In 1816, George Brabantjieff’s fragile genes allowed him only to be carted in a wheelbarrow, at the age of eleven, through London streets by Alexander Poole, a vegetable gardener who lived by the Thames among a grove of Mulberry Trees, which he brought from Armenia and cultivated with care.
No one troubled Poole where he made his home and grew carrots and potatoes and beans, ate them for himself and fed to Brabantjieff, and sold them in the markets. But Poole frequently resented Brabantjieff, who was left to his caretaking by a young Armenian woman when Poole travelled to Turkey and then to the Mountains of Ararat with Cortezza, Portuguese dancer, whose scar beneath her lip was the mark of an earlier lover’s overzealous passion, from whom she escaped one night in Lisbon with nothing but a shred of her life. It was during that visit in 1804 when Poole acquired his Mulberry seeds and finally returned to England, in the spring of 1805, with Brabantjieff.
On a winter afternoon when Poole longed for the orange dusk of Armenian nights; when, for the sixth day, the London sunset was obscured by obstinate rain and clouds; when the cold and his fever stretched thin the meninges of his brain and spinal chord, the wheelbarrow in which Brabantjieff sat, and the carrots beside him, struck an obstacle and propelled Brabantjieff onto the stony path. In the ubiquitous darkness, Brabantjieff’s head struck a stone, and he could not be saved. But before his quivering body ceased all motion, Brabantjieff said this to Poole, his voice clear and emanating from the darkness, for his mouth could not be seen: “Thank you, my dear Mr. Poole. That I have been half of you, half of all people, save for the little boy we saw yesterday with no arms; I have been one portion of all people. Like you are too, Mr. Poole, one part of all mankind. I can leave you now, for without my legs you cared for me like I was part of you. Thank you Mr. Poole, go now and take your part in mankind, and remember me, that I was part of you, and all of you.”
Poole was never certain whether the wheelbarrow pitched against that stone in the darkness entirely by accident, but when he eventually returned to Lisbon and found Cortezza, travelled again to Armenia to stand at the foot of the Mountains of Ararat, only then did he at last understand Brabantjieff. By happenstance he passed a grove of Mulberry Trees, and he was with Cortezza beneath the orange light of dusk; then he forgave himself and all mankind.
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