The Steampunk Trilogy (7 page)

HOTTENTOTS

1

THE FACE OF AN APE

T
HE BIG FISH
was plainly stitched together at its midsection. Sloppy looping overhand whiplashes formed of black waxed twine ran around its entire circumference like the grin on an insane rag doll, holding its two disparate halves together. Mismatched slightly in size, the halves of the hybrid did not fuse neatly, but revealed the pinkish white inner meat of the larger front. With its long tapered head, protruding lower jaw and leading grasping teeth, the forepart plainly belonged to the family
Sphyranidæ
:
one of the Barracudas. The rear portion was less identifiable, although a highly educated (Lausanne, Zurich, Heidelberg, Munich, Vienna, and Paris) guess would place it within the family
Acipenseridæ
:
the Sturgeons. One fact, however, was incontestable: the tail was mated upside down to the head, so that the ventral fin was now impossibly in a dorsal position.

The monstrous miscegenation lay on a piece of damp canvas with ripped edges and a single brass grommet, its eyes glassy, pale serum slowly leaking from its jointure. The canvas lay in the lap of a seated man.

This man was Louis Agassiz.

Swiss-born scientist, master of paleontology, ichthyology, and zoology, doctor of medicine, public lecturer, formulator and popularizer of the
Eiszeit
Theory, Naturalist Laureate (in journalistic parlance) to his adopted America, Agassiz had only recently turned forty. Tall and strong, yet somewhat portly, he was dressed in wool pants, vest and double-breasted suitcoat, with a white foulard at his neck. His face was dominated by brown eyes as sharp and piercing as the spikes of a sea urchin (or common echinoid), and a broad square jaw. His lips and nose were rather fleshy. He was clean-shaven, save for longish sideburns, and possessed of a rather florid complexion. The tide of his still dark hair, now ebbing slightly, revealed a highly philosophical brow. (Samuel George Morton, distinguished Philadelphia colleague of Agassiz, had estimated his peer’s cranial capacity at 115 cubic inches, plainly above average for a specimen of the white race ((and hence for all races, white representing the pinnacle of creation)), and Morton, although he had refrained from revealing his desire, had already made plans to secure Agassiz’s skull for his immense collection, should he, Agassiz, chance to perish before Morton himself. . . .)

Agassiz now regarded the abomination on display in his lap. He hardly knew what to say. Was he supposed to take this crude hoax seriously? Just how gullible did these Americans imagine the average European to be?

During the ten months of his American experience to date, Agassiz had formed certain conclusions regarding the national character. The typical citizen of the United States was brash, cunning, energetic and liberally supplied with glibness and low morals. At their most likable, they were spoiled children, full of a youthful enthusiasm. Good in a sprint, they had no endurance. The best of them, such as his compatriots at Harvard (those who had managed to establish clean breeding lines within their own class) were intellectually and ethically equal to the best of the Europeans. The bourgeois, such as John Lowell and Samuel Cabot—well, bourgeois were the same the world over. But the mass of Americans, unlike their Old World counterparts, were wild and unpredictable.

It stemmed, of course, from interbreeding. The country was a hodgepodge of races, all mixing their bloods without proper regard for the ancient geographic divisions that had prevailed since the Creation. Aryan, Anglo-Saxon, Gallic, Slavic, Iberian, Mediterranean, Hibernian, Celtic, Mongol, Han, Semitic, Scandinavian, Baltic, Red Indian—Was it any wonder that the progeny of such egregious mongrelization were capricious, unorganized and avaricious, or that they should assume that their betters would be as easy to hoodwink in a business transaction as their own simple-minded fellows?

And the worst component of the mix, the vilest, most polluted stream feeding into the muddy river that was America, the most offensive taint in any putative white man’s blood, a contamination which reeked to heaven and violated all moral order, was—

The Negro.

Agassiz shuddered, recalling his first encounter with American blacks—with any member of the African races, for that matter—which had taken place just last year. He had written about it last December, in a letter to his sainted mother, Rose, thankfully safe at home in Neufchâtel.

It was in Philadelphia that I first found myself in prolonged contact with Negroes; all the domestics in my hotel were men of color. I can scarcely express to you the painful impression that I received, especially since the feeling that they inspired in me is contrary to all our ideas about the confraternity of the human type and the unique origin of our species. But truth before all. Nevertheless, I experienced pity at the sight of this degraded and degenerate race, and their lot inspired compassion in me in thinking that they are really men. Nonetheless, it is impossible for me to repress the feeling that they are not of the same blood as us. In seeing their black faces with their thick lips and grimacing teeth, the wool on their head, their bent knees, their elongated hands, their large curved nails, and especially the livid color of the palm of their hands, I could not take my eyes off their face in order to tell them to stay far away. And when they advanced that hideous hand toward my plate in order to serve me, I wished I were able to depart in order to eat a piece of bread elsewhere, rather than to dine with such service. What unhappiness for the white race—to have tied their existence so closely with that of the Negroes in certain countries! God preserve us from such a contact!

Eyeing the piscine horror in his lap, Agassiz suddenly saw embodied in it all his fears of cross-breeding. With a shiver, he recalled the similarly stitched creature born in Mrs. Shelley’s imagination. What if Nature should ever permit such monsters? Even the fancy was too much—

Agassiz tore his gaze away and confronted the man standing expectantly before him.

A rough-hewn fisherman of indeterminate age, with a seamed face like tanned leather in which were set squinty eyes, dressed in a turtle-necked cabled sweater greasy with lanolin, watch cap and baggy trews, a long-stemmed unlit clay pipe poking out of one corner of his mouth, the hopeful seller now deemed it appropriate to speak up in favor of his wares.

“So, young fella, what d’ye think? The boys down at the wharves all say you’re lookin’ for queer specimens, and you’ll not see many queerer than that ’un.”

Agassiz was astonished at the man’s temerity. The Professor’s Swiss accent—which so many of the ladies had found charming, and which consisted mainly of Frenchified vowels—became highly pronounced now, in an attempt to cow.

“Do you expect me to believe, sir, that this fish ever swam whole and entire through the seas of this world?”

The old salt scratched under his cap. “Ah, them eagle eyes of yourn has done detected the slight repair which I was forced to make in the rascal. One o’ my crew was preparin’ to fillet the critter for our shipboard supper when I comes upon him and, recognizin’ its scientific value, put a halt to his butchery. Unfortunately, not before he had separated snout from flipper. Seein’ as how it’s slightly damaged, I will consider lowerin’ my price. Which is four bits, cash on the barrelhead.”

Agassiz removed the canvas and its contents from his lap and stood up. “Please, go now. You’ve wasted my time.”

“Wait, old hoss, I can see ye be too many for me. Hold on, and I’ll tell ye the truth. I was only holdin’ back cuz I warn’t sure ye could appreciate it.”

“Very well, proceed. I am all ears, as you say.”

Cupping his chin and squinching his eyes even further, so that he looked like a mole (
Talpa europad
),
the fisherman said, “Well, we pulled our nets aboard, and in them was a barracudy and a black sturgeon—”

“That much I had deduced.”

“Mebbe so. But what ye cain’t know was that there was also a swordfish with ’em. Now, that there swordfish had the most peculiar instrument. Namely, a spike with a hole in its tip like the eye of a needle! Before my unblinking gaze, that swordfish proceeded to slice them two other fishes in half. Then it flopped across the decks to where we was mending our sails. It got the end of some cord in its eyelet, and proceeded to stitch the fishes together, just as ye seen ’em. I merely brung them by as proof, since the swordfish was too big to lug along. And it’s this swordfish what I propose ye should buy offen me!”

Concluding triumphantly with a huge grin, the fisherman awaited Agassiz’s reaction.

For a moment, Agassiz was stunned. Then he began to roar in laughter. The foul mood he had been laboring under all day—which had many unavoidable causes—evaporated in a moment under the flow of the typically American tall tale.

When he had mastered himself, Agassiz said, “Very good. You bring me this surgeon swordfish, and I’ll pay you handsomely.”

The fisherman extended a horny hand, and Agassiz took it. “That I’ll do, old hoss, or my name’s not Captain Dan’l Stormfield out o’ Marblehead.”

And with that, Captain Stormfield departed, taking with him both the vivisected fish and also a pleasant personal briney odor Agassiz only noticed in his absence.

Spoiled children, indeed!

Agassiz’s study was a comfortable den where he had spent many a lucubratory hour since his arrival on these foreign shores. Several glass-fronted bookcases held ranks of large scientific volumes from Linnaeus to Lyell; their open lower shelves were devoted to the well-read volumes of the elephant-folio edition of
Audubon’s Birds
.
A sideboard was scattered with the fruits of recent composition, neatly stacked into separate monographs. A round-topped table pushed into a corner was littered with correspondence to be answered. A comfortable couch, occasionally used for postprandial naps, was now occupied by large cardboard portfolios secured with ribbon ties and containing various expeditionary sketches. Several leather-cushioned chairs and throw-rugs were scattered around the wooden floorboards. (Hardly Biedermeier, but what could one expect from such a rude nation . . .?) A watercolor of Agassiz’s birthplace, the lake-surrounded village of Motier, composed by his longtime artistic assistant, Joseph Dinkel, who had regrettably chosen not to accompany his master to America, graced one wall. On another hung a map of North America, studded with green-flagged pins indicating points already visited—Niagara Falls, Halifax, New Haven, Albany, Philadelphia—and red-flagged ones betokening planned jaunts: Lake Superior, Charleston, Washington, the Rockies. . . .

Having holed up here in his atelier all morning indulging the black melancholy which had been dissipated so effectively by Captain Stormfield’s fable, Agassiz now enjoyed a return of his accustomed energies. He felt inclined once more to be out and about in the world, uncovering Nature’s secrets, classifying and discovering, collecting and theorizing, and, not incidentally, making his name resound from the lips of the masses as synonymous with modern nineteenth-century science.

Stepping from his study, Agassiz headed toward the workrooms located in his East Boston quarters hard by the bayshore, which had been so graciously donated by one of his patrons, John Amory Lowell, textile magnate and financier. The establishment was sufficient for the moment, and daily inspired in Agassiz feelings of satisfaction. But he had bigger plans in mind. A separate warehouse for specimens, perhaps fronted by a museum where selected ones could be displayed; larger workspaces, equipped with all taxonomic necessities; a gas-lit office; a lecture-hall; perhaps he would even have his own printshop and bindery, as he had had in Neufchâtel, to handle the steady flow of books from his industrious pen. . . .

Agassiz put a brake on his fantasies. All this could only be accomplished from a position of power and prestige. The amount of money he could personally invest was insignificant compared to his dreams. True, his lectures had earned him more than he had ever dreamed possible—in the last four months, over six thousand dollars!—but it was all spent as fast as it came in. Salaries alone for his trained team consumed a large fraction of his income. Add in his purchases from the local fishermen, the normal costs of maintaining a household, the expenses of field surveys, entertaining, and so forth, and you were soon running in the red.

No, only the resources of an institution such as Harvard would be sufficient to propel him to the heights of which he dreamed. He must have the professorship in the new School of Geology soon to be endowed by Abbott Lawrence at the university! His competitors for the seat, Rogers and Hall, were mediocre talents who did not deserve such a prestigious post. He alone, Louis Agassiz, First Naturalist of his times, was entitled to the professorship!

Approaching the door to the workrooms, Agassiz made a mental note to cajole Lowell into hosting another dinner at which he could subtly lobby Lawrence for the job. . . .

The workroom was humming like a top with activity. As he entered, all his loyal assistants who had accompanied him from Europe looked up from their benches with dedication and admiration in their eyes. There was Count François Pourtales, who had tramped all over the Alps with Agassiz, busy examining a large coprolite with a magnifying lens. Charles Girard, trained zoologist, was gutting a perch while wearing a gutta-percha apron. Artist Jacques Burckhardt was attempting to sketch a live lobster (
Homarus americanus
),
which unfortunately was bent on scuttling to freedom across the tabletop. Auguste Sonrel, expert lithographer, was busy with his flat stones. (In an attempt to raise additional funds for science, Agassiz had authorized Sonrel to provide a set of illustrations for a private edition of Mister John Cleland’s book under subscription by a group of Boston businessmen.) The only ones missing were Charles “Papa” Christinat, Arnold Guyot, Leo Lesquereux, and Jules Marcou, who all awaited his summons across the Atlantic, which he would issue once he had obtained the Harvard position.

The scene thrilled Agassiz. This was modern science: teamwork and delegation of responsibilities, a tight unit functioning with a single goal—the further illumination of the name of Agassiz!