Devoured (21 page)

Santubong

December 10th, 1855

 

Dear Katherine,

What a tonic this place is and what a relief to be lifted, as I have been, from my stupor. These gentlemen have ideas and are thinkers and I can hardly believe my good fortune, but they
seem happy to chat endlessly with me about everything I most enjoy and long to question. I cannot say we all agree with each other, but if we did, where would be the fun in it?

Emmerich is in his element. The orchids here are magnificent and our German professor is up and out before breakfast, coming back hours later, his breeches covered in mud, his hat askew, but his face beaming, a new and rare bud in his hand.

I, too, have my little excursions. The cottage of Mr Brooke is surrounded by fruit trees. Bright green buprestis abound, many of which I have spiked already and boxed. And as you would expect in his own lush gardens, something very special – the velvety
Ornithoptera brookiana,
named by Mr Wallace after the Rajah himself. What a creature. This butterfly looks like a bird, for it is large enough. Only yesterday, I went out for a short walk with Mr Wallace, and we caught one, not less than seven inches from wing to glorious wing. Wallace caught it in a trice. He’s quite the expert; with great care, he picked the fluttering insect out of the net in untarnished perfection. Its head is scarlet like one of your finest rubies and its wings are soot black.

Mr Brooke generally leaves his guests to do as they please. He holds his views on all things scientific and religious with gusto, but is still inclined to listen carefully to others, and let them have a view. He is a Christian of a sort, I believe, though it is rumoured that he keeps a Muslim wife. If he does, what of it? He is a fine gentleman and has no doubt as to the way of things and how the world should run and is a great believer in conversation, free speech, liberty – and so, by God, am I!

As I suspected, he’s a very fine chess player and can argue a point of theology quite lucidly whilst calling ‘Checkmate!’ and quite confounding his competitor. I have learnt to listen. And what conversations are these. They speak freely here on every subject, Katherine. Politics, morality, religion. Nothing is spared. Not even the question of Creation.

But Emmerich takes little interest. He is the Master of Tiny Things, but on questioning the bigger picture, the place of life which we all inhabit, he seems happily oblivious. I say happily, because although it’s exciting to ask questions about the Nature of things and Man’s place in the world, it is also a burden. And for me, this burden became almost unbearable in Empugan.

But Borneo is not like London, where our intellectual questioning is contained. Here it is different. In the forest, the mind constantly asks the question, ‘And to what purpose?’ Life stripped to nothing, laid bare to an emptiness which has left in me only doubt. I have found no absolute answers here. But I do know this. We move about like ants. We follow a pattern. We start and finish. We are at once bursting with life like the forest, but then, when it ends, we are hopelessly hollow.

This is where my mind runs to, if I let it. And always back to Ackerman. He is less than a pupa now. All spent and come to nothing. I still hear his voice, Katherine, in my head. And his whispers stay with me and taunt me. Where is God? Who are we?

But it is good to be here with Mr Wallace because unlike this novice, he has been in Indo-China for two years now and his
work has only just started. He has plans to travel east as far as Macassar, the Aru Islands, and New Guinea, where he is not only bent on collecting extraordinary specimens that I could only dream about, but where, I gather, he will be testing some scientific theories on transmutation, which is an interest we all share.

I could listen to Mr Wallace forever. He is not The Intellectual, but perfectly practical in his outlook; his ideas are grounded in statistics and fact. He is a very utilitarian collector and for that I admire him all the more. He is quiet and steady and looks rather like a local parish priest with his huge beard, gangly frame, and spectacles. I have my doubts, however, that Wallace is a God-fearing man. Dare I confess that Mr Wallace and I are of the same mind on the subject of religion? But if I share my concerns about God, Katherine, am I putting you in danger? I fear I am, and yet, I know you welcome such conjecture.

He is resting here, in Brooke’s cottage, and preparing for his great trip east having already catalogued thousands of new species. I have seen some of his drawings and classifications. They are extremely impressive and he keeps them in a series of green leather-bound books. He is very careful as to their whereabouts and at any given hour in the day checks them with acute agitation, as if they might disappear at any moment. He never talks about it, but I have it on good authority that he lost everything once in a shipwreck, costing him thousands. Now that is loss. Incalculable loss, and I can only admire the tenacity
of a man who didn’t give up, but who gritted his teeth and, like a true collector, went on to gather up treasures again.

Although he is bookishly silent sometimes, and ponderous, clearly he sees more than just the science and the cataloguing. He sees the world around him and all of us in it. And he has passion. A considered, quiet passion which burns.

Last night, for example, we sat together admiring the stars. There are so many foreign constellations – Aquarius, Aquila, and Capricornia. We picked them out to test each other, and I fared better at this game than at chess. It was just the two of us. Both English collectors, a million miles from home.

At first, he talked of nothing but specimens. Their numbers, their characteristics, their locations. Plants, birds, insects, invertebrates, mammals, shells, even interesting rock formations, minerals, and stones.

I listened intently as he shifted his talking to more than numbers and creatures. I had heard his arguments before, when Brooke would slap him down and call him a heretic. But I had not really heard them at all. Until now.

He sat back in one of Brooke’s old swinging chairs which the Rajah had brought here from India. Covered comfortably in a pile of cushions, he had the best seat of the two of us and slowly lolled back and forth with it creaking as he puffed on a slim cigarette. He offered me one. It was Javanese tobacco, the very best.

He said that Brooke’s cottage was to him, after so long travelling, sheer luxury. To play chess, to swim, to have
everything done for him, allowed him time and leisure. I had to agree with him and I said so. My own time in Borneo had been short by comparison, but I, too, felt the need to recover. And this little spot was perfect for quiet contemplation. He nodded at me and said that he had been able to make notes here, which, when he had time, he would craft into a paper and send to England, to the Entomological Society and his agent, a Mr Samuel Stevens.

Of course, I pushed him on the notes and their meaning. He said he was happy to tell me and that he welcomed another’s view and opinion. It seems that since he has been in Borneo, Wallace has been gathering evidence. That such a huge variety of species found in such specific locations, found nowhere else on this earth, could only mean one thing. That species could not be immutable. I agreed with him. I had read Lamarck, I told him. He looked troubled, and stressed that what he thought was beyond that.

He suggested that species had altered, over many, many years, like Lyell’s rocks forming in layer on layer. Evolving and shifting, changing and moving, adapting to their particular world. Brooke, when Wallace had suggested this (and yes, I had heard him), had only bellowed, ‘So, we are all the orang-utan’s brothers, Alfred? Is that what you are saying? You’d better have the evidence, or half of England will skin you alive.’ I laughed almost out of politeness to my overbearing host, but Mr Wallace was stony.

So I sat down that night on a spindly rattan chair and I listened. For some reason, as he talked, it seems ridiculous now,
but my eyes grew hot. Quite unprompted and strange. And I felt held to my chair, frozen. The black velvet sky hung low and leaden. The night was Godlike, heavenly, omnipotent. I think it was The Truth that held me rooted there, Katherine. His words like a beam of light. He had answered Brooke at the time. And he answered me now. It was such a simple answer, almost lost in a whisper. ‘No,’ he had said then at the chess game, and to me now repeated, alone, ‘Not brothers, but cousins.’ Cousins. Like you and I, Katherine. Everything about Borneo, that night and before, shouted out loudly. And its noise was deafening. Whirring cicadas, the low melancholic echo of tree frogs, a breeze through the stirring leaves lifting and fluttering, the hiss of a moth wing burning.

All of it, Katherine. All of it, bound up together, related and connected. Birds with fish. Fossils with flowers. Think on it. Share it. Of all people, Katherine, you can do this. Your influence is greater than you think.

I know Wallace is right. He is gathering evidence which will rock the world. And his thinking has not stopped at these connections and transmutations of life. He believes that at the core of this adaption is a force of nature. And that force is the pain and struggle to survive. It is only the best and the most perfected of the species which moves on to the next stage. The weak are left behind. That, in short, Nature is brutal. Not just.

And after this time in Borneo, I must agree. But then, what are we left with? The ebb of a tide, our so-called faith, withdrawing. A swirling vortex of nothing. A world without God.

He has given me some essays to look upon, not quite complete. Some half-finished notes, some hurried illustrations. Some penned ideas, which even in their unfinished form entice me. He is the master of absorption and has read so much that we have shared, but Wallace shines a light on these works which I had not, until now, understood. William Lawrence, Thomas Malthus. But he is so unconnected, Katherine. He is shy and he is awkward, a man obsessed with his work and not caring for, or even knowing, Society, but I think here we could help him.

Wallace is not a man to keep ideas or his passion back. His excitement for Nature is almost like religion. He confessed to me that when he finds a rare, undiscovered specimen, his excitement is so overwhelming that he feels he is close to death.

And it will not surprise you to hear that for the last day or two, Mr Wallace and I have given up on chess, for there’s another game in play, which if we could win it, would be a prize worth having. But this game’s not static like figures on a chessboard, but is ever-changing, swirling in the sky and moving in the depths of the forest. It’s dipping in the water and basking on the rocks. Each wondrous creature I observe seems so utterly perfect, so suited to its designated place, and there’s such an infinite variety that I have to ask myself, can all of this be God’s work? Were all these creatures made in the blink of an eye?

 

I have so much to send you. Your house will be overflowing with the most marvellous specimens. But you will have your own opinion on all of this, Katherine. Of that, I have no doubt.
But Katherine, when I beg you to share this knowledge, I also beg you to wait, wait till I return because these thoughts are too embryonic and I will need to think on it. Wait for my return from Borneo so that we can work on this together. I know how impulsive you can be. Let’s take our time because there are many who will not take kindly to such thoughts. We know who they are. They sit in The House and they rant from pulpits. But there will be many others who will welcome us. We will have your soirees and your parties, fear not! But you must wait until I’m back in London and I have my wits about me as to how best to proceed with these ideas. You will be at the centre of the vortex, Katherine. I promise you. You will be the eye of the storm.

Yours etc.

Benjamin Broderig