Voyage of the Narwhal

by Andrea Barrett

  Browning raised his eyebrows and turned the conversation toward more serious books. Coffee and the puddings and pies arrived, and by the time Alexandra could pay attention again Browning and Linnaeus were discussing the relative merits of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Mrs. Hentz’s rebuttal of it in The Planter’s Northern Bride. Then Emily was telling Linnaeus and Lucy about her work with runaway slaves who’d made their way to the city. Perhaps she’d drunk too much of the Wellses’ lovely claret.

  Linnaeus said, “That’s all very admirable. But can you answer the argument Mrs. Stowe has St. Clare make to Miss Ophelia? Are we in the North willing to elevate and educate the floods of freed slaves that must arrive here on emancipation? I think we won’t; we can’t. They’re so essentially different from us.”

  Humboldt leaned into the conversation. “Are they not,” he said, “even a separate species from us? In the same way that Catlin thinks the Indian tribes he painted out west are indigenous, and extremely ancient—their languages resemble no other group, they must have been created there. And Agassiz and others have argued . . .”

  “Agassiz’s idea of centers of creation is simple sacrilege,” Browning said sharply. “This position that species are created in their proper places and don’t migrate far, this thing he calls ‘polygenism’: to argue that human races are different species, descended from different Adams who were created separately in different zoological regions—this is to argue that scripture is allegorical rather than literal. And I don’t accept that. We all descend from Adam and Eve, a singular creation. Human races have degenerated differently from that original pair.”

  Erasmus, Alexandra saw, was flicking his thumbnail against his front teeth. Lavinia looked up when Emily began to contradict Browning.

  “Never mind that,” Emily said. “It’s not the theology that’s important—Agassiz’s polygenism is harmful because of the ammunition it provides to the proponents of slavery. And anyway he’s a horrid man. He didn’t come here just to give those lectures; he wanted to see Dr. Morton’s collection of skulls and gather more data for his theories. I was working among the Negro servants at the hotel he stayed at, trying to convince them to provide shelter for escaped slaves passing through, and I saw him there, in the hall. One of the maids was trying to give him a message from someone who’d come by looking for him. She spoke perfectly clearly but he stood there like a big ox, pretending he didn’t understand her and asking her again and again to repeat the same phrases. The look on his face—he was frightened of her. Revolted by her. How can you trust the science of a man like that?”

  Erasmus flicked his thumbnail again and then spoke for the first time since he’d finished carving the ham. “Is that true?” he said. “About Agassiz?”

  “As far as I know,” Emily said. “He makes no secret of his attitude toward other races. No more than did Dr. Morton.”

  Erasmus shook his head. “Morton did good work at the Academy,” he said. “But that necropolis he kept in his office—for all the time I was acquainted with him, I managed to avoid seeing the cabinet. None of us ever saw it.” Linnaeus and Humboldt agreed.

  “Such an awful obsession,” Erasmus continued. “Hundreds of Indian crania, hundreds more from the Egyptian tombs and men all over the world robbing graves to send skulls back to him—but I don’t remember any connection to Agassiz, I just remember the lectures Agassiz gave. And all the dinners feting him.” He was silent for a moment. “Can’t we talk about pleasanter things?” He pushed his chair away from the table and rolled in the direction of the parlor.

  ERASMUS DIDN’T SAY he hadn’t met Agassiz because he wasn’t invited to the dinners. In the aftermath of the Exploring Expedition his reputation as a naturalist had been so slight that, despite his father’s connections, no one had thought to include him. Yet what did this matter now? Most of his attention was taken up by fittings for his new shoes with the little pads that replaced his lost toes and cushioned his stumps. Late one night, when he was sure he wouldn’t be interrupted, he opened his tin box and then the fossil cabinet with the hidden compartment. His nostrils filled with the smell of leather as he lined the footwear along his bed: one tiny antique woman’s boot, one new man’s shoe, one piece of boot sole. The fragment he’d brought home from Boothia was distinctly larger than the corresponding portion of his new shoes; his shoes now matched his mother’s.

  He practiced moving on his dwarfed feet, aided by a pair of walking sticks. For a while this occupied him entirely. Later, as he grew more confident but still was trapped inside by the freak snowfalls and bitter cold, the Christmas conversation began to nag at him. He read Agassiz’s essay in Types of Mankind and studied the chart linking the world’s zoological provinces and their human inhabitants. The arctic column showed a polar bear, a walrus, a Greenland seal, a reindeer, a right whale, an eider duck. Then the face and skull of what Agassiz termed a Hyperborean. The features, which looked like no person Erasmus had ever seen, might have been imagined from Pliny’s description. The races of man, Agassiz had written, differed from each other more than monkeys considered separate species within the same genus.

  Browsing through the long passages of biblical exegesis and the essays on geology and paleontology, Erasmus saw that the point was an attack on the unity of races, an attempt to prove their separate creation. A messy compendium, the drawings distorted—whether willfully or unconsciously—to make a point. The Esquimaux looked like misshapen gnomes and the Negroes like chimpanzees; how could anyone who’d traveled the world take this seriously? Yet he knew there were clergymen shouting that the book cast contempt on the word of God. He was no judge of theology, but he thought it was bad science to deny that humans were part of nature and all one species. He had the feet of a pygmy now, but he was still himself.

  He longed, as always, for Dr. Boerhaave, with whom he might have had a proper discussion. What is life, where did it come from? Species may be placed in groups related to one another in structure—but where did that relationship originate? He and Dr. Boerhaave would have laughed as they argued. He was grateful for that memory—and grateful, too, that the horrid stretch during which he’d been able to hear his friend’s voice but couldn’t see his face had passed.

  Bit by bit his friend had returned to him. As he lay sleepless he’d seen first Dr. Boerhaave’s leafy brown hair, striped with white, perfectly straight and flopping in the wind. His long chunky nose with that charming square tip appeared next; then his narrow eyes, slightly too close together; his wide, thin-lipped, mobile mouth; and the long-fingered hands which, gesturing so fluidly, had seemed like outposts of his mind. The world has a pattern, he’d said. Our minds are made to perceive that pattern laid down by the Lord. With those words humming in his ears, Erasmus searched the shelves for his father’s old copy of Morton’s Crania Americana.

  Tiny steps; he felt like a deer, balanced on pointed hooves. He propped the volume open on the table and copied out Morton’s interpretation of the cranial capacity of three Esquimaux skulls:

  “The Greenland esquimaux are crafty, sensual, ungrateful, obstinate and unfeeling, and much of their affection for their children may be traced to purely selfish motives. They devour the most disgusting aliments uncooked and uncleaned, and seem to have no ideas beyond providing for the present moment. . . . In gluttony, selfishness and ingratitude, they are perhaps unequalled by any other nation of people.”

  Certainly those people had seemed alien, but this wasn’t the way he remembered them. Nor was this the way—or not solely the way—that Dr. Kane portrayed them in his book. Which Alexandra had worked on; and it was her sister who’d brought up this side of Agassiz. How could that philosophical idealism, which Dr. Boerhaave shared with Agassiz and Thoreau, have these consequences? He wanted his friend’s face shining clearly; he’d almost lost that precious memory.

  All of this was confusing. On his desk lay something else confusing, his first response to the letters he’d sent to the families of the three dead crewmen. Fletc
her Lamb’s mother had sent a bitter letter, pencil on lined paper:

  I had two sons. The oldest went off on a whaling ship and was drowned to death and I forbade Fletcher to go to sea. He ran away to you. And now this. What am I to do without him? What am I to live on, without a son to support me? I had hoped you’d include the balance of Fletcher’s wages. I am in urgent need of funds.

  He would pay her himself and sort out the details with Zeke’s father later; he’d do the same for Nils Jensen’s mother and Mr. Francis’s wife. But the money wouldn’t make things right. He’d mishandled everything.

  Every corner of his life was confused. After the Christmas dinner Alexandra, out of the blue, had asked Linnaeus and Humboldt for some engraving work. She hadn’t admitted her work on Dr. Kane’s book; her glance at Erasmus had entreated him not to betray her. She’d said only that Mr. Archibault believed her efforts promising.

  His brothers had stalled but agreed to consult Mr. Archibault; and Erasmus had understood, as they had not, that Mr. Archibault would support her. Almost a form of blackmail, Erasmus thought. Doubly so, as his brothers couldn’t afford to cross her; if she left they’d have to make other arrangements for the care of him and Lavinia. Later that week they’d agreed to subcontract a small set of botanical engravings to Alexandra and had arranged a work space in her rooms, but Erasmus knew they blamed him. They were waiting for him to take charge of the household, so they could dismiss Alexandra.

  Which would leave him, he thought, alone with Lavinia. How would they live together? She came downstairs each day and dined with him each night, but it was Alexandra who made conversation, finding the neutral topics that got them through meals. Only once had they approached the topic of Zeke. “If you knew how much I miss him,” Lavinia had said. “How hard it is for me to imagine the rest of my life . . .”

  “I know,” he’d said. “I would have done anything not to have it be this way.” Liar, he’d thought. What a liar.

  And there they sat. Her mouth said she’d forgiven him, her body at the table signaled a truce, but her gaze eluded him. She seemed to have grown a set of translucent second eyelids, like a cat’s nictitating membranes. Behind that film she raged with loss. Had she been able to choose, he thought, he would be dead and not Zeke. “I’m sorry,” he’d said. Again, again. “So sorry.” The servants swirled around, pretending not to notice the anguish behind their words: Agnes the housemaid, Mrs. Parkins the cook, Cardoza the groundskeeper, Benton the groom. Two years ago he’d hardly been able to tell them apart; now he knew all their names, as he knew their habits and moods and troubles. He had to know them; he depended on them, and on Alexandra. Together they helped him and Lavinia return to the world that had become so strange to both of them.

  ALL OVER PHILADELPHIA, merchants and tavern keepers had picked up on the craze for Kane’s book. Shops displayed white fur muffs and seal-trimmed jackets a la Esquimaux; hairdressers styled tresses in casual topknots emulating the Greenland belles. By the wharves one might order a dish called “Dr. Kane’s Relief,” which appeared crowned with a tiny wooden spear. A hot brandy drink was called “Ice and Darkness,” an ale “Kane’s Dew,” a towering dessert with almond paste “Tennyson’s Monument,” after the striking engraving in Kane’s book. No one mentioned Erasmus and his expedition, but there was still talk of Franklin.

  In England Lady Franklin pressed for another expedition to leave next summer, heading for Boothia and King William Land and perhaps employing the Resolute, which had safely reached Portsmouth. The most recent American expedition, she’d said in a speech—meaning his own, Erasmus thought with a pang—may have failed. But apparently they saw evidence of my husband’s ships as clearly as did Dr. Rae. While we sorrow over their losses, we are grateful for their efforts. It is imperative that a British ship examine this site.

  She might have written him directly, Erasmus thought. Even the smallest word of thanks, acknowledging receipt of his list. Instead she’d ignored him and taken her facts from the newspapers, never asking him to confirm or deny them. The ‘apparently’ stung.

  Then he learned from Linnaeus what everyone else in Philadelphia already knew—that Dr. Kane had left London in mid-November, sailing for Havana in the hope that a warmer climate might cure his persistent fever. On the passage from St. Thomas to Cuba he’d suffered an apoplexy and now lay in Havana partially paralyzed and missing much of his memory.

  Erasmus hobbled down to the creek after he heard this, on his first solo trip outside. At his feet the rushing brown current swept twigs and litter past the tulip trees and deposited a shingle, like a little hat, on a tuft of dried grass.

  “YOUR FEET ARE much improved,” Alexandra said. “It’s time we got you out of here.”

  She threw open two of the Repository’s windows; spring was in the air and the trees were unfurling small green leaves. The lists strewn over Erasmus’s work table curled in the humid breeze.

  “I’d like to visit the Academy of Sciences,” she said. “It would help me with the engravings if I could consult some of the thallophytes there. And I can’t very well go by myself—but if you were willing, we could pretend these were specimens you wanted to inspect. Would you come?” She had an idea that Erasmus might rouse himself if she could make him feel that he was helping her, rather than that she was helping him.

  He frowned. “Do you really need to?”

  “It would be an immense help,” she said. “And it might be useful to you as well. You could compare the arctic specimens in the herbarium to your lists.”

  “I could,” he said. “And it’s such a lovely day. Would Lavinia join us, do you think?”

  “Not today,” Alexandra said. “I asked her at breakfast, but she wants to spend some time with the gardener.”

  “That’s good,” Erasmus said. “Isn’t that good, that she’s interested in the gardens again?”

  “It is,” Alexandra agreed.

  The drive along the river was beautiful, the banks filmed by a haze of green and sheets of flowering blue squill spreading like water beneath the beeches. At the Academy they sat in the carriage for ten minutes while Erasmus examined the altered facade. “It’s too peculiar,” he said. “When I was away on the Exploring Expedition the Academy moved from the old Swedenborgian meeting house on Twelfth Street to here. I came back to find this big new building, everything moved and changed so I couldn’t find anything—and now this.”

  “What’s so different?” Alexandra asked.

  “The extra story,” Erasmus said. “It’s twenty or thirty feet taller than it used to be, there’s a whole extra story added on.”

  As she guided him inside, slowing her steps so she was at his elbow, she caught only fragments of his continual mutter. The lecture room fronting on Broad Street was now part of the library; the old meeting room was now full of shelves; all the specimens had been rearranged. There were people about, but no one Erasmus knew from the old days. The young man working in the library probably meant nothing unkind when, after Erasmus introduced himself, he said, “Of course I’ve heard of you. I imagine you’d like to see the collections from Dr. Kane’s first trip north.”

  “It’s . . .” Erasmus said. “I didn’t have in mind those specifically, there’s a set of thallophytes I’d like to see, and also all the arctic specimens. I don’t know where anything is anymore.”

  “Let me show you,” the young man said. He led them into a room lined with shallow drawers and smelling of earth and mold. “All the herbarium sheets are here. Most of the specimens came from Dr. Kane, as I’m sure you know.”

  “Indeed,” Erasmus said faintly. At the far end of the room a stuffed dog was mounted on a pedestal, ears erect and tail curled springily over its back. Beside it stood a dog’s articulated skeleton, posed the same way. “Where did you get those?” he asked. He drew Alexandra closer to the mount and the skeleton.

  “That’s Toodlamik,” the young man said proudly. “Skin and bones. Dr. Kane’s faithful companion on the
sledge journeys, whom he managed to bring home. He sickened over the summer, while Dr. Kane was finishing his book, and when he died Dr. Kane brought him here to the taxidermist. We’re so pleased to have him.”

  “Very lifelike,” Alexandra murmured. She glanced at Erasmus, hoping this wouldn’t upset him. None of this was what she’d intended; she’d meant only to ease him back into the scientific world. She’d imagined them bending over sheets of lycopodium and sphagnum, which would get him thinking about his own work. She was touched when Erasmus squared his walking sticks under him, lifted his chin, and said, “An excellent preparation. I had similar dogs myself. Now if we could look at the herbarium sheets, I’d like to compare some of the specimens with my own lists from the area.”

  “Of course,” the young man said. “Anything you can confirm as having seen in a similar area, or perhaps if you note having seen something in a different place—your explorations didn’t entirely overlap Dr. Kane’s, did they?”

  “They did not.”

  “We’d welcome your observations.” He turned to leave but Erasmus moved in another direction.

  Beyond the two versions of Toodlamik an open door led to another room. More bones, Alexandra saw, as she followed Erasmus. Bones and bones and bones. Erasmus moved toward the shelves. Human skulls, cheekbone to cheekbone, rows upon rows. And the skulls of bear and deer and squirrel and mouse; hundreds of bird skulls and fishes and snakes and two hippopotamus skulls.

  “Dr. Morton’s entire collection,” the young man announced. “After his death, his friends raised funds to purchase the collection from his widow, and they presented it to us. There are over sixteen hundred crania, almost a thousand human and the rest from other species. You must have known Dr. Morton?”