Barkskins Read online

  At the edge of a lake they entered a pavilion. A servant brought tea. White flowers seeped a musky perfume. The pale liquid beauty of the garden calmed the negotiators. Duquet watched the way the others held their translucent bowls, inhaled the aroma, sipped, sighed, sipped again. He did the same.

  At last Wuqua and Captain Verdwijnen rose, bowed to each other, bowed to the translator and Duquet and they all returned to the business room. The negotiators were gentle with each other now, and each man’s offer was presented as a gift, but refused by the other with flowery, elaborate speeches that seemed acceptances. Duquet watched everything intently, memorizing the procedure. Duquet felt he was in a fantastical world, but it was his skill to adapt to strange circumstances, and even to find pleasure in them. As the day drew on, the warm air thickened. At last Wuqua stood up, spoke rapidly to the translator and left the room. Captain Verdwijnen said they all, even the translator, had been invited to a banquet that evening at one of the merchant’s private residences.

  Back at their rooms Duquet and Captain Verdwijnen washed and changed. They had an hour to wait before Wuqua’s servants came for them. Duquet got out the gin.

  “Did you work out a fair price for the goods you want?” he asked the captain.

  “Not yet, not yet! We have only begun. We shall continue tomorrow and perhaps the next day and the next. Haste is not advisable. Slow, contemplative weighing of loss and gain, of prestige, of honor and much more are involved.” Duquet envied this captain who so skillfully played the cards.

  Captain Verdwijnen lit his long clay pipe and puffed out smoke. “You are wondering when we will get to your furs, no?” His foot waggled.

  “Yes,” said Duquet, “I do wonder.”

  “Eventually. There is no hurry. In any case we cannot leave until we finish conducting our business—next year with the correct wind for our return. So enjoy your time here. What did you think of the garden?”

  “Why, very—very—agreeable.”

  “I also like beautiful gardens and constich objects.”

  This Duquet knew, for he remembered Captain Verdwijnen waking him from a deep sleep one night—“Get up! There is a great sight! Awake!”—and commanding him to come on deck immediately to see a wonder. Swaying in his nightshirt, barefoot and bleary, he clung to the rail and looked down. The water curling back from the rushing ship’s prow was a froth of luminescence and behind them the fiery glow marked their recent passage.

  “Look! See there!” cried Captain Verdwijnen gesturing at the water-riding phosphor and waving his hands. Alongside the ship the bodies of dolphins trailed sparks that twisted and writhed as the fish moved. A sailor hauled up a bucket of quivering light. Captain Verdwijnen plunged his hands into it and held them up, his fingers and palms glowing as the water dripped away. The crests of the waves caught fire, darkened. The ship seemed to be sailing through a burning sea. Duquet yawned, said “remarkable,” and returned to his blanket.

  • • •

  Before they stepped into the palanquins, the translator said Wuqua had noticed the foreigners’ pleasure in the garden earlier in the day and the dinner invitation included a walk through his personal Garden of Vermilion Dragonflies. But when they arrived, and their host conducted them under the rustling trees, it was dark. There was no moon. The pathway was lighted by a tremble of distant lightning and by paper globes of imprisoned fireflies, which cast a greenish light. Of dragonflies, whether vermilion, amber or blue, there was no sight. But Wuqua took their hands and led them to the darkest shade. “We stand here under a duck-foot tree, the largest in the city. My garden was once part of an ancient temple and this yin-kuo tree was old then; they say it lived in the time before Buddha. It is not like any other tree. It is believed to be one of the first trees to live in the world.” In the darkness he pulled at the leaves and gave one to Duquet, another to Captain Verdwijnen.

  “You must come another time in daylight to see the dragonflies,” said Wuqua and led them into a room faced with intricate carved screens. Two dozen lanterns threw a radiant light on the guests and the wine winking in silver bowls. Duquet looked at the yin-kuo leaf in his hand; it looked very like a leaf from a maidenhair fern which he had seen a thousand times in the forests of the north. At the back of the room musicians played in the Xinjiang style and a performer sang in a high, strangled voice. The translator said the great dish of the dinner, following many courses, was called Buddha Leaps over the Wall. Duquet enjoyed it while Captain Verdwijnen, longing for herring and headcheese, picked at it fearfully.

  On the way back to the Factory quarter, Captain Verdwijnen said, “I offer a wager that wall-jumping concoction will make you ill—perhaps kill you.”

  “It was worth it,” said Duquet.

  • • •

  Weeks passed before Wuqua deigned to consider Duquet’s offerings. He seemed to expect a request for ceramics, teas, lacquerware and silks. He seemed to think Duquet’s pack contained silver. So when Duquet took out the lustrous furs, one by one, shaking them until they snapped with static electricity, Wuqua’s face, trained never to show surprise, showed surprise. He took up a snowy arctic fox fur and caressed it, examined the mink and marten furs, the ice-white ermine and two thick sea otter pelts. At the sight of the velvet-black fur tipped with silver, the world’s most desirable luxury, Wuqua sucked in his breath.

  “Very pretty. Very, very pretty. We do not too often see furs of such beauty and quality. However, the Russians do bring us furs, so they are not unknown here. And in Guangzhou it is really too warm for furs, but at court and in the north . . . What do you wish for these?”

  Instead of the usual list of luxury goods Duquet named a very high price—in silver. Wuqua pretended to faint, his head slumped to one side but watchful eyes glinting from the slitted lids. He revived and named a small sum that would be bolstered by a few rolls of silk and a bale of tea.

  Duquet hurled himself to the floor in a fit of shrieking, spasmodic, disbelieving laughter. Even as he fell he realized he had gone too far. He got up, sure he had lost face in the negotiations and that the morning—perhaps the entire trip—was wasted. He sat again in his chair and looked at Wuqua.

  The expression on the businessman’s face was peculiar. Amazement? Disdain? But Wuqua nodded his head, the slightest nod, but it expressed a kind of calculated admiration, an acceptance of Duquet’s behavior as a tolerable and even admirable ploy. Decorum returned. The day progressed, the bargaining continued. They again went to the garden for tea and arranged to meet in two days’ time. At the end of the month of bargaining Duquet accepted a princely sum in silver for his furs. He had gained a staggering profit.

  “If you come in a future year,” said Wuqua, “with furs of equal quality and variety they may excite a greater passion.” The servant poured more tea. Wuqua sipped, looked into the distance and then asked offhandedly, “And do you have this in your forests of New France?” From his sleeve he withdrew a gnarled root vaguely shaped like a hunchbacked, three-legged man. Duquet had seen this root before, in the hands of the Indian woman who had saved his life.

  “Yes, we have this.”

  “Ah. If you bring me a quantity of these roots I will pay as much as for the furs. Perhaps more, depending on the quality and quantity.”

  “Very good. And I also have rare woods for fine cabinets,” said Duquet, trembling inwardly, knowing he was on the edge of extraordinarily advantageous arrangements.

  “Rare woods are of interest. Especially sandalwood. Scented woods are prized.”

  In a stroke Duquet had become a wealthy man and, he thought, after one or two more trips—if Captain Verdwijnen were willing to take him—his forest enterprise would begin. As they spoke of woods Duquet was emboldened to ask a question.

  “Sir, honorable Wuqua, as foreigners may not leave the Factory compound I have wondered many times about the forests of China. I see that men in China make gardens that seem the essence of forest and mountain, but in miniature. But what of the real for
ests? It is my belief that forests are everlasting and can never disappear, for they replenish themselves, but I have seen in France that they are . . . diminished. And I have noticed that even in New France the forest is drawing back—a little, wherever there are settlements. How far back can a forest withdraw before it replenishes itself?”

  Wuqua looked at him as though trying to judge whether or not Duquet had designs on China’s woodlands. He glanced at the translator. He hesitated.

  “I can only say that China is very large and very old with many people. More than that I cannot say. Perhaps another time?”

  Duquet understood that he was dismissed, rose, bowed and backed away.

  • • •

  After some months Duquet yearned to leave. It was irritating to wait for the monsoon to shift. Then one day Wuqua requested his presence in the trading room. It was a clear chill day in springtime and outside the wind cast plum blossom petals on the courtyard tiles. There was a different translator.

  “You wished to know about our forests,” said Wuqua in a low, hurried voice, pausing impatiently for the translator. “I spoke with an elderly scholar on the subject. He said that our venerated sage Meng-tzu wrote of the people clearing land for crops, pulling grass and weeds, cutting trees ceaselessly, dividing the land and plowing. The people were very numerous even in Meng-tzu’s time, and very poor. People must eat or they die. They need fuel to cook rice. They must keep warm. So trees fall.” A rod of sunlight touched the toe of Wuqua’s black silk slipper. “We are a country of agriculture. You understand of course that land division is the base of all human government.”

  “The forests then are diminished?”

  “It is an arguable point, for men transplant many trees—bamboo, pine, oak and the valuable ones that produce lacquer or rich oils. Bear in mind that if forests and timberlands are diminished, cropland is very much augmented—more food, more money, more people, more contentment.”

  Duquet nodded though he did not see contentment in this recipe. He knew very well that Wuqua hoped to gain his favor by telling him these secret things.

  “But even beyond increasing our agricultural land we cut forests for other reasons. For example, do you know the scholar’s four treasures?”

  “No. I regret to say I do not.”

  “This is a country of scholars, poets and calligraphers,” said Wuqua, “and the four treasures are brush, paper, ink and inkstone, the necessities of calligraphy. But the source of the ink is the soot from the burning of pine trees. Very many pine trees must burn to supply China’s scholars.” The sunlight had moved up Wuqua’s robe and made a bright band across the embroidery. “And there was war. And metalworkers, potters, brickmakers—all craftsmen’s trades demand wood. In some tree-denuded places peasants are forced to gather grass, twist it into hard bundles and burn it as fuel. In other places animal dung.” He whispered. “There are wood shortages . . .”

  “So the forests of France and China are not everlasting,” said Duquet unhappily. “And I have heard that Italy’s mountains are stripped.”

  “Perhaps. But nothing is everlasting. Nothing. Not forests, not mountains.”

  “But how came the gardens that honor forests and wild country?”

  “We do not forget the forests when we have removed the trees. We make gardens to give us the pleasurable illusions of wilderness.”

  “I myself,” said Duquet, “despise the gloomy and unruly forest, even while recognizing that it is a source of wealth and comforts. Yet I would never make a garden alluding to it.”

  “Of course you would not. You do not understand the saying ‘tian ren he yi.’ It refers to a state of harmony between people and nature. You do not feel this. No European does. I cannot explain it to you. It is a kind of personal philosophy for each person, yet it is everything.”

  Duquet thought it likely that the forests of China and France and Italy had been puny in their beginnings; he believed that the uniquely deep forests of the New World would endure. That was why men came to the unspoiled continent—for the mind-numbing abundance of virgin resources. Only he grasped the opportunity.

  • • •

  Duquet visited the ivory carver, who took a wax mold of his toothless jaws and set to work fashioning teeth. There was a wait of several months until they would be finished. The day came and the carver showed him how to insert the plates of large white teeth hinged with fine gold wires. Duquet looked in a glass for the first time in many years and although the teeth felt monstrous and uncomfortable, they undeniably improved his appearance. The carver told him he would get used to the intrusive feeling, but that the teeth were only for display, not for chewing. “Clean every day with brush, white cloth.” In pantomime he showed Duquet that he must expect they would become yellow over time, especially if he let sunshine fall on them. It could not be helped; it was the nature of ivory. Perhaps he should have a second pair made for spares? Yes, nodded Duquet. He wondered if ceramic teeth could be fashioned, then thought of a likely mouthful of broken shards.

  • • •

  Late every afternoon when the day’s continuing bargaining was finished Duquet and Captain Verdwijnen enjoyed a glass of jenever in the courtyard. The two men had become used to each other. Duquet several times, between panegyrics on the forests of New France, said he wished to arrange another passage as soon as possible, but Captain Verdwijnen always slipped to another subject.

  “How do you like this pretty little table I’ve bought for Margit? That old rogue Wuqua bargained as though I was trying to buy his precious dragonfly garden. At one point he actually fell off the chair and rolled on the floor laughing like a madman. A complete loss of face. But in the end I got it for a good price.”

  “Hah!” laughed Duquet. Wuqua, the old rogue, had learned a new trick from him.

  • • •

  Often one or two of the captain’s maritime friends, Piet Roos and Jan Goossen, captains of their own ships, dined with them. The face of Piet was like a pale plate set with two round eyes the color of raw sugar. His hair was almost the color of his skin and thus invisible. He dressed in the French mode, black silk culottes and coat set off by a froth of fine lace at the neck. Jan wore an immense sword and coarse workman’s fustian trousers. These contrasting men seemed familiar to Duquet and he finally asked about them.

  “Of course they are familiar. You saw them in the Rock and Shoal in La Rochelle.” Captain Verdwijnen lowered his voice to a whisper. “I told you, they are my partners, my vrienden. Piet is my brother-in-law, Jan is my cousin. You didn’t think I could defy the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie and bear the expense of this voyage alone, did you?”

  Duquet said, “I would like to be a partner with you for the sake of the furs. And for my future lumber enterprise. We could make money together, don’t you think?”

  After a long silence Captain Outger Verdwijnen spoke slowly. “You know that the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie for many years tightly controlled Dutch trade with India, China and Japan, the Spice Islands. No private merchant was allowed to do business nor travel through the Strait of Magellan.”

  “But men do try. And succeed,” said Duquet.

  “If you tried and were caught your goods were seized, your ship taken, and you were punished by the VOC’s stony hand. That is what happened to Willem Schouten, who discovered Kaap Hoorn. Now the Company is weaker, but still watchful. My vrienden and I made a secret partnership to enter the India-China trade ourselves—and someday even Japan—by banding resources together and sailing together. This is our fourth voyage and it is going well. Of course Piet and Jan own their boats and I am just the captain for Herr Grinz, but I hope to make enough on this trip to buy a good little fluyt. I am not altogether sure there is a place in our arrangement for a timber merchant. There may be—I don’t know. I fear a fluyt could not carry great loads of timber. Our West Indies want lumber, but I prefer to continue the China trade. If I were you I would look into the Indies trade.”

  But D
uquet, with stubborn single-mindedness, began once again to describe the forests of New France. The Dutchman interrupted him.

  “My young friend,” he said. “Allow someone with knowledge of the world to offer a comment. You speak always as though New France were your country.”

  “It is. Our fortunes are intertwined. It is a new world, rich and beauteous with massive forests and powerful rivers. It is a place that has earned my respect.”

  “May I remind you that your New France is not a sovereign country but the colony of a major European power? May I, from long observation of the political machinations of these great powers, introduce a note of caution? The kings of these strong countries do not know their colonies and overseas settlements. They have never been there, nor have their ministers. For them those colonies are colored blotches on maps, they are only counters in the savage games of war, only sources of income. They do not give a fig for anything else. And I might observe that you are not wary enough of France’s European enemies, especially England. It might fall out that France trades or otherwise divests itself of New France, as the occasion dictates.”

  “That could never happen.”

  “Of course not. But I have heard that France, the mother country, is not particularly enamored of New France, that supply ships are often very late, that she keeps her population at home instead of urging settlement in this northern paradise, that favors and help are conspicuously absent, that she is unwilling to open her markets to what is in a way her own child.”

  “That is only temporary,” said Duquet sullenly, not liking these truths.

  “You will see how temporary and remember this conversation if France comes to war with one of the powers and, not doing well, is forced to give up something. How long do you think New France will stay inviolate?”

  • • •

  In the months since they had arrived Captain Verdwijnen arranged to have the ship hauled onto a nearby beach where it could be cleaned, everything removed from the interior. A hundred Chinese men removed the ordure-coated ballast stones from the bilges and laid them in the beating surf, scraped down the bilges, removed the stinking limber ropes and threaded new ones. They laid down a bed of clean sand before replacing the surf-scoured ballast, scraped the exterior bottom free from barnacles and seaweeds (for it was an uncoppered ship), recaulked and repainted the vessel inside and out. The Steenarend was refloated and for days long lines of men carrying chests and boxes packed the hold. The reprovisioned ship was fresh and clean, stuffed with the luxury goods of the China trade, and fifty flowering plants. They set off for the Bay of Bengal, with crates of lemons and mangoes to keep them safe from scurvy.