Cloud Atlas, Page 50

  Averse to seeing Mr. Wagstaff’s humiliation at the hands of his wife, I gave a noncommittal bow & withdrew outside the fence. I heard male indignation trampled by female scorn & concentrated my attention on a nearby bird, whose refrain, to my ears, sounded thus:—Toby isn’t telling, nooo … Toby isn’t telling …

  My guide joined me, most visibly glum. “Beg pardon, Mr. Ewing, Mrs. Wagstaff’s nerves are fearful frayed today. She don’t sleep much on account of the heat & flies.” I assured him the “eternal afternoon” of the South Seas taxes the sturdiest physiologies. We walked under slimy fronds, along the tapering headland, noxious with fertility, & furry caterpillars, plump as my thumb, dropped from talons of exquisite heliconia.

  The young man narrated how the Mission had assured Mr. Wagstaff’s family of his intended’s impeccable breeding. Preacher Horrox had married them a day after his arrival in Nazareth, while the enchantment of the Tropics still dazzled his eyes. (Why Eliza Mapple had consented to such an arranged union remains uncertain: Henry speculates the latitude & clime “unhinges” the weaker sex & renders them pliable.) Mr. Wagstaff’s bride’s “infirmities,” true age & Daniel’s obstreperous nature came to light scarcely after their signatures on the wedding documents had dried. The stepfather had tried beating his new charge, but this led to such “wicked recriminations” from both mother & stepson that he knew not where to turn. Far from helping Mr. Wagstaff, Preacher Horrox chastised him for a weakling & the truth is, nine days out of ten he is wretched as Job. (Whatever Mr. Wagstaff’s misfortunes, could any compare to a parasitic Worm gnawing his cerebral canals?)

  Thinking to distract the brooding youth with matters more logistical, I asked why such an abundance of Bibles lay untouched (& read only by book lice, to tell the truth) in the church. “Preacher Horrox should by rights tell it, but briefly, the Matavia Bay Mission first translated the Lord’s Word into Polynesian & Native missionaries using those Bibles achieved so many conversions that Elder Whitlock—one of Nazareth’s founders what’s dead now—convinced the Mission to repeat the experiment here. He’d once been ‘prenticed to a Highgate engraver, see. So with guns & tools the first missionaries brought a printing press, paper, bottles of ink, trays of type & reams of paper. Within ten days of founding Bethlehem Bay, three thousand primers was printed for Mission schools, before they’d dug the gardens, even. Nazareth Gospels came next & spread the Word from the Societies to the Cooks to Tonga. But now the press is rusted up, we’ve got thousands of Bibles begging for an owner & why?”

  I could not guess.

  “Not enough Indians. Ships bring disease dust here, the Blacks breathe it in & they swell up sick & fall like spinny tops. We teach the survivors about monogamy & marriage, but their unions aren’t fruitful.” I found myself wondering how many months had passed since last Mr. Wagstaff smiled. “To kill what you’d cherish & cure,” he opined, “that seems to be the way of things.”

  The path ended down by the sea at a crumbling “ingot” of black coral, twenty yards in length & in height two men. “A marae, this is called,” Mr. Wagstaff informed me. “All over the South Seas you see ’em, I’m told.” We scrambled up & I had a fine view of the Prophetess, an easy “dip” away for a lusty swimmer. (Finbar emptied a vat over the side & I spied Autua’s black silhouette atop the mizzen, furling the fore-skysail lifts.)

  I inquired after the origins & purpose of the marae & Mr. Wagstaff obliged, with brevity. “Just one generation ago, the Indians did their screaming & bloodletting & sacrificing to their false idols right on these stones where we’re standing.” My thoughts went back to the Banquet Beach on Chatham Isle. “The Christ Guards gives any Black who sets foot here now a hefty flogging. Or would do. The Native children don’t even know the names of the old idols no more. It’s all rats’ nests & rubble now. That’s what all beliefs turn to one day. Rats’ nests & rubble.”

  Plumeria petals and scent enwrapped me.

  ———

  My neighbor at the dinner table was Mrs. Derbyshire, a widow well into her sixth decade, as bitter & hard as green acorns. “I confess to a disrelish for Americans,” she told me. “They killed my treasured uncle Samuel, a colonel in His Majesty’s Artillery, in the War of 1812.” I gave my (unwanted) condolences, but added that notwithstanding my own treasured uncle was killed by Englishmen in the same conflict, some of my closest friends were Britons. The doctor laughed too loudly & ejaculated, “Hurrah, Ewing!”

  Mrs. Horrox seized the rudder of conversation ere we ran onto reefs. “Your employers evince great faith in your talents, Mr. Ewing, to entrust you with business necessitating such a long & arduous voyage.” I replied that, yes, I was a senior enough notary to be entrusted with my present assignment, but a junior enough scrivener to be obligated to accept the same. Knowing clucks rewarded my humility.

  After Preacher Horrox had said grace over the bowls of turtle soup & invoked God’s blessing on his new business venture with Cpt. Molyneux, he sermonized upon a much-beloved topic as we ate. “I have always unswervingly held, that God, in our Civilizing World, manifests himself not in the Miracles of the Biblical Age, but in Progress. It is Progress that leads Humanity up the ladder towards the Godhead. No Jacob’s Ladder this, no, but rather ‘Civilization’s Ladder,’ if you will. Highest of all the races on this ladder stands the Anglo-Saxon. The Latins are a rung or two below. Lower still are Asiatics—a hardworking race, none can deny, yet lacking our Aryan bravery. Sinologists insist they once aspired to greatness, but where is your yellow-hued Shakespeare, eh, or your almond-eyed da Vinci? Point made, point taken. Lower down, we have the Negro. Good-tempered ones may be trained to work profitably, though a rumbunctious one is the Devil incarnate! The American Indian, too, is capable of useful chores on the Californian barrios, is that not so, Mr. Ewing?”

  I said ’tis so.

  “Now, our Polynesian. The visitor to Tahiti, O-hawaii, or Bethlehem for that matter, will concur that the Pacific Islander may, with careful instruction, acquire the ‘A-B-C’ of literacy, numeracy & piety, thereby surpassing the Negroes to rival Asiatics in industriousness.”

  Henry interrupted to note that the Maori have risen to the “D-E-F” of mercantilism, diplomacy & colonialism.

  “Proves my point. Last, lowest & least come those ‘Irreclaimable Races,’ the Australian Aboriginals, Patagonians, various African peoples &c., just one rung up from the great apes & so obdurate to Progress that, like mastodons & mammoths, I am afraid a speedy ‘knocking off the ladder’—after their cousins, the Guanches, Canary Islanders & Tasmanians—is the kindest prospect.”

  “You mean”—Cpt. Molyneux finished his soup—”extinction?”

  “I do, Captain, I do. Nature’s Law & Progress move as one. Our own century shall witness humanity’s tribes fulfill those prophecies writ in their racial traits. The superior shall relegate the overpopulous savages to their natural numbers. Unpleasant scenes may ensue, but men of intellectual courage must not flinch. A glorious order shall follow, when all races shall know & aye, embrace, their place in God’s ladder of civilization. Bethlehem Bay offers a glimpse of the coming dawn.”

  “Amen to that, Preacher,” replied Cpt. Molyneux. One Mr. Gosling (fiancé of Preacher Horrox’s eldest daughter) wrung his hands in oleaginous admiration. “If I dare be so bold, sir, it strikes me as almost … yes, a deprivation to let your theorem go unpublished, sir. ‘The Horrox Ladder of Civilization’ would set the Royal Society alight!”

  Preacher Horrox said, “No, Mr. Gosling, my work is here. The Pacific must find itself another Descartes, another Cuvier.”

  “Wise of you, Preacher”—Henry clapped a flying insect & examined its remains—”to keep your theory to yourself.”

  Our host could not conceal his irritation. “How so?”

  “Why, under scrutiny it is obvious a ‘theorem’ is redundant when a simple law suffices.”

  “What law would that be, sir?”

  “The first of ‘Goose’s Two Laws of Survival
.’ It runs thus, ‘The weak are meat the strong do eat.’ ”

  “But your ‘simple law’ is blind to the fundamental mystery, ‘Why do White races hold dominion over the world?’ ”

  Henry chuckled & loaded an imaginary musket, aimed down its barrel, narrowed his eye, then startled the company with a “Bang! Bang! Bang! See? Got him before he blew his blowpipe!”

  Mrs. Derbyshire uttered a dismayed “Oh!”

  Henry shrugged. “Where is the fundamental mystery?”

  Preacher Horrox had lost his good humour. “Your implication is that White races rule the globe not by divine grace but by the musket? But such an assertion is merely the same mystery dressed up in borrowed clothes! How is it that the musket came to the White man & not, say, the Esquimeau or the Pygmy, if not by august will of the Almighty?”

  Henry obliged. “Our weaponry was not dropped onto our laps one morning. It is not manna from Sinai’s skies. Since Agincourt, the White man has refined & evolved the gunpowder sciences until our modern armies may field muskets by the tens of thousands! ‘Aha!’ you will ask, yes, ‘But why us Aryans? Why not the Unipeds of Ur or the Mandrakes of Mauritius?’ Because, Preacher, of all the world’s races, our love—or rather our rapacity—for treasure, gold, spices & dominion, oh, most of all, sweet dominion, is the keenest, the hungriest, the most unscrupulous! This rapacity, yes, powers our Progress; for ends infernal or divine I know not. Nor do you know, sir. Nor do I overly care. I feel only gratitude that my Maker cast me on the winning side.”

  Henry’s forthrightness was misconstrued as incivility & Preacher Horrox, the Napoleon of his equatorial Elba, was pinkening with indignation. I complimented our hostess’s soup (though in truth my craving for vermicide makes it difficult to ingest any but the plainest fare) & asked if the turtles were caught on nearby beaches or imported from afar.

  ———

  Later, lying abed in the muggy darkness, eavesdropped by geckos, Henry confided that the day’s surgery had been “a parade of hysterical sun-baked women who need no medicine but hosiers, milliners, bonnet makers, perfumeries & sundry trappings of their sex!” His “consultations,” he elaborated, were one part medicine, nine parts tittle-tattle. “They swear their husbands are tupping the Native women & live in mortal fear they’ll catch ‘something.’ Handkerchiefs aired in rotation.”

  His confidences made me uneasy & I ventured that Henry might practice a little reserve when disagreeing with our host. “Dearest Adam, I was practicing reserve, & more than a little! I longed to shout this at the old fool:—’Why tinker with the plain truth that we hurry the darker races to their graves in order to take their land & its riches? Wolves don’t sit in their caves, concocting crapulous theories of race to justify devouring a flock of sheep! “Intellectual courage”? True “intellectual courage” is to dispense with these fig leaves & admit all peoples are predatory, but White predators, with our deadly duet of disease dust & firearms, are examplars of predacity par excellence, & what of it?’ ”

  It upsets me that a dedicated healer & gentle Christian can succumb to such cynicism. I asked to hear Goose’s Second Law of Survival. Henry grinned in the dark & cleared his throat. “The second law of survival states that there is no second law. Eat or be eaten. That’s it.” He began snoring soon after, but my Worm kept me awake until the stars began weakening. Geckos fed & padded softly over my sheet.

  Dawn was sweating & scarlet as passionfruit. Male & female Natives alike drudged up “Main Street” to the church plantations atop the hill, where they worked until the afternoon heat was intolerable. Before the skiff came to take Henry & me back to the Prophetess, I went to watch the workers plucking weeds from the copra. Peradventure it fell to young Mr. Wagstaff to be their overseer this morning & he had a Native boy bring us cocoa-nut milk. I withheld from asking after his family & he did not mention them. He carries a whip, “but I rarely employ it myself, that’s what the Guard of Christ the King are for. I just watch the watchers,” he said.

  Three of these dignitaries watched their fellows, leading hymns (“land shanties”) & reprimanding slackers. Mr. Wagstaff was less inclined to conversation than yesterday & let my pleasantries lapse into silence broken only by sounds of the jungle & laborers. “You’re thinking, aren’t you, that we’ve made slaves out of free peoples?”

  I avoided the question by saying Mr. Horrox had explained their labors paid for the benefits of Progress brought by the Mission. Mr. Wagstaff did not hear me. “There exists a tribe of ants called the slave maker. These insects raid the colonies of common ants, steal eggs back to their own nests & after they hatch, why, the stolen slaves become workers of the greater empire & never even dream they were once stolen. Now if you ask me, Lord Jehovah crafted these ants as a model, Mr. Ewing.” Mr. Wagstaff’s gaze was gravid with the ancient future. “For them with the eyes to see it.”

  People of shifting character unnerve me & Mr. Wagstaff was one such. I made my excuses & proceeded to my next port of call, viz., the schoolroom. Here, infant Nazarenes of both hues study Scripture, arithmetic, and their ABC’s. Mrs. Derbyshire teaches the boys & Mrs. Horrox the girls. In the afternoon the White children have an additional three hours’ tutelage in a curriculum appropriate to their station (though Daniel Wagstaff for one appears immune to his educators’ wiles), while their darker playmates join their parents in the fields before the daily vespers.

  A short revue was staged in my honor. Ten girls, five White, five Black, recited a Holy Commandment apiece. Then I was treated to “O! Home Where Thou Art Loved the Best” accompanied by Mrs. Horrox on an upright piano whose past was more glorious than its present. The girls were then invited to ask the visitor questions, but only White misses raised their hands. “Sir, do you know George Washington?” (Alas, no.) “How many horses pull your carriage?” (My father-in-law keeps four, but I prefer to ride a single mount.) The littlest asked of me, “Do ants get headaches?” (Had her classmates’ titters not reduced my interrogator to tears, I should be standing there pondering this question still.) I told the students to live by the Bible & obey their elders, then took my leave. Mrs. Horrox told me departees were once presented with a garland of plumeria, but the Mission elders deemed garlands immoral. “If we allow garlands today, it will be dancing tomorrow. If there is dancing tomorrow …” She shuddered.

  ‘Tis a pity.

  By noon the men had loaded the cargo & the Prophetess was kedging out of the bay against unfavorable winds. Henry & I have retired to the mess room to avoid the spray & oaths. My friend is composing an epic in Byronic stanzas entitled “True History of Autua, Last Moriori” & interrupts my journal writing to ask what rhymes with what:—”Streams of blood”? “Themes of mud”? “Robin Hood”?

  I recall the crimes Mr. Melville imputes to Pacific missionaries in his recent account of the Typee. As with cooks, doctors, notaries, clergymen, captains & kings, might evangelists also not be some good, some bad? Maybe the Indians of the Societies & the Chathams would be happiest “undiscovered,” but to say so is to cry for the moon. Should we not applaud Mr. Horrox’s & his brethren’s efforts to assist the Indian’s climb up “Civilization’s Ladder”? Is not ascent their sole salvation?

  I know not the answer, nor whence flew the surety of my younger years.

  During my night at the Horroxes’ Parsonage, a burglar broke into my coffin & when the reprobate could not locate my jackwood trunk’s key (I wear it around my neck), he attempted to force the lock. Had he succeeded, Mr. Busby’s deeds & documents would now be fodder for sea horses. How I wish our captain was cut from trustworthy Cpt. Beale’s cloth! I dare not give Cpt. Molyneux custody of my valuables & Henry warned me against “stirring the hornets’ nest” by raising the attempted crime with Mr. Boerhaave, lest an investigation spur every thief aboard to try his luck whenever my back is turned. I suppose he is right.

  Monday, 16th December—

  Today at noon the sun was vertical & that customary humbuggery known as “Crossing the Lin
e” was let loose, by which “Virgins” (those crewmen crossing the equator for the first time) endure various hazings & duckings, as thought fit by those Tars conducting ceremonies. The sensible Cpt. Beale did not waste time on this during my Australia-bound voyage, but the seamen of the Prophetess were not to be denied their fun. (I considered all notions of “fun” to be an anathema to Mr. Boerhaave, until I saw what cruelties these “amusements” entailed.) Finbar warned us the two “Virgins” were Rafael & Bentnail. The latter has been at sea for two years but sailed only the Sydney–Cape Town run.

  During the dogwatch the men slung an awning over the foredeck & assembled around the capstan, where “King Neptune” (Pocock, dressed in absurd robe with a squilgee wig) was holding court. The Virgins were tied to the catheads like a pair of Saint Sebastians. “Sawbone & Mr. Quillcock!” cried Pocock upon seeing Henry & me. “Art thou come to rescue our virgin sisters from my scabdragon?” Pocock danced with a marlinespike in a vulgar fashion & the seamen clapped with lickerish laughter. Henry, laughing, retorted that he preferred his virgins without beards. Pocock’s riposte on maidens’ beards is too obscene to record.

  His Barnacled Majesty turned back to his victims. “Bentnail of Cape Town, Riff-the-Raff of Convict-town, be you ready to enter the Order of the Sons of Neptune?” Rafael, his boyish spirits restored in part by the anticks, responded with a brisk, “Aye, Your Lordship!” Bentnail gave a surly nod. Neptune roared, “Naaaaaay! Not till we shave those d——d scales off you sogerers! Bring me the shaving cream!” Torgny hurried up with a pail of tar, which he applied to the prisoners’ faces with a brush. Next, Guernsey appeared, dressed as Queen Amphitrite & removed the tar with a razor. The Cape man howled curses, which caused much merriment & not a few “slips” of the razor. Rafael had the sound sense to bear his ordeal in silence. “Better, better,” growled Neptune, before yelling, “Blindfold ’em both & shew Young Riff into my courtroom!”