Landfalls (15 page)

“But what if it catches fire?” she was asking.

“Then our demonstration will be brief,” Monneron said. Dufresne and Eleonora both laughed.

He wished he could join them, could take part in their joviality and exorcise the strange and unpleasant lunch he had just endured. But the lives of more than two hundred men depended on his successful procurement of four months' worth of provisions, and Se
ñ
or Delphin was waiting. Anyway, he knew his presence would alter the mood in the dining room. It was a peculiar isolation that came with command: one was forever excluded from easy sociability with others while still being at the mercy of highly placed bigots and pompous gabblers the world over.

He made his way down the corridor, picturing as he did the drawing room in his house in Albi and the untidy pile of books and sewing
É
l
é
onore always left by her favorite chair, a faded fauteuil she had had shipped from Port Louis. No matter how long he lived, he would never feel he had spent enough hours there. It was with some surprise that he turned into the Sabateros' drawing room to be greeted, not by
É
l
é
onore, but by a fast-talking merchant dizzy with delight over the largest sale of his career.

*   *   *

The evening meal was a happier occasion than lunch, as O'Higgins did most of the talking and Sabatero very little. Lap
é
rouse was impressed: O'Higgins was a man who sought peace, not simply through a superior show of force, but by learning to talk with his adversary. He actually knew the Araucanian chiefs and spoke of them by name with what seemed like genuine respect. The problem with a fascinating dinner companion, of course, was that one listened, rapt, and ate and drank without moderation. And the trouble with eating and drinking too much was that although one fell immediately to sleep afterward, it was a sleep neither restful nor lasting.

Lap
é
rouse came to in the middle of the night, feeling slightly sick and aware that he had spent much of the night in a restless half sleep as one document after another floated before his mind's eye, demanding attention: the bill of exchange he needed to write up for Delphin; maps of the Pacific Ocean, with possible routes plotted out between Chile and the Sandwich Islands, Alaska, China; his shipboard journal, almost a month behind; letters he needed to write to the ministry; the unfinished letter to
É
l
é
onore.

He opened his eyes and stared into the blackness. He could make out the shape of the window in the room, but nothing else. Somewhere in town, a confused rooster was crowing. Closer, he could hear footsteps making their quiet way across the courtyard. Another restless soul in the house. He wondered whom he would meet if he went out there. Most likely a servant making his or her rounds in the night. Perhaps the vigilant and ubiquitous Jos
é
. The footsteps stopped nearby, and then he could hear the sound of a door—it was just a few doors down from his own—cautiously opening and closing.

Could it be Eleonora's room? He knew where it was—or he thought he did. Right before dinner he had seen her leaving the room two doors down from his. She had not seen him—at least he did not think she had. Now he imagined himself being the one walking across the courtyard, the one opening and shutting Eleonora's door, and discovering at last the purpose of those mysterious buttons: silver buttons that were cool to the touch and slipped right through their buttonholes, cloth-covered buttons that resisted, requiring force to pop off, giving way to fabric, soft and white, and then it was hands—his own, reaching through warmer and warmer layers of gauze, and hers, small and white, reaching out to him, then his own again, fingers running through the fringe of her mantilla and unplaiting her hair, long and black, spreading it like an open fan around her head. Ashamed, he tried to switch to
É
l
é
onore, remembering the last time they were together before he set sail, the time he might have left her with child. But she had wept that night, naked shoulders shaking in his arms. Their first time, then—but no, she had cried then as well—and he was back to yielding buttons and fabric and hair, groping in the darkness for her, for himself, desire prevailing for the moment over compunction, over memory, even over fatigue.

He rose to use the basin and looked through the window at the courtyard, a dark space barely washed in the pale light of what he knew was an almost-quarter moon. Once more he heard a door close, then light footsteps outside. A tiny, disembodied light appeared to the left and began to travel diagonally across the space. Lap
é
rouse moved to the edge of the window, not wishing to be seen peering out in the dead of night. The light reached the center of the courtyard and stopped for a moment. Face lit briefly by the taper in his hand, the figure looked up with an expression of wonder at the southern sky. It was Dufresne.

*   *   *

The cold surprised him as he stepped outside. He looked back once at the house, where Jos
é
stood in the doorway watching them. It was impossible to read his expression in the dark. Lap
é
rouse turned away in relief and set off with Pierre into the streets of the still dormant city.

They found their way easily enough to the edge of town, footfalls echoing off the crumbling mud walls of the buildings as they passed. Once outside of town, they occasionally exchanged nods with fishermen or peasants on their way to town with fish and produce. At the top of the first rise, they stopped and unpacked the parcel Jos
é
had silently handed them: two flasks of water, two minced-meat pastries, and some jerked beef. Lap
é
rouse took one pastry and Pierre the other. Looking back, Lap
é
rouse could see the roofs of the dusty town below just brightening while to the east, the rising sun gilt the jagged line of the cordillera.

“Why did we leave so early, sir?” Pierre asked.

“We didn't,” Lap
é
rouse said. “I meant to leave at daybreak, and see?” He pointed to the mountains. “It's daybreak.”

“It is
now
,” Pierre muttered.

Lap
é
rouse got up and set off again down the road. He could hear Pierre groan sleepily as he hoisted himself to his feet and followed his master.

By the time they crested the highest point in the road between Concepci
ó
n and Talcahuano, there was enough light to distinguish three bodies of water: the Bay of Concepci
ó
n to the north, the frigates just visible in their anchorages; the great B
í
o-B
í
o River to the south, marking the boundary between the Spanish colony and the untamed Araucanians; and to the west, still murky with night and unanswered questions, the Pacific Ocean. Lap
é
rouse's heart lifted at the sight of so much water and at the mostly downhill path that lay between him and the
Boussole
.

He was not a man to obsess about a thing for too long. He knew this about himself and trusted it. Every step he took away from Concepci
ó
n resolved some of the turmoil he had experienced during the night and restored clarity to his mind. He thought of
É
l
é
onore with a twinge of guilt, but he had not, after all, done anything wrong. He knew what Jesus was reported to have said about lust, how it was the same as committing adultery. But only a man who had never been with a woman could have believed such a thing. He moved on, down the steepest part of the pass, and welcomed the return of his usual yearning for
É
l
é
onore, a feeling painful in its way, but not intolerably so, and familiar for all that. Some mariners suffered acutely from lovesickness at sea, but seemed to enjoy
missing
their wives or lovers more than
being
with them. Not he. He thought of
É
l
é
onore every day, many times a day, but he remembered her equably, and did not allow his longing for her to distract him from work. Every time he returned to her, she delighted him all over again and, he liked to think, he her, but it was never a surprise. It was simply what it was: happiness. Stepping carefully over the loose gravel on the road, he began composing in his head the next page of his letter to her:
Some of the husbands in Chile are so very much older than their wives that you and I would be considered quite contemporaries, my dear.

They reached a flatter part of the road, and Pierre unwrapped the sun-dried beef and handed a piece to Lap
é
rouse before taking a bite for himself. A large shadow passed over them, and both men ducked by instinct. Looking up, Lap
é
rouse saw the most enormous bird he had ever laid eyes on. Two more flew in long, graceful curves, never flapping their wings. He was not much of a naturalist—one bird was much like another, to his mind—but these creatures could not fail to impress. “They must be the famous Andean condors,” he told Pierre, who nodded. Lap
é
rouse tossed his meat out into a clearing by the side of the road and waited to see if they would come down for it, but the wide gyres they traced in the sky were apparently focused on something else.

“Sir?” Pierre said, offering what remained of his dried beef. Lap
é
rouse regretted the loss of his breakfast, but he shook his head, and the two men proceeded in silence.

The village of Talcahuano was already in full bustle when they arrived, but the sudden appearance of two dusty, rumpled Frenchmen coming from the direction of Concepci
ó
n, one in partial dress uniform, surprised the inhabitants and soldiers they passed. Even more surprised were two other Frenchmen, who had just hauled one of the
Astrolabe
's small boats ashore. “Commander!” one of them cried out when he recognized Lap
é
rouse. It was several paces before Lap
é
rouse recognized him: It was Tr
é
ton de Vaujuas, Langle's young ensign. The other man was middle-aged, pale, and very thin.

“Good morning, Monsieur de Vaujuas,” Lap
é
rouse called out.

“Good morning, sir,” Vaujuas said, then looked around for a corresponding boat from the
Boussole
, and finding none, toward the village for a carriage or horse or some other explanation for the commander's appearance. “Where did you come from, sir?”

“Never mind that,” Lap
é
rouse said, feeling testy and enjoying it. “Just row us back to my ship.”

Vaujuas held the boat steady while Lap
é
rouse and Pierre climbed aboard, then helped his companion on with great gentleness, and pushed off. The other man sat in the back and did not help row. Vaujuas sat facing Lap
é
rouse and took the oars. “My manservant, Jean Le Fol, sir,” he said by way of introduction. The servant leaned to the right so as to be seen from behind his master, and inclined his head in greeting. It was the sick servant La Borde had told him about.

“And how do you fare, Monsieur Le Fol?” Lap
é
rouse asked.

“I'm very well, sir,” the man replied, but he shivered in the light breeze, and sweat beaded his pale forehead.

*   *   *

Lap
é
rouse did not leave the
Boussole
for three days. Indeed, he hardly left his cabin, spoke to almost no one, and did little but write. He wrote to Major Sabatero, thanking him for his hospitality and apologizing for his hasty departure, assuring him that only the most pressing need could have dragged him from their gracious company and home. He wrote to Monneron, who was still in town, with instructions regarding preparations for the f
ê
te. He wrote to decline an invitation from O'Higgins to celebrate Mass on Sunday at what passed for a cathedral in Concepci
ó
n, then sent a note to the
Astrolabe
, directing Langle and a few officers to go in his stead. He wrote to the minister, assuring him that they “had not one sick aboard either vessel.” He remembered Vaujuas's servant as soon as he'd penned the line, but he didn't wish to cross it out. Langle would be writing his own report to the minister—let
him
mention the sick servant. He wrote to accept a subsequent invitation from O'Higgins to join an outing to explore the ruins of the old city. He drafted a bill of exchange for Delphin and a short speech to give at the f
ê
te. He caught up on his journal, had it copied, then corrected the copy. He struggled to finish his letter to
É
l
é
onore. It seemed thoughtless not to mention a child if there were one, but equally thoughtless to mention one if there were not. In the end he punctuated the note with numerous “my dears” and “my loves” and trusted to her affectionate understanding.

Every time his thoughts strayed back toward Concepci
ó
n, to the Sabateros, the darkened courtyard, the floating light, he forced his mind to something else, and failing that, cast doubt on his memories. Perhaps Dufresne had just stepped out for the night air or to examine the stars. Perhaps it had not been Dufresne, after all. Perhaps his own disordered state of mind had created recognitions and associations where there were none.

By the fourth morning, he was pale and ink-stained, and his right hand ached from the hours spent writing, but he had caught up with his administrative duties, and his mind and conscience felt clear and unencumbered. Unfortunately, the day's reports challenged his hard-won equanimity, bringing as they did a second letter from Dufresne, requesting once more that he be released from the expedition. Lap
é
rouse tried to bring a disinterested reading to the request, to put aside his suspicions, his own antipathy to the man, but it was impossible. Whereas before the young man had seemed motivated by a strong sense of having made a mistake, of realizing he was not suited to life at sea, and simple homesickness, in this new letter he was more polite, but also more assertive. He sounded as though he just wanted to be freed from the expedition to go his own way: as if, Lap
é
rouse could not help but think, he had found a compelling reason to stay behind.