On the Proper Use of Stars

by Dominique Fortier

  As I took my leave I went to look for one of those damned cylinders, which I took to my cabin. There, I extricated the sheet of paper that was rolled up inside it and on it wrote today’s date, our position, and the route that we planned to follow. I closed up the tube and went on deck with the intention of throwing it overboard, half from defiance and half from a strange sense of duty or necessity, but I could not carry it out.

  I went back down to my cabin in search, God help me, of something attractive. Alas, I had only her portrait, which it would be ridiculous to send to her and from which I refuse to be separated. My belongings are unimaginably dull and without ornament. I am certain that Fitzjames’s drawers are overflowing with signet rings that have been passed on in his family from generation to generation as well as cufflinks set with precious stones, but for my part I possess nothing by way of jewels but my father’s watch, which was given me when he died and is too bulky to be inserted into the thin cylinder that, in any case, it would cause to sink.

  Eventually, for want of anything better, I pulled a brass button off my tunic and scrawled a hasty note which said:

  I closed the cylinder and went back up on deck. A gibbous moon emerged from behind the clouds, casting silver ribbons onto the shifting surface of the waves. I hurled the cylinder, which struck the water with a faint sound and seemed to be floating in place while we continued to advance. Then I went back down to my cabin to sew a button onto my tunic, at once ashamed and happy.

  THAT MORNING SOPHIA dressed with particular care, choosing a silk dress with shimmering highlights of pearl grey, sky blue, and rose and trimmed with a narrow edge of lace, only after she had considered carefully and then rejected everything that hung in her wardrobe. She fastened to her ears two delicate mother-of-pearl earrings set in silver and, around her neck, a pendant with a cameo presumed to depict Helen of Troy, whose profile it had been said resembled her own. She powdered the tip of her nose and applied a rose balm to her lips, then she perfumed herself not with bergamot, her everyday scent, but with magnolia. These operations completed, she brought her face close to the mirror on her dressing table to judge the result; she examined herself with satisfaction. With one finger she curled a lock of hair that had escaped from her studiedly negligent coiffure and used thumb and forefinger to pull out a white hair she had just discovered. Then she smiled and set off to celebrate the betrothal of Mathieu de Longchamp and Geraldine Cornell.

  Nothing had been done by halves. No effort had been spared to mark the occasion fittingly. The Cornells’ salons and parlour were overflowing with flowers sent by the cream of London society. In one corner, a chamber orchestra exuded soft music; on pedestal tables were arranged platters of meringues and macaroons; liveried servants offered the guests refreshments of all kinds; and in the conservatory a long table had been set up on which, among the bouquets of fresh flowers, confections and petits fours had been set out around a portrait of the young couple.

  “My dears, I am delighted to see you both!”

  The voice that welcomed them belonged not to the fiancée – who could not, for the moment, be seen – but to her mother, a rather corpulent, red-faced creature, with the quiet confidence of one who knows that she is a direct descendant of one of the oldest families in England but nonetheless is pleased to entertain at home, as equals, recently ennobled ladies and their plebeian nieces.

  “Jane, you look radiant. And you, dear Sophia, are even more charming than I remember.”

  As the only occasion on which Sophia had had the honour of meeting Lady Cornell was a day when she had just arrived home after travelling a mile in the rain, finally pushing open the door with a sigh of relief, her nose red, hair dripping, dress sodden and smeared with mud, to find Lady Cornell in the foyer preparing to leave after a visit with Lady Jane, the compliment was not particularly generous.

  “You’re too kind,” Sophia replied simply, smiling graciously.

  “You know my daughter Geraldine, of course,” Lady Cornell went on, turning to find the young woman among the crowd of guests, beckoning her to join them. Watching her approach, Sophia realized that her memory had played a trick on her. Geraldine Cornell was not that girl dressed all in white, with blue eyes and pink cheeks, whom she had spotted in the crowd of debutantes two years earlier: she was another, nearly identical, with a complexion equally fresh, with curls the same light brown, with eyes just as blue, and, as Sophia noted when the young girl smiled at her guests, with equally bad teeth.

  During the week before the party, Sophia had prepared herself for all eventualities – most often unconsciously, while she stood at the window watching the rain fall, waiting for her aunt to go out, or soaking in her bath scented with orange blossom; sometimes even in a dream or during that half-sleep when one’s thoughts follow one another with no apparent intervention by the brain, where they open and unfurl. She had pictured herself being introduced to Mathieu de Longchamp, smiling faintly as she whispered that she had already had the pleasure of meeting him, or leaving him to set the person straight while she remained silent, her head tipped slightly to one side, looking barely amused. She had imagined herself seeing him in the crowd by chance and greeting him either like an old, dear friend whom one scolds nicely for not having stayed in touch, or like some ordinary individual whose name one has trouble recalling but with whom one is cordial because good manners demand it.

  The only thing she had not anticipated was that she would not see him – or, more precisely, that he would not see her. Over the two hours that Lady Jane Franklin and her niece, Sophia Cracroft, spent at the home of Lady Columbia Cornell to celebrate the betrothal of her daughter, Geraldine, Sophia:

  greeted 17 of her aunt’s women friends and 32 gentlemen friends;

  had her hand kissed by 8 young men, one of whom – either he had not shaved very closely that morning or he was endowed with particularly vigorous facial hair – grazed unpleasantly her white skin, which was scented with sweet almond oil;

  drank 1 glass of lemonade and 1 cup of tea;

  offered her compliments to the blushing young fiancée;

  ate 3 sandwiches and 2 meringues;

  drank another lemonade followed by a glass of seltzer;

  promised her friends Ursula and Amelia that she would accompany them to a charitable evening in aid of orphans;

  freshened up and, under the pretext of combing her hair and powdering her nose, went to the newly installed water closet to relieve herself;

  found herself alone and idle for 8 long minutes, forced to pretend that she was looking for her aunt until one of the young men mentioned above (no, not the one with the prickly beard, thank God, but another, one who was afflicted – no one is perfect – with very bad breath) came to discreetly court her;

  pretended to listen to the ramblings of old Miss Whitfield, who, having mistaken Sophia for her mother, insisted on asking about some ladies Sophia had never heard of and of whom, incidentally, a certain number had unfortunately passed away;

  while still pretending to be looking for her aunt in the crowd, knowing perfectly well that she was in the greenhouse admiring the collection of African violets that were Lady Cornell’s pride and joy, tried to spot Mathieu de Longchamp, wondering if she would recognize him immediately when she saw him from the back or heard his laughter.

  In the end she did not have to make too great an effort because, along with his fiancée and her mother, he mounted a small podium set up for that purpose near the string quartet, which fell silent, and thanked the guests for coming to celebrate the happy occasion with them, and his future mother-in-law for having received him so graciously into the family that would soon be his.

  He swept the room with his eyes as he spoke those few words without fixing his gaze on Sophia or even making her out among the faces turned his way. After which she:

  went into the garden, where she took a few steps and then scurried back because it had started to rain;

  had a very animated conversation and
laughed a great deal with the young man afflicted with bad breath, who was in other respects charming;

  began to suffer a slight headache behind her right eye;

  did not refuse a drop of port wine.

  WHILE LADY JANE takes a few steps in the garden with Sophia – whose pallor and lack of enthusiasm over the past two or three days have her worried – breathing in the aroma of the dead leaves that crackle beneath their feet, she tries to imagine that at the other end of the Earth it is already winter and night. While she knows rationally and could even explain the phenomenon of the Polar night to those who do not understand it, it still is hard for her to accept. She who has travelled – on foot, by boat, by mule or camel – Europe, North America, and almost all of Tasmania has no trouble envisaging the distance that separates her from her husband. What is difficult, virtually impossible even, is not to give in to the illusion that Sir John is also in some mysterious way remote in time. Her scientific mind rebels before that impression, though she senses that it is partly true. At her side, Sophia is holding in her fingers a slender branch of willow from which she absent-mindedly strips the leaves. Lady Jane shakes herself to get rid of her unpleasant thoughts just as she would disperse a swarm of flies and grips her niece’s elbow.

  “Dear child,” she says, “you’ve been very silent these past few days. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing at all, Aunt. I’ve been thinking, that’s all.”

  Then, despite herself, as if she’d only been waiting for this:

  “The Cornells’ party was a great success, wasn’t it?”

  Here it comes, thinks Lady Jane, while a kind of fatigue steals over her.

  “Very much so,” she replies. “I didn’t have a chance to talk at any length with young Geraldine. What did you think of her?”

  She waits.

  “Well,” declares Sophia steadily, carefully enunciating her syllables, “she is utterly charming. A milky complexion, exquisite manners, a voice like honey, a touch shy perhaps, which is quite normal at her age.”

  Lady Jane squeezes her niece’s elbow and gives the young woman a sidelong glance before observing in a perfectly serious manner: “You would not have spoken differently to describe a piece of nougat. But you’re right. Something about that young girl beguilingly calls to mind dessert; now that I reflect on her, I cannot help thinking of a plum pudding.”

  “Or a mincemeat pie,” Sophia goes her one better.

  “Or a sausage,” concludes the aunt, and the two women continue along their way, smiling.

  When she first came to the Franklins some twelve years earlier, Sophia, who was then a very young girl, was of course impressed by her legendary, larger-than-life uncle. But her relations with the hero whom fate had given her as a relative had soon proved to be rather limited, for highly intimidated by young women (especially when they were as pretty as his niece), he avoided as much as he could speaking to her or even meeting her gaze, contenting himself with the most rudimentary conversations. Had she slept well? Yes? Splendid. No? Most unfortunate. Would she like to accompany him and Lady Jane to the opera, where The Marriage of Figaro would be performed? Yes? Splendid.

  Sophia’s admiration had soon been transferred to Lady Jane, whose energy, sense of initiative, fighting spirit, and intelligence, qualities that would have seemed remarkable in a man, struck her as absolutely staggering in a woman, especially one who was so frail as well. It had been a revelation to young Sophia, who had been brought up between an incurably mundane mother whose sole concern was the proper running of her household and who measured her success by the perfection of her home’s interior and of her domestics, for whom the apotheosis of the week was the serving of the midday meal on Sunday, and a neurasthenic aunt, an old maid who spent her days reading pious stories and embroidering. Between roast beef and petit-point, Sophia had refused to choose and she had won from her father the right to spend a summer at the home of her illustrious uncle, whose exploits she had read about in the newspapers.

  Summer had given way to autumn, then to winter. One spring had blossomed, then another, and there was no longer any question of Sophia’s going back to her parents. Lady Jane had no children, and her relations with Eleanor had never been a source of anything but renewed disappointment. She was incapable of understanding that exquisitely polite little girl whose serenity and impassivity were never disturbed but who seemed to her as devoid of inspiration and life as a stone. Even in her very early childhood, Eleanor never got carried away. She never shouted, never ran, never got dirty. Impervious to both reprimands and compliments, she made slow but regular progress in her education, attributable more to effort than to an inclination or a talent for any particular subject. She had become a secretive adolescent, shy and awkward, blushing for no reason at all, who rejected fiercely her stepmother’s attempts to brighten up her way of dressing or to make her exchange her schoolgirl’s plaits for a more stylish coiffure.

  In Sophia Cracroft, then, Lady Jane had discovered the daughter she had never had but whom it was perhaps not too late to educate and mould, for her niece was endowed with a curiosity that was equalled only by her quick-wittedness, and the niece had discovered in her uncle’s wife the model she had been missing since her earliest childhood: a brilliant, independent woman capable, if necessary, of standing up to the entire world.

  Sophia was convinced that Lady Jane herself would have been an exceptional explorer. By way of confirmation she had only to read the journals her aunt had kept during her travels, where she noted methodically the distances travelled, the geographical accidents observed, the temperatures recorded, as well as providing descriptions at once precise and inspired of places visited and populations encountered. Once, Sophia had even started to collect the journals that her aunt had written during her journeys to Egypt and Tasmania, with the intention of retranscribing them and entrusting them to a publisher. Lady Jane had protested half-heartedly, then offered to let her niece consult as well the letters she had written during those same journeys – of which, astutely, she had preserved the rough drafts.

  3 November 1846

  YESTERDAY MORNING the propellers were lifted, to be placed in the hold where they will stay until the pack ice melts, then the vessels were hoisted onto the ice, which is solid enough that it is not liable to crush the ships once spring arrives. The men, who have been given a supplementary ration of rum along with strict instructions to wear their warmest clothing, went out onto the ice as joyfully as children about to build a snowman. The cables attached to various places on the Terror were flung onto the ice and the men took hold of them to set about hauling the enormous wooden carcass. Standing on the deck, armed with a speaking tube, Gore bellowed rhythmically, Heave ho! which was met each time by a slight movement forward by the ship, emerging from the icy water like a sea monster wrenched away from its natural habitat. For a second I had the impression that I was seeing come to life before my eyes one of those ancient engravings depicting slaves sentenced to Roman galleys, except that these prisoners, driven off the ship, were forced to make it advance in a manner even more punishing. Once the Terror was entirely out of the ice, it became easier to slide it across several hundred feet, to a spot where it was relatively sheltered from the wind, before an enormous wave of ice that seemed to have risen up on the icefield over the centuries like a mountain of frozen water. It was past two o’clock in the afternoon; the men, drenched by their efforts, no longer felt the cold, though it was biting. They were served a hot stew along with a fresh ration of rum, after which they had to do it all again in order to hoist the Erebus beside the Terror. Fatigue, the dark – the sun had long since disappeared from the horizon and all that remained was a greyish glow in the sky that erased every colour on Earth – limbs numb from alcohol and cold, the accidents multiplied. One sailor broke his hand; two others, sliding across the ice, suffered nasty sprains; not to mention the fact that two of the cables snapped, and they had to readjust others countless times to avoid damaging the
ship, which, submitted to torque or poorly balanced pressure, was letting out worrisome creaks. It was well past midnight when the men could finally go back on board and get into their bunks after being seen by Peddie, who wanted to be sure that no one was suffering from overly severe chilblains or any other injuries that had gone unnoticed. After more rum had been poured, the order was issued this one time, on both boats, to keep the heat on all night. This morning there are countless red or purplish noses, chins as white as flour, ear-lobes blackened by cold. Winter has imposed on the crew a grim carnival makeup.

  EVERY DAY THE deck must be scrubbed until it shines not like a new penny – money is of no use in this small, isolated Arctic society at the end of the Earth – but so that the skirts of a lady wearing a white gown could sweep it without being soiled. That lady in white is with the men in thought while they work their fingers to the bone, on all fours, hands chapped and blue from the cold, knees scraped by their heavy woollen trousers which are constantly freezing and thawing, backs exhausted by the burden of their constant labour. She floats above them, light, graceful, elusive. No doubt they make out her evanescent silhouette in the cloud of mist that escapes from their mouths and disperses in front of them before it forms again with the next exhalation, or else they spy her in a dream then see her disappear at dawn, a white shadow tangled with the black of night.