The Memoirs of Edwin Chester, Who Would Have Discovered the Origin of Species Had His Place on HMS Beagle Not Been Taken by Charles Darwin

127 end notes 1. The sting was not only in the thoughtless brevity of Captain FitzRoy’s note, but in the careless scrawl of the penmanship itself, which expressed his disdain for me and all like me—those who sail at the whim of others. 2. These were bats, unaware of my distress. 3. The letter went unanswered. 4.  A recent visit revealed that the storage shed on the quay no longer exists, though at the time, its window afforded an excellent view of the Beagle’s departure. I remember also the fragrance of burlap and dust and unpainted wood, and the odd feeling that I was both there, with my face to the window, watching the ship set sail without me, and simultaneously in bed in my parents’ house, dreaming the event. Robert Anthony Siegel fiction The Memoirs of Edwin Chester, Who Would Have Discovered the Origin of Species Had His Place on HMS Beagle Not Been Taken by Charles Darwin 128 Ecotone: reimagining place 5. I should add that my recent visit had a most unsettled and melancholy flavor, not only because of the many changes to the harbor, but because I met there an old man who insisted that no such shed had ever existed on the quay. 6. By which I mean the common mollusk. 7. See FitzRoy, Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle, Vol. IV. 8. On one such nocturnal walk, I began to imagine that I had in fact died in that shed, and simply did not know it yet. That would have explained the great distance between me and my fellow pedestrians, growing paradoxically larger as I drew closer, and the way in which they seemed to be unaware of my presence, though I stood right before them. Speaking out might have broken the spell—or might have confirmed that my voice no longer reached the living, and so I walked on in silence. 9. Frankly, I cannot be sure the letter was ever mailed. 10. Nettles cost nothing, and can be boiled into a soup. 11. I had told Mr. Potts that no task was too humble. Accordingly, my first assignment was to check the catalogue raisonné against the objects in the collection, starting with the aardvark mounted in the front hall, and moving through four rooms of amphorae, a specimen of the North American beaver, a glass case of Egyptian scarabs, a wall of British heterocera , and so on, through 104 rooms, the cellar, and the attic. The catalogue ran to thirty-two volumes, in quarto, and I went from entry to entry without pause, aware of the passage of time only because of the changing light from the windows, and the periodic chiming from the clock room. 12. Emotions much like that of a shipwrecked man for the piece of timber he rides. 13. Three pewter spoons, a porcelain bowl with a chip, and a small bellows. 129 robert anthony siegel 14. Her breathing seemed to come not from her chest but from someplace deep inside the world itself. 15. The box contained a sandalwood comb and a piece of jade. 16. It seemed impossible that we separated so completely during sleep, each cocooning back into dreams invisible to the other. 17. On that very afternoon, as I ran for Mrs. Wilkes, the midwife, Darwin waded through the shallow surf onto Chatham Island, in the Galápagos, where he would find his most vivid example of the transmutation of living creatures under pressure of need: the finch. 18. To wit, that the human being develops an obsession for the same reason that a given species of finch develops its particular kind of beak. 19. My outburst had little to do with the events of the morning, the missing button, or the handkerchief. Simply put, there is something maddening in the recognition that after so much careful deliberation one decides nothing, that one is shaped by life as water is shaped by a vase. 20. I should point out that on the day the Beagle docked in Falmouth, I was occupied with the porcelain figurines that Mr. Potts had ordered up from the cellar...