Chapter 2 #2
He peels off the skin, removes the rest of the innards, then drops the flayed body into a vat of water, and the process of decomposition begins.
Every morning, he changes the water and removes small pieces of flesh loosened from the bones, until all that is left are the bones.
Reconstructing a bird’s skeleton requires dexterity, precision and patience, but on this expedition he has no shortage of time – what a laughable scientist he is, examining the new world from his cabin, where all he can do is imagine the contents of these islands.
He brushes the skin with preserving solution.
Some scientists preserve birds by submerging them in fluid, locking them in barrels, drowned in alcohol, but this method quickly causes the feathers to lose their lustre: blackcurrant-blue, deer-brown, chantarelle-yellow and heather-red fade into a single soggy colour, and all too often the collector opens up the barrel only to discover that the alcohol has evaporated and all that remains of the birds is a foul-smelling sludge.
By using glass vessels, one can observe the birds’ state, but glass is always at risk of smashing.
At the university, his teachers had suggested using spices, they filled the birds’ stomachs with alum, ginger, pepper, myrrh and cinnamon.
The smell of these collections recalled the birds’ exotic origins, but despite their expensive innards, they too soon succumbed to fleas and their colour lost its brilliance.
Steller believes neither in alcohol nor spices.
Once long ago he came across a trusted recipe: five ounces of camphor, two pounds of arsenic, two pounds of soap, twelve ounces of potash, four ounces of quicklime, and the decomposition process stops altogether; this tincture he spreads on the skins, and with that the bird is beyond the reach of death.
He has no eyes. He will have to order some from St Petersburg, where the master glassblower will fill their eye sockets with small pearls, each complete with a tiny round oculus.
He attaches labels to their stiff legs, gives names to those that lack one, and arranges the birds in neat rows.
The seamen are horrified at his collection.
Blind birds, their eye sockets gaping and empty, but Steller simply laughs – these are nothing but lifeless, hollow skins.
He does not tell them that as darkness descends he too hears the flapping, the fluttering of dead birds on his shelves.
It must be this ship, causing an incessant superstition to spread from one man to the next like a plague.
A storm is coming in. They can sense it, there is a heaviness in the air, and rolling clouds begin to gather along the horizon like a great reef.
They decide to guide the ship towards the shore of a nearby island and anchor the St Peter in a secluded cove.
The crew takes advantage of the stop, sends a dinghy ashore to exchange stale drinking water for fresh, and the captain relents before an argument can get underway.
Steller is allowed to accompany the water-bearers, and he examines the shoreline, the creatures living in its sands.
At the edge of a small woodland, he finds a spring, a deep pool with clear water, where he washes his face and drinks.
After weeks of stuffy water, stagnant in its barrels, this tastes more magnificent than any wine or mead, and he drinks his fill, hurries back to the water-bearers and tells them he has discovered the best water on earth.
But the seamen have already filled the barrels, lowered them into a rippling rockpool near where they came ashore and let them bubble until they are full.
Steller is horrified. Can’t you see? The surface of the pool is rising and falling with the waves!
That means the two are connected somehow, that somewhere at the bottom the seawater and the rainwater mix together.
He orders them to light a fire, he takes a pot and fills it with water from the pool, boils the water in the pot and shows the men the sediment gathered at the bottom, the salt and limescale, but the rowers are tired.
They have no desire to start their task over again, and they ask the officers to make the final decision, which comes as no surprise to anyone.
The officers side with the sailors and dismiss the naturalist’s objections: water is water, regardless of where it comes from, and with that Steller fills his waterskin from the spring, his pockets with berries growing along the shoreline, and decides not to assist when Khitrov’s gums begin to bleed and his teeth start to fall out.
The wind dies down, and it is time to hoist the sails.
Before their departure, the navigator says he wants to measure the depth of the water by the shore, to mark it on the map to help the ships of the future, but the plumb slips from his hands.
The string slithers from between his fingers and spins down into the depths, and silence descends upon the deck.
Dropping the plumb is the worst of all omens.
They hoist the sails in silence, avoiding one another’s eyes, and the St Peter glides glumly on its way.
Steller writes up his notes, cleans and catalogues his instruments.
Four times a day he notes down the prevailing weather conditions, the forms and colours of the clouds, anything to take his mind off the sediment at the bottom of the barrels, and he gazes at the night sky, eager to know why it is that when one trains one’s eyes into the darkness, what at first looks empty eventually reveals tiny specks of light.
He asks the navigator to teach him the constellations, and he studies the sky, practises identifying the bears, unicorns, foxes and ravens that live there, Ursa Major, Monoceros, Vulpecula and Corvus.
To him, they do not look like animals, and he would gladly suggest some improvements to the system.
Back in Kamchatka, a local cooper had fashioned wooden hoops for their water barrels.
They had been expecting metal ones, but the metal never reached the harbour, it must have been forgotten about, or stolen and sold on, and now the hoops holding the barrels together are beginning to rot and fall apart in the ship’s damp hold.
The wood gives way and the water seeps through the gaps in the barrels.
Before long, the crew is running low on food, and they institute a system of rationing.
Each man is given his daily allowance first thing in the morning.
They wet the pieces of rusk with spittle, chew the floury mush first in one cheek then the other, swallow, and feel an instant pang of guilt: how had this mouthful disappeared so quickly?
Hadn’t he resolved to savour it a moment longer?
They had intended to return to Avacha Bay by the end of September to avoid the autumn storms, but as the weeks pass, the wind obstinately refuses to turn in their favour, and a sea dotted with islands can be treacherous.
Their progress is painfully slow. The end of September comes and goes, they are nowhere near the harbour, and then the gales start to pick up.
Khitrov closes the door behind him, and Bering slumps into his berth.
These days the fleet master reports directly to the captain’s quarters.
This is handy. Sitting by his desk, he can make a note of what he hears right away, and they can scrutinise the maps and decide upon the best route to keep the ship as secluded as possible in winds becoming more ferocious by the day.
If truth be told, the reason Bering does not climb the steps onto the deck is because the exertion makes him catch his breath, and on deck he stares at the fleet master’s lips without understanding a word he says.
A little rest is all he needs, a few days without exerting himself, then he will be himself again, but the tip of his tongue keeps prodding the gap between his front teeth and his tooth suddenly moves, his tongue touches the tooth, and the tooth and the root holding it in place give way, and Bering catches the taste of blood in his mouth.
He pulls his tongue away in horror. This cannot be real, he must be mistaken, he just needs some rest, a few days in bed and he will be on his feet again.
He stares at Khitrov and nods, hopes he is nearing the end of his monologue, and when the door finally shuts, he staggers to his berth, careful not to touch his teeth, and finds oblivion in sleep.
Able seaman Nikita Shumagin dies in the early-morning dim.
The crew wraps him in a sheet and buries his body on the shore of a nearby island, they dig a pitiful, shallow grave in the sand and name his resting place in his memory.
But Shumagin is merely the first of many.
Initially the men begin to feel weak and drowsy, then pale blotches appear on their skin, and they lose control of their limbs.
After this, it is not long until they stop breathing, and nobody names islands after them anymore. Death is just death, numb and endless.
On the twenty-sixth day of September, waves come crashing over the deck. The autumn storms have arrived.