The Extinction Club (32 page)

The first humans to pass through the Laurentians probably saw the last of this glacier. The Weskarinis? The Montagnais? If they did, they left us no record of what it was like. We haven’t found anything yet, at least.

I will now tell a story about St. Lawrence whales. In 1861, P.T. Barnum led an expedition to capture white whales from Quebec for his circus aquarium in Manhattan. In his autobiography he wrote: “On this whole enterprise, I confess I was very proud that I had originated it and brought it to such a successful conclusion. It was a very great sensation, and it added thousands of dollars to my treasury. The whales, however,
soon died.” So Barnum sent out his agents to capture two more whales. They soon died too.

In the Saguenay River, which flows into the St. Lawrence, there were once more than 5,000 beluga whales (“beluga” means “white” in Russian). When fishermen began complaining that these whales were eating their fish, the Canadian government put a bounty on their heads. Hunts were organized where sportsmen could shoot whales from boats. Like the way Americans used to shoot buffalo from trains. The population was reduced to about 500.

Today, when a St. Lawrence beluga whale dies naturally, its body is so contaminated that it’s considered hazardous waste.

I asked Nile if he was happy staying here with me and he said he was “on cloud ten.” Which made me smile and made me feel great. Especially after what happened. I’m not using it as an excuse, but I should never read novels, just science books. And never drink champagne.

Nile doesn’t know it but I’ve been listening on my headphones to the CD he gave me for Christmas. My grandmother would’ve hated it because she hated rock music but I like it. A lot. There are 3 songs I play over & over & over: “Foxy Lady,” “Purple Haze” & “All Along the Watchtower.” I’m also reading Nile’s book of poems because I kind of like Lewis Carroll, I have to admit, even though I’m 15. This poem was circled in pencil, probably because “The Mad Gardener” is SO much like Nile:

He thought he saw an Elephant,

That practised on a fife:

He looked again, and found it was

A letter from his wife …

He thought he saw a Buffalo

Upon the chimney-piece:

He looked again, and found it was

His Sister’s Husband’s Niece …

He thought he saw a Rattlesnake

That questioned him in Greek:

He looked again, and found it was

The Middle of Next Week …

He thought he saw a Banker’s Clerk

Descending from the bus:

He looked again, and found it was

A Hippopotamus …

He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four

That stood beside his bed:

He looked again, and found it was

A Bear without a Head …

He thought he saw an Albatross

That fluttered round the lamp:

He looked again, and found it was

A Penny-Postage Stamp …

Poor Mr. Llewellyn, I can’t stop thinking about him. I hope he’s all right.

I’ve lost my voice again. But this time I have a feeling it’s never coming back …

More later. Guess who just popped in. Nile from Neptune.
He’s heading my way, balancing a bottle & two wineglasses on a chessboard, like a waiter …

   XXI   

I
t was New Year’s Eve, a time for merrymaking and madcappery, so I proposed a game of chess. Naturally, I intended to go easy on her. Start with a Sicilian, but make it elastic. Porous, if necessary. She’s still in rough shape, still feeling bad about her drunken antics—wouldn’t want to break her spirit, poor thing. Especially when she’s lost her voice again, and is convinced she’s never going to get it back.

She was lying in bed wearing one of my T-shirts, writing or drawing in her
NOT TO BE READ UNTIL I’M DEAD
sketchbook. She would invariably close it whenever I came too near, which is what she did now. To the title on the cover she had added, in smaller capitals,
AND NEVER BY NILE NIGHTINGALE
.

Céleste reopened the book when I asked if she played chess, and under a nice sketch of a horse head, wrote in blue pencil:
You any good?

I set down my cut-glass goblets and Welsh grape juice and considered the question. Why be modest? “Well, let me put it this way—it takes a pretty heavy-duty computer program to beat me.” As a child in Baden-Baden I played a game of fast chess called Blitz with my father, in a park with chessmen bigger than me, and won more often than not. “How about you?”

She made a
comme ci comme ça
roll with her hand.

“You play much?”

Now and then. With Grand-maman.

“Ever beat her?”

Near the end, when she wasn’t … She probably let me win.

“Maybe I can show you a few things. A few tricks.”

Céleste reached for a vial of Voxangel, a voice-loss medicine whose label warned of such side effects as reduced alertness and impaired thinking. She took a swig from the bottle’s neck.
No doubt
.

Her king’s pawn opening followed by a move of the king itself might have sent a player less humane than I into wild, uncharitable laughter. Talk about unorthodox. An opening favoured by kindergartners. “Well, okay, I’m not sure … you know, whether that’s the best strategy …”

Let’s play it through.

“Fine with me.”

After a dozen moves with running commentary, as I was showing her how to bend a Sicilian defence into a variation of my own device, I was checkmated. Obviously a trap I’d fallen into while pedagogically preoccupied, something her grandmother had shown her.