Landfalls (30 page)

That was yesterday.

Now he and the chaplain were being led to their cabins by marines who made a point of telling them they would remain posted outside their doors all day and all night.

“What for?” Lamartini
è
re retorted. “To make sure we don't
flee
?”

“The lads are only doing their jobs,” Father Receveur said.

Lamartini
è
re scowled at the priest before being shut into his cabin, then threw his document case across the room with a yell, belatedly relieved to find none of his cabinmates within. His weeklong absence had not made him any fonder of the “Savants' Quarters.” He walked to the far end of the space and flung himself across his hard, narrow bed, banging his head against the wall. He lay back, swearing and massaging his pate while a parade of other, more extreme gestures flitted through his mind: he would destroy the cabin, tear up everyone's bedding, smash and scatter his own specimens and the other men's belongings, pour his ink bottles out over everything, torch the place and himself in it, sink the ship and its inmates. The violent fantasies did not soothe him. He had often indulged such thoughts during the long Pacific crossing. They had not helped then, either. By the time they had dropped anchor in Macao Harbor, he had been spending most of the day either asleep or feigning sleep, and had exchanged scarcely a word with his shipmates for weeks. Father Receveur's unexpected invitation to join him, Lamanon, and Father Mongez in Macao, in a proper house where he would have his own room, away from the fake “savants” with whom he had been trapped for so long, had felt like salvation.

He sat up now, chewing his lower lip, regretting the way he had just left Father Receveur. He leaned over and peeled off his muddied shoes and stockings, wrinkling his nose against the rankness of his still-wet feet. He tossed the shoes across the floor, then shuffled with a groan to his desk. Ignoring the neat, securely arranged boxes of specimens before him, he freed several sheets of paper from the stash he kept dry between layers of oilcloth and sat down to write some letters—one to his brother Pierre; another to his mentor, Andr
é
Thouin, the head of the Jardin du Roi; and a third to the Marshal de Castries, minister of marine. What relief to give vent to his feelings! It was with great regret he reported the lack of priority and respect accorded to the pursuit of science—this, on an expedition ostensibly devoted to discovery! Scarcely any time allowed in months for botanizing! Now a trivial misunderstanding had resulted in his incarceration aboard his own ship!

Before he could think better of anything he had written, he sealed the letters and slipped them under the cabin door. He could hear the marine lean over to pick them up, then call to a sailor to deliver them to the officer in charge. Only then did it occur to him that his current situation was largely the result of letters penned and dispatched in high dudgeon and that he might be compounding his difficulties.

A knock at the cabin door interrupted his regret and brought a tray with a lantern and dinner. The meal was a tasty ragout of fowl and a carafe of robust red wine. Ordinarily he would have had only a small glass of wine, but tonight, with no shipmates eager to claim his share, he drank it all. He hated to admit it, but he felt better afterward. It could be vexing, the way the body could overrule the mind. One could be determinedly and quite justifiably aggrieved, only to find a full belly and the sedating effects of alcohol had rendered one's well-tended grievances less grievous. Perhaps, he reflected, the human race needed this faculty for self-deception to survive. Did savages have this same need, or only civilized men? Whatever the answer, it was with some pique that he noted the dulling of his anger and moroseness, and then even that pique became impossible to sustain.

He lit a second candle and turned to the specimens on his desk.

He was primarily a botanist, but tiny animals interested him too, and he was still amazed by what he had discovered on the head of a sunfish the men had caught in Alaska. A keen-eyed sailor had brought it to him. “I saved this from the stewpot, sir,” he said, “when I noticed all the worms on it.” Sure enough, the head was like a cabinet of curiosities, parasitized by several distinct organisms on and around its gills. The specimens he extracted were now suspended in five alcohol-filled vials secured in a wooden box made specially for the purpose. He opened the box and slid out one vial, then fumbled around himself for a moment in search of his pocket microscope before remembering that he had left it in the house in Macao. Sighing, he held the vial between himself and the candle flame and squinted to see the nearly transparent specimens preserved within.

The sailor who saved the fish head had called the creatures “worms,” and indeed, most naturalists did too, but Lamartini
è
re thought they had more in common with insects. To the naked eye, the tiny filaments that protruded from the fish's head and now floated in the vial looked wormy enough, but with a microscope one could clearly see that they had leglike appendages. He had consulted both Fabricius and Linnaeus and felt pretty certain they were parasitic varieties of
Pennatula
. Some of the creatures were buried so deeply and firmly in their host's body that he had trouble extracting them; at least one he had unwittingly beheaded. It was hard to imagine how the soft-bodied creatures had burrowed their way through the fish's scales. Could they have found their hosts early, he wondered, while in some tinier, sharper, juvenile state, then remained headfirst in the fish's body, lodged and fed forever therein as their heads enlarged and their bodies softened and elongated behind them? They also appeared to have eyes, a single compound structure in the middle of their heads, though they hardly had need of them. What a strange life, he thought, with one's head entirely buried in the relative safety of ever-present nutrition while one's back end lay exposed to whatever might befall in the great oceans, including, at the last, the naturalist's indelicate tweezers dragging one out from dark sustenance into light and death.

He had been trying to communicate something of this earlier at the consulate, but it was not an audience given to marveling at anything unless it affected the price of tea or the sale of opium. Perhaps it was just as well he had been interrupted. He retrieved his document case—it had landed on d'Aigremont's side of the partition, narrowly missing a sextant on his desk—and after wiping it clean, pulled out the crude drawings he had made of the creatures. He frowned at his poor draftsmanship, retrospectively relieved that he had not had to show them. Indeed, one of the creatures he had drawn looked for all the world like a striped barber's pole. He had meant to suggest the pumping of the insect's blood, which he had clearly observed while it was alive, but the drawing was not a success. He indulged another flash of annoyance at Pr
é
vost for his refusal to do his job. Then reaching again into the case, he pulled out the notes he had made. If he wrote them up into a monograph, he could send it, along with the drawings, to the
Journal de physique
in Paris. What better time than now, when he had nowhere to go and nothing else to do, and ships on their way back to Europe lay at anchor all around them?

The work occupied him until his eyelids grew heavy, then again in the morning after his breakfast tray had come and gone. When the marine knocked on the door the following afternoon to say he was free to leave the cabin, and, indeed, to return to Macao, the manuscript was complete. Only then did he realize that not one of his cabinmates had returned for the night. If he could have enjoyed such privacy even occasionally while at sea, he thought, he might still be on speaking terms with d'Aigremont and Dufresne and—well, probably not with Pr
é
vost.

First to greet him on deck was a slicing north wind that nearly took his hat, then, more warmly, Father Receveur. “My dear Lamartini
è
re,” the priest said, apparently having forgiven or forgotten the peevishness with which Lamartini
è
re had left him the day before. “You look rather tired but also somewhat pleased.”

Lamartini
è
re patted his document case. “I've completed a monograph on the parasites I found in Alaska. I'd like to read it to you all tonight.”

The priest smiled. “I'm not going back to Macao.”

“You're not?”

“Not today,” he said, still smiling, as if he were conveying good news. “I've been neglecting my shipboard duties. I was quite busy with confessions during our little ‘incarceration.'”

Lieutenant de Monty, looking less condescending and somehow also less tall than he had the day before, called from the rail: “I'm holding a sampan for you, Monsieur de Lamartini
è
re. The boatwoman is impatient to be off.”

Father Receveur put his hands together and bowed to Lamartini
è
re, a rare clerical gesture from him, then added, less clerically, “Don't let Lamanon bully you!” Lamartini
è
re nodded and climbed over the rail, noting as he did that he still had not seen Captain de Langle. Apparently the entire episode would conclude without a word or even an appearance from the captain. The realization left him feeling rather bereft. Especially as he was now returning to Macao alone.

He was not alone, however. In addition to the boatwoman and her child, who was strapped to its mother's back, the sampan contained two marines and Dufresne, the unpopular cabinmate who would soon be leaving the expedition. “Dufresne!” Lamartini
è
re cried out, unable to hide his surprise. “Where have you been?” He looked at the two marines, whom he now recognized as his escorts from the day before, then back at Dufresne. “My God, have they arrested you as well?”

Dufresne cocked his head to one side, a lock of dark hair partially covering his pale face, his expression one of both amusement and annoyance. “Good afternoon, Monsieur de Lamartini
è
re,” he said. “I am
not
under arrest.”

“No, of course not—forgive me,” Lamartini
è
re stammered. “But you weren't—you never came in last night.”

“I spent the night ashore as a guest of Monsieur von Stockenstr
ö
m, the head of the Swedish company,” Dufresne explained. “I only returned to the frigates this morning to take more of our furs ashore.” He pointed to two large bundles next to him, then to the two marines. “These gentlemen are here to make sure they're delivered safely.”

“I see,” Lamartini
è
re said without understanding.
“Furs?”

“The otter pelts we got in Alaska,” Dufresne said. “We mean to sell them here.”

“Otter pelts?”

Dufresne burst out laughing. “Yes, nearly a thousand. One of the voyage's tasks was to determine the feasibility of entering the fur trade between North America and China.”

“A
thousand
?” Lamartini
è
re shook his head. How had such an undertaking entirely escaped his notice? Did the expedition have other aims of which he was quite ignorant? “I was rather preoccupied with a sunfish head at the time,” he muttered.

“Yes,” Dufresne said. “It stank up the whole cabin.”

“No doubt it did,” Lamartini
è
re said, shrugging apologetically. “And the fur business—
is
it feasible?”

“Not at all,” Dufresne replied. “The price has fallen precipitously the last few years. One Portuguese merchant had the temerity to offer to take them off my hands if
I
paid
him
!” He waved his hand dismissively toward the advancing shoreline. “Bloodsuckers, the lot of them,” he said, then sighed and added in a lower voice, “And I hardly need mention the unsuitability of the port we explored in Alaska.” The two men's eyes locked in shared memory. Dufresne looked away first, gazing eastward toward the hazy Pacific horizon. “That was only six months ago.”

“Seems longer, doesn't it?”

“
Much
longer.”

“And the Swedish gentleman?” Lamartini
è
re asked after a moment.

Dufresne looked back with a surprised smile, as if he could not account for Lamartini
è
re's continued friendliness. “Yes, Monsieur von Stockenstr
ö
m. He's agreed to store our furs until I can dispose of them. He's been most helpful. Unlike our own officials. They've been worse than useless.” His dark eyes danced with judgment. “They know nothing—or pretend to know nothing. Have you met this fellow Vieillard, our consul?” He wheezed in imitation of the man's stertorous breathing.

“I believe he was the gentleman who slept through my abbreviated lecture yesterday,” Lamartini
è
re said.

“The man is like a giant barnacle on the ship of state.”

Lamartini
è
re laughed. Dufresne had never been so affable before. Perhaps the prospect of going home had cured him of the surliness that had marked him earlier in the voyage. Or perhaps Lamartini
è
re and the others had never given him a chance. Rumor had it he was actually on board at the behest of the Ministry of Finance and not a naturalist at all. Certainly he had little enough acumen for the sciences. He seemed more comfortable now, skewering incompetent officials and discussing the disposition of commodities in a glutted market, than he had ever been on their all-too-infrequent botanizing expeditions. Perhaps the rumors had been right.

The air warmed noticeably as they approached the Praya Grande with its watchful line of European buildings along the waterfront. “And how will you occupy yourself now that you're back in this strange little settlement, Monsieur de Lamartini
è
re?” Dufresne asked.