(The Scream, by Edvard Munch)
Dear readers, some of you may remember the Baroness, the first occupant of my current home on historic Meridian Street, in Indianapolis. If you follow my “5 a.m. Stories,” you know that she died right here in 1934, and her ghost continues to haunt our house nearly a century later.
In the 1880s and 1890s, the Baroness was a noted Shakespearean actress in the United States and Europe, going by the stage name Rachel Deane. In 1929, retired and widowed, she and her son would move into the home where my wife and I are living now.
The Baroness stays up late at night with us watching television - she’s currently partial to “Mork and Mindy” and “The Dukes of Hazzard.” She plays “Lady of Spain” constantly on her accordion, and she really loves knock-knock jokes and outrageous puns. She can’t get enough of them.
She also adores cocktails, something that concerns us, knowing that her death certificate said cirrhosis contributed to her demise. Still, she’s been dead now for 89 years, so sometimes we indulge her. I mean, how much deader can she get?
Despite the casual familiarity that comes from sharing the same house, she remains in many ways a woman of mystery. Tonight, as we sip Old Fashioned cocktails and eat spicy sesame snack mix in our den, I plan to ask her a very personal question that I just can’t get out of my head, no matter how hard I try.
We will return to the Baroness in a moment. But first…
On August 27, 1883, an engineer was enjoying his morning cigar and coffee outdoors on a remote island in the Dutch East Indies, which is now Indonesia. Let me tell you from experience, if you haven’t had Indonesian coffee then you haven’t had coffee.
Anyway, this engineer, Jean Theodore Fransen Van Gestel, had been sent there a couple of months earlier by the Dutch government, to observe ongoing volcanic activity coming from the uninhabited island of Krakatoa. It was a pretty sweet gig until the small series of eruptions he had been monitoring turned into the biggest natural disaster of the 19th century.
On this summer morning he was admiring the beauty of the scene. Birds were singing and fishing boats bobbed gently in the bay. He blinked, and the boats were gone. Daytime turned to night, as a giant plume of ash rocketed 50 miles skyward.
The sound of the eruption was heard more than 2,000 miles away, in Australia. It is believed to have been the loudest sound in human history, rupturing the eardrums of sailors on a ship 40 miles away. The resulting tsunamis created waves 150 feet high, as far away as South Africa.
Between the eruption itself and the enormous waves it triggered, Krakatoa killed more than 36,000 human beings..
You can look it up. Welcome to hell on earth.
Some people believe this event was the inspiration for Edvard Munch’s painting, “The Scream,” although that has been disputed.
There was a disaster movie, “Krakatoa East of Java,” in 1968. Krakatoa is actually west of Java, but Hollywood doesn’t like to get bogged down with small details.
Perhaps most bizarrely, in a 1998 comic book Scrooge McDuck finds himself witnessing the eruption and fleeing on horseback. Krakatoa and the ship that had brought him there are visible in the background. The folks on Scrooge’s ship had seen the eruption from a long distance and calculated that they had just two minutes before the sound waves would reach them. They pulled some cotton from the cargo hold and stuffed it in their ears, to survive.
The wealthy ducks get all the breaks, am I right?
“Excuse me, Bob, I’m sorry to interrupt your seemingly pointless free-association here, but it’s me, your Typical Reader.”
“Hey, welcome back! What can I do for you, buddy? You want a bite of my fish taco?”
“No, thank you. Don’t take this the wrong way, but for the love of Almighty God, what has any of this Krakatoa crap got to do with us?”
“I’m glad you asked. That Dutch engineer was one of the few eyewitnesses to survive, and he reported extensively about the experience. His accounts were published everywhere, and he became something of a celebrity.”
“Again, why should we care?”
“You remember the Baroness? I was just talking about her, earlier.”
“Of course! I love the Baroness!”
“So did that Dutch engineer. In fact, sometime around 1900, he married her. She became Anna Louise Fransen Van Gestel. And, because he was a Baron, she became…”
“Wow! The Baroness! I’m so sorry I doubted you! Carry on with your compelling storytelling!”
This Typical Reader’s query reminded me that I, myself, had a lingering question for the mysterious Baroness.
That evening, in our cozy, book-lined den, I poured each of us an Old Fashioned. She inhaled hers. I poured her another. I wasn’t proud of myself, getting a ghost drunk the Old Fashioned way.
“Hey, Bob, I learned a new song on my accordion yesterday. You want to hear it?”
“It isn’t ‘Beer Barrel Polka,’ is it?”
“Roll out the barrel, we’ll have a barrel of fun…”
“Stop! Put down that accordion, you’re sloshing bourbon on it! Tell me about your late husband, Baroness.”
“He was from the Netherlands, born in 1842.”
“So, he’s that guy who witnessed Krakatoa erupting and lived to tell about it, right? I suppose he didn’t talk much about something so painful.”
“Seriously? It’s ALL he talked about! It was Krakatoa this and Krakatoa that… He was like, ‘Anna Louise, your eyes are fiery like Krakatoa, and your lips are molten lava.’ He could empty a room with, ‘Have I ever told you about Krakatoa?’ I saw him do that at our wedding reception. So much wasted food.”
“Listen, I‘ve been wanting to ask you something a little bit personal. How did you come to love knock-knock jokes and puns so much? Was it from the Baron?”
God no! You’ve seen his photo. Does he look like a million laughs, to you?”
“No, but it’s surprising, what with you having been a very smart and classy Shakespearean actress, and all.”
“Say, Bob, may I have another Old Fashioned?”
“Sure. Just go ahead and drink out of the pitcher.”
(Baron, Baroness and Baby Baron Photo courtesy of Indiana Historical Society)
“Yummy! To answer your knock-knock question, do you have a copy of ‘Macbeth’ around?”
“The Shakespeare ‘Macbeth?’”
“No, the J.K. Rowling one.”
“Very funny. Here, I found a copy in the bookcase. Must be Barbara’s”
“Okay, now turn to Act 2, Scene 3 and read me what it says.”
“Okay, let’s see, it says… OMG! No! This isn’t possible!”
“Go ahead, Bob, read it out loud.”
“’Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there?’ This is incredible! Shakespeare invented knock-knock jokes? Does anybody else know this?”
“Only folks who have seen ‘Macbeth.’”
“But wait. I’m not getting the punch line: ’Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there? In the name of Beelzebub? Here’s a farmer that hanged himself on th’ expectation of plenty.’ I don’t think that’s very funny, Baroness.”
“It was the very first knock-knock joke, Bob, What do you expect?”
“I guess maybe something a little better than this.”
“So Bob, you’re saying you think William Shakespeare’s knock-knock jokes were just much ado about nothing?”
“I’m going to ignore that. The gals who edit my stories will take it out, anyhow.”
“The point is, my husband loved the Dutch East Indies, and he never stopped talking about it. When their most popular crooner came to New York City for a concert, we went to see him.”
“Uh-oh. What was this singer’s name?”
“Frank Sumatra.”
“Sigh. You’re going down that path again, aren’t you? So, what was Frank Sumatra’s biggest hit?”
“Do you want me to keep going with this?”
“It’s too late to stop now.”
“‘Hello, Bali…’”
And I DO love the baroness!!!
Hope you've noticed that the groans coming from the house three doors south by south of you and East of Java have subsided.