Voyage of the Narwhal

by Andrea Barrett

  Zeke brushed his outstretched hand aside. “Can’t I simply have a minute alone?” He exhaled a cloud of frost, shaking his head as he rose. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go be cheerful.”

  Joe had hidden seven ptarmigan, which he roasted with the help of Ned: half a bird to a man, a splendid change from salt pork. Isaac, Thomas, Robert, and Barton had secreted a portion of their flour and lard rations for the past several weeks, and with these supplies, and the dried cherries and raisins Sean contributed, they made a delicious duff. Erasmus brought out two of the plum puddings donated by a neighbor at home; Dr. Boerhaave prescribed from the medical stores two bottles of cognac, to protect them all from indigestion.

  They ate and drank with good humor, despite Zeke sitting glum at the head of the table, and despite the silence falling after a memorial toast to Nils Jensen and Fletcher Lamb. Isaac pulled himself together and elbowed Barton. “A joke!” he cried. “Every man must tell a joke!”

  Barton shook himself and told a coarse story about a one-legged man and a singer. Thomas responded with a joke about a carpenter and a cow. Around the table they went, all except Zeke; when silence fell again Mr. Francis and Mr. Tagliabeau led a round of whaler’s songs. Then Ivan flourished his napkin and said to the officers, “Please take your seats in the theater.”

  Up on deck, under the housing, the men had arranged meat casks and boxes for seats and marked off a stage with a row of candles. In great secrecy they’d gotten up a little skit for the officers, prancing about in the freezing air with their fur jackets tied about their waists like skirts, and their shirts pulled open and tucked down to form flounces around their hairy bosoms. Bulky Sean played a young beauty; Ivan and Barton her jealous older sisters; serious Thomas her mother; and Robert and Isaac the two suitors competing for the beauty’s hand as they fended off the sisters’ advances. As the melodrama concluded with the duel of Robert and Isaac, frowning and slashing the air with their jackknives, Sean stood on a candle box and shrieked so shrilly that Erasmus could hardly see for laughing.

  Afterward Captain Tyler and the mates brought out the last surprise—three bottles of excellent port. Even as the men fell on it gratefully, and as Erasmus sipped his own delicious ration, he wondered where it had come from. Captain Tyler’s bleary-eyed mornings, his snoring deep sleep—had he a private supply of spirits? Erasmus saw Zeke look down at the cup he’d just held to his lips and come to the same realization.

  “Captain Tyler,” he said coldly. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “It’s Christmas,” the captain said, grinning and waving one of the bottles. “Relax yourself a bit. Celebrate. It is very fine port, is it not?”

  “We are carrying no port.”

  Captain Tyler shrugged. “No ship’s captain would travel without a small private stock,” he said. “What I do with it is my own business. And what I choose to do with it tonight is share it with our fine crew.”

  “You are in on this?” Zeke said, turning to Mr. Francis and Mr. Tagliabeau. “I object to this. Very, very strongly.”

  “More music!” Mr. Francis said. Gathering the men on the makeshift stage, he started up a sailor’s hornpipe. Joe played his zither, the men sang and danced, Captain Tyler joined them. Erasmus followed Zeke outside, where they gazed at one another and then at the moon. A complete halo hung around it, with the arc of another perched on top of the first like a crescent headdress.

  “More snow on the way,” Zeke said gloomily.

  Erasmus wished he could join the frolicking men. The invisible ice crystals filling the air and bending the moon’s rays made Zeke’s face look ghastly; Erasmus turned his eyes back to the sky.

  “Homesick?” he asked. “Lavinia should be lighting the candles on the tree about now. Serving eggnog, and those little ginger cookies our mother used to make. Maybe the rest of the family is there and someone’s playing the piano . . .”

  “Torture yourself,” Zeke said. “Go ahead.”

  “SHOW HIM YOUR gums,” Dr. Boerhaave said, standing Sean and Barton in front of Zeke one January Sunday.

  Obediently they opened their mouths. “See that?” Dr. Boerhaave said. Zeke leaned toward Sean. “How puffy and red the gums are in the back?”

  “And I have a loose tooth,” Barton said, reaching up with his right hand. “Here.”

  Zeke shook his head. “I know,” he said. “We need fresh meat. Joe’s been out looking for bear every day this week but he’s seen nothing yet.” Then he returned to his charts. He was making elaborate maps of the coastline, naming every wrinkle.

  “My knees and shoulders are aching badly,” Dr. Boerhaave said to Erasmus later. “How are yours?”

  “Not bad.” But he lifted his shirt to show Dr. Boerhaave the dark, bruiselike discoloration spreading down his left side.

  “Ned has patches like that all over his arms,” Dr. Boerhaave said. “Ivan’s old harpoon scar is beginning to ooze. I fear we’re in for real trouble.” He and Erasmus went through the storehouse and suggested to Zeke that small portions of the few remaining raw potatoes and a little lime juice be added to the daily rations. They worried that everything was running short.

  Erasmus counted items again and again, comparing what was left against his lists. All his work and planning, and still he’d miscalculated. Already the candles were almost finished, as was the lamp oil. Joe had made some Esquimaux lamps, which he fueled with the blubber he’d put down in the fall; these helped stretch the candles but were smoky and covered everything with soot. The coal was low enough that they had to ration it and could no longer keep the cabin so comfortably warm. Erasmus found plenty of beans and salt beef and pork, but Dr. Boerhaave said these were exactly the worst things for men beginning to suffer from the scurvy. They needed fresh food, and couldn’t get it.

  When Erasmus showed Zeke a detailed accounting of their stores, Zeke blamed the shortages on him. “All those days you were fretting in Philadelphia,” he said. “How could we have ended up like this?”

  Erasmus couldn’t answer him. The obvious answer—that they hadn’t meant to overwinter—he’d long since realized wasn’t true; more and more he understood that Zeke had plotted since the beginning to search for an open polar sea. Only living members of Franklin’s expedition could have kept him from this ambition. Zeke had insisted they stock the ship as if they might have to overwinter, as if they might need these supplies in an emergency, and Erasmus couldn’t blame their present straits on ignorance. Somehow, despite all his lists, he’d made mistakes. He hadn’t realized how ravenous the cold and the boredom and the physical labor would make them, or how little they could depend on hunting.

  Dr. Boerhaave joined Erasmus in the storehouse one dark morning when he was counting the tinned soups for the third time. “This isn’t your fault,” he said.

  Erasmus shook his head. “Then whose fault is it? If I’d planned better . . .”

  “Blame Commander Voorhees,” Dr. Boerhaave said. “It’s his expedition, as he never fails to remind us.” With his mittened hands he pushed aside a sack of flour and sat on a crate of salt beef.

  Erasmus looked down at the array of tins. “I can’t . . . don’t put me in that position.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Boerhaave said. “I admire your loyalty—I just don’t like to see you blaming yourself. He doesn’t listen to anyone, he’s so preoccupied with his own ambitions that he doesn’t think things through. If he’d told us from the beginning we were going to winter up here . . . how could you know what to plan for, if he didn’t tell you?”

  Erasmus fiddled with the smoking wick in the lamp. “I have to do the best I can,” he said. “I promised my sister.” One end of the wick sank in the melted blubber, reducing the light to a flicker. “But why didn’t he just tell me?” he burst out.

  “Why indeed?” Dr. Boerhaave said. In the gloom something scuttled along the wall; perhaps a rat. “He sits in there with his papers and leaves you to sort out his mistakes.”

  Eras
mus tried to think of something positive. “In the fall,” he pointed out, “he was wonderful about organizing the men.”

  “And since Sabine’s death,” Dr. Boerhaave said, “he’s been lost in his own world again.”

  IT WAS TRUE what Dr. Boerhaave had said; some days Zeke seemed to have abandoned his command. Yet even with this to worry about, Erasmus was sometimes peculiarly, privately happy. The animals had disappeared and the landscape was empty: not a plant, not a creature, not an insect or a particle of mold. The only living things he saw besides the men were the rats infesting the brig and the storehouse, further diminishing their supplies. But one day he stood with Dr. Boerhaave and saw sheets of light undulating like seaweeds in the sky. The ice where they stood was bluish gray, the immobilized icebergs a darker gray, the hills in the distance a friendly, velvety black. As he and Dr. Boerhaave discussed what they saw, the arctic’s simultaneous sparseness and richness seemed to unfold. In his mind the long journey they’d made, and the plants and animals they’d collected, fell into a beautiful pattern. The dwarfed low willows and birches, hugging the ground to evade the blasting winds; the great masses of mosses and lichens and the sorrel growing like tiny rhubarbs; the small rodents skilled at burrowing—“It all forms a kind of rhythm,” Erasmus said, and Dr. Boerhaave agreed. The fact that they didn’t fit into it made it no less beautiful.

  In Lavinia’s journal—what could Zeke’s contract mean now?—Erasmus began making extensive notes for a natural history book. Meanwhile Dr. Boerhaave wrote in his medical log:

  These signs of scurvy so far—

  Captain Tyler: abdominal pains, swollen liver, gout in right foot. Mr. Francis: tubercles on three finger joints, accompanied by pain and stiffness. Mr.Tagliabeau: right premolar lost, other teeth loose, bleeding gums. Seaman Bond: purpurae on forearms.Seaman Carey: left knee grossly swollen; reports a sprain there as a child. Seaman Forbes: bleeding gums. Seaman Hruska: serous discharge from old lance wound. Ned Kynd: excoriated tongue, bruises on both arms.

  Mr. Wells has those bruises on his side; now I have a few myself. Our lime juice is almost exhausted. I’ve been prescribing vinegar, sauerkraut, and a dilute solution of hydrochloric acid: all I have left by way of antiscorbutics. Our commander, who has no symptoms at all, prescribes daily exercise on the promenade. And a cheerful attitude.

  He closed the log and picked up his journal. Still he loved to touch it; a smooth tan spine, with elegant marbled paper on the boards. He’d brought it with him all the way from Edinburgh. Whatever he put here Zeke would read; he couldn’t put anything he meant: he copied into it six pages of Thoreau’s essay “A Winter Walk,” just for the pleasure of hearing the words in his head, shaping them with his pen. He put his head down on the cover, amid creamy moons haloed with red and green swirls, and slept.

  ROBERT CAREY WAS crying. Erasmus found him wedged between two crates, his knees tucked under his chin as tears rolled down his face. To Erasmus’s gentle questions he said nothing. Hours later, when he still wouldn’t stop crying, Dr. Boerhaave gave him some laudanum and carried him to bed. Then Ivan Hruska said no one ever paid attention to him, that his fellow seamen ganged up on him and teased him mercilessly. Everyone preferred Robert, Ivan said, everyone coddled him; he rolled himself in his hammock and refused food until Dr. Boerhaave threatened to put a tube down his throat. Sean and Thomas got into a fistfight. Barton let the galley fire go out. There were arguments, then long tense silences.

  One night Erasmus, alone in the cabin, heard from the other side of the stove an unfamiliar, nasty, muffled laughter. He stepped through the gap in the partitions to investigate and came upon a reprise of the Christmas skit, transposed into a coarser key. Isaac, as the successful suitor, had opened his fly and was waving his thick erect penis at Sean, who was rolling his eyes in maidenly shock. In the background Barton, as one of the jealous sisters, was swishing his hips. “Give me some of that,” he was hissing, while Isaac gasped with laughter. “Let me . . .” He fell silent when Sean, who saw Erasmus first, elbowed him in the chest.

  “Just having a little fun,” Isaac said. He tucked himself back in his pants. “Can’t hold that against us, can you?”

  Erasmus didn’t know what to say. Between the cold and the stress and the hunger his own penis felt like a tired leather tube, shrinking away from his hand each time he tried to urinate. What was all this urgent flesh? Before he had time to wonder if the playacting was play, or something more serious, Zeke stepped around the stove and joined him.

  “What’s going on?” he said. He blinked as if he’d just awakened.

  The men were silent, apparently abashed.

  “Nothing,” Erasmus said. “Just a little . . . a little quarrel.” Clumsy lie.

  “I won’t have that,” Zeke said. “We’re all uncomfortable. But we must stick together, we must be cheerful.” When he turned his back, Isaac grabbed his crotch mockingly.

  ON JANUARY 24 the southern horizon glowed reddish orange, before fading away in a violet haze. This hint that the sun would return seemed to rouse Zeke at last, although not in a way Erasmus would have chosen.

  At dinner Zeke said, “We’ll have sun in another month and a half, but we won’t be able to free the brig until July, at the earliest. I propose we occupy the spring months with sledge trips north. It’s unfortunate about the dogs. But we can pull the sledges ourselves, and the ice belt along the shore will be in excellent shape in April and May. We can examine the coastline north of here, we can follow the trend of the Sound and look for the open polar sea.”

  Captain Tyler laughed wildly. “If you think we’re going to pull sledges like draft horses, that we’ll go one inch further north with you . . .”

  “You will go where I say,” Zeke said. And left the cabin, to walk the promenade in the dark.

  Erasmus threw on all his clothes and followed him, too angry to feel the cold although the thermometer outside the observatory read fifty below. “Why did you do that?” he shouted, even before he’d reached Zeke. “You couldn’t have made the men more anxious if you’d tried.”

  Zeke continued pacing, leaving a fog trail behind him.

  “What is it you want?”

  Zeke stopped and turned to face him. “What do you think?” As he spoke his face disappeared inside the cloud his breath created. “I want my name on something,” he called. “Something big—is that so hard to understand? I want my name on the map. Your father would have understood.”

  “My father is dead!” Erasmus called back. “Why would you want to endanger yourself and the rest of us more than you already have?”

  Zeke shook his head and his face disappeared again. “Don’t turn against me,” he said. “Everyone else is—don’t you know how much you and your family mean to me?” When the cloud blew away his eyebrows jutted out, entirely white. “Your house was where I grew up,” Zeke said more quietly. Now Erasmus stood by his side. “Where I learned everything important. You and your father . . .”

  “If something happened to you,” Erasmus said, “Lavinia would die. Don’t you worry about her?”

  “Of course,” Zeke said. “About her, and you and your brothers, and what you think of me—I’ve always wanted to be part of your family, for all of you to be proud of me. If I led a successful sledge trip north, everyone would see what I can do.”

  “Lavinia loves you no matter what,” Erasmus said. What was all this talk about his family? A man in love, a man engaged, might be a little more romantic. “Surely you understand that?”

  Zeke’s frosted eyebrows drew together. “The men need to get used to the idea,” he said. “We’re going north.”

  ERASMUS THOUGHT HE had several months to talk Zeke out of his useless plan; meanwhile he must do what he could to lift the men’s spirits. When the sun approached during the second week of February, he and Joe and Dr. Boerhaave took a party out to meet it. They clambered up the hill behind the brig, up and over the two beyond. An arc of light split the horizon, violet
and lavender merging into rich brown clouds. Then the shining disk broke free, perched on an icy range. They opened their jackets, the briefest moment, the pale rays touching their throats. Barton cried at the sight, and Isaac pointed at the giant shadows they cast on the snow. It cheered them, Erasmus thought. He was cheered himself and afterward saw mirages for hours, blue and green and pink balls of light. That night they all ate in some semblance of harmony.

  When he woke at three A.M. and heard a faint noise, Erasmus thought at first that he was dreaming. The cabin was dark but for the gleam of one tiny blubber lamp. The fire was banked in the stove; Mr. Francis, who had the watch, had fallen asleep at the table. The curtain to his bunk was open but the others were closed and appeared undisturbed. Erasmus couldn’t see beyond the stove, but he heard no sound from the men’s quarters. The noise was above him, distinctly above him. He put on his boots and his furs and made his way up the ladder.

  The noise ceased before he came out on deck. It was completely dark under the housing, much colder than in the cabin but not nearly so cold as it must be outside, where the wind was singing in the shrouds. He hadn’t brought a lantern with him, and he would have slipped back down had he not heard another noise just then: a sort of snort or gasp.

  “Who’s that?” he said sharply.

  Someone laughed.

  “Speak up,” Erasmus said. “Who’s out here?”

  More laughter, from more than one voice. Then, “Me. Isaac.” And “Robert.” And “Ivan.”

  A scuffle, some whispers, a giggle. “All right. Me, too—Thomas.”

  “You’re sitting in the dark?” Erasmus said. “What are you doing?” He had a horrid memory of Isaac prancing around, half-clothed. “Who else is here?”

  “Me” came a voice from the bow. “Barton.”

  And Robert—it was Robert who couldn’t stop giggling—said, “Sean and Ned are here too.”

  “Ned?” Erasmus said. Sensible Ned. “Are you trying to kill yourselves?”

  “Ssh,” Ned said, from behind him. “Whisper.”