Galapagos Regained (26 page)

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.

“Hear me, Herr Professor,” he would say, flourishing the canvas. “Fifteen years from now this Moldavian monk will send you a monograph. Study it carefully, lest you do its author, yourself, and the scientific world a disservice. If you think me mad”—here he would hand Nägeli the pigeon missives—“then read these messages from the future.”

Already Granville could hear Dr. Earwicker's voice chirping in protest. “I'm sorry, Reverend, but we cannot allow you such an outing. Your plan is more irrational, even, than your project of eating the Apocalypse.”

Amongst the many disadvantages of being thought insane, Granville concluded ere falling asleep, was that nobody believed a word you said.

*   *   *

Shortly before the
Rainha da Selva
steamed free of Belém, Malcolm Chadwick had wisely told himself that a difficult and protracted voyage lay ahead. He knew to expect an ordeal. And yet, despite these mental precautions, he was not prepared for what actually befell him, that most primeval of Christian trials, a long dark night of the soul.

The farther Malcolm traveled up the sinuous ochre Amazon, contemplating the world as reflected in the great equatorial basin, the more dreadful that world became, forsaken by the Hebrews' Yahweh, the Mussulmans' Allah, and Her Majesty's God. He could barely bring himself to eat. The faculty of prayer deserted him. Celebrating the Eucharist, he decided, would be as pointless as serving a banana to a cat.

The first five days elapsed without incident, the packet-steamer chugging effortlessly past a northern piedmont of thicketed hills and a southern plain planted with sugarcane and tobacco, both shores punctuated by the occasional Indian cottage, trading post catering to
caboclos
frontiersmen, or fishing village populated by mestizo river-folk, the flamboyant
ribeirinhos
. Screeching and squawking, gulls, noddies, and other seabirds wheeled overhead, reminding travelers that for many miles the lower Amazon was synonymous with the Atlantic Ocean. Throughout this phase of the journey Malcolm took genuine pride in his job as
homem da proa,
shouting warnings to Mr. Pritchard at the helm whenever the
Rainha
appeared headed for a canoe, ketch, rock, grass island, or
barco da borracha
coursing towards Belém under full sail.

By the sixth day the jungle was upon them, ranks of twisted trunks forming living ramparts along both banks, their branches festooned with tangled vines and gobbets of hanging moss. Sanctuary to multitudes of visible predators and hidden contagions, the trees cast thick and malignant shadows on the river, so that its waters now seemed a kind of weeping wound scored in the flesh of a black-blooded demon. It was as if the
Rainha
had steamed into the heart of the Argument from Evil, and with each passing mile Malcolm felt yet another stone drop from the mosaic of his faith.

As endured by Saint John of the Cross, the long dark night of a believer's soul signaled eventual redemption. Such despair foretold an ecstatic union with Christ. But Malcolm could imagine no such light shining at the headwaters of the Amazon—only more mosquitoes, scorpions, and predatory candiru fish, only more malaria, typhus, and yellow fever, only more Jesuits acquiescing to a forced-labor economy. He saw at best the Divine Clockmaker of eighteenth-century Deism, though the inert and indifferent gods of Epicurean philosophy seemed a more plausible hypothesis, as did the nonexistent God of Miss Bathurst's ambitions.

Curiously enough, his one reliable source of solace was that same exasperating actress. He and Miss Bathurst had of late enjoyed several stimulating conversations (despite the wretched heat, infinitude of mosquitoes, and endless throbbing of the
Rainha
's engine) concerning the mystery of art and the enigma of personhood. If Miss Bathurst could be believed, then her she-devil side, so appealing to the fawning Miss Kirsop, was naught but an affectation—a costume to be put on and taken off as readily as her pirate regalia.

“I shall remain the Covent Garden Antichrist for as long as the role suits my purposes,” she insisted, “not one minute more.”

“Let me suggest that the role has
never
suited your purposes,” said Malcolm. “Renounce your mystique whilst ye may, Miss Bathurst, ere you start believing it.”

“You forget I'm a professional player.” Her eyes narrowed with scorn. “I know the difference between beguiling an audience and fooling myself.”

“Whether actors, actresses, vicars, harlots, gamblers, or sailors, we're all members of our own audiences and thus vulnerable to self-deception,” said Malcolm. “I fear you take too much pleasure in this antichrist affectation. Beware, Miss Bathurst, lest you carry the game too far.”

It did not help Malcolm's disposition when, in the middle of their second week on the river, Mr. Flaherty was eaten alive by piranhas. The catastrophe was of the drunkard's own making. Shortly after they'd put to shore for the evening, anchoring in an inlet two miles east of the Rio Tapajós, Flaherty declared that he was going for a swim, the torrid climate having become unbearable. Despite his companions' protestations, he swallowed some grog, stripped down to his linen, and dove off the transom. Unfortunately, the crew of a passing
barco da borracha
had selected that moment to throw overboard the bloody residue of their roasted peccary dinner, and by the time Malcolm, Dartworthy, and Gonçalves realized the implications of this action, it was too late.

For several minutes the famished fish were content to fillet the peccary's remains, but then they turned on the swimmer, and the banks of the Amazon reverberated with screams so ghastly they seemed to shred the veil of dusk. Gonçalves raised the amidships lantern high, casting its beams across the water. Pritchard threw out a lifeline. Dartworthy launched the dinghy and paddled it into the darkness, returning in time with a version of Flaherty in the stern, an abridgement so pitiable that Malcolm took to muttering, again and again, “There is no God.”

In the soft glow of the lantern Flaherty appeared to be dressed in a sailor's white trousers, but then Malcolm realized that the brilliant stalks extending from the man's pelvis were not breeches but bones, their flesh shucked away. Astonishingly, he still lived, and after they lifted him onto the afterdeck he groped towards his naked femurs, as if seeking to move them in the absence of tendons. Somehow he put words to his predicament, alternately begging God to have pity on him and cursing that same deity for a monster. At length his body ran short of blood, and he gained admittance to the hospice of Heaven.

Within twenty-four hours of Flaherty's death, Malcolm attempted to disown his earlier convulsions of doubt. “I truly love Thee, Lord,” he muttered repeatedly, until he believed it, or believed that he believed it—though he no longer imagined that the institutions of religion, especially the Church of England, enjoyed any prestige in the Almighty's eyes. To wit, he must forswear the chicanery he'd been sustaining on the Oxford Diocese's behalf. He was not ready to tell Miss Bathurst about the plot against the Encantadas fauna (she would surely vilify him for not informing her sooner, so he might as well inform her later), but he would certainly confess that he'd boarded the
Equinox
under false pretenses, at the behest of Bishop Wilberforce, on a mission to identify the person who'd actually devised the species theory.