Ship Fever Read Online Free Page B

me when he spoke.
    â€œDid you know,” he said to Sebastian, “that I have an actual draft of a letter that Gregor Mendel wrote to the botanist Nägeli? My dear Antonia gave it to me.”
    Sebastian looked from me to Richard and back. “Where did you get such a thing?” he asked. “How…?”
    Richard began to talk, but I couldn’t bear to listen to him tell that story badly one more time. “My grandfather gave it to me,” I said, interrupting Richard. “He knew Mendel when he was a little boy.” And without giving Richard a chance to say another word, without even looking at the hurt and puzzlement I knew must be on his face, I told Sebastian all about the behavior of the hawkweeds. I told the story slowly, fully, without skipping any parts. In the gathering darkness I moved my hands and did my best to make Sebastian see the wall and the clocktower and the gardens and the hives, the spectacles on Mendel’s face and Tati’s bare feet. And when I was done, when my words hung in the air and Sebastian murmured appreciatively, I did something I’d never done before, because Richard had never thought to ask the question Sebastian asked.
    â€œHow did your grandfather come to tell you that?” he said. “It is perhaps an unusual story to tell a little girl.”
    â€œIt gave us something to talk about,” I said. “We spent a lot of time together, the fall that I was ten. He had killed a man—accidentally, but still the man was dead. He lived with us while we were waiting for the trial.”
    Overhead, the first fireworks opened into blossoms of red and gold and green. “Antonia,” Richard said, but he caughthimself. In front of Sebastian he would not admit that this was something his wife of twenty-five years had never told him before. In the light of the white cascading fountain above us I could see him staring at me, but all he said was, “An amazing story, isn’t it? I used to tell it to my genetics students every year, but this fall everything was so deranged—I left it out, I knew they wouldn’t appreciate it.”
    â€œThings are different,” Sebastian said. “The world is changing.” He did not ask me how it was that my grandfather had killed a man.
    The pace and intensity of the fireworks increased, until all of them seemed to be exploding at once; then there was one final crash and then silence and darkness. I had been rude, I knew. I had deprived Richard of one of his great pleasures simply for the sake of hearing that story told well once.
    We gathered up our blanket and basket and walked home quietly. The house was dark and empty. In the living room I turned on a single light and then went to the kitchen to make coffee; when I came in with the tray the men were talking quietly about their work. “I believe what we have here is a Rassenkreis ,” Sebastian said, and he turned to include me in the conversation. In his short time with us, he had always paid me the compliment of assuming I understood his and Richard’s work. “A German word,” he said. “It means ‘race-circle’—it is what we call it when a species spread over a large area is broken into a chain of subspecies, each of which differs slightly from its neighbors. The neighboring subspecies can interbreed, but the subspecies at the two ends of the chain may be so different that they cannot. In the population that Richard and I are examining…”
    â€œI am very tired,” Richard said abruptly. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go up to bed.”
    â€œNo coffee?” I said.
    He looked at a spot just beyond my shoulder, as he always did when he was upset. “No,” he said. “Are you coming?”
    â€œSoon,” I said.
    And then, in that dim room, Sebastian came and sat in the chair right next to mine. “Is Richard well?” he said. “Is something