The Counterpane — Moby-Dick

Daylight finds Ishmael pinned under Queequeg's arm in the most loving, matrimonial clasp, as if the harpooner had married him in his sleep. The patchwork counterpane and the tattooed arm share the same parti-coloured labyrinth of shades, so fabric and flesh blur until only weight and pressure prove someone is hugging him. The sensation sends Ishmael back to childhood punishment: sent to bed at two in the afternoon on the longest day of the year, he later woke in darkness to feel a nameless phantom hand close on his, and for months he could not decide whether the terror was dream or fact.

Take away the awful fear, he says, and waking beside Queequeg is strangely like that old shock. Then last night's bargain returns as sober comedy. Ishmael tries to unlock the bridegroom grip, finds the tomahawk sleeping by Queequeg's side like a hatchet-faced baby, and scolds his roommate awake for hugging a fellow man in that style. Queequeg sits up stiff as a pike-staff, shakes off sleep like a wet dog, and by signs offers to dress first and leave Ishmael the whole room, a courtesy Ishmael admits beats his own rude staring from the pillows.

What follows is a private lesson in how culture arrives in pieces. Queequeg dons his tall beaver hat before his trousers, crawls under the bed to boot himself, washes chest and arms but not his face, then unsheathes the harpoon and shaves his cheeks with steel meant for whales while neighbours could plain see into the narrow street window. Ishmael calls him a creature in the transition stage, civilized enough for boots, savage enough to put them on beneath the bed, and essentially polite in ways the inn's drunken Christians were not. Queequeg marches out wrapped in his pilot jacket, harpoon shouldered like a marshal's baton, and Ishmael is left curious rather than terrified. When they go down to breakfast among the whalemen, will the room read him as Ishmael's friend or as last night's monster in daylight?