The Storm at the Door Read Online Free Page B

ride shared with Mickey Mantle, Billy Wilder lecturing at Harvard. It had always been impossible to reconcile that which had so moved him, abstractly and at a distance, with the human-size person before him. But Lowell has proved rather the opposite of Frederick’s previous brushes with fame; he is grander in person than even his grand poetry. Lowell’s face is carved with a severity simultaneously biblical and Hollywood, not unlike that of Kirk Douglas. Even in Lowell’s overt madness, not a word or a gesture seems undetermined; his every movement can still appear guided by some nameless furious brilliance within. Even when Lowell is delusional, believing himself Christ, Milton, or Shakespeare, it can all seem part of his poetry, his poetry bursting beyond the language that cannot quite contain it, becoming his life itself. Even now, in this simple exchange, Frederick—the generative, the imposing, the brilliant Frederick—feels reduced to his childhood gangliness. Frederick glimpses himself as the sick boy he once was, withering to skeletal on his bed, trying to explain himself to his mother and the doctors, shamed to find himself without words.
    Part of Frederick’s anxiety around Lowell, Frederick knows, derives from the unpredictable nature of Lowell’s attentions,from Lowell’s imperviousness to Frederick’s charisma. Near Lowell, Frederick is struck with the troubling realization that, set in relief against Lowell’s true, recognized genius, his own minor genius is insufficient, perhaps not genius at all. Frederick wants to be taken into Lowell’s private machinations, to be the object of Lowell’s creative exertions, as he has been only once, on his first day at Mayflower.
    Do you see the sign?
Lowell had approached Frederick that first morning with his arm extended, pointing to an empty white space near the entrance to Ingersoll.
    Sign?
Frederick asked.
    Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’entrate
.
    Excuse me?
    Abandon all hope, ye who enter. Dante’s
Inferno.
    Ah
, Frederick said.
    Lowell took a step back from the new patient, his eyes traveling Frederick’s length, not so much in judgment, but as if to limn Frederick’s psychic affliction. Eventually, Lowell stated his conclusion in Latin.
    Arma virumque cano
.
    Frederick scrutinized the man before him for a moment before the recognition came. He had heard of the famous poet’s frequent sojourns at Mayflower but had not until this moment, not during all the vertiginous confusion of his admission, considered he would find Lowell here like this, simply another man on the ward. That first day had been one of Lowell’s
up days
, his arms flailing in his French sailor’s jersey, his eyes unfocused, his pupils occasionally disappearing into his skull, his hair jutting from his scalp in electrified tufts, as if charged by the profound wattage within.
    I sing of arms and a man at war
, Frederick said.
Virgil
.
    Lowell flashed Frederick a sly smile, leaned to his ear, and whispered,
I wrote that
.
    Excuse me?
    For the following two hours, Lowell had not let Frederick stray far beyond the span of his arms. In his unbrushed breath, Lowell spoke rapid Latin and Italian into Frederick’s ears, occasionally muttering to Frederick how grateful he was Frederick had come, how he recognized Frederick’s rare form of intelligence, how Frederick was just the sort of man he had been waiting for, to assist in his escape into a place that was his own, where he could begin his true poetry.
    Lowell, the other men later told Frederick, has reacted similarly to a number of new patients, their newness their true appeal. Their newness, which implies a chance at revision. This, Frederick senses, is part of Lowell’s affliction and also his poetry, forever seeking exit from the chaos he carries through new forms, new friends, new lovers. Lowell can go to sleep fizzled, cracked, too worn to raise a brush to his leonine mane, then wake in a manic awareness, entirely other,