Fortune

by Lenny Bartulin

  ‘Listen,’ Josephine said. She pointed at the obia again with her pipe. ‘you hear it.’

  Krüger closed his eyes, the lids heavy as chains.

  ‘Listen tell it.’

  ‘No!’

  Josephine reached over and put her hand to Krüger’s forehead. Her hand was soft and cool.

  ‘Listen tell it, man.’

  He breathed in the smell of her palm. The touch of her skin, her fingertips. Tears pooled in his eyes. She whispered something in a language he couldn’t understand.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘Don’t leave me.’

  ‘No,’ she said, but reluctantly. Then she stayed like that beside him and smoked her pipe until he fell asleep.

  NGĀTI KURI

  Blown violently off course by a storm in the Tasman Sea, the New Bedford was driven south of the Manawatawhi islands, ripped and raked across the living ocean. Fury surged tremendous flanks of dark water and crashing waves and men were washed away from the deck like tiny crabs. She struck the reef just after midnight: five hundred and seventy-nine barrels of whale oil to the bottom, twenty-nine men, the captain and his log, every hull rivet, ship timber and mast, the sails long lost to the gales that had torn and snapped them away to the horizon.

  Seven survivors, including Claus von Rolt, washed ashore onto a rocky, coarse-sanded beach.

  Over the stormed hours of that night, they dragged themselves out of the heavy water one by one, brine lung’d, salt-bleached, the bitter burn of the sea in the backs of their throats. Prostrate, grateful, pummelled, penitent, they fisted the cold sand and thanked Almighty God.

  All except Rolt, who thanked only the warrior’s shrunken head, still hanging by the cord around his neck.

  They waited for dawn, shivering. In the morning, the beach was strewn with broken timbers and debris from the smashed ship. Bodies of the drowned began to wash up too, waxen and blue, draped in sashes of green-black kelp. The Ngāti Kuri tribesmen came as they were struggling to bury the dead in the hard-packed, shell-crusted ground.

  The Ngāti Kuri wielded their patu paraoa and clubbed each man to death, the first blow knocking the half-drowned men senseless, the second and third to oblivion. Claus von Rolt was last, his tattooed killer pausing to laugh at the head Rolt wore around his neck. The man reached out and snapped the cord off with one pull, held the shrunken head up to his companions, who each turned and either laughed or smiled, or were deeply offended by what they saw and spoke angrily.

  Had this white man come to conquer them with such pathetic powers and such disrespect?

  The Ngāti Kuri warrior threw the shrunken head away. Claus von Rolt lunged for it, but was knocked backwards and onto the ground with a blow from the man’s heavy club. Then he thrust at Rolt with his pouwhenua, stabbing him under the ribcage. The smooth, broad wooden blade slid easily into the Prussian’s flesh, piercing his lung and hitting the spine. The warrior leaned on it, heard a rib crack, then pulled the weapon clear. He reached up high and it was the last thing Claus von Rolt ever saw, the man’s tattooed face and the wild cry he made, eyes shining, the terrible, gaping, red flesh hole of his open mouth.

  GOOD CONDUCT

  There were plenty of opportunities to escape (the camp was loose, the guards corrupt) and it was all Johannes Meyer could think about, but he resisted the urge to run. Along with the evidence of his fellow convicts and their failed attempts, he sensed a misalignment of time and place. There was an instinct to wait, and he abided.

  He suffered, survived the miserable days, though they defeated him often enough. Nothing he’d ever experienced compared to what he now endured.

  He held on.

  ‘They nabbed Larson,’ somebody said in the dark, each man chained to his pallet.

  ‘Bates?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Good riddance.’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘Just try it, brother!’

  Johannes Meyer held on. Something in his ear told him to.

  26 MARCH 1812

  Alejandro Joaquin Montoya and Elisabeth von Hoffmann boarded a ship in Cayenne and sailed for Caracas, in Venezuela.

  There, after converting to Catholicism (a single morning’s administering of the rites of Holy Communion and Confirmation, followed by a generous donation to the priest), Elisabeth and Montoya were married in the Iglesia de San Francisco, on a steamy Wednesday afternoon. Apart from the priest and two altar boys, and an old woman in black who kneeled and prayed silently by a glowing stand of candles (she’d walked in as the ceremony began, a dark figure in a harsh blaze of light in the doorway), there was in attendance only a lawyer acquaintance of Montoya’s, who served as witness and later toasted them in his home.

  ‘To a long and happy life with many sons and daughters!’

  They stayed in Caracas for three weeks and enjoyed each other with passion and abandon, reaping every day the satisfactions of new and deeper intimacies.

  For the first time since leaving Berlin, Elisabeth Montoya wrote her aunt Margaretha a letter. She told her aunt of her marriage and happiness. She wrote one to Général Fourés too, care of the authorities in Cayenne and in the hope that he might receive it one day. She wrote of how much she missed him and of the loss of their love and her shame that she could not hold him close again, that time had withered her strength. Another man has come to love me, she wrote, a gift, as he had once been. She hoped, and she knew, he would not think ill of her.

  Elisabeth went early to send the letters and returned to their room in a state of bliss, these last duties to her former life performed, her guilt unburdened in some way, enough at least for now.

  On this particular day, that was also the eve of their departure for Montoya’s home in Valdivia, it was unusually hot. Not a breath of wind, only a disconcerting stillness. The residents of Caracas were all in the streets and gathering for Holy Thursday, and they went early to find a seat in the coolness of the churches. The strange quiet (there wasn’t a single bird in the sky or in the trees or perched on the eaves of houses) and the deadness of the air was seen to reflect the solemnity of the day and the power of God’s will.

  Montoya looked out from the balcony of their room and watched the procession of people. He wanted to go for a walk through the streets, but Elisabeth wouldn’t get up again and stayed in bed. She watched him dress and pull his boots on.

  ‘Bring back something to eat,’ she said as Montoya bent down to kiss her. ‘It’s too hot to go anywhere.’

  ‘Señora Montoya,’ he said, ‘I never dreamed you would be so lazy.’

  Elisabeth dozed beneath the bedsheet, her legs out to the sides, exhausted by the heat and by love, deeply contented. Some time later she woke when a bead of sweat trickled down the back of her knee. She wiped at it with her other leg and turned over in the bed, luxuriating in her happiness and the warm scent of her new husband on the pillows. She wondered when Montoya would return, relishing his absence as she imagined him coming back through the door. She finally got out of bed and had water brought to the room so that she could take a bath. Afterwards, Elisabeth sat in a rocking chair and drank coffee and smoked one of Montoya’s thin cigars.

  It was now seven minutes past four.

  First, everything shook and there was a deep rumbling sound like thunder and the church bells began to ring erratically. The bath spilled its water and the furniture walked the room. Vases, lamps, pictures were upended and smashed into pieces on the floor.

  Then a pause, a moment: not a sound, only the tinkling of glass, the chandelier above Elisabeth’s head. There was a sensation of everything being sucked into a hole, of everything rushing silently down, through the floor, down into a drain.

  She went to the window, moving as though through some kind of thickness, the air condensed into matter. And then there was another cracking, dry, terrific booming sound and the building started to shake violently again. Elisabeth saw a wave pass through everything outside, as though the city had become liquid. She saw the
ground tear open and split apart and the buildings of Caracas toppled over and collapsed, fell into gaping crevices. Great clouds of dust burst into the air; it was hard to see any distance. There was yelling and screaming in the streets.

  And in that instant, the balcony fell from Elisabeth’s room, and then the entire facade of the building dropped away. She saw people falling through the air, women, children, dogs and cats. The bath tipped completely now and the water rushed out across the floor, swept over Elisabeth’s bare feet and ankles. She looked down and the shock that had taken hold of her broke. She ran for the door and onto the landing and began down the twisted, splintered staircase, no mind to anything but getting out, getting out.

  WOURALI DREAMS

  Girodet was frustrated and grew angry. He struck Krüger across the face with the back of his hand, split the skin over the cheekbone, which instantly began to bleed, cut by the ring on Girodet’s finger.

  And still the man remained delirious and unreachable.

  ‘He won’t agree,’ Girodet said.

  ‘He doesn’t understand,’ Christophe Bergerard said. ‘He’s in a fever.’

  ‘Damnation!’

  ‘There’s nothing to be done.’

  Girodet stood up. ‘He’ll still add numbers to our ledger,’ he said. ‘If not insight to our cause.’

  Bergerard nodded, looking down at the man, who was at their mercy. ‘Hopefully he’ll stay alive long enough,’ he said.

  Josephine watched through the window. She waited until the doctor and Bergerard were gone, then came in and kneeled down beside Krüger.

  She pressed some of the gummy wourali paste she’d made into the cut across his cheek. It only ever worked if it entered the bloodstream.

  ‘Sleep,’ she said. ‘Dream.’

  Snakes’ teeth (labarri, counacouchi), vines, dried roots, ants, Indian peppers. She’d learned the recipe from her brother, Mr Hendrik, who’d learned it from the forest Indians in Surinam.

  ‘There be no more living to suffer, man,’ Josephine said, smearing the paste. ‘Let bad heart go.’

  Shave the vine and roots, pour water on the shavings, drain into a calabash. Smash the vines stalks and crush the root flesh, squeeze the juice out. Bruise the snake fangs and mash the ants. Throw them in, all together, everything mixed and then into a clay pot. Cook over a low fire, slow, slow, ladle away the scum, cook and cook until thick and dark, dark brown, like burnt sugar.

  Whisper the name of thy enemy or friend, whisper and sing their dreams.

  ‘It is not a woman’s work,’ Mr Hendrik said, when she’d first asked him for the secret. ‘Not for you.’

  She begged and pestered, knew he wouldn’t deny her.

  ‘It will call the evil down and curse you!’ he said.

  ‘He is here already!’ she said. ‘Look, brother, look! It is the captain!’

  ‘No!’

  But he showed Josephine how to make it, what to do.

  ‘Do not eat for a day and the morning before, then not for another day and the morning after. The pot must be new, never used, and never after, and always the red clay pot. Do not breathe its boiling breath.’ He gathered the ingredients, spoke over them, bashed them with the handle of a machete, and showed her the order and the time everything took. ‘Be exact,’ he said. ‘you will be sick for three days after. Do not fear. Leave and be alone, do not speak to women, and never the young women and never none weighed with child. The breath will be in you for these three days but then it will leave and you will recover.’

  It had taken her some days to gather all that was necessary. And yes, she had been sick. She painted more wourali paste across Krüger’s cut cheek.

  ‘Better this way,’ she said. ‘you dream all there to see. And my brother too, Mr Hendrik be free. He dream some place, you see it.’

  Outside, rain began to pummel the ground. It fell in a great roar and within seconds everything was mud and spreading pools of water.

  Josephine took red and yellow parrot feathers out from her sleeve, wove them into the obia around Krüger’s neck. It was to aid the spirit flying and to give strength. There were enough feathers for Mr Hendrik, too (they were joined by the obia and must fly together). They were brothers in death.

  Krüger’s limbs became heavy, and then he couldn’t feel them anymore, only vaguely, and then he forgot about them. His neck stiffened and his heart slowed, slowed, he heard it as though from far away. And then the heartbeat was a voice, calling him, come, and then it was singing, singing.

  Josephine stayed beside the white man, sang softly and listened to the rain as it washed the world clean.

  THE PENULTIMATE DEFEAT; OR, A MOMENTARY DIVERSION

  He tried to kill himself but survived the vial of poison (it was only a half-attempt, really, the valet said in private). When he woke the next morning (exhausted, thirsty, pale), the world was still as he had left it. The Russians had occupied Paris and he’d been exiled to the island of Elba in the Mediterranean. It appeared the gods wished him to endure a little longer.

  But the climate down there, the Italians, the clear blue sea, it was something like Corsica. When he stepped off the ship in Portoferraio, a huge crowd of people had gathered to greet him.

  ‘Viva l’imperatore!’

  Bonaparte quickly revived. His boots were polished for hours, his stride lengthened. With a personal army of some twelve hundred soldiers, two or three small ships (he referred to them as his navy) and an entourage of workers, footmen, valets, chefs and secretaries bequeathed to him by the victors, he set about improving what he saw as the miserable lot of Elba’s inhabitants.

  He planted trees, cleaned the streets and organised garbage collectors. He improved the water supply and established gardens, irrigated new crops. They said there hadn’t been a man possessed of such boundless energy since—well, they couldn’t remember when. There had never been such a man before!

  Only the news of Josephine’s death could halt his constant, relentless advance. When Bonaparte was told of it, he stayed in his rooms for three days and refused to see anybody.

  Further days passed, weeks, months; the Emperor endured. He wrote to his wife, the Empress Marie-Louise (every morning, every day), but the Empress stalled and made excuses, until finally she resented his demands for her presence on Elba. (‘It is only his reputation he cares about,’ she was told, repeatedly, by her entourage of minders. ‘you must forget him.’) Soon enough, she did forget him and succumbed to the many charms of her handsome chaperone, General Graf von Neipperg. Then she never opened another letter from Bonaparte again.

  He tried to keep busy, but his false enthusiasms were exposed and shivered into dust, every day by day. For truly, there was nothing to match his ambition there on Elba. Where was he? Nowhere! The scale, it was all wrong, reduced. The world was out of proportion.

  An island wasn’t nearly enough.

  He endured. Then finally, after three hundred days on the island of Elba, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped.

  LUCKY BREAK

  They gave him a conditional pardon (half free, that is, until further notice) and changed his name at the same time. John Myer in the paperwork now, everything official, Lieutenant Governor Lachlan Macquarie signed it and there was nothing else for Johannes to think about.

  Until they caught him two months later receiving stolen ewes. Judge George Tobias Fitzgerald presiding, in his yellowing wig and with his various ailments, sentenced John Myer again, another fourteen years’ hard labour down in Van Diemen’s Land.

  He didn’t say a word (of course, he wasn’t permitted to say a word) and he looked up at the judge and had an out-of-body experience: Johannes Meyer was actually in Berlin, dreaming that this was happening to him, or to somebody who might have been him. Somebody they called John Myer. He didn’t know who this man was and, suddenly, it was a relief! It made him feel calm, because he knew that soon he’d be waking up from all this. He’d be able to go for a walk down Unter den Linden, and later visit Otto�
�s on Taubenstraße and drink good coffee, listen to the philosophers argue. What had become of the one called Krüger?

  John Myer knew the sheep were stolen. All the sheep, everywhere, were stolen. Everything in the colony was stolen.

  ‘Wha’d’you want with bloody sheep?’ she said.

  He should have listened to Kathleen. She’d wanted to lease the small house in york Street, rent out the back room to lodgers and sell them a bite, a bottle of beer, her exclusive night-time comforts (mostly it was that). ‘I need a man about,’ she’d said, loud into his ear because the grog shop was raucous, the Rocks at its debauched heights. ‘Someone I can trust,’ she said, ‘no bloody drunk, no basher.’ She leaned back a little, smiled kindly, smoothed John Myer’s hair across his forehead and came back to his ear. ‘Someone pretty like you, eh?’ And with a few coins in your pocket and the right signatures in your book, she thought. Because they wouldn’t lease shit to the likes of her.

  Eighteen, and her breath rusty with rum. They’d met at the Ferret’s place, a dingy hole, and John Myer couldn’t even remember the first time, he’d drunk so much, fresh in his freedom; stumbling through the night, a thin mattress on a dirt floor somewhere, waking with his head cleaved. ‘There’s money owed,’ she’d said in the cold morning, standing above him. ‘you can buy us breakfast.’

  That morning, in the streets, the mist like cannon smoke, drifting, whispering death. Kathleen’s blue face. And the girl again, in the window, who’d looked at him, who looked at him now. John Myer called out, still drunk, but what would that do? It wouldn’t do a thing.

  Damper loaf and dark ale, she ate more than half, drank most of the bottle. His only friend in the colony then. Kathleen of the kind brown eyes and hair the colour of stale biscuit, who wore the same tattered maroon dress most nights, patched and sewn.

  ‘Wha’d’you say, pretty John? Do we have a deal?’

  He bought the ewes instead (he didn’t even know they were ewes). There was plenty of cheap land outside of town. John Myer was searching for peace, though it was true he mainly went about drinking for it.