The Discovery Of Slowness (23 page)

Jean-Baptiste and Solomon Bélanger were brothers who didn't like each other. A third Bélanger had been a sailor who had been killed in the Battle of Trafalgar. ‘Sharpshooter?' John asked, biting into a zwieback but keeping it quietly in his mouth to be able to hear the answer. ‘No, gunner,' answered Solomon. John resumed his chewing.

Vincenzo Fontano hailed from Venice. The only Indian among the travellers was Michel Teroaoteh, an Iroquois of the Mohawk tribe.

Among the Copper Indians, next to Akaitcho, Keskarrah, the scout with a bulbous nose, was most conspicuously memorable. He had an unbelievably beautiful nineteen-year-old daughter who remained in the mind of every man in the expedition
without any effort. Of all people, deep-thinking Dr Richardson was the first to direct his fascinated eye to her knees, murmuring something like ‘Divine creature' and trying quite openly to impress the line of her thighs upon his mind. With the explorer's privilege he named the maiden by what he saw: Green Stockings. Midshipman Hood, too, riveted all his sense of detail on Green Stockings. He now saw only her, and she seemed to him different with every move she made: the bold nose, the black hair, the proud curve from chin to ear. Hood filled his sketchbook with these drawings. To rivers and mountains he was hopelessly lost.

For days they paddled up the Yellow Knife river. The Indians did not hunt enough, and since, in violation of their agreement, half the tribe stayed with the chief and used up many of their supplies, John began to worry. When Akaitcho insisted that the ammunition he had been given had been lost when a canoe capsized, John realised that it would make little sense to become angry. His system provided that one must believe what each person says. He rationed what was still on hand and allowed only as much powder and lead to be distributed as was needed for each individual hunting-expedition. At the end of the day, the hunters had to hand in either the game or the bullets. Akaitcho didn't like this, but John presented these new rules to him so calmly in a very slow, deliberate speech that he could not feel offended.

One could gain strength from the beautiful landscape. It even helped against fatigue and blisters. At least the eye was finding nourishment when hunting and fishing by net brought poor results. Two partridges and eight gudgeons – that was bad. Three dozen hard-working people ate a lot. The
voyageurs
bore the main burden in carrying boats round waterfalls and rapids, and they were therefore the first to find the landscape picturesque no longer. Rivers were beautiful when they flowed broadly and smoothly. Forests were delightful when they revealed reindeer tracks.

As food continued to be scarce, open rebellion broke out. John
listened to the
voyageurs
for half an hour without saying a word, then declared that he knew full well that he was demanding superhuman efforts from them. Any man who didn't think he was up to it was free to return home with no danger that anybody would be angry with him. ‘This is an expedition like no other,' John said, and wrinkled his forehead because it had suddenly occurred to him that Nelson's address on the
Bellerophon
had begun with the same words. In any case, it worked: the
voyageurs
, despite roughness and alcohol, were still something like Frenchmen. If he had dressed them down, they would have left, but this way it became a matter of honour. They went back to work.

Akaitcho complained that the expedition was making too little progress because of the burden of gifts they were carrying for the no-good Eskimos. He warned of a possible early start of winter: even now a thin cover of ice was visible on dead arms of the river in the morning, and it was only mid-August.

Hood was so much in love with Green Stockings that he had a hard time even managing his hours of guard duty. All day long he thought only of ways to get closer to her and at least touch her little finger. ‘If it goes on this way,' Back remarked sarcastically, ‘he'll expire from love. He's going to simmer away before our eyes; it's got to be put out in time.'

Back's behaviour changed from day to day, and always for the worse. He started to shout at the
voyageurs
. He talked about Franklin behind his back – Hepburn had hinted at something like that. He believed the Indians were undependable, thievish and mendacious, and declared this more and more openly. Worst of all, he talked in an unbearably obscene way about Green Stockings's visible and invisible features and how he was going to demonstrate to Hood how to make use of them.

When John asked him to respect Hood's feelings for the good of the expedition, Back looked at him insolently. ‘Respect feelings? What kind of advice is that coming from you of all people, sir? Many thanks!'

Just what I feared, John thought. First he loves me, then
he hates me. He knows no boundary between acceptable and unacceptable feelings; this is sad and dangerous. But he knows how to draw. Green Stockings modelled for a portrait, and he painted such a good picture of her that Keskarrah became worried. ‘It's too beautiful. When the Great White Chief sees this, he will demand her for himself.'

About Wentzel, Back said, ‘Now that's a real German. Everywhere in the world you see them standing around brooding about why they can't get a move on like anyone else. And most of the time they try to prove that the reason is their intelligence, and then they start to teach the rest of mankind.'

John had long ceased to react to each of Back's remarks – on the quiet his first choice was now Hepburn. But this time he replied, ‘It's the problem of slowness, Mr Back. And Wentzel really knows a thing or two.'

At a lake the Indians called Lake Winter the travellers remained for a few days, built a blockhouse as a base for a possible return trip, and provided themselves with game to salt and even convert into pemmican for the long haul up the Coppermine river. Night frosts became more severe. One morning Akaitcho announced that he opposed continuing northwards in this season. ‘The white chiefs may do so, and some of my young warriors may accompany them so they won't have to die alone. But as soon as they climb into their canoes, my people will mourn them all as dead.' Cautiously, John pointed out the discrepancy between these words and other words the chief had spoken at Fort Providence. Akaitcho replied with dignity: ‘I eat my words. Those were words spoken for summer or autumn, but soon it will be winter.'

Back fumed about the ‘savages' and their false promises. Even Dr Richardson started to talk again about how Christian culture would do these primitives a world of good. John would have still liked to reach the Coppermine river and perhaps even the sea. He thought it over for a whole night before he said anything. In the morning he knew that Akaitcho was right when he feared a 198 · franklin's domain ·
atastrophe in an area so poor in game and wood. Indians had frozen and starved to death before up there – Wentzel told of the death of entire camps. John announced to the chief that he was grateful for his kind and wise counsel. They would spend the winter here. Akaitcho bowed contentedly, as if he had not expected anything else, but he was very glad that John had given in and became downright talkative in his pleasure. John discovered that he was held in great esteem by the Indians because they believed he spoke often with the spirits of the dead: they had observed him when, in thinking about something, he laughed apparently without reason and moved his lips.

The blockhouse was named Fort Enterprise. It would remain their home for at least eight months; that much was sure. And the officers knew at last why the Indians had called the lake Lake Winter four days earlier.

Back began to woo Green Stockings in an intentionally crude and insolent way. Apparently, he wanted to prove something again. Meanwhile, Hood had reached the point of holding her hand now and then, and gazing into her eyes; he did not let himself be pushed to adopt a faster pace, even by Back. John suspected that there had been words between Hood and Back, but if so it was without success. Back didn't stop touching Green Stockings to point out for which details of her person his compliments were intended. Sometimes he made her laugh, but John was almost sure that she rather detested Back.

One evening, Hepburn reported that Messrs Back and Hood had agreed to a duel the following dawn. This was no laughing matter. John didn't doubt that Hood was serious, and Back was sufficiently vain to push the matter to the limit. John ordered Hepburn to use the 12:00-to-6:00
A.M
. watch to stuff the primers of the gentlemen's guns with pemmican. Then he spoke with each of them individually – they promised to be reasonable. Hepburn nevertheless did as he was told, and successfully. The next day at least one partridge owed him its life.

John Franklin had the excellent idea of sending Back together
with Wentzel to Fort Providence to look for the expected delivery of supplies. Sullenly they departed. All at once peace reigned in Fort Enterprise.

The Indians hunted. The women sewed winter clothes. During the time he did not devote to Green Stockings, Hood built an excellent stove, far more economical with wood than an open fireplace.

Hood loved this Indian girl more and more intensely. His eyes filled with tears of pleasure when he saw her again after only a few hours of separation, and sometimes no one saw hide nor hair of them for days. Akaitcho and Franklin exchanged not a single word about it – they held the situation to be too unusual to drown it in obvious protests – but they talked of many other things: the compass, the stars, the signals with which whites in one big canoe communicated with those in another, Indian feasts and legends. John wrote down one or another of these. The
voyageurs
cut down trees and built a second hut. It became cold frighteningly fast. Akaitcho had been right.

Weeks passed. Now and then John sat in front of the hut, bundled in heavy clothing, looking at an autumn storm sweeping swarms of the last leaves off the branches. John picked out a specific leaf and waited for it to fall. Often this allowed him many hours of aimless and unhurried contemplation. A warrior brought letters from Fort Providence. Back and Wentzel had not found the supplies and had now gone on to Musk Ox Island, where they were supposed to be waiting. There was also a letter from Eleanor: ‘To Lieutenant Franklin, Commander of the Land Expedition to the Arctic Ocean, c/o Hudson's Bay or Elsewhere.' Graceful, good Eleanor. John saw her before him, talking constantly to everyone about everything. For her the world was language, and therefore, in her view, there had to be a great deal of talk. Still, Eleanor was always pleasant and without malice; perhaps she was the woman to whom he would best like to be married after all. She could bear years of her husband's absence well, for she had the Royal Society and her literary circle. Of course, there were also other women – Jane Griffin, for example, Eleanor's friend, equally curious and
well-read but with longer legs – and she didn't write poetry. When John noticed that his mind wanted to dwell on the legs, he quickly put Jane Griffin out of his head. Need came easily to a man here in the wilderness, and it was not easy to help oneself; the bedstead of reeds and furs made noise at the slightest movement. Everyone except Hood suffered greatly. There remained only stalking game by oneself in the forest. But God and the Indians saw everything. Once, when Hepburn returned from a hunt without spoils and pretended not to have seen any game, old Keskarrah with the bulbous nose said to Saint-Germain with a stolid expression, ‘There was game enough, but perhaps what the white man had in his hand wasn't a rifle.' Since tact was not his strength, Saint-Germain passed this on to Hepburn, who was at first annoyed, then in the end had to laugh himself.

John took up Eleanor's letter again. She asked him to check whether the pantheism of the Indians could be compared to that of the Earl of Shaftesbury. A paragraph on Shaftesbury's teachings followed. Then she again returned to the theory of the melting polar ice: the increasingly dry weather of the last few years spoke for it. Between London Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge, John read, the Thames had dried out completely during the last winter. It was possible to cross it on foot and find hosts of odd things sailors had thrown overboard in the course of centuries for fear of customs inspectors. They included even a silver christening font of very Catholic appearance. Near the end of the letter she wrote: ‘A fortnight ago there was a ball at the Thomsons'. Oh, if only you had been there, dear Lieutenant.' Eleanor loved to dance quadrilles, and always ‘con amore'. John loved not to dance at all best.

In the evenings John talked more and more often with Richardson. The doctor was pious but not a bad fellow. He wanted to know the truth. If he was told the truth he could be tolerant. While he firmly believed that the doubter John would have to be converted some day, he tried it also with questions, and with listening, and that was not a bad route to choose with John, if one had the patience. On Monday evening Richardson asked,
‘Aren't you afraid of nothingness?' And John was thoughtfully silent until Tuesday. Then the doctor asked, ‘If there is such a thing as love, doesn't there have to be a pinnacle, a sum total of love?' But now John answered yesterday's question: ‘I'm not afraid because I can only imagine nothingness as rather quiet.' He remained silent about love for the present. On Wednesday evening they talked for a very long while, this time about eternal life. As Richardson spoke of the prospect of seeing lost people again, John became so much interested in this subject that he entirely forgot his answer to the question about love. Looking at Hood, love seemed to him to end up more in a kind of sickness than in God.

‘Some people are engaged in going, others in coming. Whatever comes fast, goes fast. It's the way things look through a carriage window: nothing and nobody is spared. More I don't know.'