Across the Endless River (39 page)

Soon word arrived that the baby, a boy, had been born early in September. When Paul came home ten days later, he had left his wife and his son, Maximilian, in Regensburg while Sophie recovered from a difficult delivery. Paul was excited as he told Baptiste about his son. “He has his father's eyes, my friend, and a grip as strong as a hawk's!” He walked about the castle and the town with a broad grin, accepting the congratulations of townspeople and servants alike with genuine pleasure. Two weeks later he received a letter from his wife, who was delaying her return with the baby. His happiness began to fade.

“She finds every reason in the world for not bringing Max home,” he railed at lunch, brandishing the letter in his hand, “and not one of them valid!” The trip would be too fatiguing; the heat was still oppressive; her mother wanted more time with her grandson. “I shall have to go to Regensburg myself to bring them back.”

He left two days later and returned within the week in a splendid coach that Sophie's family had offered for the occasion. Paul and Sophie were like any other parents with their firstborn, basking in the joy and adulation of all those close to them. The first argument arose over the nursery. Sophie insisted on a series of rooms on the second level, but Paul countered that this would require him to move several thousand plant specimens, when adequate space already existed adjacent to their own suite. This rapidly deteriorated into reproachful looks, angry silences, and emotional outbursts. An impasse reigned.

Herr Thomm delivered one hundred copies of Paul's book in the last week of October. Paul was filled with delight, and proud that his account of the expedition was finally in print. Baptiste shared his relief after all their work on the specimens, but the celebrations also meant that his work with Paul was very nearly finished. He had agreed to read it through for errors, but already he knew that Herr Thomm had done a fine job of printing.

Professor Picard arrived a week after the book. After an initial round of hospitality and visiting, he asked Baptiste to show him the collection.

“This is very fine!” Picard exclaimed, picking up a Shawnee leather bag worked with quill and tufts of hair. He looked closely at the stitching and then, replacing it on the table, said softly, “But surely this is the fourth or fifth example of its type I have seen this morning.” Turning from the last of the heavily laden tables, Picard shrugged and shook his head. “Why, it is almost unimaginable that a single person is responsible for all this,” he said with a wave of his arm that took in more than the room and its contents.

“There are still some boxes that have not been emptied,” Baptiste told him.

“Ah, of that I am sure,” Picard shot back. He walked to the window, his hands clasped behind his back. “I am of two very different minds when I consider what Paul has brought to Europe from his American travels.” He turned now, and though there was more gray in his hair than the last time they had met, his eyes retained their piercing quality. “The richness and variety of objects will add to our understanding of those tribal peoples. However, the fact that Paul has plans for a museum here in Mergentheim makes me wonder if any of these treasures will enrich more than a handful of visitors. Stuttgart itself would be too small to accommodate this bounty. I proposed Paris, but Paul refuses to consider anyplace but here. He means to make his name with his collection while thumbing his nose at his family in their own backyard. A fatal error, I fear.” He returned to sit across the table from Baptiste.

“Have you seen the book yet?” Baptiste asked.

“Yesterday I spent the afternoon going through it.” Picard paused, as if considering what tone to adopt. “Baptiste, I shall speak candidly. Paul's capacity for close observation in the wild is impressive. He is best with plants, since that is his specialty. Unfortunately, though, he has chosen the dreariest form possible for his narrative, the chronological journal. I did this, then I did that. I saw this, then I saw that. Is there a more effective soporific known to mankind?” Baptiste couldn't restrain a smile. “Rather more than most,” Picard continued, “he places himself at the center of every scene, just like a duke, and the effect is dull.”

“Will anyone want to read it?” Baptiste asked.

“It will find an audience in Paris and Vienna and London. A few dozen members of the learned societies, perhaps, will pore over the text and glean what they may. Personally, I would be more interested in the observations of someone less self-important, an account of the tribes seen from the wings rather than from center stage—that is, what people do when they are not being watched.”

Picard picked up a carved pipe that lay before him and ran his hand carefully along the elegant stem as if he were searching for the solution to a puzzle. “Life has played a cruel joke on our friend Paul. He is a player on the wrong stage. He will never fit in here, and yet he cannot bring himself to leave. He can only flee and then return, and I am afraid he is bound to be most unhappy for it.”

“He talks of returning to the Missouri next spring.”

Picard shrugged. “Tell me about your plans, Baptiste. Paul told me you will help with his museum. Can that be so?”

“No, it cannot,” Baptiste replied quickly, his anger rising to the surface. He explained the understanding he had with Paul.

“The important thing is that you have decided to leave for your home before the year is out, and so it shall be. Allow me to tell you how pleased I am to hear it. Europe is no place for a young man of your talents.”

“But Professor Picard, when I return to St. Louis the likeliest prospect for me is to become a scout or a trapper, a
voyageur
like my father.”

“My point exactly! A go-between to Indian tribes and the European world of commerce. Every kind of human knowledge is called upon daily—skill at languages, tact and diplomacy, the ability to read human nature, ease with animals, mastery of one's moods. That man—an intermediary, vanguard, outrider, call him what you will—is the true lord of the earth, far outstripping the overfed worthies who are driven about Europe in coaches to see one another's palaces.” This last, Picard spat out with a merciless sarcasm. “You have enjoyed the benefits of European civilization, considerable to be sure—reading, writing, languages, art, music—and yet you need not be shackled to it. You can go back and forth and survive admirably in both milieus. That is most unusual, Baptiste, and it gives you a passage that is unavailable to all but a very few. It is your birthright, and it is precious not only because it is so rare but also because it is so vital.”

Baptiste stared at the pipe that lay between them, considering all Picard had said.

Picard continued. “There is, of course, a price to pay for such godlike behavior. You may never fit in entirely on either side of the divide; you are of both worlds but perpetually between them.” Picard rose now and walked again to the window. “When you return to St. Louis, you will certainly be associated with the five years you have spent in Europe, and all you have learned here.”

For Baptiste the specifics of his departure were still far from clear, and he voiced his concern. “I have been Paul's guest for five years, but now I must go home. How can I convince Paul to take my departure seriously without offending him?”

“Paul must come down to earth. He can be feckless, but he is an honorable man, and there is no reason for him to take offense. He has given his word and he will keep it. I will talk to him and remind him of his duty.”

Later that week, Picard and Paul inspected the frescoes in the castle's elaborately decorated chapel. A student of Baroque architecture, Picard had long wanted to see the renowned interior. They looked overhead to the painted ceiling, a monumental
trompe-l'oeil
sky with an army of saints and faithful ascending into heaven.

“Very sensitively done,” Picard said. “But I am reminded of something Baptiste asked when I first met him. ‘Why do you paint the ceilings of your churches and palaces to look like the sky when you can just walk outside?' ” Both men laughed. “He tells me he is ready to return to America,” Picard added.

“He says so, yes. But I think he still has much to learn here.”

“Paul, I must object in the most strenuous terms.”

“But he has been indispensable to me in the laboratory,” Paul countered.

“Come, come, Paul. You must look at this from Baptiste's point of view.” Picard's tone was clipped. “What Europe offers him cannot approach the fulfillment of life on the frontier. It is his home. You should know that better than anyone. Don't condemn him to being a specimen in your collection. Let him go!”

Picard's words resonated beneath the illusion of the soaring heavens, filling the tall space until they died in the abiding stillness.

F
ORTY-ONE

D
UKE
P
AUL, FROM HIS PRIVATE JOURNAL
F
EBRUARY 10, 1829
B
AD
M
ERGENTHEIM

It is finally over: Sophie and I were separated last week by formal decree. The negotiations have been so lengthy and rancorous that the only emotion I feel is a deep sense of relief. Since my book appeared in November, she has insisted that I give up my research and, as she put it in one of our many violent exchanges, “clear this house of the stinking animal corpses and Indian trinkets.” When before Christmas I announced my intention to return to North America to continue my research, she laid down an ultimatum: my marriage or my travels. So began the vengeful discussions that led us to separate.

Although we will remain married, there will be no contact or obligation between us. I shall keep her dowry as well as a sizeable payment in gold. She will raise Max at Regensburg, and I shall have the right to see him once a year. I can now proceed with my work, unimpeded by domestic duties.

I will return to the Missouri River this spring. This time I hope to travel far above Fort Recovery, where the Arikara forced me to turn back five years ago. Baptiste has agreed to act as my guide and interpreter, after which he will remain in America. Though he is keener than ever to return, he agreed to put off our departure until the dissolution of my marriage was settled. Now that he is to leave Europe, I think again of the ways in which Baptiste sees his surroundings differently from us.

I recall when Picard visited in October how we examined together a splendid specimen of
Ardea cayennensis,
a night heron I had collected on the Mississippi. After looking over my notes listing the bird's dimensions, weight, color of plumage, wing beats, and observed behavior, he said in his matter-of-fact way, “You and I closely record every material element but miss the animal's essence. To know that, you must become the bird: live, hunt, eat, even fly with every part of your self that can follow the heron. That, my friend, is simply not a path available to us. Don't you agree?”

Yes and no. There is most certainly a gut instinct for the ways of animals possessed by the likes of Baptiste, and every tribal hunter I have come across, that defies reason or even clear description. But the accretion of detail from close observation, both in nature and in the laboratory, can yield insights that surprise us, and from those insights come ideas about the underlying order of things. That is our path, but I see no reason why it should be separated from the ways of the true hunter. Picard is, after all, something of a sentimentalist. Perhaps it is fairer to say that Baptiste is in many ways an amalgam of the two ways of seeing things. What amazes us Europeans is that he possesses the one skill that cannot be bought, traded for, quickly learned, or otherwise acquired by force of will: know-how in the wilderness.

Only a tiny number of white men are able to penetrate the barrier separating European from Indian ways and live by their wits from the bounty of a seemingly endless expanse. Baptiste has a network of contacts and friends, based on bonds of trust, which allows him to enter this world where the ancient and shifting claims of aboriginal peoples to hunt and to live off the land's fruits still prevail. This capability and the freedom it affords are, it seems to me, fast going out of the world. After the ordeal of these past several months, I look forward to being on the river, the plains, in the mountains, far from the constraints of society and the judgment of others.

Word arrived today through a courtier that His Majesty is very unhappy with his cousin's disgraceful separation from his wife. Wilhelm can go to the devil, for all I care.

A peculiar local matter came my way last week. The chamberlain informed me that the daughter of the garrison's sergeant major is pregnant and claims Baptiste is the father. She has made a nuisance of herself, carrying on at the guard post and insisting on seeing Baptiste. At the chamberlain's suggestion, I dealt with the situation in the usual way: ten pieces of gold to the girl's father and a clear message that any further complication would imperil his position. I see no reason to tell Baptiste, since it is likely a fabrication. Even if true, it is the only peccadillo that has landed on my account in the five years he has been in Europe. Soon I shall be far away from these hopelessly petty concerns.

I had a most welcome letter from Theresa, who is in Berlin and plans on staying there for some time. She is in the company of the banker, Jacob Warburg, whose family has provided funds for many of the new industrial schemes on the Ruhr. She is happy to be away from court life, and enthuses about the excitement of men who, to read her account, are changing the world, financing huge projects, and building on a scale never before seen. Is this the future?