Studies in the Novel, Volume 41, number 2 (Summer 2009). Copyright © 2009 by the University of North Texas. All rights to reproduction in any form reserved. MINDING THE BODY: BENITO CERENO AND MELVILLE’S EMBODIED READING PRACTICE MATTHEW REBHORN Almost every aspect of Herman Melville’s 1855 Benito Cereno contributes to the menacing atmosphere aboard the ghostly San Dominick: Atufal’s theatrical scene of contrition, the slave’s attack on a Spanish sailor, the tossing of a knot to Delano, and, perhaps most famously, Babo’s shaving of Benito Cereno in the cuddy. Crafted with such sinister effect, these events do two things simultaneously. First they reveal that there is another narrative, an “inside narrative,” to borrow a phrase from Melville’s Billy Budd, on board the San Dominick that lickers at the edge of Delano’s clouded vision. Second they offer the savvy reader distinct opportunities to unravel the gnarled lines of the narrative. As most critical studies of the story have suggested, however, our failure to unknot the narrative–to separate the inside narrative from the outside one–merely clariies the way our reading practices, like Delano’s, are implicated in the narratives of power. 1 This essay focuses on another one of these deeply meaningful moments from the narrative. Near the beginning of Benito Cereno, when Delano is invited to accompany Cereno on the upper deck, Melville relates: As during the telling of the story, Captain Delano had once or twice started at the occasional cymballing of the hatchet-polishers, wondering why such an interruption should be allowed, especially in that part of the ship, and in the ears of an invalid; and moreover, as the hatchets had anything but an attractive look, and the handlers of them still less so, it was, therefore, to tell the truth, not without some lurking reluctance, or even shrinking, it may be, that Captain Delano, with apparent complaisance, acquiesced in his host’s invitation. The more so, since with an untimely caprice of punctilio, rendered distressing by his cadaverous aspect, Don Benito, with Castilian bows, solemnly insisted upon his guest’s preceding him up the ladder leading to the elevation; where, one on each side of the last step, sat for armorial supporters and sentries two of the ominous ile. Gingerly enough stepped good Captain Delano between