Across the Endless River

by Thad Carhart

  Many of the passersby were headed to the cafés that abounded. CAFÉ DEUX BILLARDS, CAFÉ GARNIER, CAFÉ DU PONT, Baptiste read above their big striped awnings. When Paul emerged after half an hour, he suggested they have a drink in one of them. What most impressed Baptiste was the size of the interior—there were thirty tables or more on the ground floor alone—and the constant bustle of activity. Waiters raced about with laden trays, people came and left, and everyone talked as if conversation were an entertainment that could never be exhausted.

  That evening Paul took him to the Palais Royal, across from the Palais du Louvre, for what he called a divertissement, an entertainment. Organized around the extensive planted courtyard of a palace owned by the king’s cousin, it was the center of nightlife for the rich and well connected. The horde of carriages as they approached was another shock to Baptiste; never had he seen a crowd like this. They jostled one another beneath arcades that opened onto the rectangular formal garden, with shops, cafés, and restaurants on the inside. Baptiste saw money changers, boot makers, barbers, tailors, gun sellers, clothiers. Paul told him there were gambling parlors in the upstairs rooms.

  It seemed to Baptiste that everyone in Paris was there at the same time, all of them promenading as they inspected one another and bought things. When he and Paul tried to make their way across one of the large interior rooms, the press became so great that they were slowly being carried backward by all the bodies. For an instant Baptiste felt powerless, unable to understand what was happening or why others would seek out such a crowd. A rouged woman with blond ringlets and a low-cut dress caught his eye and smiled broadly. Did she nod at me? Paul grasped his elbow firmly and pulled him to the side, whispering in his ear over the din, “Come, Baptiste, not tonight.”

  They returned to Prince Franz’s well past midnight, after eating at the best restaurant at the Palais Royal. But Baptiste was too excited to sleep, and for a long while he sat in his room and thought about all he had seen in a single day.

  He considered the buildings that Paul had shown him on their drive—the Ecole Militaire, the church of Val-de-Grâce, the Chapelle de la Sorbonne, and many more—all of them calling attention to themselves with carvings and fine tracery. Baptiste had not known that stone could be quarried in such huge pieces, or that it could be worked as if it were river clay into shapes that looked lifelike and supple. He was puzzled when he considered the bulk of all that stone they had driven past, like an endless wall with infinite variations on one basic idea: to make something heavy look light.

  He thought, too, of the odd glow from all the gaslight lamps at the Palais Royal, brighter than the afternoon sun, and of how it painted people’s faces with seductive shadows. He opened the window and listened for something he knew he would hear, a dim background noise that subsided at night but did not go away. It was strange, and yet exciting in a way he had never before imagined.

  Baptiste spent the first few days walking around the city on his own. Paul was immersed in the paperwork that had accumulated at his uncle’s household during his eighteen-month absence: correspondence, acquisitions, family affairs, and, as he growled several times when he left the library table piled high with documents, “Bills! Nothing but God-blessed bills from my accursed creditors,” as if they were there only to persecute him. But Baptiste had passed enough time with Paul to see how he spent money: he never calculated the cost of a purchase. In the flurry of nervous activity before they left New Orleans, Paul had bought everything he saw, so it seemed, and left Schlape to deal with payment. Baptiste couldn’t square this appetite for acquisition with the surliness that now attended the resulting requests for money. Paul was rich. What was the problem in paying for the things he had so eagerly bought?

  Baptiste’s wanderings took him away from Prince Franz’s house for hours at a time in ever-widening circles of discovery. The tailor had visited the day after their arrival to measure them both for new clothes, but in the meantime Baptiste wore the dark gray suit he had bought in New Orleans for the voyage. Freshly cleaned and pressed, and set off by a white shirt and loose black necktie, his suit passed Paul’s muster as “respectable,” though a gray felt hat with a narrow brim was forced upon him with a categorical pronouncement: “A gentleman always wears a hat in town.” He had been offered the use of a horse, but he declined. After the sea voyage, he felt the urgent need to keep his feet on the ground. He also bore in mind one of Captain Clark’s favorite pronouncements to his many visitors: “If you want to get to know a place for yourself, your own two legs are the surest conveyance.”

  Everything was interesting, every street, alley, window, doorway, courtyard. All his senses were sharpened and attentive to what lay ahead, as if he were hunting back in the Missouri forest. But instead of stalking game, his eyes fed on Paris. He surprised a coachman and servants by staring at the carriage they polished and the paving stones they swept. Instead of the dismissive gestures that he half-expected from his years in St. Louis, however, they reacted with embarrassment, a half bow, and a murmured “Monsieur” to acknowledge him. So here on the streets of Paris he was assumed to be a gentleman because he was dressed like one! That was a new and heady feeling, especially since the reaction of others was not the result of Paul’s commanding presence. A new Baptiste had been fashioned without his realizing it, and he discovered that he liked it.

  On his second day in Paris he walked a good distance east beyond the Hôtel de Ville, City Hall, to a section of the city where neither the streets nor the courtyards were paved. This area was much busier than any of the others he had walked through, with horses and vehicles filling the roadway while pedestrians jostled for room on both sides. The street ended in a substantial irregular square filled with awnings held up by poles. They covered an expanse of wagons whose open beds were laden with more kinds of foodstuffs than Baptiste knew existed: huge brown bread loaves stacked like flattened cannonballs; tables of cheeses in great wheels, triangles, and pyramids; sugar beets piled high in wine-colored mounds; bulky open bags of beans, lentils, and peas in warm hues of green, orange, and burgundy. He had happened upon a market, and its pungent smells and the high, piercing cries from the sellers hawking their goods caught him by surprise. “Venez, venez! Approchez-vous, Mesdames, Messieurs!” He plunged into the noisy crowd.

  He was surrounded by strangers, many of them shrill and insistent, yet no one seemed bothered by the closeness or the din. But this was very different from the Palais Royal. Rows of carts on either side made little alleys, and the intersections and crossings were even more crowded. It felt like a festival. Every vendor had his own cry, many in accents and dialects he didn’t understand, and their voices rose and fell with urgency. They singled out passersby and harangued them with loud pleas to look, to consider the quality, to buy. “Regardez, Madame! Regardez mes jolies pommes!” The reaction of those who passed was one of nonchalance, as if they had not heard the entreaties directed at them. When they continued on, the litany ceased and the vendor turned and found another mark.

  The sellers all had double-pan scales on their carts, and they counterbalanced their merchandise with varied iron weights, calibrating the balance with dazzling speed as they cried out the cost. Watching their deft gestures, Baptiste thought of the card dealers in St. Louis saloons whose mastery had the same mix of insouciance and skill.

  He eventually came to the far side of the square, which was flanked by a wall of buildings. Fish and creatures of the deep were spread out in the last several carts he passed. He looked in wonder at their staring eyes, shiny scales, and menacing teeth. The bed of snow on which they were arrayed astonished him, too—snow on a sunny day in the middle of the city! Yet the market-goers walked by as if it were usual. As he ventured out into the sunlight again, he felt in his coat’s inner pocket for the coins Paul had cautioned him to hide. The heat of the covered marketplace had made him thirsty.

  He walked past several piles of refuse that rose to his own height and from which emerged the f
etid odor of spoiled vegetables. At first he thought the creatures sniffing through the market’s leavings were dogs, but as he drew close he saw that they were human beings covered in filthy rags, rooting in the garbage for whatever they could find to eat. Torn cabbage leaves, shriveled carrots, half-rotten fruit—their haul was meager, but they clutched their findings close and looked around them with an air of distrust. Baptiste saw two tiny children crawling amid the garbage, their bodies covered with a layer of dirt that looked as if it had been baked into their skin. Only their eyelids, their mouths, and the palms of their hands revealed pink flesh. Baptiste looked around to see if anyone was with the two, but they seemed to be on their own. One of them—it appeared to be a little girl, though it was impossible to be sure—raised her arms toward him and began to cry. He crouched down at once and tried to calm her. But she only closed her eyes and sent more tears rolling down her grimy cheeks. Baptiste fished in his coat for a coin, thinking that the glint of metal would capture the child’s attention.

  Suddenly a hand brusquely swept up the child and snatched the coin from his fingers in one fluid movement. A young woman stood before him in the same rags as the others, her features scrawny and drawn where they could be made out beneath the grime. The child stopped bawling.

  “Merci, Monsieur,” she said, then asked if he had another, so that they might eat a bit of meat that night.

  The stench that emanated from this creature was sickening. She gave him a semblance of a smile, and Baptiste saw that she had few teeth, and those were badly discolored. Her breath smelled of wine. He took another coin from his pocket, handed it to her, and walked on quickly.

  The exchange had not gone unnoticed. Others materialized along his path and begged for coins. He hurried along, escaping their entreaties by darting down an alleyway. Leaning against a building for a moment, he found that he was breathing heavily. Across the street, a tavern’s sign—a jug of wine and a cluster of grapes—swung lightly in the morning breeze. He would have a glass of wine to soothe his nerves.

  It was dark inside the tavern. A few candles guttered in their wall holders on either side of the broad planks that served as a bar, and a bed of coals glowed brightly in the facing hearth. Rough-hewn tables and benches filled a plain room, and a few posters and handbills adorned the smoke-blackened walls. The atmosphere differed entirely from the cafés Paul had taken him to.

  He removed his hat, ordered a pitcher of wine, and sat near one of the narrow windows that looked out onto the alley. Boisterous conversation and laughter came from a room in the back, but only half a dozen people occupied the front room. Baptiste greedily drank a glass of wine, then relaxed and sipped a second. Three men wandered in from the back and sat at the table next to his, loudly talking about politics. They reeked of alcohol.

  “Taxes, and then more taxes! Tell me, how is this better than Bonaparte?” The man who slouched at Baptiste’s side was tall and burly, and he slurred his words.

  “Bonaparte, Bourbons, it’s all the same shit!” his companion cried, and was immediately shushed by the third, who looked around nervously.

  “Shut up, you imbecile,” he hissed. “The police have informers everywhere.”

  Baptiste’s attention was riveted on his neighbors, though he pretended to be uninterested. They looked at him, and he felt menace in the air.

  “So they do,” the big one said slowly; then, looking directly at Baptiste, he continued with an unctuous grin. “Perhaps you are one, Monsieur.” He picked up the hat Baptiste had laid on the table and held it up appraisingly, as if it were a piece of evidence. “Such a fine hat in such a poor neighborhood.”

  Baptiste put his glass down, returned the man’s stare, and said evenly, “Put the hat down.” The husky man’s friends watched in excited anticipation, as if they had seen this before.

  “And if I don’t?” The big man rose unsteadily from his seat and straightened up to his full height. He lifted the hat to put it on his greasy head, and as it passed in front of his eyes, Baptiste jumped to his feet, grabbed the man’s shirt with his left hand, and pulled him forward. His right hand emerged from his vest grasping a hunting knife whose eight-inch blade flashed in the candlelight as he thrust it against the troublemaker’s throat. All was still in the room. The two friends leaned back from the confrontation; laughter continued to drift in from the back.

  Baptiste said softly, “You will put the hat down.”

  The other man didn’t dare take his eyes from Baptiste’s. Beads of sweat covered his brow and spittle caught in his scraggly mustache and beard as he silently mouthed his assent. He reached out and opened his palm, and the hat fell to the table, where it hit with a muffled thump.

  “Stand up, all three of you!” Baptiste demanded. He released the burly man and pushed him toward the others. Still holding the knife in the direction of the three cowering together, he picked up his hat, put it on, and pulled several coins from his pocket and threw them on the table. “Monsieur, this is for the wine,” he said to the owner, who was still behind the bar. He drew his knife in close to his face, looked at the three men across its tip, and said, “Good day, gentlemen.” Then he was through the door.

  He knew enough not to linger. The knife had surprised them, but it wouldn’t be possible again. Baptiste hurried down the street and turned the corner, then headed down the first alley he came to. Once he had made sure he wasn’t being followed, he relaxed. Then he recalled the initial exchange, so like boyhood quarrels, but with the strange addition of politics that were unknown to him. He reached up and touched the brim of his hat. So this makes me look like a police informer, he mused. What else don’t I know that could get me into trouble?

  His route back to Prince Franz’s house took Baptiste along the Seine in the heart of the city. He sat on a stone wall at the water’s edge. It’s not much of a river, he thought, but at least it has a current you can see. As he watched workmen loading barges, his mind drifted to the life he had known before. What would my mother think if she could see where I am? he wondered.

  When Baptiste thought of his mother, he thought of his spirit bird and the day she had said goodbye. Many more times in subsequent years she had told him to have strength, and he heard her voice now. The spirit bird will always protect you, no matter what path I have taken.

  He felt in his pocket and found the little obsidian bird that meant strength. Since her death the stone figure had never left him, wrapped in a square of elk hide that fit neatly in his closed fist. It represented his tribal ties in a way that meant more to him than the Kit Fox Society, to which he could never fully belong. He thought of his mother’s broken childhood and why a guardian spirit would have been important to her. She had fashioned the idea of this protective companion from her own mixed experience among the Shoshone, the Mandan, and the white voyageurs, and this, he thought, approximated his own destiny. The spirit bird seemed right for someone living in two different but overlapping worlds.

  TWELVE

  MARCH 1824

  Prince Franz had decided to give a ball. Officially it was to be in honor of Paul before he and Baptiste left for Stuttgart, their next stop, but the reason mattered less than the gathering itself to this lover of the good life. “Tout prétexte est bon!” Paul said good-naturedly. “Any pretext will do.”

  Paul and Baptiste sat in the dark green leather-covered armchairs in the room Paul’s uncle called his library, a long formal space on the second floor with five full-length windows that looked down onto the garden. Although shelves of books lined the walls, the owner’s principal activity in this chamber was not reading, but the examination of his extensive collection of maps. Three or four large maps lay unrolled on a long trestle table in the center of the room, their corners held down by magnifying lenses, rocks, and fossils. Nearby, a huge globe nestled in a floor stand; its upper hemisphere turned so that North America faced the adjacent chair.

  Paul and Baptiste had gotten into the habit of spending at least part of their mor
nings together in this long, cluttered room. It was the one place in Prince Franz’s vast house where they could step out of the constant round of his activities: the frequent visits, official and unofficial, of diplomats with business to conduct with Württemberg; the comings and goings of mistresses; the dinners and card games that sometimes didn’t wind down until after the sun had risen. The prince was not only an ambassador from a small but strategically important state and an aristocrat with ties of blood or marriage to most of the princely families of northern Europe; he was also a bon vivant with a prodigious appetite for women, gambling, hunting, and good food. An army of servants maintained the life of his household. The library was his refuge, the only room where servants were forbidden when the prince was in residence.

  “We’ll have to visit a number of suppliers before leaving Paris next week,” Paul said. He mentioned half a dozen scientific instruments he was anxious to acquire.

  “We are also to meet with Professor Picard,” Paul went on. “He is an old friend of Professor Lebert, my teacher at the Stuttgart Gymnasium. Both of them worked with Bonpland and von Humboldt, and together they have educated an entire generation in the importance of the natural sciences. He’s keen to examine some of the tribal objects I brought back.”

  Paul picked up one of the magnifiers and turned it slowly by its handle. “Now, it occurs to me, my friend, that before we travel to Württemberg I owe you a bit of background if you are to understand my family. Other than the bits and snatches you may have picked up on our passage from America, you really know next to nothing about my country and my family’s place in it. Let me tell you about where I come from.”

  Paul pulled his chair close to the table and riffled through the maps until he found the one he wanted and laid it on top of the others. “Europe—1820” was printed in large gothic letters across the top.