Landfalls (5 page)

“You're tired,” Webber says gently. “I'll take you home.”

“Webber,” Monneron says. “I must return to my lodgings tonight. I can take a cab from here.”

Webber's face opens in disappointed surprise, and Monneron cannot suppress a flare of impatience.
I have spent a day and a half riding all over London with you
, he wants to say.
Is that not enough?
Instead he protests that he has much to do before he leaves, letters to write, accounts to check over—and it's all true, but still he sounds like a boor. “I am sorry, Webber,” he says. “You have been so good to me.” He does not add,
I no longer have need of you
. But the expression on Webber's face suggests he has heard it anyway.

He won't hear of Monneron taking a cab. They ride in silence to Mrs. Towe's. “I'll have your portrait ready tomorrow afternoon,” Webber says when the driver stops.

Monneron gets out of the carriage, then turns around in the street. The portrait—he'd forgotten about it. And Webber can see that he has. “I will come tomorrow, Webber,” he says, then compelled by some need to address his indebtedness, says, “May I help pay for the driver?”

Webber looks stricken. “Please don't insult me, Mr. Monneron.”

On a tarnished salver in Mrs. Towe's entryway lies a message addressed to Monneron. “It came yesterday,” the landlady says from her parlor. The note is short and unsigned:

Sir

have secured dipping needles for expedition which I should be honored to entrust to your safekeeping at earliest convenience

Influence

Sir Joseph receives him the next morning in the study under the stairs. He pats the top of a large box on his desk, then says: “On loan from the Board of Longitude.”

Monneron sits up. The Board of Longitude? Clearly they are well past the fiction of Don Inigo. Sir Joseph opens the box, pulls out an instrument, and sets it on the desk surface. It's an odd apparatus, looking like a framed vertical compass set over an adjustable tripod. “There's a second one like it in the box,” he says. He looks pointedly at Monneron. “They were on the
Resolution
and the
Discovery
.”

The
Resolution
and
Discovery
—the ships from Cook's last voyage! Monneron breathes in sharply. “Sir Joseph,” he says helplessly. “How—?”

Banks smiles. “There are quarters in which I have some influence,” he says. Then more seriously: “We are honored to cooperate with your government in this.”

Monneron cannot speak. He's struck, as he has not been before this moment, by the real importance of the expedition he represents. But also by the pointlessness of the secrecy he's been compelled to maintain—a secrecy that now seems like so much bureaucratic posturing.

Banks packs the dipping needle back into its box. “Take good care of these instruments,” he says. “Discover much. Write everything down. And then, come back. It's very important that some of you come back.”

Five Guineas

He's loath to leave Mrs. Towe's after depositing the dipping needles in the locked storage room. But he needs to collect the portrait and pay for it, and more than that he wishes to unburden himself to Webber, so he returns one last time to Oxford Street. He's surprised and vexed to learn that Webber is out. He has no right to his vexation, of course; he knows that. He's gone from expecting nothing helpful from the artist to having scruples about taking advantage of him to feeling smothered by the man's wanton availability to being, now, annoyed by evidence that he has other things to do. How can an acquaintance of four days have grown so tangled?

The dignified servant says no, he doesn't know when Mr. Webber will return, but there's a parcel for Mr. Monneron, if he would just step inside for a moment. This duty discharged, the servant doesn't invite him to wait. “May I—I should like to leave a note for Mr. Webber,” Monneron says. The man returns with pencil and paper, then departs without showing him to the writing table in the parlor. Monneron leans awkwardly over a ledge in the entryway to write.

What he wished to say in person—about Don Inigo and Lap
é
rouse and the minister, about Banks and the dipping needles—he cannot safely commit to paper. So he settles for thanking Webber—for the painting, for his hospitality, his time, knowledge, friendship. “I will think of you often on the voyage,” he writes in French (English would take too long), “especially when we begin trading with natives.” Then he places five guinea coins on the sheet and folds it up as securely as he can. The coins slide around inside, clinking with metallic vulgarity, but it's the best he can do. He's a little relieved, after all, not to have seen Webber again in person.

Back at Mrs. Towe's, he unwraps the portrait and looks at it by the late afternoon light. Webber has filled in the scenery around Monneron, who is now standing on a tropical shore. Palm trees and native huts grace the beach while mountains, ocean, and cloud-dappled sky fill out the background. His facial expression is also altered—or does it simply look different in context? He doesn't look anxious and lost now so much as surprised and curious. The painting is like a wish for a successful expedition: the young explorer standing amazed in a new place. On the right side, partly blocked by his own figure, Monneron can make out the image of a ship anchored offshore, a ship flying a white flag with three fleurs-de-lis.
So he did know
, Monneron thinks. He blinks back his regret as he rewraps the painting.

He can never sleep when he has to be up before dawn. He spends a few hours wondering if the stain above his head has grown, then gets up. By four o'clock, when Mrs. Towe knocks on his door, he's already dressed. The journey proceeds with clockwork precision: The stagecoach departs on time from the Golden Cross. They stop in Rochester for dinner, spend the night in Canterbury, reach Dover Saturday morning. He takes possession of his many purchases from the storehouse at the dock, pays the fees, watches everything stowed safely aboard the French mail boat, then takes his place on deck just as the right tide and a favorable wind arrive to speed the packet across the Channel.

In the past he's delighted in watching the approach of home. But today he keeps looking back at the receding white cliffs, fighting the sensation that he's left something undone. When England disappears in a veil of mist, the French coast comes at him too quickly, and he's astonished to find himself staggering on deck, dizzy and sick. A kindly crewman takes him below, murmuring that it's almost over, sir, some people are more sensitive than others, and Monneron cannot, dare not, open his mouth to put the man in his place, to tell him he's a naval officer, that he's about to circumnavigate the world, that he's never been seasick in his life.

 

TWO

LAMANON AT SEA

Tenerife, August 1785

It is the afternoon of August 26, 1785, and Jean-Honor
é
-Robert de Paul, Chevalier de Lamanon, has just returned to the
Boussole
, exhilarated and exhausted after a successful ascent of the Peak of Tenerife. Lamanon has two years, three months, and fifteen days left to live. He does not know this, of course. He has no inkling of what is to come: an uncharted cove in Samoa, an ill-conceived watering party, the misunderstanding over beads, stones overpowering muskets. Right now it is just three weeks into the voyage. The
Boussole
and her sister ship, the
Astrolabe
, are lying at anchor in the port of Tenerife. In two days the expedition will set sail across the Atlantic, away from the Old World and toward they know not what for certain. At the moment, however, Lamanon's chief concern is the safe retrieval of his supplies and equipment, which two crewmen are hauling up the side with altogether too much dispatch. The same two men just brought him up in the bosun's chair, and if their cheerful mishandling of his person is any indication—

“Do be careful,” Lamanon cries. “There's a Fortin barometer there, a gift from Monsieur de Lavoisier himself! Not to mention…” And then he goes on to mention the tripod and theodolite and glass sample bottles and his notebooks—oh, the loss to science if they should be dropped in the sea!

The crewmen do not know who Lavoisier is or why his barometer is so special, but they have safely delivered such objects before, to say nothing of frightened livestock and sick passengers, or water barrels and carronades that might kill a man if mishandled. “Your things,
Chevalier
,” they say with exaggerated flourish, placing everything on the deck.

Lamanon takes no notice of their flippancy. He likes to be called “chevalier.” He is thirty-two but looks fifteen years older. He has the longest official title of anyone on the expedition: Physicist, Geologist, Botanist, and Meteorologist. “Four men of science for the price of one!” he is wont to say, unaware that the comment does not endear him to his shipmates.

He walks with labored steps toward the companionway. Every part of him aches with the effort of three days of climbing followed by two days descending. He can look across to the island and see the mountain that required so much of him. It looks so near, so gently sloped, so brown and barren. It was none of these things. He would like to tell someone about it—about the surprising ruggedness of the trail, the blue lizard he spotted halfway up, and the clusters of violets and daisies he found at the summit, right next to a patch of snow. And most of all, the important scientific tasks he was able to carry out on the excursion. “I was just there!” he says aloud, pointing at the peak. But no one is looking his way; they are all busy with shipboard duties. No matter. He will have ample time to record all of his observations tomorrow. Right now he wants nothing more than to retire to his cabin and indulge in some reflective and self-satisfied languor.

This is not to be, however, for here is the captain, Monsieur de Lap
é
rouse, informing him that a boat will be leaving the
Boussole
at five o'clock, bearing letters for France. There will be no other opportunity to send letters before they set sail, the captain adds; in fact, it may be three months before they can send letters again. If Monsieur de Lamanon has any letters to write, the time to do so is now.

Lamanon is displeased; this does not suit him at all. Not that he isn't eager to depart. He cannot wait to see a place and a people untouched by Europeans and their pernicious influence. Tenerife, for all it has been a diverting and profitable port of call, is just another outpost of Spain, its native people and culture and innocence erased. But writing a good letter takes time, and naturally, he has several to complete (“
If
Monsieur de Lamanon has any letters to write”? What an idea—so typical of the low regard in which the expedition's savants are held!). They are not leaving till the day after tomorrow. Why is
this afternoon
the last opportunity to send letters?

“Because I say so,” Lap
é
rouse tells Lamanon. A most peremptory and unsatisfactory reply, but this appears to be one of the many prerogatives of command. After three weeks at sea, Lamanon is learning that his preferences count for very little. He might not mind this so much if he could feel that logic and good sense prevailed on board. They do not. But there is nothing to be done, so he shrugs and makes his way down the companionway. He winces with every step, shins aching. Ducking his head to enter his room, he curses the poor light and bends over the slab of wood that passes for his work table. He assembles inkstand, paper, candle, sealing wax, and seal; they vie for space with one another and with the specimen jars, notebooks, and rocks that clutter the surface. Then there is Lamanon himself, not a small person (though he will steadily lose weight during the time left to him), with hands and elbows that must perforce be placed somewhere among these objects.

One of the items he must clear from the table is a small bag of white beans. Ah, yes, he thinks. He must not forget the beans. The beans are an achievement. In fact, his first letter ought to be the one that accompanies this bag back to France. The thought rallies him, and he picks up his quill to begin. Easily nettled, but almost as easily cheered. That is our Lamanon.

The letter is for the minister of marine, the bewigged and bemedaled Marshal de Castries. Lamanon writes to beg a favor of the minister, but it is the sort of favor calculated to impress more than impose. He asks the minister to send a bag of white beans, enclosed herewith, to his hometown of Salon-de-Provence. He reminds the minister that he, Lamanon, had been mayor of Salon-de-Provence before the expedition. (He does not mention that he had been so unsuited to the post that there was almost no complaint when he announced he was leaving after only four months in office.) Beans, he goes on to explain, are vital to the well-being of the peasants of lower Provence. The peasants satisfy their hunger with bean salads, which they carry with them into the fields. The beans not only strengthen them for their labors, but counteract the inebriating effects of the strong local wine, which they also tend to carry about with them.

In recent years, however, the bean crops of Provence have fallen prey to an infestation of rust, a problem he attributes to the “dry fog” of the summer of 1783. (This persistent haze, caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland, had so darkened the daytime sky that for a few days Lamanon had been able to look at the sun through a telescope without a filtering lens. He does not clutter his letter with this detail, of course, but he does linger for a moment with the memory, feeling some nostalgia for that strange time.) At any rate, the fog and the resulting rust have rendered Proven
ç
al beans scarce and expensive. And no, he writes, anticipating an objection, potatoes are
not
a good substitute. Potatoes are bland. The peasants are not fond of potatoes. Potatoes do not go well with the local wine. “But I have had the good fortune to discover an excellent white bean in Tenerife,” Lamanon writes. “With the introduction of this variety, it is hoped we may revive the cultivation of beans in southern France.”