Andrea Barrett - Voyage of the Narwhal

“You should be telling Commander Voorhees this,” Erasmus said. He decided not to show his treasure to Joe; it would only make Joe feel worse about what the Esquimaux might not have admitted. “Not me.”

“You think I didn’t try? I tried to tell him the night before we sailed. And he said, he said”—here Joe drew himself up and tucked in his chin—”7 have always read that the Esquimaux pride themselves on their excellent memories, and the faithfulness of their storytelling. I think we may have absolute confidence in what we’ve been told.’”

With that Joe headed up to the crow’s nest, leaving Erasmus to ponder the eerie accuracy with which Joe had caught the inflections of Zeke’s voice.

Later, napping briefly, Erasmus dreamed that Joe had turned into an Esquimau boy, indistinguishable from the children at the hunting camp. Then he dreamed that he was himself a tiny boy, listening to his father read. Not far from the cave where the north wind rises live people who have a single eye centered in their foreheads. In Africa is a race who make in their bodies a poison deadly to snakes. On a mountain in India live men with dogs’ heads, who bart instead of talking. Near the source of the Ganges are mouthless people, who subsist on the odors they breathe; beyond them live pygmies in houses of feathers and eggshells.

He woke still within the enchanted circle of his father’s words, and then blinked to see where he was. What had his father meant to do, reading those tales to his small sons? He and his brothers had soaked up those words, which had lit their own experiments. Cutting open a little green snake, they’d been equally ready to see eggs or infant snakes or three-headed monsters. Try to see what you see, his father had said. Then integrate it with what you’ve already read and heard. Still Erasmus felt a kind of pity for him. At thirteen his father had gone to work in the firm his own father founded; after that he’d read in snatches, always standing at a printing press or setting type or inking it, lugging bales of paper or bundles of pages, always on the move and starved for time. Once he’d taken over the firm he’d been busy in other ways. I wanted things to be different for you boys, he’d said. For you not to have to worl(so hard. For you to be able to learn in peace, and travel wherever you wanted — especially after your mother died, I could never leave home for more than a few days.

How could Erasmus not be grateful for all he’d been given? The next morning he made what amends he could to Joe, offering the heap of little disks he found in the stomach of a bearded seal. “Specimens of the operculum from the large whelk snail,” he said.

Joe, who seemed to have recovered his good humor, examined them with interest and then butchered the carcass when Erasmus finished his dissection. Somewhere during those hours, both of them up to the elbows in blood, Erasmus said, “I’m sorry. You’re right — I should have been paying more attention. But what can we do about it now?”

“Nothing,” Joe said. “We must be thankful for what we did learn. And the Netsilik can be thankful that we’re gone; and I can be thankful that we didn’t do any more damage than we did.”

NOTHING SHONE so brightly for Erasmus after that. It rained for three days, windy squalls that made work difficult and left him too much time to think about what Joe had said. Then Zeke appeared on deck one afternoon and asked the crew to report to him in the cabin after their evening meal. As Captain Tyler started to ask a question, Zeke said, “I would like to see all the officers together, now.”

They crowded around the cabin table in their usual formation: Zeke at one end, flanked by Erasmus and Dr. Boerhaave; Mr. Tagliabeau and Mr. Francis and Captain Tyler clumped together, as separate from Zeke as was possible in such a tiny space; Sabine annoyingly underfoot. Zeke placed a sheet of paper on the table.

“I should have taken care of this before,” he said. The paper was densely written over, in his clear hand. “And I apologize for my tardiness. This is quite standard, something that most expedition leaders require their crews to sign, and I would appreciate it if you’d attend to it now.”

“May I?” Dr. Boerhaave said. Zeke nodded and pushed the paper over. Dr. Boerhaave read for a minute, before handing the document to Erasmus.

The undersigned accept Zechariah Voorhees as sole commander of this expedition, and pledge to aid him to achieve the goals of the expedition in every way possible, as deemed best by said Commander Voorhees.

The contract, stilted and formal, went on to state that, should something happen to Zeke, the expedition would then be under the shared command of Captain Tyler and Erasmus, with the captain responsible for the safe return of the ship, and Erasmus responsible for fulfilling the expedition’s goals. Erasmus had no quarrel with this: he was Zeke’s right hand and this seemed a simple formality. But a more disturbing paragraph followed, stating that all members of the crew — not exempting Erasmus, nor Dr. Boerhaave — promised to turn their journals and logs over to Zeke at the conclusion of the expedition, and further promised to refrain from lecturing or writing about their observations for a period of one year after the journey’s end.

Where had this come from? The blood hummed in Erasmus’s temples, and when Sabine draped herself over his instep he nudged her aside more sharply than he meant to. Zeke had been distant since Fletcher Lamb’s death but still Erasmus hadn’t sensed how far they’d drifted apart. They were meant to be brothers; who would impose on a brother like this? When he knew he could control his voice he passed the contract to Mr. Tagliabeau and said to Zeke, “I’m sorry to disagree with you, but I think this is outrageous. You never said a word of this to me before. You’re acting the way Wilkes did on the Exploring Expedition and I object to it, I object to it strongly…”

Zeke raised a hand to silence him. “It’s a formality,” he said. “But surely you can see the need to present our findings quickly, and in concert; not to contradict each other. Of course I’ll expect all of you to help with the initial announcement of what we’ve learned, and I would fully acknowledge any material I draw from your notebooks.”

Looking straight at Erasmus, and ignoring the whispers of the captain and the mates, Zeke said, “It’s to avoid what happened with Wilkes’s expedition that I do this. We must have no quarrels among ourselves, no results thrown into question by any appearance of disunity among us.”

“Why should Mr. Wells share command with me, in your absence?” Captain Tyler said angrily. “He knows nothing about this ship.”

“He shares my goals for the expedition,” Zeke said. “I must be sure that if something happened to me, someone would take charge of delivering the relics and our scientific observations. As well as safely delivering the ship and its men.”

Dr. Boerhaave, who’d said nothing yet, drew the paper from Captain Tyler’s hand, took the pen Zeke had prepared, and signed. Then he rose. “Of course I will assist you in any way I can,” he said. “As I have always done. But I’m offended that you feel a need for this. If you’ll excuse me.”

He nodded stiffly and went up on deck. Erasmus, left behind, stared at the paper that blocked his dream of lecturing by himself. But he’d be with Zeke, he thought. They’d be striding into the Academy of Sciences together — and already they were sharing the journal Lavinia had meant for Zeke. Their observations would be fused together, into a single narrative that Erasmus might write himself; Zeke disliked the act of composition and preferred to toss out broad ideas and let others shape them. This contract was the act of a young man, still nervous about his position. Surely Erasmus, so much older, could afford to give in here and work out the details later? Zeke would never prevent him writing a few articles purely about the natural history of the area, with no reference to Franklin or their Esquimaux companions.