This Thing Of Darkness (38 page)

At the Rio Macaé, where they had to swim alongside the horses to ford the torrent, they came across a gigantic rock rising from a plain of rhododendrons.

‘That is where a gang of runaway slaves hid out, not a year or two back,’ related Lennon. ‘They were all recaptured, except one old woman, who, sooner than be taken again, dashed herself to pieces from the summit.’

Darwin shuddered. The forest was a cruel environment, there was no doubt of that. Everywhere one looked, strangulating creepers twisted about each other like tresses of braided hair, each fighting to squeeze the breath from its adversary. Luxuriant parasitical orchids drank the fluid of their victims with dainty care. Lianas crawled over the rotting corpses of fallen trees, the trunks split and gaping open in the fixed attitudes of death. He felt torn between a sublime devotion to the God who could create such marvellous beauty, and awe at the cruelty of Him who would devise such a world, founded as it was upon a pitiless struggle for survival.

They slept the second night at Ingetado, following a hearty meal of
feijão
beans and farinha flour. In the morning they rode past a lagoon, many miles from the sea, its shores a mass of broken shells. Was this the proof of the Biblical flood that FitzRoy was so keen to establish? Darwin collected specimens, delving under logs and stones, chasing pale fat worms through clammy leaf litter, and peering into the rainwater traps of bromeliads in search of gaudy spiders. In a pile of decaying wood he found a wriggling heap of gorgeous orange-and-black flatworms, like striped and dandified slugs. But these were sea creatures! What were aquatic
planariae
doing here, so far from the sea? He had discovered a species new to science, he realized, but what was the connection between these land flatworms, their marine cousins and the flood? His brain whirled with possibilities.

They spent the third night in the
venda
at Campos Novos, where the innkeeper had learned a smattering of English and was keen to practise his skills.

‘What have you for supper?’ Darwin enquired hungrily.

‘Anything you choose, sir,’ the man replied grandly, his fingers spread upon his belly.

‘Thank goodness for that! So, is there any fish you can do us the favour of giving?’

‘Oh! No, sir.’

‘Any soup?’

‘Oh! No, sir.’

‘Any bread?’

‘Oh! No, sir.’

‘Any dried meat?
Carne secca?’

‘Oh! No, sir.’

Lennon laughed like a drain. ‘Welcome to the Brazils, Mr Darwin.’

After an interval, it was established by one of the Portuguese members of the party that the innkeeper could offer either
feijão
beans or
farinha
flour, or both.

On the fourth day the forest thickened and the showers closed in, and the little mulatto guide had to hack at the fronds with a sword to clear the path up into the high hills. Finally, towards the end of the morning, they reached Lennon’s
fazenda.
A large bell clanged out and a cannon was fired to announce the arrival of the
senhor,
and a crowd of black slaves rushed forth to be blessed by the white men. A neat slave-line formed up in starched white smocks, to sing a Catholic morning hymn of the most sublime harmonic sweetness. Lennon lived like a little god here, Darwin realized, his wealth untold, his power absolute. The Irishman smiled and invited him on up to the house.

The
fazenda
proved to be a white-painted two-storey mansion with rustic blue shutters, a thick reed roof and a wrought-iron balcony, which sat on a gentle rise under a permanent blanket of low, sticky clouds. Even here, nature’s myrmidons kept up their ceaseless assault: tree roots slithered across the courtyard, blotchy green mould insinuated itself beneath mirror-glass, while the opposing forces of mildew and whitewash grappled for possession of the walls. Dogs, baby chickens and little black children ran left and right through the ground floor of the house. Piles of banknotes lay aimlessly about the heavy gilded furniture, comprehensively chewed through by grubs.

‘Nothing I can do with it,’ remarked Lennon, indicating the money. ‘Nothing I can do to stop it,’ he added, with reference to its gradual consumption. ‘I have everything I want here, without recourse to money. Take some, if you like.’ Darwin declined as politely as he could.

A servant showed him to his room on the first floor. There were rifles mounted on the walls, a cast-iron cot in the corner, and no glass in the windows. In the dark, gloomy wardrobe were two jars of yellow fluid, the pickled grey snakes inside coiled lifelessly against the glass. He changed, laid out his sweat-stained clothes to be washed, and descended the stairs once more. Lennon had been joined by a short, spherical, olive-skinned Portuguese, and his younger, heavily made-up female equivalent, who had squeezed herself into a liberally frilled dress.

‘Mr Darwin, I have the honour to present Dom Manuel Joaquem da Figuireda, my partner in business, and his daughter Donna Maria. Donna Maria is married to Mr Lumb, a Scotchman.’

Lumb, who had the lugubrious air of a half-asleep walrus, moved from the shadows to shake Darwin’s fingers, but said nothing. Darwin sensed that Lumb had seen in Donna Maria a match to improve his financial situation.

‘Do you ride to hounds, Mr Darwin?’ asked Dom Manuel, unable to conceal a grin.

‘Of course, Senhor. What well-born Englishman does not?’

‘Excellent. Then tomorrow we shall have a hunt.’

‘You have hounds, here?’

‘We have five hounds,’ said Donna Maria, in the clipped accent of one who has carefully studied a foreign language. ‘Trumpeta, Mimosa, Clariena, Dorena and Champaigna.’

‘But what do you hunt? Surely there are no foxes!’

‘Monkeys, Mr Darwin. We hunt bearded monkeys!’ Dom Manuel cackled and clapped Darwin on the back.

‘You see, Mr Darwin, even here in the Mata Atlantica there is no aspect of civilized society that we cannot replicate,’ smiled Lennon. ‘Would you care for coffee?’

Coffee was kept bubbling continuously in a big black skillet on the iron kitchen range. Presently, a small greasy-fingered black boy appeared with a full jug and several cups, and handed one to Darwin.

‘Pray excuse me,’ said Darwin, with a trace of embarrassment.

‘Would you mind if I exchanged my cup? There is a fingermark.’

Immediately, Lennon picked up a riding-crop and lashed it across the little boy’s head, not once but three times. The child screamed in pain and terror. A red rivulet streamed from his nose, and across his upper lip, before dividing into smaller streams between his teeth; he fled sobbing from the house, a further coffee-cup tumbling with a smash as he ran. Darwin sat frozen with horror. Dom Manuel and his daughter continued to smile as if nothing had happened. Lennon, as charming now as he had been before the attack, offered his apologies: ‘I’m sorry for the slave boy. Those people know no better. There are too many damned kids about the place. I think I shall sell some of them at the public auction in Rio.’

‘The children will be sent to market ... separately from their mothers and fathers?’ Darwin was still stunned, so his words came out slowly.

‘Oh, they are well used to it, Mr Darwin. Savages do not enjoy the same emotional closeness as we civilized people.’

 

They rode out the next morning, past the long, low sheds housing the hundreds of plantation slaves and the little stone chapel adjoining. Black huntsmen in maroon jackets rode ahead, to encircle the forest wildlife and drive it back towards the guns. Then an old Portuguese priest in a wide-brimmed hat blew upon a hunting-horn, and the main party moved forward. Before long they ran into the squawking, whooping mass of monkeys, parrots, toucans and other creatures that had been corralled towards them, all of which were unceremoniously blasted out of the sky. The monkey’s prehensile tails tightened as they died, so their corpses hung farcically from the branches while the huntsmen rode around in circles beneath, trying to bring them down. Darwin did not enjoy his sport. The episode with the slave boy had affected him badly, and he was keen to return to the coast.

The next day, he seized the opportunity of accompanying the mulatto guide back to Rio de Janeiro; they took a different route, heading for the only ferry crossing on the Rio Macaé, riding in silence on account of the language barrier, which Darwin felt was the least of the divides separating them. He collected an insect that was disguised as a stick, a moth that was disguised as a scorpion, and a beetle that was disguised as a poisonous fruit, but his heart was no longer in his work.

When they arrived at the riverbank, a powerful black ferryman stood to attention alongside a rudimentary raft, a punt-pole held aloft by his side in the style of a medieval pikeman.

‘Onde você gostaria de
ir,
Senhor?’
asked the ferryman.

‘I should like to cross the river,’ explained Darwin.

Both guide and ferryman looked at him, their faces full of incomprehension.

‘Eu não entendo. Onde você gostaria
de ir,
Senhor?’
the ferryman repeated.

‘I should like to cross the river,’ explained Darwin for the second time, waving his arms in the direction he wished to take. But as he gesticulated, the big ferryman cowered, his pupils widening in fright; the man dropped his hands, shut his eyes, and dipped his head in supplication. He fell to his knees and began to beg for mercy in Portuguese, pleading with the white man not to strike him. Darwin immediately understood what had happened; and he felt only shame and disgust.

 

FitzRoy dined alone, his plate of rice and peas strangely devoid of flavour in the absence of his friend. A knock briefly and foolishly raised his spirits, but they fell once again when the door opened to reveal McCormick. Despite his ever-rigid bearing, the surgeon’s moustache showed him to be in a state of some agitation. In his left hand, he carried a large wire birdcage, which housed a bright green parrot.

‘Excuse me, sir, but I must speak with you.’

‘I am at dinner, Mr McCormick. This is most incommoding - can it not wait until we are under way?’

‘I am afraid not, sir. It is uncommon urgent.’

‘So urgent that you have to bring your parrot with you.’

‘I have purchased the parrot this very morning, sir - at a most Jewish price, as it happens - for reasons of scientific investigation. It belonged formerly to an English merchant seaman, from whom it has gleaned a rudimentary grasp of our language. I intend to make a study of animal intelligence, sir, and to investigate the extent to which such creatures appreciate the import of their words, and the extent to which they merely mimic what has been expressed in their presence.’

‘I am glad to see that you are taking your responsibilities seriously, Mr McCormick. Pray tell me what English words your parrot has yet grasped.’

‘As yet it has but two English expressions, sir. One of them is “Great heavens” -’

‘Great heavens!’ interjected the parrot.

‘- and the other expression, common decency forbids me from repeating, sir.’

‘Go to the devil!’ shouted the parrot.

‘That is the other expression, sir.’

McCormick’s face remained blank, but the ends of his moustache twitched violently.

‘But I must inform you, sir, that it is not regarding the matter of this parrot that I have come to see you.’

‘Indeed.’ FitzRoy transferred a forkful of peas elegantly in the direction of his mouth.

‘No sir. I have come to see you regarding Mr Darwin, sir.’

‘Indeed?’ The peas paused in mid-air. ‘What about Mr Darwin?’

‘I have heard tell, sir, that Mr Darwin’s specimens have been sent to England carriage free, aboard His Majesty’s packet
Emulous.
Is this true, sir?’

‘It is.’

‘Great heavens!’ observed the parrot.

‘Then I must protest, sir.’

‘About what, Mr McCormick?’

‘Mr Darwin is not responsible for bringing together a natural history collection for the Crown, so it is not proper for the Service to see to the freight of his private specimens. Nor is it proper, sir, for his specimens to litter the deck, or for the ship’s carpenters to make packing cases for their transportation.’

‘What is proper, Mr McCormick, and what is not proper, are matters for me to decide.’

‘I find myself in a false position, sir. Mr Darwin sits at your table, discussing books and whatnot, whereas naval practice dictates that any philosophical debate on board should fall strictly under my jurisdiction as ship’s surgeon. Furthermore, sir, I hear that Mr Darwin intends to retain the right to ownership of his specimens upon their reaching England.’

‘That is so,’ confirmed FitzRoy.

‘Great heavens!’ added the parrot.

‘Have you considered, sir, that Mr Darwin might intend to sell such items of natural history for his own personal profit?’

‘Your suggestion is absurd, Mr McCormick.’ FitzRoy’s voice hardened. ‘I suggest that you withdraw your allegation forthwith.’

‘It is vulgar, sir, to receive money for one’s researches.’

‘I will say it once more, Mr McCormick. I suggest that you withdraw your allegation forthwith.’

‘Great heavens!’

‘I demand, sir, that Mr Darwin be dismissed from the Beagle immediately.’

‘What?’

‘I demand, sir, that Mr Darwin be dismissed from the Beagle immediately.’

‘Go to the devil!’

‘Otherwise, sir, I shall tender my own resignation as ship’s surgeon immediately.’

‘I accept your resignation, Mr McCormick.’

‘What?’

‘Great heavens!’

‘I said, I accept your resignation as ship’s surgeon, Mr McCormick.’

‘Great heavens!’

‘I think I have your gauge, sir,’ said McCormick grimly, through hardened lips, ‘and I shall make it known throughout Whitehall when I return. Rest assured of that!’