Andrea Barrett - Voyage of the Narwhal

“I’m going to try to get Erasmus working on the book again,” she said, rising and brushing her skirt. “And myself as well. Can I count on you? If he knew you were still painting, and supported what he was doing…”

“I do support him,” Copernicus said, sounding surprised.

“I know. But…” She turned her eyes from his sun-browned throat and squinted at the garden. He was strong and good-hearted, yet perhaps not really reliable. “You’ve been gone for almost five years and maybe you’ll want to travel again. And there’s nothing wrong with helping your sister’s husband while he’s away. But once he returns — Erasmus needs your help more.”

“I will help,” Copernicus said. “I said I would, and I will. As soon as they return I’ll let Zeke take care of his Esquimaux and I’ll work on the paintings full-time.”

Alexandra folded the handkerchief over the pile of fragrant leaves. “Steep these for ten minutes in a quart of boiling water,” she said. “Have Annie and Tom drink the tea while it’s hot, it will bring out a cleansing sweat.”

She stepped into the Repository again, laying her hand on Annie’s hot forehead and then on Tom’s. “Zeke will be back soon,” she said. She gazed at the chaos around her and moved quickly back into the light.

NED KYND RECEIVED Erasmus’s letter late one July night, as he was cleaning up after a long stint cooking for a dozen boisterous hunters. Rabbit stew and porcupine pie and sauteed trout; wild mushrooms and venison filet. He had a reliable stove, good supplies, a grateful employer. The patrons called out loud compliments, and if one grew overenthusiastic and came back to the kitchen and then recoiled at Ned’s face, he could claim he’d had a hunting accident and be believed. In these North Woods his was just another legend. “A she-bear tore off that half of my nose,” he’d say. “Then left me for dead. I was lucky.”

And he was lucky, he thought, washing his hands with strong brown soap. Lucky to have landed here. Behind the hotel the mountains rose in solid ranks, cliffs and ledges jutting like bones through the fur of trees and stars shining, sharp and violent, as bright as those in the arctic. In Philadelphia there’d been nothing for him, only more bad jobs in taverns near the wharves. Only the lowest sort would consider him, because of his face. Some asked if he had leprosy, and if he told them what had really happened they stared at him blankly. On an impulse he’d made his way back to the Adirondack Mountains, to a village mentioned by a man he’d known at the lumber camp: Keene Flats, on the eastern side of the highest peaks. A place, his friend had said, where a few hotels catered to city men eager for a wilderness experience.

The noise from the dining hall diminished; the hunters shambled off to their beds. After hanging up his apron and changing his shoes, Ned began the long walk along the Ausable River, to the cabin he’d rented near John’s Brook.

Inside he lit the stove and a pair of candles, then opened the envelope from Philadelphia. He wrote back to Erasmus that same night:

Your letter reached me with little trouble though I've moved since you last wrote — this is a small place, and everyone knows everyone else. Your news disturbed me. I've gotten settled here, it's a kind of new life. I hoped you might have one as well.

For Commander Voorhees to show up like this — I didn't wish him dead, I'm glad he's alive but don't see why you must suffer for it. You only did what we asked you to, you led us all to safety and should be honored. Those newspaper pages sounded more as if Commander Voorhees is making up an adventure tale than reporting what he saw. Why should he get to say what he wants, and be believed? I know what he did with that meteorite, despite Joe's advice, yet it seems he was rewarded for his errors. I remember Nessarkjrom my stay at Anoatok, and he didn't strife me as someone who'd willingly let a family member go. Do you suppose Commander Voorhees deceived them in some way? It's the Esquimaux who make him a hero — without them he'd have nothing more than you do, just his story. It's the Esquimaux who set him off from you and me, from Dr. Kane — and I think he knows this, I thinly he had to bring them back. All this maizes me suspicious.

I feel that if you're patient your reputation will be restored in time, as will your family's affections. Perhaps it would be helpful if you left that place for a while. Up here, no one talks about us or any other expedition, they're busy taming this wild place and no one requires explanations.

My job as cook is not exciting, but it's good enough. On my days off, I still practice what you taught me; some of the hunters wish to bring home the skins of the animals they've shot, and I do what I can to pre pare them. My big triumph lately has been with deer — finally I've mastered removing that leaf-shaped piece of cartilage from the ear while keeping the skin intact. For my own amusement I've prepared some small skeletons: a bat, a fox, a salamander. You're a better man than Commander Voorhees. I'm not surprised he's taken those two Esquimaux from their homes, I always thought he'd do something like this. I wish he'd lost more than his ear. Should you need me you can reach me care of the hotel, at least for the remainder of the season.

“I’M GLAD HE’S all right,” Alexandra said to Erasmus, when they met in early August by the Schuylkill River. She folded the pages of Ned’s letter neatly. “I was worried about him when you first came back — his poor face. But he’s right that you’re a better man than Zeke. And I agree with both of you about that diary, I had the same reaction when I read the sections in the newspaper. Everything I saw of Zeke before I left — he just seems false to me somehow. Even the way he is with Lavinia. I don’t understand him. I never trusted him, not from the beginning.”

Erasmus looked out at the ducks paddling in the eddies behind the rocks. When the Esquimaux at Disko Bay had tipped and rolled their delicate kayaks, the crew of the Narwhal had tossed them scraps of food, as strollers here might feed these creatures.

“He’s already got a name for his book,” Alexandra added. "The Voyage of the Narwhal — aping the famous works of exploration, I suppose. Copernicus told me he’s written a hundred pages.”

Erasmus shook his head. As if sensing that he’d not done a stroke of work since Lavinia’s wedding, she’d asked him to bring some new pages and promised she’d bring some drawings. He had nothing to exchange for the detail of a whale’s mouth she now spread on the bench between them.

“That’s good,” he said. “It’s really quite close. If you could shade the baleen plates a bit more…”

Her face fell. “I knew I wouldn’t get it right without you,” she said. “And it’s the only one I’ve been able to work on, it’s so hard to get time at home.”

“At least you’ve done something. I can’t work at all.”

“There must be someplace,” she said. “Someplace we can go.”

“We might be able to use the Repository as a studio,” he said. “If we didn’t bother Lavinia, if I didn’t have to see Zeke…” Beneath the hem of her dress, one of Alexandra’s shoes inscribed an arc in the dirt. “You don’t think that’s a good idea?”

“Have you talked to Copernicus?”

“What do you mean?” She looked so unhappy that, despite his own misery, he felt sorry for her.

“Probably he didn’t want to upset you,” she said. “But you should know.”

She told him, then, how Zeke had converted the Repository into a kind of camp for Annie and Tom. He tried to envision it, but failed — bales of skins and puddles of water and dogs lurch ing against the tables. The precious books and specimens disturbed, and Annie and Tom both ill. Zeke had known and cherished that place as a boy.