Barkskins

by Annie Proulx

  • • •

  In India, Captain Verdwijnen exchanged some of the ceramics and silks for more cabbages and fruit, spices, especially cloves and pepper, and picked up a chest of Patna opium for medicinal trade in Amsterdam. Duquet’s busy mind, once again dense with forest thoughts, took note.

  “Such a three-corner trading route could work for a lumber merchant, could it not?”

  “Yes, but in my case the profits would be better if I bought the opium going forward, for there is a growing market in China for it. But we were pressed for time. Many foreign traders are taking advantage of the demand. Why should I not as well? But perhaps you were not thinking of opium?”

  “But, yes. I was.” He was thirty-two and on the way to his fortune.

  14

  risk

  On the home voyage some of the sailors refused to drink the scurvy-preventing lemon juice and threw the mangoes overboard (as they had the oranges and bok choy) when they thought they were unobserved. Those who were caught had the choice of sucking two lemons dry or enduring ten lashes. Most chose the lashes, for they believed that salt meat, hardtack and cheese so stale and granitic they had to be cut with an ax were manly foods suited to sailors. Lemons were not well regarded. Captain Verdwijnen smiled and said he hoped they would enjoy their scurvy. And soon enough those men began to move stiffly, leaving bloodstains on their hardtack, bending double with gut-ripping pains. There was great laughter one day and Toppunt, seeking the cause, found one of the lemon haters staring at his ration of hardtack. He had tried to gnaw it and it came away from his mouth bloodied and with three teeth embedded in it. Now the voyage seemed interminable but Captain Verdwijnen made one more stop.

  The ship made port at Ghana, picked up thirty slaves and crowded them into the cargo hold with the crates of porcelain, the rare plants and the chest of Patna. There was not a cat’s whisker of free space on the vessel. In the dark hold the slaves got at the contents of the opium chest, a fortuitous find which greatly eased their passage. They found and ate the rare plants, blossom, leaf, stem, root and soil. It was only when they sighted France that the loss was discovered.

  Captain Verdwijnen, when he had recovered from his shock, drinking his evening jenever put a question to Duquet.

  “So, my friend, what think you the value of those slaves now?”

  Duquet thought before he answered. The affair had its comic side but he would keep his smiles to himself.

  “To you, they must have a very high value, for when you add up the cost of the slaves themselves, then cipher in what you paid for the plants and the opium, they become precious, likely far above the market price for slaves.”

  “Quite so,” said Verdwijnen. “But. It is more complicated than that. For neither the plants nor the opium have fixed prices that are the same everywhere. What amount might I have received for the opium, which is an expensive and desirable medicine? And what if some of the plants soared in value as tulips did in my grandfather’s time? Should those estimated future prices be factored into the value of the slaves? And what about the slave buyer? He would see only a slave, not the opium and rare orchids the creatures ingested. To him, the value is the slave-market price.”

  He thought a moment, then went on. “The slaves, opium and plants were mine. That’s all.”

  “But do you not hold marine insurance for this trip? With the men in the coffeehouse in La Rochelle?”

  “That, too, is complicated. Of course Herr Grinz’s ship was insured by the coffeehouse men against loss, piracy and wreck, and also his cargo of silk and tea, but the rest . . . no. Piet, Jan and I are self-insured through our partenrederijen, so the risks fall equally on all of us. Piet and Jan own their ships—I alone had to hire out to Herr Grinz. They will share my losses and I will share their profits.”

  Duquet nodded. The motion of the ship was very slight as they were passing through slick water in which long windrows of seaweed made a pattern like a gigantic tweed cloak. He felt slight sympathy for Captain Outger Verdwijnen, who had made a negligible profit from the long, perilous journey, very little to show for all his bargaining and diplomatic skills. Unexpected dangers in business were part of the game. Captain Verdwijnen gave a hard laugh and said, “It’s always a risk, such a voyage. We might easily have lost the ship and all its contents, we might have lost our lives, we might have been captured by pirates and sold as slaves ourselves. I look on the pleasant side. We have evaded cyclones and pirates. I still have Margit’s little table—and I still have the slaves. I’ll get something for them, so in the end it is only the opium and the rare plants that I have lost. In any case we Dutch do not mind taking a risk. If business and enterprise is a fruit, we understand risk is its inner kernel.” He stretched his legs and half-smiled. “Besides, I also placed some bets at the coffeehouse before we sailed that the ship would not wreck, that we would dodge pirates, and that I would return very much alive and twice as clever. There is my profit.”

  And so they returned to France, where the Steenarend would stay for three weeks, Duquet chafing to see the new finery which would present him as a person of value and importance.

  15

  hair

  They were late arriving in Paris and rather than go to the tailor’s shop in the deepening dusk Toppunt and Duquet spent the night at an inn.

  The tailor seemed surprised to see them. Duquet, trying on his finery behind an embroidered screen with the help of Jules, the tailor’s assistant, listened while Toppunt and the tailor conversed.

  “We have heard so many ships were lost in storms and to pirates that I thought yours was surely among them.”

  “Not this time,” said Toppunt, “though we were severely lashed by typhoons and came close to being driven onto the rocks off the east coast of Africa, a vicious shore. There is more to the sea than water—there is the land that constricts it.”

  “The sea is the master of all men.”

  “Not our captain. He is a skilled navigator and of a pleasant nature unlike most ship captains. He is a good man. This was my fourth voyage with him and I will never ship out with another captain.”

  “And if he dies?” asked the tailor. “Will you accompany him on that voyage as well?”

  “Ha ha,” said Toppunt, “we’ll see. It depends on his port of call.”

  Duquet, a vision in blue, stepped out from behind the screen and turned about to show the fit of his costume.

  “So,” said Toppunt. “Even a prince would envy you.”

  The tailor held both hands up and praised Duquet’s legs—“You are certainly a man not in need of calf pads. You, sir, have a well-turned leg.”

  After this blandishment the tailor tried to wheedle more money from him. “It’s for storage. And I gave the costume very much care, dusting the shoulders, airing it outdoors, protecting it from my cat.” Duquet took out his smallest coin and spun it on the tailor’s table.

  • • •

  The wigmaker’s shop was closed, but with loud pounding they raised the proprietor, whose pointed nose gleamed wet. He coughed incessantly.

  “The powder on the wigs, you know. It’s quite irritating. I have lately changed to a powder made from curious lichens that grow on rocks, and it does not trouble me so severely. I have heard they use it to poison wolves, so rest assured that your fine wig will never be plagued by those ferocious animals.”

  He brought the wigs out. Toppunt’s was black and glossy and very smart. Duquet’s was enormous and heavy, of auburn color with countless long ringlets that cascaded down his back and over his shoulders.

  “Do you wish it powdered?” asked the wigmaker. He produced a hacking sound.

  “No, no,” said Duquet, staring at himself in the shop’s watery mirror. Between the blue shimmer of the garments, the flash of his ivory teeth and the expensive wig he was transformed into an apparent gentleman—what Toppunt, not altogether kindly, called a schijn-heer—an almost-gentleman.

  They left the street of shops, heading for a cert
ain eating place. Toppunt had heard the cook came from Bourgogne and was a genius of the kitchen. This inn was in a distant street and the longer they walked the hotter Duquet became until he felt his brains roasting, his shoulders laden with coals. His neck ached with the weight of the wig. The sun glowed as a smelting furnace. They pushed through crowded streets, down alleys that ran at angles. A man carrying a large covered tray on his shoulder came toward them. He brushed past Duquet, who suddenly felt the expensive wig ripped from his head. He spun around in time to see the man with the tray running, and on the tray a ragged child clutching Duquet’s new wig. The load was heavy and the man lurched as he ran.

  “Au voleur! Au voleur!” shouted Duquet and Toppunt. A passerby stuck out his leg and the man fell, the child, tray and wig hurtling into the mud. The child scampered away at extraordinary speed but the passerby held down the man. A crowd gathered and pinioned the thief.

  “It’ll be the galleys for him,” said Toppunt. “He will join the Huguenots.”

  Duquet, in an icy rage, retrieved the huge wig that had cost him so much. It looked twice as large as before, quite the armful, as big as a mattress and with clots of mud dangling from its curls; as he shook it he saw it had become entangled with another wig, apparently stolen earlier than his and hidden beneath the cloth.

  “It’s a good one,” said Toppunt, examining the modish second wig critically. “You can sell it.” But as he examined it more closely he grimaced.

  “It’s full of lice and nits.” He held it up. “But you could have it fumigated and cleaned. It is a valuable wig.” While they were examining the hairy mass the passerby, still holding the thief and craning his neck to better see the wigs, relaxed his grip a little and the miscreant wrenched loose and ran into the faceless multitude. A chase was hopeless.

  Duquet had had enough of wigs for the day, and, carrying his own under his arm, he strode away, Toppunt, carrying the lousy wig, running after him, calling, “Slow, slow.”

  By the time they reached the inn they could laugh at the adventure. Duquet said they should return to the wigmaker and see what he would give for the stranger’s wig. It might pay for their dinner. They recklessly ordered dishes with the feeling that someone else would pay—some good French wine. At last, sated and half drunk, they ate a sweet tart, and after that neither could move.

  “We need coffee,” said Toppunt. The innkeeper told them of a coffeehouse two streets away. They waddled in that direction, passed it twice before seeing it and went in.

  When they were finally restored to mobility and mental clarity they returned to the wigmaker’s shop, Toppunt carrying the stolen wig. The man recognized it as one he had made himself for a great gentleman. He said he would return it to his client, but Duquet insisted on a reward, naming a sum that covered the cost of their lavish dinner. Moaning, the wigmaker paid it, protesting that his client would hardly pay twice, even for a stolen and returned wig.

  In the street Toppunt said the wigmaker would likely cleanse the wig, hide it away and, when the client came to him telling of the theft, the wigmaker would promise him a new one, as like the old as a pea in the pod resembles its neighbor, and charge an even greater sum (for the verisimilitude) than the wig’s first sale.

  “In truth,” he said, “I believe the thieves are in the employ of the wigmakers.”

  • • •

  A week later, dressed in his finery and wearing the ivory teeth and stifling wig, Duquet attended a formal return dinner at Captain Verdwijnen’s house in Amsterdam. The captain and his wife, Margit, Captains Piet Roos and Jan Goossen, their wives and Piet’s two nearly grown daughters, Josina and Cornelia, made up the company. In the entrance hall Duquet noticed the table Captain Verdwijnen had purchased for Margit in Guangzhou.

  As Margit looked him over Duquet saw that her right eye was more kindly than the left, which shot out a ray of antipathy. He felt that eye erase his fine clothes, discard the wig, dissolve the ivory teeth and identify him as a scavenging opportunist. He dared not eat anything but soup and gravy as he did not wish to remove his teeth in company. They were inadequate for anything beyond blancmange.

  To avoid Madame Verdwijnen’s cruel eye, all through the dinner Duquet shot his own glances at young Cornelia. There was a resemblance to Piet and she was passable, though certainly not a beauty. Her eyes were of a blue so pale they seemed white, her nose was broad. She wore a dark brown silk dress with a filmy ruff collar and an embroidered linen cap. Duquet made up his mind that she would be his wife. At the flashing thought of any opposition or denial the inner tiger stirred.

  • • •

  During his time in Amsterdam, at a popular coffeehouse Duquet met a colonial Englishman from Boston, Benton Dred-Peacock, dressed in smart clothes of the best quality but with a face that seemed made from stale bread crusts. Most colonial settlers were of low circumstance; it was obvious Dred-Peacock was a moneyed gentleman. As they talked Duquet learned Dred-Peacock had intimate business dealings with the newly appointed New England royal mast contractor Jonathan Bridger. The man knew very much about the forest business in the colonies, and made it clear that his allegiances lay with the colonists rather than the Crown. And Dred-Peacock recognized in Duquet a man who knew how to get money from turnips if nothing else was at hand. Money was power and Duquet gave off the smell of both. He was one of those men others wished to know, even while they despised him.

  Duquet gathered from the conversation the knowledge that many colonials bitterly disliked English rule and the public taxes that went (unfairly, said Dred-Peacock) to support England’s reckless wars. Especially did they dislike the restrictive policies of the Royal Board of Trade, which set stringent rules for cutting the dense and dominating forests, rules pressing on amounts and procedures for supplying the Royal Navy with ships’ stores—masts, bowsprits and yards, not to mention pitch and tar. The residents were incensed over the Acts of Trade and Navigation, which clamped like vises on colonial trade. And this Bridger fellow was apt to be troublesome about the sale of townships and the cutting of mast trees. But, said Dred-Peacock, “that man is eager to make a name for himself, and I believe he will respond to careful smoothing.” And Dred-Peacock knew the Elisha Cookes, both formidable powers in colonial affairs.

  Dred-Peacock, his breath heavy with black rum fumes, whispered to Duquet, his eyes casting about for listening spies; “As Dr. Cooke says, we ought to have the rights to trade with the whole world if we have the enterprise to produce the goods and timber, to grow hemp. But these Acts bind us at every turn.”

  Duquet suggested they move to a more private table near the back, and he ordered a flagon of rum. As the evening wore on he learned there were many sly ways the New Englanders evaded those thousand and one strictures, most generally in collusion with colonial officials, especially the sawmill owners. Dred-Peacock leaned closer, thinking an alliance with this brute could be to his purse’s advantage. It was all about money.

  “Chief among these exigencies is procuring ownership of great white pine tracts by purchasing old township grants. One must cultivate understandings with men who enjoy political influence and connections. I have done so. The enemy is the King’s Surveyor, a dotard in London who makes a big fluster examining the licenses and permits of lumbermen. He is cowardly and dare not come to the colonies lest he suffer an accident. He sends his henchmen, the lowest of men.”

  “I would know more about acquiring those townships,” said Duquet.

  Armed with a dozen new names and Dred-Peacock’s promise to meet him on his return, Duquet sailed for Boston, reflecting that the great and important advantage of the colonies over New France was the ice-free ports. The St. Laurent was locked in ice for six or even eight months of the year.

  He found a small house in the colonial city and for the next year practiced speaking English and cultivating acquaintances with men who could grant him favors, all introduced by Dred-Peacock. Duquet did not quite trust Dred-Peacock, yet the man was a tolerable woodsman
, a grand walker with legs cutting distance as springily as sheep-shearing blades. In the early spring Duquet fell ill with cholera, gradually regaining his health. He planned one more trip to China, and then he would buy up old Maine land claims and paper townships. But first he had to go north.

  16

  “a wicked messenger, fallen into evil . . .”

  (Guy du Faur, Seigneur de Pibrac)

  Back in New France Duquet reverted to buckskin and moccasins and set out to find the Trépagny brothers. Everywhere he went there were stump-choked clearings, charcoal kilns and settlers’ cabins, for men were cutting maple trees to make charcoal; the English needed it for their glass and gunpowder factories and paid high prices. He could not find Toussaint and Fernand—but that could be explained by the new war. New France, Indians and the English colonies to the south boiled with spies; there were constant ambushes by roving bands of combatants. Duquet was impatient to get the brothers aligned for another season of fur trading. They would dodge the fighting.

  Then it was cooler and there was rain in the woods, the smell of leaf mold and mushrooms. The refreshed river hissed. He looked up at a sky that seemed set with rondels of thick glass. He found the brothers tearing out a beaver dam near their old hut on the Rivière des Fourres. Both brothers, muddy and glad to leave the beaver dam for a reunion, were in fair health though Toussaint’s beard showed white side streaks and Fernand groaned when he straightened up.