Ainslie walked them to the Camino de la Muerte so they could find their way back, and also to make sure that they were safely out of earshot when he returned.
“That’s who has been lurking around, I’d bet my life on it,” Ainslie said.
“Hopefully you don’t have to,” I said.
“Run into them my foot.” Ainslie paced our small home. “I caught them poking around.”
“In the house?” I looked around, to see if anything was out of place, not that there was anything I particularly cared about in it. My diary was harmless enough, and there were no letters to “Ainslie’s sister,” even in code.
Ainslie said, “Let’s just keep our eyes open.”
“And look for what?” I asked.
“You’ll know it when you see it.”
“Elmer Ainslie Conway, I have never in my life known it when I saw it.”
*
For two weeks I saw no human being other than Ainslie. No ships came in, no neighbors visited. I liked it like this. Ainslie reported seeing Genevieve and Victor on his daily outings to improve his roads or to hunt or to visit the radio, but I was always at home. We played our cover so convincingly that there were occasions when I forgot it wasn’t true. We were homesteaders, Swiss Family Robinsons, newlyweds. Ainslie was affectionate, even when it was clear that we weren’t being watched. Though living on the island was difficult, physically, I felt freer there than I had ever in my life. I wanted to keep the real world on the other side of the ocean. I wanted to keep away a looming war, an inevitable return to civilization.
Ainslie’s mood began to improve. I wasn’t sure what the change was, but I could hear him whistling as he came down the path for dinner. Even in the morning he was less like a beast of the jungle and more his best self. I thought it was perhaps that he was finally getting to be the spy we came here for. When a man lacks a vocation (even if he’s busy), he is less of a man. Ainslie’s purpose gave him strength.
Three weeks to the day, which made me think they planned it on purpose, our neighbors came to visit again. They sat down to my famous “sandcakes” (a sort of flatbread/pancake) and strong coffee. At least this time they brought oranges, though our grove overproduced them anyway.
Genevieve was dressed in the same outfit as the last time I’d seen her (then again, so was I). There was a new hole in her shirt, under her arm. Victor’s hair had grown longer and his beard had come in full, red on his chin, patchy toward his ears. He looked a bit like a wild dog.
Ainslie treated Genevieve as royalty. He greeted her by kissing her hand. He pulled out our bench so that she could sit down, and poured her more coffee each time she took a sip. He was convincingly enthralled—could he actually be fooled by her fake solicitousness? He leaned forward across the table and rested his chin on his hands, really listening. He laughed when she did, so loudly that I could see the gold of his fillings. I got angrier and angrier, gripping my fists tightly. I even thought of flirting with Victor, but I was so out of practice, I wouldn’t even know what to do.
Once they left, I planned to tell Ainslie exactly what I thought of his attitude toward Genevieve. To see him desiring another woman made me furious. Why? I wondered as I scrubbed the plates. What did I care if he found someone attractive? Why wouldn’t he? And though I thought Genevieve ugly, she was a decade or so younger than I.
“What is wrong with you?” I hissed.
“What do you mean?”
“You were practically fondling her.”
“It’s our job.” Ainslie laughed, which made me angrier. “I only have eyes for you, Mrs. Conway,” he said.
“I don’t believe that,” I said. “You don’t have eyes for me.”
The tenor of the conversation changed. “Franny, I don’t really have eyes for anyone.” He sat on the bench and rested his elbows on his knees, which made him look smaller.
There had been so many of these men in my life, men who wanted a sister rather than a lover, men who would rather live alone in their own thoughts. Was I one of them? One of those people who ultimately wanted to be alone? Maybe that was why I never married. What did that say about me?
“I’m not sure I even understand what that means,” I said. I remained on the other side of our house. I didn’t want to be near him so he could kiss me on the head or pat my knee.
“This has worked out better than I’d hoped,” he said, waving his hand back and forth, indicating us. “Sure as hell beats Verdun as assignments go, but you have to remember why we entered into this.”
I was stung, as though slapped. I’d begun to believe the lie of our marriage. But I looked at Ainslie now, and I was sure, as I stared at his brows, unknit and wrinkleless, that he had been pretending. Was any of his affection for me real? Or was it all another job, like clearing the spring of brush or radioing Guayaquil? My heart began to beat rapidly. Ainslie was so good at deceiving, I felt a chill.
He must have seen my dejection. He leaped to his feet and put his arms around me. “Oh Franny, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m thrilled to be saddled with you, but we need to remember to put Pomegranate first.”
“What will happen to us,” I whispered, “when it’s over?” It was so good to be held that I relaxed into his embrace.
“Oh I don’t know,” Ainslie said breezily. “A mission’s over when it’s over, and until then, can’t we enjoy how well it’s working out?”
I willed a tear not to fall.
“I mean,” he continued, “it could have been awful, and it’s rather nice.”
“Do you think so?” I asked.
He pushed me back so that he could see my face. “Of course.” He looked stricken. “Don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “It is rather nice, I suppose.”
His face relaxed. “I’m sorry, I’m not used to working with women. I probably say all the wrong things. I’m very fond of you, you have to know that.”
“I’m just…I have island fever, I think.”
“Happens to the best of them,” he said. “You’re doing a great job. We’ll keep an eye on them. I’ll stick close to home.”
It is an interesting quality in humans (or in my incarnation of humanity) that this promise gave me hope, or kept hope alive. He kissed the top of my head and hugged me, and I could hear his heart beating. I willed mine to beat in time and we stood that way a long while, letting our blood run through us together, interrupted intimacy.
*
A week or so later, I went down to the ocean to see if I could catch some fish. Usually hunting was Ainslie’s job, but he refused to have anything to do with seafood, and I was growing tired of our all-meat diet. I thought perhaps I could find some lobsters, or mussels, or catch a fish with some bait and a line. How naïve I was. Lobsters hide, fish swim far from shore. While I waited for something to bite, sitting on some sharp rocks, the sun beat down on me. I realized I hadn’t seen the ocean in a month. I sipped at my water canteen. I felt and wore all the years of my age, the twinges in my knees, the various age spots on my arms, the slight curve of my pre-arthritic fingers. I was struck by the folly of our mission, by my involvement in it, and I retraced the path of my life, wondering how it was that I started the daughter of immigrants in Minnesota and ended up a spy in the Galápagos Islands. At that moment, a curious bug came toward me, its body half stick and half leaf, and I began to think about all the paths Darwin described which brought animals here, and for the first time all day, I was comforted.
I relate these musings not because I imagine that a reader will find them interesting but to explain how an entire day can go by when your only conversation partner is yourself. And how you start to believe in that bifurcated voice as much as you believe in your own, because it is your own.
Eventually I gave up the line and waded into the water to get cool, and that’s when I saw that the tide had gone out, trapping a couple of fish in the tide pool. I suppose they were young tuna. I don’t know very much about fish, but even I could catch th
ese. I grabbed one by the tail and swung it against the rock to put it out of its misery, and repeated the process with a second one.
At home, I started the fire. I had gotten good at this now. I knew what kind and shape of wood made the best kindling, and which was the best for smoking meat. I could tell by looking at its whirled knots, its tender edges, whether it was dry enough to burn or if it would just smoke and peter out like a storm gathering strength out on the water but then deciding not to bother with rain. I could see how heavy it would be, whether or not I could carry it or if it was worth chopping up with the small hand ax.
I had also learned by now how to start a fire without matches, to twist my wrist just so to make the stones spark, where to hold them in relation to the wind so that the smallest wisps would catch, and how to blow on these newborn flames so that their larger siblings would begin to burn.
Ainslie took a while coming back from the radio, but I thought nothing of it. We had dinner; he didn’t even complain the way he usually did when I served anything except meat. I took his silence for exhaustion.
After dinner, I knew whether we would need to put the fire out or if it would burn down on its own, not threatening us while we slept. And I thought now of all the things I used to know like this back in my old life. I knew what time the cable car would come. I knew how far in advance to turn the water on so that it would run hot when I got into my bath. And before that, I knew how to stroke a chicken before I wrung its neck so that it would be calm in my arms. I knew how to make my ideas seem like they were Mrs. Keane’s. And even before that, I knew how hot the iron was by the sizzle of my spit. I could braid Rosalie’s hair into plaits so smooth they might have been corn silk. It seems that with enough practice, we can get to know just about anything.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next day Ainslie was several hours longer than he’d said he’d be. As dusk fell, I began to worry. My thoughts turned back to my previous jealousy. He was meeting with Genevieve, sleeping with her. A young man has needs, needs that I was certainly not meeting. But I wanted him to sleep with me if he slept with anyone, and certainly not the horse-toothed drama-lover Genevieve.
Maybe he was sleeping with Genevieve to find out her secrets, I reasoned. She did not hide the fact that the way into her confidences was through flattery. I wished he’d have told me, though. But perhaps he didn’t want me to act differently around her.
Should I have known or guessed? Probably. But do not forget I was lying to myself about so many things. Lies were my entire life at that point. I had lied about my real name, my religion. I lied about being ready to travel halfway around the world to an island on the edge of nowhere. Ainslie and I lied to everyone we met, and when there was no one to meet, we lied to ourselves.
I knew our relationship was a sham. And I knew that we had only ever shared a bed as man and wife once. But I wanted so badly for that to be just an oddity of our marriage. I had fallen for Ainslie. Who didn’t? His charm, his jolliness, which I rarely saw deflated, his humor, his capabilities. Even the way he spent what little leisure time he had improving a road that no one would ever use. I found that all adorable instead of exasperating.
Could he have been helping me instead of building his highway to nowhere? Yes. I was worked to the bone. I had grown so thin my short pants were held up by some rope that we needed for our home, but it was tie them up or walk around in my underthings. The mirror I had brought from the mainland had shattered, but in its fragments, strung up with fishing line in our garden to entertain birds (they were designed to discourage them but merely charmed them), showed partial views of a wan, pale woman with reddened, sunken cheeks. But I found his dedication to the craft as a sign that he was an enlightened being, like those monks who spend years crafting sand paintings only to sweep them away once they’ve finished. Now I see he was keeping himself busy, keeping the demons at bay. But demons are not dissuaded by oceans or preferences; they stow away like sea lice, unwanted visitors from another place, coming ashore with you wherever you go.
I said nothing to him about needing help. His affection for me felt so tenuous that I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize it. I knew enough of love to know it didn’t work this way, but I still fantasized that if I could just catch him at the right moment Ainslie might want me as I wanted him. Did I want to be intimate? Well, yes and no. I wanted to sleep next to him, to breathe in his scent when I awoke. I wanted to be close to him. I felt unloved but only in the sense that Ainslie could not love me, not that I could not be loved, if that makes sense. So I took what love he offered and the two of us pretended that it was enough, that it was all right. We were playacting anyway: A schoolteacher pretending to be a government agent. A Jew pretending to be a Gentile. A man masquerading as a husband. The circles of deception were endless, the spiral of a master hypnotist.
The signs of an affair, which women’s magazines love to list, are not applicable on a desert island. There are no collars, let alone lipstick stains. There are no receipts, no late nights at the office, no suspicious business travel. Still, something had changed. Ainslie was lighter, there’s no other way to put it. He whistled all the time, signaling his approach like a cat with a bell. He joked more. He was even a bit more physically affectionate toward me. And a woman always knows. I knew. I thought I knew.
So is it coincidence that I neglected to put his sandwich in his bag one day? I think I legitimately forgot, but the subconscious has a funny way of making volition seem like coincidence.
So, armed with a Galápagos sandwich (sandcakes with dried meat), I climbed after Ainslie to his road. It was not a short walk, about an hour each way. But when I reached the end of the improved road, hot and tired, I was surprised to not see him there. Perhaps he had gone another way. Perhaps he had decided to go hunting. By this time I was hungry, and so I ate half the sandwich and drank half the water. On my way back down, I stopped to remove a stone from my shoe, and I saw, oddly, Ainslie’s kerchief tied in a knot around an acacia tree. I stopped to untie it before I even thought about what it might be doing there. Silly Ainslie, leaving everything everywhere, as though there were maids to pick up after him.
But tied around a tree? And leaving his poor neck bare to be burned by the sun? It made no sense. The nearby brush had been disturbed by something, animal or human, the branches bent back and slanted, pointing. My feet began to follow the tamped-down undergrowth. I didn’t stop to consider what might be waiting for me at the end. I snagged my shirt on a thorn and paused to extricate myself. I had the flash of an image—Ainslie and Genevieve, him kissing her horsey mouth and pawing at her enormous breasts. I gulped down air. I could turn around, I thought. I could just pretend I hadn’t seen the handkerchief. But there is no unseeing something once you’ve seen it.
I was prepared for the tangle of naked limbs, the sweat-soaked sounds of heaving breath, but I was not prepared to see that the second body belonged to Victor. What was most shocking was that they were kissing, passionately.
Of course, I had lived for many years in San Francisco, and I understood the rudiments of homosexual relations. But I never considered that they would do it face-to-face, like they loved each other, and it might have been this realization that hurt most.
They sprang apart at my shocked cry, and I was catapulted back to that moment in Chicago when I saw Rosalie and Zeke together. That discovery changed my life. It was hard to imagine this one wouldn’t as well.
I ran madly back to the house, arriving with torn clothes and a skinned knee. I was too upset to cry. I began to breathe heavily. There wasn’t enough oxygen in my lungs; my vision was a camera lens that was narrowing rapidly. My heart beat wildly, and I could feel the blood rise to my ears, throbbing. I gasped for air, leaning over. I was sure I was going to die. Can you die from shock? A surge of panic, and the pinhole through which I was seeing the world narrowed to black.
“Shh, shh.” I heard Ainslie’s voice. He took my wrist, not hard, but firmly. “Shh, calm down
. Breathe. Just concentrate on breathing. Here, with me. One, in. Two, out. One, in. Two, out.” He urged my head between my knees, like he did the last time this happened, in Carmel.
The air began to return to my lungs, and my brain lost its balloon feeling. I sobbed, covering my face with my hands. I didn’t want Ainslie’s comfort, but there was no one else. He held me to his chest, where I breathed in the familiar scent of his sweat. Then I remembered what had provoked this panic attack, and I pushed him away.
“I don’t know what you think you saw,” Ainslie said, “but it’s not—”
I held up my hand. I didn’t want to speak right now. I didn’t want to listen. I just wanted to be away, anywhere but here. But an island is ironically a terrible place to be alone. You are too alone, always, and therefore it offers no respite, no cover. I parted the mosquito netting and lay down on my bed, the first time I’d lain down during daylight since we arrived.
When I awoke, I saw Ainslie struggling with the fire. He was blowing too hard, and the flames were suffocating from too much air. Without speaking, I walked over and pulled him back, blowing softly. The fire recovered. “Thanks,” Ainslie said. “I’m not too good at women’s work.” He was trying to jolly me out of my mood, but this time his jocularity wouldn’t suffice. I was numb. Were I to hammer my finger I wouldn’t even feel it.
I ate Ainslie’s terrible cooking staring off into the middle distance. I know he was worried I was punishing him, and undoubtedly that was a part of the silent treatment, but mostly I felt empty of words, like I was an iguana with a reptilian brain, who could only perform basic bodily functions. Afterward, I left Ainslie to wash up and I lay back down in bed. Mercifully, it got dark quickly. As I was falling asleep, I wondered if I were sick. I had the same separated-from-my-body feeling I had when I ran a fever.
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