: “Cetology”. There was no author name or publisher imprint upon it. She opened the front cover to faded and browned pages. She flipped through and saw illustrations and diagrams of whales—that ancient creature so feared by sailors like her father and grandfather before him. There were different taxonomies of whales and descriptions of their internal organs, descriptions of many different types of fins, skin colors, and diagrams of various teeth sizes. There were entries with sophisticated medical language that she did not quite follow, long passages describing grazing and eating habits, and chronicled commentary on mothers rearing their young. Perhaps this belonged to some kind of doctor or veterinarian? She noticed a number of different hand-written inscriptions and small drawings all about the pages of the book. She passed most of them, but one scrawl stood out to her as her fingertips pinched a page near the end: “vishnoo”.

She next removed a black leather notebook. She untied its thin leather hawser and as she did small, white particles displaced themselves and fell onto the table. They were small and hard—perhaps salt? The notebook was festooned with brine and experience. The leather was hard and unmoving. The pages had lost the elasticity of paper and had been reborn as thin, wooden tablets from weather. The writing was preserved in a dark ink and it remarkably retained some of its legibility. She forced open the pages one after another stopping only to notice the odd scribble here and there. She saw “All that most maddens and torments,” and “hail, forever hail, O sea,” and in the final pages: “Job 1:15-19”. Rachel remained indifferent as she put the notebook aside, its leaden weight slipping from her hand onto the table like an anchor punching the seafloor.

The fourth item was unlike the others and Rachel held it close up to her face to observe the detailed carvings on the unusual object. It was a wooden creature, carved perhaps by a child from a small, handheld-sized block of wood. The age of the wood was significant and a green-grey patina had overthrown the natural yellow-brown of the wood. It was difficult to say for sure, but she thought perhaps it was meant to be part sea-serpent and part man. The creature had four arms and folded legs, and its head made up most of the front of the object. Rachel felt uneasy with it as she felt it was looking at her, observing her, judging her. Rachel was not interested in religion outside of her own, but she did have an appreciation for the skilled craftsmanship of the timber block. As she went to place it on its side upon the table, she noticed a slight and worn engraving on the bottom of the creature. Examining it, she thought perhaps it was a circle or the letter “O” etched upon the bottom.

Finally, there was the last item that had been weighed down by the other heavy objects within the box. Her fingers failed to be able to pinch a corner of the lonely photograph at the bottom of the tin. She pushed it towards a corner of the box and with some force was able to pick up the photograph and examine it. Quite washed, the photograph was of two men: a sailor that looked quite like her father and a savage. The contrast was noticeable, and her attention first was drawn to the exotic. The dark man was unclothed above the waist and had many decorative triangular markings upon his skin. Rachel was not able to make out if they were made of ink or were scars from some awful battle. He had various piercings throughout his face, and small animal bones protruded from both of his earlobes. The savage had a most-strange ball of hair upon the very top of his head. It was the only hair he seemed to have on his body short of his eyebrows. The man held a rather large axehead in his left hand, and his wanton leer was eerie to Rachel. She felt that same stare, that same sense of fearful apprehension from the small idol that was born from the box moments ago.

The sailor in the picture wore a uniform typical of sailors from many parts of the coast of Maine. Her father had one of the uniforms hidden within the master closet in her childhood home. When she was younger, she would sometimes quietly sneak looks into that closet at some of the old memories her father had locked away in there. There were old knives and watches, handkerchiefs, portraits of women painted on to canvas and small oak panels, school pennants, and various white clay smoking pipes—all keepsakes that he had held onto that seemingly still held meaning to him. It always struck her strange that he would not display them more prominently. To her it was as if they were memories now forgotten within his mind, now only residing physically in the world in a closet both nearby and a long way behind him.

The sailor wore spectacles and in his right hand held a thick, black book of some kind. The two men both had thin smiles upon their faces like friends might, laughing together at the absurdity of standing still so long for a photographer. Rachel’s mother was always a bit fearful of photographs and would whisper old superstitions that the photograph captured a piece of your godly soul that you could never get back. For some reason, that barmy alarm always stuck with Rachel. She noticed in the space behind the two men many planks of freshly-cut wood resting and leaning against the side of a dwelling. The top left corner of the photograph captured the end of some kind of sign tacked to the dwelling behind them, but Rachel couldn’t make out any of the words on it. The photograph was an ungraspable phantom, and it lured over her like a threatening miasma intent to share some important, unknown meaning.

Rachel took a second look at the book in the man's hand. It was quite a thick, long read—much larger and conspicuous than an average novel. Could it be? Was that the very notebook she had found here in this coffin of dead relics?

“The story is coming together,” mused the detective to herself as she shifted her weight to the opposite hip. Rachel turned the photograph over and written in the same hand as the notebook was a scrawled label: “Q, New Bedford”.

Rachel checked the tin box again for any remaining items but found only more salt scruples and residue from the black notebook. She collected all of the items in her hands at the same time and lifted them back into the box. She paused and gave them one last look as if seeing them all in there together again would spark some understanding, like looking at the whole puzzle instead of its many pieces. But she hadn’t the luck. She was still unsure of who the men in the picture were and of who could have left this large sum to her. She reached for the cashier’s check, folded it, and pocketed it within her coat. She walked a few steps to the heavy door and knocked. The cold steel of the door hurt her knuckles. Mechanisms moved within the door and the old bankman walked in and closed it behind him like a citizen carefully visiting an inmate within their cell.

“Are we satisfied with the conclusion to the mystery?” the bankman said.

Rachel frowned and shook her head. “I’m afraid I’m still lost in the surprise. I think perhaps there could have been a mistake?”

“That’s very unlikely. You aren’t the first young lady to receive a sudden letter from us. While you were in here, I was able to ask Mr. Thomas—our executive in these deposits—for more information on your behalf. I hope that is most acceptable.” Rachel nodded that it was.

The bankman continued, “Mr. Thomas thumbed his records and viewed the original deposit box application. The depositor did not mark the section for anonymous deposit, so we suppose it is acceptable to share the original name of the man who consigned this trust to you. He didn’t inscribe the name on the application correctly, instead only using his first name—perhaps it can lend some clarity for you, madame.”

“Yes, I think it best to know who thought so highly of me as to share his wealth with a stranger,” Rachel said as she closed the lid to the tin box.

“He left only one name: Ishmael,” said the bankman. “He also wrote that the receiver would be his niece. It’s unusual that our depositors leave monikers or surnames and the like. Typically our clerks catch that sort of thing. Does the name mean something to you, I hope?”

“Not a thing,” Rachel replied, disappointed to not ever be able to thank the benefactor herself.

“I see you have left some items behind within the deposit box,” the bankman said with something of an accusatory tone.

“Would you please discard those effects for me? I’m afraid it’s just old keepsakes that I have no use for. My husband is a printer and probably has fresh copies of the whaling text anyway.”

“We are asked not to rid items for our guests, but I will surely discard them in great secret, Mrs. Shaw,” the old bankman said with a wink.

“Please—call me Rachel.”

After Rachel had left, the mystery of the box before him overcame the bankman and he let his curiosity move his hands over the tin box, beneath the lid, and finally onto the black notebook. He raised it near his nose, smelling the sea on its hardened cover. The young man in him remembered that smell. He opened the notebook to the first page. It was blank save for a small written signature in the middle of the page: “H. Melville”. The bankman turned the page and inscribed in large, unleveled writing was “Moby Dick;” and below it: “or, The Whale”.