Chapter 13 #3
Not that she didn’t like Georg Wilhelm. He was a polite, spirited man, a good conversationalist, a sought-after dinner guest, a man who talked with her about the natural sciences, notwithstanding that she was a woman, a weaker vessel and a weaker mind, as her first husband the naturalist Daniel Gottlieb had taken pains to remind her.
But Georg Wilhelm deigns to speak with anyone who is interested in grasses, birds and the nervous systems of mammals.
Daniel used to say that Steller would have made an excellent doctor had he not been such an excellent naturalist: whenever he set off to fetch some medicine, he was so caught up with classifying all the plants, insects and mushrooms he discovered that he was met with a grieving family and an already cooling cadaver upon his return.
Brigitta-Helena doesn’t just listen, she converses too.
She knows about plants, knows the pests that nibble at their leaves, she knows to protect her saplings with chalk and ash, and she is fascinated by molluscs too, the golden ratio spiralling from a snail’s moist body, its shell spun in a perfect Fibonacci sequence – how can such a simple creature perform such a mathematical feat?
Georg Wilhelm listens attentively, and eventually he proposes.
And thus the protégé marries his former benefactor’s widow.
It is only natural. Brigitta-Helena is used to Steller’s presence in her home, so Steller can continue her husband’s work, and this younger man will certainly make a change from the learned old man who used to ask her to rub his knobbly joints and fell asleep before his head touched the pillow.
After their wedding, Georg Wilhelm is given an assignment.
He is to be sent to Siberia, and Brigitta-Helena too starts to pack her belongings and bids farewell to their garden and arboretum.
The white and silk mulberries blossom only in her garden, and she gives her gardener advice far too many times.
Eventually Georg Wilhelm has to command her into the sled, and Brigitta-Helena curls up under the furs with tears in her eyes, but as the horses canter off Steller squeezes her hand, and suddenly she feels a faint, wild thrill.
First they travel to Moscow. Once there, they are to confirm their travel arrangements with the Sibirskii Prikaz, but the journey is long and the road in terrible condition.
Brigitta-Helena catches a chill, her feet feel numb and her skin becomes so chapped that she barely recognises herself in the mirror, but Georg Wilhelm seems oblivious to the dire conditions, he just talks about birds and clouds as though they were sitting in a grand parlour and not in an uncovered sled in the middle of a forest full of wolves.
Brigitta-Helena begins hallucinating about the endless cold, she wakes at night, her sheets damp and dotted with bugs, and upon arrival in Moscow she makes up her mind: she will not go a step further.
Georg Wilhelm rages and weeps, rages and weeps and prays.
He had imagined their journey together, imagined them climbing the slopes of uncharted mountains, identifying hitherto unknown species and in the evenings curling up together under warm fleeces, but this was his vision alone.
Brigitta-Helena’s science is the science of conservatories and greenhouses, she did not choose this journey, nor this brutal, lonely work out on the steppes.
Georg Wilhelm rages and weeps but eventually acquiesces, he will not stoop to forcing his wife against her will, and so Brigitta-Helena returns to St Petersburg.
Steller continues his journey alone, and in his diary writes the bitter words: “I no longer need my wife, I have the ravens (Corvus corax)”.
Waxell beckons the naturalist and the navigator and spreads out the map.
They are not in Kamchatka, but neither can they be very far away, the mainland must be only a few days’ journey away.
It is hard to imagine that an uncharted island could exist this close to a known settlement – after all, this is no piddling little crag either but a stretch of land ninety versts across and covered in hills – but their calculations cannot be out by much.
Khotyaintsov has seen some persistent mist to the south-west, hanging in place even when the weather is clear, and he believes this curtain of fog must be held in place by the Kamchatka peninsula and the mountains lining its coast. Waxell asks the navigator to measure the distance by the stars, to assess the ocean currents; Steller conducts calculations of his own, and the men compare their results.
Fleet Master Khitrov watches the men bent over their maps.
By rights they ought to ask his opinion, but they do not.
Waxell summons the men together, all forty-six who have survived the voyage, the sickness and the winter.
What next? They are alive, they have the easier, lighter days of summer ahead of them, but after the summer comes the autumn, and after autumn, winter.
They are the only people on this island, and had a search party been sent to look for them, the mission would have been abandoned long ago.
Still, the edge of the mainland cannot be far away.
Only a week earlier a piece of driftwood washed ashore, the sea had brought them a white-painted window frame.
There must be a settlement somewhere nearby, but their ship is in pieces and they have no wood to mend the damage.
One cannot cross the ocean in a dinghy, but they could dismantle the decaying wreck on the sandbank and use the timbers to build a new ship.
Two of the St Peter’s three carpenters are already rotting in their graves, but in his grace the Lord has spared the third.
The crew can either remain on the island, feast on sea cow and protect themselves from the elements until the last man perishes of the cold or old age, or they can build a new ship and cross the sea, and at least attempt to return home.
Thus begins a slow and arduous operation.
They row out to the wreck, remove planks from the old ship and pile them on the shore, and the carpenter slowly begins to put them together into a new vessel.
As work progresses, a faint inkling of the future starts to creep into their minds, and they begin to look at the foxes and otters with fresh eyes.
The helmsman rows a pack of cards back from the wreck, and the men begin to play, to win and lose.
During the day they dismantle the old ship and assemble the new one, but as the light fades they take out the playing cards, and animal pelts pass from one man to the next.
The following day, they hunt more animals in order to pay their new debts.
Summer has arrived, and hunting the foxes and otters is easy.
The animals have offspring now, and the female protecting her brood is an easy target.
They quickly strip them of their pelts and leave the carcasses to the mercy of the seabirds.
Otter meat is no match for that of the sea cow; the only specimens that find their way onto the men’s campfire are those expecting young or those that have just whelped, as their flesh is soft and fatty.
In the space of two weeks, the men skin nine hundred otters, leaving an endless banquet for the gulls and crabs on the shore.
Some of the men enjoy the taste of the whelps’ meat, and Steller observes the behaviour of the females who have lost their young.
They weep like small children, and their sorrow dehydrates them so much that their fur loses its lustre until there is no longer any reason to hunt them.
The otter is a most caring mother, she plays and frolics with her young such that Steller cannot help but smile, and in the moments when life on the island becomes too much for him, he seeks them out and watches them as they float in the water.
As he follows their antics, an amusing thought occurs to him.
The otter is as playful as a dog; he could tame a litter, a young otter accustomed to humans from birth would make a loyal companion indeed.
He could get a house and build a small pond for his otters, but as he gazes at their skinned bodies abandoned on the shore and draws in the stink of their dying, rotting flesh, he is forced to remind himself of the order of the world, and he shakes off the thought.
This is how God intended the matter. He created the world and its creatures under man’s dominion, animals best perform their role by benefitting mankind.
Steller does not take part in the games.
He has no interest in the cards and their unchanging odds, nor in whose pile of pelts is taller on any given evening.
His days have been calm and unhurried, he has spent his time gawking at sea cows, birds and otters like a simpleton, but now the skeleton of their new ship is beginning to take shape in the wash, and he reproaches himself, for his work is yet unfinished.
He must classify the birds, the grasses, minerals and mammals, there is still so much to do, and when he is asked to help build the ship, he initially refuses but is put to work against his will.
Will this drudgery never end? Why can’t he be left in peace to continue his work?
He dreams of being able to walk the length and breadth of the island irrespective of his duties and the time of day, able to observe every blade of grass, every bird’s egg, to draw up an exhaustive report and fold the island into his satchel like a glove, and whenever the ship builders berate him for how slowly he works, delight flickers in his breast – every setback means more time spent on the island.