Beasts of the Sea A Novel #5
Constance has at her disposal a figure sketched with a few pencil lines and a set of bones, and she must imagine the rest, but she needs more information to guide her imagination.
She wants to learn, and she is thrilled at how thoroughly shocking Wolff finds the idea.
She wants to learn the bones’ names, to understand the strictures and structures hidden beneath feathers and skin, she wants to hear how guts are removed from a body, eyes from a skull.
She wants to know how the sea cow is put together.
Wolff is forced to introduce the governor’s sister to an animal about which he knows nothing, and all the while she uses him like a dictionary.
What is this bone, and that one, and Wolff sighs and thinks of the statue he once saw in a museum when such diversions were within easy reach.
He does not usually care for the arts, but that sculpture spoke to him.
He stood in front of it and looked on as demure, bare-chested creation revealed itself to the watchful eyes of science, undressing humbly but without shame.
Nature’s cloak was fashioned from beige marble, her fulsome breasts from even whiter stone, and as he gazed upon it, Wolff understood his calling: the slow, thrilling unveiling of nature’s secrets.
And now this imbecilic woman wants to unveil it with him!
There is something untoward about it, something lewd, a woman undressing another woman, but he cannot refuse, she might complain to her brother the governor, and so Wolff meekly obeys but makes his displeasure plain for all to see.
The sea cow briefly cheers Hampus up. The bones that the Aleuts brought back are a rare piece of good news, and in the evening he joins his family for the first time in a long while.
He asks Anna to report on the children: has Annie been behaving, is Otto Edvin’s cough improving?
Constance comes down to the salon too, and Anna notices how pleased she is to see her sister-in-law.
She hardly sees Constance in Sitka, and if it weren’t impossible she might imagine herself actually missing her company.
She is worried about Hampus. He has begun to suffer from headaches, terrible migraines that make his eyes water and banish sleep and badly needed rest, and at nights Anna lies in bed listening to her husband dragging himself around his study, pacing in a circle like a restless animal.
Meanwhile, Constance simply hides herself away with her collection and would rather stare at the bones of a marine mammal than support Anna in her tribulations.
Today, Hampus reads to his family. There are rumours that gold ore has been located in the north, and now he is obsessed with minerals and rocks.
He reads from Chambers’ geological treatise and enlightens his family regarding the structure and history of the Earth’s crust. Anna cannot remember the last time she lost herself in a book.
Before coming to Alaska, she used to spend her days reading, but nowadays she can manage no more than a few lines from the Bible or a recipe in a cookbook.
As lady of the house, she has no time for novels, and she prays that the children will not inherit her love of music and poetry.
A constant, practical mind would be best: a person with such a mind will not suffer upon ending up in a place like this.
Anna has never considered rocks. To her they are dead objects, they are already fully formed and, as such, unchanging, but Hampus reads aloud, Anna listens to Chambers’ words, and the geologist shows them how even the smallest pebble in the garden reveals a story of great change.
The minerals layered one upon another inside the stone tell of upheavals and cooling magma, of continents pushing against one another and of periods whose sheer length shrinks a human life into insignificance.
Anna listens and pictures the animals and plants in their rocky graves, wing bones and the ribs of leaves preserved in layers of sediment as they are pressed deeper and deeper into the earth.
She thinks of the dinosaurs she saw at the Crystal Palace, and for the first time she senses why Constance enjoys spending her time surrounded by dead animals, consumed with her catalogues.
If so much can be contained within a mere rock, imagine how much must be hidden within a once living creature, a deer or a duck.
Hampus cannot remember the last time he succeeded in anything, but now the bones of the sea cow have found their way to him, and he is filled with a renewed sense of energy and purpose.
He has found a lost animal, succeeded in an endeavour many had thought was doomed to failure, so why should he not succeed again?
Perhaps the colony can yet be saved, if only he tries hard enough, works hard enough.
He intends to present the sea cow to the delegation, for is its discovery not an indication that, given enough time and resources, he is capable of even the most demanding tasks?
He summons Wolff. He needs proper scientific evidence to enhance his presentation, and to this end he has asked the taxidermist to gather information about the sea cow.
Wolff steps hesitantly into the study. He can tell that what he knows will not please the governor, but he does as he is told and puts together everything he has learned.
The illustrious Peter Simon Pallas added his description of the sea cow to the list of species found within the empire, though he hesitated to do so.
The sea cow had not been seen for almost a century, so Pallas sent his young colleague Martin Sauer in search of these lost mammals.
Sauer sailed the northern seas for almost a decade, but even he could not find the sea cows’ famed island.
Eventually, Sauer reached a grim conclusion: the fur hunters have brought the sea cow to an end.
Upon hearing this, the governor is taken aback.
Wolff is silent and glances furtively around, but Furuhjelm implores him to continue, and Wolff hurriedly adds how ludicrous he thinks such a claim to be.
The governor may take comfort in the fact that Pallas did not believe his assistant either.
The scope of his Zoographia reflects the scope of the empire, its list of species the empire’s grandeur, therefore how could he possibly suggest that the greatest of the animals depicted in his work has been eradicated by the actions of the empire itself?
This is a story that Pallas did not wish to tell, so he added the sea cow to the pages of his work and told Sauer to hold his tongue.
However, Sauer did not hold his tongue but published an account of his travels, and inspired by this, the Encyclopaedia Britannica dared to print the contested hypothesis that the sea cow had indeed become extinct.
It is an extraordinary assertion – that man could be to other species as great a threat as an asteroid or a flood – and when he sees the governor’s expression, Wolff stresses that researchers are far from agreed on the matter.
In fact, the eminent dinosaur scholar Richard Owens himself refutes the claim as utter nonsense: the account of one incompetent assistant is not enough to upend our understanding of life and death, of man and beast. The governor nods: hardly a coincidence that it was the British who came up with such a claim, they are always more than eager to cast our colony in a bad light, and Wolff laughs along with him.
Furuhjelm thanks the taxidermist for his report, but Wolff does not yet take his leave and remains standing in the study, nervously fidgeting.
Furuhjelm is filled with an ominous foreboding.
Is there still something he should know about the matter?
Wolff curses to himself. Why is he the one who must bring the governor such bad tidings?
Why is he not leading an expedition in the Tierra del Fuego, but instead standing in this stuffy study like a schoolboy brought before his master?
He pulls himself together and spits it out: Sauer did not hold his tongue, and now he is suggesting that the next creature to meet the fate of the sea cow will be the otter.
Furuhjelm waits until the taxidermist’s footsteps have faded down the stairs and holds his head in his hands.
As Wolff was speaking, that familiar tingling returned to his temples.
Now the pain is throbbing behind his eyes and for a moment he gasps for air like a dying fish.
He has sent men to seek out the otters, forced them to scour ever more distant coastlines, ever more inhospitable wilderness, but they have always returned empty-handed, and now he no longer knows where to search, what to do.
All he can do is pray that Sauer is mistaken.
Did not Linnaeus himself once write that animals are like the tide, at times in short supply in any given place, at others plentiful, but that ultimately the population is stable?
This must be true, for if the otters and the walruses do not return, their colony will be doomed.
Wolff eventually completes his work. The sea cow’s bones have all been measured, cleaned and catalogued.
Finally, he can return to his workshop, his birds and pine martens, their familiar bones and hides, forms that he knows and understands.
Wolff asks Constance to inform her brother that his wishes have been fulfilled, then he rushes off.
He wants to get as far away from Constance and the beast she guards so closely as he can, and heads to the tavern for a well-earned drink.