Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish

by Richard Flanagan

  As you can see, it was then a tragedy when Old Gould on his way back from the market with some onions was pounded to death beneath a stagecoach bound for Liverpool. The workshop was sold by his executors, his daughter unexpectedly gained a small sum of money & larger pretensions, & she, armed with both & abandoning the joys of reason that had meant so much to her as well as me, made a suitably advantageous marriage with an ironmonger from Salford with a face like an anvil & a soul like slag, & so I never saw her freckles fade, her auburn hair dull, never had to watch our love turn to that non-colour, white.

  I, meanwhile, was forced once more to make my way in the wider world, taking with me three things that have served me tolerable well since: a knowledge of the joys Voltaire can bestow, which went somewhat beyond what Reason can ever know; Old Gould’s book of engravings of his beloved Dutchies’ still lifes; & his last name, for which neither he nor his daughter any longer had use.

  When asked my handle in the first pothouse I stopped to pass the following evening, I tried it on for size, & cried out, ‘I am William Buelow Gould!’

  I really did think it sounded a whole lot better than before, those splendid three words pulling the mouth out-in-out &, proper pleased with my new self, I winked at a woman I later came to know as the publican’s wife while sounding my new middle name. And what do you know?—the publican’s wife smiled back! Before said she aught a word I knew that she was a bedswerver, aiming to sweep out from her hubby’s cot into mine, which poor as it was that night—a damp straw palliasse with a mouldy scent in the stables—was still more than welcoming enough for us.

  ‘And my name,’ whispered I close to her ear, ‘is a song that will be sung.’

  Later that night I learnt that a stranger with a ludicrous name always fares better than a familiar with a normal moniker when dancing the old Enlightenment.

  ‘You know what I like about you?’ said she. ‘You’re different from the others around here.’ Then she told me how she had walked to London the previous year to watch Lord Byron’s coffin go past, & because everyone has to be a poet now & few are, she liked me all the more when I told her how she had breasts like wax fruit, which really wasn’t a compliment at all but the first thing that came into my mind when I saw them, & when said she, ‘What else do I remind you of?’ said I, ‘Well, that just depends on what else you might care to show me.’ Said she, ‘The Devil you are indeed! Perhaps you aren’t that different after all.’ Said I, ‘You’ll just have to see,’ & so it went, until she felt the full Flemish painter & agreed that it really wasn’t that different, & nor was I, that we men were all the same, & then she grew angry …

  Yet again the Surgeon interrupts, & yet again I am compelled to agree, this time with his assertion that the role of Art will diminish as that of Science grows. And why not?—when it is after all the Surgeon’s very own fine idea & my mind is in any case filled only with thoughts of what Art might mean to me, which as you can see really wasn’t that high & pure at all but lovely nevertheless, a vision glorious of the publican’s wife’s splendid white thighs & buttocks rising & falling as we danced the dear old Enlightenment, & it all seems a dim, lost thing—

  ‘SCIENCE—INEVITABLE ASCENT—ART—SERVANT—’ & he is off again. I myself have no real thoughts whatsoever on this matter of Science & Art but only a few sweet memories to which I cleave, for I am nothing more than a falsely accused forger & take each job as it comes & do it as well or as badly as money demands. For some reason I remembered being told by Old Gould, who prided himself on such matters, that the Frenchie philosopher Descartes thought all matter consisted of whirlpools, but somehow I didn’t think the Surgeon would want to hear that everything from foetuses to hangovers to death circles, so instead said I nothing more.

  Finally the Surgeon stood up, picked up the shoeing stool, turned, rapped twice on the cell door with the stool, & light & a burst of fresh air briefly filled my dark, fetid cell as the turnkey opened the door to let the Surgeon out.

  At this point I knew it was time to intervene.

  ‘A man such as you, sir,’ began I appropriately deferential, ‘being, if I may be so bold, somewhere in his forties, obviously a man in his prime who desires to secure his lot against a hostile future by inviting posterity to share in your wonderful achievements as a scientist …’

  ‘PRECISELY,’ said the Surgeon. ‘THOUGH—ESTIMATE OF AGE—FLATTERING—FOR TIES?—YES? NO?—YES—POSSIBLY.’

  ‘Being such a man,’ said I, tongue sliding into the easy rut of well-worn words, ‘you know that such things cannot be bought cheaply or easily, but arise out of the estimation of one’s peers.’

  ‘ABSOLUTELY,’ said the Surgeon, & he swallowed somewhat embarrassed, ‘ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE THOUGH, NOT SELF—DESIRE?’

  ‘Science,’ said I, feigning both comprehension & agreement, ‘desires only science.’ I began lowering my head. ‘But to record that on canvas, one needs the scientist as well as the science, to paint you with your achievements, to …’ The Surgeon swallowed some more, as if his dreams of scientifick immortality demanded proofs other than those I was offering. I could feel my tongue slipping out of its rut, losing its way. ‘If you would allow me the honour of painting your portrait. I—’

  The Surgeon cut me short with a fierce uplift of his beetle brow—and for a dreadful moment I feared two of the many marsupial mice in my cell had leapt up onto his face, mistaking it for a pumpkin, & were hanging off his forehead over his warty eyes.

  ‘FISH, GOULD!—THAT FISH—THE EYE—MOST SCIENTIFICK.’ I must have been still so bedazzled by his eyebrows that he thought I had not heard him properly. ‘CAPTAIN’S FISH,’ he continued, a little irritated. The mice arched up in emphasis over his nose. ‘MAN MUST FIND HIS MÉTIER—YOURS I BELIEVE—YOU HAVE FOUND—EN UN MOT?—FISH?’ He paused, looked at the ceiling & back at me, ‘IN FISH, YES?—NO? YES—IN MR TOBIAS ACHILLES LEMPRIERE, A MAN WHO RESPECTS TALENT, A SCIENTIST—YOUR PATRON, YES YOU MAY HAVE ALSO FOUND JUST THAT—TO YOU, SIR, GOOD DAY.’

  And with that he was gone, & with him, reckoned I, any chance of my evading the chain gang.

  VI

  OUR SECOND MEETING took place immediately after my entirely unexpected release, when I was trooped straight from my cell to Mr Lempriere’s quarters, a small, somewhat ramshackle whitewashed earth cottage. On the way we passed a flogging taking place in the muster yard. The flagellator was pausing between each stroke of the cat, running the tails between his fingers to squeeze out the excess blood, then dipping the cat’s tips in a small bucket of sand kept for the purpose at his side, so that they might have extra gravelly bite on each new stroke.

  After a short walk we arrived at a roly-poly building near the boatyards. I was ushered without ceremony into a dark, odorous &, in spite of the darkness, what appeared to be a messy room. I almost failed to notice the Surgeon reposed like a sea lion on a chaise longue.

  About him I began to make out his proudly arranged possessions—overbaked, crusty & craggy to the touch, doughy & soft in their centre, be it the rough worm-riddled table, or the portraits that oozed over his walls, all of which seemed to wish to shout, ‘We too are Lempriere.’ Being of a polite disposition I had no desire to express how much sorrow I accordingly felt. Most striking were the innumerable oddities arrayed around him like the sun around Egyptian kings in the pyramids: more bones than a knacker’s vat—racks of marsupial skulls, rib cages, thigh bones & entire skeletons of various animals—as well as assortments of feathers, shells, dried flowers, rocks; framed collections of butterflies, moths & beetles; & trays of bird eggs.

  Before I had even sat down the Surgeon was launching into a subject about which I was devoid of either interest or curiosity.

  ‘AS YOU KNOW—WOULD WELL SO—IN SCIENCE FEW NAMES HIGHER,’ Mr Lempriere told me, ‘THAN CARL VON LINNAEUS—YES? NO? YES—GREAT SWEDISH NATURAL HISTORIAN.’

  Bewildered, I nodded knowingly. Mr Lempriere gestured for me to sit down on a stool opposite him, & pointed to
ward a decanter of the best French Martinique rum (no watery Bengal rum was this, that tasted of burnt sugar & a damp fire, to which I was accustomed), indicating I was to help myself. He then—to use one of his more favoured words—discoursed upon the revolution in the affairs of man that the Linnaean system of classification of plants & animals was beginning.

  For every plant, a species; for every species, a genus; for every genus, a phylum. No more vulgar folk names for plants based on old witches’ tales & widows’ remedies, no more ragwort & nightelder & foxglove, but a scientifick Latin name for every living thing, based on a thorough scientifick study of its physical features. No more thinking that the natural & human worlds are entwined, but a scientifick basis for separation of the two, & human advancement on the basis of that scientifick difference forever after.

  He seemed all index learned, & I wondered if he had ever listened to a book in its whole as I had to the old Frenchie’s tales of dear Dr Pangloss & Candide. He was full of inkhorn words going so far as to call grog shops zythepsaries, which seemed several syllables too long to be uttered by any I had ever met within such places, & never used a straight word when a long bastard Latin one could be awkwardly jammed in its place, so that his sentences became like the room in which we sat, overcrowded & awful confused.

  If in his appearance he harked back to the past, in his ideas & ambitions he wished to be seen as a man of the future. But this was clearly not a conversation—much as I tried to make it one by occasionally repeating the last phrase he had spoken, as if by echoing him he might be alerted to the notion of another person in the room—but a manifesto in which he managed to spectacularly meld scientifick & domestick opinion into a single sentence that made no sense whatsoever.

  ‘ERASMUS DARWIN—WISE MAN,’ said he at one point, ‘BUT WHY LEMON IN GREEN TEA?’

  Again I found myself understanding nothing of what he talked about but I nodded sagely, occasionally uttering a slightly sceptical ‘Well’ or an uninterested ‘Oh’, & pushing my closed rummoistened lips out & up to my nose, to convey the sense of comprehending what he was heating up about, & to indicate an active, critical interest when he showed me his most prized possession, the celebrated—he told me in no uncertain terms—tenth edition of Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae for animals.

  The Surgeon was now rising to his fullness: ‘INDEED,’ he continued, & to ensure no abatement of my interest he poured me another French Martinique rum, ‘TIME IS RAPIDLY COMING—PROPERLY CLASSIFY NOT JUST ANIMALS—ALL LIVING THINGS—EN UN MOT?—PEOPLE—YES? NO? YES.’

  I nodded, skolled, & held out my empty glass this time without even being asked, & the Surgeon—wonderful, generous Mr Lempriere—filled it yet again.

  ‘DON’T BELIEVE ME—DON’T?—BUT YOU WILL, YES, YOU WILL—FIRST SUCCESSFULLY CLASSIFY ALL CONVICTS IN A CLASS FROM 1 TO 26—THEN ON SUCH BASIS MAKE SOCIETY ANEW.’

  ‘Science?’ asked I.

  ‘APPLIED,’ confirmed he.

  He then went off into several byways of conversation, about how gonorrhoea could be successfully treated with mercury ointment. ‘A NIGHT WITH VENUS,’ he sighed at one point. ‘A LIFE WITH MERCURY.’ He shook his head. ‘HOT RUM—YOUNG GIRL—OLD DOCTOR—CRUEL—CRUEL.’ He rattled on about a French botanist called Lamarck whose seven-volume Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertébrés he described as a taxonomic tour de force, & the infinite perfectibility of pigs through breeding.

  At this point he indicated with the wave of a fat finger that we were to make our way outside. After showing me the beauty of his one sash window at the rear of his cottage, the only such window on the island, which he had brought with him from Hobart Town to be fitted in his new residence, Mr Lempriere led me around to the back of his cottage where he kept a pig, a large boar he called Castlereagh after the Prime Minister, because, as a Whig, Mr Lempriere saw himself as a man of advanced opinions who held no truck with simpering Tories.

  It was difficult to get a bearing on where this was all going, & I gave up trying & simply followed. The hog was of indeterminate breed & lived in a pen that adjoined the cottage. Even by the squalid standards of the island, Castlereagh’s home was a festering, stinking horror of churned mud in which the Surgeon daily threw his slops & leftovers any convict would have happily scrabbled for. The hog—a black & white mottled porker—was consequently the only life form that seemed to prosper on the island & had reached a gigantic size, a great stench & an ugly disposition.

  It may be thought that the hog, being an intelligent animal as pigs are known to be, would have tried to curry favour with the Surgeon, who insisted on feeding it himself in order to ensure that all food went to the animal & not the servants. But to the contrary, Castlereagh’s anger with the world & all who lived in it seemed only to grow with his bulk, & it would as readily charge the Surgeon as anyone else.

  The Surgeon’s purposes in keeping the pig seemed confused. Sometimes he declared that it was to be for a banquet for the officers of the establishment, at others for a Christmas dinner, or the arrival of the new pilot, & sometimes just for the perverse pleasure of drawing a knife across its throat, so that the pig’s end might mirror that of his contemptible namesake. Sometimes he talked of selling it to the Commissary for money, & at other times of bartering pieces of a slaughtered Castlereagh with the other officers for the substantial items fresh meat commands among those who have tasted only rancid pickled pork for years.

  In truth, I suppose he kept it because it made him feel powerful to have so much food in his control, to know that no-one could look at him without enviously dreaming of an unbroken banquet of pig pea&hamsoupbrawnbaconbakedtrottersblackpuddingporkknucklesroastporkcracklingpig’s footjelly. So a day of reckoning for Castlereagh was constantly postponed, with the effect that the hog continued to grow ever more gigantic & with a temper fouler than its breath.

  But at that time I knew little of this because the Surgeon was off talking again, as he guided me back inside his roly-poly cottage. He continued on about how he believed that we had a valuable role to play in breaking the world into a million classifiable elements that would lead to a whole new society. I understood none of it, except that feigned interest was returned with more French Martinique rum, which I had initially thought was very good & now was inclining to believe excellent.

  ‘I AM,’ said he, leaning back & raising his obelisk of a white head & pulling back his slobbery walrus lips, so that I might understand that the next few words were to be underlined, ‘IN CONTACT—VERY IMPORTANT—COSMO WHEELER?—WITH THE MR COSMO WHEELER—NOTED ENGLISH NATURAL HISTORIAN,’ something which was clearly of great import, if only I knew what that import was.

  I didn’t.

  But I wasn’t so stupid as to betray my ignorance & let it be known that the repute of the aforementioned Mr Cosmo Wheeler was not yet completely universal.

  ‘Famous,’ suggested I.

  ‘EXACTLY,’ agreed he.

  Whoever he was, the mysterious Mr Wheeler had impressed upon the Surgeon the majesty & centrality of the Surgeon’s work in collecting & cataloguing specimens & sending them all back to him in England. This work, Mr Wheeler had written, was to be the Surgeon’s ‘Historical Destiny’. Reading between the lines, underlined or otherwise, it seemed to me that if this English natural historian was noted, it may well have been because he was building a fair old career out of the various bits & pieces the Surgeon & his other colonial collectors were shipping back to him.

  For his part, the Surgeon appeared blind to the uses to which he was being put, & pathetickally grateful for the slightest association with such an eminence as he deemed Mr Cosmo Wheeler to be. It sometimes seemed that the Surgeon believed that if he could only smash the mystery of the world up into enough fragments & ship them all back to Mr Wheeler to catalogue, then the mystery would disappear & all would be knowable, & with all knowable, everything would be solvable & improvable, all matters of good & evil explicable & remediable on some Linnaean ladder of creation.

 
Our own part in this gargantuan act of vandalism was to record as fully & as clearly as possible what the Surgeon, quoting Cosmo Wheeler, referred to as ‘THE SMALL WORLD OF MACQUARIE HARBOUR ICHTHYOLOGY’, & then send our records off to Mr Wheeler for him to categorise & systematise.

  As always when I didn’t understand a word he had said, I nodded & the pitcher was brought once more to my glass & levelled but not poured. The good Surgeon held the pitcher poised, fixed me with his watery stare, to indicate that his system of thought was now about to reveal its genius in a revelatory statement of the greatest profundity.

  ‘WHAT I AM SAYING, GOULD,’ said the Surgeon, leaning close, placing one small fat hand on my knee & at the same time smiling—two physically repulsive gestures to which I may well have had a very adverse response had not at that moment the glorious rum of French Martinique once more begun to flow—‘IS FISH.’

  VII

  IT WAS CLEAR to me even then that the Surgeon was entirely mad. We were to start making pictures not of ferns or birds or kangaroos or platypi but fish, to record in paint pilchards & pike, monkfish & boarfish, or whatever their antipodean equivalents or opposites might be. For fish being fish, specimens of a useful nature could not easily be preserved, &, more to the point, Mr Cosmo Wheeler had been very specifick in writing the Surgeon that the reputation of a scientist grew not simply out of Industry & Genius, but, as the great Swedish naturalist - collector Count Linnaeus had himself shown through the example of his life, by being as strategic as Wellington in making choices as to what to collect & what not to collect.

  I could not then have known how such madness, this job of painting fish to further another man’s reputation in another country, would come to overwhelm my life to such an extent that it would become my life—that I would, as I am now, be seeking to tell a story of fish using fish to tell it in every which way, even down to the sharkbone quill & the very sepia ink with which I write these words, made from a cuttlefish that squirted me only a few hours ago.