Creation (16 page)

He finishes Tom Lincoln’s Finch. He cannot remember its song at all. Johnny and Tom Lincoln never found the mate of the little bird they shot, and now the mating season is over: it will not sing again this summer.

In a rainstorm, he watches as a black-backed gull takes a young duckling from a nest, flies to a high point, and drops it on the rocks below. Not satisfied with his kill, the gull seizes the duckling, flies up and drops it again.

Audubon is tired of waiting. He has no time, no time to waste. Wind and water seem designed to hold him back. They do not see the
Gulnare
again.

Then Johnny shoots a white-winged crossbill on a bunch of grass growing out of the fissure of a rock on a small island.

He knows the bird when Johnny brings it in, a beautiful male, its red back, head and chest gleaming against the white patches on its wings, and its sharp curved beak giving it the look of a Renaissance cleric. He recognizes it as the little creature that rode for a time on the rigging like a herald the night he first met Captain Bayfield.

“Ah, you,” he says to the almost weightless mystery in his hand, “we’ve caught up with you at last.” He remembers the dry, rattling
chuck chuck
of the entire flock as it settled in the masts of the
Gulnare
. And the solitary
trreeeee-ker-treeee-ker-treeee
that it makes on its own, a rising trill when it is on its way.

How small the bird is! Yet its migrations are enormous. In this tiny body is the strength to cover one quarter the globe. It is clearly at home here, a true northerly creature. It can lay its eggs and raise its young even in January.

He begins to work. The red darkens into the shade of dried blood the second his back is turned. He wires it, quickly, in profile, with wings down and half outspread to best show the lovely egg-shaped white patch on the top of the wings. This white has a sickle of black across it, a curve that is echoed in its beak. He portrays the curious beak open, in profile. The upper bill crosses over the lower when closed and is razor sharp, this strange twisted bill slate grey with a blue tinge. Beside the beak are bristles of yellow. The iris of the bird’s eye is hazel and weirdly human. The back feathers are that lovely pinkish red and sometimes crimson, with black tips. The white spot is absolutely pure, such a whiteness he cannot replicate. The feet again are different, the golden brown of pine sap.

In fact the bird is nearly a rainbow. And the female, which Johnny brings in later, is entirely different, dark yellow with grey and white bands, her feet more brown than red, and her bill the same. The young male is yellow like the female but will grow redder and redder as it matures.

He makes notes in the margins, notes which are directions for Havell. And he paints, mixing the watercolours he has brought with
local tinctures from berries, which are never quite true, and coats them with egg white to make them shine. He has never been able to make paint do what he wants it to do.

Hours pass: he notes them only by the way the light moves across his paper. Drawing is a meditation to him. His hand imitates every line of the posture in which he has arranged the bird’s wings, tarsis, bill and feet; he outlines each feather fastidiously. This very absorption allows his mind to rise freely to another plane, to the place where there are no lines. His hand moves without his conscious guiding. The force with which he applies the paint is the same force that joins him to the bird. He feels the bird’s joy and terror. He knows its sufferings and its obedience to waters and heavens. He wills his bird beauty. And it is good, this one.

At noon, he rises from his chair, one hand on the small of his back, the other on the back of his neck. He climbs the ladder out into the day and takes the food the cook brings him. He can see the young gentlemen resting on a bit of flat rock not far from the schooner, catching the sun while it is high, and eating their dinner. He rests his plate atop a barrel, but he does not sit. He chews with little awareness of what he is eating, taking in fuel because he knows he needs it to keep warm, to keep alert, to work.

Anonyme struts and preens, making it clear that he must be dealt a large measure of deference by the rest of the menagerie. The greedy gannets make their awkward quarrelsome way in the wake of the cook, who walks the deck dropping kitchen refuse behind him. For these handouts, they now compete with the young of the black-backed gulls. These junior predators are growing every day, their feathers darkening to take on the sinister aspect of their elders. One of them has begun to chase Johnny’s pointer. The bemused dog backs across the deck while the bird, still walking clumsily, menaces with its bill.

These pets seem suddenly oppressive to the painter. He recalls a series of them, birds that have been taken from the wilds and come to live amongst men, birds with names and even characters, amusing, tolerated, subjects of study, objects of affection. Come to think of it, they all met with a bad end. The Canada goose the boys called Google that lived
in the dooryard of the log cabin in Kentucky. And the wild turkey cock they took in, which came to its name and was known to all the neighbours. Lucy tied a red ribbon around its neck, so that any man who got the bird in his sights would know it was theirs. But the ribbon only postponed its inevitable end, and someone other than themselves ate it.

The charm of his shipboard menagerie is utterly lost to him. He cannot abide the waddling, quacking, peering, preening, ordure-dropping presence of the fowl. It is as if he is being watched, judged and even, perversely, captured by their presence.

He finishes his lunch quickly and, although reluctant to leave the deck when the sun is high, descends again to the hold and takes up his pencil and his brushes.

A
FTER HE SAID GOODBYE
to Maria and boarded the revenue cutter
Agnes
for Florida, he found himself on a dreadful trip. Florida was hot and dry and sandy; the birds were wily, and the ship’s captain hostile. He returned to Charleston with only a few drawings and no new species. He’d been gone two months and he hadn’t shaved. He had been thinking the whole while of her.

“You look like a bear,” she said.

They walked in the garden, accompanied by the dawn chorus. The voices of the birds wove in and out of their own, which were heavy with feeling. Two rows of balcony windows from the back of the house looked down on them. Any of the children, the slaves, or John Bachman himself could look down on them. He overflowed with words, and the wonders that until this moment had been lost on him.

“I must tell you something. Up the Halifax River the unearthly Roseate Spoonbill sits high in a tree like some giant hothouse flower bending the branches. Or feeds in the shallows, its wide green bill swinging from side to side. Then there is the little Green Heron with its neck pulled aggressively into its burgundy chest. Best of all is the Yellow-crowned Night Heron with its jaunty striped cap, who flew ahead of the boat from branch to branch.”

Maria was so small she reached only to his middle chest. She smelled of roses. She always did. He bent over her so he could speak
softly and so, when she answered, he might not miss a word. And she listened, listened, watching his eyes and his throat where the words came out. She did not look at his lips. To him, they felt electric, they were so aware of her nearness.

“The pink of the Roseate Spoonbill,” he murmured, “is like the roses over the arbour where I first sat with you; the yellow of the Yellow-crowned Night-Heron is as lemony and pure as the sound of your voice; and the plump chest of the Green Heron, where its soft plumage blends into a sumptuous wine colour, is like that other breast on which I would die to lay my head. At the end of the day the Mangrove Swallows go mad, swooping over the surface of the river. As I thought I would go mad until I saw you. Then a rainstorm broke, a downpour, without wind, simply splashing out of the heavens, and it was as if I had given in to my longing for you. Then, magically, in the clouds on the horizon appeared two rainbows one overlapping the other. I thought we might by a miracle be together.”

“Good morning, Audubon!” The call came from the second storey of the house. The painter straightened without haste, and turned back to hail his host.

“And good morning to you!”

The preacher was in his bathrobe.

“Are you just wakening? I have been up for hours.”

“And my sister too? Are you tiring her?”

Maria looked up at her brother-in-law impishly, too modest to call up to the second floor of the house.

“We are here in the garden!”

Had he spoken too plainly? Of course they were in the garden. Where else would they be? It is obvious they were in the garden; Bachman was looking right down on them. “We are looking at the myrtle tree to copy it.”

“You are teaching my sister then? You know she’s most willing!”

H
E FOLLOWED HER
into the brick outbuilding that housed the kitchen, overflowing with the fall produce from the garden. Rows and rows of tomatoes on the sideboards were waiting to be put up, and the
cook, whose name was Venus, was sweeping the stems and leaves from the floor. Venus’s brother, Adonis, poured water, brought in a barrow from the garden well, into the great stone sink. They sang as they worked, in a language he did not understand. He stood awhile, watching; Maria moved so quickly and with purpose.

She was absorbed in washing the giant French artichokes. The beautiful swelling leaves with their nib-like points turned and turned in her hands. She pulled off the crêpey, purple blossoms and set them aside. She pulled off the outside leaves, continually turning the bulb itself. The vegetable was a flower, its centre unrolling in her hand, like the inside of a rose. He grew dizzy looking at it. He tried to tell her what he had been thinking.

“Maria,” he said, “I am mated, like the birds. That is nature, as it must be. Lucy is my dearest friend, my partner in life. She is part of me, and part of my work. I need her; I have a right to her. She is my wife, but part of me still longs.”

She took the purple blossoms and put them in a thin muslin bag. Their curves and points showed through the fine white net.

“What is longing?” she said.

“I may still fall in love with another woman. I may woo her with my words, with my art, with my dreams. Do you understand? I have a passion for you.”

“If you had, you would come to me.”

“No, Maria, you did not say that.”

“You are right. I did not.”

“We are what we are. You are a spinster. I am a married man with a family. I look after them. They are my life and they help me with my work.”

“And I?”

“You help me too.”

“Is that all?”

“I desire you.”

Venus placed a large saucepan of milk on the stove to heat. Maria pulled a cloth from her waist and placed it over her head. She slid it backwards to secure her hair. As she tightened the cloth into a knot,
the slanted bones of her cheeks and the hollows beneath them stood out starkly. Her head was an elegant skull. She retrieved the translucent sack. The purple of the blossoms was darker — he could see it palely through the sack. She crossed on her small feet to the stove, holding the sack high over the saucepan, and then began to let it down. The pile of artichokes with their endless folding intricate centres sat beside the sink. He felt himself sink under the surface.

“And why are you drowning the blossoms in the milk?”

“To turn the milk sour.”

“Why would you want to sour the milk?”

“It is what I must do. It is my work.”

“But why? I don’t understand.”

“To make the slip for dessert,” she said, turning to him and laughing.

A
NOTHER DAY THEY SAT
in the rain under the giant magnolia tree, on the bench that encircled its trunk.

“Desire,” she said. “That intense wanting that seizes the body.”

“You know of that?”

“I suppose you think that I, a spinster, should be ignorant of it?”

He bent his head, to hide the proof that she was right. “Tell me what you know of desire.”

“Desire burns through the frames within which we live. Desire is the defence of the sinner and the redemption of the prodigal.”

He looked up at her again.

“And something more. Desire makes a place in the world for people who have not got one.”

“We all deserve a place in life.”

“Yes. Even the spinster sister.”

Even John James. Fougère. Jean Jacques. Monsieur Newhouse. Jean Rabin. Even the motherless boy.

S
HE SAT,
trim in her brown bodice, across from him at the study table where they worked. The sun fell through the casement windows onto his back. It illumined her face, which was not beautiful but clean
and fine. She was painting the trumpet-creeper, which she had picked earlier that morning in the garden. Her yellows and reds, her pinks, were sharp and full blown. She had spent hours mixing the colour exactly, but she used it sparingly. The blooms were imperfect, different, richly curved, the flowers lush, lolling, wide open.

The trumpet-creeper was a love letter from Maria to Jean Jacques.

It was exquisite. And bold. He could not speak.

He took the watercolour from her and began to place his Black-throated Mango Hummingbirds on the vine. He positioned the birds in and about her blooms, playful, ecstatic, hot, tropical. The birds were large, they seemed larger than life. Dizzily, they approached the flowers from all directions; one was upside down in the top left-hand corner, another had his entire head buried in a flower. A third flew in from the side to touch the outer curled lip of flower with his long narrow beak; still another rode triumphant on top of a pink fully opened blossom.

“Do you see, Maria?” He placed females upright and half hidden. The males were more exuberant and fully stretched out. The wings, the body, were stopped as if for a fraction of a second in their constant, tremulous flying. The flight of the birds was as true to life as he could make it. The blossoms and the birds were perfectly balanced; one knew the birds were weightless in their excitement. The flushed insides of the trumpet flowers matched the fuchsia of the birds’ underparts. It was rapture, this collaboration of bird and blossom.