Darwin's Ghosts

by Ariel Dorfman

  Xolás does not deign to listen to these words. Instead, their god asks them to look back: “Reflect now on your life and actions.” And once the soul has done so and is ready to tell its host the truth, then Xolás opens the great door to the immense hut and says, “Now you may come in.”

  If the world followed the advice of Xolás to tell the truth, it would be a far better place and I would not have been forced to write this response. It is advice, dear Mr. Foster, that you have chosen to ignore, though I conjecture that your motives are not sinister or malevolent, just guided by trembling and shame.

  I called a colleague at the linguistics lab at MIT, with whom I had studied while completing my doctorate at the University of Sussex, and he informed me of your wife’s recent accident and recovery and also that it was rumored that her husband was a recluse, had not been seen in public for years due to some strange illness which made him agoraphobic. In short, you could not have traveled to the center of Boston, let alone to Paris.

  I am told your wife has no parents and you yourself sound bereft, and though I am not myself a Kaweshkar I have learned much from them; in this case, to revere their tradition, by giving refuge to you both as orphans. And am thus most willing to help you, sir, but can only do so if you are equally willing to share the truth with me. Then I will welcome you and your wife into my abode and my life with all the respect you deserve.

  I await your further instructions.

  Cordially,

  Dr. Frano Vudarovic

  P.S. There are no direct descendants of the man you call Henri, whose fate—as that of those kidnapped along with him—is a legend among the older members of this ethnic group. It is likely, however, that his blood—or that of brothers and sisters left behind—courses through some of the few pure Kaweshkar who still survive and are on their way to dying out.

  His letter did not really surprise me. It was as if I had wanted to be found out, maybe had blatantly lied in order to receive an admonition demanding that, like the lost soul in the Kaweshkar myth, I pour out the truth to a stranger.

  I began to feverishly write back. In English, naturally. After so many years of hiding from others, skulking in my room, entombed with Henri’s face, it was a relief to express my story with no ornaments attached, freely and forthrightly.

  When I was done—seven pages later—I felt fresh, renewed, invigorated—and more so when my letter was dispatched the next day. Remembering what Cunningham had said about the agent Makaruska who had interrogated Mrs. Hudson at the library and the possibility that we might be under some sort of surveillance, I asked my father—he did not demand an explanation and I did not furnish one—to mail it from a post office with no return address. It would be unlucky if our confidential information fell into the wrong hands. Given such a confession of my vulnerability, I did not doubt that Professor Vudarovic would defer to my directives and send any response care of my father at his work address.

  It took a while for the reply to arrive, but when it did, the news gave me yet another lift.

  If my wife and I were able to arrive in Punta Arenas, despite the problems that I had with travel, two Kaweshkar elders were ready to welcome us and perhaps perform a ceremony that might offer some relief to the dead and also, perhaps, to the living. There was only one thing puzzling them. They were not owurken, shamans—most of the ancient rituals were no longer practiced in a semi-urban environment where the young were frequently disbelievers. If I was indeed possessed, they feared they did not have the knowledge to dominate demons and drag them out of my body, even though certain remnants of the ceremonies, like the language itself, had been transmitted from the past. If they were to engage in a burial ritual, what exactly was being given its final resting place, given that the body itself had been lost, perhaps forever, as well as anything that might have belonged to the dead person?

  I spent several days mulling over how to respond to this query, when my dad offered an answer.

  The joy he had received from his daughter-in-law’s New Year’s Day recovery had gradually eroded as Cam’s conduct became more obsessive and erratic. At first, perhaps channeling Mom, who would have counseled prudence, he reined himself in, but changed his mind when Vic called toward the end of July, confiding that Barry Cunningham was concerned about my wife’s increasingly shrill demands, putting excessive pressure on the agency. Perhaps the blow to the head had not completely healed? But when my father at last voiced his doubts, he did not blame her but me for indulging her manias.

  “And what would you have me do?”

  “Burn them.”

  “Them?”

  “The photos. And the documents, notes, photocopies, sources, the whole shebang, everything. But first of all, the photos. Down to the last one.”

  I didn’t understand how that would help us—or get Cam to cease and desist from her research.

  “The photos,” Dad insisted. “That day, on your fourteenth birthday, remember how I pleaded with your mom to get rid of them? And she convinced me, damn it, to preserve them. Oh, if I’d—oh, I blame myself for not having had the balls to turn the fuckers to ashes right then and there, prove to this savage that he had no power over us. Instead, we let him grow each time we—”

  “But you were the one demanding sessions, one after the other, so we could find out if he was still—”

  “I know, I know. My mistake, stupid, idiotic, imbecile, to ignore my gut instinct. Keeping that poison in our home! And when your mom was murdered by him, I should have gone straight upstairs and burnt that savage like a witch, see how he liked being licked and consumed by fire like we were by his fucking face, blacken his fucking face, turn it to cinders, scattered to the wind, ground into pieces, drowned down a toilet. And I would lie awake at nights—by myself, by myself, reaching out a hand to where your mother used to sleep. Eyes wide open in the dark, thinking that those images were close by, in a box, seeping through the floorboards like a serpent, spitting at you, at me, at us. Gathering my courage to incinerate the motherfuckers, but always held back by the memory of Margaretta, her project, her hopes, not wanting to betray what she had dreamt of as a way out. And when Cam entered our lives, well, I quenched that desire, because she was like your mother. I could see that she was being seduced by this monster, but I fooled myself into believing she could tame him. And then he caused that amnesia—and even so, I held back, it wasn’t fair to trash the photos when Cam couldn’t protest, participate. And when she awakened, well, I thought maybe he’s satiated. But now, now it’s clear he’s cast another spell on her, engaged legions of other fiends, and we have to intervene, drastically, you have to show him who’s the boss, you’re the one—not me—who has to do it.”

  He was wrong. That road of revenge and anger would not assuage Henri. It had led me nowhere for many forsaken years.

  And yet, Dad’s outburst supplied me with the response to the question the Kaweshkar elders had transmitted via Frano Vudarovic.

  The photos!

  Take them down to Henri’s birthplace, the island where his life had been interrupted, where we would get the last Kaweshkar to honor Henri and his story. Even if it didn’t free me, it was the right thing to do. His body might be irretrievable, but his images—they were the greatest outrage. Pierre Petit had made immortal and perennial his humiliating captivity. But we could reverse what was done to him, at least symbolically, at least indicate that we understood. Take him home.

  But how to get me out of the country without my photo being snapped or my face filmed? All airports were under surveillance, with hidden and not-so-hidden cameras everywhere. Though Cam had hinted that she had some ideas about how to circumvent that security, probably had contrived some harebrained scheme to—No, I wanted to present her with solutions and not problems. She was right that I was depressingly dependent on her initiative. And besides, who knows if she would abandon her quest for Hindu acrobats in London and Tuaregs in St. Louis long enough to look for a way of smuggling me out of the United States
, she’d probably shelve my idea indefinitely—whereas if I had it all disentangled . . . Which I did more promptly than I could have expected—thanks to some inspiration from Henri, who must have whispered the solution that had been staring me in the face, his and mine.

  He had left his home by sea and we would get there by the same means, of course. Arrive in Tierra del Fuego on a boat, avoid troubled, congested public areas and Downey’s presumably ubiquitous spies. For that we needed a ship seaworthy enough to get us there, run by somebody we could trust—if not with all our secrets, at least with the fact that we were not only in danger from treacherous currents or hurricanes but from human enemies as well. Someone ready to take risks and bend the law a little, with decades of experience sailing every ocean, preferably an older man whom no one would take on as a skipper anymore, perhaps slightly insane, ready to cater to the whims of a young couple who were more than a little insane themselves. Someone who wanted the job so urgently that he’d be loyal to a fault.

  And how in the hell can you, Fitzroy Foster, unable to move out of your house, find someone like that?

  The next day—it was a Sunday—Barry Cunningham providentially solved my problem.

  He called to let me know that he happened to be in town. Would we mind if he stopped by to pay us a visit?

  The first thing he did when he stepped up to the door was to flash Cam and me—Dad had gone fishing for the day—a piece of paper on which words had been written: at the top, in capital letters, ACT NORMAL, and below, pretend I’ve come to talk about possible wedding plans for Laura and Vic. While a technician sweeps the house for listening devices. Nod if you agree.

  We nodded obediently and he flashed a signal to someone waiting in the Ford he’d rented. A tall, stooped, gloomy man emerged, blinked his eyes at us as a way of saying hello, and proceeded to make sure the house was clean. It was, I could have told Barry that. I did tell him that once we could speak freely, sure that nobody was eavesdropping.

  “I’m always at home,” I said. “I haven’t left this place in years. So they—whoever they are—can’t plant their devices.”

  Better safe than sorry, was Barry’s clichéd but unassailable reply. More so, when we heard why he’d come to warn us personally of the discovery made by the detective assigned to Cam’s genealogical inquiries, who had confirmed that everywhere he went a man had preceded him. The description of this person corresponded to Danny Makaruska, the agent who’d been to the library to interrogate Mrs. Hudson. Barry’s source at the FBI had indicated that this was all part of a hush-hush Pentagon project—Operation Memory Redux—and that Camilla Foster Wood and her husband were among its targets.

  This meant that someone could be listening in on our phone conversations, opening our mail, examining packages sent out. If we had revealed confidential information in recent calls or encounters, he suggested disseminating contradictory versions in the weeks ahead in order to confuse our pursuers.

  As to the investigations initiated on Cam’s behalf, progress was negligible. Collating all those names in search of a common lineage had turned up only a few possible leads and even those had fizzled out. He thought, frankly, that we were wasting money and resources. His firm had more normal cases to pursue, adultery and fraud and missing children, and hoped we didn’t mind if he desisted from tracking down the far-flung progeny of circus impresarios and photographic hacks. If any other need happened to arise, he’d still be in town for a few days.

  Neither Barry’s warning nor his withdrawal from the investigation had any effect on Cam. On the contrary, she seemed even more resolved to stick it out, engaging another agency if necessary. “We’re so close, Fitz, I can feel it.” Nor did she care if Downey and his henchmen were spying on us—“So what else is new? Just proves that we’re nearing success, that he’s worried we’ll get to all those people before he does.”

  I was, however, shaken. Did our adversaries know of my contact with Frano Vudarovic, had they intercepted my confession to him, his invitation to Punta Arenas? I would have to throw them off the scent, as Barry had counseled—one more task awaiting me, along with hiring a skipper and vessel to take us down there.

  The next morning, as soon as Cam was on her way to the library to check out who had photographed a nine-year-old Hottentot girl exhibited in Paris and a phony Swahili tribesman in Basel and some early film by the Lumière brothers in Lyons, I called Barry Cunningham at his hotel and asked him to come over right away, see if he could help us get to Europe by sea.

  As he had told us that the less he knew, the better, I didn’t mind lying to him about our destination. Le Havre, I declared, we wanted to arrive in that port by early September—a voyage by sea, as the air might help my wife recover from her sickness. Our intention was to visit Zurich and then board the same boat and cruise the North Sea before heading to the Caribbean in time for the five-hundredth-anniversary celebrations. Perhaps he could locate a sea captain, preferably someone slightly shady?

  A few hours later I called Barry, notifying him that it was Hamburg and not Le Havre we were sailing to, hoping that whoever was recording the call would take due notice.

  “Hamburg, eh?” Barry said, emphasizing the word, he had probably guessed that this was some sort of trick on my part.

  “Hamburg,” I confirmed, relishing how Downey would receive the news, prepare his cohorts for a European excursion. He’d assume we were going there to interview the Hagenbecks and visit the Jardin d’Acclimatation and then on to Zurich to disinter some Kaweshkar body.

  “I’ll find the right person,” Barry said.

  That Captain London Wolfe was indeed the man for the job was obvious to me one week later during the first five minutes of an interview that was to last for several hours. Before we even sat down, in fact. He had not called ahead of time, just showed up at our door, banging on it as if funneling a gale. A tall and burly man, face burnished by wind and brine and sun, with a white beard out of some novel and knuckles the size of hammers.

  “You must be Fitzroy Foster,” he said, pumping my hand genially. “Was told you never leave the house so why bother letting you know I was on my way, huh? Though if you never leave your house, not sure why the hell you and your wife want to cross the Atlantic and cruise other seas and then sail around the Caribbean in hurricane season—and hey, a vessel before the end of August, not much time to get ready.”

  “Before I invite you in, Captain . . .”

  “Name’s Wolfe—Captain London Wolfe. Born in Nantucket, smelled the salt and the sand before I even knew the taste of milk, like six generations before me. Been sailing since I was a lad, lied to the skipper of my first boat about my age, he thought—or maybe not—that I was several years older—done every ship, every shoal, every sea. Served in the Coast Guard, sailed the Norway fjords and the depths of Sumatra, cruised the Great Lakes as master boson, speared sharks and hunted marlin, towed vessels in Korea and Singapore and Rio, can fix any electrical and mechanical problem, deal with boat maintenance and engineering, first aid and CPR certified, one-hundred-ton endorsement, you won’t find anyone better equipped.”

  “Then why do you need this job so desperately, Captain Wolfe?”

  He measured me as if I were lightning on the horizon. He must have liked what he saw or maybe he was, in fact, so desperate that he would have liked me if I had been Godzilla or mad Ahab.

  “You asked for someone who knows the ropes but nobody will hire. Now, if you’re not interested, let’s not waste each other’s time. I’ll go my way and you—well, you’ll never find anyone like me.”

  I was soon to find out how true this was.

  We sat down together—after he had refused a cup of coffee, the tilt in his eyes telling me that there would be plenty of time to share beverages and warmth once we reached an agreement.

  “So, you asked me a question, Fitzroy Foster, sir, and here’s what I propose. You’re hiding something and I’m hiding something. If you tell me the truth, then I’ll retaliate
. You tell me your plans—your real plans, not the bullshit you fed Barrington Cunningham—and I’ll tell you why nobody else will hire me.”

  I liked that. Though no way was I going to reveal all my secrets to this stranger, certainly not the existence of Henri. Just as I did not expect him to come completely clean. But other things he would get to know in due course if we engaged his services, so I explained that Hamburg was a fraudulent endpoint, meant to fool anyone who meant us harm—here, the captain’s features lit up with bliss at the possibility of a good brawl, I noticed approvingly how he clenched his robust fingers into a fist—and that as soon as we were in extraterritorial waters, we’d deviate from our course to Europe and head south until we reached Punta Arenas, so we could visit one of the most inaccessible islands on October 12.

  “Patagonia,” Wolfe exclaimed. His eyes—squinty from having faced windward for so long—opened a tad, brightening even more below a forest of bushy eyebrow outcrops. “Went there on my first ship, I was just fourteen—” And at the sound of that age my eyes began to sparkle as well, this was the sort of adventure I had dreamed of during my humdrum early adolescence—“when I escaped to sea, following in the wake of my pa and grandpa, whalers both of them from Nantucket. Climbed the masts on that whaleship, swabbed the decks, peeled potatoes, slept in the filthiest quarters reeking of bilge and seaweed, did anything the first mate commanded and several things that he didn’t. I’ve been back many times since, in every capacity, I know those reefs and inlets, coming from the Atlantic and from the Pacific and under the worst gales, but also enjoyed some days that were gloriously sunny, fewer than anywhere on this earth, but oh so translucent and bright. So I’m your man. It was meant to be. I have contacts with the Coast Guard who will facilitate that change in course, I know somebody in the International Maritime Organization who will help us avoid collisions but not pass the information along, frustrating reconnaissance by the pursuers out to cause you mischief. I’m your man, I say. The Straits of Magellan! And I’d thought I’d die without braving them again.”