Landfalls (32 page)

“He come to Macao very young,” she said in her slow, strange French. “Always he want to go back to France but always they say no. Fourteen year they say no, so—he die.” Her lips trembled.

“You loved him.”

She turned to face him. The bitterness in her expression reminded him of the defiance he had seen in her eyes the first time he saw her. “He leave me,” she finally said.

Oh, this was why he had left medicine, he thought, his heart contracting with pity. It was too much, witnessing other people's pain. She had loved an unhappy man, a man who wanted to leave, a man who could not have taken her back with him to France in any case and decided he would rather die than stay in Macao with her. For her part, she had no freedom to leave the house, of course, for she belonged to it, bound to its reminders of the man who wanted to leave, bound now to entertain strange men in the house, even in the room where, perhaps, her lover had shot himself. No wonder she smoked opium. If she were his patient, he would prescribe laudanum—as much as she wanted.

“Sophie,” he finally said. “It's a beautiful afternoon. I'd like to sit on the veranda and correct a manuscript. It will help to read it aloud to someone, though I daresay you'll find it tedious. Will you join me?”

*   *   *

Of the many strange experiences Joseph Hugues de Boissieu de Lamartini
è
re would have on the voyage, this would turn out to be the strangest: sitting on a cane chair on the third-floor veranda of a house in Macao, with its view of the Inner Harbor and the forbidding Chinese mountains to the northwest, a beautiful woman installed on a rattan settee opposite while he read aloud his monograph on marine parasites, stopping now and then to make marginal notes, and finding in their odd, transient domesticity the most unexpected happiness. When he finished reading, he found Sophie asleep. He got up; it was time to change for his dinner with Dufresne. But first he lowered the bamboo blinds on the veranda to shield her from the cooling breeze and the slanting rays of the setting sun, then went inside and found a light blanket to place over her.

*   *   *

In the end, he could not rest easy in the bed of a man who might have shot himself in it. He decamped to Lamanon's room for the night, grateful to have another place to sleep and also diverted by the vision of Lamanon returning, like a fairy-tale character, to find his bed had been occupied during his absence.

 

NINE

DISPATCHES

Russia, September 1787–August 1788

It took more than two years to reach Petropavlovsk and only three weeks to carry out his responsibilities there, translating French into Russian and back again. Then the order came to leave the
Astrolabe
, and Barth
é
lemy de Lesseps thought his heart would break. He had known all along that he would leave the expedition then, but
then
had always seemed so far in the future. He had never guessed how accustomed he would grow to life at sea or how attached he would become to his shipmates. So many of those shipmates now wanted to help see him off that they scarcely fit into the longboat conveying him to shore. The
Boussole
had launched its own longboat as well, crowded with well-wishers calling out to him as everyone rowed toward the official leave-taking onshore.

“This isn't making it easier for me,” Lesseps protested.

“You've made many friends,” Captain de Langle said.

“I wish the expedition still needed me.”

“It does,” the captain said, “just not on board.”

Lesseps turned to look at the settlement advancing toward them. Petropavlovsk was a rough, modest place, its small wood dwellings clustered in the narrow flats between Avacha Bay and the steep hills beyond, hills that had blazed with autumn when they arrived but had since faded to rust and ocher. The town was not without charm—its tiny churches boasted the steeply tented roofs topped with onion domes and traditional Russian crosses that reminded Lesseps of his childhood in St. Petersburg. But overshadowing the vista, dwarfing the hills, was Koryakski volcano, as imposing a mountain as he had ever seen, hinting at the wild, forbidding terrain he would be obliged to traverse in the coming months. He turned back. “Monsieur de Lap
é
rouse says the journey will be a good opportunity for me,” he said.

Langle nodded. “You'll know the empire better than most Russians.”

Too soon, they all scrambled ashore. They were met at the landing place by Igor Golikoff, a soldier the governor-general of Kamchatka had assigned to serve as Lesseps's guide and bodyguard. A few years older than Lesseps, the soldier was tall and serious and a little vain about his fine mustache and beard. He stood respectfully aside as Lap
é
rouse bade farewell to the expedition's Russian translator. Lap
é
rouse praised Lesseps's conduct on the voyage and thanked him for his excellent work in Petropavlovsk. Then he gave him one more task. “Deliver these dispatches to our ambassador in St. Petersburg,” he said, holding out a leather-inlaid box. “Should some mischance overtake us, these documents will prove our accomplishments.”

Lesseps took the box as if it contained the Holy Grail. “Yes, sir,” was all he could say.

“Meanwhile,” Lap
é
rouse continued, “learn everything you can about this vast and varied continent. One day you will be the most effective, influential ambassador to Russia France has ever appointed.”

“Thank you, sir,” Lesseps said. He resisted the urge to throw himself at the commander's feet and beg to be taken back.

“We'll race you home,” Lieutenant de Vaujuas quipped.

Everyone laughed, then boisterous, tearful hugs were exchanged, and Lesseps watched, helpless, as they all piled into their longboats and rowed away. They called back and waved wildly until the distance obscured their faces and the bay swallowed their voices. They were the best men he would ever know, and they had all just marooned him at the far end of the world. He felt so bereft he allowed Golikoff, whom he had only met the day before, to hold him as he wept. But after a moment he pulled away, embarrassed.

“Come,
barin
,” Golikoff said, using the Russian word for “lord.” “I'll take you back to the governor's house.”

“I know where he lives,” Lesseps said. He walked away, hoping Golikoff wouldn't follow.

“But wait!” Golikoff called. He ran to catch up with his charge. “Your dispatches.” He held out the precious box.

Lesseps was too abashed to thank him.

*   *   *

It took three weeks to cross the peninsula to reach the lightly fortified town of Bolsheretsk on the Sea of Okhotsk. The same governor-general with whom Lesseps had stayed in Petropavlovsk had a house here as well, maintained in his absence by a Cossack and his wife. They invited Lesseps and Golikoff to stay with them.

Lesseps had hoped to take a ship across the sea to its namesake port of Okhotsk, but Golikoff said it was too late; the ports were icing over. They would have to go overland, up the length of the Kamchatka Peninsula and around the sea.

“But that will take forever,” Lesseps said.

“Some months, yes.”

“It's only October. Surely a ship could still—”

“It's almost November,” Golikoff countered. A galliot had apparently become trapped in the ice south of town just a few weeks earlier, he explained. The crew had managed to get off with most of its cargo, but there was no hope for the vessel. “Would you like to see it?”

“The wrecked galliot?” Lesseps asked.

“It's become something of a local destination.”

They traveled down the Bolshaya River toward the site, taking two small floats and two Kamchadal guides. Eight hours later, the sun was setting and they still hadn't reached the wreck. They took refuge for the night in a wretched shack that kept out neither cold nor rain, then set out again in the morning, fighting rough water and wind as they approached the sea. At last they saw something in the distance—a lighthouse, the guide told them, then pointed out the masts of the doomed vessel, which looked like nothing more than driftwood thrown up on the broken ice.

The cold was unbearable.

“Let's go back,” Lesseps said, realizing that none of them wished to continue but that neither Golikoff nor the guides would call off the excursion.

When they turned around, the current was so strong their floats kept filling with water. They made little headway while they bailed, and had to spend another night in the same wretched shelter. Dinner consisted of dried sea wolf and weak tea. The four men huddled together without embarrassment to stay warm.

Shivering, Lesseps thought of the expedition, of the two frigates traveling south, of the men counting on him to deliver their letters and papers. He had abandoned the dispatches for three days, enduring freezing, wet conditions and risking illness and drowning—for what? He hadn't even had a good view of the galliot. What was he doing anyway, seeking out wrecks? It seemed inviting of bad luck to view a shipwreck when all of one's friends were on the high seas.

The next day, his anxiety about the dispatches grew with every league they traveled. What if the box were stolen? Or sent ahead through some misguided attempt to help? What if the house had burned down? They didn't get back to town till evening. He rushed to his quarters, scarcely acknowledging the Cossack and his family's warm welcome, flung open the wardrobe where he had stowed his belongings, unlocked the box, and rummaged through its contents. “Oh, thank God,” he cried.

Golikoff was watching him from the doorway. “What's in the box,
barin
?”

“Everything.”

“Everything?”

Lesseps sighed with impatience. “The commander's journals, officers' reports, scientific papers, artists' drawings, maps, letters. Yes—
everything
. I have to deliver it to our ambassador in St. Petersburg.”

“Your father?”

“No, Golikoff,” Lesseps said. “My father is only consul general. The great Count of S
é
gur is the ambassador.”

“But you're going to have his post one day.”

“Maybe. My father's not a count.” He looked up at the soldier with a self-conscious smile. “Neither am I.”

He watched Golikoff's face—would the soldier realize that his charge was not as distinguished as he had been led to believe? But Golikoff nodded thoughtfully and said, “We won't go anywhere again where we can't take your box.”

*   *   *

Lesseps was frantic to be off again, but they had to wait till winter was advanced enough for dogsleds. First there was not enough snow, then not enough dogsleds, dogs, drivers, provisions. Then
too
much snow, winter gales that lasted for days. He thought his childhood in St. Petersburg had prepared him for Russian winters.

“This isn't a Russian winter,” Golikoff said. “It's the devil's own season.”

Lesseps spent the days between storms learning to drive a dogsled. Golikoff tried to dissuade him. “If you get hurt, we'll be delayed even longer,” he said, and when that didn't work, “If you get hurt, I'll be responsible.”

“My dear Golikoff,” Lesseps said. “Don't worry.” He threw an arm around the soldier and kissed his cheek. Golikoff blushed through his beard.

The Kamchadal guides were happy to let the Frenchman try his hand at driving and showed no concern for his safety, laughing loud and long whenever he fell off or overturned the sled, which was often. But after a month he had become, if not expert, competent enough to join them on a hunt.

They didn't catch much, but they did encounter a sable being chased by a flock of ravens. The animal seemed to be swimming through the snow, poking its head out from a drift, then, menaced by the birds, diving down and reappearing some distance away, only to be set upon again. The Kamchadals released a few of their dogs to chase the birds away, and one of the men devised a small noose to catch the sable. That's never going to work, Lesseps thought, but it did—the man managed after three tries to get the noose around the creature. He presented the defeated animal, squirming dispiritedly in a cloth sack, to Lesseps, and promised to catch another, a female, so he could take a pair back to France.

When he returned to the house that afternoon, Lesseps found Golikoff smoking in the governor's kitchen with the dispatch box at his feet. They had settled into an unspoken arrangement whereby one of them would always have custody of the box. The soldier raised a skeptical eyebrow when introduced to the sable, then left the house and came back with a small wooden cage. When they transferred the sable to the cage, it bit Lesseps, drawing blood.

“Let me see,” Golikoff said.

Lesseps sucked on the injured thumb. “It's nothing.”

“Let me see.”

Golikoff made a very good bandage—secure but not too tight. “My Imperial Army training at your service,” he said.

When blizzards trapped them indoors, Lesseps caught up on his journal. He thought he could probably publish it back in France. Mindful of Monsieur de Lap
é
rouse's charge to learn as much as he could, he carefully recorded his observations about the villages he had passed through, how the Russians administered the region, and the behavior of the native Kamchadals, whose population and customs were in obvious decline. He wrote that the men of Kamchatka, natives and Russians alike, were strangely unjealous about their wives, but he really meant just one man—his Cossack host. Lesseps took more pains to hide the affair from Golikoff than from the husband.

Her name was Daria. She was part Kamchadal and had the blackest, most luxuriant hair of any woman he had ever been with. Not that there had been so many—he was only twenty-one, after all. She taught him Kamchadal words that he copied into his journal:
ship, house, family, man, wife, ice.
He loved to lay his head on her belly, softened from bearing four children, and stroke the smooth black hair between her legs. He had never before been with a woman whose hair there was straight. He wondered if it was a characteristic peculiar to the Kamchadals. This detail did not go into his journal. He told her about the accident in Alaska that had taken his best friends on the expedition, two brothers who were around his age. He had not spoken of it in many months. When Daria reached out and stroked his head, he wept like a child. This detail didn't go into the journal either.