The sixth generation!
What ghosts then would haunt our son or daughter if ever we dared to breed, what would the seventh generation be like? Would the other members of the group that had been kidnapped from Tierra del Fuego and stuffed into my ancestor Pierre’s camera find a way into the dreams of my offspring? None of these thoughts shared with Cam as I examined the many reproductions of their photos she had sent me, culled from a smattering of Parisian archives. My visitor was present in a series of collective representations that must have been snapped one after the other, all of them against a background of trees.
Paris in September, an ideal time, Cam commented, for a family outing to the zoo on the train line expressly built to carry innumerable clients back and forth. Animals and beasts mixed together: one of the photos flaunted an ostrich crossing the expanse where the clutch of natives sits. In the next shot, probably a minute later, two of the men have stood upright while my visitor remains crouching, more mistrustful and startled than ever, and he is still in the same position the next time Pierre Petit’s camera bags the group that has begun to disperse and separate, a white light from overexposure slicing the scene nearly in half. The light overwhelms them in the ensuing shot, and still he does not move, he continues to stare straight at the man who was my great-great-great-great-grandfather, if looks could kill, if looks could kill. Until in the next take, he is no longer visible, my visitor, engorged by a smudge of infested light. And then, new combinations: there with an older man and woman and a tiny naked babe, and in the following sequences he’s standing by a different woman and after that accompanied by an older, fierce man—oh, my visitor was popular, one of Petit’s favorites. And of course, of course, the shot that was to be transferred to a carte postale and sold for a few sous over a hundred years ago only to end up in a bookshop in the rue de l’Odéon. But it was the others that my faraway wife kept demanding that I look at—who were they, what relation did one have to the other? Was that older couple the mother and father of my visitor? Was that baby his brother? His nephew? The other baby, his niece, his sister? Was that other young man a brother? I interrogated their faces as I had done for all this time with my visitor’s and, as with him, their answer was silence.
But on this occasion I had some help, the beginning of a response from the material Camilla had sent over, mainly a long article published by the Anthropology Society of Paris, which tried to understand where these natives fit in the Darwinian scheme of evolution, wondering about their intelligence, how close they might be to the mongoloid race, how far from Asian ancestors. A presentation by Dr. Léonce Manouvrier on November 17, 1881—“by then,” Cam wrote, “they were already in Germany, ten of them, because one of the children had died. The daughter of the woman called Petite Mère, little mother, a name not given to her by Pierre Petit, but by their keepers. They baptized the fiercest looking one Antonio, described by Manouvrier as having a wild appearance. The gentle, older man is called the Captain, his wife for some reason keeps her own name, Piskouna. The other women are Lise and Catherine, and then there are the two younger ones, Henri and Pedro. Manouvrier’s descriptions don’t allow us to fathom which one might be our visitor. But nevertheless, that scientist spent many hours with them on five different occasions, so you should spend time with him, with the pictures, Fitzroy Foster, no better way to get close to those natives and lift the curse, if indeed it is a curse and not, perhaps, a blessing.”
These last words alarmed me—was Camilla becoming an apologist for the visitor, like my mother? But I had once doubted my swimmer when she had initially asked those right questions and we had lost seven years of love and companionship due to that mistake and I was not about to tread the same path again. I would let her lead me into this thicket, I would have faith, I did have faith in my darling’s guidance. Soon I’d be hearing, in the carnal presence of those moist, full lips, the story she was writing for me.
Meanwhile, Manouvrier’s testimony did indeed open my eyes—helping these eyes, so often supplanted by my visitor’s, to roam his face and body, probe the habits of his fellow captives. So much that I did not know, in spite of our infinite hours of cohabitation. There was more information about Henri than about Pedro, so I focused on him. His gait, his spindly legs. Advancing, according to Manouvrier, with an odd, uncertain step, bending his legs a little and lifting his feet rather high, in the manner of a hunter who walks with precaution through the bushes. Landing on the outer edge of his feet, just like the native women. A sizable gap between the big toe and the second toe. An overly developed chest, a little convex shaped. Well built, of average stoutness. A nose, somewhat depressed, large at its base, but substantially less flat then a Negro’s. Small, quite confined ears. One of the young men (—Henri? Pedro? unspecified) already had had all his wisdom teeth emerge. The teeth are beautiful and well ordered, in spite of the abundance of raw mussels consumed. Skin smooth, of a color corresponding to numbers 29 and 30 of the society’s chromatic table, perhaps best described as yellow-brown or a yellowish-red chocolate. No hair on the back, shoulders, chest, except for an extremely fine fuzz, only perceptible when viewed from an oblique angle. The hair on the head, deep black color, straight, glossy, abundant, reaching the eyebrows. Two locks have been deposited in Monsieur Goldstein’s collection.
And the eyes—oh the unmistakable eyes—very dark, now I learned that they corresponded to numbers 1 and 2 of the chromatic table. Both Pedro and Henri, according to Manouvrier, under seventeen—so one of them could indeed have been fourteen when the picture was taken.
Could either or both have been the offspring of the women prisoners? The only hint came from an observation about Lise, the youngest female. This maiden has never had any children. So we were interested in and able to establish the size and shape of her breasts. They are quite voluminous and stand rather upright. The breasts of the other three females droop down, but not noticeably more than those of women of our country who have nourished many infants. We have often observed these natives give breast in the European manner.
Had my visitor suckled at one of those breasts? Had his mother put water in his mouth by drinking first from a fountain in Patagonia and then dropping the liquid slowly into his waiting infant lips, throat, stomach? Had she watched him play and grow and come of age and now tried to protect him in a foreign land? Or had she been left behind, mourning her son when he and the others were spirited away?
And then, of course, there were the measurements, a whole table of them. The individual results had been deposited in Dr. Broca’s lab for further consultation, but there were averages for each category, quantified according to recommendations in the Manual of Instructions of the Anthropological Society. I could visualize the process, Manouvrier’s fingers on the measuring tape and his lips calling out numbers to his colleagues Deniker and Goldstein, going on to the next angle or limb or protuberance. From the dolichocephalic skull, down the vertex to the ear cavity, and from the ophryon to the hairline and then to the top of the nose and the alveolar point. Facial angle from the chin point to the top of the sternum, and thence to the upper edge of the pubis, navel and nipple and cervical vertebra and iliac anterior-superior spine and bitrochanteric line, chest width, circumference of the thorax under the armpits—did it tickle my visitor when the examiner prodded under his armpit?—upper limb, from the shoulder blade to tip of the middle finger, hand length from the styloid process to the medius, height of the ankle bone, foot length. Fifty measurements. But not all the parts of the body were studied.
Only one thing were we unable to obtain: to examine and measure the genital organs. It turned out not to be possible to view any lower than the upper edge of the pubic region. Our insistences on this subject were unavailing, and whenever we attempted to proceed by surprise to lower a savage’s underwear, which by no means was the Fueguians’ national dress, each would quickly react by hand in order to stop us. Manouvrier went on to wonder if this was due to innate modesty or fear of their keepers, who could well have succeeded in providing them, besides the underwear and the most indispensable notions of propriety, some lessons on decency and proper deportment.
Probably nothing that I read in this report endeared me more to my visitor and his tribe than this resistance to some stranger scrutinizing their sexual organs. It brought the Kaweshkar to life for me, a process that was already well on its way. They seemed so . . . human, yes, that’s the right word. How they laughed when the French experts twirled their moustaches, how they made sure the fire was always lit and barely warmed their food on its embers, the skill shown at forging arrowheads, the fact that they liked baguettes and displayed no interest in coins or silver. Brought to life for me now as life ebbed from them more than a century earlier: each day more dejected and lethargic, apparently because vaccinations had made the whole colony sick, suffering from pustules and glandular congestion. Was this what had killed the child of Petite Mère?
Oh to see through his eyes, once, just once, to see through your eyes, to accompany you on your journey.
Because Cam had discovered their itinerary.
“Listen to this: The day after the baby dies, on September thirtieth, the rest of them are packed in a train and transported to Germany. I’m going to follow their trail, Fitz.”
“To Bonn?”
“No, no. Hamburg first, yes, Hamburg is where it all started, that’s where they disembarked—not in Le Havre as I thought. And after Hamburg, Leipzig, so that’s next if I can get permission to enter East Germany, but there’s a lot of turmoil there at the moment, so maybe the Communists won’t allow an American to cross the border, we wouldn’t want them to accuse me of being a spy or something. Better go straight to Stuttgart, then Nuremburg, Munich. Not the order in which they made the trip, but it makes sense for another reason and—and I’ll leave Berlin for the end, Berlin holds the key, the kidnapping was financed from there.”
“You’re going to all those cities?”
“And Zurich afterward, that was their final destination.”
“Cam! Can’t you just tell me what’s so important that you—”
She wouldn’t budge, said that before feeding me more information piecemeal like this, she wanted to get even closer to them, closer to what . . . Her voice faded away.
“Closer to them! What about getting closer to me, Camilla Foster?”
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous of that poor young man, Fitzroy Foster! If he’s your only rival, a Kaweshkar who died over a hundred years ago, well, count yourself lucky.”
“No, seriously—”
“Seriously, just trust me. I’ll be in touch every day, only thing is don’t ask me for details.”
I realized that I had to let her puzzle her scientific way into and out of the labyrinth of my ailment, without the distraction of having to explain each interminable stage, each loose thread, to someone faraway, even if I was the victim. Of course I’d trust her.
And besides, she had a wonderful reward in store, promising to be home by Thanksgiving, with her mission accomplished.
I was delighted at the news that she would soon be in my arms, a delight tempered by what this meant for her career. What about the Institut Pasteur?
“They wouldn’t give me the two-week leave of absence I needed, Fitz. So we terminated my contract—quite amicably. They’ll be happy to host me in the future, once you get your affairs in order. I’d told Dr. Louvard that this trip to Germany, my second since I’d been here, was to help my husband, and he was discreet, raised an eyebrow but smiled and said—oh so French, even for a scientist—There is only one thing more important than molecular DNA, and that is love. And I answered that I believed that all DNA is held together by love. And I do, I do. So no worries, Fitz.”
She seemed excessively cheerful, even for eternally optimistic Cam. Wasn’t this pursuit handicapping her career?
“Not at all,” she answered and right away backtracked. “Well, a bit. Dr. Louvard was keen on my teaming up with one of their consultants, this hotshot American epidemiologist from Stanford, Ernest Downey. A legend, already a candidate for a Nobel Prize due to his work on the AIDS retrovirus. But when I met him briefly as I was leaving, he—well, he has, in effect, switched to my field of visual memory and genetic mutations, except that he mentioned that the transmission of images does not only descend through heredity, but may spread from person to person, sexually or via saliva. He said he’d look me up in the States, keep in touch, save humanity from the oncoming plague. Truth is I felt him to be—don’t know, creepy, Fitzroy, almost tormented. So your visitor has done one good deed already, keeping me away from Downey!”
Off she went then, deep into Germany.
I heard from her sporadically, mysterious messages of erotic enchantment interspersed with short, almost telegraphic phrases that tantalizingly afforded glimpses into her doings on the road from Hamburg to Berlin via those other cities.
Hamburg: I know who arranged the kidnapping, Fitz, and much more. Heinrich, they called him Heinrich—Henri’s your visitor, Fitz. Nuremburg: They were sick when they arrived here from Berlin, Fitz, but still put on display. Stuttgart: So sick they couldn’t be exhibited, Fitz, not here.
And then München: Definitely ill, your Henri, if we trust a Dr. Bollinger who treated him in this city, according to memos among the papers of Professor Theodor von Bischoff. And later that night: Now I understand how he died, of what he died, Fitz.
And, finally, Berlin.
November 7, 1989.
Last link, almost the last missing link, Fitz, here in Berlin where all hell—or should I say heaven—is breaking loose, a new dawn for humanity. But that’s not why I came here. It turns out that our Kaweshkar were delivered to Rudolf Virchow, Fitz. Not easy for me to write that name contemptuously, my dear. A friend and colleague of Louis Pasteur, a hero to anybody studying biology and cancer. We owe him the theory of cellular reproduction—that diseased cells originate in healthy ones. Also a terrific social reformer, saving countless lives with changes in public hygiene and the sewage system, one of the most progressive public figures of his time, a believer in full democracy, including for women, and taxing the wealthy and—that’s why it’s so difficult to believe someone like him could have paid for the abduction. But Saint-Hilaire only came aboard later, once Henri and the others were in Europe. Virchow had been trying for years to get his hands on some Patagons, wanted to examine them thoroughly, up close. More results tomorrow from the Berlin Zoological Society. Love you with every molecule in my blood, Cam.
Heaven and hell were indeed breaking loose in Berlin, where three days before my love arrived half a million people had protested at the Alexanderplatz in East Berlin, demanding free passage to the West. She had traveled “all night in a train from München, through East Germany, darling, was sort of exciting that we couldn’t stop because it was enemy territory. I peered out into the darkness and there was nothing, nothing to be seen, I wonder what Henri felt, twenty-seven hours shut inside a wagon with meat and biscuits and a bit of water, from Paris to Berlin.” Just a few miles from where she wrote to me, the Politburo of the Communist Party in the East was secluded right then and there trying to avoid a bloody confrontation. Not the best moment to be doing research on other sorts of violence and migrations, other walls erected in zoos a hundred years back, but Cam’s exuberance was limitless. “The best time,” she cooed the next morning, November 8, “you should see the people in the streets marching to the Brandenburg Gate, thousands gathered waiting for something monumental to happen. Liberation, Fitz, for those people. And for us, we’re about to be free as well of the past, you’ll see, love, got to go.”
And rushed away, not clear if to join the protestors or to delve into the archives Virchow had left to the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology, and Prehistory.
Next day, she called twice.
First early in the morning. “Henri—I can’t get used to calling him Heinrich or Heindrich, one report says he was eighteen years old—which undermines our perfect theory of his being fourteen like you on September 11, 1881. Also that he was, along with Pedro, the son of Antonio, the fierce one—though they both look much more like the one called the Captain. One report adds that Antonio was the husband of Trine, which I very much doubt—nobody in Paris ever suggested anything of the sort. So many lies. You see why I don’t want to give you details until I’ve sorted everything out. But I’ll have it all wrapped up by tomorrow. I’ve just fixed up an appointment at one of the newspapers that reported about the Patagonians while they were still in Berlin. Till later, love.”
And with a quick kiss, she was gone.
I waited by the phone for hours, ever more concerned by the situation in Berlin and the nonstop coverage on the radio and TV, and her excessive excitement redoubled my anxiety—did she even look before crossing the street, had she forgotten her promise to be back by Thanksgiving?
The second call came much later that evening.
Sheer gold, she said, the newspaper clippings had all the information we required, she’d leave for Zurich tomorrow evening. So she was in the mood to celebrate and she knew just the place. “It’s all coming together, Fitz, our history and the history of this century, two hundred years after the storming of the Bastille, I’ll call later, darling. Just remember this. From now on, it’s going to be all right. Fitz, we’ve paid our dues, that’s what I realized.”
She was rushing out the door, she was zooming away with such speed that I hardly had time to tell her to take care of herself, she was carrying my life as well as hers, take care of yourself, Cam, my Camilla, my Camilla Wood, take care, my love, I don’t know if she heard me.
The third call of the day never came.
I waited all night long that ninth of November, 1989, watching the crowds surging through Checkpoint Charlie, the men and women from the East and the West dancing on top of the wall, the first fragments of brick and concrete being thrown down, I watched hoping to catch sight of the only woman in the world I cared about and she was not there, the cameras did not capture her as they had captured Henri and Antonio and Lise and the little child who had died in Paris, there was no call from her that night.
Or the next day, a Saturday.
I had phoned the hotel and nobody in her room was answering. My father said not to worry, there were moments in history when you lose sense of time and space and even responsibility, she’d be all right, he assured me she would be all right.
On Sunday, November 11, the call came early.
I was the only one up. By myself as I had been when the Consul called from Manaus, again Fitzroy Foster picked up the receiver when an official from another consulate called.
This time the bad news came from Berlin.