On the Proper Use of Stars

by Dominique Fortier

  “Oh, it would take far too long to explain. But do stop worrying about me and marry your Albertine with your soul at peace. Be happy.”

  “Geraldine.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My fiancée’s name is Geraldine.”

  “Never mind. Marry Geraldine, go forth and multiply. And most of all, don’t worry about me.”

  Without a word Mathieu walked away, his heels clicking along the path. Sophia stayed alone under the black sky, looking for the Pig, the Ear of Corn, and the Hen, and tried to imagine Mr. Pincher’s profile.

  24 March 1848

  SUPPLIES ARE AT THEIR lowest and basically we are reduced to eating Mr. Goldner’s tinned meats, of which we open three twenty-pound cans per day and hope for the best. Since we started this diet we have lost some twenty men and the condition of several others has deteriorated. I found myself wondering if it would be better to content ourselves with the meagre ration of sea biscuits we are still able to bake. Who knows, perhaps that often-foul food is part of the cause of our misery. Like the snow we swallow that does nothing but stir up the fire of thirst, sometimes killing. All the same, most of the men, if given the choice of dying with an empty stomach or a full one, will choose to eat what is put before them and not ask any questions. I cannot blame them.

  Peddie died four days ago, and I realize that death has become so common that I did not even note the date of MacDonald’s, which occurred a fortnight back. I suffer greatly from their absence, as do the rest of the men, who are now deprived of a physician. Adam seems to have taken over, doing the best he can; he assures us that Peddie entrusted to him the contents of his flasks and phials, which he distributes parsimoniously to the sick, who, in any case, do not do any worse. The stock of lemon juice has been exhausted for more than three weeks already but I have the impression that it has been a much longer time since the liquid has not had an effect. I wake up every morning with the taste of iron in my mouth and I no longer dare to feel my teeth ever since I dislodged one with a clumsy movement of my tongue. I know better than anyone the symptoms of scurvy, for which there is no remedy among all the syrups, powders, and decoctions that we brought.

  – AUNT?

  – Yes.

  – May I disturb you for a moment?

  – You aren’t disturbing me, child. What is it?

  – How did you know that you should marry my uncle?

  – Why do you ask?

  – Because I’ve never thought about marriage – and I still do not, not exactly, but …

  – And who has stirred these thoughts? Could it be young de Longchamp? Is he not to marry Albertine Cornell?

  – Geraldine.

  – As you wish. Is it he who suddenly has you wondering about marriage?

  – I read somewhere that if you place a mirror under your pillow, on the morning of the fourteenth day you will see the face of the man you will marry.

  – You did? And what face did you see?

  – I could not leave the mirror there for fourteen nights, I couldn’t sleep with that hard object under my head.

  – As for me, I have never, as you know, given any credence to such old wives’ tales. I believe that one sees the face of the man one will marry on the morning of one’s wedding, when one walks up the aisle on one’s father’s arm.

  – But how do you know that he is the one?

  – The other man is the pastor, child.

  – Aunt, I’m serious.

  – So am I, Sophia. Now listen: you have no need to marry. Your uncle and I, God be thanked, will leave you a sufficient fortune that you will never have financial difficulties. You will be well able to run a household, travel, even to work should you wish without the hindrance of a husband. So tell me why you would like to enslave your destiny to that of a man?

  – Because more and more it seems to me that it already is.

  Stella Maris

  FOR MONTHS NOW Lady Jane has been besieging the Admiralty, has stood waiting in ill-lit, drafty corridors, bribing secretaries, aides de camp, butlers, and other lesser sorts, insisting, hounding, pursuing, hunting, and, all shame swallowed, has ended up pleading and beseeching. Nothing has any effect. The Admiralty says not a word. The expedition is not in danger; the expedition cannot be in danger. The pride of the British Navy is not about to stay imprisoned in a territory from which any whaler at all can extricate himself with his eyes closed. As for previous failures, if indeed one can speak of failures, they are milestones marking the progress of the conquest of this last section of the globe to escape from the grip of the Crown and it is inconceivable that errors committed in the last centuries or past decades should be repeated: indicating the dangers that lie in wait, they are, on the contrary, similar to buoys warning of the presence of shoals, guarantors of the success of the undertaking. It is ridiculous then to dispatch a rescue expedition. One does not set out to rescue heroes.

  Lady Jane goes home exhausted, ankles sore from standing for too long on legs where varicose veins are appearing that were not there the year before, mouth dry from arguing in vain, heart filled not with despondency but with a will, animated first by anger, which grows from day to day and is gradually being steeped in a muted hatred. They will not get rid of her like that. With her swollen feet immersed in a basin of hot water in which Alice has dissolved some Epsom salts, she settles in at her writing desk to write to those who have refused to see her during the day, then to their colleagues, their opposite numbers, their superiors. When these actions prove fruitless, she takes up her pen to beg for help from some American friends, then from vague acquaintances, before appealing to the highest officers and the heads of state of friendly countries who she hopes will in turn exert pressure on the Crown and the British Admiralty, and succeed by bringing shame on the latter where she herself failed by appealing to their honour.

  And then one morning in April, while she is sitting at the breakfast table with Sophia, who is rereading to her the list of her appointments for the morning, she receives the news that she has been expecting for months: Edgar Simonton, the American she had met at an inn in the south of France years before, agrees to finance a search and rescue expedition that will leave in a few weeks.

  Lady Jane lets the letter drop onto her toast. She leans back in her chair. She would like to tell Sophia that’s it, at last they are successful, but she knows that if she opens her mouth she will not be able to produce the slightest sound. She feels tears come to her eyes and stop somewhere between her throat and her nose.

  —

  At once, Simonton takes matters in hand, personally making contact with ship-owners, pilots, and stockists, while an army of assistants and young secretaries sees to obtaining the necessary authorizations (of which there are very few) for setting up the operation. Lady Jane puts them in touch with those who over the months have shown themselves willing to come to her assistance, but she can only follow from a distance the preparations, most of which are taking place on another continent. Feverish, she makes lists of urgent matters, of absolutely essential equipment, she dispatches copies of the maps she herself has drawn over the past three years, the last of which, she is certain, shows the route that her husband followed. Panicking, she realizes that the whole story is getting away from her, has already gotten away, that the fate of Sir John rests inexplicably in hands other than hers. Less than one month later, everything is ready, the Jupiter is set to weigh anchor in the port of Greenhithe, whence they will cast off in the presence of families and friends of the missing, whom she has personally invited to the event.

  AS THE DAYS GO BY, Crozier sees an incredible array of bric-à-brac accumulating on the pack ice, as might be seen in the warehouse of a general store turned upside down by particularly incompetent burglars. Piled up there, baroque, astounding, is an odd collection of objects whose mere presence in this universe of ice defies understanding. Reviewing the absurd mounds, he has to muffle a nervous fit of coughing, but he cannot reconcile himself to order
these distraught and bloodless men, whose fever-bright eyes haunt him, to leave behind the final links attaching them to the world that has been theirs and to the existence they are trying with all their might to still believe in. These household trinkets are just so many charms, it is all of England that they will pull behind them, the weight of their country, even if it should lead them directly to their death. Among these growing piles proclaiming with eloquence the superiority of civilization over savage nature are found:

  silver flatware

  undergarments

  small cakes of scented soap

  polish for buttons

  toothbrushes

  4 Bibles

  bedroom slippers

  sponges

  a copy of The Vicar of Wakefield

  empty cigar boxes

  wax seals

  curtain rods

  The last-named are, however, simply too preposterous. Taking aside Fitzjames, who, like him, observes these mountains of objects growing hour by hour:

  “I am well aware that these wretched dinghies are nearly as heavy empty as full and that we would be well advised to bring along everything that we might need, but seriously, James, I believe we must give up the notion of hanging any sort of curtain during the next few weeks or even the coming months.”

  Fitzjames attempts a thin smile, something he has not done for weeks.

  “No, Francis,” he explains, “of all this hodgepodge, the curtain rods may be the only useful things. It was Adam who suggested that we bring them to use as lightning rods when we are alone on an ice floe that stretches out as far as the eye can see, with no shelter, in the middle of a thunderstorm.”

  Crozier wonders at once why he did not think of it himself. Accordingly, he takes a second look at the rest of the objects there; perhaps each one serves some mysterious purpose that escapes him just now but will be revealed at the opportune moment.

  15 April 1848

  I ASKED ALL THE MEN who had written journals, letters, and memoirs to bring them to me so that we would leave them clearly visible in Sir John’s cabin, which strikes me as the place where rescuers would be most likely to look for them. Some refused vehemently, choosing to entrust their writing to the flames in the kitchen stove. What they could have noted that was terrible enough that they would rather destroy every sign of their passage, I do not know. I let them do as they wished. What does it matter?

  There was, however, something infinitely sad about seeing them line up in front of the cast-iron ogre, hugging in their thin arms a bundle of sheets of paper, notebooks, a journal covered in leather which produced a brief, bright flash before going up in smoke. Though intentional, this auto-da-fé is no less abhorrent.

  To those who have entrusted their writings to me I promised that I would not read them and I respected that oath. I merely placed on Sir John’s desk and bunk, unused since his death, the various notebooks and bundles of papers, some of them accompanied by a note: “For Elizabeth Wilson, 12 Parson Lane, Peterborough,” or “Blessed be he who will read these lines.”

  Feverish, DesVoeux suggested as well that we leave a message in the cairn erected more than a year ago. I did not wish to oppose him, even though I did not and do not see the utility of it. He thought it wise to take the sheet of paper left there some eighteen months before and trace on it, with a trembling hand, a new message that was rolled like a garland around the earlier one. Why in God’s name did he not instead use the still blank back of the paper? Did he fear that whoever found it would forget to check the other side? Seeing him turn the sheet over and over abruptly, a quarter-turn each time, to continue his message, I had the impression that he must have been suffering from fever for several days, a feeling that became a certainty when I read the few lines he had written, which one might have thought the work of a man who was drunk. In it mention is made, in an untidy, incomprehensible jumble, of a cairn erected elsewhere by John Ross, of a sheet of paper that had been lost, then found, of a tower that had disappeared. But that, too, is of no importance. There are sufficient documents inside the Erebus that attest to our presence and give details of the journey we are undertaking, so I do not stop him from setting off again to entrust those few frenzied words to the stones.

  As for me, I cannot bring myself to abandon either to the cold of the deserted ships or to the fire this notebook that has been my confidant ever since we set off, that sometimes seems to me to be the only way to explain why I have not yet lost my mind. I shall take it with me, under my shirt, along with the daguerreotype of Sophia.

  THEY HAVE BEEN WALKING on the pack ice for three weeks, dragging boats that weigh as much as a world, and the readings taken by an incredulous Crozier sometimes reveal at the end of a day spent making painful progress, stooped from effort in this lunar landscape, that not only have they not come the distance anticipated but they have regressed, as the ice moves with an unfavourable current. No doubt their instruments are not absolutely reliable, distorted by their proximity to the magnetic pole, even by the quantity of scrap iron they are pulling behind them like the unwieldy shadow of the country they have forsaken and now refuse obstinately to abandon. It is impossible then to know precisely where they are, and it changes nothing because they know well they are no longer totally on this Earth.

  It sometimes takes hours to cross a few yards of ice that seems to be folded onto itself and rumpled like a monstrous piece of fabric to form tremendous solid waves with sharp ridges onto which they must tip the boats in order to go on. Elsewhere, the ice has been transformed into a kind of thick pulp that impedes their steps, and they sink into it up to their knees.

  After intense discussions, twenty-two men turned around in the second week of their march and set out again, back towards the ships, taking with them a sloop holding part of the provisions, with DesVoeux leading them. God have mercy on them. Those who have stayed wonder at times what has happened to the others – if they have been able to get back to the Terror and the Erebus, if they too are racked with hunger, if they have been found by an expedition sent out to search for them, if they are still of this world.

  The procession thins out from day to day. All have trouble walking, their muscles feel like open wounds, they are half-blinded by the sun whose dazzling brightness is reflected off the snow that still surrounds them completely. They are weak, starving, but they are not hopeless because in the face of all opposition they continue to advance, even when their walking takes them farther from the goal that they sense in a confused way they will never reach.

  The fallen are no longer buried; there is no time or energy for digging the frozen ground to offer them a grave. They are merely covered with snow and at their heads the men make a small pile of stones gathered up nearby, like a tumulus to indicate the presence of prehistoric bones. After a mere three or four hours their skin takes on a bluish tinge reminiscent of the hide of a sea mammal.

  Crozier says a few words, always the same ones, to commit their souls to God and beg for mercy for the living, and he places beneath a stone a sheet of paper inscribed with the name, age, and rank of the deceased, as well as the itinerary he himself is preparing to follow with the survivors. He hopes in spite of everything that these improvised cairns will be able to guide rescuers to them before it is too late, but deep in his soul he knows that the path drawn by his men’s remains cannot be a path of life. The last time they left behind one of their men, spread out stiffly on the cold ground, Crozier turned around and saw the note he had written with trembling hand fly away, white against the sky.

  – THOMAS?

  – …

  – Thomas, are you asleep?

  – …

  – Thomas?

  – Yes.

  – Were you asleep?

  – No.

  – Are you cold?

  – No.

  – Can you move your legs, Thomas? Wiggle your toes.

  – …

  – Come on, try, just wiggle them once.

  – …
>
  – That’s all right. Rest. We’ll try again later, once you’ve warmed up a little. Are you thirsty?

  – No.

  – I saw her, Thomas, this time I really did see her …

  – …

  – You know, the lady in white … The one they promised us every day on deck would visit. She’s even more beautiful than I’d have thought, with skin as fine as glass and a very sweet voice. She talked to me, Thomas, she told me that soon I would join her and that she was expecting me. Close your eyes, Thomas, and you’ll see her too, with her long robe as white as snow …

  – …

  – She’s waiting for us, Thomas, she’s waiting for you … Can you see her?

  – …

  – Go to sleep now.

  IT IS GREY on this 8th day of May 1848 when the Jupiter is getting ready to cast off. Crowded onto the wharves is a sparse and shivering crowd. The women’s faces are drawn, the children stamp their feet and ask to go home. On the water, as on land, a cold wind is blowing and a few drops of rain are falling from a sky swollen with clouds. The crew is assembled on the deck from where it gives a solemn salute. Lady Jane spies Mr. T., in the background and leaning on the ship’s rail, a blissful smile on his round face, already savouring the sea air. Then the ship sets off, Simonton shouts something that cannot be heard, the men waving goodbye shrink until they are nothing but minute shapes on a boat no bigger than a thimble. On the wharf only Sophia and Lady Jane, Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy are left.

  11 May 1848

  THE NIGHTS ARE MORE difficult than the days. The men dig rough-and-ready shelters in the snow or cluster inside the sloops, where morning finds them curled up and huddled together, shivering, in the midst of the incredible jumble.