by James Morrow
“A jaw so handsome as yours should be exposed to the world,” said Chloe.
“It’s settled then. I shall live by the razor, taking care not to die by it.”
Now Mr. Chadwick officially assumed the four o’clock watch, and for an indeterminate interval Chloe and her companions leaned on the rail as the Rainha plowed through the onrushing current, chasing the westering sun. At length the vault of Heaven turned the bright vermilion of a Chatham Isle flycatcher, whilst the clouds became the luscious purple of ripe plums.
“We have breached the bourne of a marvelous realm,” said Chloe, taking the mirror from Mr. Dartworthy and holding it up to catch the celestial spectacle. “Here in enchanted Amazonia the sun sets”—she gestured towards the reflection—“even as it rises.”
“I am reminded of that splendid May morning when Voltaire, having awakened before dawn, climbed a hill near Ferney accompanied by a visitor,” said Mr. Dartworthy. “Reaching the summit, the great philosopher was overcome by the beauty of the sunrise. He removed his hat, knelt down, and cried, ‘I believe in you, powerful God—I believe!’ And then, scrambling to his feet, he told his visitor, ‘As for Monsieur the Son and Madame his mother, that is a different story.’”
“An amusing anecdote, n’est-ce pas, Mr. Chadwick?” said Chloe.
“Amusing,” the vicar replied phlegmatically. “Obviously you and Mr. Dartworthy are determined to receive me into the Church of Awful Doubt. But even if the entire British Empire ends up subscribing to your irreverent religion, I shouldn’t be surprised if God has the last laugh.”
“But first He must acquire a sense of humor, a faculty on display in neither the Old Testament nor the New,” noted Mr. Dartworthy.
The vicar responded not as Chloe had expected, by sneering at the village atheist, but rather with a self-deprecating sigh. “Even as we speak,” he said, “Voltaire stands before God’s throne, cajoling Him into cracking a smile.”
“Voltaire as Heaven’s jester—what a delicious idea,” said Mr. Dartworthy.
“As to whether Monsieur the Son and Madame his mother are also present in the palace,” said Mr. Chadwick in a doleful voice, “I cannot begin to say.”
7
Addressing a Vexing Question: Is Malaria Best Viewed as a Punishment for Improvidence or a Portal to Infinity?
The instant he saw the albatross snared in the rigging of the Antares, the Reverend Simon Hallowborn knew that he must be the one to free the bird, not Bosun McGowry, Midshipman Moffet, or Quartermaster Foyle, all of whom had volunteered for the task. Fearing for Simon’s life, Captain Garrity had tried to dissuade him from climbing the mizzenmast, even though everyone on board agreed that this albatross, like all albatrosses, was a favorable omen—a reputation tracing to the species’s utility as both a harbinger of dry land and an index of strong winds—and thus required immediate rescue. To allow an albatross to die was to invite a curse upon your ship.
A theologically sophisticated man, Simon wanted no truck with maritime superstition. The trapped bird, he knew, was neither a portent nor an augury but rather a Heaven-sent test. God had placed this albatross in harm’s way for the sake of Simon’s soul. Come spring, when he arrived in Galápagos and started eliminating its satanic fauna, scores of innocent reptiles and birds (recent emigrants whose ancestors had not been designed by the Devil) might accidentally perish. By saving the albatross, Simon would be performing an act of anticipatory contrition.
“I forbid it,” said Captain Garrity.
“I am pleased to render unto Garrity what is Garrity’s,” Simon replied, “insofar as I may also render unto God what is God’s.”
At this juncture Mr. Moffet and Mr. McGowry appeared on the quarter-deck, the former ostensibly training the latter in how to use a sextant but both men clearly hoping to witness a quarrel between their captain and an Anglican priest.
“You mean to defy me,” said Captain Garrity in a prosecutorial tone.
“Only that I might obey my Creator,” Simon replied, pulling on leather gloves.
“If you fall and crack your skull, you won’t be able to cleanse the Encantadas.”
“Adam fell, but I shan’t.”
Fixing his lips in an insouciant smile, Simon passed his hat to Mr. Moffet, climbed onto the starboard gunwale, and set his boot against the lowest ratline.
“Good luck, Reverend!” called Mr. Moffet.
“There goes a brave man!” shouted Mr. McGowry.
And so it happened that as the Antares pursued her southerly course, circumnavigating the bleak and lunar Falkland Islands, Simon ascended, slowly but deliberately, like a pilgrim mounting Jacob’s ladder. The winds of the fiftieth parallel chewed his ears and gnawed his cheeks, yet he pressed ever upward. The glazed shrouds frustrated his grasp, and his feet slipped on the frozen ratlines, but still he cleaved to his purpose.
There was much to be said for martyrdom, and none had said it better than the Church Fathers when interpreting Jacob’s dream. For the true Christian ascetic, the journey to eternity entailed two sorts of ladders: the scaffolding of penitential acts he erected during his lifetime, and the numinous spiral staircase his soul pursued after death (each turn bringing him nearer to God). The more brutally the weather treated Simon, the happier he became, realizing that he’d contrived for himself a genuine ordeal.
Gaining the mizzentop, he scrambled onto the slick and frigid platform, then turned from the billowing sail and scanned the horizon. By Captain Garrity’s calculation, the Antares was winning the race, running at least six days ahead of the Equinox, but Simon was still gratified to note that the South Atlantic disclosed no sign of another ship. He gritted his teeth, steeled his nerves, and scaled the uppermost shroud. Only after finding himself staring into the massive bird’s bright red eye did he recall that his familiarity with albatrosses extended to a dramatization of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner he’d seen at the Adelphi Theatre. By a strange coincidence, the principal female part, a wraith called Life-in-Death, had been essayed by none other than Miss Chloe Bathurst—though the title role might have better suited her, he now decided, for just as the Ancient Mariner had shot a profane arrow into a holy bird, so did this reckless actress mean to prick the heart of Christendom with her poisonous tree.
Caught in a sudden updraft, the albatross had become wedged between the topsail and its spar. Gripping a shroud-line with one hand, Simon reached towards the bird and seized its tail. He shoved. The albatross, startled, lurched free of the trap and with a shrill cry pressed its webbed feet against Simon’s face, the claws digging into his brow. He screamed. Having secured a serviceable perch, the bird spread its enormous wings and took off, soaring over the main topgallant and disappearing from view. As rivulets of blood rushed from Simon’s punctured flesh, the spectators on the quarter-deck cheered.
Step by treacherous step, rung by icy rung, Simon descended, all the while drawing comfort from the throbbing holes in his forehead. How gracious of God to stamp him with the same wounds that the crown of thorns had inflicted on Christ.
“‘Ah, well a-day, what evil looks had I from old and young,’” said Simon, reciting Mr. Coleridge as he stepped onto the quarter-deck. “‘Instead of the cross, the albatross about my neck was hung.’”
“You saved our ship,” said Captain Garrity.
“I did my duty,” said Simon, though his thoughts were still on the albatross—not the one he’d just rescued, but the bird the Ancient Mariner had worn, its splayed wings locked by rigor mortis in a grotesque parody of a crucifix. What a foul thing that corpse must have become, plucked like a Christmas goose, infested with worms, exuding noisome stenches: a foretaste of Hell, in fact, and thus essential to the mariner’s epiphany—that glorious moment when, having blessed the beautiful, flashing, multicolored water-snakes sinuating about the ship, he could at long last pray.
* * *
As the harsh Brazilian sun bloodied the skies over Manáos, Chloe strolled through the open-air market, a
bazaar so bright and gaudy it seemed like a jewel embedded in the navel of the world. Making her way across the sodden, unpaved plaza, her Panama hat shielding her from the blazing rays, she fancied she was leading a parade of her personae: Caribbean pirate, Egyptian queen, Romanian vampire, French castaway, Southern belle, Pompeian flower seller, Mr. Coleridge’s spectral Life-in-Death. At the head of the cavalcade marched her present preferred self, the Covent Garden Antichrist. Each time Chloe paused to caress a potter’s vase or price a milliner’s wares, England’s most notorious freethinker did the same. Whenever she inhaled the market’s mingled fragrances—the sharp odor of fresh fish, the dulcet savor of perfume, the ambrosial bouquet of bananas—the probable winner of the Shelley Prize likewise inhaled.
Whether Chloe’s antichrist persona bespoke some deep and unnamable malaise, as she occasionally feared, or whether it was merely an affectation, as she kept telling Mr. Chadwick, its ascendancy obviously traced to her role in the vicar’s rotation from devout Christian to bewildered Deist. Although his crisis of faith was not due entirely to their conversations aboard the Rainha da Selva (Mr. Flaherty’s death had also played a part), she’d surely helped to enroll him in the Church of Awful Doubt, an accomplishment of which her antichrist side felt proud, though the pirate, the queen, the vampire, the castaway, the belle, the seller, and the wraith were not wholly at peace with the situation.
A sudden breeze cooled the plaza, the sky above the market darkened, and the chickens clucked nervously in their rattan cages, portents that caused Chloe no alarm. She and the rest of the Rainha’s company had reached Manáos at the height of the wet season, and every afternoon without fail a furious downpour had drenched the city. As the vendors moved to protect their wares with scraps of sailcloth, She tightened her grip on her burlap sack—the day’s purchases included a paisley shawl, a white muslin shift, and a bottle of Madeira—and scurried along the scattered, mud-borne mahogany planks known euphemistically as the Bulevar das Palmeiras. An instant later the clouds cracked open. With practiced steps she outmaneuvered the deluge, scurrying from tree to tree and awning to awning, reaching the Hotel da Borboleta Azul before the rain could drench the floral-patterned gown she’d acquired shortly after her brother’s first profitable night of poker.
Thanks to Algernon’s skill in enticing rubber barons to the gaming tables of the Dragão Verde and relieving them of their ready cash, the treasury of the Albion Transmutationist Club was filled to bursting, each member enjoying in consequence not only a new wardrobe but also private accommodations at the hotel, where every fourth-floor suite came with a feather mattress, a cherrywood dresser, and a large copper washtub. Chloe would not soon forget her first bath in Manáos, the three Arauaki women scrubbing her with a sponge dipped in scented soap, sluicing away the silt, grime, sand, sweat, engine oil, and mosquito paste of her three-week, thousand-mile journey. She had paid the Indians ten réis each, twice what they would have received for ministering to a rubber baron’s mistress or an aviador middleman’s wife.
Amongst the Rainha’s newly arrived passengers, the person most grateful for the hotel’s amenities was not Chloe but her acolyte. Although Solange had thus far managed to cling to the rank of courtesan, she feared that sooner or later she would become (as she confided to Chloe) “a common prostitute, that miserable caste of the supremely touchable.” Throughout the final day of their journey—ten miles up the Rio Amazonas to the mouth of the dark Rio Negro and thence another thirty-five miles northwest to Manáos—visions of brothels had haunted Solange, but then came that magical moment when, not long after the company had disembarked, Algernon offered her a share of his poker earnings, and it was obvious that, for the present at least, she would not be obliged to enter her mother’s profession.
“Oh, how I wish she could see me now,” said Solange. “It was never given to Mama to awaken in a rented room without some libertine snoring beside her.”
The women had settled into wicker chairs on Solange’s private terrace, their recently bathed bodies swathed in white linen robes, pursuing a conversation that soon came to embrace amorous matters.
“I believe Mr. Pritchard has set his cap for you,” said Chloe. “Throughout the voyage he sent many a lascivious wink in your direction.”
“I am likewise favorably disposed towards Mr. Pritchard, and I shall come to love his monkey as well”—Solange flashed a prurient grin—“and his other monkey, too.”
“Meanwhile, the head I should most like to turn houses the brain of Ralph Dartworthy,” said Chloe.
“You’ve already turned it, darling. I would wager my ruby pendant that the brain in question spends the better part of every day thinking about Chloe Bathurst.”
Of late, however, neither woman’s imagined paramour had been around to intercept coquettish glances or sly smiles, for both sailors were spending their waking hours with Captain Runciter as he prowled the docks seeking some means of continuing the westward journey (Capitão Gonçalves having already delivered the bordello supplies, acquired a ribeirinho crew, filled the Rainha’s hold with rubber, and started back to Belém-do-Pará). Runciter’s plan was to offer his company’s services to any engine-boat skipper who needed to get a cargo upriver to Iquitos, the great freshwater port that the Peruvian government had established on the last navigable stretch of the Amazon. The problem, as Mr. Dartworthy had explained to Chloe, was that the harbor authorities invariably greeted any Brazilian merchant vessel with suspicion, hostility, and occasionally gunfire, for the owner’s only purpose could be to harvest latex rightfully belonging to a Peruvian corporation. In consequence, the vast majority of boats leaving Manáos pursued a course that, from the perspective of a Shelley Prize contestant, went in the wrong direction.
Given the prevailing pessimism, Chloe was surprised when, the instant she entered the hotel following her expedition to the market, Mr. Dartworthy rushed towards her wearing a lavish smile and declaring that their troubles were over. Captain Runciter had finally secured posts for everyone aboard an engine-boat called the Pulga Feliz, the Happy Flea. The skipper was a Venezuelan soldier of fortune, one Alfonso Torresblanco, who’d commanded a regiment of Manáos rebels in the disastrous Cabanagem uprising. Capitán Torresblanco wished to hire Runciter’s company not only for their nautical skills but also as guardians of an unspecified shipment he intended to take to the headwaters of the Amazon.
“Unspecified shipment?” said Chloe. “That sounds like smuggling.”
“Yes, it does,” said Mr. Dartworthy evenly.
“Give me a moment to consider the morality of the situation.”
“You would murder your Creator, my fair philosopher, yet you hesitate to deal in contraband?”
“The moment has elapsed,” said Chloe in a sweetly scolding tone. “Very well, Mr. Dartworthy, we shall assist your new acquaintance in breaking the law.”
“The Pulga Feliz steams out of Manáos five weeks hence.”
“Five weeks? Five weeks?!”
“Naturally you are loath to cede such an interval to the Diluvian League, and so am I—though I strongly suspect the ark hunters are enduring delays of their own.”
“How might we persuade your Capitán Torresblanco to leave sooner?”
“Alas, he needs a month to collect his cargo, forge our Spanish passports, and fabricate letters of transit.”
“Alas indeed.”
“Don’t tell your friend the vicar we’re about to become smugglers.”
Chloe responded in her most sensual Carmine the vampire whisper. “It’s true that I’ve formed an amicable association with Mr. Chadwick, but my good opinion of him is not nearly so prodigious as my admiration for you.”
And so it begins, she thought, Aphrodite’s ebullient tennis match, a whacking good serve if she did say so, and now the ball was speeding towards Mr. Dartworthy’s court. He heaved a sigh and said, “Miss Bathurst, it has long been understood within our company that your charms have ensnared this sailor.”
&nbs
p; Instinctively she sidled towards a quiet corner of the lobby, a miniature arboretum crowded with potted ferns, Mr. Dartworthy following. “My dear gallant,” she said, “your words have brought me such joy that, despite the premise of our quest, I must imagine that a benign Providence governs the world.”
“Henceforth I shall consider myself your champion, pledged to bearing you safely to the Encantadas, even if I must carry you over the Andes in my arms.”
The thought of assuming a recumbent posture vis-à-vis Mr. Dartworthy had an immediate and incandescent effect on Chloe. She recalled a speech from Siren of the Nile, Cleopatra telling Antony that he’d become “a proximate moon, tugging at my blood, raising tides of desire in my veins.”
“Since we now both have time on our hands,” Mr. Dartworthy continued, “may I suggest that we visit a cantina and keep our appointment with the great Omar Khayyám?”
During the voyage to Manáos, Chloe had learned much about Mr. Dartworthy’s life—his decision to abandon the family’s sedate trade for the sea (his father and grandfather were both drapers), his South Pacific adventures with the American author Mr. Melville (whose recently published novels Typee and Omoo included characters inspired by Ralph Dartworthy), the ten months he and Runciter had spent in gaol for “an escapade that, viewed with a magistrate’s squint, might be termed piracy”—but little of the inner man, though she hypothesized he had not a caddish bone or loutish ligament in his body: a theory that, she suspected, was about to be put to the test.
“No doubt this proposition will sound rather forward,” she said, “but I am inclined to savor Mr. Khayyám’s verses in the privacy of my hotel suite.”
“Miss Bathurst, you shock me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted. Shock me again.”
“Voilà!” said Chloe, pulling the Madeira from her sack. I am the Covent Garden Antichrist, she mused, the She-Devil from Dis, beyond good and evil and everything in between. “We no longer have need of a cantina. Come to my room in a half-hour’s time.”