David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

Autua fairly ran up the mast & I began to hope all was not lost. The newly risen sun shone low over the water & caused us to squint. “Ready & aim my piece,” the captain instructed Mr. Boerhaave, once the stowaway was past the spanker gaff, “fire on my command!”

Now I protested with the utmost vigor, the Indian had received holy sacrament, but Cpt. Molyneux ordered me to shut up or swim back to the Chathams. No American captain would cut a man down, not even a nigger, so odiously! Autua reached the topmost yard & walked it with simian dexterity despite the rough seas. Watching the sail unfurl, one of the “saltest” aboard, a dour Icelander & a sober, obliging & hardworking fellow, spoke his admiration for all to hear. “The darkie’s salt as I am, aye, he’s got fishhooks for toes!” Such was my gratitude, I could have kissed his boots. Soon Autua had the sail down—a difficult operation even for a team of four men. Cpt. Molyneux grunted approval & ordered Mr. Boerhaave to replace his gun, “But d—me if I pay a stowaway a single cent. He’ll work his passage to O-hawaii. If he’s no shirker he may sign articles there in the regular fashion. Mr. Roderick, he can share the dead Spaniard’s bunk.”

I have worn away a nib in narrating the day’s excitements. It is grown too dark to see.

Wednesday, 20th November

—

Strong easterly breeze, very salty & oppressive. Henry has conducted his examination & has grave news, yet not the gravest. My Ailment is a parasite, Gusano coco cervello . This Worm is endemic throughout both Melanesia & Polynesia, but has been known to science only these last ten years. It breeds in the stinking canals of Batavia, doubtless the port of my own infection. Ingested, it voyages through the host’s blood vessels to the brain’s cerebellum anterior. (Hence my migraines & dizziness.) Ensconced in the brain, it enters a gestation phase. “You are a realist, Adam,” Henry told me, “so your pills shall be unsugared. Once the Parasite’s larvae hatch, the victim’s brain becomes a maggoty cauliflower. Putrescent gases cause the eardrums & eyeballs to protrude until they pop, releasing a cloud of Gusano coco spores.”

Thus reads my death sentence, but now comes my stay of execution & appeal. An admixture of urussium alkali & orinoco manganese will calcify my Parasite & laphrydictic myrrh will disintegrate it. Henry’s “apothecary” holds these compounds, but a precise dosage is paramount. Less than half a drachm leaves Gusano coco unpurged, but more kills the patient with the cure. My doctor warns me that as the Parasite dies, its poison sacs split & secrete their cargo, so I shall feel worse before my recovery is compleat.

Henry enjoined me not to breathe a word about my condition, for hyenas like Boerhaave prey on the vulnerable & ignorant sailors can show hostility to maladies they know not. (“I once heard of a sailor who showed the touch of leprosy a week out of Macao on the long haul back to Lisbon,” recalled Henry, “and the whole company prodded the wretch overboard without a hearing.”) During my convalescence, Henry shall inform the “scuttlebutt” that Mr. Ewing has a low fever caused by the clime & nurse me himself. Henry bridled when I mentioned his fee. “Fee? You are no valetudinarian viscount with banknotes padding his pillows! Providence steered you to my ministrations, for I doubt five men in this blue Pacific can cure you! So a fie on ‘Fee’! All I ask, dear Adam, is that you are an obedient patient! Kindly take my powders & withdraw to your cabin. I shall look in after the last dog.”

My doctor is an uncut diamond of the first water. Even as I write these words, I am tearful with gratitude.

Saturday, 30th November

—

Henry’s powders are indeed a wondrous medicament. I inhale the precious grains into my nostrils from an ivory spoon & on the instant an incandescent joy burns my being. My senses grow alert, yet my limbs grow Lethean. My Parasite still writhes at night, like a new babe’s finger, igniting spasms of pain & dreams obscene & monstrous visit me. “A sure sign,” Henry consoles me, “your Worm has reacted to our vermicide & seeks shelter in the recesses of your cerebral canals whence visions spring. In vain Gusano coco hides, dear Adam, in vain. We shall winkle ’im out!”

Monday, 2nd December

—

By day, my coffin is hot as an oven & my sweat dampens these pages. The tropic sun fattens & fills the noon sky. The men work seminaked with sun-blacked torsos & straw hats. The planking oozes scorching tar that sticks to one’s soles. Rain squalls blow up from nowhere & vanish with the same rapidity & the deck hisses itself dry in a minute. Portuguese man-o’-wars pulsate in the quicksilver sea, flying fish bewitch the beholder & ocher shadows of hammerheads circle the Prophetess . Earlier, I stepped on a squid that had propelled itself over the bulwarks! (Its eyes & beak reminded me of my father-in-law.) The water we took on at Chatham Isle is now brackish & without a dash of brandy in it, my stomach rebels. When not playing chess in Henry’s cabin or the mess room, I rest in my coffin until Homer lulls me into dreams a-billow with sails of Athenians.

Autua knocked on my coffin door yesterday to thank me for saving his neck. He said he was in my debt (true enough) until the day he saves my life (may it never dawn!). I asked how he was finding his new duties. “Better’n slaving for Kupaka, Missa Ewing.” Anyhow, growing sensible of my fear someone would witness our congress & report to Cpt. Molyneux, the Moriori returned to the fo’c’sle & has not since sought me out. As Henry warns me, “It’s one thing to throw a blackie a bone, but quite another to take him on for life! Friendships between races, Ewing, can never surpass the affection between a loyal gundog & its master.”

Nightly, my doctor & I enjoy a stroll on the deck before retiring. It is pleasant merely to breathe the cooler air. One loses one’s eye in lanes of sea phosphorescence & the Mississippi of stars streaming across the heavens. Last night, the men were gathered on the foredeck laying up grass into sinnet for ropes by lantern light & the prohibition on “supernuminaries” on the foredeck seemed not to apply. (Since the “Autua Incident” that contempt directed at “Mr. Quillcock” is in recess, as is the epithet.) Bentnail sang ten verses on the world’s brothels foul enough to put the most wanton satyr to flight. Henry volunteered an eleventh verse (about Mary O’Hairy of Inverary) that turned the air yet bluer. Rafael was next coerced to take his turn. He sat on the “widow maker” & sang these lines in a voice unschooled yet honest & true:—

Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see you ,

Hurrah, you rolling river .

Oh, Shenandoah, I’ll not deceive you ,

We’re bound way ’cross the wide Missouri .

Oh, Shenandoah, I love your daughter ,

I love the place across the water .

The ship sails free, the wind is blowing ,

The braces taut, the sheets a-flowing .

Missouri, she’s a mighty river ,

We’ll brace her up till her topsails shiver .

Oh, Shenandoah, I’ll leave you never ,

Till the day I die, I’ll love you ever .

Silence from rude mariners is a grander accolade than any erudite eulogy. Why should Rafael, an Australian-born lad, have an American song by heart? “I din’t know ’twas a Yankee un,” he replied awkwardly. “My mam teached it me before she died. It’s the only thing of hers I got still. It stuck in me.” He turned to his work, an awkward curtness in his manner. Henry & I sensed anew the hostility that workers emanate at the bystanding idler & so we left the toilers to their industry.