Barkskins. Annie Proulx

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 Duquet, 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.

      In India, Captain Verdwijnen exchanged some of the ceramics and silks for more cabbages and fruit, spices, especially cloves and pepper, and picked up a chest of Patna opium for medicinal trade in Amsterdam. Duquet’s busy mind, once again dense with forest thoughts, took note.

      “Such a three-corner trading route could work for a lumber merchant, could it not?”

      “Yes, but in my case the profits would be better if I bought