Landfalls

by Naomi J. Williams

  He had been trying to communicate something of this earlier at the consulate, but it was not an audience given to marveling at anything unless it affected the price of tea or the sale of opium. Perhaps it was just as well he had been interrupted. He retrieved his document case—it had landed on d’Aigremont’s side of the partition, narrowly missing a sextant on his desk—and after wiping it clean, pulled out the crude drawings he had made of the creatures. He frowned at his poor draftsmanship, retrospectively relieved that he had not had to show them. Indeed, one of the creatures he had drawn looked for all the world like a striped barber’s pole. He had meant to suggest the pumping of the insect’s blood, which he had clearly observed while it was alive, but the drawing was not a success. He indulged another flash of annoyance at Prévost for his refusal to do his job. Then reaching again into the case, he pulled out the notes he had made. If he wrote them up into a monograph, he could send it, along with the drawings, to the Journal de physique in Paris. What better time than now, when he had nowhere to go and nothing else to do, and ships on their way back to Europe lay at anchor all around them?

  The work occupied him until his eyelids grew heavy, then again in the morning after his breakfast tray had come and gone. When the marine knocked on the door the following afternoon to say he was free to leave the cabin, and, indeed, to return to Macao, the manuscript was complete. Only then did he realize that not one of his cabinmates had returned for the night. If he could have enjoyed such privacy even occasionally while at sea, he thought, he might still be on speaking terms with d’Aigremont and Dufresne and—well, probably not with Prévost.

  First to greet him on deck was a slicing north wind that nearly took his hat, then, more warmly, Father Receveur. “My dear Lamartinière,” the priest said, apparently having forgiven or forgotten the peevishness with which Lamartinière had left him the day before. “You look rather tired but also somewhat pleased.”

  Lamartinière patted his document case. “I’ve completed a monograph on the parasites I found in Alaska. I’d like to read it to you all tonight.”

  The priest smiled. “I’m not going back to Macao.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Not today,” he said, still smiling, as if he were conveying good news. “I’ve been neglecting my shipboard duties. I was quite busy with confessions during our little ‘incarceration.’”

  Lieutenant de Monty, looking less condescending and somehow also less tall than he had the day before, called from the rail: “I’m holding a sampan for you, Monsieur de Lamartinière. The boatwoman is impatient to be off.”

  Father Receveur put his hands together and bowed to Lamartinière, a rare clerical gesture from him, then added, less clerically, “Don’t let Lamanon bully you!” Lamartinière nodded and climbed over the rail, noting as he did that he still had not seen Captain de Langle. Apparently the entire episode would conclude without a word or even an appearance from the captain. The realization left him feeling rather bereft. Especially as he was now returning to Macao alone.

  He was not alone, however. In addition to the boatwoman and her child, who was strapped to its mother’s back, the sampan contained two marines and Dufresne, the unpopular cabinmate who would soon be leaving the expedition. “Dufresne!” Lamartinière cried out, unable to hide his surprise. “Where have you been?” He looked at the two marines, whom he now recognized as his escorts from the day before, then back at Dufresne. “My God, have they arrested you as well?”

  Dufresne cocked his head to one side, a lock of dark hair partially covering his pale face, his expression one of both amusement and annoyance. “Good afternoon, Monsieur de Lamartinière,” he said. “I am not under arrest.”

  “No, of course not—forgive me,” Lamartinière stammered. “But you weren’t—you never came in last night.”

  “I spent the night ashore as a guest of Monsieur von Stockenström, the head of the Swedish company,” Dufresne explained. “I only returned to the frigates this morning to take more of our furs ashore.” He pointed to two large bundles next to him, then to the two marines. “These gentlemen are here to make sure they’re delivered safely.”

  “I see,” Lamartinière said without understanding. “Furs?”

  “The otter pelts we got in Alaska,” Dufresne said. “We mean to sell them here.”

  “Otter pelts?”

  Dufresne burst out laughing. “Yes, nearly a thousand. One of the voyage’s tasks was to determine the feasibility of entering the fur trade between North America and China.”

  “A thousand?” Lamartinière shook his head. How had such an undertaking entirely escaped his notice? Did the expedition have other aims of which he was quite ignorant? “I was rather preoccupied with a sunfish head at the time,” he muttered.

  “Yes,” Dufresne said. “It stank up the whole cabin.”

  “No doubt it did,” Lamartinière said, shrugging apologetically. “And the fur business—is it feasible?”

  “Not at all,” Dufresne replied. “The price has fallen precipitously the last few years. One Portuguese merchant had the temerity to offer to take them off my hands if I paid him!” He waved his hand dismissively toward the advancing shoreline. “Bloodsuckers, the lot of them,” he said, then sighed and added in a lower voice, “And I hardly need mention the unsuitability of the port we explored in Alaska.” The two men’s eyes locked in shared memory. Dufresne looked away first, gazing eastward toward the hazy Pacific horizon. “That was only six months ago.”

  “Seems longer, doesn’t it?”

  “Much longer.”

  “And the Swedish gentleman?” Lamartinière asked after a moment.

  Dufresne looked back with a surprised smile, as if he could not account for Lamartinière’s continued friendliness. “Yes, Monsieur von Stockenström. He’s agreed to store our furs until I can dispose of them. He’s been most helpful. Unlike our own officials. They’ve been worse than useless.” His dark eyes danced with judgment. “They know nothing—or pretend to know nothing. Have you met this fellow Vieillard, our consul?” He wheezed in imitation of the man’s stertorous breathing.

  “I believe he was the gentleman who slept through my abbreviated lecture yesterday,” Lamartinière said.

  “The man is like a giant barnacle on the ship of state.”

  Lamartinière laughed. Dufresne had never been so affable before. Perhaps the prospect of going home had cured him of the surliness that had marked him earlier in the voyage. Or perhaps Lamartinière and the others had never given him a chance. Rumor had it he was actually on board at the behest of the Ministry of Finance and not a naturalist at all. Certainly he had little enough acumen for the sciences. He seemed more comfortable now, skewering incompetent officials and discussing the disposition of commodities in a glutted market, than he had ever been on their all-too-infrequent botanizing expeditions. Perhaps the rumors had been right.

  The air warmed noticeably as they approached the Praya Grande with its watchful line of European buildings along the waterfront. “And how will you occupy yourself now that you’re back in this strange little settlement, Monsieur de Lamartinière?” Dufresne asked.

  “Well—” Lamartinière began. “I expect Monsieur de Lamanon will have something planned for us.” He frowned, hearing how dependent and ineffectual he sounded, still deferring to Lamanon after what had happened.

  “Not tonight, he won’t,” Dufresne said, smiling. The two marines tittered.

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “I was on the Boussole this morning to collect these two gentlemen and the first of these bundles, and Monsieur de Lamanon was—how to put this?—expostulating with Monsieur de Lapérouse.”

  “A shouting match it was,” one of the marines offered.

  “A shouting match?” Lamartinière said.

  “There was some disagreement over when Monsieur de Lamanon would be permitted to return to shore,” Dufresne said.

  “Indeed?”

  “The commander sai
d Monsieur de Lamanon couldn’t leave the Boussole until three o’clock,” Dufresne explained. “And when Monsieur de Lamanon—uh, resisted this notion, the commander said in that case he could stay aboard till tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh, no,” Lamartinière said, trying to sound sorrier than he felt.

  “Then it got worse,” the other marine said.

  “Worse?”

  Dufresne looked over at the marines with mild disapproval. “Monsieur de Lapérouse tried to mollify Lamanon by inviting him to lunch with the consul”—he inhaled noisily again to indicate Vieillard—“who was coming from Macao with Captain de Langle. But when the party arrived, I’m afraid the consul made the mistake of addressing Lamanon as—well, as you.”

  “As me?” Lamartinière felt his face flush. For once it was not an altogether unpleasant sensation.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “‘Good afternoon, Monsieur de Lamartinière, it’s a pleasure to see you again, sir,’” the first marine said, imitating the consul’s gravelly voice.

  “Didn’t take it too well, our chevalier,” the other one added.

  “Chevalier?”

  “That’s what he likes to be called,” the marine replied.

  Yes, he does, Lamartinière thought, recalling Lamanon’s oversize, ornate signature on each of the offending letters: Chev er de Lamanon.

  “And off he stalked,” the same marine said, finishing the story.

  “I’m sorry, Lamartinière,” Dufresne said, “but you may be quite alone till tomorrow.”

  “What about Father Mongez?”

  “He’s staying aboard in … unity, I suppose, with his friend,” Dufresne said.

  “That priest don’t do anything without the chevalier’s say-so,” the first marine said.

  “Come now, that’s enough,” Dufresne said, but he looked back at Lamartinière with an expression that acknowledged the soundness of the marine’s judgment.

  Lamartinière hardly knew what to think. He had not expected to end up alone in Macao, but the image of Lamanon storming about impotently on board, unable to leave when he saw fit, then subjected to the humiliation of being mistaken for someone he considered a lesser man and savant—oh, he could not help it. He threw back his head and laughed, and, freed by his reaction, the other men joined in.

  As soon as the sampan pulled up to the quay, three Chinese porters, drawn by the sight of the bundles next to Dufresne, ran over to vie for their delivery, shouting prices in Portuguese. Dufresne pointed to one man and waved the others off, then joined the chosen porter and the two marines in wrestling the cargo off the boat. Lamartinière stepped ashore behind them, watching the hubbub, trying to catch Dufresne’s eye to say goodbye, feeling both pleased and regretful for the late amity that had sprung up between them as they crossed the harbor.

  He began to edge away toward the street that would take him to the Rua de São Lourenço, when Dufresne called out: “Lamartinière!”

  He turned.

  “Will you join me for dinner tonight?”

  “Certainly.”

  They arranged for Dufresne to call on him at seven o’clock, and Lamartinière headed down the street. Till he turned the first corner into a narrow, canyon-like street hemmed in on either side by tall buildings, he could hear Dufresne and the marines and the porter shouting to one another over the furs. What was it about human beings, he wondered, that they thought cultural barriers might be crossed simply by yelling? This was not a trait limited to civilized men. He had seen it everywhere—Spanish colonists, missionaries, soldiers, mestizo servants, Indian guides, Easter Islanders, Alaskan natives, Chinese boatwomen—all shouting to be understood, so angry when communication failed.

  These musings brought him to the Rua de São Lourenço and the narrow three-story house he had departed the previous morning, never suspecting he would be away so long. A window above was open, a lace curtain peeking out with the breeze, but he half expected no answer to his knock. With their temporary occupants suddenly gone, the servants were likely to have absconded for the day. The wizened watchman opened the door immediately, however, as if he had been standing on the other side just waiting for someone to return.

  “Monsieur Lama!” the man cried.

  Lamartinière frowned. Lama? “Oh, close enough,” he said, following the servant inside. He tried to explain that a friend would be calling at seven, that they were going out for dinner, and that none of the others would be returning before tomorrow. The watchman nodded energetically, but Lamartinière suspected the man had not understood a word.

  Upstairs, he was pleased to find his room aired out and fresh water in the ewer next to the basin, and even more pleased to find his belongings exactly as he had left them—his clothes in the massive mahogany wardrobe, his books dusted but otherwise untouched, his pocket microscope undisturbed in its box on the bedside table. Eager to change into fresh clothes, he removed his hat and wig, then his coat and waistcoat, and was undoing his cravat when he heard a hissed conversation outside his room and, opening the door, found Sophie holding a tea tray and the watchman pushing her forward.

  Sophie! He had all but forgotten her. She stood before him now in all her languid beauty, swaying slightly, eyes downcast, hair carelessly piled up on her head and half spilling down her neck. She seemed to be wearing only a white silk petticoat, the gauzy fichu thrown over her shoulders quite insufficient to complete the dress. Mesmerized by this vision of alluring dishabille and keenly aware of his own state of partial undress, Lamartinière realized that the old watchman, understanding perfectly that Lamartinière would be alone the rest of the day, was offering the amenities of the house accordingly.

  The old man barked something in Chinese and poked Sophie in the back. She took a step into the room, but was so unsteady that Lamartinière rushed forward to relieve her of the tea tray. Setting the tray down on a small walnut table, he led Sophie to the leather-upholstered chair next to it. She fell into it like a dead weight.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Lamartinière demanded.

  “Sophie little sleepy,” the watchman said.

  “She’s not ‘sleepy,’” Lamartinière said. He leaned over the chair and tipped her head back. “Sophie, open your eyes.” She complied, smiling absently at the sight of his face over hers. Her eyes were so dark it was hard to make out the pupils, but then he saw them, a black pencil dot in the center of each iris. He took a handful of her hair and sniffed it. “She’s been smoking opium,” he said, recognizing its sweet pungency.

  “No, no. Only sleepy,” the watchman repeated, then bowed his way out of the room, winking once before shutting the door.

  Lamartinière regarded the woman slouched in the chair before him and wavered between anger, repulsion, and lust. What had the watchman been thinking, bringing her to him in this state? It was a terrible imposition. Yet her presence also felt like a gift, some recompense for the vexations he had suffered. He thought too of Lamanon, who might or might not have been with her the day before, and he could scarcely believe the happenstance that now left him alone with her.

  His fingers were still in her hair, and he could see the slow rise and fall of her breasts beneath the fabric of her shift—the slow breathing another sign of intoxication, but a bewitching one. He sat on the floor next to her and lay his head in her lap, his heart pounding—in sharp contrast to her own slowed pulse, he thought, taking her wrist to check, unable to stop acting the part of medically trained man despite the roar of desire coursing through his body.

  He had not touched a woman in two years. Some of the men had consorted with women in Chile or in Alaska, but he had not, constrained by—by what, exactly? His own reputation for fussy rectitude, he suspected. He did not have the resourcefulness to seek out such enticements himself, and had never been offered any because his shipmates assumed he would disapprove. They were right: he did disapprove. He disapproved mightily even as he allowed one hand to slide down the length of Sophie’s leg, caressing it t
hrough the silk, then slipping under the skirt and moving back up, this time along the stockinged leg itself, past the garter then along her bare thigh, its warmth and softness overwhelming compunction.

  When he tried to put his hand between her legs, she stirred and opened her eyes, looking down at him without recognition, alarm, or pleasure. He gazed into her dark eyes with their opium-pinched pupils and thought of the purposeless eyes of his Pennatula in their vials aboard the Astrolabe. Perhaps they needed their eyes only long enough to identify their host. He slipped his other hand under the skirt and gently pried her legs apart. She shut her eyes again and offered no resistance. Hosts rarely knew when they were being encroached upon, of course. It was a linchpin of the parasitic relationship. His breath caught in his throat when his fingertips reached the warm, furred center of her. He raised himself to his knees, the better to move himself over her, and pillowed his face against her breasts, still thinking—indeed, unable to stop thinking—of the Pennatula and his hypothesis that they burrowed into their hosts early on and grew once inside. But now he found his fingers pressing into dry, unyielding flesh. Another symptom of opium use: lack of sexual response. But could one really call it that if the nonresponsive party seemed unaware of the ministrations being applied? He felt himself deflating, body and mind, and tried to rally himself to the task. Reaching behind Sophie, he pulled her forward in the chair, then raised her skirts, the better to see and smell and taste her. A little moisture applied to the right place and he would be able to see it through. But now his head filled with the memory of the difficulty he had had removing the parasites from the sunfish, how he had accidentally beheaded one of them, extracting its back end while leaving the tip buried in the fish, and he drew back with a groan of repugnance and defeat.