Easter Island Page 8

  “Eamonn, let’s set the outer jib. And, Elsa, would you mind tightening the main?”

  “Not at all.” Elsa cranks the winch with ease. Her arm muscles have hardened these past few months; her palms are now callused. “Are you feeling all right?” she asks.

  “Excellent. Perfect. I’m in tip-top shape.”

  “Because if you wanted to work belowdecks, Edward, I’m sure we can manage things up here.”

  Her solicitude seems to hurt him, as if he imagined his few boasting words might, after all these months, have won her attention. He stares at the horizon. “As the captain, everything is my responsibility. I like to keep watch here, to look after things. In another few weeks, Elsa, you will be able to sail this schooner. You’ve become quite the mariner. It’s wonderful. I hadn’t expected it. That is not to say I did not think well of you, I admired all your abilities, but the life of the sea is not for everybody. I simply, well—” He halts; this half-compliment is tripping him. “What I mean to say is: You mustn’t concern yourself with me.”

  In late August they reach the coast of Uruguay. They are again becalmed, slowed to thirty miles a day, drifting south on the Brazil current. They tack endlessly to no avail. On several occasions, when the current stills, they even drift north. From the hold wafts the odor of spoiling meat and oranges and fish. The boat has taken on a swarm of mosquitoes, and each evening, as they light the oil lamps in the cabin, there follows a frantic smacking and swatting, the burlesque of which might quell some tensions were it not for the threat of malaria. At bedtime, Elsa begins administering quinine.

  During these windless weeks, everyone grows edgy. Edward, in particular, grows curt with the crew. While he is above deck late at night, Elsa can hear Kierney complaining to Eamonn.

  “Perhaps if Captain Beazley and his wife shared a cabin he wouldn’t be hollering at us so.”

  “Ah, clam it, Kierney. Drifting like this’ll make a saint testy.”

  “Aye, but a saint would at least get a little squeeze from his wife.”

  “The captain’s a gentleman,” says Eamonn. “That’s all, Kierney. You just dunno what that word means.”

  “Gentleman. Lady. You can call it whatever, Eamonn. But if that’s what the moneybags call marriage, you won’t be seeing me trying to get meself into no aristocracy.”

  Eamonn laughs. “You’ll be too busy trying to get yerself into a wife!”

  “Shut up.”

  As Elsa lies in the dark, listening to them, she thinks Kierney has, in fact, hit on the source of Edward’s agitation. Not the arrangement itself—Edward seems as willing as she is, given the circumstances, to postpone sharing a bed—but having a crew there to witness their arrangement, to judge it. Privacy vanished the moment they stepped on the boat. Surely Kierney and Eamonn, whom Elsa suspects spend their nights ashore rum-drunk with prostitutes, look down on Edward. A wife who sleeps with her sister—to them, it must seem ridiculous. And it doesn’t help that in Rio, the consul’s sister, partially deaf from a severe case of tonsillitis—“You see, dears, it makes no difference to me if someone is speaking Portuguese or English or Bantu!”—assumed Elsa and Alice were Edward’s daughters. Despite protestations and clarifications, in the haze of her deafness and several brandies she insisted that Elsa had Edward’s same lovely cheekbones.

  To pass the slow days, Elsa and Alice sprawl across the bow for fish-spotting contests. Alice exaggerates incessantly.How many sharks, Alice dear? Fifty? Well, I hope we don’t fall in. They watch the occasional sea turtle glide by, and once in a while, when they pass through a shoal, a flying fish leaps aboard, sending Alice into hysterics. She giggles at the fish’s side fins thumping the deck, until, the creature’s distress beginning to alarm her, she finally tosses it back to the sea.

  The cape pigeons also delight Alice. Edward hands her shreds of meat to throw to them and crouches behind his photo box to take several photographs of the birds. Then, with evident pleasure, he takes one of Alice, her arm extended over the gunwale, a smile stretched across her face as a gray speckled bird dives before her.

  Alice and Elsa wear broad hats on deck, tie scarves about their heads when the wind is strong, but already their skin has darkened. At night Elsa rubs almond oil into their hands and arms and necks; they drift to sleep beside one another in a haze of salt air and marzipan.

  At Buenos Aires, they meet supplies and letters from England. A week later, they put in briefly to water at Bahía Blanca—where native women make Elsa presents of penguin eggs and seashells—and then at Puerto Deseado. The tropical heat dissolves, replaced by clear and breezy days. But farther south, as they approach Patagonia, it grows colder; porpoises tumble about the bow, seals slither alongside. Two albatross, their wide white wings suspended in a gentle arc, wheel and circle about the stern, silently following the boat.

  The patent log bobbing behind them registers speeds of six knots, but their sense of motion slows as daylight stretches interminably with summer’s approach. Elsa and Alice prepare breakfast at threeA .M.—dawn. When they retire at tenP .M., the sun still cuts through their cabin window. And late into the night Pudding stumbles dizzily on his perch.

  “Are you sick, Pudding? Are you sick?”

  “Good Alice. Bird superior. Bird. Bird.”

  “Allie,” says Elsa, rising from the bed. “I think Pudding needs to sleep.”

  “Oh, no, Elsa. He’s cross. I was watching the other birds and he thought I forgot all about him. But I didn’t, Pudding, I didn’t.”

  “Look, Allie,” says Elsa as she drapes a shawl over the cage. “He just needs the dark so he knows to rest.”

  Only Alice sees this as concealment; she rises every few minutes to peek behind the shawl. “Pudding,” she whispers, “where are you, Pudding?”

  In bed at night, unable to sleep, Elsa thinks: Darkness is now like a blanket too small to cover one’s entire form. You try to wrap yourself safely within, but daylight still finds a naked spot toward which it creeps.

  The daylight is misty-gray, foglike, shrouding the landscape in constant haze. Its damp chill reminds Elsa of London. So far away now. They have been at sea eight months, and it will be years before she sees England again. St. Albans’s clock tower, its Roman walls, the narrow streets where she cycled, her father’s house. For the first time, she misses home.

  Farther south, antarctic breezes tear through the cabin. Elsa dresses Alice in gaiters and a second pair of bloomers. At night, they cuddle close, their teeth chattering into each other’s ears.

  “Cooollddd,”Alice says in the darkness.

  Elsa presses her mouth to Alice’s neck and releases a slow, hot breath. Alice giggles. Elsa finds a spot on Alice’s scalp and blows again. Elsa can feel the steam collect on her own lips. Alice squirms with delight.

  “I’m your very own stove,” Elsa says.

  Alice suddenly flips over. “Alice is a stove too.” Her eyes flicker with excitement. “Hot, hot, hot!” she squeals. Her lips stretch into an exaggerated yawn and find their way to Elsa’s neck. The blast is hot and moist. Then there is brief suction, a cold tickle on Elsa’s neck as Alice nestles her lips on the gulf of skin and breathes in. This must be what mothers feel, Elsa thinks, when they listen to the breath of their infants. The sound soothes her.

  Then, on the night of October tenth, Kierney shouts below, “I see the light of Cape Virgins!”

  They have arrived at the Straits of Magellan. Elsa knows enough of sailing now to realize how difficult they will be to pass—a long, narrow, zigzagging path of roiling ocean. Max had called the straits a seaman’s greatest adversary. “Scylla! Charybdis!” he said. “Odysseus was fortunate he did not have to sail through the Straits of Magellan!”

  In Tierra del Fuego, they anchor for two nights, waiting for the wind to slacken. The British consul, interested in the expedition, invites them to dinner. “I have always meant to make the trip myself. Only my poor health prevents me. Asthma, you see.” Over brandy he remarks on the pe
rils of the straits, suggesting they enlist a tramp to tow them through.

  But Edward, discouraged by their recent drifting, now takes great pains to prove his ability. He sits up straight. “We shan’t be discouraged by minor danger.”

  “Edward.” Elsa sets her glass down.

  The consul grins. “Ah, you see? The ladies often have ideas of their own.”

  “Elsa,” says Edward. “We’re not amateurs. I’ve sailed with Lipton, considered one of the best. I hope you have some faith in my judgment in these matters.”

  “Neither my faith nor your judgment is in question,” Elsa says flatly, aware she is spoiling the mood. The consul, to her right, shifts in his chair. “I only think we should take better stock of the situation before determining our course.”

  “Mrs. Beazley,” says the consul, “it is the captain’s ordained task to determine the course of the boat.”

  “The safe course.”

  “Very well, we’ll take better stock,” Edward cuts in.

  An awkward silence fills the room. Edward avoids Elsa’s gaze.

  But on the third day, they do sail. The navigation of the First Narrows proves tricky. The water churns above the rusted wreckage—smashed hulls and broken masts thick with barnacles. Alert, hands ready to loosen or cleat a line, they station themselves on deck. “Remember, keep the sails loose,” says Edward. “We don’t want to catch any sudden gusts.” Slowly, the boat noses through the narrow waterway and at the first hint of dusk they drop anchor; at least Edward acknowledges the risks of sailing without full light.

  At sixA .M. they awake to pass the Second Narrows at slack tide, and make it safely, though exhausted, to Punta Arenas. Here the land is flat and windswept; it is sheep country, grassy and low. “A tow!” Edward tosses the word overboard. He rubs his knee, looks up at Elsa. “You see, Elsa, I would not lead us astray.”

  “I see, Edward. I see that now.”

  “I am looking out for us. For all of us.”

  “I know.” And she is sorry. Sorry she let her doubt reveal itself to him. He has acted with caution and kindness the entire way, and she hopes that when they are there and settled, she can prove her growing trust.

  For a fortnight they sail the Patagonian Channels, a labyrinth of fjords and coves and bays. Hundreds of giant petrels and albatross circle the stern, their wings forming a loosely knit canopy of white. Alice settles herself on the foredeck, wrapped in a blanket, her arms folded across her bosom, her head tilted back. For hours she watches the birds intently, warned by Eamonn not to wave or shout at the petrels, known as “stinkers,” for vomiting when frightened.

  Elsa draws a map and plots the schooner’s progress against Darwin’s route. She is now readingThe Voyage of the Beagle, devouring the descriptions of Rio de Janeiro, Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires, the Falkland Islands, and Patagonia—all places they have passed. The pages have curled from the spray of seawater.

  At Isla Desolación, they are detained by hail for five days, but as they zigzag north through the channels, the weather warms. Above them now, in misty splendor, rise the snowcapped Andes.

  Christmas Day, they anchor in Golfo de Penas, off the coast of Chile. A light drizzle washes the boat as they dine on a special meal of salted beef and boiled potatoes. But the damp air holds warmth, and Elsa, for the first time in weeks, perspires beneath her dress. After their meal, despite the rain, Elsa, Alice, and Edward row the dinghy ashore. Alice insists on bringing Pudding. Once the dinghy is pulled onto the beach, they hike through a winding path of dripping vegetation.

  “Elsa!” Edward calls from ahead. Pulling aside a cluster of wet vines, he peers into the dark mouth of a cave. “Shall we have a look?”

  “Oh, let’s!” says Elsa, breaking into a run. The exertion delights her. How wonderful to be moving! Alice, slowed by Pudding’s cage, lags behind.

  From his pack Edward pulls a revolver and a small lantern, which he lights beneath the shelter of his body. “Ready?”

  But as he steps forward, Alice darts ahead. “Hullo in there! Hullo!” she shouts into the cave.

  “Allie dear, careful.” Elsa gently pulls her backward. “You can’t just storm in there. There might be bats.”

  “Bats!”

  “Bats can’t harm you, Alice,” Edward says. “And it’s likely there aren’t any. I’ll go first, just to be sure. You hold Elsa’s hand.”

  “I am not going where there are bats.”

  “Allie.”

  Alice shakes her head no.

  “Then you can wait here and look after Pudding,” says Elsa. “Edward and I won’t be a minute.”

  “Why do you want to go in there if there are bats? Oh, no. Don’t go in there, Elsa.”

  “We want to explore, Allie. We’re going to be one minute. That’s all. I promise you we’ll be fine.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Alice’s eyes look from Elsa to Edward and back again, and finally she moves aside and squats by the cave’s entrance, settling Pudding’s cage in a patch of grass. The bird flutters and caws, agitated by the raindrops. Elsa unties her own cape and drapes it, like a hood, over Alice’s head.

  “Why don’t you tell Pudding about the albatross you’ve seen.”

  “I already did.”

  “What about the flying fish?”

  “Oh, no. He wouldn’t like that. Fish aren’t supposed to fly. If I tell him that he will think he can swim. I’m going to tell him about bats, Elsa. Big horrible bats in caves.”

  “Allie, we’re going to be fine. I’ll call to you from inside.”

  Edward passes Elsa the lantern and takes her hand. With his other hand he poises the revolver. Elsa calls, “We’ll be right back.”

  Inside, the air is cool and moist. Their shoes thud against the hard ground; a slow drip pings against the rocks. The walls are slick with moss, the ceiling low, and they crouch forward through the narrow passage, Elsa’s eyes intent on where she steps. Soon Edward releases her hand and squeezes ahead.

  “No bats, Allie!” she hollers back, watching Edward crouch down, uncock his revolver, and tap it against the rock face. She holds the lantern out. “How deep do you think it goes?”

  “I think we’re at the end,” he says. “Hear that?” He taps the handle of the revolver once more against the rock. “There’s something hollow. Maybe another passage, but there’s no opening I can see.”

  Elsa wiggles beside him. “Are you sure?” She’d been hoping for a brief adventure.

  “Nothing is so final as a wall of rock.”

  Elsa swings the lantern in a half arc over the passage’s end. “Not even a crack,” she says.

  Edward tucks his revolver through his belt and takes the lantern. “Follow my light,” he says, brushing by her. He extends his hand back for hers.

  “I can manage,” she says.

  She gropes the walls for balance, carefully places her feet behind his. Outside, the light is gray, and they turn from each other, embarrassed by their brief physicality.

  “Good Lord,” says Edward.

  Alice’s post beside the cave has been abandoned. On the ground, the cape lies in a soggy heap.

  “Allie!” Elsa shouts. “We’re out now.”

  “Alice!” Edward shouts, his voice panicked.

  “She’s not far,” Elsa says. “She’s no doubt waiting by the dinghy.”

  Hurrying through the wet overgrowth, they retrace their steps along the coast, calling Alice’s name along the way. But when they finally spot her, she isn’t waiting by the boat. She is in it, steadily rowing away from the shore, her head tilted back so that the rain falls upon her small, upturned face. Pudding’s cage sits beside her, the bird’s wings flapping madly.

  “Alice!” “Allie! Allie!” Their frantic voices stumble over each other. But Alice keeps her head back. Her mouth seems to be moving, her thin lips forming strange shapes, but Elsa cannot tell if Alice is speaking to them or simply lapping at the raindrops.

/>   6

  Greer awoke to the late-afternoon sun filtering through the burlap curtains. She propped herself up against the headboard, knuckled sleep from her eyes. She looked around the dim room—wicker nightstands, cement walls. On the desk opposite her a stack of books rose in an unstable spiral—Plants of Polynesia. The Settlement of the Pacific. The Theory of Island Biogeography. Textbook of Pollen Analysis.Ah, she remembered, Rapa Nui.

  She stepped out of the bed and pulled back the curtain. A warm glow bathed the courtyard, its eclectic vegetation reminding her of Rousseau’s paintings. Greer once spent a month investigating each floral image inThe Dream after reading a turn-of-the-century botanist’s paper that accused Rousseau of inventing his tropical flora. “Jungle Jousts and Botanical Brawls” claimed Rousseau concocted aesthetically pleasing plants: broad emerald stalks with giant fronds, white blossoms on velvet-black branches. InThe Dream , Greer had found a subtropical mimosa branch depicted at ten times its normal size, a Japanese clover blossom, and an agave native to the African desert. The plants were real but the proportions confused, and their biogeographic combination a greenhouse mishmash: a biota worthy of Dr. Frankenstein’s imagination. In fact, that was what she titled her article—“Frankenstein’s Jungle”—which she sent to several botany journals, all of which rejected the manuscript for its lack of scientific relevance. She then sent the article to a dozen art magazines, who likewise rejected it, this time for its inconsequence to art. It now sat in a drawer in Marblehead inside a folder bulging with other articles on hybrid, unpublishable subjects—subjects that, she now knew, once you were established in the scientific community would suggest to colleagues your robust intellectual appetite but, as a young post-doc, simply suggested a lack of focus, and imaginative, perhaps emotional, tendencies.

  Greer pulled the curtain shut, lifted the books from her desk, and spilled them on the bed. She’d brought botany and pollen guides; her collections of Darwin, Wallace, Lyell, and Linnaeus; two contemporary volumes on the history of the island with excerpts from early European visitors. But she knew she would need their full accounts. Roggeveen’s or Cook’s journal might, after all, mention the island’s flora. Somewhere in their building, SAAS maintained a good library, but the materials were locked away, and access required paperwork. It would have to wait.