Landfalls (35 page)

“Beautiful, isn't it?” Golikoff said.

Lesseps shrugged. “It's just as impressive on the Neva,” he said, “and the women are better-looking.” Seeing Golikoff's stare, he added, “In St. Petersburg.”

Golikoff rolled his eyes. “I
know
where the Neva flows,
barin
.”

A commotion at the water's edge drew their attention. They made their way through the crowd to find a dozen dogs had somehow ended up on a large ice sheet drifting out to sea. The dogs seemed quite unaware of their danger, placidly looking back toward shore as onlookers added their voices to those of the owners, a Yakut man and woman, who stood on the bank frantically calling to the dogs to jump to safety. Two of the dogs obeyed, leaping into the frigid water and swimming to land. But the others remained on the ice, growing smaller and smaller as they floated away, till in the glare of the rising sun it became impossible to distinguish them from among the thousands of ice rafts around them. They never barked or gave any sign of distress.

“Well,” Golikoff said, “is it enough of a spectacle for you
now
?” When Lesseps didn't reply, he turned around.
“Barin?”
Lesseps shook his head, unable to speak. Golikoff took his arm and drew him away from the crowd. “What is it?”

Lesseps found himself once again standing on a shore weeping in Golikoff's arms.

“You're thinking of your friends on the expedition,” Golikoff said.

“Those dogs—” Lesseps said. “It's like another presentiment.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The shipwreck in Bolsheretsk, those Japanese mariners, all the dead dogs—”

“You don't believe in presentiments.”

“I know. I don't. Yet—I'm starting to think some calamity—”

“Stop,” Golikoff said. “Your friends are safer in their ships than you are.”

“I know, but— What if I've come through all these dangers for a reason? Maybe I've been kept alive because they—”

“Shh,” Golikoff said, touching his hand to Lesseps's lips. “Don't.”

Back at the house, Golikoff and the governor's wife insisted that Lesseps take to his bed. A French-speaking Italian doctor who had somehow found himself in Okhotsk came and prescribed him a sleeping draught. Lesseps could hear the three of them conferring outside his door. “I have to get him back on the road,” Golikoff was saying. “He won't rest till he's delivered those dispatches.”

“I believe you're right, Sergeant,” the governor's wife said.

Sergeant?
Surely Golikoff had been a corporal when they first met. As he slipped toward unconsciousness, Lesseps wondered when Golikoff had been promoted. Did escorting foreigners earn one higher rank in the Imperial Army?

*   *   *

A month after their first arrival in Okhotsk, on horses still emaciated from their long winter famine, they left the town and headed inland. Lesseps assumed the much-traversed road to Irkutsk, though long, would be easier. It was not. His horse collapsed under him the very first day. Indeed, the roadside was littered with dead horses. Large black flies rose in clouds from the rotting carcasses to buzz in their faces with the stench of death. Then there were the river crossings—terrifying rivers roaring with winter melt. Sometimes they were obliged to use leaky, unstable floats to get across, risking life and cargo as they navigated the surging waters. The sun set late, allowing for long travel days. But with it came heat and biting gnats. Their Yakut guides burned horse dung to keep them away—a smelly but effective recourse.

The only respite was the pleasure of seeing new foliage after so many months of ice and snow. Lesseps felt as if he were seeing the color green for the first time, green in its infinite variety of hue and texture, green with its promise of life and survival. Sometimes, plodding along the muddy road or waiting for a river crossing to commence, assailed by heat and insects, Lesseps would fix his gaze on a spot of green in the distance and surrender every other sensation but that one.

Lesseps and Golikoff took turns carrying the dispatch box in Golikoff's large military satchel. One day, when Golikoff had custody of the box, his horse threw him off and into a large, rock-strewn puddle. He landed right on top of the satchel. He crouched over the road and clutched at his chest, but when Lesseps ran over and tried to loosen his clothing, Golikoff pushed him away. “The box!” he gasped when he recovered his breath. “I broke it.” Lesseps reached into the satchel, and indeed—the lid was askew, its lock bent, hinge broken. Golikoff covered his face in shame and wailed.

“It's all right,” Lesseps said, showing Golikoff that the contents were safe. “A little carpentry will put everything right. Are you sure you aren't hurt?” It was, he realized, the first time he had had to comfort Golikoff.

*   *   *

When they reached the Lena River at Yakutsk, they left their horses and took to boats, sailing upstream toward Irkutsk, a feat grimly accomplished by the labor of ragged, sullen convicts forced into service as pullers. The Lena and its banks shifted constantly: splitting in two, then splitting again, and again, widening into unnavigable shoals, then noisily converging. They floated through canyons defined by great limestone rock formations that looked like the ruins of some alien race, then through gentler regions of pine-covered hills and rolling grasslands, before finding themselves in barren, flat country between gravelly banks. And then the dramatic cliffs would resume.

Traveling by boat put him in mind of the expedition, of his friends on the
Boussole
and the
Astrolabe
. The commander would have been horrified by the slaves pulling their boats upstream. Monsieur de Lamanon would have loved the geological wonders on display—and taken pains to befriend the native guides. Captain de Langle would somehow have managed to remain clean and well-dressed throughout the ordeal. Lieutenant de Vaujuas would have known where they were, always, just by looking at the sky. He had not thought of them much lately. It was as if the dispatches and their delivery had taken on an urgency of their own, divorced from the actual persons they represented. It was July 1788. Where were his friends right now? What were they doing?

Beyond Kirensk they bade farewell to their Yakut guides and transferred to carriages, a return, at long last, Lesseps thought, to a comfortable, modern mode of travel. But the carriages were old and in disrepair, and the roads full of holes and rocks. Golikoff, still denying he'd been hurt in his fall, clasped his left side for the duration and moaned in pain whenever the carriage suffered a jolt. “This is how rich people travel?” he cried.

“No,” Lesseps said. “The rich travel in
good
carriages on
proper
roads.” He looked at his companion, whose face was drawn with pain and nausea. “Have you never ridden in a carriage before?”

Golikoff shook his head. “Never.”

“Your maiden carriage ride,” Lesseps said. “Take heart, Golikoff. It gets better after the first time.”

*   *   *

The driver told them they would reach Irkutsk that night. “Do you recognize anything?” Lesseps asked Golikoff. The soldier had grown quieter and quieter as they neared his hometown.

He sat up now and looked out the window. “It's been many years since I was here,” he said.

It was nearly midnight when they arrived. As they rolled up to the sentry station at the town's northern entrance, Lesseps felt his heart swell with joy and relief. Considered a small fortified town, Irkutsk nevertheless boasted a cathedral, a palace, and markets filled with tea, silk, and gold. Most important, it was the gateway to Europe. Good carriages could be had for the right price. The still-new Siberian Road would take him to Moscow, and from there, St. Petersburg. Barring some unforeseeable and unlikely catastrophe, he would make it. He would deliver the dispatches. He would get home. He would be reunited with his friends. He would publish his journal.

“We've done it, Golikoff!” he cried, turning to his companion and grasping his hand.

Golikoff returned the grasp in silence. In the dark it was impossible to read his expression.

Friendly sentries greeted the travelers and directed the carriage to a military lodging house nearby. But the lodgings master, a skinny man with a swollen nose, told them he had no orders to house anyone, and slammed the door.

Golikoff banged on the shut door until a beleaguered servant opened it again. “Excuse me,” Golikoff called into the darkness. “I'm Sergeant Igor Golikoff of—”

“Go to hell!” the lodgings master barked back.

“I'm conveying a Frenchman, member of an important expedition—”

“Not important to me!”

The door began to close, but Golikoff stepped up and jammed it open with his foot. “We have letters of introduction from General Kasloff, governor of Kamchatka,” he called in a loud voice.

“You can have a letter from the empress for all I care!” came the reply.

“We've come all the way from Petropavlovsk,” Golikoff shouted back. “We've been traveling almost a year!”

“Then you can travel a little longer!”

Lights blinked on in windows around them as neighbors woke to the shouting. “It's all right, Golikoff,” Lesseps called from the carriage. “We'll find somewhere else to stay.”

“No,” Golikoff said. He stepped back into the street and yelled, “I have the French ambassador with me! Will no one in this godforsaken town welcome him?”

“Golikoff—what are you doing?” Lesseps cried, cowering in the carriage.

Silence followed. Golikoff leaned against the carriage. “Now watch—something will happen.” He laughed mirthlessly. “God, I hate this place,” he added.

Another door nearby opened and a stout man with mussed hair stepped into the street. He ran toward them, still buttoning up his uniform. “I'm so sorry,” he said. “I'm the commandant here—who did you say you were?”

Lesseps stepped out of the carriage. “My name is Barth
é
lemy de Lesseps,” he said. “I'm not the ambassador, but everything else is true.”

The commandant's expression sagged only a little. Within an hour, Lesseps and Golikoff were housed in an elegant suite of rooms near the palace.

*   *   *

The dashing young Frenchman was promptly invited to all of the best houses in town. Lesseps was hard-pressed to keep up with social engagements while preparing for the next leg of the journey. For his part, Golikoff spent most of his time in their rooms. One day he reported to the local garrison that would be his home once he saw Lesseps safely on his way to Moscow. Otherwise he remained in the suite with the dispatch box at his side while Lesseps rushed about town securing transportation, obtaining passports and letters of introduction, and playing the part of amiable French diplomat.

“Are you actually from here?” Lesseps asked one night when he returned from yet another dinner and learned Golikoff had not left the building that day.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Why ‘unfortunately'?”

“Never mind why,” Golikoff said. Then he laughed and indicated the elegant furnishings around them. “These are the finest rooms I'll ever occupy,
barin
. Forgive me for enjoying them as long as I can.”

*   *   *

The night before his departure, Lesseps dined with a wealthy merchant who had agreed to convey most of Lesseps's belongings to St. Petersburg. The two men were finalizing details over a delicate poached fish and a bottle of French wine—the first Lesseps had drunk in almost two years—when a deep rumbling began, first as a sound, its origin unplaceable, then as a sensation visibly rocking the floor beneath them.

Lesseps caught his wineglass before it toppled and got to his feet, simultaneously alarmed and fascinated by the clattering of windows and the violent tinkling of the chandelier overhead. Servants rushed in to keep china and glass from rolling off the table. His host remained seated and unperturbed, silently regarding his pocket watch till the movement subsided.

“Almost one minute in duration,” he said, snapping his timepiece shut.

“A
minute
?” cried Lesseps. He sat down and gulped what remained of his wine. “Surely it was longer than that.”

“Time seems to stand still during earthquakes,” the merchant said, refilling Lesseps's glass. “Any great shock will do that, I find.”

They resumed their conversation, and Lesseps felt his pulse gradually return to normal, when another temblor struck, stronger this time. The servants rushed back in, one with the express task of keeping a longcase clock from falling over; the others extinguished all the candles. Riding out the movement in darkness increased its terror, but Lesseps realized the measure was to prevent a house fire from breaking out. He could hear bells pealing angrily through the town, the sound of breaking glass in another part of the house, a woman's shriek, and somewhere distant, a heavy, dull crash.

As soon as the shaking ceased and the safety of the household was assured, Lesseps made his excuses and raced back to his rooms by the palace. People filled the streets, exchanging stories with the exaggerated energy and cheer of near disaster. He overheard snippets about injured neighbors, a kitchen fire, a fallen turret, frightened horses that had run off. And then there was Golikoff, standing before their building, scanning the crowd, the dispatch box cradled like a child in his arms.

“Oh, thank God,” Lesseps cried, embracing him. He buried his head on Golikoff's shoulder. That particular combination, not unpleasant, of damp wool, cigar smoke, leather—for as long as he lived, he thought, he would recognize that smell as belonging to Golikoff.

Settled in their drawing room, where a chair had toppled but there was otherwise no sign of disorder, Golikoff poured a glass of clear liquor and handed it to his charge. Lesseps downed it, wincing against the burning sensation.