by James Morrow
Runciter cast his eye down the page. He clucked his tongue, exhibited a grin, and informed Solange she was correct.
“Show me a jungle saloon, and I’ll show you a slew of gaming tables littered with poker chips and playing cards,” said Algernon gleefully. “When we reach Manáos, I’ll do my part to swell the coffers of the Transmutationist Club.”
“Obviously a man needn’t go all the way to the Encantadas to make a fortune in the tropics.” Mr. Flaherty used his jackknife to prise meat from the tail of a bright blue lobster. “Perhaps I’ll stay behind in Manáos and become a gambler like Algernon, or maybe I’ll start a rubber empire of my own.”
“If you aspire to the status of baron da borracha, you’ve selected a promising career.” Mr. Dartworthy took up his crab mallet and cracked open his supper with, as Chloe judged the gesture, supreme savoir faire. “Hardly a week goes by without someone finding a new use for latex.” He forthwith reeled off so impressive a catalog of hevé products, from boots to garters, gaskets to fire hoses, railway bumpers to bicycle tires (to say nothing of Mr. Macintosh’s rainproof coats), that an eavesdropper might have mistaken him for a stockjobber selling shares in a rubber plantation.
“You’ve forgotten the most useful device of all,” said Solange. “Check the bill again, and you’ll see that a large quantity of Amazon rubber routinely returns to Brazil in the form of those remarkable sheaths invented by Colonel Quondam.”
“Miss Kirsop is right again,” said Runciter.
“When patronizing the brothels of Manáos, please do my sister courtesans a favor and wear a quondam on your pizzle,” said Solange. “This applies even to you, Mr. Chadwick.”
“Miss Kirsop, I would be within my rights to leave you behind in Belém,” Runciter noted.
“That won’t be necessary, sir,” said Mr. Chadwick.
“Personally, I like having her along,” said Mr. Pritchard, feeding a slice of melon to his monkey. “She makes me laugh.”
Chee-chee-chee! shrieked Bartholomew.
It occurred to Chloe that if you wanted to redeem a tedious dinner conversation, you could do worse than hire Solange Kirsop. True, this sea-witch might one day choke on her own prodigal tongue. Yes, she was probably riding for a fall. Ah, but what a fine figure she cut in the saddle, a crazed woman astride a wild horse, vaulting hill and hummock, leaving the rest of humanity behind in the stables to mend harness and muck the stalls.
* * *
Shortly after dawn on the morning of their scheduled embarkation, the women slipped into their buccaneer ensembles, then secreted their valuables in their newly purchased valises (Chloe’s essay, Solange’s glass pendant), concealed their hair (Chloe employing her Panama hat, Solange her Pirate Mary bandana), and descended to the hotel lobby, all the while practicing their tenor voices, the better to deceive Capitão Gonçalves. They straightaway engaged two Tupinambás, muscular boys who owned a dual-seated litter and proposed to transport them to the waterfront for a mere fifteen réis. Soon the women were flying along the Rua dos Mercadores with its neat rows of whitewashed shops, their red-tiled roofs glowing in the morning light, and then came a public square hemmed by orange groves, its flagstones thronging with portly Brazilian citizens, tanned American businessmen, befuddled European emigrants, lithe Indians, and morose West African slaves. Arrayed in natural liveries of violet and amber, tiny lizards skittered along the branches of the mango trees, oblivious to the ancestors they held in common with the formidable iguanas thriving on a Pacific archipelago.
A half-hour later Chloe and Solange stood on the quay and looked across the Rio Pará towards Ilha de Marajó, beyond which lay the mouth of the mighty Amazonas. Even at this early hour the harbor swarmed with Indian workers and migrant cabanos, half of them employed in removing peles from the ketches and barques moored to the docks, the other half bearing the harvest to the central pier and loading it onto ocean-going ships doubtless bound for London, Marseilles, Bremerhaven, and other European ports. Mounds of rubber rose everywhere in configurations suggesting Egyptian pyramids. Should Halley’s Comet fall on Belém that morning, Chloe decided, it would bounce right back into the sky.
She had no difficulty locating the Rainha da Selva, partly because the adjacent dock was piled high with mirrors, spittoons, a piano, and other items specified in the bill of lading—but mostly because the man on the foredeck of the ramshackle side-wheeler seemed precisely the sort of rogue who’d do business with a scoundrel like Runciter.
“Ahoy there,” said Chloe, pitching her voice to a masculine register. “Have I the pleasure of addressing Capitão Gonçalves?”
The skipper dipped his glossy, balding head. He was a blockish man with bristled cheeks and skin as coarse as cau-chu bark. “Are you with Runciter’s gang?”
“Able Seaman Claude Bathurst at your service,” rasped Chloe, nodding.
“Able Seaman Solomon Kirsop,” said Solange in her imitation tenor.
“If you’re able seamen,” asked Capitão Gonçalves, “why do you come sauntering down the dock with the gait one normally attributes to the female sex?”
“An astute observation,” said Chloe, stalling for time and bartering for deus ex machina. “In point of fact we’re refugees from the commedia dell’arte, adept at female impersonation.”
Capitão Gonçalves glowered.
“By which Claude means we’re escaped castrati in flight from indenture to a Milano opera company,” said Solange.
The skipper sneered.
“Though an honest answer to your question would touch on the fact that we’re women,” said Chloe, pulling off her Panama hat and releasing a cascade of chestnut hair.
Before she could learn whether the master of the Rainha was incensed or merely confused by their masquerade, a cabriolet clattered into view and disgorged the rest of their party. Captain Runciter, alighting, saluted Capitão Gonçalves, then listened patiently whilst the skipper accused him of “delivering twenty-five percent fewer men than you promised.”
“It’s worse than you think,” Runciter replied with disarming candor. “Not only is Chloe Bathurst an actress and Solange Kirsop a harlot, a distinction in which you will find what difference you may, but Miss Bathurst’s brother is a gambler who, before embarking on the Equinox, had never been to sea. Moreover, our companion Mr. Chadwick is a priest whose previous nautical experience was limited to immersing infants in baptismal fonts.”
Gonçalves snorted like a boar in high dudgeon and vanished into his cabin, returning promptly with a large paper scroll, tattered and torn but carefully secured in a leather pouch, as a pirate might preserve a treasure map. He unfurled the poster, which featured a young woman dressed in the glittering regalia of Queen Cleopatra, the caption declaring, THE ADELPHI COMPANY HAS THE HONOR OF PRESENTING MISS CHLOE BATHURST IN SIREN OF THE NILE.
“My sister married a London barrister,” Gonçalves explained. “Three years ago, visiting my relations, I not only savored Miss Bathurst’s performance, I also stole the poster. I shall be honored to escort her up the Amazon, much as Antony accompanied her down the Nile—provided she and her trollop friend are willing to work their fingers to the bone.”
“Beyond the bone,” said Chloe, torn between gratitude for this sudden piece of luck and dismay over Gonçalves’s fancying himself a latter-day Antony.
“I’m a courtesan,” said Solange.
Chloe and her companions spent the rest of the morning loading the packet-steamer with saloon appointments, brothel paraphernalia, and the two essentials of survival on the Rio Amazonas—mosquito paste and potable water—plus ample stores of provender: cassava bread, plantains, bananas, caxirí beer, Brazil nuts the size of cannonballs. As the sweaty British subjects labored in the suffocating heat, Capitão Gonçalves held forth concerning life aboard the Rainha. Captain Runciter, he explained, would be demoted to first officer, whilst Mr. Dartworthy assumed the position of chief engineer, assisted by Mr. Bathurst. Mr. Pritchard would serve as helmsman, Mr. Fl
aherty as stoker, and the vicar as primary homem da proa, forward lookout. As for Miss Bathurst and Miss Kirsop, they would become bichos da seda, silkworms, charged with maintaining the gossamer netting that surrounded the packet’s weather deck, lest her crew be tormented by insects.
“I shall now tell you our most important rule,” said Gonçalves. “Vocês tem que ficar no barco—stay on the boat. We’ll stop for boiler wood in Monte Alegre and Villa Nova, but otherwise we belong to the Rainha. The Oyampis are waiting out there to catch and eat us, likewise the Tapajós, Bonaris, and Hixkaryánas. If Indians don’t get you, a jaguar might, to say nothing of our scorpions, electric eels, anacondas, coral snakes, vampire bats, stingrays, and candiru: worm-like fish that will enter your—I believe the English word is ‘orifices’—and must be cut out. As for our piranhas, though they’re not quite the killing machines of Amazonian lore, you won’t see me wading or swimming, especially if there’s blood in the water. Did I mention our diseases? Malaria, dysentery, cholera, typhus, yellow fever? The Rainha is our citadel. We shall not want. Avoid the jungle. Stay out of the water. Understood?”
“Understood,” chorused the chastened crew.
“You will now satisfy my curiosity,” Gonçalves continued. “What brings you vagabonds to Brazil? You call yourselves naturalists, but I don’t believe that any more than you do.”
“We seek a faraway archipelago,” Runciter explained.
“According to rumor, a person might employ the Galápagos reptiles and birds in disproving the existence of God,” said Chloe. “Oddly enough, certain sybarites in England will pay handsomely for such an argument.”
“So in truth you’re a greedy gang of bounty hunters,” said Gonçalves.
“Well, yes,” Mr. Dartworthy admitted.
“Myself excluded,” Mr. Chadwick insisted.
“I had no idea philosophy could turn a profit,” said Gonçalves. “Tell me, what’s the going price these days for God’s scalp in a cigar box?”
“We would prefer not to disclose the sum in question,” said Chloe
“Larger than you might imagine,” said Runciter. “Several thousand pounds.”
“You may be sure that on my return trip our hold will be jammed with peles,” said Gonçalves. “By all means, senhors and senhoras, run our Creator to earth. I’ve never had much use for Him, nor He for me. If you want my opinion, though, there’s more money to be made in rubber.”
* * *
The Reverand Granville Heathway stepped back from Gregor Mendel Pollinates His Pea Plants and contemplated the emergent painting. Although Bertram’s second pigeon missive had provided but a minimal description (chubby, bespectacled, owlish), Granville believed he’d wrought an adequate representation, capturing not only the monk’s outward appearance but also the intellectual fires blazing within. Mendel, he decided, was much like his experimental peas, whose exteriors offered misleading clues to their essential nature.
But what of the drama itself? Did this painting convey the fertilization act with sufficient sensual intensity? There he stood, Moravia’s brightest monk, basting implement in hand, bent over a nubile specimen of Pisum savitum, dusting pollen onto the stigma. Granville decided that he’d given the moment its due. All that remained was for him to provide the sky above Brünn with a dazzling sun, and the scene would be complete.
He loaded his brush with orange pigment, but before he could touch bristles to canvas Ezekiel came swooping in from Constantinople. The courier had encountered inclement weather, as evinced by his soggy tail and dripping wings. What remarkable creatures were homing pigeons, brave, noble, and faithful. If only madhouse proprietors boasted such virtues.
Dearest Father,
In the interval since my last letter we have heard nothing from the ark hunters. Mustapha Reshid Pasha estimates that by now the Paragon must be in Sinop Bornu. Once she reaches Trebizond, nexus of a semaphore system, Captain Silahdar will send the Grand Vizier a message apprising him of the expedition’s progress.
Yesterday Gregor Mendel returned to the Bosporus and dispatched a message to my suite, proposing that we meet in Yusuf ibn Ziayüddin’s establishment. Upon my arrival in the hookah-den, the monk gave me to know he still suffered from impecunious circumstances, and so I agreed to pay for the hashish.
“Well, Friar Mendel, how have you and Nature’s secrets been getting on?” I asked as we sucked on our hoses.
“It’s Abbot Mendel now. Back home everybody is living in 1868, and I’ve just become head of the monastery.” The monk cracked his knuckles. “Do I lament the loss of time for my research? Not really. Science and I are no longer companionable.”
“When last we spoke, you were planning to cross a round-yellow line of pea plant with a wrinkled-green generation,” I said, perplexed by Mendel’s abdication of his destiny. “What went wrong?”
“Actually, the experiment was successful. Allow me to explain. I’m not at odds with science per se but with a particular scientist.”
As before, Mendel pulled out a fountain pen and decorated the back of a hashish menu with alphabet letters. He wrote R’s and Y’s for dominant “Round” and “Yellow” traits, w’s and g’s for recessive “wrinkled” and “green” traits—all the while lecturing me on his adventures in hybridization.
“With feverish fingers I opened the pods. I quickly realized that a majority of the peas were both round and yellow, the possible dominant-dominant permutations being nine in number, RRYY, RwYY, wRYY, RRYg, RRgY, RwYg, wRYg, wRgY, and RwgY. I also saw many round-green peas, tracing to the three dominant-recessive combinations, RRgg, Rwgg, and wRgg, and quite a few wrinkled yellows, children of the recessive-dominant possibilities, wwYY, wwYg, and wwgY. The smallest subset, of course, was the solitary recessive-recessive group, the wrinkled greens, my wwgg’s. I began counting, eventually determining that my double-hybrid plants had yielded 315 round yellows, 108 round greens, 101 wrinkled yellows, and thirty-two wrinkled greens—the very nine-to-three-to-three-to-one ratio I predicted when last we smoked Cannabis!”
“Congratulations!”
“Next I shuffled three traits. Can you imagine how nerve-wracking it is to cross a round-yellow-gray-jacket line with a wrinkled-green-white-jacket strain? I nearly went out of my gourd. And yet somehow I made my garden grow, obtaining the varieties my calculations predicted.”
“You are indeed the Newton of biology.”
The monk offered me a jack-o’-lantern grin. “Collectively my double-crosses and triple-crosses make the strongest case imaginable for the segregation of heredity units. The factors governing a given trait—pea shape, for example, or jacket tone—operate independently of those controlling any other characteristic you care to name: albumen color, bud position, pod texture, pod hue, stalk length. Generation upon generation, the sovereign atoms of descent retain their integrity. They do not blend. They cannot dilute one another. Quod erat demonstrandum.”
“At this point the average scientist would have been tempted to publish. But doubtless you designed further experiments.”
“Do you think I’m crazy? I rushed my monograph into print before you could say ‘Till Eulenspiegel.’ Early in 1866 it graced the pages of the Transactions of the Brünn Natural Science Society under the modest title ‘Experiments in Plant Hybridization.’”
“Whereupon you became famous.”
“Whereupon I became despondent. Nothing happened, Bertram. No letters from fellow researchers. No invitations to scientific congresses. I mailed my article to the renowned Karl von Nägeli in Munich, accompanied by a long letter. Weeks went by. And still more weeks. Finally, three months after receiving the secret of life in his mailbox, the great botanist deigned to write back, and you know what he said? He said my work was ‘only beginning.’ Seven years of meticulous experiments, thirteen thousand recorded observations—thirteen thousand—and my work was ‘only beginning’!”
“How exasperating.”
Mendel removed his spectacles, cleaning the lenses
with his handkerchief. “My reply, as you might imagine, was extensive, twelve pages covered in my smallest hand. More months of silence. Finally Professor Nägeli answered. Of my self-defense he said nothing. He merely noted that he was sending me some Hieracium seeds, hawkweed, and suggested I use them in future investigations.” The monk inhaled a goodly measure of hashish. “My career is over, Bertram—I realize that now. At sunrise tomorrow I begin the long trek home, where I shall strive to become the best abbot our monastery has ever known.”
“May God go with you.”
“Never again shall I gaze upon a Pisum or a Hieracium without feeling sick. In fact, the only plant that finds favor in my eyes these days”—he pointed towards the water pipe—“is our friend Cannabis. Give me a large enough garden and a few more years, and I’ll breed a generation of hashish so powerful it will melt your melancholy in a single puff.”
“So perhaps you’ll become famous after all.”
“I think not.”
Rising in perfect synchronicity, Mendel and I floated towards each other. We embraced. He told me I’d been an apt pupil and a comforting presence in his life. Naturally I wanted to thank him for enlightening me, but before I could voice that sentiment the wizard of heredity slipped away, trailing behind him a cloud of smoke and a fug of broken dreams.
Your devoted son,
Bertram
Upon placing the message in his nightstand drawer, Granville seized his loaded paintbrush and approached Gregor Mendel Pollinates His Pea Plants, blessing the abbot with an orange sun, so that his experiments might prosper. He heaped the sky with clouds, populated the trees with finches, and scattered a dozen bumblebees amongst the vines.
As darkness descended, Granville stretched across his pallet, but sleep eluded him. If only he could walk free of the sanitarium, Bertram’s bulletins secured in his satchel, the painting of Mendel tucked under his arm. He would travel to Munich and track down Karl von Nägeli.
