Andrea Barrett - Ship Fever - Stories

“Charles is a nice boy,” he said. “But quite incapable — look what he has done with this bird.”

He showed Alec a bee-eater Charles had been putting up, which resembled Alec’s own first specimens. The head was crooked, a lump of cotton bulged from the breast, and the bird’s feet had somehow been twisted soles uppermost. Alec looked at this, sighed, and steeled himself to prepare Ali’s remains alone. Separating the skin from the bone and muscle beneath, he reminded himself that, in so doing, he served science. Was this science? That night he was unable to sleep. Some hours after the bungalow had lapsed into silence, he found himself outside, in the dripping forest, slashing savagely at a tangle of lianas.

Not until later did he learn that somewhere during this long run of fever-soaked days, Wallace had written a paper on the possible origin of species by, as he put it, natural succession and descent — one species becoming changed either slowly or rapidly into another…Every species has come into existence coincident both in time and space with a pre-existing closely allied species. His paper caused a stir when it was published in England that September, bringing him to the notice of such eminent men as Lyell and Darwin.

What was Alec doing while Wallace was writing? Tossing on his sweaty bed; mourning his little orangutan as he sorted and arranged his insect collections. He prepared a shipment for Mr. Barton, with a long anxious letter about the difficulty of his finances, and how much he needed to receive a good price for this batch of specimens. He wrote,

Enclosed please find:

Beetles 600 species Moths 520 species Butterflies 500 species Bees and wasps 480 species Flies 470 species Locusts, etc. 450 species Dragonflies, etc. 90 species Earwigs, etc. 45 species Total: 3155 species of insects

(note: multiple specimens enclosed of many species)

Alec never claimed that his financial difficulties kept him from such fruitful speculations as Wallace made; he knew that Wallace, like himself, spent precious hours sorting and crating specimens and was largely dependent on the income from the sale of same. Alec merely noted that Wallace had Charles, however incapable; a bungalow-palace where he might return from time to time to regain his strength; and powerful friends. [Theories—1862]

Here is one: Two human beings, coincident in time and space, cannot simultaneously think the same thought; one always precedes the other. As Wallace always preceded Alec, except in a single case. For consolation Alec had this: that he was the first to bring living specimens of paradise birds to the western world. And he believed he was the first American to see these creatures in their native forests.

Although Alec thought of Wallace often, and longed to see him, the Malay Archipelago is a very big place and they never crossed paths again. Not until the winter of 1860, while Alec was on Sumatra plowing stupefied through a year’s accumulation of letters — his mother was ill, or had been the previous May; his brother Frank had married; Mr. Barton had sold his last shipment of insect specimens for a gratifying sum, but had advanced all the money save for a pittance to his father, at his father’s request — did he again hear news of Wallace.

In a letter Mr. Barton, who kept up with the natural history journals in both England and America, recounted to Alec how at Ternate, while suffering again from the ague, Wallace had written a further essay on the origin of species and mailed it to Darwin for comments. The essay had caused a sensation, Mr. Barton said, summarizing its main points for Alec. It had been read at a meeting of the Linnaean Society, along with some notes of Darwin’s expressing a similar idea.

Genius, Alec thought, sitting stunned on his wooden stool. That’s what had come of Wallace’s ague. Of his own, which was upon him again, there were only incoherent letters begging to know the true state of his finances. He would not repeat to anyone what he wrote to his family. To Mr. Barton he wrote,

Thank you for your last, and for the most interesting news of Wallace’s essay. You cannot imagine how tired I am after my last year’s voyages. During the recent months, when I might have been resting, I have been cleaning, labeling, arranging and packing the enclosed: some 10,000 insects, shells, birds, and skeletons. Also hiring men and obtaining stores for my trip to Celebes and the Aru Islands — none of this made any easier by the fact that you have sent me hardly enough money to live on. Do not give the proceeds of this shipment to my family, but forward a full statement directly to me.

Perhaps this is when Alec first wondered why his journal had deteriorated into little more than a tally of species, interspersed with fumbling descriptions of places and people. Why all he’d observed and learned had not crystallized in his mind into some shimmering structure. Certainly he’d never lacked for facts — but he was caught like a fly in the richness around him, drowning in detail, spread too thin. If he were to narrow his gaze, perhaps? Focus on one small group of species, contemplate only them? Then he might make both his reputation and his fortune.

As a boy he’d spent hours in the Philadelphia museum staring at a skin labeled Magnificent Bird of Paradise: red wings, dark green breast-plumes, cobalt-blue head, a stunning yellow ruff or mantle, and behind that a second mantle of glossy pure red. Sprouting from the tail were two long spires of steely blue. He had stared not only because the skin was so beautiful, but because it had no wings or feet.

Birds with no feet — could there be such a thing? From a book in the museum’s library, he’d learned that Linnaeus had labeled the skin he’d seen Paradisea apoda, or the footless paradise bird. A Dutch naturalist wrote that the paradise birds, wingless and footless, were buoyed up by the beams of the sun and never touched the earth till they died. How tantalizing, Alec thought now, looking up from his papers and crates. They were elusive, irresistible; and their skins were so rare as to be very valuable. Money crossed his mind, as it always had. Nearly penniless, and still without a wife or any possibility of supporting one, he seized on the prospect that the paradise birds might save him. Had Wallace married yet? He thought not. Once more he gathered the necessary supplies and prepared to disappear from sight.

After a long journey in a native prau from Celebes, during which his life was often in grave danger, he arrived in the Aru Islands. He shut his eyes to the fabulous trees, the astonishing moths and ants, and sought singlemindedly the Great Paradise Bird, with its dense tufts of long golden plumes raised to hide the whole body; the King Paradise Bird, so small and red, with its beautiful, emerald-green, spiral disks lifted high on slender paired shafts. The islanders with whom he was staying took him to see the sacaleli, or dancing-party, of the Great Paradise Birds.

In a huge tree, deep in the forest, he saw several dozen gather together. They raised their wings, they arched their necks, they lifted their long, flowing plumes and shivered them as if to music, darting now and then between the branches in great excitement. Their beauty and strangeness beggared even that of the lyre-tailed drongo-shrike or the Amazonian umbrella-bird. Above the crouching, glossy bodies the plumes formed golden fans. The islanders taught Alec to use a bow, and arrows tipped with blunt knobs. He sat in the trees, dazed by the beauty surrounding him, and shot strongly, so as to stun the birds without rending the skins or staining the plumage with blood. On the ground below him, boys wrung the birds’ necks as they fell.