Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish

by Richard Flanagan

  I stepped over to him & peered more closely at the barrel with which Mr Lempriere was busying himself. It appeared to be full of brine—though I cannot vouch for this being the exact nature of the pickling solution. I glimpsed a dark glint, & at first I guessed he was potting eels, of which the harbour had that year an abundance. Then thought I, no, my eyes are playing tricks on me, that some effect of the southern light is making me see men as fish everywhere.

  And then so slowly & so awfully that I still felt a fool about it for several days after, it dawned on me that bobbing up & down in the barrels, rolling around like apples at a fair, curing like so many cabbages, they were not eels: they were the severed heads of several blackfellas. Multiplied by the half-dozen barrels, I guessed there must be somewhere between forty & seventy black heads pickling that fine midwinter’s morning in Mr Lempriere’s backblock.

  It also became apparent that Mr Lempriere believed these heads of dead blacks were yelling at him & mocking him. He tried to feign an oblivious air to their imagined derision, but would every so often crack & start yelling back. Then he would look weary with the demands scientifick respectability was placing upon him & would glance fondly, almost coquettishly across at the pig yard where Castlereagh was asleep in the muddiest corner. He allowed himself a small indulgent smile at the sight of such bucolic bliss, a slight curving rip in his glowing globe, took a sip of rum from a chipped earthenware pitcher at his side, & wiped his white-leaded brow with a filthy spotted silk handkerchief.

  Mr Lempriere explained that he was annoyed with the heads as they would not sink, but kept bobbing up to break the surface of the pickling solution & then would talk back at him. He worried that these faces might decompose if exposed to air on the lengthy ocean voyage to Britain. But in death, as in life, the black heads remained a force with which to be reckoned & their open eyes seemed to follow Mr Lempriere wherever he went, much to Mr Lempriere’s discomfort. He asked the cooper if it might be possible to weight the heads down with stones. The cooper stifled a sigh & went away to search for some string.

  Mr Lempriere had many qualities, not least what he referred to as his common sense. I admired how he in no way regarded a severed head talking as if it were still connected to its body & alive as abnormal or paranormal, but only as a practical nuisance. There was something so tremendously & stoutly English about this that I was for a moment overcome with yearning for the dear Old World that produced such giants as this moonfaced servant of Science who several times told the silent heads to shut up while he & the cooper tried to figure out a solution to the problem of weighing their heads down.

  In the middle of that circle of heads he believed to be jeering him & his work, he welcomed me as some sort of long lost friend. He leant up against a closed barrel & launched into a tale of exasperation that centred on one of whom I had only ever heard him speak with the reverence normally accorded a sage: Cosmo Wheeler.

  ‘AT FIRST—MERELY—COLLECTING—FLOWERS—FEW LEAVES—THINGS,’ began Mr Lempriere, mopping his brow yet again with his grubby handkerchief, rubbing the powder off & leaving a sorry purple skin with the sheen of varnish in the wake of his wipe. ‘SUCH WORK, SAID WHEELER—EARN ME MEMBERSHIP OF SOCIETY, THE ROYAL—BUT THEN—A LETTER, THAT’S ALL—OFFICIAL THANKS FROM THE EMINENT BODY—TOUCHING I’M SURE—SINGLED OUT—PRESERVATION & PACKING EXEMPLARY—ENSURED CONTENTS SUITABLE FOR SCIENTIFICK STUDY—THAT’S ALL!—IT! A LETTER!

  ‘THEN MR COSMO BECOMES SIR COSMO WHEELER—RECOGNITION OF HIS GREAT WORK ON ANTIPODEAN FLORA—NEXT HE’S WANTING—EN UN MOT—MOLLUSC SHELLS—SHELLING SHORT? NO! LONG TIME, VERY LONG—EVERY FREE DAY SCOURING THIS WRETCHED COAST—MOST INCLEMENT & MISERABLE CIRCUMSTANCES OBTAINING—YEARS OF WRETCHED WORK—SECOND OFFICIAL LETTER FROM THE ROYAL SOCIETY—EVEN MORE LAUDATORY THAN FIRST—BUT WHAT MENTION OF MY MEMBERSHIP OF THE SOCIETY?’

  ‘No,’ said I.

  ‘YES,’ said he, ‘NONE.’

  At this point he momentarily broke off to take issue with what he believed to be some lewd commentary emanating from the barrels, before returning to his story.

  ‘SO YOU SEE,’ continued Mr Lempriere, ‘I RAISED THIS—RESPECTFULLY—WITH SIR COSMO—NOW SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY IN CONSEQUENCE OF HIS PATHBREAKING RESEARCHES ON INVERTEBRATES OF THE SOUTH SEAS, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCES TO ANTIPODEAN MOLLUSCS.

  ‘SIR COSMO ASSURED ME IN A SEPARATE & PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE THAT MY FEARS OF BEING IGNORED &—I HAD NEVER DARED IN MY LETTERS EVEN WRITE IT, FAR LESS THINK IT!—USED—MISPLACED ENTIRELY—MATTER WELL & TRULY IN HAND—ASSURED ME—SAW ME—HE DID, THE SOCIETY DID—MOST EMINENT & DESERVING OF ITS COLONIAL COLLECTORS—MOST PRACTICAL SCIENTIST—REPUTATION SUCH THAT IT MERELY NEEDED SOME GREAT, FINAL WORK TO CAP ALL OTHER UNDOUBTED INDUSTRY OFF—THEN I COULD RETURN TO ENGLAND IN TRIUMPH.

  ‘SO—WHOLE FISH THING—MEANT TO BE MY GREAT WORK—MY TICKET TO SOCIETY, SARDINES & SQUIDS, TO THE SOCIETY—BUT NOW WRITES HE:

  ‘“No, fish have been done by Hooker, between you & me it’s a poor work that Hooker has done, but nevertheless fish are finished, done for, & don’t bother me with sending your pictures, it’s all too late.”’

  ‘UP-&-COMING FIELD NOW—WRITES HE—NEW SCIENCE—NEW SOCIETY—NEW AGE—PHRENOLOGY, PARTICULARLY IN REGARD TO VANQUISHED & INFERIOR RACES—SCIENCE POISED TO MAKE GREAT ADVANCES IN ITS UNDERSTANDING OF HUMANITY IN ITS SUPERIOR & INFERIOR FORMS FROM SUCH STUDY OF SKULLS BUT FOR WANT OF GOOD SPECIMENS.’

  I then gathered—as much as one could gather anything from such a cavalcade of clauses—that Sir Henry Hooker, who in spite of Sir Cosmo Wheeler’s dismissal of him as a mediocre mountebank, seemed nevertheless to be his chief scientifick rival, had chanced upon six barrels chock-a-block full of black heads belonging to his friend, Sir Joseph Banks, that many years before Banks had collected in Van Diemen’s Land. Hooker’s subsequent monograph upon Banks’ black heads—proclaiming their innocence of white civilisation, their nobility of black physiognomy—had excited much interest.

  ‘SO MUCH ROUSSEAU-AN NONSENSE,’ continued the Surgeon, ‘SENT LADIES INTO A FAINT—HA!—BUT SIR COSMO BELIEVES HOOKER’S WORK FOUNDED UPON FLAWS FUNDAMENTAL—FASHIONABLE FRENCHIE ROT—INTELLECTUAL ONANISM!

  ‘IF HE, SIR COSMO, HAD, MORE UP-TO-DATE BLACK HEADS—ONCE & FOR ALL WILL PROVE HOOKER’S WORK—NOT SCIENCE—JUST SO MUCH VAINGLORIOUS TOMFOOLERY.

  ‘SO NOW INSTEAD OF FLOWERS OR MUSSELS OR FISH—BLACK HEADS!—IF I AM TO BE ACCEPTED INTO THE ROYAL SOCIETY—BLACK HEADS!—BUT IT’S NOT SO EASY—WHERE?—& HOW?—CAN’T NET BLACK HEADS—CAN’T PRISE BLACK HEADS OFF SHORE ROCKS—NO!—CAN’T SNIP A BLACK HEAD AS YOU MIGHT A WILD FLOWER, CAN’T PRESS & DRY A BLACK HEAD—CAN’T SHOOT THEM LIKE SNIPE, THOUGH SOME DO—WHAT WAS ITO DO?

  ‘FORCED INTO MOST UNSAVOURY TRADE—LOWEST TYPES—CONVICT GRAVE DIGGERS—MORTUARY ATTENDANTS—SYDNEY SOLICITORS—RESULTS? ENTIRELY PREDICTABLE: LOST BEST PART OF SAVINGS—PROCURED SERIES OF SLIMY, STINKING HEADS—MANY THINGS BUT NEVER A BLACK MAN—CONVICTS’ HEAD VARNISHED WITH JAPAN BLACK—PAUPER SKULLS’ RADDLED MEAT BLOTCHED WITH TAR—ALL MANNER OF OTHER HEADS MOST PATHETICKALLY DISGUISED AS BLACK MAN’S HEAD—INEVITABLY MOST DISGUSTING CONDITION—SELL YOU ANYTHING—WHALER TRIED TO PASS OFF TWO SHRIVELLED MAORI HEADS CARRIED IN A DILLY BAG AROUND WAIST AS VAN DIEMONIAN NATIVES—NO BETTER THAN SHRIVELLED APPLES COVERED IN INDIAN INK STENCILS—THEN—’

  ‘Guster Robinson?’ suggested I. ‘VOYEZ-VOUS,’ said he. ‘Tragic,’ said I.

  ‘EN UN MOT—BUT WHERE OTHERS SAW TRAGEDY—I SAW—WHAT?—I SAW AN OPENING.’ He leant forward in the manner I had learnt was that which he used when wishing to impart knowledge he regarded as revelatory. ‘Science?’ guessed I.

  ‘BLACK HEADS,’ nodded he sagely.

  I ran my fingers over the still sappy wood of the barrels.

  ‘POSTHUMOUS REDEMPTION,’ said he, ‘—OTHERWISE TRAGIC UNCHRISTIAN LIVES.’

  ‘Salvation,’ ventured I.

  ‘HOPEFULLY,’ said Mr Lempriere, ‘& NOT ONLY FOR THEM.’

  Mr Lempriere
wiped his face again, told the cooper to go & bring out some tea & more rum from the cottage. We sat down. ‘IGNORE THEM,’ said Mr Lempriere quietly, as though he could once more hear muffled protests emanating from inside the barrel & would not acknowledge them. ‘NEVER ANSWER INGRATITUDE.’ The cooper returned & put the teapot & rum pitcher on top of a sealed barrel.

  The cooper went back to nailing more lids down, oblivious to whether the heads were floating or sunken, sullen or shouting. It was probably not the best time to say what I then did, but never theless I launched into a speech about how the fish were still a project of the highest scientifick significance & that perhaps if Sir Cosmo Wheeler were not interested, Mr Lempriere might consider publishing them himself with the printer Bent in Hobart Town.

  A London imprint with the attachment of Sir Cosmo Wheeler’s name—that meant glory, recognition, a path back into the world Mr Lempriere had so long stood outside of, the key to which Mr Lempriere had desired above all else: membership of the Royal Society. But a Hobart Town book …

  ‘EST-CE QUE JE SUIS SI MALADE?’ bellowed the Surgeon. ‘A HOBART TOWN BOOK—A CONTRADICTION, SIR!—A VERITABLE INSULT TO SCIENCE!—TO CULTURE!’

  Then he drank some more rum & tea, & went round beating each barrel in turn with the hammer, yelling at them to desist & to be grateful for the fact that they would finally be of some practical use to Civilisation.

  He came back & sat down & told me how the most temperate climes lie between the 40th & 50th degrees of latitude & how it is from this climate that correct ideas of the genuine colours of mankind & of various degrees of beauty ought to be derived.

  ‘FOR NEVER WAS THERE A CIVILISED NATION—ALL WHITE—WHAT INGENIOUS MANUFACTORIES—WHAT ARTS OR SCIENCES—HAVE ARISEN ELSEWHERE?—THE NOBLE GAIT & BEARING OF THE WHITE!—AND WHERE EXCEPT ON THE BOSOM OF THE EUROPEAN MAIDEN?—WHERE POSSIBLE TO FIND TWO SUCH?—SUCH!—PLUMP & SNOWY WHITE HEMISPHERES—TIPPED WITH VERMILION?’

  My poor mind filled with a parade of white hemispheres not plump, & hemispheres less than hemispherical, & of black hemispheres dipped in a darker dye with their lush plum-purple triggers, & not one pair of that happy procession that I had at some time or other been fortunate enough to be on more or less intimate terms with had I found without its attractions & compensations.

  My attempts at hiding the shock I felt at all this—at the unwelcome supremacy of snowy white hemispheres; of the black heads who Mr Lempriere was convinced would not cease babbling & who still had not woken up to the fact that their hemispheres were on the wrong side of the globe; at the sad lack of goodwill in this world & its pitiful consequences; at my own fate now any hope of a future cosy billet of painting fish seemed about to disappear—must have been obvious.

  ‘I WILL HAVE SCIENCE, GOULD—NOT A RUDDY CIRCUS.’

  Then Mr Lempriere swung around wildly, as if he had heard some jeering or mockery. His back turned to me, he roared at the barrels.

  ‘I’LL NOT DON GRIEVING BLACK FOR YOU—I AM A PATRIOT NATURALIST, &, LIKE ME, YOU WILL MAKE SACRIFICES FOR SCIENCE—FOR THE NATION.’

  In his mind the general outburst from the barrels must have grown louder, for he picked a heavy stick up from his firewood heap, & went about with it whacking the lids again & again, telling them how no-one could have done more for them than he. He yelled, how the past was the past, but his interest was the future & how overjoyed they ought be at the prospect of working together on such a mighty project of Science & finally be of some use to Civilisation. At this last word the pig Castlereagh awoke startled, & began trotting around its pen squealing. This contributed to a general cacophony of noise: Mr Lempriere beating the barrels with a stick, Mr Lempriere yelling abuse of the most vile kind as he ran round, his pig screeching.

  ‘I LOVE YOU—DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?’ he was now blubbering. ‘OUT OF LOVE—ONLY LOVE—DO I DO THIS FOR YOU.’

  Finally Mr Lempriere seemed to give up as though defeated, throwing his stick away with such force that it sailed out onto the Commandant’s as yet unbuilt Boulevard of Destiny. He sighed, flicked some tears out of his eyes & slump-shouldered went & stood over near the pigpen, striving to bring the squealing Castlereagh into the conversation.

  ‘THEY,’—& here, so that the pig might see, he pointed an accusing finger at the recalcitrant barrels—‘THEY FAIL TO APPRECIATE—SHAPE—SIZE—RELATIONSHIP OF PARTS OF CRANIUM—ALL SURE INDICATORS OF BOTH CHARACTER & INTELLECT—&—AM WORKING ON A PAPER ON THIS VERY MATTER—THE SOUL ITSELF—STUDY OF SKULLS WILL REVEAL THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN—PRECISE NATURE OF—EXACT REASONS FOR HIERARCHY IN RACES OF MAN.’

  He turned, shook his head, & walked back to me.

  ‘YOU SEE,’ Mr Lempriere continued, refilling his pitcher of rum & tea, ‘SCIENCE IS PRESENTED—

  HERE—WITH ITS GREATEST CHALLENGE—WHEELER IS DETERMINED TO SOLVE—OUR SABLE BRETHREN LIKE DOGS—FLEAS—ARE NOT DESCENDED FROM ADAM—GOD CREATED THEM—SEPARATE BUT INFERIOR SPECIES, AS HE CREATED MULLET OR SPARROWS AS SEPARATE BUT INFERIOR—AS STURDY ENGLISHMEN—WE APPREHEND THIS—STOUT COMMON SENSE—BUT WITHOUT SCIENTIFICK CLASSIFICATION & CATEGORISATION WE DO NOT KNOW IT AS SCIENCE—YET.

  ‘SIR COSMO HAS CRANIOLOGICAL TREASURES—UNRIVALLED FOR PROFUNDITY OF ANATOMICAL VIEWS—BUT—THEY ARE WHITE SKULLS.’

  Mr Lempriere leant forward, dropped his great sweating bald head low, swivelled it this way & then that, like it was a hog’s head on a spit, then when he seemed satisfied no-one else was about & listening, continued in a conspiratorial voice.

  ‘HERE’S THE RUB—FOR HIM TO COMPLETE GREAT WORK TO PROVE ALL THIS AS SCIENCE—WHEELER MUST HAVE—WHEELER NEEDS—BLACK SKULLS TO EVALUATE & STUDY.’

  Mr Lempriere rolled his head back on his shoulders, a boiled egg wobbling in its cup, & hissed—

  ‘HE NEEDS ME.’

  V

  SEVERAL DAYS AFTER I left Mr Lempriere & his barrels without the watercolour set, I received a message that I was to meet him first thing that morning to discuss my future role as his assigned servant. My mind filled with worry that this was the end of both the fish & of me. I resolved that I must do everything in my power to argue the worth of continuing with the project, & as I walked to his cottage through the cold, slapping my hands to warm them up, I tried to think of all the scientifick arguments I could invent, the only arguments that ever cut any mustard with Mr Lempriere.

  In the week since I had seen him, Mr Lempriere had been busy with his black heads, which he had given up trying to transport whole in casks & had instead decided to render down into skulls, which were being prepared by a mute convict assistant for cataloguing & transporting to England.

  Oddly, there was no-one at his cottage. Odder yet, there was no violent shuddering & squealing coming from the pigpen. I went for a walk round the back just in case the Surgeon was involved in some uncharacteristickally silent meditation with Castlereagh. I found the pig, seeming for once sated, asleep on its side in what appeared a deep & happy repose. But there was no sign of his master & confidant, Mr Lempriere.

  Only later did I notice the giveaway white shadowing around the pig’s snout, like an old man’s stubble. But at the time I was overwhelmed by an unusually large cloud of vapour—so dense that it obscured much of the pigpen from which it was billowing forth—& the treacly, sour aroma with which the mist was so strongly redolent. I closed my eyes with the childlike instinct that this would somehow erase reality. But the smell only grew till it was an oppressive presence, so heavy it felt as a weight upon my head, so wet I could feel it as a dewy acid on my face, so pungent that my nostrils felt as if they were on fire.

  And when finally I reopened my eyes & saw that the acrid mist had parted like a theatre curtain, there was no way of mistaking what now rose up in the muddy horror of that stage before me.

  VI

  IT WAS A turd.

  It was enormous.

  It might even be, reckoned I in awe, the largest pig turd on the planet that morning. Perhaps ever. It was most certainly an astou
nding sight, not easy to immediately reconcile with the idea of pig dung. How in that ruddy early winter morning light that steaming obelisk of crap glowed. It might just have been possible to mistake it for a sublime & infinitely valuable gold nugget were it not for the somewhat tarnished, yet unmistakable form of a once-mended, now mangled cheap pewter shoe buckle protruding from the pyramid’s base.

  I climbed up on the fence & peered more closely. In the churned-up earth around the pile of glinting pig shit, looking as if they had been discarded after some bacchanalian excess, I saw shreds of a shirt (bloodied), a tail of a black swallow-tailed coat (torn), a blue silk sleeve (shredded), & half a spotted silk handkerchief (slobbery).

  Then I noticed what looked uncomfortably like a human thigh bone. Other gory, muddied bones. Ribs. Femurs. And yet more & more—shin bones. Forearm bones. Vertebrae. Then I saw the great wen itself, a huge bloodied skull lying on its side like some fallen Pacific Island idol.

  Castlereagh farted, an odour at once sweetly acrid & horrendously overpowering, & at that moment I, who stood immediately downwind, knew that familiar stench to be no other than the atomised essence of Mr Lempriere.

  I noticed some smashed pottery at the far end of the pen, & recognised it as the remnants of the pitchers in which Twopenny Sal & I had been fermenting our Larrikin Soup. Castlereagh had somehow managed to roll them under the fence & into his pen with his front trotters, whereupon he had smashed them open & drunk their potent contents. I looked at the pig. The pig opened its eyes & looked at me.

  I swear to God he smirked.

  I staggered back in revulsion, hand over my mouth.

  Like a dull daydream, I saw how Mr Lempriere must have met his end, sitting on the fence, drinking, drunk, talking to Castlereagh, the choleric boar his final audience, about Science, Civilisation, Kabbalist tracts & snowy hemispheres that were little more than a corrupted, corrupting memory. I saw Castlereagh drunk on our rough rum, ever angrier, trotting up & down, up & down, wondering, in as far as drunk pigs may be said to be capable of active thought, when this maddening racket would halt. I saw Castlereagh finally breaking into a deafening squeal & charging the fence with all his might.