Landfalls (31 page)

“Well—” Lamartini
è
re began. “I expect Monsieur de Lamanon will have something planned for us.” He frowned, hearing how dependent and ineffectual he sounded, still deferring to Lamanon after what had happened.

“Not tonight, he won't,” Dufresne said, smiling. The two marines tittered.

“Why? What's happened?”

“I was on the
Boussole
this morning to collect these two gentlemen and the first of these bundles, and Monsieur de Lamanon was—how to put this?—
expostulating
with Monsieur de Lap
é
rouse.”

“A shouting match it was,” one of the marines offered.

“A shouting match?” Lamartini
è
re said.

“There was some disagreement over when Monsieur de Lamanon would be permitted to return to shore,” Dufresne said.

“Indeed?”

“The commander said Monsieur de Lamanon couldn't leave the
Boussole
until three o'clock,” Dufresne explained. “And when Monsieur de Lamanon—uh,
resisted
this notion, the commander said in that case he could stay aboard till tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, no,” Lamartini
è
re said, trying to sound sorrier than he felt.

“Then it got worse,” the other marine said.

“Worse?”

Dufresne looked over at the marines with mild disapproval. “Monsieur de Lap
é
rouse tried to mollify Lamanon by inviting him to lunch with the consul”—he inhaled noisily again to indicate Vieillard—“who was coming from Macao with Captain de Langle. But when the party arrived, I'm afraid the consul made the mistake of addressing Lamanon as—well, as
you
.”

“As
me
?” Lamartini
è
re felt his face flush. For once it was not an altogether unpleasant sensation.

“I'm afraid so.”

“‘Good afternoon, Monsieur de Lamartini
è
re, it's a pleasure to see you again, sir,'” the first marine said, imitating the consul's gravelly voice.

“Didn't take it too well, our chevalier,” the other one added.

“Chevalier?”

“That's what he likes to be called,” the marine replied.

Yes, he does, Lamartini
è
re thought, recalling Lamanon's oversize, ornate signature on each of the offending letters:
Chev
er
de Lamanon
.

“And off he stalked,” the same marine said, finishing the story.

“I'm sorry, Lamartini
è
re,” Dufresne said, “but you may be quite alone till tomorrow.”

“What about Father Mongez?”

“He's staying aboard in … unity, I suppose, with his friend,” Dufresne said.

“That priest don't do anything without the chevalier's say-so,” the first marine said.

“Come now, that's enough,” Dufresne said, but he looked back at Lamartini
è
re with an expression that acknowledged the soundness of the marine's judgment.

Lamartini
è
re hardly knew what to think. He had not expected to end up alone in Macao, but the image of Lamanon storming about impotently on board, unable to leave when he saw fit, then subjected to the humiliation of being mistaken for someone he considered a lesser man and savant—oh, he could not help it. He threw back his head and laughed, and, freed by his reaction, the other men joined in.

As soon as the sampan pulled up to the quay, three Chinese porters, drawn by the sight of the bundles next to Dufresne, ran over to vie for their delivery, shouting prices in Portuguese. Dufresne pointed to one man and waved the others off, then joined the chosen porter and the two marines in wrestling the cargo off the boat. Lamartini
è
re stepped ashore behind them, watching the hubbub, trying to catch Dufresne's eye to say goodbye, feeling both pleased and regretful for the late amity that had sprung up between them as they crossed the harbor.

He began to edge away toward the street that would take him to the Rua de S
ã
o Louren
ç
o, when Dufresne called out: “Lamartini
è
re!”

He turned.

“Will you join me for dinner tonight?”

“Certainly.”

They arranged for Dufresne to call on him at seven o'clock, and Lamartini
è
re headed down the street. Till he turned the first corner into a narrow, canyon-like street hemmed in on either side by tall buildings, he could hear Dufresne and the marines and the porter shouting to one another over the furs. What was it about human beings, he wondered, that they thought cultural barriers might be crossed simply by yelling? This was not a trait limited to civilized men. He had seen it everywhere—Spanish colonists, missionaries, soldiers, mestizo servants, Indian guides, Easter Islanders, Alaskan natives, Chinese boatwomen—all shouting to be understood, so angry when communication failed.

These musings brought him to the Rua de S
ã
o Louren
ç
o and the narrow three-story house he had departed the previous morning, never suspecting he would be away so long. A window above was open, a lace curtain peeking out with the breeze, but he half expected no answer to his knock. With their temporary occupants suddenly gone, the servants were likely to have absconded for the day. The wizened watchman opened the door immediately, however, as if he had been standing on the other side just waiting for someone to return.

“Monsieur Lama!” the man cried.

Lamartini
è
re frowned.
Lama?
“Oh, close enough,” he said, following the servant inside. He tried to explain that a friend would be calling at seven, that they were going out for dinner, and that none of the others would be returning before tomorrow. The watchman nodded energetically, but Lamartini
è
re suspected the man had not understood a word.

Upstairs, he was pleased to find his room aired out and fresh water in the ewer next to the basin, and even more pleased to find his belongings exactly as he had left them—his clothes in the massive mahogany wardrobe, his books dusted but otherwise untouched, his pocket microscope undisturbed in its box on the bedside table. Eager to change into fresh clothes, he removed his hat and wig, then his coat and waistcoat, and was undoing his cravat when he heard a hissed conversation outside his room and, opening the door, found Sophie holding a tea tray and the watchman pushing her forward.

Sophie! He had all but forgotten her. She stood before him now in all her languid beauty, swaying slightly, eyes downcast, hair carelessly piled up on her head and half spilling down her neck. She seemed to be wearing only a white silk petticoat, the gauzy fichu thrown over her shoulders quite insufficient to complete the dress. Mesmerized by this vision of alluring dishabille and keenly aware of his own state of partial undress, Lamartini
è
re realized that the old watchman, understanding perfectly that Lamartini
è
re would be alone the rest of the day, was offering the amenities of the house accordingly.

The old man barked something in Chinese and poked Sophie in the back. She took a step into the room, but was so unsteady that Lamartini
è
re rushed forward to relieve her of the tea tray. Setting the tray down on a small walnut table, he led Sophie to the leather-upholstered chair next to it. She fell into it like a dead weight.

“What's wrong with her?” Lamartini
è
re demanded.

“Sophie little sleepy,” the watchman said.

“She's not ‘sleepy,'” Lamartini
è
re said. He leaned over the chair and tipped her head back. “Sophie, open your eyes.” She complied, smiling absently at the sight of his face over hers. Her eyes were so dark it was hard to make out the pupils, but then he saw them, a black pencil dot in the center of each iris. He took a handful of her hair and sniffed it. “She's been smoking opium,” he said, recognizing its sweet pungency.

“No, no. Only sleepy,” the watchman repeated, then bowed his way out of the room, winking once before shutting the door.

Lamartini
è
re regarded the woman slouched in the chair before him and wavered between anger, repulsion, and lust. What had the watchman been thinking, bringing her to him in this state? It was a terrible imposition. Yet her presence also felt like a gift, some recompense for the vexations he had suffered. He thought too of Lamanon, who might or might not have been with her the day before, and he could scarcely believe the happenstance that now left
him
alone with her.

His fingers were still in her hair, and he could see the slow rise and fall of her breasts beneath the fabric of her shift—the slow breathing another sign of intoxication, but a bewitching one. He sat on the floor next to her and lay his head in her lap, his heart pounding—in sharp contrast to her own slowed pulse, he thought, taking her wrist to check, unable to stop acting the part of medically trained man despite the roar of desire coursing through his body.

He had not touched a woman in two years. Some of the men had consorted with women in Chile or in Alaska, but he had not, constrained by—by
what
, exactly? His own reputation for fussy rectitude, he suspected. He did not have the resourcefulness to seek out such enticements himself, and had never been offered any because his shipmates assumed he would disapprove. They were right: he
did
disapprove. He disapproved mightily even as he allowed one hand to slide down the length of Sophie's leg, caressing it through the silk, then slipping under the skirt and moving back up, this time along the stockinged leg itself, past the garter then along her bare thigh, its warmth and softness overwhelming compunction.

When he tried to put his hand between her legs, she stirred and opened her eyes, looking down at him without recognition, alarm, or pleasure. He gazed into her dark eyes with their opium-pinched pupils and thought of the purposeless eyes of his
Pennatula
in their vials aboard the
Astrolabe
. Perhaps they needed their eyes only long enough to identify their host. He slipped his other hand under the skirt and gently pried her legs apart. She shut her eyes again and offered no resistance. Hosts rarely knew when they were being encroached upon, of course. It was a linchpin of the parasitic relationship. His breath caught in his throat when his fingertips reached the warm, furred center of her. He raised himself to his knees, the better to move himself over her, and pillowed his face against her breasts, still thinking—indeed, unable to
stop
thinking—of the
Pennatula
and his hypothesis that they burrowed into their hosts early on and grew once inside. But now he found his fingers pressing into dry, unyielding flesh. Another symptom of opium use: lack of sexual response. But could one really call it that if the nonresponsive party seemed unaware of the ministrations being applied? He felt himself deflating, body and mind, and tried to rally himself to the task. Reaching behind Sophie, he pulled her forward in the chair, then raised her skirts, the better to see and smell and taste her. A little moisture applied to the right place and he would be able to see it through. But now his head filled with the memory of the difficulty he had had removing the parasites from the sunfish, how he had accidentally beheaded one of them, extracting its back end while leaving the tip buried in the fish, and he drew back with a groan of repugnance and defeat.

The sound—and perhaps the suddenly cooler air around her—roused Sophie from her torpor. “So nice,” she said breathily while attempting to straighten her petticoat. The falseness of the sentiment, and her apparent ignorance of what had just happened—or
not
happened—mortified Lamartini
è
re almost as much as the failure itself and elicited another groan from him. “I like too,” she said, her words slow and slurred, deepening his misery. She tried to sit up. “I pour you tea.”

Lamartini
è
re scrambled up from the floor. “No,” he said, placing his hand on the porcelain teapot and wincing at the heat. “You're in no condition to handle hot water. I'll pour it.” Stilling his guilty hands by force of will, he poured out a cup of the steaming green liquid. He blew across its surface and brought it to her lips. “Sophie, you must stop using opium,” he said.

Her lips fluttered open to take a sip. “Monsieur Telli say so too.”

“Monsieur Telli?” He urged another sip.

“Other Frenchman.”

“What other Frenchman?” Did she mean Lamanon? One of the priests? She turned to him with drowsy eyes full of sadness, and then he knew: the Frenchman who lived here before, the one who killed himself. He had heard the man's name once—Theiers? Thierry? “Monsieur Th
é
rien?” he whispered, and she nodded.

“This his room,” she said.

“What?” He looked around suddenly, knowing alarm to be irrational but feeling alarmed all the same.

She smiled, but not with mirth. “I forget I not suppose to tell.” Her accent in French was so odd, neither Portuguese nor Chinese. Sino-Iberian, he thought it could be called.

“I don't mind,” Lamartini
è
re assured her. He made her drink more tea, then finished straightening her petticoat for her. “It's not as if Monsieur Th
é
rien died in this room.” He noticed her sudden stillness. “Did he?”

She remained motionless, her eyes fixed on the wall just above the headboard of the bed. He saw now that one of the panels was new and did not match the others. But the man had killed himself at the beach; the agent had said so. “Sophie—” No, he would not ask. He did not wish to have his suspicions confirmed.