I liked to squint and try to see land. Though I understood intellectually how one can travel so far as to not be able to see where one has come from, it still struck me as odd that I used to be there but was no longer. What was Rosalie doing? Was she planning a meal? Wiping a tear from Sylvie’s face? Out in Union Square “stirring the pot,” as she used to call shopping?
I was not opposed to solitude—I was mostly by myself when I was not working back in San Francisco, but then at least there was a city around me, with its spicy noise and its fervency. Now, when I was not with Ainslie, I was alone. When he was gone, I had the uncanny sense that I was being watched. Indeed I was being watched carefully by several animals to see if I’d be so careless as to leave the top off the sugar or drop a bit of meat. I was vulnerable in our house without walls, like I was in a fishbowl. At the beach, however, I had a sense that there was a whole world around me, and it gave me comfort.
I began to keep a diary, under cover as Mrs. Conway, intrepid explorer, to reinforce my story and assuage my loneliness. It turned into my first book, The Enchanted Islands, which you can find a copy of, if you search diligently. By the end, I was so adept at writing fiction that my second book, Return to the Island, is a near-complete work of imagination (except, of course, for the banal events, which happened with great regularity throughout our island stay). It’s a misconception that island life is always hopping. Rather, it is full of routine and hoping for weather other than what you have. When it’s hot, you wish it were cooler, and then the cool weather arrives and you wish the sun would shine with greater enthusiasm. During the rainy season, you’d pay a great deal of money for one dry day, and then the drought comes and you dream of rainstorms. It is a flaw of the human spirit that we always want what we don’t have, and the achievement of one goal merely sparks the setting of another, at least in those of us who strive to better ourselves.
*
We celebrated two months of residence, and our garden was finally starting to bear its first edibles. I was finding new ways to eliminate pests and discourage foragers. Our house, such as it was, was complete. It was time for some reconnaissance. We still had not met our other neighbors who lived over the sierra, so Ainslie said he’d hike around and say hello. His secondary motive was to fill in the details of the rudimentary maps of the islands we had been provided with. He would also look for other sources of water, always a concern and essential to any future military usage. He forewarned me he might be spending the night away, either “on the road” or with the couple who lived on the other side of the sierra, the Weisses. He set off with a bundle of dried meat and some cornmeal cakes. Night fell and he wasn’t back.
It had been a rainy day, odd for this time of year, and I spent it running from receptacle to receptacle, pouring what little water I collected into a jug so as to save it from evaporation and to stop the birds from fouling it. The ground, which so often rejected the meager rainwater, pushing it away in little clumps, finally gave in and absorbed it, and the result was miraculous mud! I scooped some and plugged the holes in the roof as best I could, then tried to make our dirt floor a bit less dusty, as I’d read they do in Africa. If that’s true, then I needed some African guidance, because I merely succeeded in making our floor deeply rutted.
I spent the night huddling under my thin sheet, simultaneously hoping for and dreading the rats’ arrival. Sure enough they came, their familiar presence comforting in its regularity, but of course, rats are no friends and no substitute for a husband. As they ran over our tin roof, I imagined the worst. What would happen if I were to fall—would Ainslie find me? Would I be eaten before then? What if I were bitten by some poisonous spider? Ate something rotten and vomited out my insides organ by organ like what felled poor Dr. Ritter? What if Ainslie never came back and I was left to fend for myself until the next boat came by? The thought of Ainslie’s demise struck me with a coldness and panic I didn’t know I was capable of feeling.
As if the moon couldn’t decide if I needed light or dark, it shone half. Not enough to see by but enough to cast shadows. And shadows I saw, as I alternated between keeping my eyes open and shutting them tight like a child willing ghosts away. Every paw- or hoof-fall was a murderess coming to ply her trade. Every snapping twig a cocked gun. Even the wind blew louder.
I must have fallen asleep because something woke me during the night. A boar? A goat? A murderous German? I sat shivering until dawn. At first light, the rats retreated and noises outside returned to their non-scary incarnations: branches, birds, wind. I was all right.
Until I went out front. There were brush marks in the front area, striations in the wet dirt like something had tried to cover its footsteps.
Could an animal have done this, dragging a branch? It was rather unlikely. A sense of dread lodged within me and stayed for the day. But there was nothing to be done, and there was bread to bake and a garden to clear and no end of other chores.
As a second dusk began to fall, I scanned the horizon nervously, a Penelope waiting for her wandering Odysseus. For a spy, Ainslie walked with a heavy step. I could tell they were his footfalls for long minutes before he arrived; he took large strides and often paused at the top of his gait. There would be a long silence and then the crash of a crush of underbrush, sometimes accompanied by the whoosh of branches being swept out of the way to make room for him.
With a simultaneous sense of relief and also of joy, I called, “What ho!”
“Friend or foe?” he replied.
“That’s what I’m supposed to say!” I laughed and took his pack off his shoulders.
Ainslie gave me a hug, lingering and squeezing in a way that reassured me he was happy to be back. He looked rested but troubled. I didn’t dare ask him what was wrong, though, for I knew he would just make a joke and pull away even further. The only way to get information from him was to allow him to divulge it in his own time.
Our worry for each other’s safety was mutual, and I was thrilled to think I occupied his thoughts when he was gone.
“Of course you do! You’re my wife—who else am I supposed to think about?” He sat down and wiped his face with the kerchief he always wore around his neck. After he rested a while he said, “The Weiss kid looks terrible, odd pale tint to his skin. They’ve lived here five years, so I’m marking them down as harmless. But might as well radio it in tomorrow. Tomorrow is Thursday, right?” We had a standard Thursday-afternoon radio appointment. Communications were so limited that both receivers had to be on at the same time and same frequency for Guayaquil to copy us.
I had prepared a homecoming meal of fried ham and cornmeal biscuits, assuming he’d be hungry after his journey, and I was not wrong. He drank his customary black coffee and strode around the house, examining it like I’d done some damage that needed to be inspected, which made me feel self-conscious about the mud plugs in the roof.
“What’s this, then?” he asked, looking at the branch marks near the path.
“I don’t know,” I said. “They were there when I woke up. Do you think it’s an animal?”
Ainslie squatted down to look more closely. “Did anything else…happen?” he asked.
“I’m not sure if this counts as happening,” I said, “but no, it was utterly quiet here. Scarily quiet, in fact. A rat got into the sugar again, even though I put a rock on top. Those things are much cleverer than we give them credit for.”
I had set Ainslie up for a joke here, but he didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he looked concerned, which tamped the feeling of joy at his return.
“You don’t think it’s…” I trailed off. I couldn’t imagine what it might have been.
“I’m sure it’s nothing, pet,” he said. “Your imagination gets active when you’re by yourself. I brought some papayas from upcountry. They’re not particularly good. Picked too early. Give one a try. Maybe you can turn them into something more interesting.” I smiled. So much was confusing about Ainslie. He flirted, professed affection for me, which I re
ally believed he felt, but he shared so little with me, and we hadn’t repeated our night in Guayaquil. At night he pecked my cheek and retired to his own bed. It’s true that it was easier to keep bugs at bay with separate nets, but it was an obvious rebuke.
And then, like any other husband come home from a day of work, Ainslie lit his pipe with muyuyo grass and contemplated the rapidly setting sun, turning in as soon as it fell into the water, another day.
*
A week passed, and Ainslie prepared to pay a visit to the other German couple we had yet to meet, the Muellers. I asked Ainslie if I could accompany him. I didn’t want to spend another night alone if he somehow found himself unable to return before dark. So we hiked the hour and a half to Friedo, as Dr. Ritter and Dore had christened their home in a combination of their names. He strode ahead of me as though he’d trod the path many times. His legs were so long, I had to hurry to keep up and eventually I asked him to slow down. He was apologetic—he hadn’t realized he was rushing. It was an old habit from the service.
He let me rest until I’d caught my breath, and then had me hike on before him. But his presence just behind me, looming, made me more cross than hurrying to follow him had done. “Just go,” I snapped.
Ainslie was patient. He sat on the path and said, “Let’s have lunch.”
I did feel better after eating and drinking, and I had changed my attitude by the time we got to Friedo’s front gate, which had its own name like the entrance to the Forbidden City in China: Elephant Gate. Ainslie said to me, “Tell them hello in German.”
“ ’Allo!” I yelled, a trilingual mix of hallo, hello, and hola.
I had been told that the Muellers were old, but Ingrid was about my age, though browned and leathered by the sun. I was shocked, if only because that meant that I was old too. My age occasionally snuck up on me like this, a startled look in the mirror, a twinge in the mornings. Tasks that required viewing of small details, like threading a needle, were hard (all right, impossible).
Though she had a reputation for being unpleasant, Ingrid was as warm as her Teutonic heritage could let her be. She shook our hands—I was impressed with the strong grip—and then called to her husband that the American couple had finally arrived, as if we had been expected and were tardy.
We sat down with her and Alexandre and drank an odd tea that may have been just twigs. Their English was excellent; Alexandre had learned it at university. He had a long gray beard, Santa Claus style, which made him seem friendly. He spoke very slowly, and put great thought into each word. He had been a professor, he said, of philosophy at Stuttgart. I was curious as to what would make someone cross an ocean to study with a two-bit philosopher like Ritter. Of course, I didn’t raise the question in quite that way. To answer me, he thought he had better begin way in the past, and we sat for an hour or so while he related his entire life story. By the time he explained the effect that Ritter’s philosophy had on him, my bottom hurt from sitting so long. It was the longest I had sat since leaving the boat more than two months ago. Ainslie was growing increasingly restless next to me. He was not built for holding still, and first his knee began to jostle, then he started tapping his fingers together. I could feel our mutual annoyance building, but I was powerless to stop Alexandre’s tirade. His wife sat placidly by his side; from her expression I believe she had left her body and was imagining herself somewhere very different. She would have to be. How could she stand to listen to him drone on and on? Occasionally he would ask her for a word in English, which she could usually provide, but other than that she said nothing.
Finally, Ainslie stood. “I have to go finish that project before dark. You stay, Franny, and help plant those seedlings you wanted to give Frau Mueller.” He smirked at me. He was teasing me even as he was throwing me to the wolves.
“Please come to the garden, ja?” Ingrid was obviously desperate for company. She grabbed my arm and practically pulled me away.
“You want to see my papers?” Alexandre asked Ainslie.
“Next time, I’m afraid. Have to make tracks.”
We needed some cucumber seedlings and mature sugarcane, and they were obviously growing in abundance in the Muellers’ garden, but I would rather have gone without sugar forever than spend another minute with these bores. “How will I get home? You know I’m hopeless with directions.”
“You’ll make it. It’s easy, you can’t miss it. Be home before dark!” And Ainslie took off out the gate and down the path on his long legs before I could gather my belongings. I reluctantly let Ingrid take me to the garden, where I got my sugarcane and a long explanation of the life cycle of garden beetles, and how much we can learn from them about our own society. Then I received a lecture on the lettuce seeds that I had brought her. I also got to see Alexandre’s papers, which were luckily in German, or I’m sure he would have had me read them in their entirety. They had created a little shrine to the departed Ritters, with the doctor’s rusting typewriter and a moldy notebook that Dore had left behind when she returned to Germany.
I did have to admire the house though, and their luck in finding such a dwelling place already built. There were wood plank floors, with lumber obviously purchased off-island, and their veranda was large and completely covered by a tarp. They also had tarp walls, and on the windward side a wall made of corrugated metal of which I was very jealous. The long, straight poles that held up their house made it airy and spacious, with copious shelves for the many books and papers that Ritter and Dore had collected in their ten years on the islands. Now, though, they were mostly empty.
Still, their house made me feel uneasy; the deceased’s belongings haunted the place. I didn’t think it was the Muellers who created the brush marks in front of our house, but they were obviously a bit off their nuts. I find unpredictability in humans very off-putting, and so I breathed a sigh of relief as I finally extricated myself from their clutches.
I did find my way back because I spent the entire journey thinking about the Muellers, and whether they could possibly be German government employees. Therefore my feet had free rein to find their own way without interference from my intellect, and they did splendidly.
It was easy for me to imagine the Muellers getting sent away just so the continent of Europe would have some breathing room, but as far as strategies go, sending a myopic drip to look for ships or a place to moor a fleet could not have been the wisest course of action. The famed German efficiency wouldn’t have tolerated such sluggishness. These were not government agents.
*
I was near home when my body went into high alert. What was wrong? I heard voices laughing. Voices. Plural. A strange sound for the islands. Ainslie was sitting at our table drinking lemonade with Genevieve and Victor.
“Hello, what’s this?” I said.
Ainslie said, “I ran into them on the way home and they came by for a drink, such as it is.”
“Oh,” I said. I was tired, and not excited about having guests, especially these. I’d had enough trying Germans for a day, nay, a week. “Can you help me with this?” I held out the sugarcane.
“Of course.” Ainslie stood to take the package from me. He set it next to the stove. “Have a seat. We were talking about…I’m not sure.”
Genevieve came toward me and kissed my cheek. I must have smelled terrible. “You the eyes of the nice person, yes?” she said in Spanish.
I have always been a sucker for a compliment, and Genevieve delivered this one with such sincerity that I was forced to examine her for once in return. She must indeed have been striking when she was younger and less disheveled. She still held herself regally. She could see me soften. She gestured around our house. “I come to say hello to friend.”
“How nice,” I said in Spanish.
She sat ceremoniously on our bench, legs crossed at the knees. Her shorts were frayed at the ends, and she picked at a thread. I noticed her extreme thinness. Her collarbones were protruding and her rib cage was poking through the gap in her
blouse. My pity won out over my wariness, and I invited them to stay for dinner.
It was a bit in retaliation for Ainslie leaving me at the Muellers’, though it would mean more work for me, preparing dinner, than for him. I stoked the fire and cooked a double portion of the cow we’d butchered recently.
We sat down to eat, smiling, nodding, and pantomiming, but mostly eating. Our guests seemed untroubled that they had contributed nothing to the meal and were consuming the lion’s share of it.
Genevieve was flirty with Ainslie, smiling with her oversize teeth showing. The grin crinkled the skin around her eyes, which made me suspect her more. I didn’t like the way both Ainslie and Victor paid so much attention to her. I didn’t like the way she demanded it, laughing too loudly, using her hands to gesture so that everyone became protective of their glass lest she knock it over.
Whenever I tried to contribute to the conversation, either by translating or adding my own thoughts, Genevieve laughed, too high, humoring me. She began to sing, and her voice was solid, if not beautiful. She sang something melancholy and when she stopped, both men applauded her roundly. She gestured with her hand to say, Your turn, but my voice is so bad that when I was teaching they asked me not to sing at my school’s seasonal concert. I shook my head. I found myself exhausted by the effort to entertain as well as the activity of the day. Once you’re out of the habit, interacting with others is a trial. All right, I’ll say it: I was jealous. She was younger and charismatic in a way that I never was. A way that Rosalie was able to master effortlessly. An old insecurity rearing its ugly head again. It always made me feel my plainness and my age acutely. I stood up and began to scrub the dishes with sand and salt water. Genevieve did not help me, which annoyed me further. Where I came from, the women helped to serve and clear the meal.
The three of them shared a cigarette while I banged our tin plates together to signal my displeasure. But either no one heard me or no one cared. Finally Genevieve said she was ready to go home. We said our goodbyes. Genevieve tried to hug me, and I let her put her arms around me. Oddly, she smelled like flowers. I was so used to Ainslie’s and my stink, it was a shock to smell something on a person other than body odor.
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