Andrea Barrett - Voyage of the Narwhal

The bookshops sport great stacks of The Voyage of the Narwhal. At a dinner at the Laurens ’ last week a woman bent toward me and, with great seriousness, began describing the differences between the Arctic Highlanders and the Netsilik, just as if she knew what she was talking about. I have to tell you it ’ s a most interesting work — vivid, well-written, full of adventures. Are you surprised to hear you play a very minor role in it? As do your shipmates. Captain Tyler, Mr. Tagliabeau, Robert Carey and Scan Hamilton visited the city briefly, to settle some question of wages with Zeke ’ s father. They aren ’ t happy with the way Zeke portrayed them but said it ’ s no more than what they expected. When I told them you ’ d sailed for England they asked me to thank you for forwarding the letters to their families and to tell you they bear you no grudge— they profited from their sealing voyage and leave soon on another whaling ship. Also they said you ’ d want to know that the Greenlander called Joe is in Denmark, preparing reports for the missionary society and writing something about the Anoatok Esquimaux and their folk-tales. Is everyone writing a book?

Lavinia hardly speaks to me or Humboldt and I thinly is very unhappy. Zeke ’ s father is having financial troubles and had to give up his plans to build them a house; and although Zeke should make plenty from his book there are apparently some debts we didn ’ t know about. If I hear from you, she says, if I have a way to contact you — how awkward this is! — would I ask if you would consider letting her continue living in your house for the next year or two, or until you return: when are you returning? “ Remind him of what he gave me when I was ten, ” she says, which I hope means more to you than it does to me. She knows we don ’ t life Zefe but reminds me that she loves him. What does she mean by love, I wonder?

ERASMUS MADE ARRANGEMENTS. There would be no special ship this time, no provisions to arrange, no men to interview. After several inquiries he settled on a reliable whaling firm in New London, and a captain whose ship was due to leave mid-May and who didn’t mind conveying paying passengers to Godhavn. The rest of the journey he must make on his own, but he’d settle the details in Greenland. Annie was gone; he couldn’t bring her family her bones and couldn’t imagine how he’d explain this failure. But he could return Tom to them. One last chance; he understood his luck. He wrote to Linnaeus, giving Lavinia permission to stay in the house indefinitely. His father’s house; their father’s house. On the ice, before everything had changed, he’d once built a model of it — and that was how it now existed in his mind. A small thing, blank-windowed and closed and cold. Let her stay there with Zeke.

He sat down with Copernicus. From the beginning Copernicus had refused to commit himself beyond the next week or month: one painting at a time, he’d said. He’d finish as many as he could. Still Erasmus had hoped he could convince Copernicus to come north. “If you could see it for yourself,” he said. “The ice, the light, Tom’s people in their own place…”

“It’s not what I want,” Copernicus said, startling him.

In the room’s farthest corner, so absorbed in drawing bowhead whale that the men might have assumed she wasn’t listening, Alexandra made a dark stroke she hadn’t intended and then bit her lip. Of course Copernicus would go, it was his nature always to be going somewhere. His luck to be offered all the chances. Almost she rose, so the brothers could talk privately. Ned came into the room with a muskrat skin and paused as he heard the discussion; when Copernicus gestured for him to stay, Alexandra kept her place as well.

“I know it’s hard to understand,” Copernicus said. “But I can’t take in one more thing. The West is still in my eyes, and the visions of the arctic you gave me, and now these mountains — this is an amazing place. As wild as the West, in certain ways, and changing so quickly — I could paint for the rest of my life and never get it all down. I’ll finish what I can before you go, but I have to capture what’s here as well.”

“Are you sure?” Erasmus said. When they were boys, he remembered, a delegation of Indian chiefs had paraded through Philadelphia on their way to Washington. Even then, Copernicus had flown to his notebook and captured their spirits on paper. “Tom and I could use your help.”

“I know,” Copernicus said. “And I’d love to see those places for myself someday. But I’m here now, and my eyes are full. I have to get this place down while I can. Ned’s going to help me.”

Who would help her? Alexandra wondered. Never Copernicus, or not more than he already had. He might believe he was staying here in these mountains, but soon he’d be wandering again, alone again. She turned her gaze from him and back to her work. Erasmus turned as well, not toward her — she felt as invisible, among their swirl of plans, as Lavinia had once felt among her brothers — but toward Ned.

“I was wondering if you might like to come with us ” Erasmus said to his old companion. “With me.” His left foot throbbed and he reached down to rub it.

“I’m going to be Copernicus’s guide,” Ned said. “I can take him down the rivers and through the lakes, and we’ll make camps in the woods. I know the area well. He’ll paint. I’ll hunt and cook. It will be good for both of us.”

He didn’t say that Copernicus had offered him a higher wage than he received at the hotel; nor that he had a plan of his own.

He’d saved some money and meant to save more. As they traveled the mountains, he hoped to find a site suitable for a small hotel of his own. A resort, not just for hunters but for their families, where there might be healthful outdoor recreations and indoor comforts. Where a fleet of guide boats might glide like gondolas up to sturdy docks, and take those who were adventurous, but not so strong or skilled, down the braided streams. On the side, he thought, he might establish a small taxidermy firm.

“I’ve always tried to help you,” he said to Erasmus.

“You’ve been a huge help,” Erasmus agreed. He tried to smile, he tried to show his gratitude. On the Narwhal, he remembered, Zeke had asked for company on his last trip north and been refused. Had that felt like this? To Ned he said, “After all you’ve done — you must do what you want.”

Through the winter Ned had been plagued by a dream, which he kept to himself. In it he and Zeke and Dr. Boerhaave were lost again among the maze of pressure ridges. Dwarfed by the treacherous heaps of ice they spun in circles, chopping passageways only to discover their own tracks on the far side. Cold and hungry and weak, then weaker, they climbed and fell, burrowed and heaved, and never got anywhere. The dream was endless and without resolution; its only saving grace the fact that in it, the moment never arrived when Dr. Boerhaave slipped beneath the ice. Now he looked into his surviving friend’s eyes.

“I can never repay you,” he said. “For all you’ve taught me. But when we got back from the North, I swore I’d never set foot on a ship again.” He stretched the muskrat pelt in his hands, turning the fur side toward Erasmus. “Torn asked me for this,” he said. “Is that all right?”

“Of course,” Erasmus said absently. As Ned ducked into Tom’s room, Copernicus said, “I feel a bit like him.”

“Like Ned?”

“I’ve traveled too much already.”

Alexandra crosshatched a shadow. Imagine being able to say that, she thought. Too much; when all she’d ever felt was Not enough. He was wrong about himself, he’d always be in motion. No woman would ever hold him more than briefly. In the village, she knew, the shopkeeper’s daughter slipped from her family’s home late at night to meet Copernicus in the woods. Because he never brought her to this house, they all pretended it wasn’t happening.