Across the Endless River (38 page)

As he watched Theresa in the brilliant light of the chandeliers, Baptiste felt the nervous unease in his face and neck spread to his chest. His breathing tightened and he felt a deep resentment for Warburg and the courteous air of respect and devotion he exuded.
How dare he?
he thought angrily.
What makes her smile so much?

Suddenly Theresa crossed the room and stood at his side. “I want you to make the acquaintance of Herr Schubert.” She took him by the arm and gently eased through the crowd to where Schubert stood nearby.

“Franz, let me present my special friend from America, Monsieur Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau.”

Baptiste extended his hand.

“Good evening to you, Monsieur. Where do you live in America?”

“In St. Louis, sir.” A puzzled look crossed Schubert's face. “It's on the Mississippi River, in the Indian Territories.” As always, the name of the river sounded peculiar to Baptiste in a German sentence.

Schubert asked Baptiste to repeat the name of the river.

“What kind of a word is that?” Schubert asked.

“It is from the Ojibwa tribe. It means ‘River of Waterfalls.' ”

“How perfectly poetic.
Mississippi, River of Waterfalls:
it sounds like an ideal title for an opera, doesn't it, Princess?”

Schubert turned to the keyboard and played a series of rhythmic chords in the lower registers as he intoned in a throaty bass-baritone the four syllables of the name that so captivated him. He repeated it several times, establishing a gentle rolling cadence and changing the chord progressions to add drama. Two or three others standing by joined in the slow incantation of the river's name, adding harmony on the last syllable as Schubert rolled and thundered in the bass notes. Then they laughed together amid a smattering of applause.

Schubert looked at Baptiste and asked, “Is that your River of Waterfalls in any of its moods?”

Baptiste was caught up in the playful mood. “That is what it sounds like before a storm,” he said as the other guests drew silent in order to hear his words, “but I hope you will see the river for yourself before you write the opera.”

“I should like nothing better, I assure you!” Schubert responded. “How I would love to see the New World!”

Then Schubert was borne off in the direction of an adjacent room, where the Esterhazys were holding forth. Theresa remained at Baptiste's side and they had a few minutes of solitude.

“Tell me what you think of our famous Herr Schubert's new piece.”

“I've never heard anything like it,” Baptiste said. “I don't think I'll ever forget the very beginning—so much feeling in just a few notes.”

Theresa closed her eyes. “I adore four hands when the music has substance. It's like flying.”

“Just watching you play was like flying,” he told her. She inclined her head very slightly as her fingers, still full of energy, touched his hand.

That night, after he and Theresa had fallen asleep in each other's arms, Baptiste dreamed of something he had witnessed in the wilds above the White River before he had met Paul. The images were clear and connected rather than dreamlike, and the scene unfolded just as he remembered it, as if he were watching it happen all over again.

He had ridden out alone before dawn to check a set of traps he and his father had placed three days before along a wooded stream that drained a shallow valley. “Still some beaver left here,” his father had said when they had surveyed the stream, and he had been right. Baptiste collected half a dozen decent animals with their full winter coats that would make fine pelts, then collected his gear and headed his horse out of the bottomlands. The sun was fully up now and the fastdisappearing rime frost sparkled on the scrub brush that covered the undulating prairie. Only patches of mist remained in the hollows. He sat his horse at the top of a rise, taking in the breadth of the land that was his alone to survey, when his horse spooked. Baptiste reined him in hard, the animal's nostrils flaring and ears erect as his flanks quivered. Baptiste felt more than heard a deep galloping vibration. The buffalo herds were nearby, he knew, but this wasn't a mass of animals. Then there came a frantic bleating, a deep guttural growling, and an insistent lowing. From a fold in the hills on the opposite bank of the stream, less than a hundred yards from where he sat, three animals shot into view.

In the lead ran a spring calf, no more than a month old. It had the short reddish coat and long-legged lope of a young buffalo. Ten yards behind, an adult grizzly pursued him at a full run, his form a mass of muscular agility and his quivering coat showing silver tips in the slanting early-morning light. The calf 's mother ran close behind the bear, lowering her head to charge with her horns as she approached its flanks. From right to left across the gentle slope they ran through the low brush. The calf drew ahead, then tried to circle back to its mother, its only hope of safety, but the bear cut it off, then turned to face down the cow. The chase began again. On the third try the frantic calf tried once more to race behind the bear, but the grizzly put on an astonishing burst of speed to intercept it. In a single series of fluid movements, it caught the calf 's hindquarters with its right forepaw, broke its neck with its left, and wheeled around to face the charging mother at its full height of eight feet. Its forelegs and claws were outstretched and its guard hairs fully extended as it roared in fury, defending its kill in a menacing rage. The cow stopped short five yards from the bear, lowering her head as if she would renew her charge and calling for her calf. Finally the growling bear dropped down on all fours, seized the calf in its jaws, and dragged it down the slope until it disappeared in another fold of the terrain. The cow lowed for a long while in the silence of the early-morning air.

Baptiste woke silently in the dark. Theresa's regular breathing reassured him and he lay unmoving, wondering at the meaning of what he had just relived. It was more vivid than a dream. The cow had certainly fallen behind the herd in order to drop her calf, he reasoned, and once separated, she had not had the means to find the main herd again. Wolves often preyed on stragglers—he had seen it often enough—but for a grizzly to take on an adult buffalo was rare. And his mind returned again and again to the calf trying to circle back to its mother as he watched from the saddle, knowing the inevitable outcome at the first sight of the three animals. Why this all returned to him now with a sharp edge, he could not tell, but he lay awake for a long while thinking of it.

The next morning, Theresa and Baptiste sat at a table in the drawing room of Theresa's apartment, drinking coffee and eating the breakfast that Marie-Claire had brought to them. Her features had the rosy freshness that he found particularly beautiful.

“You will return to Bad Mergentheim today?” Theresa asked.

“Yes, I leave at noon.”

He sensed that she had something more to tell him, and he waited. Theresa put down her fork and lowered her eyes. Her hands trembled, but she raised her chin and looked at him with her usual calm and open look.

“Mon ami,
I wanted you to know that it is unlikely that we shall see each other again before you leave Europe. I have decided to stay in Vienna until October, and then I shall spend the winter in Naples. I do not anticipate returning to Württemberg.”

Baptiste was stunned by her words. “Does this have to do with Warburg?”

Theresa's eyes narrowed. “Herr Warburg is a very close friend, but that is not the point,” she said. The ticking of an ornate clock on the mantel underscored the stillness in the room. Theresa's features softened and she said in a low voice, “Baptiste, jealousy makes us all ugly.”

“I am not jealous,” Baptiste stammered. “That is, I do not mean to be.”

Theresa continued with more warmth. “Our paths are turning in different directions, as we knew they would. That does not change the fact that I have loved you as much as I have loved anyone in my life. You shall always have a place in my heart, wherever you may be.”

As Baptiste realized the plain truth of her words, he was ashamed of his reaction.
This is truly goodbye.
His eyes filled with tears and his heart pounded.

Theresa reached across the table and put her hand on his. “Partings are not easy when they involve those we truly care for. But life is like that. Come and kiss me, and tell me that you will think of me sometimes with affection.”

They both rose and he walked around the table and held her for a long while. “ ‘Neither knife nor ball shall pierce the flesh of him I hold dear,' ” he whispered in her ear. “I will never forget that.” Then he caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers, the way she liked him to do, and kissed her deeply, breathing in the smell of her hair, her skin, and her breath for the last time.

He turned away, put on his jacket, and walked to the mantel. “When you think of me, you will remember this, too.” He reached to the clock's pendulum and stopped its swing with a deft and rapid movement of his hand, as one might catch a butterfly in flight. When he turned, Theresa's face was streaked with tears, but she was smiling. Baptiste made an awkward bow and left.

F
ORTY

O
CTOBER 1828

W
hen Baptiste returned from Vienna in late June, he had found Paul in a state of restless agitation. The book, the book, everything came down to the book. He asked hollow questions about Baptiste's time in Vienna, then returned to his projected work schedule for the months ahead.

So it was that the next morning, just after dawn, Baptiste and Paul were at the laboratory worktable, reading notes and examining specimens at a rapid pace. This had gone on through July and August with scarcely a pause, until Paul finished the narrative of his travels in North America. The last chapter included a terse account of his rendezvous with Baptiste at the mouth of the Kansas five years earlier.

“The hog-nosed snake you collected that day seems to be of more interest to you than our meeting,” Baptiste said.

“Nonsense!” Paul protested. “I described our meeting at the Curtis & Woods trading post in June earlier in the text! Besides,” he added,
“Heterodon simus
has proved to be one of the most unusual snakes in my collection.”

They had spent the last part of August checking a myriad of references about which Paul had voiced a doubt: Was the white plumage of a heron its seasonal phase or the feathers of a young bird? Were the tail feathers attached to a Sauk shield those of a golden eagle? Should he properly attribute the war club he had collected in St. Louis to the Omaha or the Pawnee? The questions were endless. Baptiste gave Paul decisive answers in order to cut short the inquiries. Finally, in the last days of August, Paul announced that he could add no more. Herr Thomm was summoned and together the three men went over the final handwritten version, and drank a toast to the book. Then the printer carefully gathered together two trunkloads of papers, listened politely to Paul's entreaties to keep him informed of any questions that arose, and was gone.

Paul's book ended with a short description of the arduous sea journey from New Orleans to Le Havre, and of all the odd effects that his clinical prose worked on events with which Baptiste was familiar, this was the oddest. The endless weeks caught in North Atlantic storms in the dead of winter were reduced to a few oblique references to heavy weather, numerous latitude and longitude readings, a dispassionate mention of some gear lost overboard, and a summation of conditions in the cabin as “exceedingly unpleasant.” The descriptions in Paul's book were very often terse to the point of spareness, a style that Baptiste by now recognized as a convention of the scientific accounts of explorations that Paul so yearned to reproduce. Baptiste shuddered. Once more he would have to cross the endless river, this time in order to find his way home.

“We need to talk about my departure, Paul,” Baptiste said. “Arrangements need to be made.” They had worked together for only a few hours in the late morning, identifying specimens, before a combination of heat, fatigue, and boredom drove them both from the laboratory.

“Yes, yes, of course. I will be spending a few days in Stuttgart, then visiting my wife in Regensburg as she prepares to give birth. We can talk about all that when I return. Herr Thomm plans to have a first proof ready in six weeks, and your participation in the editing will be indispensable,” Paul said. “Professor Picard will be visiting in late October, and he is looking forward to seeing you again.”

Baptiste held his tongue. He would have to press Paul when he returned from Stuttgart.

While Paul was away, Baptiste heard from Maura; the letter was distressing. Her mother was still weak and in need of assistance, though there was no certain diagnosis. Increasingly she relied on priests and nuns for companionship, and she was spending money constantly, sponsoring Masses, novenas, and even a side chapel in the local church. Maura was torn about leaving, though her mother had told her not to stay. “I think, somehow, she senses our plans, though I have said nothing,” Maura wrote. “She reminded me that she ran off with my father—a mad Frenchman, in the eyes of her family—when she was seventeen.” She asked if Baptiste knew when he would be leaving for America, and closed with words that gave him hope: “I want nothing more than to go with you. Please remember that.”