Landfalls

by Naomi J. Williams

  “No, I’m ‘associating’ movement with movement,” Golikoff protested, mimicking Lesseps’s accent.

  When dawn came, they saw with horror that the sea ahead of them had broken up into giant undulating ice sheets, their edges glinting in the sunlight. The beauty of the sight would have astonished them if it hadn’t signaled mortal danger. The party quickly took refuge on a small stony beach hemmed in by steep promontories while Golikoff and one of the guides scouted a path ahead. They came back and reported that the only way forward was a narrow ledge along the cliff wall, a ledge that was broken in places and suspended over the melting bay, but led to a larger beach and, beyond, a path into the woods.

  “You and your box first,” Golikoff said to Lesseps.

  When they got to the ledge, Lesseps recoiled. “This isn’t a ledge, Golikoff,” he said. “It’s a crust of ice adhering to the cliff face. It could shear off any moment.”

  Golikoff took the box from Lesseps and stepped out onto the ice. “We have no choice. Follow me.”

  Lesseps minced his way forward, terrified of slipping, praying the ledge would hold their combined weight. At times they were obliged to turn sideways, facing the cliff and proceeding crabwise with no handholds till the “ledge” widened. There were gaps in the ice, and Lesseps watched with mounting anxiety as Golikoff stepped over them. Then they came to a gap that had to be leaped across. Stashing the box in a cleft in the rock wall, Golikoff jumped over, then motioned for Lesseps to toss the box across before jumping over himself.

  Lesseps studied the turbulent, ice-filled water below them. “If it falls in, I’m following it,” he said.

  “Shut up and throw the box,” Golikoff called.

  He threw the box, crying out in anticipatory anguish, but Golikoff caught it. Steeling himself against the shaking in his legs, Lesseps followed. When they finally reached the end of the ledge and the wide, rock-strewn beach that led into a wood, Lesseps fell to his knees, too tired and too desolated by the prospect of what could have happened to cry or give thanks or even feel relief.

  Golikoff immediately went back for the others. It took seven hours to unpack the sleds, carry all the cargo to safety, unharness the dogs, drag the sleds across (one skate hanging off the edge), then cajole the reluctant animals through. By the end of the ordeal, the ledge had grown narrower and many of the gaps wider. One dog fell into the icy bay after misjudging a jump. They could do nothing to save it.

  They hadn’t slept since the previous day, and the entire party collapsed into exhausted slumber on the beach. But every time he eased toward sleep, Lesseps would start awake remembering the dog that drowned, who sometimes looked like his friends who died in Alaska, or imagining that he himself was falling from the ledge, or—most horribly—that he was watching his dispatch box drop away into the sea. Then Golikoff was at his side, offering a flask of brandy.

  “I don’t like brandy,” Lesseps protested.

  “But when you don’t sleep, I don’t sleep.”

  “So why don’t you drink it?”

  Golikoff grunted in annoyance. “Very well,” he said.

  Later, kept awake by the soldier’s low snoring, Lesseps crept out from under his bedding and found the flask by Golikoff’s head. He tipped it to his mouth, hoping for a few drops, but there was nothing left. He felt like Romeo left at his lover’s bier without a drop of poison for relief. Or was that Juliet?

  * * *

  They reached the port of Okhotsk the first week of May. Built illogically on a long, flat spit of land at the mouth of a treacherous river and its fickle harbor, the town had an air of decline about it, as if it had been born of an old and expired necessity. Nevertheless, it was the first town of any size since Petropavlovsk, and with a return to something that resembled society, the French diplomat’s son and his soldier escort went their separate ways, Golikoff lodging with the local garrison while Lesseps took his letter of introduction to the house of the governor-general. This was the same governor whose homes in Petropavlovsk and Bolsheretsk had already hosted Lesseps, but this was the man’s real residence, a large, European-style dwelling that was almost grand. The governor was still in Kamchatka, but his very pretty, very upright French-speaking wife and three-year-old daughter, Tasha, were delighted to take him in.

  That first night Lesseps nearly wept with the pleasure of sleeping quite alone in a real bed. The next day, free to converse in his native language, he talked more than he had in months, regaling the governor’s wife and daughter with stories from his travels. But the morning after he woke late and remembered with dismay how the commander had said, If some mischance should overtake us. Oh, what if they had, indeed, come to grief? He still had so far to go before delivering the dispatches. He announced his intention to leave within the week.

  “But you just arrived,” the governor’s wife said.

  “It’s raining,” Tasha said.

  Indeed, it had not stopped raining since his arrival. The piles of snow outside grew dirtier and smaller each day. Tasha called him to the window, where they watched a coachman struggle to free his carriage from the mud.

  “The roads will be impassable,” Golikoff said when Lesseps found him at the garrison.

  “We’ve come all this way on ‘impassable’ roads,” Lesseps said. “I’m leaving on the tenth, with or without you.”

  At sunset on the appointed day, Golikoff showed up at the governor’s house with their old sleds, a complement of dogs, and a Yakut guide. Lesseps bade farewell to Tasha, who was crying, and the governor’s wife, who was trying not to.

  “Don’t be sad, madame,” Golikoff called as he helped Lesseps into his sled. “We’ll be back.”

  “Why are you telling them that?” Lesseps said, shrugging off his help. “None of your nay-saying has ever come to pass.”

  But this time it did. They were back four days later, the dogs caked with mud, the sleds damaged, the guide angry, Golikoff bedraggled and vindicated, and Lesseps bedraggled and depressed. Tasha jumped up and down with glee. The governor’s wife invited Golikoff to stay with her as well instead of returning to the garrison while they waited for the spring rains to abate.

  “That’s really not necessary,” Lesseps said.

  “But it is,” she insisted.

  Over dinner—in Russian now, so as to include Golikoff—the governor’s wife tried to cheer Lesseps by praising his intrepidity. “Remember how you found that ledge to carry your party past the melting bay,” she said.

  Golikoff’s watchful eyes flicked toward Lesseps, but his expression never faltered. “Indeed, barin,” he said, raising a glass. “If not for you, we would never have found that ledge.”

  Lesseps felt his face grow warm. He raised his own glass and drained it. He really should have insisted that Golikoff return to the barracks, he thought.

  Smoking in the drawing room after their hostess had gone to bed, Golikoff said, “I knew about Daria.”

  “Who?”

  “Daria, the Cossack’s wife in Bolsheretsk.”

  Lesseps’s hand stole to his neck, where he still wore the sable fur. He could no longer remember her face or any of the Kamchadal words she’d taught him. The interminability of the trip was crowding out even the memory of pleasure.

  * * *

  He had no interest in seeing the spring breakup of the Okhota River ice. “The thaw is why we’re stuck here,” he said. “Why would I find it diverting to watch?”

  “Because a future ambassador should be interested in the customs of the country to which he’s appointed,” Golikoff said. “And because your gloomy refusal to leave the house is becoming a burden to the governor’s family.”

  The two men set off and joined townspeople and soldiers and native traders gathered at the eastern extremity of the town, where the Okhota River met the sea. Some years, they learned, the thaw happened so suddenly and with such force that it flooded the town and drowned people. But this year the river seemed more gently inclined. Enormous white sheets
floated past, shearing along straight lines whenever they struck one another or something onshore before heading out to sea, a silent, frozen flotilla.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Golikoff said.

  Lesseps shrugged. “It’s just as impressive on the Neva,” he said, “and the women are better-looking.” Seeing Golikoff’s stare, he added, “In St. Petersburg.”

  Golikoff rolled his eyes. “I know where the Neva flows, barin.”

  A commotion at the water’s edge drew their attention. They made their way through the crowd to find a dozen dogs had somehow ended up on a large ice sheet drifting out to sea. The dogs seemed quite unaware of their danger, placidly looking back toward shore as onlookers added their voices to those of the owners, a Yakut man and woman, who stood on the bank frantically calling to the dogs to jump to safety. Two of the dogs obeyed, leaping into the frigid water and swimming to land. But the others remained on the ice, growing smaller and smaller as they floated away, till in the glare of the rising sun it became impossible to distinguish them from among the thousands of ice rafts around them. They never barked or gave any sign of distress.

  “Well,” Golikoff said, “is it enough of a spectacle for you now?” When Lesseps didn’t reply, he turned around. “Barin?” Lesseps shook his head, unable to speak. Golikoff took his arm and drew him away from the crowd. “What is it?”

  Lesseps found himself once again standing on a shore weeping in Golikoff’s arms.

  “You’re thinking of your friends on the expedition,” Golikoff said.

  “Those dogs—” Lesseps said. “It’s like another presentiment.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The shipwreck in Bolsheretsk, those Japanese mariners, all the dead dogs—”

  “You don’t believe in presentiments.”

  “I know. I don’t. Yet—I’m starting to think some calamity—”

  “Stop,” Golikoff said. “Your friends are safer in their ships than you are.”

  “I know, but— What if I’ve come through all these dangers for a reason? Maybe I’ve been kept alive because they—”

  “Shh,” Golikoff said, touching his hand to Lesseps’s lips. “Don’t.”

  Back at the house, Golikoff and the governor’s wife insisted that Lesseps take to his bed. A French-speaking Italian doctor who had somehow found himself in Okhotsk came and prescribed him a sleeping draught. Lesseps could hear the three of them conferring outside his door. “I have to get him back on the road,” Golikoff was saying. “He won’t rest till he’s delivered those dispatches.”

  “I believe you’re right, Sergeant,” the governor’s wife said.

  Sergeant? Surely Golikoff had been a corporal when they first met. As he slipped toward unconsciousness, Lesseps wondered when Golikoff had been promoted. Did escorting foreigners earn one higher rank in the Imperial Army?

  * * *

  A month after their first arrival in Okhotsk, on horses still emaciated from their long winter famine, they left the town and headed inland. Lesseps assumed the much-traversed road to Irkutsk, though long, would be easier. It was not. His horse collapsed under him the very first day. Indeed, the roadside was littered with dead horses. Large black flies rose in clouds from the rotting carcasses to buzz in their faces with the stench of death. Then there were the river crossings—terrifying rivers roaring with winter melt. Sometimes they were obliged to use leaky, unstable floats to get across, risking life and cargo as they navigated the surging waters. The sun set late, allowing for long travel days. But with it came heat and biting gnats. Their Yakut guides burned horse dung to keep them away—a smelly but effective recourse.

  The only respite was the pleasure of seeing new foliage after so many months of ice and snow. Lesseps felt as if he were seeing the color green for the first time, green in its infinite variety of hue and texture, green with its promise of life and survival. Sometimes, plodding along the muddy road or waiting for a river crossing to commence, assailed by heat and insects, Lesseps would fix his gaze on a spot of green in the distance and surrender every other sensation but that one.

  Lesseps and Golikoff took turns carrying the dispatch box in Golikoff’s large military satchel. One day, when Golikoff had custody of the box, his horse threw him off and into a large, rock-strewn puddle. He landed right on top of the satchel. He crouched over the road and clutched at his chest, but when Lesseps ran over and tried to loosen his clothing, Golikoff pushed him away. “The box!” he gasped when he recovered his breath. “I broke it.” Lesseps reached into the satchel, and indeed—the lid was askew, its lock bent, hinge broken. Golikoff covered his face in shame and wailed.

  “It’s all right,” Lesseps said, showing Golikoff that the contents were safe. “A little carpentry will put everything right. Are you sure you aren’t hurt?” It was, he realized, the first time he had had to comfort Golikoff.

  * * *

  When they reached the Lena River at Yakutsk, they left their horses and took to boats, sailing upstream toward Irkutsk, a feat grimly accomplished by the labor of ragged, sullen convicts forced into service as pullers. The Lena and its banks shifted constantly: splitting in two, then splitting again, and again, widening into unnavigable shoals, then noisily converging. They floated through canyons defined by great limestone rock formations that looked like the ruins of some alien race, then through gentler regions of pine-covered hills and rolling grasslands, before finding themselves in barren, flat country between gravelly banks. And then the dramatic cliffs would resume.

  Traveling by boat put him in mind of the expedition, of his friends on the Boussole and the Astrolabe. The commander would have been horrified by the slaves pulling their boats upstream. Monsieur de Lamanon would have loved the geological wonders on display—and taken pains to befriend the native guides. Captain de Langle would somehow have managed to remain clean and well-dressed throughout the ordeal. Lieutenant de Vaujuas would have known where they were, always, just by looking at the sky. He had not thought of them much lately. It was as if the dispatches and their delivery had taken on an urgency of their own, divorced from the actual persons they represented. It was July 1788. Where were his friends right now? What were they doing?

  Beyond Kirensk they bade farewell to their Yakut guides and transferred to carriages, a return, at long last, Lesseps thought, to a comfortable, modern mode of travel. But the carriages were old and in disrepair, and the roads full of holes and rocks. Golikoff, still denying he’d been hurt in his fall, clasped his left side for the duration and moaned in pain whenever the carriage suffered a jolt. “This is how rich people travel?” he cried.

  “No,” Lesseps said. “The rich travel in good carriages on proper roads.” He looked at his companion, whose face was drawn with pain and nausea. “Have you never ridden in a carriage before?”

  Golikoff shook his head. “Never.”

  “Your maiden carriage ride,” Lesseps said. “Take heart, Golikoff. It gets better after the first time.”

  * * *

  The driver told them they would reach Irkutsk that night. “Do you recognize anything?” Lesseps asked Golikoff. The soldier had grown quieter and quieter as they neared his hometown.

  He sat up now and looked out the window. “It’s been many years since I was here,” he said.

  It was nearly midnight when they arrived. As they rolled up to the sentry station at the town’s northern entrance, Lesseps felt his heart swell with joy and relief. Considered a small fortified town, Irkutsk nevertheless boasted a cathedral, a palace, and markets filled with tea, silk, and gold. Most important, it was the gateway to Europe. Good carriages could be had for the right price. The still-new Siberian Road would take him to Moscow, and from there, St. Petersburg. Barring some unforeseeable and unlikely catastrophe, he would make it. He would deliver the dispatches. He would get home. He would be reunited with his friends. He would publish his journal.

  “We’ve done it, Golikoff!” he cried, turning to his companion and gras
ping his hand.

  Golikoff returned the grasp in silence. In the dark it was impossible to read his expression.

  Friendly sentries greeted the travelers and directed the carriage to a military lodging house nearby. But the lodgings master, a skinny man with a swollen nose, told them he had no orders to house anyone, and slammed the door.

  Golikoff banged on the shut door until a beleaguered servant opened it again. “Excuse me,” Golikoff called into the darkness. “I’m Sergeant Igor Golikoff of—”

  “Go to hell!” the lodgings master barked back.

  “I’m conveying a Frenchman, member of an important expedition—”

  “Not important to me!”

  The door began to close, but Golikoff stepped up and jammed it open with his foot. “We have letters of introduction from General Kasloff, governor of Kamchatka,” he called in a loud voice.

  “You can have a letter from the empress for all I care!” came the reply.

  “We’ve come all the way from Petropavlovsk,” Golikoff shouted back. “We’ve been traveling almost a year!”

  “Then you can travel a little longer!”

  Lights blinked on in windows around them as neighbors woke to the shouting. “It’s all right, Golikoff,” Lesseps called from the carriage. “We’ll find somewhere else to stay.”

  “No,” Golikoff said. He stepped back into the street and yelled, “I have the French ambassador with me! Will no one in this godforsaken town welcome him?”

  “Golikoff—what are you doing?” Lesseps cried, cowering in the carriage.

  Silence followed. Golikoff leaned against the carriage. “Now watch—something will happen.” He laughed mirthlessly. “God, I hate this place,” he added.

  Another door nearby opened and a stout man with mussed hair stepped into the street. He ran toward them, still buttoning up his uniform. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m the commandant here—who did you say you were?”

  Lesseps stepped out of the carriage. “My name is Barthélemy de Lesseps,” he said. “I’m not the ambassador, but everything else is true.”