Creation (12 page)

Now Bowen begins.

“I’ve been told that three hundred fishing vessels work this coast, averaging seventy-five tons each, and manned by fifty men to each six vessels,” he says. “If you do the mathematics, that equals two thousand five hundred men. About one half of them are French and the other two quarters British and American. Each vessel when it leaves carries fifteen hundred quintals of codfish. Using the equivalent of one hundred twelve pounds per quintal, I get the figure of sixty million and four hundred thousand pounds of fish per season. Of course the fish are small on this coast, and weigh an average of four pounds each — we are talking of somewhere in the neighbourhood of twelve millions of fish.” He smiles as he arrives at his figure. “It is a fine harvest.”

“A great deal too fine,” says Audubon. “When you understand that it has been going on for at least two hundred years and probably more. It cannot go on forever. They may just as well make a clean sweep of it and rid the seas of all fish forever!”

“But that would not be possible. Not by any chance at all. The fish are so numerous.”

“On the contrary, it is entirely possible. And that is to say nothing of what these Eggers are doing to the wild birds! It is a war of extermination.”

“Father,” says Johnny.

“Have you seen Eggers?” asks Bayfield. “They generally try to stay out of our way.”

“Oh yes, only today, just outside the harbour.”

“They are a rough bunch, it is true. But, surely the birds abound in so many millions as to be beyond harm.”

“I wonder that we all believe so. There are instances where the depredations of man have created scarcity in animals. In fact, where a species disappears altogether.”

“I know of none such,” says Bayfield, as the sailor brings pudding. “What sort is it?” he asks the sailor in the same breath. It is an acceptable vice, a love of sweets.

“Bread, sir,” the sailor apologizes.

“I had them ask for berries on shore today,” says Kelly. “But as I suspected, it is too early in the season.”

“Later on, the native women will come selling cloudberries, as they did last year,” says Bayfield with hope.

“If the smallpox or starvation hasn’t taken them,” murmurs Kelly.

“You say a species may disappear altogether? Of what example are you thinking, Mr. Audubon?”

“The Dodo is one.
Disparu
.”

“It is a French word,” sniffs Bowen. “We don’t have it in English.”

“The key to it is flight. The birds could not fly, you see, and man simply killed them until there were no more.”

“We do not see the Dodo today. But we cannot prove that the Dodo has
disparu
,” says Bowen.

“In English we do have a word. Extinct.” Kelly bestows his smile on the table.

“Surely God would not permit such a thing,” says Bowen.

“I doubt that God has much to do with it,” says Audubon. “It is man’s doing.”

Bayfield rises and lifts his Bible off the nearest shelf. “I keep this to hand,” he explains. “God has entered our conversation twice tonight. Shall we look at his own words? Genesis 1, verses 27 and 28.”

And there they sit, five men, full of dinner, under the light of an
oil lamp, in the farthest reach of the charted territory of the New World. The wind is up and the ship’s timbers creak and sometimes there is the snap of a bit of canvas; the coffee tilts in their cups. The captain reads from his favourite book and the others listen obediently. His voice deepens, betraying the pleasure he takes in the words.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

Audubon has listened with drooping eyes. He has never liked long meals.

“‘Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth,’” Bayfield repeats. “That would seem clear.”

There is no response.

“Have dominion over,” repeats Bayfield.

“Replenish the earth,” rebuts the painter.

“And subdue it.
Subdue
,” insists Bowen. “Perfectly clear.”

Audubon is suddenly weary of the English. They are too sharp. They smile but do not mean it. “All that is clear is that the Bible was not written by a bird or a fish!”

“I find that a sacrilegious remark,” huffs Bowen.

“Ah no, but to the contrary! It is an expression of one of your facts.”

Johnny knees his father under the table.

“Perhaps I do not say it well,” says Audubon. “I mean to say, it shows that the Bible was written by men.”

“The word of our Lord is that the creatures of the earth are for us to make use of.”

“It does not say that after we are finished there ought to be nothing left moving!”

This is a strenuous remark and for a moment the men sit stunned. Then Bowen speaks.

“Surely you exaggerate. The birds and the fish exist in such profusion!”

Now there is a longer silence. Audubon reaches, as if for reassurance, for the eggs, which still sit in their basket in the middle of the table. He takes one between thumb and forefinger and holds it before his face.

“This egg,” Audubon says, “is the future.”

The other men push back their chairs.

There is a silence in which they hear the creaking of the mast, a sound which brings Bayfield peace, but only increases the artist’s anxiety.

“Nature is unbounded,” says Bayfield gently. “It is our duty to contain it.”

Audubon’s face registers his scorn. “Once contained, it is no longer nature!”

“I am not certain I will grant you that, sir,” says Bayfield. “It is nature but nature brought under man’s influence.”

“It cannot be both,” announces Audubon savagely.

Bayfield subsides. He is a little in awe of this strange man.

D
INNER IS OVER.
The five men stand on deck. The ship rolls. The demoiselle Gulnare arches into the gloom. And at this moment, because it is their moment, the cusp of day and night, the birds pass. There is the sound of an urgent whirring of wings as a long line of eider ducks heads majestically out to sea. The artist looks up, exultant.

“There is one final hour of daylight,” he says. “I must get back to my birds.”

Song

N
o sooner does he put his foot on the red and grey shore rocks than he hears the magical song. A little like that of a canary and resembling a wood lark. But more beautiful than either. Perhaps a finch, but more vigorous than any finch he knows. He hears it and then it is gone. He stops and stands silent to hear the song again, and when he does, it is coming from another bush, a farther grove; he moves toward it stealthily and as fast as his legs can take him.

The bird’s song draws him around the shore. Odd, to be chasing a song. It strikes the ear and gives pleasure and then it dies away. The singing bird flies from one tree to another as he walks underneath.

The song is unknown to him, and beautiful. The song is louder, stronger and more wild than that of the canary. It is the most beautiful song he has heard on this continent.

Following the song, looking upward, he loses his way. This happened when he was a boy, in France. But he always got the bird in the end. Wanting to know what was inside it, where the song came from, he took it back to D’Orbigny, and they took it apart. That is how he learned what a bird is.

If he ever learned.

There is tame song and there is wild song. Tame song is beautiful, but wild song is haunting.

The bird, alone amongst creatures, has song within its being.

Song has been given to the bird to attract its mate, and perhaps to remind man of what lies beyond. The song can be a warning, or a call,
but sometimes, Audubon believes, the song is play. A bird may sing for the joy of it.

Bachman has accused him of having a poor ear for birdsong.

His English, too, retains its odd French accent and rhythms. Yet he is musical; he can play the flageolet. What does it mean to have no ear for birdsong? Perhaps only that he cannot remember it. He can never recreate the song, later. He cannot imitate the birds’ song.

The bird is singing out its essence.

What does the bird’s song mean?

Perhaps it means nothing except this: that the singer and the listener come to each other with need and hunger in the joy of being made of flesh and air.

And then it is over.

The end of the song is present in its beginning and all through it, and this too is its beauty. There was no other possibility than this, and hence no blame, no hurt.

He shoots. The song stops. A tiny feathered dart falls from the treetop to the ground.

He searches the spot but cannot find the bird.

At Last
THE WIND

T
he
Ripley
slides beyond the shoals. Godwin and Audubon are on deck. The wind from the open water slaps both men across the back as they stand beneath the crossbeam, the painter looking back at Little Natashquan and the pilot looking to where they are going, and back again, to be certain of their progress through the gap. They have left the
Gulnare
behind. Bayfield’s schooner trembles within reach of the lethal black arm of granite lying in the passage.

“He’s taking the west channel out.”

“He can’t get through there. He ought to know,” says Godwin. “He surveyed the damn thing yesterday.”

The naval schooner tacks, hangs, swings about and appears to be turning back.

“You see? She can’t get out,” says Godwin with satisfaction. “Even the damn Royal Navy surveyors can’t get out. You’re bloody lucky we’re still afloat.”

“Where’s Captain Emery?” Audubon scans the deck, casts his eyes up the rigging and sees Emery’s reassuring legs descending. The Yankee captain jumps the last two yards to land beside Audubon; Emery is grinning in his confident way.

“That’s done it,” he says.

Godwin turns his back. “I’ll be heading out to sea. I’ll try to manage this rotten coastline no more.”

“I asked him to stay close to shore, Captain Emery. But it seems our pilot would prefer to take his instructions from you.”

“Gentlemen,” says Emery mildly.

“Plenty a’ birds on the islands,” interjects the pilot. “The painter can see ’em.”

Each man now having become third party, they speak to and through Emery, who turns his head politely first one way then the other.

“On the islands? There’s gulls and gannets. That’s about it.”

“Perroquets too. It’ll have to do ’im. I’m not bringin’ this ship to ruin.”

“This man said he knew the coast.”

“No one knows this coast,” says Emery gently.

“I’ll tell you what I know,” says Godwin, growing louder and more pugnacious. “This coast is bloody black hell on the water. And haunted into the bargain. You hear that howling at night?” His obdurate stance on the foredeck reminds the painter that, for the moment, the pilot has the upper hand.

“That howling is wolves,” says Audubon with asperity. He doesn’t like the sound much himself; he’d prefer the gentle hooting of a barred owl, for instance, such as he heard near Charleston.

“That’s another good thing about staying out at sea. We won’t hear the wolves.”

“Can it be that the one-time bodyguard of a New Orleans cotton speculator, a fighter of duels and trader in used muskets, is afraid of a wolf? You have charts,” he persists.

“Charts! You mean those rolls of paper? It’s no good pretending they can help. You can’t read ’em and sail too! Damn rocks lurking under the water popping up wherever. And that’s to say nothing of the fogs that choke a man and wind that tears at you ’til you’re mad. Charts don’t tell you about sailin’ blind. And who’s to know whether the depths was taken at low tide or high? Anyways,” he says with finality, “they’re all wrong.”

He gestures to the harbour they’ve just come from. The
Gulnare
has retreated. “Look at that! Just about hit, they did. You can bet the new charts your Royal Navy friends are making aren’t going to be any better than the old. Look! They can’t even get their ship out!”

“We’ve an advantage,” the captain puts in. “The
Ripley
can manoeuvre in less space. The
Gulnare
’s too big for that harbour. She’s
140 tons to our one hundred and she draws much more water. They know it. But they’ve got a job to do. As do we.”

“I’m just telling you that I won’t be getting us in to shore, not until we get to Ouapitagone,” asserts Godwin.

“Let it drop, then, Godwin,” says Captain Emery, genially. “You’ve won your battle, don’t you see?”

The wind has caught them fair now and, as if it subscribed to Godwin’s views, whisks the
Ripley
out toward the open. Audubon eyes the pilot with fury and then retreats to where Anonyme is chained. He takes the raven on his wrist.

“Godwin is making us sail in the open sea all the way up the coast to the next harbour,” he confides. “It is dangerous in the open, and we’ll miss the birds. There will be storms. We could be wrecked, out so far from land. This bodes ill.” He exaggerates the movement of his lips: “Bodes ill, bodes ill, bodes ill.”